Stealthy Quotes & Sayings

Nature had come into her own again and, little by little, in her stealthy, insidious way had encroached upon the drive with long, tenacious fingers. — Daphne Du Maurier

Mkhaya's herd is a good-sized group - sixteen in all, counting the calves - and even though they are the largest land mammals on earth, they are not always easy to find. Elephants, it runs out, are surprisingly stealthy. — Thomas French

The cat's not hurting you, Oscar. Get a grip."
"Mistress, make it stop looking at me!"
I pulled up to a stoplight and assessed my posse.
"Cat, stop it. Oscar doesn't want to be your friend." At the sound of my voice, the feline shifted it's gaze to me.
"There," I said to Oscar. "All better."
Keeping its eyes on me, the cat moved with stealthy determination, climbing into Oscar's lap.
"Mistress!"
"Stop it, both of ya'll," I said as the light changed. — Juliet Blackwell

Refusing to let her stealthy slip away, he firmly pulled her to him, unwilling to continue this dance any longer. Although she nervously tried to resist, he could feel the pounding of her heart, and the weakness in her arms. In a soft, charming voice, he challenged, "Would it be so horrible to end this waltz, and just kiss me? — Dana Christy

Elephants, it turns out, are surprisingly stealthy. As the sunlight fades, other species declare their presence. Throngs of zebras and wildebeests thunder by in the distance, trailing dust clouds. Cape buffalo snort and raise their horns and position themselves in front of their young. Giraffes stare over treetops, their huge brown eyes blinking, then lope away in seeming slow motion. But no elephants. — Thomas French

Men do change, and change comes like a little wind that ruffles the curtains at dawn, and it comes like the stealthy perfume of wildflowers hidden in the grass. — John Steinbeck

When the leaves rustle, they sound very much like the stealthy movement of a woman in evening dress, and when they shiver suddenly, and fall, and scatter away along the ground, they might be the patter of a woman's hurrying footsteps, and the mark in the gravel the imprint of a high-heeled shoe. — Daphne Du Maurier

Someone is going to figure out how to make this work and when they do, all the anti-gambling, over-regulating authoritarian governments will be exposed as emperors without clothes. It might not be obvious that this is even happening at first, since these systems are by definition stealthy affairs. — Calvin Ayre

Her movements were so stealthy that she seemed to be an invisible creature. Frightened by her strange nature, her mother had hung a cowbell around the girl's wrist so she would not lose track of her in the shadows of the house. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

A stealthy ninja monkey she was not. — Dinah Katt

He stops in his tracks, face expressing major disappointment. Wait - seriously? That's it? We don't get to do a stealthy tiptoe as we slip around back? No sneaking through a cracked window, or arguing over who gets to crawl through the dogie door to let the other one in? — Alyson Noel

Obelisk?" "It's my favorite word." "Really?" "One of them, at least. Look at it." I look. "That is one straight-up, upstanding, powerful word. Unique, original, and kind of stealthy because it doesn't really sound like what it is. It's a word that surprises you and makes you think, Oh. All right then. It commands respect, but it's also modest. Not like 'monument' or 'tower.' " He shakes his head. "Pretentious bastards." I don't say anything because I used to love words. I loved them and was good at arranging them. Because of this, I felt protective of all the best ones. But now all of them, good and bad, frustrate me. — Jennifer Niven

The morning is a stealthy hunter, my father used to say. It sneaks up quiet and quick on the night and overtakes it. — Victoria Schwab

He thought himself awake when he was already asleep. He saw the stars above his face, whirling on their silent and sleepless axis, and the leaves of the trees rustling against them, and he heard small changes in the grass. These little noises of footsteps and soft-fringed wing-beats and stealthy bellies drawn over the grass blades or rattling against the bracken at first frightened or interested him, so that he moved to see what they were (but never saw), then soothed him, so that he no longer cared to see what they were but trusted them to be themselves, and finally left him altogether as he swam down deeper and deeper, nuzzling into the scented turf, into the warm ground, into the unending waters under the earth. — T.H. White

I won't be able to run with ghosts and slip down dark alleyways in quite the swift and stealthy fashion that I do now; but perhaps children will be amused by my hippopotamic heroics, and no one will disagree that bringing laughter to children in a dark world is admirable. — Dean Koontz

That reminds me." I dug into my book bag and pulled out a white cardboard box tied with a string. "I brought these back for you."
He looked at the box, then at me, before slowly reaching out. "What are they?"
"Poisonous snakes. Open it."
Zachary untied the string. "They seem like very quiet snakes."
"They're stealthy. Or maybe dead. — Jeri Smith-Ready

We moved in bursts, with me on point and Marcus at the rear, everyone moving quietly except Sebastian, who was about as stealthy as a giraffe.

"Get quiet and low," I whispered to him.

He ducked his head, taking him to an almost invisible six-foot-two. — Veronica Rossi

The universe is a dark forest. Every civilization is an armed hunter stalking through the trees like a ghost, gently pushing aside branches that block the path and trying to tread without sound. Even breathing is done with care. The hunter has to be careful, because everywhere in the forest are stealthy hunters like him. If he finds other life - another hunter, an angel or a demon, a delicate infant or a tottering old man, a fairy or a demigod - there's only one thing he can do: open fire and eliminate them. In this forest, hell is other people. An eternal threat that any life that exposes its own existence will be swiftly wiped out. This is the picture of cosmic civilization. It's the explanation for the Fermi Paradox. — Liu Cixin

That corner in the drive, too, where the trees encroach upon ... the gravel, is not a place in which to pause, not after the sun has set. When the leaves rustle, they sound very much like the stealthy movement of a woman in evening dress, and when they shiver suddenly, and fall, and scatter away along the ground, they might be the patter, patter, of a woman's hurrying footstep, and the mark in the gravel the imprint of a high-heeled satin shoe. — Daphne Du Maurier

At nineteen, it seems to me, one has a right to be arrogant; time has usually not begun its stealthy and rotten subtractions. It takes away your hair and your jump-shot, according to a popular country song, but in truth it takes away a lot more than that. — Stephen King

Stealthy approaches were hard to make through thigh-high drifts. — Lee Child

That's kind of the point of being stealthy. And if he doesn't catch you, then you're not doing anything wrong, are you?" That sounded true. That sounded very true! — Tui T. Sutherland

This female was: dangerous, stealthy, utterly lethal Gen One Breed. And hotter than hell itself. — Lara Adrian

Maybe consequences are dear friends in stealthy disguise. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

He might have stolen her breath the first time they kissed, but there and then - stealthy like a cat burglar - he was trying to steal her heart. — Gail McHugh

The Wood knew I was here: even now its creatures were moving towards me, stealthy padding feet through the forest, walkers and wolves and worse things still. I suddenly was sure that there were things that never left the Wood at all, things so dreadful no one had ever seen them. And they were coming. — Naomi Novik

She'd been feeling pleased with a couple of moves, had thought she was gaining the upper hand. But she'd been overconfident. She'd failed to notice his stealthy approach until he turned the tables on her with a move she hadn't expected and now she was fighting for her life. — Emily Arden

Nobody near me here, but rats, and they are fine stealthy secret fellows. — Charles Dickens

At evening when the lamp is lit,
The tired Human People sit
And doze, or turn with solemn looks
The speckled pages of their books.
Then I, the Dangerous Kitten, prowl
And in the Shadows softly growl,
And roam about the farthest floor
Where Kitten never trod before.
And, crouching in the jungle damp,
I watch the Human Hunter's camp,
Ready to spring with fearful roar
As soon as I shall hear them snore.
And then with stealthy tread I crawl
Into the dark and trackless hall,
Where 'neath the Hat-tree's shadows deep
Umbrellas fold their wings and sleep.
A cuckoo calls - and to their dens
The People climb like frightened hens,
And I'm alone - and no one cares
In Darkest Africa - downstairs. — Oliver Herford

Well, there are also prescribed methods for entering a room. Must you always be stealthy like the ninja?'
Like the ninja,' he repeated, smirking. "I'm that good, huh?'
Come to think of it, you never announce yourself. Just, poof, and "Oh, look, William's here."'- Lily and William, Seers of Light — Jennifer DeLucy

I caught a glimpse of my face in the mirror as we glided p. I looked as eroded as the groaning lift. What had happened to the fresh-faced belle from Boston, Mass.? The woman who stared back at me was at the dreaded age between forty-five and fifty, that no-man's land of sag, oncoming wrinkle, and stealthy approach of menopause.
"I hate this elevator, too," I said grimly.
Zoe grinned and pinched my cheek.
"Mom, even Gwyneth Paltrow would look like hell in that mirror."
I had to smile. That was such a Zoe-like remark. — Tatiana De Rosnay

Their dad was the god of thieves, but they were about a stealthy as water buffalos. — Rick Riordan

Be open where you can and stealthy where you must — George R R Martin

Sometimes you want to turn the page, stealthy, to see what is going to happen next. — Kambiz Shabankareh

In a consumerist culture, people rebel by buying a different brand, and instead of staging a real rebellion, which requires secret planning and stealthy strikes, American pseudo-radicals are constantly fingering themselves as soon as they hit the sidewalk. It's a fashion thing. In this illusionistic and narcissistic society, it's imperative that you look a certain way if you want to be slotted into one of the socially acceptable subgroups. It's all cosplay, all the time, for even the nerd look has been commodified and imbued with irony. — Linh Dinh

The most domestic cat, which has lain on a rug all her days, appears quite at home in the woods, and, by her sly and stealthy behavior, proves herself more native there than the regular inhabitants. — Henry David Thoreau

Also, screw you - maybe you can be all stealthy and break into their building to get the woman out, but I can get
us there and back safely. I did this for months and never got a second glance from anyone, including PSFs."
"Probably because your ugly-ass face blinded them on the first look," she muttered. — Alexandra Bracken

There had come to him one of those moments of quiet despair that lie in wait for even the happiest. Stealthy-footed they leap upon us, as we walk along the street, as we sit at evening with fruit and wine upon the table and laughter on our lips, as we wake suddenly from sleep in the hour before dawn; neither at our work nor our play nor our prayers are we safe, those moments can leap at any time out of the blackness around human life and suddenly the colors that we have nailed to our mast are there no longer and all that we have grasped is dust. — Elizabeth Goudge

Night is a stealthy, evil Raven, Wrapt to the eyes in his black wings. — Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Day is a snow-white Dove of heaven That from the East glad message brings. Night is a stealthy, evil Raven, Wrapped to the eyes in his black wings. — Thomas Bailey Aldrich

I'm also discovering that while they seem to believe that I do not require sleep, my husband (who also doubles as their father) has the ability to morph into an invisible and supremely evasive nocturnal being, with powers so stealthy as to evade capture by the aliens [children] that had invaded our once peaceful and quiet habitat [bedroom at night]. — Dallas Louis

Most wealth is inconspicuous. The man down the street driving the nice car and living in the mansion could easily have greater debt and a lower net worth than the stealthy and wealthy plumber who drives a beat-up truck but seems to work only when he doesn't feel like fishing. — Loral Langemeier

I like games where you can use stealth and guile. As you get older, it's like the difference between playing squash and racketball. Squash is an older man's game, because if you're stealthy and wily, you can beat a better-co-ordinated and stronger, younger person. — Nolan Bushnell

Once the quietness arrived, it stayed and spread in Estha. It reached out of his head and enfolded him in its swampy arms. It rocked him to the rhythm of an ancient, fetal heartbeat. It sent its stealthy, suckered tentacles inching along the insides of his skull, hoovering the knolls and dells of his memory; dislodging old sentences, whisking them off the tip of his tongue. It stripped his thoughts of the words that described them and left them pared and naked. Unspeakable. Numb. And to an observer therefore, perhaps barely there. Slowly, over the years, Estha withdrew from the world. He grew accustomed to the uneasy octopus that lived inside him and squirted its inky tranquilizer on his past. Gradually the reason for his silence was hidden away, entombed somewhere deep in the soothing folds of the fact of it. — Arundhati Roy

Teppic had learned how not to move stealthily. Millions of years of being eaten by creatures that know how to move stealthily has made humanity very good at spotting stealthy movement. Nor was it enough to make no noise, because little moving patches of silence always aroused suspicion. The trick was to glide through the night with a quiet reassurance, just like the air did. There — Terry Pratchett

At night, they lie in bed holding hands. It is possible if she is stealthy enough that the wife can do this while secretly giving the husband the finger. — Jenny Offill

Person's own level of virtue is a tradeoff between the esteem that comes from cultivating a reputation as a cooperator and the ill-gotten gains of stealthy cheating. A social group is a marketplace of cooperators of differing degrees of generosity and trustworthiness, and people advertise themselves as being as generous and trustworthy as they can get away with, which may be a bit more generous and trustworthy than they are. The — Steven Pinker

Neither spoke, but lat silently listening to the ticking of the clock. A stair creaked, and a squeaky mouse scurried noisily through the wall. The darkness was oppressive, and after lying for some time screwing up his courage, he took the box of matches, and striking one, went downstairs for a candle.
At the foot of the stairs the match went out, and he paused to strike another; and at the same moment a knock came so quiet and stealthy as to be scarcely audible, sounded on the front door.
The matches fell from his hand and spilled in the passage. He stood motionless, his breath suspended until the knock was repeated. Then he turned and fled swiftly back to his room, and closed the door behind him. A third knock sounded through the house. — W.W. Jacobs

Sometimes the emptiness in a room becomes palpable as if you could reach out and touch it real, hear its silence, feel its black nothingness. It invades your spirit, your soul like a stealthy misperception; a liquid lie that whispers and will not die, and makes you fight to stay alive. — Gloria Smith

But *why* do clean torture and democracy appear to go hand in hand? This is an important puzzle (though by no means the only one suggested by the data). My explanation for this pattern generally is this: Public monitoring leads institutions that favor painful coercion to use and combine clean torture techniques to evade detection, and, to the extent that public monitoring is not only greater in democracies, but that public monitoring of human rights is a core value in modern democracies, it is the case that where we find democracies torturing today we will also be more likely to find stealthy torture. — Darius M. Rejali

Awake and listen, you that are lonely! From the future come winds with stealthy wings, and to subtle ears good tidings are proclaimed. — Friedrich Nietzsche

No one understood why she had not died of hunger until the Indians, who were aware of everything, for they went ceaselessly about the house on their stealthy feet, discovered that Rebeca only liked to eat the damp earth of the courtyard and the cake of the whitewash that she picked off the walls with her nails. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

I have dwelt ever in realms apart from the visible world; spending my youth and adolescence in ancient and little-known books, and in roaming the fields and groves of the region near my ancestral home. I do not think that what I read in these books or saw in these fields and groves was exactly what other boys read and saw there; but of this I must say little, since detailed speech would but confirm those cruel slanders upon my intellect which I sometimes overhear from the whispers of the stealthy attendants around me. — H.P. Lovecraft

I would have to stop at a local shelter and possibly PetSmart. They had silent, stealthy, vicious predators available for adoption. — Ilona Andrews

Wealthy the spirit that knows its own flight. Stealthy the hunter who slays his own fright. Blessed the traveler who journeys the length of the light — Dan Fogelberg

Because somewhere along the way, a poison had infiltrated their relationship. Quiet and stealthy, it had eaten into the fabric of emotion that bound them until that fabric was threadbare ... and her wolf had withdrawn totally from the relationship. — Nalini Singh

Apparently Mayella's recital had given her confidence, but it was not her father's brash kind: there was something stealthy about hers, like a steady-eyed cat with a twitchy tail. — Harper Lee

The lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the house a guest, and then becomes a host, and then a master. — Khalil Gibran

William to Paris: "I always figured you for the in and out type. Kinda stealthy, leaving the girl wondering whether you'd been there or not. But I didn't know you were quite this stealthy."
(Paris) "Nice to know you've considered my sex life"
"Hasn't everyone?"
"Screw you"
"Again, hasn't everyone? — Gena Showalter

Love is stealthy hiding under ribs. — Veda Hille

Outside the drizzling rain had begun again. It pattered around the house, and on the roofs and eaves, like a million, tiny, stealthy feet: softly, as though the night were teeming with a host of minute, dark beings. — Evangeline Walton

She was beautiful and lithe, with soft skin the color of bread and eyes like green almonds, and she had straight black hair that reached to her shoulders, and an aura of antiquity that could just as well have been Indonesian as Andean. She was dressed with subtle taste: a lynx jacket, a raw silk blouse with very delicate flowers, natural linen trousers, and shoes with a narrow stripe the color of bougainvillea. 'This is the most beautiful woman I've ever seen,' I thought, when I saw her pass by with the stealthy stride of a lioness, while I waited in the check-in line at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris for the plane to New York. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Our rival interrogation team is the Pubyok, named after the "floating wall" defenders that saved Pyongyang from invaders in 1136. There are only a dozen or so left, old men with silver crewcuts who walk in a row like a wall and truly believe they can float, stealthy as ghosts, from one citizen to the next, interrogating them as the wind interrogates the leaves. — Adam Johnson

But tonight I'll go alone. You're about as stealthy as a lame elephant. See you later." She patted me on the shoulder and took off down the path, leaving me behind, both charmed and insulted. The side effects of hanging around Charlotte Holmes. — Brittany Cavallaro

One wants more time, more youth. That is it. That is all one asks for - nothing but that, a little more time. Hear it running by! Listen! In the night, in the morning, at noon, at even, rushing by, silent, stealthy, trying to hoodwink you by the fixed appearance of things that seem not to change; but never stopping. Oh, to stop it! Oh, to get it back! Oh, to dig one's toes in and refuse to be rushed headlong towards the brink! — Mary Borden

Grabbed his neck and screamed in terror (which was not very stealthy). — Rick Riordan

A working woman, rising before dawn to spin and needing light in her cottage room, piles brushwood on a smoldering log, and the whole heap kindled by the little brand goes up in a mighty blaze. Such was the fire of Love, stealthy but all-consuming, that swept through Medea's heart. In the turmoil of her soul, her soft cheeks turned from rose to white and white to rose. — Apollonius Of Rhodes

One of them, at least. Look at it." I look. "That is one straight-up, upstanding, powerful word. Unique, original, and kind of stealthy because it doesn't really sound like what it is. It's a word that surprises you and makes you think, Oh. All right then. It commands respect, but it's also modest. Not like 'monument' or 'tower.' " He shakes his head. "Pretentious bastards. — Jennifer Niven

The Goldsworth castle became particularly solitary after that turning point at dusk which resembles so much the nightfall of the mind. Stealthy — Vladimir Nabokov

Where are the dogs?" I asked.
"At training," he said. "I have a friend who's an expert dog trainer, and he's giving them some stealth lessons. He used to work for a local K-9 unit."
I didn't think it was in the Chihuahua genetic code to ever be stealthy. — Richelle Mead

Death is a supple suitor, that wins at last. It is a stealthy wooing; conducted first by pallid innuendos and dim approach, but brave at last with bugles. — Emily Dickinson

Now the moon is high; and the great house, needing habitation more than ever, is like a body without life. Now it is even awful, stealing through it, to think of the live people who have slept in the solitary bedrooms, to say nothing of the dead. Now is the time for shadow, when every corner is a cavern and every downward step a pit, when the stained glass is reflected in pale and faded hues upon the floors, when anything and everything can be made of the heavy staircase beams excepting their own proper shapes, when the armour has dull lights upon it not easily to be distinguished from stealthy movement, and when barred helmets are frightfully suggestive of heads inside. But of all the shadows in Chesney Wold, the shadow in the long drawing-room upon my Lady's picture is the first to come, the last to be disturbed. At this hour and by this light it changes into threatening hands raised up and menacing the handsome face with every breath that stirs. — Charles Dickens

This mission was about as stealthy as Godzilla at a petting zoo. — Michelle Muto

Beneath the broad tides of human history there flow the stealthy undercurrents of the secret societies, which frequently determine in the depth the changes that take place upon the surface. — A. E. Waite

We all have a plan, those of us who love George Romero and Resident Evil. We all keep a sword under our bed, or a chainsaw in our garage. We know the quickest way to the mall, and we practise our stealthy moves when no-one else around is watching. We know where we'll get food, water and gasoline, and where we'll stay until society gets back on its feet. We know the zombies are coming. — Hugh Howey

Just about everything in this world is easier said than done, with the exception of "systematically assisting Sisyphus's stealthy, cyst-susceptible sister," which is easier done than said. — Lemony Snicket

We must be as stealthy as rats in the wainscoting of their society. It was easier in the old days, of course, and society had more rats when the rules were looser, just as old wooden buildings have more rats than concrete buildings. But there are rats in the building now as well. Now that society is all ferrocrete and stainless steel there are fewer gaps in the joints. It takes a very smart rat indeed to find these openings. Only a stainless steel rat can be at home in this environment... — Harry Harrison

Did you ever feel a creeping,
That awoke you from your sleeping,
That made your pulses flutter and bristled all your hair;
While a horrid stealthy crawling
Prevented you from calling,
And something seemed to tell you that a ghost was coming there? — Amelia B. Edwards

Tracker Marks was of a different opinion. Though he seemed more white than a white man, he had no time for their ways. For him his dress, his deportment was no different than staying downwind in the shadows of trees when hunting, blending into the world of those he hunted, rather than standing out from it. Once he had excelled at the emu dance & the kangaroo dance; then his talent led him to the whitefella dance, only now no-one was left of his tribe to stand around the fire & laugh & praise his talent for observation & stealthy imitation.
The whites have no law, he told Capois Death, no dreaming. Their way of life made no sense whatsoever. Still, he did not hate them or despise them. They were stupid beyond belief, but they had a power, & somehow their stupidity & their power were, in Tracker Marks's mind, inextricably connected. But how? he asked Capois Death. How can power & ignorance sleep together? Questions to which Capois Death had no answer. — Richard Flanagan