"Slipperiness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... are unsuspicious, and would scarcely see a monster in a minotaur. It is well, however, to draw good out of evil, and it is the peculiar gift of an elevated mind. Nevertheless, you must have observed, although with greater curiosity than concern, the slipperiness and tortuousness ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... however, be no impediment to the good; for they shall pass with wonderful ease and swiftness, like lightning, or the wind, Mahomet, and his Moslems leading the way; whereas the wicked, what with the slipperiness and extreme narrowness of the path, the entangling of the thorns, and the extinction of the light which directed the former to paradise, will soon miss their footing, and fall down headlong into hell, which is ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... behind them uniformed and much-moustached musicians played with ardour, with rapture, their eyes closing sentimentally in the choicest passages. Baskets of flowers hung from the chandeliers, the floor was polished to the slipperiness of ice and Mrs. Batty, on her hospitable journeys to and fro, was in constant ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... minute doses of arsenic. They extract their arsenic from the air. The way they step and the carriage of the form show how full they are of life and spirits. Sarah Bernhardt will not come to Brighton if she can help it, lest she should lose that high art angularity and slipperiness of shape which suits her role. Dresses seem always to fit well, because people somehow expand to them. It is pleasant to see the girls walk, because the limbs do not drag, the feet are lifted gaily and with ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... The super-curious insist that the knife with which sallet herb is cut must be of silver. Some who are husbands of their oyl, pour at first the oyl alone, as more apt to communicate and diffuse its slipperiness, than when it is mingled and beaten with the acids, which they pour on last of all; and it is incredible how small a quantity of oyl thus applied is sufficient to imbue a very plentiful assembly of ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... spider-legged furniture caused John to choose the haircloth sofa, whose shining surface bulged substantially. He wondered where the judge used to sit. Any of the chairs would have held him, but perhaps they both used this sofa. If so, they must have led a migratory existence; and perhaps its slipperiness had infected and undermined the ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... all day. To Helen Raymond, spatting along the wet slipperiness of the drenched pavements, it seemed as if it had always rained, and always ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... made the attempt, and now Loki, grown reckless, leaped out of the water. But this time Thor caught him by his tail, and held it fast in spite of its slipperiness. ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton
... lofty trees. Long before we had reached the top it had become quite dark, and the rain had increased considerably. We stumbled along in the obscurity, leading our horses, which were occasionally down on their knees, owing to the slipperiness of the path. At last we accomplished the ascent in safety, and pushing briskly forward, we found ourselves, in about half an hour, at the entrance of Muros, a large village situated just on the declivity of the farther side ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... only the wall-paper. The furniture had been removed, the carpet taken up, the boards waxed to a high degree of slipperiness; and across the far end stretched a buffet-table presided over by a venerable person in black, with white hair, a high clear complexion, and a deportment which hit a nice mean between ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... came in, saw that her father had been beguiled into foregoing his usual nocturnal amusements, and looked soft gratitude at David. But as for him, he had never realised so vividly the queer aloofness and slipperiness of Daddy's nature, nor the miserable insecurity of Dora's life. Such men were not meant to have women ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... not think that is, on the whole, a successful paragraph, considering the general slipperiness of the subject, and the state of the ice in those parts of it, in particular where the movements appear to be the most free and graceful; such a one has, probably, failed in applying to it, that key of 'times,' which a full occasion is expected to produce for this kind of delivery. But ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... a tree: /adj./ Used to describe a task thought to be impossible, esp. one in which the difficulty arises from poor specification or inherent slipperiness in the problem domain. "Trying to display the 'prettiest' arrangement of nodes and arcs that diagrams a given graph is like nailing jelly to a tree, because nobody's ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... mind fixed upon the fact of man's superiority to Nature; his ability to dominate and outwit her. My situation was an amusing satire on this theory. I fancied that I could feel a sneer in the woods at my detected conceit. There was something personal in it. The downpour of the rain and the slipperiness of the ground were elements of discomfort; but there was, besides these, a kind of terror in the very character of the forest itself. I think this arose not more from its immensity than from the kind of stolidity to which I have alluded. It seemed to me that it would be ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... — N. danger, peril, insecurity, jeopardy, risk, hazard, venture, precariousness, slipperiness; instability &c. 149; defenselessness &c. Adj. exposure &c. (liability) 177; vulnerability; vulnerable point, heel of Achilles[obs3]; forlorn hope &c. (hopelessness) 859. [Dangerous course] leap in the ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... a brother's honest part, John Birkenholt. A loving part I say not. Thou wert always like a very popple for hardness, and smoothness, ay, and slipperiness. Heigh ho! But what is right by ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... of caucuses swelled and reports of results flowed into State headquarters, Chairman Presson and his lieutenants found themselves unable to mark men with the old certitude of touch. There was a queer kind of slipperiness everywhere. It was evident that the Canibas result had stiffened backbones in many quarters, but more new men than usual were coming forward with nominations in their fists. Many of these men were not telling any one how they felt on the big questions that were agitating the State. ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... lire, and leads men to drown thought by plunging into the thick of the worldly absorptions that really cause their unrest. The least persistent of men is strangely obstinate in his adherence to old ways, in spite of all experience of their crooked slipperiness. We wonder at the peasants who have their cottages and vineyards on the slopes of Vesuvius, and who build them, and plant them, over and over again after each destructive eruption. The tragedy of Israel is repeated in many of our lives; and the summing up of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren |
