"Slyness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as pallid of face as Newman, himself, and their faces gave one the impression of both slyness and force. A grim looking pair; I should not have cared to run afoul of them on the Barbary Coast after midnight. I already knew the names they called each other—the only names I ever knew them by—"Boston," for the blond fellow with the bridge of his nose flattened, ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... m. envelope. sobrenatural supernatural. sobrenombre m. surname, nickname. sobreponer to put over; vr. to rise above. sobreseer to suspend. sobrevivir to survive. sobrino, -a nephew, niece. socarroneria slyness, cunning. sociedad f. society. socio associate, partner. socorro succor, help. soflama trickery, deception. soga rope. sol m. sun. solamente only. soldado soldier. soledad f. solitude. solemne solemn. solemnidad f. solemnity. soler to be accustomed. solidaridad ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... pleasing slyness, and gave me a dunt with his elbow on the side, a bit of the faun, a bit of the father, a bit ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... messenger had done no more for us than this, I think he would have earned his money. But the harmless young man is a regular Jesuit at a private inquiry, with this great advantage over all the Popish priests I have ever seen, that he has not got his slyness ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... satisfy him except the death of De Artigny. Personally I had little to fear; I knew his cowardice, and that he would never venture to use physical force with me. Even if he did I could rely upon the gallantry of De Tonty, and of De Baugis for protection. No, he would try threats, entreaties, slyness, cajolery, but his real weapon to overcome my opposition would be De Artigny. And ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... blunder was in underestimating your intelligence. I thought I could play hob with you; but I was a fool." His face gave me a certain impression of slyness, which I ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... it acquired the precision, the flexibility, the nettete, which satiric treatment of the follies and evil chances of life, the oddities of manners and morals, require. It became bright, if a little hard, easy, if a little undistinguished, capable of slyness, of innuendo, of "malice," but not quite so capable as it had been of the finer and ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... she replied, looking at him with the coquettish slyness of a woman who is not quite decided in ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... narrow, menacing eyes, for he knew that Howells challenged him to a duel of slyness with the whole truth at stake. The detective's manner increased the hatred which had blazed in Bobby's mind when he had stood in the bedroom over his grandfather's body. For a moment he wished with all his heart ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... her, that minute you were in the room?' said Nyttleton to Tayling, when their client had left the house. Nyttleton was a man who surveyed everybody's character in a sunless and shadowless northern light. A culpable slyness, which marked him as a boy, had been moulded by Time, ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... looked at one another, Kovrin with amazement, and the monk with friendliness, and, just as before, a little slyness, as though he were thinking something ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... passion on the miner's part; continued presents of dust from him to the lady; on her part continued trips to Folsom, a lessened caution, and a brag of manner based upon her very just popularity at the Gap; next, Drylyn's first sickening dawn of doubt, jealousy equipping him with a new and alien slyness; the final accident of his seeing the shot-gun messenger on his very first visit to the Gap come out of the Gazelle's tent so early in the morning; the instant blaze of truth and fury that turned Drylyn to a clever, calculating ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... it is an essential part of the pleasure derived from the perusal of a popular English book, that the author gets nothing for it. It is so dar-nation 'cute—so knowing in Jonathan to get his reading on those terms. He has the Englishman so regularly on the hip that his eye twinkles with slyness, cunning, and delight; and he chuckles over the humor of the page with an appreciation of it quite inconsistent with, and apart from, its honest purchase. The raven hasn't more joy in eating a stolen piece of meat, than the American ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... success with his lance, the dwarf at least had won a victory through his comical situation and ready wit. Fair ladies forgot his ugliness; the pages his ill-humor; the courtiers his vindictive slyness; the monarch the disappointment of his failure to worst the duke's fool, and all applauded the ludicrous figure, shouting, waving his arms, struggling with inexorable destiny. Finally, in despair, his hands fell ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... thousand per annum, besides expectancies. "Here's a game of chess for you, Transit," said Echo; "why, every move upon the board is a character, and not one but what is worth booking. Observe the arch slyness of the jockey yonder, ear-wigging his patron, a young blood of the fancy, into a good thing; particularising all the capabilities and qualities of the different horses named, and making the event (in his own estimation) as sure as the Bank of England:—how finely contrasted with ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... by the way, Mr. Dudgeon, I shall be glad to see you at lunch at half-past one. (He pauses a moment, and adds, with politely veiled slyness) Bring Mrs. Anderson, if she will be so good. (To Swindon, who is fuming) Take it quietly, Major Swindon: your friend the British soldier can stand up to anything except the British War ...
— The Devil's Disciple • George Bernard Shaw
... feared that Mr. Torrance is now taking advantage of his superior slyness. 'Still, ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... persuaded by them, when, as fortune would have it, he encountered the face of the wicked little cousin, who, half afraid for her brother, and half laughing at Nathaniel Pipkin, presented as bewitching an expression of countenance, with a touch of slyness in it, too, as any man, old or young, need look upon. She drew her arm coaxingly through the old man's, and whispered something in his ear; and do what he would, old Lobbs couldn't help breaking out into a smile, while a tear stole down his cheek at the same time. 'Five minutes after ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... certain kinds of experience; such are the recurrences of reference to the Cinderella story. Sometimes it is an allusion which has its strength in long association of certain qualities with certain characters in fairydom—like the slyness of Brother Fox, and the cruelty of Brother Wolf. Sometimes the association of ideas lies below the surface, drawing from the hidden wells of poetic illusion which are sunk in childhood. The man or woman whose infancy was nourished exclusively on tales adapted ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... with an almost unhealthy pallor, from which his small dark eyes glittered restlessly; his thin lips, tightly closed, were set in an almost straight line. Clean-shaven, sleek of hair, he wore an expression of cautious slyness that implied a mental attitude ever on guard against some sudden exposure of his real feelings. Such was ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... same Creole skin, pink over a delicate duskiness, the same supple figure, the same impenetrable grey eye, and in both faces a slight defect hardly to be noticed; the finely-cut nose was a little out of line, giving an expression of slyness, of something not to be trusted. While each watched and waited for the other, the pause was filled by the distant ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... began to weigh upon him. He gave ear; all was silent without, but within and close by he seemed to catch a faint sighing, a faint sobbing rustle, a little stealthy creak—as though many persons were at his side, holding themselves quite still, and governing even their respiration with the extreme of slyness. The idea went to his vitals with a shock, and he faced about suddenly as if to defend his life. Then, for the first time, he became aware of a light about the level of his eyes and at some distance in the interior of the house—a vertical thread of light, ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... dozed upon a fold of her skirt. Dorinda had been undressed and rocked to sleep at sunset. Preciosa had gone upstairs at the same time. I saw her lying upon the foot of our bed after supper, her eyes narrowed to slender slits with sleep or slyness. I had a shrewd impression that if I were to go upstairs now I should not find her in the same place. Instead of verifying the surmise in this way I stole noiselessly out of the family group, sauntering along ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... herself could never eat pine-apples, which were altogether unnatural productions, extorted by the force of artificial fire out of filthy manure, asked, with a faltering voice, if Mrs. Pickle was not of her way of thinking? This young lady, who wanted neither slyness nor penetration, at once divined her meaning, and replied, with seeming unconcern, that for her own part she should never repine if there was no pine-apple in the universe, provided she could indulge herself with the fruits of ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... Orleans could be taken required no stretch of policy to plan, nor spirit of enterprize to effect. It was like marching behind a man to knock him down: and the dastardly slyness of such an attack would have stained the fame of the United States. Where there is no danger cowards are bold, and Captain Bobadils are to be found in the Senate as well as on the stage. Even Gouverneur, on such a march, dare ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... fond, and we hated her for oppressing us with a sense of many surreptitious favors. Objectively, she was a slim, hoopless little woman, with a tendency to be always at the street-door when we opened it. She had a narrow, narrow face, with eyes of terrible slyness, an applausive smile, and a demeanor of slavish patronage. Our kitchen, after her addition to the household, became the banqueting-hall of Giovanna's family, who dined there every day upon dishes of fish and garlic, ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... eight and thirty, noted for her dairy and fond of out-of-door pursuits; her devotion to these last had resulted in her complexion being rather reddened and weather-beaten. We were to stay a week, an unusually long halt; and even before we arrived I detected a simple slyness in my good Vohrenlorf's demeanour. When a secret was afoot, Vohrenlorf's first apparent effort was to draw everybody's attention to the fact of its existence. Out of perversity I asked no questions, ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... man, wearing very large pantaloons, and he had a little countenance whose expression was a curious combination of rustic vacancy and incongruous slyness. He was evidently from the country, and Uncle Matt's respectable, in fact, rather aristocratic air, apparently attracted ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... lines from the plow handles preparatory to making another round. He suddenly remembered to be discreet, and winked one eye with indescribable slyness. ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... certain slyness, "Have you heard anything about her already? At the club? From that fool woman ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... lead Tsiganok to the execution he began to bustle about and seemed to have recovered his spirits. Again he had that sweet taste in his mouth, and his saliva collected abundantly, but his cheeks turned rosy and in his eyes began to glisten his former somewhat savage slyness. Dressing ...
— The Seven who were Hanged • Leonid Andreyev
... anigh unto the Maid, where she did lie so quiet, I saw that something moved in the wood, and was running. And truly it did be an Humpt Man, and came forward very silent and with a quick slyness, as that he did track the Maid secretly; for he lookt alway to the earth. And I perceived that he was that one of the Humpt Men which the Maid had cut with the knife; for the blood did show upon the shoulder and the breast; and this bleeding mayhap to have slowed the Man; so that Mine Own did ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... call it knocking their heads together), while they never dreamed of offering resistance and eagerly submitted to her. About her whole being, so full of life and beauty, there was a peculiarly bewitching mixture of slyness and carelessness, of artificiality and simplicity, of composure and frolicsomeness; about everything she did or said, about every action of hers, there clung a delicate, fine charm, in which an individual power was manifest at work. And her face was ever changing, working too; ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... we find a touch of that easy slyness which gives an additional zest to surprise; but here is ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... nothing. While this particular battle was raging, there came an interruption which Mary V first considered sinister, then peculiar, and at last, after much cogitation, extremely suspicious and a further evidence of Johnny's slyness. ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... toilet was over the head found its rest behind the wing, and profound sleep followed. Sometimes my friends would make a spring upon the sofa by my side, I fear with a view to forthcoming worms, of which they well knew I was the purveyor; and nothing could exceed the slyness of their eyes as they looked up at me and mutely suggested an expedition ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... ends. Unnatural son, cruel father, terrible husband, detestable master, pernicious neighbour; without friendship, without friends—incapable of having any jealous, suspicious, ever restless, full of slyness and artifices to discover and to scrutinise all, (in which he was unceasingly occupied, aided by an extreme vivacity and a surprising penetration,) choleric and headstrong to excess even for trifles, difficult of access, never in accord ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... could not help considering how he could get rid of Vassenka and be free in his movements. Stepan Arkadyevitch evidently had the same desire, and on his face Levin saw the look of anxiety always present in a true sportsman when beginning shooting, together with a certain good-humored slyness peculiar to him. ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... and scoffed at the possibility of being killed by women. He also carefully fastened the window-shutters. He appeared to be somewhat excited, and went about his operations with an air at once of slyness and ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... amiable-looking man. Above his gigantic body was a lowering face that showed a capacity for slyness or viciousness, whichever better served his turn. As Kark talked to him, his brow grew blacker and he plucked savagely at his knife-hilt. It dawned upon Alwin then that he must be Kark's father, the steward Thorhall of ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... the good man, with cherubic slyness, "he would give his left hand for such a chance to please us! Perhaps you haven't noticed that my nina is rather attractive; but it has not escaped the observation of ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... "Unknowingly deceitful, I practised untruth. Loge artfully tempted me." He explains himself to Fricka, when she asks why he continues to trust the crafty Loge, who has often already brought them into straits: "Where frank courage is sufficient, I ask counsel of no one. But slyness and cunning are needed to turn to advantage the ill-will of adversaries, and that ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... it would have been more generous, more—manly. But we cannot all be gentlemen, you know. It was so sweet to hear Edward praised by one who did not know us; it was like stolen fruit; and by one whom others praise: so, if you can forgive us our slyness, there is an end of ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... to find out!" she would say apprehensively, and then perhaps giggle at the slyness of it all. Tommy had to make merry with her, as if it was one of his boyish plays. If he was overcome with the pain of it, she sobbed at once ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... was a look of exceeding slyness. But this did not content her lord, who, after repeated questions, and a threat to resort to extreme measures in case of continued refusal, drew ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... Lupo Vulp, it would be difficult to discover. A sardonic smile hovered perpetually about his mouth, which was garnished with ranges of the keenest and whitest teeth. His features were sharp; his eyes small, set wide apart, of a light gray colour, and with all the slyness of a fox lurking within their furtive glances. Indeed, his general resemblance to that astute animal must have struck a physiognomist. His head was shaped like that of a fox, and his hair and beard were of a reddish-tawny hue. ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... his day's work in the mine, and after his pipe was going to work in his garden, where his vegetables were coming forward very well. Nothing could have been better than his manners—quiet, manly, civil, without the rather aggravating slyness of the ordinary French peasant, and with absolutely nothing of the infantine swagger of the small French bourgeois. These miners here wear a picturesque and practical costume, something between ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... Walter had made his calculations without taking into consideration the slyness and respectability of the Hallemans. They lay in wait for him the next day as he came from school. Walter, who had painted to himself how they would be panting under the weight of the great sack; Walter, who was so anxious to know if Christian Kloskamp had taken what he had ordered; ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... frightens me. When he looked at me in church last Sunday night, I shuddered. It seemed as though a venomous snake had put its folds around my neck. Zibe Turner, called the monster dwarf, seems to me to be almost less than human. He combines the ferocity of the tiger, the slyness of the fox, and the shape of a monkey. I am doubly alarmed when ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... postman's knock rung through the dark of the house when the eldest of the three grim men would always run to the door. O, what a face had he. There was more slyness in it than ever his beard could hide. He would put out a gristly hand; and into it Amuel Sleggins would put the letter from China, and rejoice that his duty was done, and would turn and stride away. And the fields lit up before him, but, ominous, eager and low ...
— Tales of Three Hemispheres • Lord Dunsany
... said Richard, putting on a look of innocent slyness, like a lamb engaged in intrigue, "had I known that you might feel Mr. Gwynn's going away, I would have kept ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis |
