"Prying" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... heartily, all but Judith, who did not trust herself to speak to him before the prying eyes of Mrs. Dax, and escaped to the house. Chugg's latest excursion into oblivion had resulted in a fall from the box. He was not badly hurt, and recuperation was largely a matter of "sleeping it off," concluded ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... oppressive an evil to causes of any debateable quality, while there is glaring in sight a cause of stupendous magnitude, which could not possibly do otherwise than produce immense and calamitous effects. It would be as if a man were prying about for this and the other cause of damage, to account for the aspect of a region which has recently been devastated by inundations or earthquakes. It has become much a fashion to explain the distresses of a country on any principles rather than those that are taught by all history, ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... I'll blab. I wish I could help you to get out of danger. Now I see why cousin Brightwell was Paul Prying here last night. There's your horse saddled and bridled. ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... seems, I could not live elsewhere. Then, by degrees, your feigned respect withdrew; You marked my actions, and my guardian grew. But I am not concerned your acts to blame: My heart to yours but upon liking came; And, like a bird, whom prying boys molest, Stays not to breed, where ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... conduct, a manual of ethics, a treatise on astronomy, and a medical handbook; sometimes indelicate, sometimes irreverent, but always completely and persistently in earnest. Its trifling frivolity, its curious prying into topics which were better left alone, the occasional beauty of its spiritual and imaginative fancies, make it one of the most remarkable books that human wit and human ...
— Hebrew Literature
... up and down the room, called down curses on the prying fools who came across the unexpected streak of copper in the failing mine, drew heart-rending pictures of his wife and family singing hymns in the street, and asked me for a drink of prussic acid. I rang the bell and ordered Rogers to give him a brandy ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... sticks, notched at the ends which, like the Chinese, they threw three times in case they did not approve of the first throw. Herodotus traces the custom of predicting future events to the ancient Egyptians, and seems to think the Greeks had it from them. But is not the desire of prying into futurity to be ascribed rather to a weakness in human nature, than as a custom borrowed by one nation from another? Are we entirely free from it in modern Europe? However humiliating the reflection may be, yet it is certainly true, that men of the strongest minds and soundest judgments ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... do some thinking. He believed, in spite of a good deal of evidence to the contrary, that his best ideas came to him while walking. At any rate, it was a way of getting away from four walls and from the prying eyes and anxious looks of superiors. He sighed gently, crammed his hat onto his head ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... meddlesome; and he was stung with a sudden sense that it was not honorable to have pushed his questions upon Forsythe. Gifford's relentless justice overtook him. Had he not given Forsythe the right to insult him? Would not he have protected himself against any man's prying? Gifford blushed hotly in the darkness. "But not to use Lois's name,—not that! Nothing could justify the insult ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... a hand. "That gets us to the point. What's this here purpose? What's the big idea prying, like, into my affairs till you learned all this about me? And what's this stuff about me getting something out of it? Right now I'm ...
— The Common Man • Guy McCord (AKA Dallas McCord Reynolds)
... I was on the threshold of hell. To-day I am within sight of my heaven—I have my eyes on it—hardly three feet to sever me. And now you'd better go. You'll neither see nor hear anything to frighten you if you refrain from prying." ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... hypocrisy of those tones, and they sounded in his ear like the suppressed hiss of a deadly serpent. He had always suspected that this man hated him to the death; and he felt now that he was come with his stealthy-tread and his almost supernatural power of prying observation, to read the very inmost secrets of his heart. He knew that he longed for nothing so much as the power to hurl him from his place and to reign in his stead; and the instinct of self-defence roused him. He started up as one starts from a dream, waked by a whisper ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... with great uneasiness what he called the liaison of des Lupeaulx with Madame Rabourdin, and his silent wrath on the subject was accumulating. He had too prying an eye not to have guessed that Rabourdin was engaged in some great work outside of his official labors, and he was provoked to feel that he knew nothing about it, whereas that little Sebastien was, wholly or in part, in ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... when she saw the stranger, and had been growing ever since. One circumstance after another had increased it till now it was definite, concrete. She wondered that she did not feel ashamed of such a feeling so unusual in her, and surely unworthy, like a prying thing. Of all her old indifference that side which confronted people had always been the most sturdy, the most solidly built. Without affectation she had been a profoundly incurious woman as to the lives and the concerns of others, even of those ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... upon her with a sudden and extraordinary intensity. Lavinia saw that her sister, without dissembling her interest, sat forward, statuesque and lovely. It seemed to the former that the cab was an intolerable time passing; she wished to draw Gheta back, to cover her indiscretion from Anna Mantegazza's prying sight. She sighed with inexplicable relief when she saw that the man had driven beyond them and ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... peaceful days for California. The vagrant keels of prying Commerce had not as yet ruffled the lordly gravity of her bays. No torn and ragged gulch betrayed the suspicion of golden treasure. The wild oats drooped idly in the morning heat, or wrestled with the afternoon breezes. Deer and antelope ...
— Legends and Tales • Bret Harte
... begun at the middle of the mortise where a V-shaped opening is made the full depth of the mortise that is to be. Continuing from the middle, vertical cuts are taken first toward one end and then toward the other. The chips are pried out as the cutting proceeds. In making the last cut this prying must be omitted, otherwise the edge of the mortise would be ruined. It will be necessary to stand so as to look along the opening in order to get the ...
— Mission Furniture - How to Make It, Part I • H. H. Windsor
... mean to be prying—only I wish you big boys would hang some for the little girls—it would please them to death. If you don't mind my having a part in this. I'd like to put in a little money, too. Let me put in another quarter and I'll do ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... said Mr Slam; "why, even when I was a lad a fight or a bit of cocking could be brought off without much trouble, but nowadays the beaks and perlice are that prying and interfering there's no chance hardly. And as for them times Mr Perry was speaking of, why, I've heard tell that the princes and all the nobs used to go to see a prize-fight in a big building all comfortable, just as they goes now to a theayter. And every parish had to find ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... that here leaps from the depths to the height, and over which the iris of beauty ever and anon appears with—it is true—an unusual intensity. And so in reading the letters we have no sense of prying into secrets; there are no secrets to be discovered; what is most intimate is most common; only here what is most common rises up to its highest point of attainment. "I never thought of being happy through you or by you or in you even, your good was all my idea of good, and ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... his diary, and recruit, and keep quiet, instead of showing up the incapacity of his seniors?" So the Nasiban Murder Case did him no good departmentally; but, after his first feeling of wrath, he returned to his outlandish custom of prying into native life. By the way, when a man once acquires a taste for this particular amusement, it abides with him all his days. It is the most fascinating thing in the world; Love not excepted. Where other men took ten days to the Hills, ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... have good natural Notions, and will soon learn Arts and Sciences; but are generally diverted by Business or Inclination from profound Study, and prying into the Depth of Things; being ripe for Management of their Affairs, before they have laid so good a Foundation of Learning, and had such Instructions, and acquired such Accomplishments, as might be instilled into such good natural Capacities. Nevertheless thro' their quick Apprehension, they ...
— The Present State of Virginia • Hugh Jones
... from which he hauled the water which he drank and used for culinary purposes. If there was wealth in the land and rocks, nature had masked it very well indeed. The pick and the hammer revealed nothing; long hours of prying and exploring yielded no gleam of metal to confirm his fast-shrinking belief that he had pitched on ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... abasement, worse than a myriad mice, crept up and down over his soul. And the, as reflection began to assert itself, sheer terror took the place of humiliation. With every minute that passed the train was rushing nearer to the crowded and bustling terminus where dozens of prying eyes would be exchanged for the one paralysing pair that watched him from the further corner of the carriage. There was one slender despairing chance, which the next few minutes must decide. His fellow-traveller ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... tells of many dubious successes. He knows the elder Lanier will not betray a friend's trust. Without prying into secrets of his guest, Sir Charles touches on outskirts of many crafty exploits, suggestive of more complex villainies. Pierre Lanier is greatly interested, but the narrative always lacks coherence ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... his uncle had taken a house, and he surmised whether he had not also been induced to take a wife. He felt an inclination to put the question to Mr Scratton, as he passed through the office; but checked the wish, lest it should appear like prying into his uncle's affairs. Being the month of February, it was dark long before six o'clock, and Newton was puzzled what to do with his father until that time. He returned to the Salopian Coffee-house, opposite to ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... lad; but I've been a-watching of yer this morning," said the man, fiercely. "You've been busy with that glass, prying and peering about, and ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... and the window shutters securely nailed. Entrance to the cellar was barred by heavy scantlings fastened across the sloping hatch. In the barnyard he found a stout single-tree. With this he succeeded in prying off the two scantlings. The staple holding the padlock was easily withdrawn from one of the ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... you a few questions, and if they seem to be prying or personal, you must believe that I have no other wish than to secure information which is vital to myself. What position do you occupy ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... were indispensable to the execution of the project; Georges at Paris, unknown to the prying police of the First Consul; and General Moreau, favorable to the fall of Bonaparte, if not to his assassination. A nearly complete rupture had succeeded to the professed regard which for a long time covered the secret jealousy of the First Consul with respect ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... roll out. He does kick so! And I just sprang up and left him when I heard your voice, without putting anything to keep him in. I must go and have a look at him, or I never can settle down. No, no, don't you go, Edward; you'll be prying into all the wrong berths in the car, you poor thing! You stay here, and I'll be back in half a second. I wonder which is my berth. Ah! that's it; I know the one now. [She makes a sudden dash at a berth, and pulling open the curtains is confronted by the bearded ...
— The Sleeping Car - A Farce • William D. Howells
... grunted, prying off the tire. "Heard it m'self 'bout noon—or a little after. Yeh, ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... prying into matters which did not concern you," snarled the man savagely. "It was you who started all this infernal business. But it's all over. You can arrest me as soon as you like, Steel, and if you can catch Morley I'll willingly stand in the dock ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... where you have been. It isn't prying into your affairs. Your friends ought to be mine; at least, I mean, I ought to know their names, and something about them. Suppose I were to tell you I had been ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... that had settled to slumber for many hours. The cold moonlight streamed in at the window on the landing as I ascended the broad staircase; and I paused for a moment to look over the wooded grounds to the turreted chateau, to me, so full of interest. I bethought me, however, that prying eyes might read a meaning in this midnight gazing, and possibly the Count himself might, in his jealous mood, surmise a signal in this unwonted light in the ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... stay long; and indeed, after the disappearance of the Austrian count, a microbe pricking people to departure seemed to multiply in the Villa Bella Vista. The sailor went suddenly, on receipt of a letter from the Admiralty, that prying institution having learned and disapproved of the way in which he was spending his leave and his pay. Lord Burden followed Mrs. Ernstein to Cannes; and Dodo, who never ceased to want good value for her money, was bitterly dissatisfied with ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... to have rais'd the Mob upon me for looking upright with this Glass; for this, they said, was prying into the Mysteries of the Great Eye of the World; That we ought to enquire no farther than he has inform'd us, and to believe what he had left us more Obscure: Upon this, I laid down the Glasses, and concluded, that we had Moses and the Prophets, and ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... leave it there—never do to leave it anywhere in her room. There were prying eyes in the house, and she was as ashamed of that bill as she might have been of a contemplated theft. So she tucked it into her corsage, and went down to join her friends in ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... That one will pat my cheek And praise my Lady's kindness, Expecting me to speak; I like the proud ones best Who sit as struck with blindness, As if I wasn't there. But if any gentleman Is staying at the Hall (Though few come prying here), My Lady seems to fear Some downright dreadful evil, And makes me keep my room As closely as she can: So I hate when people come, It is so troublesome. In spite of all her care, Sometimes to keep alive I sometimes do contrive To get out in the grounds ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... the gun with us, and leaning it against a tree near the wagon, set about our usual work. The first stone we loaded that morning was an extra-large one, and Joe on one side of the wagon and I on the other were prying it into position with our pinch-bars, when my companion, who was facing the bluff, gently laid ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp
... fro like a man in great physical pain. I sat silent beside him. It is difficult to decide what to do or say to a man under such circumstances. His reference to some former arrest arose in my mind, and so, in a perfunctory way—more for something to say than for any purpose of prying into ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... a prying mind, A heart that stirs, is hard to bind, A hawk's keen sight ye cannot blind, Ye could ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... made his entrance by one of the window openings, was busily engaged in prying up a huge flat stone just back of the altar. He had it loosened; he called for help to remove it. When the stone had been overturned and had fallen back onto its aged neighbors, some soft damp earth beneath it was slowly ...
— The Woman with a Stone Heart - A Romance of the Philippine War • Oscar William Coursey
... little boy," said Gertie, prying her fingers away from those other detaining ones. "I'd fit into a three-room flat like a whale in a kitchen sink. I'm going back to Beloit, Wisconsin. I've learned my lesson all right. There's a fellow there waiting for me. I used to think ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... as soon as dinner was over, for Ned lived right across, on the next farm. In a corner of the barn, I found my old chestnut club, a hickory stave, well coiled with lead at the top. Shoving this under my jacket, so no prying eyes could see it, I joined Ned at the meeting-place, and off we went in high spirits ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... were grown and had left the tree, that bird never ceased to intrude and annoy. He visited the nest when empty; he managed to have frequent peeps at the young; and notwithstanding he was driven off every time, he still hung around, with prying ways so exasperating that he well deserved a thrashing, and I wonder he did not get it. He was driven away repeatedly, and he was "picked off" from below, and pounced upon from above, but ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... were "Commentaries," there were "Travels" and "Astronomy" and the lowest and tallest shelf was full of "Music." A card-table habitually stood in front of this false repository learning, and it was only last week that Diva, prying casually round the room while Elizabeth had gone to take off her gardening-gloves, had noticed a modest catch let into the wood-work. Without doubt, then, the book-case was the door of the cupboard, and with a stroke of intuition, too sure to be called a guess, ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... perfectly human expression, was one of extreme annoyance and of some slight alarm, as though he were muttering: "This is no place for me," and, without more ado, he began to roll toward the river. Without killing some one, I could not again use the rifle. The boys were close upon him, prying him back with the gangplank, beating him with sticks of firewood, trying to rope him with the steel hawser. On the bridge Captain Jensen and Anfossi were giving orders in Danish and Italian, and on the bank I swore in American. ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... nor two things nor twenty things!" answered Amy, looking sullen with the feeling of heaped-up wrong. "What would my mother say to see me served so! She used to trust me everywhere and always! I don't understand how those two prying suspicious old maids can be my ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... without thought of where he was going. Detail after detail of the affair presented itself to his mind in endless repetition. It had been a humiliating experience. The old woman's vulgarity; Macomber's stolid, iron hand clearing the air, like brushing trash from his doorstep; the consciousness of prying eyes at that upstairs window! "I've been a feeble cuckoo," he thought. "Mighta supposed two years in the army would have taught me better'n that. Played me for a good thing as long as it lasted and then the old lady ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... solid blocks of brick buildings next to the station, a network of paved streets, and no less than three hotels. It was so new to the eye and so obviously full of the "booster" spirit that he was appalled at the idea of prying through this modern shell and getting back to the heart and the memory of the old days of ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... Ezra. "It's been too sad an' mournful all along for me to go about to make a new quarrel on it. Let it pass. I make no doubt you acted for the best. Art too good a lad to tek pleasure in prying into the pain of an old man—as—loves thee. Leave it alone, lad. Let's think a while, and turn it over and see ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... Madame was on her mare, and the Tourainian at her side, galloping at full speed to her castle at Amboise, followed by the men-at-arms. To be brief and come to the facts without further commentary, the De Beaune was lodged not twenty yards from Madame, far from prying eyes. The courtiers and the household, much astonished, ran about inquiring from what quarter the danger might be expected; but our hero, taken at his word, knew well enough where to find it. The virtue of the Regent, ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... life. But it was meant as a lure to men who live by muscular toil. It sounded good to us mill workers for, like Eskimos, we craved much fat in our diet. We were great muscular machines, and fat was the fuel for our engines. Muckraking was just beginning in those days, and a prying reformer came to live for a while at the Greasy Spoon. He told us that so much grease in our food would kill us. We were ignorant of dietetics; all we knew was that our stomachs cried for plenty of fat. The reformer said that our landlady fed us much fat meat because it was the cheapest food she ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... Laura could not be quite content without prying into tomorrow. How could the Colonel manage to free himself from his wife? Would it be long? Could he not go into some State where it would not take much time? He could not say exactly. That they must think of. That ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 5. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... find fault, but I am conscious that he is secretly criticising my dress, my dinners, the gaucheries of the servants, my moral qualities, even the way I turn my sentences. I shouldn't mind trying to talk my very best English if he were not prying into my motives: it is difficult to be on one's guard in every ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... it is conceded that her time of rotation and the inclination of her axis cannot be determined. She revealed one of the grandest secrets of the universe to the first seeker; showed her highest beauty to her first ardent lover, and has veiled herself from the prying eyes of ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... proceeding. It is impossible to bring Sultan En-Noor to any arrangement. He still shelters himself from our importunities under the plea of ill health. Almost every morning we have a few visitors from the town. The people are not troublesome, except that they show a good deal of prying curiosity to see the faces, forms, and actions of Christians. We learn that scouts are still out after our camels, hitherto without success. I am afraid they have been driven far away; and begin to doubt our ever ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... wonted appearance; the dining-room furniture has been replaced; the tables are as nicely polished as formerly; the horsehair chairs are ranged against the wall, as regularly as ever; Venetian blinds have been fitted to every window in the house to intercept the prying gaze of Mrs. Joseph Porter. The subject of theatricals is never mentioned in the Gattleton family, unless, indeed, by Uncle Tom, who cannot refrain from sometimes expressing his surprise and regret at finding that his nephews and nieces appear to have lost the relish they ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... 15. But the prying character of these devils is described in the Koran itself. According to Muhammadans, they had access to all the seven heavens till the time of Moses, who got them excluded from three. Christ got them excluded from three ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... of these plans. If I fired the cannon it would bring a posse of curious, prying people to the island, and probably I should be taken away to St. Peter Port upon a coroner's quest. If I buried the man I should always shun that part of the island, and should have a constant memorial of my "night of horror" to depress ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... character of a plodding, taciturn, morose-mannered couple: seldom leaving the farm except to attend market, and rarely seen at church or chapel, they naturally enough became objects of suspicion and dislike to the prying, gossiping villagers, to whom mystery or reserve of any kind was of course exceedingly annoying ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... withdrawing-room and there they fell into so deep discussion that never had he been such a negligent host. And when Mrs. Gunning left the withdrawing-room, it was with an imperial head held high, and a flush in her cheek which became her so well that the most prying female eye would not give her a day ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... no difficulty in recognising in this unfortunate the person of old Coleman, the member of the coast-guard who had been most successful in thwarting the plans of the smugglers for some years past. Rendered somewhat desperate by his prying disposition, they had seized him on this particular night, during a scuffle, and were now about to dispose of him in ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... did not need to wait so long for my answer. I knew it quite as well as Courtney—maybe a trifle better. Nevertheless, it is a bit jolting to realize, suddenly, that some one has been prying into ...
— The Colonel of the Red Huzzars • John Reed Scott
... friends could come from the charity office. It was a notion she had, Mrs. McCutcheon, the district visitor, explained, that would not let her rest till her "paper" was made out. For her, born in the wilderness, death had no such terror as prying eyes. ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... to, only I don't know whether we ought! And it's heavy, too. I hardly think we could. Perhaps we might just try to peep behind it. You know, Cynthia, I realize we're doing something a little queer being in this house and prying about. I'm not sure our folks would approve of it. Only the old thing has been left so long, and there's such a mystery about it, and we're not harming or disturbing anything, that perhaps it isn't ...
— The Boarded-Up House • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... after Calhoun's return from the Oaks, the thought suggested itself to mischievous, prying Dick and his coadjutor Walter, that the key of some other lock in the house might fit that of the door they so ardently desired to open. They only waited for a favorable opportunity to test the question in the temporary absence of their ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... has been grossly libelled; she is vain, frivolous, and fond of admiration, but nothing more. For a whole fortnight I have been prying into her life, but I can't hit upon anything in it to give us a pull over her. The debt may help us, however. Does her husband know that she ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... of the curate was but a short distance from the lodgings occupied by Mr Rainscourt. They soon entered, and were hid from the prying eyes of ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... ran his hand down the length of Wilson's arm and felt for his pulse. He caught a weak but steady beat. Prying open his mouth, he poured a large mouthful of water down the dry throat. Wilson quickly revived and ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... been the misery of terrible suspense, a wait of uncertainty. Was her sacrifice of womanly instinct to go for nothing? Dixon had hurried to the scene of investigation; then he had come back after a little with Mike, and the good news that they had been given the race. If it had not been for prying eyes she would have knelt there at Lauzanne's feet and offered up a prayer of thankfulness. She had done all a woman could do, almost more; Providence had not forsaken ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... with his father by a part (tradition says a leg) of the new dish. The father was so astounded with the discovery, that he burned his house down once a year for the sake of coming at an annual banquet of roast pig. A curious prying sort of fellow, one Chang Pang, got to know of this. He also burned down a house with a pig in it, and had his eyes opened. The secret was ill kept—the discovery spread—many great conversions were made—houses were blazing in every part of the Celestial Empire. ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... she wanted to do on this her first night in her new home; and among them she wanted to put that green velvet pocket-book, gold embroidered, in some absolutely safe place, where it would not be seen by prying eyes or fall into dangerous hands. She did not intend to destroy its contents. She knew enough of the uncertainty of life to hold by all sorts of anchorages; and though things looked safe and sweet enough now, they might drift into the shallows again, and she ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... for the celibate life of a desert island. Yet I cannot set up a footman to keep her company. I will not have men's eyes prying about my house, I ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis
... used the small prongs of the antlers. They used them as wedges in prying the bark loose from the sap-wood of young trees. All the women had learned to make hammers of antler by making two cuts near the base. And sometimes they used the broad end of the brow antler instead of a ...
— The Later Cave-Men • Katharine Elizabeth Dopp
... other day; and there are several springs of fresh water, and plenty of nuts and berries; and the trees, though few, are so thickly covered with close-spreading branches that touch the very ground that we might hide ourselves from a hundred eyes, were they ever so cunning and prying." ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... window. Craig picked up some bits of broken stone from a walk about the house and threw them gently against the pane. Then we drew back into the shadow of the house, lest any prying eyes might discover us. In a few minutes the window on the second floor was stealthily opened. The muffled figure of Mrs. Cranston appeared in the dim light; then a piece ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... station; but if they had examined their consciences, perhaps they would have found the real reason of their discontent, and, turning their anger against themselves, would have done penance for having come to the exorcisms led by a depraved moral sense and a prying spirit." ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - URBAIN GRANDIER—1634 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... elsewhere "John" is a law-abiding citizen—within limits; never obsequious, nearly always friendly, ready to answer questions quite cheerily so long as he considers the matter any of your business, but closing infinitely tighter than the maltreated bivalve when he fancies you are prying ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... asked at the Article-lecture; stray remarks at wine-parties—were treasured up, and strengthened the case against him. One time, on coming into his rooms, he found Freeborn, who had entered to pay him a call, prying into his books. A volume of sermons, of the school of the day, borrowed of a friend for the sake of illustrating Aristotle, lay on his table; and in his bookshelves one of the more philosophical of the "Tracts for the Times" was stuck in between a Hermann De Metris and a Thucydides. Another ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... expression of all this curious artistic idolatry, of which, of course, I have never cared to speak to him. He knows nothing about it. He shall never know anything about it. But the world might guess it; and I will not bare my soul to their shallow prying eyes. My heart shall never be put under their microscope. There is too much of myself in the ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... Other prying ingenious Men make other conjectures, as to this mazing Controversy thus Vossius delivers himself; The Antients cannot be reconcil'd, but I rather incline to their opinion who think Bucolicks were invented either by the Sicilians or Peloponesians, for both those use ...
— De Carmine Pastorali (1684) • Rene Rapin
... of the past, and now startlingly recalled from that tender exercise; happy family parties, struck into silence round the table, the mother still with raised finger: every degree and age and humour, but all, by their own hearths, prying and hearkening and weaving the rope that was to hang him. Sometimes it seemed to him he could not move too softly; the clink of the tall Bohemian goblets rang out loudly like a bell; and alarmed by the bigness of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... had heard it said that any Christian who passed Bojador would infallibly be changed into a black, and would carry to his end this mark of God's vengeance on his insolent prying. The Arab tradition of the Green Sea of Night had too strongly taken hold of Christian thought to be easily shaken off. And it was beyond the Cape which bounded their knowledge that the Saracen geographers had fringed the coast of Africa with sea-monsters and serpent rocks ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... busy stream the Boot-maker. Miss Thompson floated in a dream. Now, hovering bee-like, she would stop Entranced before some tempting shop, Getting in people's way and prying At things she never thought of buying: Now wafted on without an aim, Until in course of time she came To Watson's bootshop. Long she pries At boots and shoes of every size— Brown football-boots with ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... follow his fellow down the mysterious river that defines the boundary between the known and the unknown, and charge him professionally till his soul has fled, and then charge a per diem to the county for prying into his internal economy and holding an inquest over the debris of mortality. I therefore hail this movement with joy and wish to encourage it in every way. It points toward a degree of enlightenment which will be in strong contrast with the darker ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... I laughed at myself for allowing a prying old man like Meeker to upset my temper, and, as I rode back to the hotel, put the both of them out of my mind; but promised myself that I would take my revenge on the old pest in some ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... how else was he to meet her without envious eyes looking on; or stealthy ears of prying women, listening at keyholes to catch every word? And out on the desert, gliding smoothly along in the best hired automobile in town, where better could he give expression to those surging confidences which he ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... what she would have to say to her aunts in her letter of farewell on leaving them would have to be thought out, too, so that no pursuit or inopportune prying into the truth would ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... many such dinners, all with the same empty ending. He attended Gargantuan feasts, where multitudes fed on innumerable bullocks roasted whole, prying them out of smoldering pits and with sharp knives slicing great strips of meat from the steaming carcasses. He stood, with mouth agape, beneath long rows of turkeys which white-aproned shopmen sold. And everybody bought ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... fetid pools, through swarms of gnats, flies, mosquitoes, poisonous insects, keeping a sharp watch for rattlesnakes. We sank ankle deep at every step, and logs we thought solid broke under us. Our progress was a steady succession of prying and pulling each other to the surface. Our clothing was wringing wet, and the exposed parts of our bodies lumpy with bites and stings. My husband found the tree, cleared the opening to the great prostrate log, ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... to serve him!" he cried. "To think that prying scoundrel found some one that was too clever for him, ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... ask any more. But her mind kept prying at that world of the sisters behind those walls. What did they do in there? Did they laugh and talk and scold each other, like people? Or did they just pray all the time? Or did they see wonderful, starry visions of God and Heaven ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... thoughtful, and absently put the note in a little rack over the mantelpiece. Then, recollecting that a prying servant or landlady might misinterpret it, he transferred it to his pocket. After breakfast, having satisfied himself before the mirror that his dress was faultless, and his expression saintly, he went out and travelled by rail from Sloane Square to West Kensington, whence he walked ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... send in her resignation at once! She would get "the boys" to write an insulting letter to Senator Slocumb,—Mrs. Baker had the feminine idea of Government as a purely personal institution,—and she would find out who it was that had put them up to this prying, crawling impudence! It was probably that wall-eyed old wife of the postmaster at Heavy Tree Crossing, who was jealous of her. "Remind her of their previous unanswered communication," indeed! Where was that communication, anyway? She remembered she had sent it to ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... reflect on the events of the preceding night, and bitterly did he regret having yielded to a curiosity which had cost the unfortunate Sambo so much. He judged correctly that they had been followed in their nocturnal excursion, and that it was the face of some prying visitant which Sambo's superstitious dread had transformed into a hideous vision of the past. He recalled the insuperable aversion the old man had ever entertained to approach of even make mention of the spot, and greatly did he blame himself for having persisted in offering a violence to ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... Henrietta proceeded, more prudently than speakers on the stage who regularly allow themselves to be overheard by eaves-droppers, for she drew together the heavy damask curtains of the alcove and retired behind them with Anicza, so that neither prying eyes nor listening ears could find anything there to satisfy ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... tell her that she knew where the bit of blue faience had been found on the day when it was lost in the hut. She burned to say, "You little prying cat, you read my diary!" instead of which ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... Matthew and Mark tell us, he went out into the outer porch or gateway, perhaps to avoid the glare of the light and the scrutiny of those prying eyes. He remembered afterward that, at the same moment, a cock was heralding the dawn—the dawn of the blackest, saddest day that ever broke upon Jerusalem, or the world. But its warning notes were just then lost on him; for there another maid, speaking to some ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... was stretched out in the middle of Tessibel's straw tick, while the girl measured her length on the cot to assure her father that the dwarf would be fully concealed from prying eyes. ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... person, except what was visible to the exterior world. And even assuming that she donned these things for the first time as parts of a manifold and complicated wedding garment, why should so much fine needle-work and delicate trimming be prepared to be stowed away out of sight of prying mortals, for whose vision women are presumed to dress themselves? Are they got up to show to friends and excite envy, and to fill the minds of other young people with a sense of ...
— That Mother-in-Law of Mine • Anonymous
... think. 'Tisn't my business prying into a girl's fancies. I'm simply telling you Phil Lambert is the man that ought to marry her, and if he doesn't get on to the job almighty quick that pop-eyed simpleton over there will be prancing down the aisle to Lohengrin with Carlotta before Christmas, and the jig will be up. You tell ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... drawn tight, so that no prying outsider might see and tell, and ready to run at the first sign of an approaching visitor, Johnny sat down on the hearth-rug, tailor fashion, to begin the quilt. A slateful of calculations had shown him that, by making ...
— The Quilt that Jack Built; How He Won the Bicycle • Annie Fellows Johnston
... had expected a melodramatic tableau, I was disappointed. I had always figured the inside of the Pillar House as full of treasures, for they told tales of the old whaler's wealth. My prying eyes found it bare, like a deserted house gutted by seasons of tramps. A little fire of twigs and a broken butter-box on the hearth made a pathetic shift at domestic cheer. Minister Malden sat at one side of it, his back to me, his face half-buried in his hands. Little Hope ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... mother, asked his usual questions: "What leads you to wish to take up nursing? Are you interested in medicine, and fond of caring for the sick? For you should be, to enter such an exacting life." She seemed to misunderstand him altogether and take his inquiry for prying. She coloured, bit her lip, then lost her head and blurted out: "Interested in the sick! Of course not. Who could be, for they are always so aggravating. I don't mean to stay so very long at it, but it's a good chance to go into some swell family, and ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... his grandfather were prying off the boards that covered in the chimney on the right side and supported the mantel-shelf. As it fell back into their hands two more gold ...
— Ethel Morton at Rose House • Mabell S. C. Smith
... suggestion very heartily. He argued that persons prying about at this stage of the game would bring suspicions ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... "Get thee behind me, Satan," so that he let her go. Whereupon she ran out at the door so suddenly that she threw me on the ground, and fell upon me with a loud cry. Hereat the sheriff, who had followed her, started, but presently cried out, "Wait, thou prying parson, I will teach thee to listen!" and ran out and beckoned to the constable who stood on the steps below. He bade him first shut me up in one dungeon, seeing that I was an eavesdropper, and then return and thrust my child into another. ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... speed and to follow him forthwith in his flight. It appears, that the story of the captain's adventure was already pretty well known in the public places of the town, and as a visit of the marshal from Boston was a very extraordinary event in a place usually so quiet, a prying character who was upon the spot asked him if he was not looking for Captain E——. Upon receiving an affirmative reply,—"That's the man," said he, "you have just spoken to." The marshal started in pursuit and the captain had called out to such persons of his acquaintance as saw him running, ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... wall I thought myself to go again and again, still prying, as I went, to see if I could find some way or passage, by which I might enter therein; but none could I find for some time. At the last I saw, as it were, a narrow gap, like a little doorway in the wall, through which ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... swale that afternoon and Samson had to cut some corduroy to make a footing for team and wagon and do much prying with the end of a heavy pole under the front axle. By and by the horses pulled ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... one recourse for me. I will have to leave Earth to complete the installation of my generator. The prying fools and mockers will not leave me alone, and nowhere on Earth can I have the needed solitude. I shall go to Venus—uninhabited, uninhabitable. Perhaps they will leave me alone for the month or two more I need to make ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... she said to herself. "How I love you to-day. You are a stern protector, keeping out all prying eyes and malignant tongues. Mr. Dobbins will not venture out while you are abroad, and so we will have peace ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... knowingly, for it was a place of ghostly draughts and blasts creeping through chambers cleft by yawning courts and open corridors and topped by that skeleton dome. And as St. George turned from the window he saw that the door leading into the hall, urged by some nimble gust, imaginative or prying, had ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... Afterwards, prying for epitaphs, we found a marble crusader with a broken nose, under a battered canopy of fretted stone, outside the restricted limits of the present Duffield church, and half buried in nettles. "Ichabod," said my uncle. "Eh? We shall be like that, Susan, ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... note eight numbers. On Monday they will be prying about. On Tuesday they separate, angry with their adversaries. On Wednesday they drink, enjoying themselves ostentatiously. On Thursday they are in the choir; their poverty is disagreeable. Friday is a day of abundance, the men are swimming in pleasures. On Sunday, certainly, five legions ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... risk, my son," admitted Basil. "But if the Luath is to escape other prying eyes, we must take the chance against ourselves. One thing, we know when and where to expect her, and the captain will steer inshore after passing Newnham, because of the deeper channel being this side. I don't think we shall ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... is a blight of the gravest character upon the local industry of the inhabitants, and it is a suicidal and unstatesmanlike policy that crushes and extinguishes all enterprise. What Englishman would submit to such a prying and humiliating position? And still it is expected that the resources of the island will be developed by British capital! The great want for the supply of the principal towns is market-gardens. Imagine an English practical market-gardener, ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... Schopper had met a violent death; and, when he had asked where and how, she had answered him that it was in one of those love-makings which were ever the aim and business of his life. Thus he might tell all his kith and kin in Nuremberg henceforth to cease their spying and prying, which had already cost her more pains ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... god-like attributes, omniscient, ubiquitous, I mean to squelch free impulse, which is commonly iniquitous. But what's the good of being Chief Inspector of the Universe, And prying into everything from pompous Law to puny verse, If everything or nearly so, shows a confounded tendency To go right of its own accord? My Masterful Resplendency Would radiate aurorally, a world would gaze on trustingly If only things in general wouldn't go on so disgustingly. Where is ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 30, 1892 • Various
... declared that he would not land until they first came off to wait on him. Decorated with an old full-dress lieutenant's coat, white trousers, and a cap with a tall feather, he looked upon himself as a most exalted personage, and for the whole of the first day remained on board, impatiently, but in vain, prying into each boat that left the shore for the dusky forms of some of his quondam friends. His pride, however, could not long withstand the desire of display. Yielding to the impulse of vanity he, early the following morning, took his departure from the ship. Those ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... if I catch you prying here again, that will be a fresh account, and I shall open it with ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... was not alone, being accompanied by a green caterpillar bigger than herself, which she held beneath her body as she travelled along on the window-sill so near my face. "So, so! my little wren-wasp, you have found a satisfactory cranny at last, and have made yourself at home. I have seen you prying about here for a week and wondered where you would take ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... France. The moral of the story is that the temptations of the flesh are pernicious and malignant. Let us not rest our glance too long on our neighbor's wife, however gratified our senses may be by her beauty. Fornication is a very libertine thought. Adultery is a prying into the pleasures of others—Ohe! the noise ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... running as second section of the Overland, slipped unostentatiously into the capital railroad yard. With as little stir as it had made in its arrival, the single-car train took a siding below the freight station, where it would be concealed from the prying eyes of any chance prowler from ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... the two battleships which, with their smaller cruisers and colliers, were to go to Manila. The preparations for this movement were kept secret for quite a time, under the cover of an avowed intention to proceed against Puerto Rico; but nothing, apparently, can wholly escape the prying curiosity of the Press, which dignifies this not always reputable quality with the title of "enterprise." No great harm resulted; possibly even the evident wish of the Government for secrecy, though thus betrayed, may have increased the apprehension of the ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... way," Camberton said. "Think of the mind at any given instant as being surrounded by a shield—a shield of privacy—a shield which you, yourself have erected, though unconsciously. It's a perfect insulator against telepathic prying by others. You feel you have to have it in order to retain your privacy—your sense of identity, even. But here's the kicker: even though no one else can get ...
— Suite Mentale • Gordon Randall Garrett
... mean to tell me that this office descends to this low practice of prying into the private lives of virtuous gentlemen and typewriters? Shame upon you, Hilton!" His voice shook. "Give me that report!" He thrust the report into the fire. "Now call up Mr. Borker, and tell him ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... blown out of their course, as far as Germany, where the women landed amongst savages, and many of them committed suicide rather than pass into slavery. Who has not heard of St. Ursula and her thousand British virgins, whose bones were said to be enshrined at Cologne Cathedral, until a prying medico reported that many of them were only dogs' bones—for which heresy he was expelled the city as a ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... it's a positive fact, for I've seen him myself, just sitting back in my chair here, you know, watching him as one would a tramp in one's orchard.' He cast a candid glance over his shoulder. 'First he looks round, like a prying servant. Then he comes cautiously on—a kind of grizzled, fawn-coloured face, middle-size, with big hands; and then just like some quiet, groping, nocturnal creature, he begins his precious search—shelves, drawers that are not ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... sometimes bestow a little consideration upon ourselves, and employ the time we spend in prying into other men's actions, and discovering things without us, in examining our own abilities we should soon perceive of how infirm and decaying material this fabric of ours is composed. Is it not a singular testimony of imperfection that we cannot establish our satisfaction in any one thing, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... called the "flats," through which the creek ran. The barn stood very close to uncleared woodland, and the banks ending the woodland showed a decidedly rocky exterior. Appleman, chasing a woodchuck one day, had seen him scurry into a hole in this rocky surface, and prying away with a handspike had unloosed a small mass of rock and discovered a cave; not much of a cave, it is true, but one of at least twenty feet in length and eight or ten in breadth, and full six feet in height. This discovery occurred a year or two before John felt ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... everything was satisfactorily arranged and everybody satisfied. Among a people so primitive and simple in their habits this could quickly be done, as no long months were required to arrange jointures or marriage settlements, or a prying into the state of the bank accounts of either ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... It was Henrietta Hen. Being a prying sort of person she had followed Turkey Proudfoot around the house to see what happened when he and the ...
— The Tale of Turkey Proudfoot - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... says Mrs. Bladen. Then, turnin' on Uncle Jeff, "Only I think you are a mean, hard-hearted old man, even if you are my uncle! Oh, you don't know how often I've wanted to tell you so too,—always prying into this, asking questions about that, finding fault, forever cross and snappish and suspicious. A waspish, crabbed old wretch, that's what you are! I just ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford
... something in your thought you hold from me. Have the lewd, prying eyes, the slanderous mind Of public envy, spied herein some mischief? What hast thou heard? By heaven, if one foul word Have darkened the fair fame of my white dove, Naples shall rue it. Let them not forget The chapel ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... a question. "Dear mamma, don't think me prying, but is Potter's the only pressing obligation ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... skeered and went screamin' away!" And the black giant laughed till the forest shook to its roots, and every inquisitive squirrel and prying fox within a half mile peered warily forth from its hole to discover what jovial monster this might be that had invaded their leafy wilds. Suddenly checking his laughter, Burl said: "But, Bushie, I forgot to ax ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady |
