"Presto" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is the scout who learns a thing so that he may do it. And having done it, he forgets it. Perhaps there is the scout who learns, does, and remembers. But Hervey was not of that order. He had made a plunge for each merit badge, won it and, presto, his nervous mind was on another. It takes all kinds of scouts to make ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... the old play in unsympathetic mood and they may look musty and worm-eaten, but imagine Oldfield as the sprightly Lady Betty Modish, the elegant Wilks as Sir Charles Easy, and Cibber[A] himself in the empty-headed role of Lord Foppington, and, presto! everything is changed. The yellow leaves are white and fresh, the words stand out clear and distinct, and it takes but a slight flight of fancy to hear the dingy auditorium of Drury Lane echoing and re-echoing ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... and I clean this mirror. A damp cloth and a little Bon Ami are all one needs. When the Bon Ami film has dried—a few brisk rubs with a dry cloth and presto! every speck of ...
— American Cookery - November, 1921 • Various
... behind the mirrors. The only possible point at which the illusion could be detected was the angle where the mirrors joined, and this was masked by the centre post at which the double doors met. To conclude the trick, the doors were again closed, the performer swung the mirrors back into place, and, presto! he was back in the cabinet, smiling genially at ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... regere immensi summam, quis habere profundi Indu manu validas potis est moderanter habenas? Quis pariter coelos omneis convertere? et omneis Ignibus aetheriis terras suffire feraceis? Omnibus inque locis esse omni tempore presto? Nubibus ut tenebras faciat, coelique serena Concutiat sonitu? tum fulmina mittat, et ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
... Presto! a current of air strikes him, and he begins dodging about in a frantic manner, as if to escape from some invisible enemy. Presently he becomes calmer, and proceeds to explore every nook and corner of the room; now going up ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... Flask. Such a queer dream, King-Post, I never had. You know the old man's ivory leg, well I dreamed he kicked me with it; and when I tried to kick back, upon my soul, my little man, I kicked my leg right off! And then, presto! Ahab seemed a pyramid, and I, like a blazing fool, kept kicking at it. But what was still more curious, Flask—you know how curious all dreams are— through all this rage that I was in, I somehow seemed to be thinking ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... from length to breadth of good-humoured, charitable England—and she is relieved, as the breaker of a commandment, when she would have been left to starve, as the keeper of it. Come here, my jolly little Mouse! Hey! presto! pass! I transform you, for the time being, into a respectable lady. Stop there, in the palm of my great big hand, my dear, and listen. You marry the poor man whom you love, Mouse, and one half your ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... I say to myself he is utterly ruined! Yellow auction placards flame at his door. He receives reams of stamped creditor's notices, which I sell by the pound for waste paper without being noticed. But presto! Up he bobs again. He is triumphant. And what devices he has! There is a new one every day! First of all, it is a scheme for wooden pavements—then it is dukedoms, ponds, mills. I don't know where the leakage is in his cash box; he finds it so hard ...
— Mercadet - A Comedy In Three Acts • Honore De Balzac
... mixers, etc., but what a guarantee for matrimonial bliss there would be if every young bride could be as sure as this ship was to please the most particular of husbands. How? By using an automatic, electric egg boiler that can be set for any time, and when the desired number of minutes is reached, presto! up comes the egg out of the boiling water! Not a second overdone, or underdone. In China some of us were given, as a great delicacy, a "twenty-year-old egg" and toward the end of the trip many of us had lost interest in all ...
— The Log of the Empire State • Geneve L.A. Shaffer
... they were with the Swedes at Bender, And listing troops for the Pretender. But Dick can f—t, and dance, and frisk, No other monkey half so brisk; Now has the speaker by his ears, Next moment in the House of Peers; Now scolding at my Lady Eustace, Or thrashing Baby in her new stays.[1] Presto! begone; with t'other hop He's powdering in a barber's shop; Now at the antichamber thrusting His nose, to get the circle just in; And damns his blood that in the rear He sees a single Tory there: Then woe be to my lord-lieutenant, Again he'll ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... walk about Savannah, which city has many splendid live-oaks in its parks and squares, involved me in a sudden shower, when, presto! the weeping willow of the North was reincarnated before my eyes, for the falling rain turned the dingy moss pendants of the live-oak to the whitish green that makes the willow such a delightful color-note in early spring. I have been thankful ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... take control of another human being. But I, personally, prefer the telepathic projection theory. All you have to do is squirt your thoughts across space and spray them all over the other fellow's brain. Presto-bingo, he does pretty much what you ...
— Supermind • Gordon Randall Garrett
... and color. There is no branch of art more elusive or more difficult than this. I must be able to construct a window which will be satisfactory as a flat piece of decoration; it must be sufficiently interesting to give pleasure even when it stands in a dim light. Then presto—the sun moves round, and my window is transformed! And in the flood of light that passes through it I must still be able to find ...
— The Story of Glass • Sara Ware Bassett
... had the greatest regard. "When I one day lamented the loss of a first cousin, killed in America, 'Prithee, my dear (said he), have done with canting: how would the world be worse for it, I may ask, if all your relations were at once spitted like larks and roasted for Presto's supper?'—Presto was the dog that lay under the table." To this Boswell opposes the version given ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... he said, "must remain in hiding behind the tree. You will hear me knock, accost the ruffians and hold them in conversation. The moment you hear me exclaim loudly, "Hey, Presto! Pots and Pans," you will dart out and engage the villains at fisticuffs. ...
— The Magic Pudding • Norman Lindsay
... faded slowly. The figures of the dancers moved uneasily in the darkness. The trumpet pealed a second signal—the darkness fled, and the great room suddenly blazed with ten thousand electric lights. The orchestra struck the first notes of a thrilling waltz, and presto!—in an instant the women appeared in all the splendour of the most gorgeous gowns, their bare arms and necks flashing with priceless jewels and each man, but a moment ago a hideous skeleton, bowed before her ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... people, "full pay during my life," and an honorary medal, were voted to me, accompanied by the truly gratifying announcement that such estimable gifts were "en testimonio de gratitud nacional por grandes servicios que presto a la Republica durante la ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... Sonata is cumulative from start to finish, passing from the exalted calm of the Adagio, through the graciousness of the Allegretto, to that inspired and inspiring torrent of harmony the Presto Agitato. Its incomparable effect of the rush and murmur of many waters, through which the still small voice of melody rings clear as a song dropped straight from heaven, leaves little room in a listener's soul for the jangling discords of earth. Into that movement ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... full-grown. It was as though they had fallen wrapped in invisibility until the great Magician had uttered the word. That was Bobby's secret thought, which he told nobody. Often he imagined he could hear the word repeated all about him, presto! presto! presto! presto! like the distant hushed falling of waters. And as the charm was said, he, looking skyward, could see the big soft flakes flash into view out ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... the parties are peer-esses; The dulness of the toujours gai, The yawning night, the sleepy day, The visages of cheese and chalk, The drowsy, dreamy, languid talk; The fifty other horrid things, That strip old Time of both his wings! There's not a topic of them all But comes, hey presto! at his call. ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... company she is in: the budding virgin is princess of chameleons; and, to confine ourselves to her two most piquant contrasts, by her mother's side she is always more or less childlike; but, let a nice young fellow engage her apart, and, hey presto! she shall be every inch a woman: perhaps at no period of her life are the purely mental characteristics of her sex so supreme in her; thus her type, the rosebud, excels in essence of rosehood ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... proprietary manner (which, by the way, had never annoyed me before), coupled with what I already knew. We had luncheon in the Della Robbia room at the Vanderbilt and I was digging the marrons out of a Nesselrode when, presto, it suddenly came over me that the baroness was right and that I could never marry a foreigner. It came like a thunderclap. But somewhere in that senate of instinct which debates over such things ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... that told you so, never believe him, for he lies as fast as a dog can trot. 'Twas in this very island that Pliny, his brother tell-truth, had seen some elephants dance on the rope with bells, and whip over the tables, presto, begone, while people were at feasts, without so much as touching the toping ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... Presto change! the rails were relaid, spiked, and the roadway levelled and better ballasted than any road I ever saw south of Mason and Dixon's line. "We must leave a good job for these folks to model after," say the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... degrees into a common indistinguishable organic pulp, out of which the new organs only slowly form themselves in obedience to the law of some internal impulse. But when the process is all over, and—hi, presto!—the butterfly emerges at last from the chrysalis condition, what does it find but that instead of having lost everything it has new and stronger legs in place of the old and feeble ones; it has nerves and brain more ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... gone," ejaculated Gazen once more. "A red and a yellow line have taken their place. That should be lithium. Hey, presto!—and all ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... be sure, can only imagine it!" growled the old man. "So long as that patrician hussy needed the poor beast of burthen she could pet it and throw barley and dates to it. Now she is rolling in gold and living under a sheltering roof, and hey presto, the discarded protector is sent to the right about in no time. This mistress of the hearts of our weak and bondage-loving sex raises this rich Adonis to fill the place of the hapless, overgrown leech, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... a partie carree," said the chaplain. "In these days of toil and tumult one has great needs of the country and its message of purity. Andate via! andate presto, presto! Ah, the town! Beautiful as it ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... perhaps does not know about the pretty servant he eloped with from the Bishop of Durango's to Murguia's hacienda? Well, but trouble started when I saw her, or rather, when she saw me, even me, senor, for then she perceived that the padrecito was not a handsome man. Presto, there was another eloping, and the holy Father Fischer felt bad, so very bad that when he got into favor with Maximilian, he had me condemned for certain toll-taking matters he knew of. But I vanished in time, ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... Francisco que significaba aquello, y el forastero le interrogo a su vez quien era el dueno de la Torre; y como Francisco le dijese que nada menos 15 que el Alcalde del pueblo, repuso que el hablaria a la noche con su merced y le explicaria sus planes. Llego presto la noche, y el hombre hizo como que se marchaba,[101-4] con lo que el cabrero se encerro en su choza, que, como sabe usted, dista poco de alli. Dos horas despues de obscurecer enteramente noto el 20 mismo Francisco que ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... at it, the aegis quivering, the thunder rattling, the lightning engaged in a perpetual skirmish. Earth was shaken like a sieve, buried in snow, bombarded with hail. It rained cats and dogs (if you will pardon my familiarity), and every shower was a waterspout. Why, in Deucalion's time, hey presto, everything was swamped, mankind went under, and just one little ark was saved, stranding on the top of Lycoreus and preserving a remnant of human seed for the generation of ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... apparently no desire to be singled out in any way, and yet she was warmly affectionate. In truth Miss Virginia was an elusive sort of person, sometimes allowing a glimpse of herself in all her unselfish sweetness, and then, presto! her reserve had taken alarm, the vision ...
— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard
... between the captain and myself were to my credit on Time's ledger—"It's all very well to stick up your pennon and ride gaily into the lists to break a lance with all comers. Society cries laissez aller! and her old dowagers shower largesse. Presto! my boy, and you find your back on the grass and your heels in the air. But I've some steady-going cousins I want to introduce ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... daughter, you're so sweetly frank. Henceforth my verses shall be blank. No other rhyme I'll rhyme for you Till you politely beg me to. Now then, your blank-verse doom you know, Hey, presto, and ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... to juggle than to write: Alas! a Poet's good for nothing now, Unless he have the knack of conjuring too; For 'tis beyond all natural Sense to guess How their strange Miracles are brought to pass. Your Presto Jack be gone, and come again, With all the Hocus Art of Legerdemain; Your dancing Tester, Nut-meg, and your Cups, Out-does your Heroes and your amorous Fops. And if this chance to please you, by that rule, He that writes Wit is much ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... know how these stories are told? Come with me, and you shall see. There! take my hand and do not be afraid, for Prince Hassan's carpet is beneath your feet. So now!—'Hey presto! Abracadabra!' Here we are in ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... and the great frown on your brow would soften into a little one; another look at the dimpled cheeks, and imploring blue eyes, and the little frown would disappear entirely; but when the sweet voice said, "Mamma, shall I put myself in the corner? I ought to go," why, one, two, three, presto!! all the angry feelings would come right out of your heart, and fly away up the chimney! and a ...
— Baby Nightcaps • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... But presto! what denouement grand Of cookery sublime! 'Twas done as by the second hand, The ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... ze affaire wis ze monstaire balloon of ze rouge color!" he cried, as he alighted from his monoplane while an assistant filled the gasolene tank. "I will in circles go around you, up and down, zis side zen ze ozzer, and presto! I am back at ze starting place, before you have begun. Zen ...
— Tom Swift and his Airship • Victor Appleton
... was the response. "Sometimes they wear orders. It's funny—if they have on a ribbon when you first notice them, they follow you, and presto—the ribbon is gone! I always laugh over that. I've watched them in the glass of the shop windows. They try to look unconcerned, but as they walk along they snap out the ribbon with their thumb—as one shells little peas, ...
— Damaged Goods - A novelization of the play "Les Avaries" • Upton Sinclair |
