"Stickler" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mother, who dared try to wear down the rule that women must be veiled. Even his own dancing girls were heavily veiled in public, and all his relations with women of any sort took place behind impenetrable screens. He was a stickler for that sort of thing and, like others of his kidney, rather proud of the rumors that no curtains could confine. So he loathed and despised Yasmini even more than he had detested her mother, because she coupled to her mother's ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... their own hearts and homes, the latter for the world. And for the world also is the noble equestrian statue upon which we now gaze. It is a question whether a work of sterling genius does not speak as effectively to the eye of the uninitiated as to that of the most inveterate stickler for antecedents of grace and technicalities of beauty. This statue of Frederick of Prussia tells upon the sense at once, because it is true to art as established by ancient critics, but more so, because ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... Hakim-Effendi and one of the Giaour women. What would happen were this knowledge to come to Alfieri's ears? The man who had not scrupled to order the pursuit and capture—the death, if need be—of Royson himself and Abdur Kad'r, was not a stickler at trifles. It was reasonable to suppose that he was making overtures of peace solely because his scouts had revealed the size of the expedition. How would he act under these fresh circumstances? Judging by the pact, there could ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... for first lieutenant whose name was Fletcher. He was a kind-hearted man enough, as he never worried the ship's company when there was no occasion; but, at the same time, he was what you call a great stickler for duty—made no allowances for neglect or disobedience of orders, although he would wink at any little skylarking, walking aft, shutting his eyes, and pretending not to see or hear it. His usual phrase was, 'My man, you've got your ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... of girl. If she is one of your high-steppers as to dignity and sense of honor, let him play mean and seem to do a few dirty tricks. If she's a stickler for manners and good taste, let him betray a few traits of boorishness or Philistinism; or if she has a keen sense of the ridiculous, let him make an ass of himself. I should say the last would be the surest cure and leave least of a sore place ...
— Potts's Painless Cure - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... by us, had we not in coming to anchor swung between her moorings and the Machina wharf. Not that it made any serious difference, Gates explained, nor were we impertinently near, but it just missed being the scrupulously polite thing to have done—and Gates was a stickler on matters of yacht etiquette. So he felt uncomfortable about it, while at the same time being reluctant to hoist anchor and foul our decks with the bottom of Havana Bay. To be on the safe side he determined to megaphone apologies and consult her ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... Hackney-School. And when grown up to Marriageable years I wanted not for store of Sweethearts, and some of them of very good Estates: and yet my Father thought none good enough. But he being one that was a great and zealous Stickler for the Parliament in opposition to the King, and thinking that Charles Stuart (as then they call'd King Charles the Second), would never be Restor'd, laid out his Money in Purchasing of Crown-Lands, having (as he thought) got a mighty Peniworth: But Oliver being ...
— The London-Bawd: With Her Character and Life - Discovering the Various and Subtle Intrigues of Lewd Women • Anonymous
... imaginative adults when they choose to throw the reins on the neck of their phantasy. Our luminous circle of rational perception is surrounded by a misty penumbra of illusion. Common sense itself may be said to admit this, since the greatest stickler for the enlightenment of our age will be found in practice to accuse most of his acquaintance at some time or another ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... have been charitable, if the author had not pointed at personal characters in this Ballad of Charity. The Abbot of St. Godwin's at the time of the writing of this was Ralph de Bellomont, a great stickler for the Lancastrian family. Rowley was ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... of advantage to the women also, since these checks and approvals were safeguards of the group as a whole, and not of the men only. The person and presence of woman in society have stimulated and modified male behavior and male moral standards, and she has been a faithful follower, even a stickler for the prevalent moral standards (the very tenacity of her adhesion is often a sign that she is an imitator); but up to date the nature of her activities—the nature, in short, of the strains she has been put to—has not enabled her ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... John Wesley himself is a Clerk in Holy Orders? and, I have heard, a great stickler for ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... unreasonableness of an Husband, or the severity of a Parent, that would debar the Sex from such innocent Liberties. Your Salamander is therefore a perpetual Declaimer against Jealousie, and Admirer of the French Good-breeding, and a great Stickler for Freedom in Conversation. In short, the Salamander lives in an invincible State of Simplicity and Innocence: Her Constitution is preserv'd in a kind of natural Frost; she wonders what People mean by Temptation; and defies Mankind to do their worst. Her ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... there is little doubt it would grow in Cameroons and Congo Francais where it would have an excellent climate and pretty nearly any elevation it liked. But I believe tea has of late years been discovered to be like coffee, not such a stickler for elevation as it used to be thought, merely requiring not to have its roots in ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... manner of his own. He was a stickler for getting down to the very heart of things, for prodding around among causes until he found the cause itself. And thus he learned the secret ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... suddenly for belief, inspired by his melancholy disappointment, so that he would dig me in the ribs with his long forefinger and laugh at me because he had discovered my deception. My uncle was a nice observer (and diligent) of fashion, and a stickler for congruity of dress, save in the matter of rings and the like, with which, perhaps, he was in the way of too largely ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... advanced education at Athens. There Brutus found him in 43, when attending philosophical lectures in order to hide his political intrigues; and though Horace was a freedman's son, Brutus gave him the high dignity of a military tribuneship. Brutus as a Republican was, of course, a stickler for all the aristocratic customs. That he conferred upon Horace a knight's office probably indicates that the libertinus pater had been a war captive rather than a man of servile stock, and, therefore, only technically a "freedman." In practical life the ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... "Messer Simone is no stickler for principles," Folco said, sourly; "he cares for no laws that he can break. But in this case he claims to be acting according to his right, since the breaking of the peace ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... opportunity of 'calling' upon Mrs Browdie first; for although Mrs Nickleby very often observed with much complacency (as most punctilious people do), that she had not an atom of pride or formality about her, still she was a great stickler for dignity and ceremonies; and as it was manifest that, until a call had been made, she could not be (politely speaking, and according to the laws of society) even cognisant of the fact of Mrs Browdie's existence, she felt her situation to be one ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... reanimated rooms of Casa Grande. Then Poppsy—I beg her ladyship's pardon, for I mean, of course, Pauline Augusta—has to duly inspect her dolls to assure herself that they are both well-behaved and spotless as to apparel, for Pauline Augusta is a stickler as to decorum and cleanliness; and Dinkie falls to working on his air-ship, which he is this time making quite independent of Whinnie, whose last creation along that line betrayed a disheartening disability for flight. But even this second effort, ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... seems about two years younger than you. I'm glad there isn't any puzzle about telling you apart. She's sweet and gay and loving and I suppose we've all spoiled her. Aunt Kate thinks she's the loveliest thing in the world, and she has just devoted her life to the child. Aunt Kate is as good as gold, a stickler for some things and she's always been splendid to mother. But she's great on family. She can't cry you down, because ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... startled and amazed beyond measure. He did not at all take in my meaning, but he was very sensible of my rudeness. My uncle was ever the most amiable of men and the most tolerant, but for correctness of deportment and elegance of manner he was a stickler, and so flagrant a breach of ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... is a stickler for monarchy, not altogether as a pensioner, if he is one, which I believe, but as a political man. He has taken up a contemptible opinion of mankind, who, in their turn, are taking up the same of him. He considers them as a herd of beings ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... whom he arrested find prosecutes for a vile crime, is championed and housed by one whom he claims as his promised wife? Dunbar has a keen eye for the 'eternal fitness of things,' and, where you are concerned, is a jealous stickler for social convenance. I warn you he will be bitterly offended, if you bring General ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... unquestionably a high-class Picturedrome. True that the local dentist, who is a stickler for correct English, protests against the designation. I have pointed out to him that if a "Hippodrome" is a place where one sees performing hippos, then surely a place where one sees performing pictures is correctly ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 18, 1914 • Various
... who have never shown any capacity to write it at all; and which seeks, in a feeble way, to cramp usage by setting up distinctions that never existed, and laying down rules which it requires uncommon ignorance of the language to make or to heed. Still there are lengths to which the most strenuous stickler for freedom of speech does not venture to go. There are prejudices in favor of the exclusive legitimacy of certain constructions that he feels bound to respect. He recognizes, as a general rule, for instance, that when the subject is in the singular ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... few that have occurred having arrived unheralded and hence have remained undiscovered. For instance, it is not generally known that Mrs. Pennycook has lost control of her husband. Yet, such is the fact. She is still a great stickler for principle, but she trembles if her husband looks at her. It appears that Dan Pennycook's half-hearted accusation of Miss Pickett as the author of the anonymous note found on the body of Boras O'Rourke preyed on the spinster's mind, and when Bob McGraw started an investigation she ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... which disarmed Bob's anger. Mart was watching the four men anxiously. Their attitude puzzled him, for the seamen were undoubtedly insolent, but Jerry seemed to pay no attention; and the old quartermaster was usually a stickler ...
— The Pirate Shark • Elliott Whitney
... French measure, two hundred and six arpents, one perch, seven feet eight inches, and four eighths of an inch," from which description one would infer the Major had surveyed his domain with great minuteness, or that he must have been rather a stickler for territorial rights. What would his shades now think could they be made cognizant of the fact that that very chateau garden, [269] which he possessed and bequeathed to his sons in the year 1800, which had been taken possession of for military purposes by the ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... known in her day as they have been since," said Joan; "only the first leaves, so to speak, were above the soil: but so far as I can judge from what I know, I should say, not so. She was a great stickler for old ways and the ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... come to the servants' entrance?" said Charolais, with the truculent air of the servant of a duke and a stickler for his ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson
... is made in any one of the theologies of the world, as to whether the statements made about him are accurate. It is not this intellectual belief that I am talking about at this minute. Have faith in God! You may not even use the name. I am no such stickler for phrases as to condemn a man who cannot say "God." I have known a good many men, who have hesitated to pronounce the name, who were infinitely more divine in their life and character than those who are glibly uttering it every hour of their lives. It is not this I mean. It is something deeper, ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... certainly no stickler for high-flown notions. I should be right glad if we understood each other. And how far ...
— Moral • Ludwig Thoma
... that sudden leap be described as "impulsive"? The Bishop, ever a stickler for accuracy in ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... Alfred's favorite farce, in which he impersonated the character of the awkward negro who breaks the dishes, was the closing number on the program. Alfred, always a stickler for natural effects, prevailed upon one of the boys to borrow his mother's china tea set. For safety these dishes were ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... At first, of course, they had a bad time with him; they couldn't talk to him, and when, quite naturally and nonchalantly he would start in to do the most outrageous things, they had to teach him better, literally by force. If Pedder weren't such an old stickler for propriety, I could go more into detail. You needn't look offended, Ped, you know you are very easily shocked, and that you make it unpleasant for everybody. He was taken on by the English consul at Teerak, who was a good fellow, and clothed, and taught to speak English, and, as a beginning, ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... sure he will agree with me. Now, Lady Dundas, if you please! I know your ladyship is a great stickler for precedence." ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... for this unique act of justice was that the said Perrelli had appeared at some palace function with paste buckles on his shoes, instead of silver ones. The pretext was well chosen, inasmuch as the tyrant added to his other vices and absurdities the pose of being an extravagant stickler for etiquette. We happen to know, nevertheless, that the name of a young dancer, a prime favourite at Court, cropped up persistently at the time in connection with this malodorous ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... a whisky and soda then and there, for he had both in the cupboard, in his sitting-room. But he was a stickler for the proprieties: he had drunk red wine, Burgundy with his dinner and port after it, and after red wine brandy is the proper spirit. There would be brandy in the tantalus in the ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... they were very pretty, but they talked so, and laughed so loud, and scuffled with each other for the paper of chocolate which one of them took out of her pocket, that Lemuel, after first being abashed by the fact that they were city girls, became disgusted with them. He was a stickler for propriety of behaviour among girls; his mother had taught him to despise anything like carrying-on among them, and at twenty he was as severely virginal in his morality as if he had ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... 1530, however, the Church was to receive a rough reminder that the Defender of the Faith was a stickler for the rigidity of the statutes. He had already struck at Wolsey because, urged thereto by himself, the Cardinal had obtained and exercised legatine powers contrary to the Statutes of Praemunire. Such was the King's reverence for the Law that after it had been transgressed ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... Mr. SWIFT MACNEILL always a stickler for constitutional precedent, attacked the Government for introducing important Bills—including one for extending once more the life of this immortal Parliament—without vouchsafing any explanation of them. He appealed to the SPEAKER ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 4, 1917 • Various
... Anatomizing of Bodies then either Sennertus or I, has somewhere this resolute passage;[12] Scio (saies he) ex arena, silicibus & saxis, non Calcariis, nunquam Sulphur aut Mercurium trahi posse; Nay Quercetanus himself, though the grand stickler for the Tria Prima, has this Confession of the Irresolubleness of Diamonds;[13] Adamas (saith he) omnium factus Lapidum solidissimus ac durissimus ex arctissima videlicet trium principiorum ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... Suvorov in 1790, after a peculiarly bloody siege. (Byron chose this episode for treatment in Don Juan, cantos vii and viii.) Mickiewicz makes Rykov give the name as Izmailov; Rykov is a bluff soldier, not a stickler for geographical nomenclature.] ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... but he is a man of very rigid principles and a great stickler in regard to any matters pertaining to the interests and duties of his office. Were I to divulge—as, I confess, my pen is itching to do—the dazzling—I will even say blinding—contents of these other grim compartments (particularly if I were to give any hint of their value in bullion), no feelings ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... Cherry Pectoral useful in my family." B. T. Johnson, Mt. Savage, Md., writes: "For the speedy cure of sudden Colds, and for the relief of children afflicted with Croup, I have never found anything equal to Ayer's Cherry Pectoral. It is the most potent of all the remedies I have ever used." W. H. Stickler, Terre Haute, Ind., writes: "Ayer's Cherry Pectoral cured my wife of a severe lung affection, supposed to be Quick Consumption. We now regard the Pectoral as a household necessity." E. M. Breckenridge, Brainerd, Minn., writes: "I am ...
— The American Missionary—Volume 39, No. 02, February, 1885 • Various
... if they should, where's the danger? You, such a believer in the romantic—stickler for old knight-errantry—instead of regretting it, should be glad! Look there! Lovers coming from all sides—suitors by land and suitors by sea! Knights terrestrial, knights aquatic. No lady of the troubadour times ever had the like; none ever honoured by such a rivalry! Come, ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... liberty of option were obvious, and the opponents of the bill did not fail to make the most of them. It was a subject which specially suited the satirical pen and declamatory powers of Dr. South. He was a great stickler for uniformity; unity, he urged, was strength; and therefore he insisted upon 'a resolution to keep all the constitutions of the Church, the parts of the service, and the conditions of its communion entire, without lopping off any part of them.' 'If any be ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... hospitality. "Where," he inquires "are the great chines of stalled beef, the great, black jacks of double beer, the long hall-tables fully furnished with good victuals?" But he seems to have been a stickler for the solid fare most in vogue, according to his complaint, formerly; and he represents to us that in lieu of it one had to put up with goose-giblets, pigs' pettitoes, and so many other boiled meats, forced meats, and made dishes. Things were hardly so very bad, however, if, as ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... at his new acquisition. He was no stickler for conventionalities, and did not in the least object to appear at his destination—where he knew no one—with a baby and ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton
... a particular grievance against the meditative guard, and his was one not tempered either by prudence or calculation. His chance came one night when Elpaso had unwisely allowed himself to be drawn into a card game at Calabasas Inn. Elpaso was notoriously a stickler for a square deal at cards. He was apparently the only man at Calabasas that hoped for such a thing, and certainly the only one so rash as to fight for it—yet he always did. A dispute on this occasion found him without a friend in ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... these views are compatible, the reader will judge. And it is hoped he will excuse the length of the extracts, from a consideration of the fact, that a great master of the "pen-craft" here ridiculed, a noted stickler for needless Kays and Ues, now commonly rejected, while he boasts that his grammar, which he mostly copied from Murray's, is teaching the old explanation of the alphabetic elements to "more than one hundred thousand children and youth," ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... he found out, at a moment when it was too late to correct his error, that she was not a woman to be slighted in respect to the conventionalities of polite life, however trifling to a man of Harley's stamp these might seem to be. She was a stickler for form; and when she was summoned to go on board of an ocean steamship there to take part in a romance for the mere aggrandizement of a young author, she intended that he should not ignore the proprieties, even if in a sense the proprieties to which she referred did antedate ...
— A Rebellious Heroine • John Kendrick Bangs
... mounted the stairs and entered the front room overhead. He was there, of course, to arrange his toilet. He was a stickler for handsome clothes, spotless linen and ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... white jet made with the long lines of the present fashion—in dress she was evidently a stickler. The neck was cut in a low square, showing the rise of the bust. Her own lines were long, the arms and hands very slender in the long white gloves. Probably she was the only woman in the house who wore gloves. ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... that which vpon credite shee deliuereth; yet I rather incline to their side, who would warrant her authoritie by apparant veritie. Notwithstanding, in this question, I will not take on me the person of either Iudge, or stickler: and therefore if there bee any so plunged in the common floud, as they will still gripe fast, what they haue once caught hold on, let them sport themselves with these coniectures, vpon which mine auerment in behalf of Plymmouth is grounded. The place where Brute ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew
... addressing the Prince, "you will forgive an old campaigner for being a stickler for the rules and procedures of military operations. An inn-yard, with soldiery around and townsfolk gaping through doors and windows, is no place for a council of war. The gentleman is pleased to dream, of birds, as I gather. Let him back to the fireside and ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... a rather injured tone, "is really the most outrageous stickler for forms and ceremonies that ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... a facer. It never occurred to any of us—eh?—that this island might have an owner. To tell the truth, I'm a stickler for the rights of property, at home; but somehow the notion of an island like this belonging to any one had never entered my head. Yet the thing is reasonable enough when you come to think it over; and, ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... happen to us," returned Bowse, who was a great stickler for the honour of the navy, and did not at all relish the colonel's observations. "I've done my best to please you, and I'm sure the officers of any of his Majesty's ships would have done the same. I've belonged myself to the service, and have held the ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... of such of the Roman nobility as had fallen in the battle of Cannae. He concluded with demanding money, provisions, and fresh troops. All the spectators were struck with an extraordinary joy; upon which Imilcon, a great stickler for Hannibal, fancying he had now a fair opportunity to insult Hanno, the chief of the contrary faction, asked him, whether he was still dissatisfied with the war they were carrying on against the Romans, and was for having Hannibal ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... Mr. Fox in the earlier part of the voyage, considering him indolent and inactive; and probably thought his present repugnance arose from a want of true nautical spirit. The interference of the partners in the business of the ship, also, was not calculated to have a favorable effect on a stickler for authority like himself, especially in his actual state of feeling ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... ran down the principal village street, shouting as he ran. At some doors he paused long enough to pound with his fist, awakening the dwellers who had not heard his call, for he was Rodney Stickler, the town constable and watchman, whose duty it was to sound the fire alarm, and summon the bucket brigade, in ...
— The Young Firemen of Lakeville - or, Herbert Dare's Pluck • Frank V. Webster
... will?" was probably the only question that suggested itself to his mind at the time, and the logic of the answer in no way troubled him. The dignity of the bench was always upheld by Judge Douglas during the sitting of the court; but he was no stickler ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... from workshop to workshop like an incorrigible ranter whom no employer would keep; those two, with their want and dirt and rebellion, had ended by incensing the vain little clerk, who was not only a great stickler for the proprieties, but was soured by all the difficulties he encountered in his own life. And thus he had forbidden ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... words to me as he hurried off after luncheon, and here we were in the great hall, but there was no Chiltern, which was vexatious. True, it was half-past four, and he is such a stickler for what he calls punctuality, and has no sympathy with those delays which are inseparable from going out in a new bonnet. One of the strings——but there, what does it matter? Here we were standing in the ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... fact, it is to this date, as far as official action can make it so, and it is interesting to conjecture what the results might be were some malicious person, or some "legal-minded stickler for rigid adherence to the law," to bring suit against those whose deeds, titles, leases, or other documents declare it ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... was a "Hamlet-hesitating monarch," who had it not been for the burly giant Bismarck would have been swept into oblivion by the first whiff of gunpowder. A stickler for religious dogma, the pietists adored him, but the classes despised him; he was one of those men who discuss trifles with elegant ease, but who have no conception of what is behind this present ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... purpose of introducing his companion. Personally, he would as readily have performed this office on horseback, but he knew that the schoolmaster was a stickler for ceremony. While the introduction was going on, Pierre took Mr. Nash's horse by the bridle, and led the procession home. There, Madame stood in the porch eagerly waiting for news of "ce jeune homme si ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... rules of the Criminal Code he knew that Kedsty even now was instructing Staff-Sergeant O'Connor to detail an officer to guard his door. The fact that he was ready to pop off at any moment would make no difference in the regulations of the law. And Kedsty was a stickler for the law as it was written. Through the closed door he heard voices indistinctly. Then there were footsteps, dying away. He could hear the heavy thump, thump of O'Connor's big feet. O'Connor had always walked like that, even ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... lighter-hearted contemporaries thought him a dull enough dog, who would not join in a carouse or a gallant adventure, but would probably get the better of you if he could in any commercial deal. He was a great stickler for the observances of religion; and never a Sunday or feast-day passed, when he was ashore, without finding him, like the dutiful son of the Church that he was, hearing Mass and attending at Benediction. Not, indeed, a very attractive or inspiring figure of a man; not the man ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... change. There is a very good bust of Chaucer, with a cap on, and there is a still more excellent bust of Lorenzo de Medici, which has also a cap; but we put the question to the most conservative of hatters, and to the greatest stickler for the etatus quo in head attire, whether he would tolerate the marble or bronze portraiture of either of those worthies with the modern hat upon its head? The idea is so preposterous, that, if fairly considered, it would make converts of the most obstinate sticklers for ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... place, as he informed me. That would about satisfy him. That such jobs were waiting by the score for an educated German in this barbarous land he never doubted for a moment. In the end he went to work in a rolling-mill at a dollar a day. Adler was ever a stickler for etiquette. In Brady's Bend we had very little of it. At mealtimes a flock of chickens used to come into the summer kitchen where we ate, and forage around, to Adler's great disgust. One day they deliberately ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... reluctant form in a two-piece bathing suit of a vivid lemon colour; for he was supposed to be representing one of those jolly dogs belonging to the best families who dive off floats at exclusive seashore resorts. J. B. Wheeler, a stickler for accuracy, had wanted him to remove his socks and shoes; but there Archie had stood firm. He was willing to make an ass of himself, but ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... said the Shalotten Shammos, who was a great stickler for precision, being, as his nickname implied, a master of ceremonies. "I can't admit that. Look ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Duncan better than did Jack Gardner, and he realized what a strong and stirring effect this fake-story, as made up between himself and Beatrice, might have upon one who was such a stickler for certain forms as he knew Duncan to be. His impulse was to follow his friend from the room, but he resisted it, although he did keep his gaze spasmodically fixed upon the door by which Roderick ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... who was a great stickler for the truth of all sorts of prophecies, gives a much more favourable account of this Peter of Pomfret, or Pontefract, whose fate he would, in all probability, have shared, if he had had the misfortune to have ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... communicated by friends to the undertaking; and for which Mr. Shiels had the same consideration as for the rest, being paid by the sheet, for the whole. He was, however, so angry with his Whiggish supervisor, (He, like his father, being a violent stickler for the political principles which prevailed in the Reign of George the Second,) for so unmercifully mutilating his copy, and scouting his politicks, that he wrote Cibber a challenge: but was prevented ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... shall be nameless, filled the situation of Plumian Professor of Astronomy at Oxford. He was a great stickler for decorum, and all due respect to his office. One day he received a letter by the post, directed to himself, as the Plumbian Professor. He shook with indignation. What an insult! Plumbian professor! Leaden professor! Was ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 379, Saturday, July 4, 1829. • Various
... be here, lug and luggage," predicted Leila with a groan. "It is the way they treated you that would have counted against them. Our president is a stickler for honor. He might readily expel them ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... myself, and surely I should meet officers at the ball who would gladly present me to the lady. I should be compelled to attend in field uniform, yet circumstances would excuse that, and what little I had seen of her convinced me she was no stickler for conventionality. The duty soldier was more apt to interest such a personality than any dandy on dress parade. With a word I dismissed my companion, and turned in to the camp of the Yagers, ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... the girls got into their gymnasium costumes. Then they clamored for breakfast, and had Mrs. Morse not appeared just then there certainly would have been a riot at the cook-tent. Lizzie was a stickler for orders, and she would not begin to fry cakes until Jess' mother ...
— The Girls of Central High in Camp - The Old Professor's Secret • Gertrude W. Morrison
... you be tied to the calendar? Can't you celebrate Johnnie's birthday a few days later just as well? Such a stickler for the exact date as you are, I ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... people be placed in charge of bureaus, or be given a minister's portfolio. I only wish to prove that eloquence is a gift which exerts today an influence out of proportion to its worth. It is overestimated. A good orator must be something of a poet, which means that he cannot be a stickler for truth and mathematical accuracy. He must be inspiring, quick, and excitable, able himself to kindle the enthusiasm of others. But a good orator I fear will rarely play a good game of whist or of chess, and will be even less satisfactory as a statesman. The emotional element and not cool reason ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... developed a liking for the new profession, and to secure a permanency obtained entrance into the established army. Among these was one Lieutenant Ben Tappan. Secretary Stanton being his uncle, no difficulty offered but this autocrat ought to remove, but unfortunately Stanton was a stickler for forms, and the relationship looked like nepotism to the world. Tappan particularly wished to stay on the staff on account of the privileges. His stepfather, Frank Wright, induced their congressman, Judge Shellabarger, ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... been saying applies to Adair Easterday," he objected. "He wasn't a profiteer in khaki; he wasn't even in khaki. He made nothing; he lost nearly everything he had. Moreover, whatever faults he may have, he's always been a thorough-bred—a stickler for honor; the kind of chap who, if he had to sink, would go down with all his colors flying. Where his wife is concerned, he's a lover-for-all-time kind ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... live in the kitchen! I asked the Mess sergeant whether the French people did anything curious in their cooking, and he at once said, "Yes; they never eat any meat, only vegetables and pork!" Our Divisional General, a Guardsman who is a great stickler for everything being quite right, was horrified the other day when crossing a bridge to see a Special Reserve sentry of the "Black Watch" with his rifle between his knees and his face buried in a bowl of soap. Of course, his job was to watch the bridge and to present ...
— Letters of Lt.-Col. George Brenton Laurie • George Brenton Laurie
... lands. He did not choose to tarry at Paris while the diplomatists unravelled the tangled web of statecraft. Nor would he tender an unconditional homage to the prince who withheld from him his inheritance. Already a stickler for legal rights, even when used to his own detriment, Edward was unable to deny his subjection to the overlord of Aquitaine. He therefore performed homage, but he phrased his submission in terms which left him ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... instances of artists I will add others of celebrated authors. Muretus rendered Joseph Scaliger, a great stickler for the ancients, highly ridiculous by an artifice which he practised. He sent some verses which he pretended were copied from an old manuscript. The verses were excellent, and Scaliger was credulous. After having read them, he exclaimed they were admirable, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... anticipated it, Knox. The Chief Constable, although quite a decent fellow, is a stickler for routine. On the strength of those facts which I thought fit to place before him he could see no reason for superseding Aylesbury. Accordingly, without further waste of time, I headed straight for Whitehall. You may remember a somewhat elaborate report which I completed upon ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... and her riches have attracted many suitors, she has never been tempted to venture again into the happy state. This is singular, too, for she seems of a most soft and susceptible heart; is always talking of love and connubial felicity, and is a great stickler for old-fashioned gallantry, devoted attentions, and eternal constancy, on the part of the gentlemen. She lives, however, after her own taste. Her house, I am told, must have been built and furnished about the time of Sir ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... isn't it a pity? [Weeping again.] Ah well! out of my heart's joy has flamed all this long history, and meanwhile you must be very uncomfortable. Take off that "abstraction blanket." Take it off, for I have nothing more to tell you. Gracious goodness! what a stickler you are! Well, then! I must pull it off myself. I will have it off, ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... is meant hostility to existing property institutions, and a determination, if possible, to subvert them. Of the two, the charge of Agrarianism is the more serious, as it implies the other. A man may be irreligious, and yet a great stickler for property, because a great owner of it,—or because he is by nature stanchly conservative, and his infidelity merely a matter of logic. But if there be any reason for charging a man with Agrarianism, though it be never so unreasonable a reason, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... she was not a stickler for social proprieties; so, although she knew the invitation savored of that "rawness" of which her aunt had remarked, she was inclined to meet ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... birthrights and common rights;" tracing the first from the creation, and deducing argument in favor of his opinions on the second from doomsday book, through all the intricate windings of the modern inclosure acts. Barney is a great stickler for reform in College, and does not hesitate to attack the fellows of Eton (whom he denominates black slugs), on holding pluralities, and keeping the good things to themselves. As Barney's avocation compels him to travel wide, he ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... general should not do anything for Mr. Mordaunt's wife, for she was his own flesh and blood; and I am sure he had no cause to be angry at her marrying a gentleman of such old family as Mr. Mordaunt. I am a great stickler for birth, sir; I learned that from the late Lady W. 'Brown,' she said, and I shall never forget her ladyship's air when she did say it, 'Brown, respect your superiors, and never fall into the hands of the ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... friendship knit these two men, who were both unmarried. Mendarva had been a famous wrestler in his day, and his great ambition now was to train the other to win the County belt. Often after work the pair would try a hitch together on the triangle of turf, with Taffy for stickler, Mendarva illustrating and explaining, the Dane nodding seriously whenever he understood, but never answering a word. Afterwards the boy recalled these bouts very vividly—the clear evening sky, the shoulders of the two big men shining against ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... for the money he gets for the job. In the instance given above, of the escapement with nine degrees of lever action, when the fork worked all right, if we undertook to give the fork the ten degrees demanded by the stickler for accuracy we would have to set out the jewel pin or lengthen the fork, and to do either would require more time than it would to bring the pallets to conform to the fork and roller action. It is just this knowing ...
— Watch and Clock Escapements • Anonymous
... taste in arrangement, light, air, setting, were his in a remarkable degree. He was not successful in large compositions, but in small pictures like those of the Rake's Progress he was excellent. An early man, a rigid stickler for the representation, a keen observer of physiognomy, a satirist with a sense of the absurd, he was often warped in his art by the necessities of his subject and was sometimes hard and dry in method, but in his best work he was quite a perfect painter. He was the first of the English school, ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke
... to show us the probabilities. It is certain that in 1564 John Augusta came out of prison; it is certain that in 1571 two Bishops-elect, Israel and Blahoslav, consecrated three successors; it is certain that Augusta was a stickler for his own authority as a Bishop; it is not certain that he raised an objection to the conduct of Israel and Blahoslav; and, therefore, it is possible that he had consecrated them himself. If he did, the Moravian succession is unbroken; and, at any rate, it is without ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... Semple say that Van Heemskirk is a great stickler for trade, and that he hates every man who ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... monotonous and colourless, and were looking forward to the termination of their visit. The life they had led for the past fortnight was not their way of life. They met each morning for breakfast at nine o'clock—Miss Heredith was a stickler for the mid-Victorian etiquette of everybody sitting down together at the breakfast table. After breakfast the men wandered off to their own devices for killing time: some to play a round of golf, others to go shooting or fishing, generally not reappearing until dinner-time. After dinner ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... Constance as to how the Countess de Santiago could be induced to pay a visit to Valley House, despite the fact that she had never met Lord and Lady Annesley-Seton. Like most women who had lived in Spanish countries, the Countess was rather a "stickler for etiquette," her friend Nelson Smith announced. Besides, her experience as an "amateur clairvoyante" made her quick to resent anything which had the air of patronage. One must go delicately to work to think out a scheme, if Lady Annesley-Seton were really in ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... Lenox, who carried on the court affairs then, he was persecuted and obliged to abscond some time, about 1584. But afterwards being carried down with the current of the times, he was transported to Edinburgh, where he became a mighty stickler for prelacy, especially, the five articles of Perth; insomuch that by the year 1620, he pressed kneeling at the sacrament with much impudence and indecency; and though he would not preach on Sabbath, yet he behoved to preach ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... he announced, with the most engaging simplicity. "We both stand in need of refreshment before we return to the serious business of our interview. You see me in my cook's dress; forgive it. There is a form in these things. I am a great stickler for forms. I have been taking some wine. Please sanction that proceeding by ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... the Greek, and applied to Theramenes, who was at first a mighty stickler for the thirty tyrants' authority: but when they began to abuse it by defending such outrageous practices, no man more violently opposed it than he; and this (says Potter) got him the nick-name of "Jack of both sides," from Cothurnus, which ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, Issue 353, January 24, 1829 • Various
... all the other youngsters in the place,—Punch walked solemnly up the aisle and stood behind them, with slow-swinging tail and a look of anticipation on his gravely interested face, while outside, Scamp, in the hands of some enterprising stickler for forms and ceremonies, rent the air ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... him. What a story that is which he has given to us of a great soul—faithful always in the greatest? Yes, but no less faithful in the least. There seems a strange, almost grotesque impossibility in the thought that such an one should ever have come to be regarded as "a stickler for ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... air of Mudfog, the Mayor died. It was a most extraordinary circumstance; he had lived in Mudfog for eighty-five years. The corporation didn't understand it at all; indeed it was with great difficulty that one old gentleman, who was a great stickler for forms, was dissuaded from proposing a vote of censure on such unaccountable conduct. Strange as it was, however, die he did, without taking the slightest notice of the corporation; and the corporation were ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... that Adrian had no intention, in the present case, of practically asserting,—as Frederic in his politic wrath said he did,—the feudal superiority in question. The English pope, however, was not the less a stickler for that superiority in theory, as well as Cardinal Roland and the rest of the hierarchy;—a superiority which Pope Gregory VII. supported by the feelings and convictions of Christendom at his day, taught as follows: ...
— Pope Adrian IV - An Historical Sketch • Richard Raby
... purely a question of expediency, and to be solved satisfactorily only by experiment. As to our right so to employ them, it seems absurd to question it for a moment. The most bigoted and inveterate stickler for the absolute divinity of slavery in the Southern States would scarcely insist that, as a matter of right, either constitutional or moral, we could not employ negroes as soldiers in the army. Whether they are, or are not, by nature, by law, or by ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... best worth listening to on the subject (observe him, the centre of half a dozen boys), and at first he was for the defence, being a great stickler for the rights of mothers. But when the case against the girl leaked out, she need not look to him for help. The police had found the child in a basket down an area, and being knowing ones they pinched it to make it cry, and then they pretended ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... replied the stranger, "my name is Kuhleborn; and were I a stickler for the nice distinctions of rank, I might, with equal propriety, require you to give me the title of noble lord of Kuhleborn, or free lord of Kuhleborn; for I am as free as the birds in the forest, and, it may be, a trifle more so. For example, I now have something ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... satisfaction with which that close-knit group of friends seized upon an outsider as the probable murderer of that other outsider whom they had rashly taken into their sacred circle. Even Penny Crain, thorny little stickler for fair play that she was, relaxed with a ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... to be no stickler for terms; his anxiety to replace the lost treaty was too great. And Mr. Scheidle, after analyzing and studying the results of the business which the Guardian had ceded to the Karlsruhe, made a very fair offer. And so the Imperial Reinsurance Company ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... contemptible for their weakness, appeared to her as better than barn-door fowl, or vermin in their multitudes gnawing to get at the cheese-trap. She could be humane, even sisterly, with women whose conduct or prattle did not outrage plain sense, just as the stickler for the privileges of her class was large-heartedly charitable to the classes flowing in oily orderliness round about below it—if they did so flow. Unable to read woman's character, except upon the broadest lines as it ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... permitted to enter, where their poor lives touched something higher or less sordid than themselves. The day was a gift of the gods and they would be merry, for to-morrow was toil and poverty. It was neither satisfying nor permanent but all so simple and happy. Only a heartless stickler for creed and dogma would have labeled it idolatry or banished from the garden of the temple the participants who ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... of a friend, after having declared, upon your arrival here, that all friendship between us had ceased. But that is not so. I never told you any such thing. As my feelings have never changed, I can repeat literally what I have said. I have told you that the count was a troublesome neighbor, a stickler for his rights, and almost absurdly attached to his preserves. I have also told you, that, if he declared my public opinions to be abominable, I looked upon his as ridiculous and dangerous. As for the countess, I have simply said, half in jest, that so perfect a person was ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... irritating to Protestants, could not shake his popularity. We shall best conceive him by examples nearer home; we may all have known some divine of the old school in Scotland, a literal Sabbatarian, a stickler for the letter of the law, who was yet in private modest, innocent, genial, and mirthful. Much such a man, it seems, was Father Dordillon. And his popularity bore a test yet stronger. He had the name, and probably deserved it, of a shrewd man in business ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... going the whole length of the principle. As Sancho, when reprimanded for mentioning his homely favourite in the Duke's kitchen, defended himself by saying, 'There I thought of Dapple, and there I spoke of him,' so the true stickler for Reform neglects no opportunity of introducing the subject wherever he is. Place its veteran champion under the frozen north, and he will celebrate sweet smiling Reform; place him under the mid-day Afric suns, and ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... became a roar, blind passion was changed into purposeful fury. Who were these white men to march so boldly into the presence of the King without even the formality of sending an envoy ahead? For the King of Bekwando, drunk or sober, was a stickler for etiquette. It pleased him to keep white men waiting. For days sometimes a visitor was kept waiting his pleasure, not altogether certain either as to his ultimate fate, for there were ugly stories as to those who had journeyed to Bekwando and never been seen or heard of since. ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Salemina dryly; "or at least the state in which it comes back is marvellous. I am not a stickler for dates, as you know, but if you could only contrive to fix a few periods in your minds, girls, just in a general way, you would not be so shamefully befogged. Your Anne of Denmark, Francesca, was the wife of ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... sword and battle-axe should fighting matters become serious, had his vice dominus to lead his forces in the field—is an old-school country gentleman who is amiably at odds with modern times. While tolerant of those who have yielded to the new order, he himself is a great stickler for the preservation of antique forms and ceremonies: sometimes, indeed, pushing his fancies to lengths that fairly would lay him open to the charge of whimsicality, were not even the most extravagant ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... rests on the petitioner. Because a case is undefended, it doesn't for one single shadow of a chance follow that the petitioner's plea is therefore going to be granted. No. The Divorce Court may be cynical, but it's a stickler for proof. The Divorce Court says to the petitioner, 'It's up to you. Prove it. Never mind what the other side isn't here to deny. What you've got to do is to satisfy me, to prove to me that these places and these circumstances were so. Go ahead. ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... fight for the Fair City. Now, though I am the elder burgess, yet I am willing, for the love and kindness we have always borne to each other, to give thee the precedence, and content myself with the humbler office of stickler." ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... better. You will have a bungalow to yourself," continued McClintock, "and your morning meal will be your own affair. But luncheon and dinners you will sit at my table. I'm a stickler about clothes and clean chins. How you dress when you're loafing will be no concern of mine; but fresh twill or Shantung, when you dine with me, collar and tie. If you like books and ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... a friend—one lone friend of her own sex amid all the waste of smouldering hate—some one surely to be wept over and made much of and caressed. The poor old hag recovered consciousness with her head pillowed on a European lap, and Duncan McClean—no stickler for convention and no believer in a line too tightly drawn—saw fit to remonstrate as he laid the jar of water down ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... fish here, and events proved I was right," said the colonel. "I hope the water isn't posted?" he inquired anxiously, for he was a stickler for ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... was a great stickler for the old English customs, and always had the yule-log brought in with great ceremony. With his own hands he suspended the mistletoe from the chandelier in the hall, which he always obtained from Dimmerly Manor in England. Lottie, without ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... proceeded to sum up, as he called it, in a fruitless and weak, though laboured attempt, to refute what I had said in my address In fact, he acted as a zealous advocate for the plaintiff, or rather as a stickler for the absurd rule of court, to make the jury give a verdict of damages, notwithstanding the only witness produced, swore, that there was not the thousandth part of a farthing ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... envelopes have in almost every case been preserved; so the postmark, when legible, has filled the lacuna. At every turn in his life we are reminded of his inexactitude—especially in autobiographical details. And yet, too, like most inexact men, he was a rare stickler for certain niceties. He would have defended the "h" in Meccah with his sword; and the man who spelt "Gypsy" with an "i" for ever ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... Godwin,[136] that the best of all governments had been that of England under George I. Though Cartwright said at the trial that Horne Tooke was taken to 'have no religion whatever,' he was, according to Stephens, 'a great stickler for the church of England': and stood up for the House of Lords as well as the church on grounds of utility.[137] He always ridiculed Paine and the doctrine of abstract rights,[138] and told Cartwright that though all men had an equal right to a share of property, they ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... can tell you If I were an oppressor, or a man Feeling and thinking for my fellow men. Haply had I been what the Senate sought, A thing of robes and trinkets,[423] dizened out To sit in state as for a Sovereign's picture; A popular scourge, a ready sentence-signer, 190 A stickler for the Senate and "the Forty," A sceptic of all measures which had not The sanction of "the Ten,"[424] a council-fawner, A tool—a fool—a puppet,—they had ne'er Fostered the wretch who stung me. What I suffer Has reached me through my pity for the people; That many know, and they who know ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... of such intense ignorance of the science of golf as Joel March, there was a perceptible difference in the style of the two competitors. Outfield West was a great stickler for form, and imitated the full St. Andrews swing to the best of his ability. In addressing the ball he stood as squarely to it as was possible, without the use of a measuring tape, and drove off the right leg, as the expression is. Despite an almost ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... admiral—a stickler for uniform—stopped opposite a very portly sailor whose medal-ribbon was an inch or so too low down. Fixing the man with his eye, the admiral asked: "Did you get that medal for eating, my man?" On the man replying "No, sir," the admiral ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... with the commander, claiming that his own rank was not sufficiently high to warrant his making such a request; but those of the force who were listening to our conversation insisted that the general was not a stickler for rank, and would receive a private soldier with as much consideration as ...
— The Minute Boys of the Mohawk Valley • James Otis
... She was a stickler for politeness, and would not hear of his being told that he had been mistaken for an agreeable man, but that the error, most fortunately, had been discovered in time. He started a row with the driver of the sledge, and devoted ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... belonged to A.B. Nichols, of Liberty, Bedford County, Virginia. He came to Lynchburg, and desired the jailor to permit him to whip the negro, to make him confess, as there was no proof against him. Mr. Williams, (I think that is his name,) a pious Methodist man, a great stickler for law and good order, professedly a great friend to the black man, delivered the negro into the hands of Nichols. Nichols told me that he took the slave, tied his wrists together, then drew his arms down so far below his knees as to permit a staff to pass above the ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... great little woman," reiterated Mr. Latz, rather riveting even Mrs. Samstag's suspicion that here was no great stickler for ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... good genius urged, I'm a stickler for solid food, his one and only reason being not gormandising in the least but regular meals as the sine qua non for any kind of proper work, mental or manual. You ought to eat more solid food. You would feel a ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... bear upon it, TOM'S eyes, roving around from window to door, happen to light on a beautiful sucking-pig, that reposes in all the innocent beauty of baby pighood before the open door of a zealous stickler ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 27, October 1, 1870 • Various
... such a thing in open court. Such utterances he reserved for his cronies and confidants. Once he was under the dented tin dome where he sat for so many years he became so firm a stickler for the forms and the dignities that practically a sacerdotal air was imparted to the proceedings. As you might say, he was almost high church in his adherence to the ritualisms. Lawyers coming before him did not practice the law ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... stickler for purity of election; although, had he considered the matter, he should have known that with him money was his only passport into that Elysium in which he had now lived for two years. He probably did not consider it; for when, in those ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... her chum. "You being such a stickler for the rules, Ruth. You know, if we should ...
— Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall - or Solving the Campus Mystery • Alice B. Emerson
... so marked," went on the detective. "I gather that Siddle is a stickler for charity and fair dealing. He didn't abandon the role, of course. It was the sheer ingenuity of his method that caught my attention. So I simply ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... Steadfast, partook of the qualities that his two appellations not inaptly expressed. There was a singular profession of steadiness of purpose, and of high principle about him, all of which vanished in Dodge at the close. A great stickler for the rights of the people, he never considered that this people was composed of many integral parts, but he viewed all things as gravitating towards the great aggregation. Majorities were his hobbies, and though singularly timid as an individual, or when in the minority, put him on the ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... ready," put in Bob, who was a great stickler for justice, "but, of course, hers couldn't go till ours did. Oh, I guess they'll turn up ...
— Patty at Home • Carolyn Wells
... Chesterfield, a Bentham— would be a very bad Lord Chamberlain: so bad, in fact, that his exclusion from such a post may be regarded as decreed by natural law. On the other hand, a good Lord Chamberlain would be a stickler for morals in the narrowest sense, a busy-body, a man to whom a matter of two inches in the length of a gentleman's sword or the absence of a feather from a lady's head-dress would be a graver matter than the Habeas Corpus Act. The Lord Chamberlain, as Censor of the ...
— The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet • George Bernard Shaw
... this writer in thus refusing to accord to me so cheap and common a courtesy is apparent, and as contemptible as apparent. Let him have the glory of it,—I pity him. Had I been a white man, he would not have so violated what he is such a stickler for—'the ...
— The American Prejudice Against Color - An Authentic Narrative, Showing How Easily The Nation Got - Into An Uproar. • William G. Allen
... wing of night o'erspreads the earth And, stickler-like, the armies separates. My half-supp'd sword, that frankly would have fed, Pleas'd with this dainty ...
— The History of Troilus and Cressida • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]
... and inquire how my health is after dancing all night. Etiquette demands that much, and I'm a great stickler for etiquette." ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... visitor as he should be sent to the head of the institution. But he refused to take the hint, and indicated that he expected me to arrange the whole matter for him. This I did by going to the observatory and frankly explaining the matter to Admiral Davis. Happily the latter was not a stickler for official forms, and was cast in too large a mould to take offense where none was intended. At his invitation I acted as one of the receiving party. The carriage drove up at the appointed hour, and its occupant ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... injury, and against this only have they the right of defence. And there are instances to be found in all countries, which shew, that it is not the change of nations in the persons of their governors, but the change of government, that gives the offence. Bilson, a bishop of our church, and a great stickler for the power and prerogative of princes, does, if I mistake not, in his treatise of Christian subjection, acknowledge, that princes may forfeit their power, and their title to the obedience of their subjects; and if there needed ...
— Two Treatises of Government • John Locke
... from where the scout-master sat, perched aloft, but he scanned it in vain. Thad would not allow himself to doubt that presently the second in command of the patrol would show up there. He knew Allan was a stickler for obeying orders to the very letter, and if his superior had said that he should reach the crown of that hill at exactly seven minutes after ten, the chances were fifty to one Allan would make his appearance on the second; or there would ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... without a word of comment. Now the room, she said, would no longer look hot and uncomfortable. There would be less dust to distract one on the walls. But Silas, the stickler for old things, thought jealously, "There's always a reason ready to excuse every change. It's pride that's to pay now,—she's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... weight;— Some wisht them tall, some thought your Dumpy, Dutch-built, the true Legitimate.[1] The Easterns in a Prince, 'tis said, Prefer what's called a jolterhead:[2] The Egyptians weren't at all partic'lar, So that their Kings had not red hair— This fault not even the greatest stickler For the ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... self-confession which we find is this: An old-maidish personage, inhabiting boarding-houses, equable and lukewarm in all his tastes and passions, having no desultory curiosity, showing little interest in either books or people. A petty fault-finder and stickler for trifles, devoid in youth of any wide designs on life, fond only of the more mechanical side of things, yet drifting as it were involuntarily into the possession of a world-formula which by dint of his extraordinary ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... A gentleman by birth, a rich and successful man, happy in his private life, a great stickler for justice, as a magistrate severe upon those who cheat and adulterate, a loyal and patriotic man, and always filled with the desire to promote the interests of the City which had received him ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant
... the bishop, who was very active, very fussy, and a great stickler for discipline. "This important church, so renowned for its three miraculous bells, confided to the tender mercies of an imbecile rogue who may burn it down any night! I will look to it ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... But he was a stickler for the rights of his race, and he devoted far more thought to the trend of events than did ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)
... intensely proud and tenacious of caste—a leader in society and a great stickler regarding ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... shouts. The Baron's pack of hounds, of great renown in the country, was composed of about forty dogs, all branded upon their right thighs with the Bergenheim coat-of-arms. From time immemorial, the chateau's dogs had been branded thus with their master's crest, and Christian, who was a great stickler for old customs, had taken care not to drop this one. This feudal sign had probably acted upon the morals of the pack, for it was impossible to find, within twenty leagues, a collection of more snarly terriers, dissolute hounds, ugly bloodhounds, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... were to stay here," decided Bob, and he was a great stickler for obeying orders to the letter. Perhaps even his small newspaper experience was ...
— The Khaki Boys Over the Top - Doing and Daring for Uncle Sam • Gordon Bates
... believe in these irregularities," said the elder Cruger, whose diplomatic training had made him something of a stickler for formality and precedent. "There will be time enough for ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... pervicacity^; indocility^. bigotry, intolerance, dogmatism; opiniatry^, opiniativeness; fixed idea &c (prejudgment) 481; fanaticism, zealotry, infatuation, monomania; opinionatedness opinionativeness^. mule; opinionist^, opinionatist^, opiniator^, opinator^; stickler, dogmatist; bigot; zealot, enthusiast, fanatic. V. be obstinate &c adj.; stickle, take no denial, fly in the face of facts; opinionate, be wedded to an opinion, hug a belief; have one's own way &c (will) 600; persist &c (persevere) 604.1; have the last word, insist on having the ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... on! The Department of the Interior running our public lands saw to that. Friday's paper might come out the following Monday or Wednesday, but it must come out. That word "consecutive" in the proof law was an awful stickler. But everyone who had hung around the print shop watching Myrtle work, took ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... stickler for a good view myself," said Porthos. "At my Chateau de Pierrefonds, I have had four avenues laid out, and at the end of each is a landscape of an altogether different character ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the robes, and Sehomberg of the ordnance: the treasury, admiralty, and chancery were put in commission; twelve able judges were chosen;* and the diocese of Salisbury being vacated by the death of Dr. Ward, the king of his own free motion filled it with Burnet, who had been a zealous stickler for his interest; and in a particular manner instrumental in effecting the revolution. Sancroft, archbishop of Canterbury, refused to consecrate this ecclesiastic, though the reasons of his refusal are not specified; but, being afraid of incurring the penalties of a premunire, he granted a commission ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... hero was a severe military critic, he was never an unjust one, neither did he spare his own men. Though not a martinet, which was foreign to every fibre of his nature, he was a stickler for rigid discipline. When the expedition was recalled, he was first quartered in Norwich, and then at the old familiar barracks of St. Helier, in Jersey. On his return to the latter place, in 1800, after leave of absence, he found ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey |
