Telltale Quotes & Sayings

That 1983 general election contained the telltale seeds of eventual Scottish Tory self-destruction. — Charles Kennedy

A wise reader reads the book of genius not with his heart, not so much with his brain, but with his spine. It is there that occurs the telltale tingle ... — Vladimir Nabokov

On land off an ice covered sea the traveler can, for example, detect the presence of open water, simply because it reflects less light than land or ice. The open sea's telltale sign is thus a darkness on the underside of the clouds. — Harold Gatty

How does Love speak? In the faint flush upon the telltale cheek, And in the pallor that succeeds it; by The quivering lid of an averted eye
The smile that proves the parent to a sigh Thus doth Love speak. — Ella Wheeler Wilcox

When we drift from a deep, intimate companionship with God, we become negative, critical, judgmental and recalcitrant. We resist the repeated overtures of God's love. Neutrality and detached aloofness eventually result. We become respectably unresponsive. It happens to all of us at times. The telltale signs are equivocation, vacillation and pretense. — Lloyd John Ogilvie

Problems associated with the menstrual cycle are now commonplace. The majority of teenagers whom I have seen suffer problems such as PMS, severe cramping, and irregular or heavy cycles. Severe hypothyroidism may cause the menses to stop. Dr. Barnes noted his patients with menstrual problems usually suffered many other telltale symptoms of hypothyroidism. Mine do as well. A large majority of menstrual problems resolve after treatment with dessicated thyroid. — Mark Starr

His hand tightened on the coppiced knob handle of his shillelagh when he also saw the deteriorating fabric. Bridget and Peter had walked together through this wooded area on the north side of Glencar Lake many times over these last four years searching for some telltale sign of Meg. — Georgette Symonds

I heard the telltale sound of scales scraping against metal
a light swoosh, a tongue flickering out to taste the stale and humid air. Whatever it was, my prey was tasting for me. — Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Everyone needs to remember that Ebola was not a worst-case scenario. Preparedness for the future means preparedness for a very severe disease that spreads via the airborne route or can be transmitted during the incubation period, before an infected person shows telltale signs of illness. — Margaret Chan

Your clothes smell heavily of clothing. Your den is filled with low-hanging palls of fresh air. The only rattle in your car is the sound of toll change in the ashtray. The absence of telltale tobacco stains on your shirt collar tells the tale - you've licked the smoking habit. — Robert Breault

He had told Downing that they would let the lady decide. That perhaps it was in Charlotte's best interest to accept and show her father what his actions wrought ... But she had cut the conversation short, said adieu, turned from all of them. Strode directly to her fate without another word.
Not just from pride or anger though.
He looked at her, at the delicate skin of her flawless neck, and smiled. No, her pulse didn't jump like that as a result of pride or anger or fear. Her voice didn't hitch [due to] chagrin at an unfortunate turn of events. That jump, that hitch ... what the telltale signs meant ... that was why she was doomed. — Anne Mallory

Every time I write something down I check it to see if it has that telltale glow, the glow that tells me there's something there. If it glows, it stays. Everything is either on or off. — Jim Woodring

When I really have to push and grope and scratch and claw to make a story work, that's a telltale sign that maybe something conceptually isn't right. — David E. Kelley

Aunt Nell used to say it was not decent to have violet eyes, that they were a telltale sign of bad nature, like ginger hair or a hunchback. — Deanna Raybourn

Women were far more fragile, and if there was one thing Michael could not bear, it was a woman's tears. Seeing the telltale rim of moisture pooling at the bottom of a woman's eyes was all it took to make him helpless. When a woman's voice wobbled with impending tears, all his extravagant strength and courage collapsed like a withered leaf in a gust of autumn wind. — Elizabeth Camden

The writers we absorb when we're young bind us to them, sometimes lightly, sometimes with iron. In time, the bonds fall away, but if you look very closely you can sometimes make out the pale white groove of a faded scar, or the telltale chalky red of old rust. — Daniel Mendelsohn

I think that the trademark of the Devil in this world, is the awful rift between women. Women backbiting other women, women envying other women and so on and so forth. And then there is the telltale sign of God in this world, which is the intoxicating potion of joy that is concocted when a woman reaches out to another woman, when women will take an extra step, go an extra mile, or just go out of their way an inch for their fellow woman, regardless of the varying degrees of things we hold important such as beauty, intelligence, status and so on and so forth. Beautiful acts of God are seen in the kindness of women towards other women. And when I say this, I am also thinking about gay men in the same light. — C. JoyBell C.

walked in slowly, trying to maintain her balance and keep to a straight line but Nadine knew the telltale signs. She watched her sister with trepidation. — Lily Zante

Know how to behave at a fine restaurant, which is a telltale measure of social maturity. — Marilyn Vos Savant

Now, though, the command he gave made two vaguenesses congeal into one threat, distant, amorphous, but unmistakable, as when, against a background of city dawn and back alley clatter, one click and one clack come together into the telltale click-clack of a ready gun, and echo won't tell you whether the enemy's perch is left, or right, or high, or low, only that it is near. — Ada Palmer

Love was meant to be also a sign, a symbol, a messenger, a telltale of the Divine. Love is a messenger from God saying that every human affection and every ecstasy of love are sparks from the great flame of love that is God. — Fulton J. Sheen

So easy now that Elder Sister has explained to her what all young girls in houses are taught - that with care and meticulous acting and tears of pretended pain and fear, and the final modest telltale stains cautiously placed, a girl can, if necessary, be virgin ten times for ten different men. — James Clavell

Alive. That was the first thing.
A daughter. That was the second.
They knew this without being told, without searching the newborn's features for some telltale sign. If the child had been a boy, the Mothers would have emerged empty-handed. They would have filed quietly from the house, leaving the family to their disappointment.
A boy was simply another mouth to feed, another body to keep warm during the winter. A boy might wield an axe or trap a bird. He might mend a roof or skin a rabbit.
Such things were useful; there was no denying it. But a daughter? A daughter could do those too, and much more besides. — Meg McKinlay

Your refusal to forgive one who has sinned against you us a manifestation of hypocrisy - a telltale sign that either you have not experenced God's forgiving grace, or that you take such grace for granted. — Joe Thorn

I watched for her hair to curl, the telltale Caster breeze. It didn't move. This wasn't Caster magic she was working. It was another kind altogether. She couldn't charm her way out from under Macon's watch. She would have to resort to older magic, stronger magic, the kind that had worked best on Macon from the time she first moved to Ravenwood. Plain old love. — Kami Garcia

It was a lie and I detected it at once. As an accomplished fibber myself, I spotted the telltale signs of an untruth before they were halfway out of his mouth: the excessive detail, the offhand delivery, and the wrapping-up of it all in casual chitchat. — Alan Bradley

You don't get 'The Unfinished Swan' or 'Shadow of the Colossus' or even Telltale's 'Walking Dead' until you've sat through the long, linear infodumps of something like 'Metal Gear Solid'. — Dave Morris

He stretches languorously under me, and the silvery scar on his abdomen catches the light, that telltale mark from Sister Two when he fought her inside Butterfly Threads just weeks ago. When he almost died to help me and Jeb escape. But I didn't let him die, because I couldn't imagine a world without him.
I can't imagine a future without him, either. Not anymore. — A.G. Howard

Anna Freud's book The Ego and Mechanisms of Defense (1936) was a partial response to this problem. It became a psychoanalytic field marshal's handbook, documenting and illustrating various unconscious defensive strategies of the ego, alerting the clinician to telltale signs of their operation in the patient's psyche. Reorienting — Stephen A. Mitchell

That was it exactly - irony was defeatist, timid, the telltale of a generation too afraid to say what it meant, and so in danger of forgetting it had anything to say. — D.T. Max

Nwella came up with a silver bowl and a big soft brush, and before Madrigal knew what was happening Nwella had dusted her chest, neck, and shoulders with something that glittered.
"What - ?"
"Sugar," she said, giggling.
"Nwella!" Madrigal tried to brush it off, but it was dust-fine and it clung: sugar powder, which girls wore when they planned to be tasted. If her rose petal lips and naked back were not enough invitation to Thiago, Madrigal thought, this certainly was. Its telltale shimmer might as well have been a sign that said LICK ME. — Laini Taylor

I like the 'Blackwell' adventure games, and I'm fond of some of Telltale's games, like 'Hector' and 'Puzzle Agent' - simple stories, but fun. I thought 'Heavy Rain' was amazing. — Jane Jensen

In those days you could identify a person's nationality by smell. Lying on her back with eyes closed, Desdemona could detect the telltale oniony aroma of a Hungarian woman on her right, and the raw-meat smell of an Armenian on her left. (And they, in turn, could peg Desdemona as a Hellene by her aroma of garlic and yogurt.) — Jeffrey Eugenides

I still feel like a castaway, th elast of a once numerous species. It was as though Robinson Crusoe discovered the telltale footprint on the beach and then realized that it was his own. Myself, small as a leaf, thin as water, begins to cry. — Audrey Niffenegger

But the actual object, that bundle of papers, is a telltale heart. She buried it long ago, and still it thumps its maddening beat. — Stefan Merrill Block

Honestly, the two main things that I always look for is, when I read the script for the first time, do I read it quickly? Because if I read it quick, that's an important telltale sign. — Colin Hanks

Because that's what unfaithfulness is, isn't it? A cancer that's always there in the back of your mind, eating away at the foundations of the relationship. It's happened once, it could happen again, so you're always looking for telltale signs or symptoms to show that it's reappeared ... — Matt Dunn

The cosmic game changed forever in 1992. Before then, logic told us that there had to be other planets besides the nine (if you still count poor Pluto) in our solar system, but until that year, when two astronomers detected faint, telltale radio signals in the constellation Virgo, we had no hard evidence of their existence. — Thomas Mallon

One of the telltale signs of one who has completely embraced their authentic self is that they are, with great consistency, the same person in public as they are behind closed doors. Until you learn how to access your authentic voice, the uniqueness of who you truly are will never be fully realized. What makes you special (just like everyone else) is that you were placed here on this planet to express the one-of-a-kind being only you can be. — Dennis Merritt Jones

The telltale clenching of hands into fists is all the invitation I need as I close the gap to hound his personal space.
Suck on my aura you spineless shit! — Poppet

People stared. Maybe because they were giants compared to everyone else, both in height and muscle mass. Maybe because of the telltale bulge of weapons at their waist. Or maybe because William opened a bag of Doritos and ate while he shopped. Hard to tell. — Gena Showalter

He's trying not to laugh, but the telltale dimple gives it away. — Nicola Yoon

I've since discovered that many human beings need no supernatural mentoring to commit acts of savagery; some people are devils in their own right, their telltale horns having grown inward to facilitate their disguise. — Dean Koontz

Horns. The skull had horns His heart sank. Only one pirate ship bore that flag - the Satyr.
To make sure, he looked for the figurehead. When he saw the telltale carving of the mythological half-goat, half-man, he groaned aloud. Then he lifted his glass, and saw the black-haired man standing in the bow. It was the Satyr, all right. And its demon owner Captain Gideon Horn.
Tis the Pirate Lord himself! — Sabrina Jeffries

The insatiable need for heartless power and ruthless control is the telltale sign of an uninitiated man - the most irresponsible, incompetent and destructive force on earth. — Michael Leunig

they all stem from the primal fault, which is idolatry, worshipping that which is not God as if it were. Second, they all show the telltale marks of the consequent fault, which is subhuman behavior, that is, the failure fully to reflect the image of God, that missing the mark as regards full, free, and genuine humanness for which the New Testament's regular word is hamartia, "sin." (Sin, we note, is not the breaking of arbitrary rules; rather, the rules are the thumbnail sketches of different types of dehumanizing behavior.) Third, it is perfectly possible, and it really does seem to happen in practice, that this idolatry and dehumanization become so endemic in the life and chosen behavior of an individual, and indeed of groups, that unless there is a specific turning away from such a way of life, those who persist are conniving at their own ultimate dehumanization. This — N. T. Wright

It was a vain attempt at indifference, on both their parts.

For Shahrzad bore silent witness to the truth. It was only for an instant, and they never glanced at each other. Yet, she wondered how anyone could miss it - the subtle shift in Jalal's shoulders, and the telltale tilt to Despina's head.

Shahrzad smiled knowingly. — Renee Ahdieh

Where is any author in the world Teaches such beauty as a woman's eye? - Love's Labor Lost. The eyes appears to be more immediately connected with the soul than any other organ. A woman reflects every emotion, almost every thought from her two wonderful, priceless eyes, and no feature of her face is more a telltale of her nature. "Show me," says the old Chinese proverb, "a man's eyes, and I will tell you what he might have been. Show me his mouth, and I will tell you what he has been." The same is true of women. Up to thirty or thirty-five a woman may be actress enough to make her eyes tell one tale, while her life would reveal another; but little by little the true state of a woman's soul stands forth in the expression, the frankness, the furtiveness, the candor, or the boldness — Harriet Hubbard Ayer

The assumption of the word reunion is that, once you're together again, you are united. Two as one. Pulling close to someone is only a temporary symbol. It's the way you breathe with each other that's the telltale sign. — David Levithan

His quick eyes seemed to miss nothing, and she couldn't hide the
motion of her fingers squeezing the fabric of her skirts. His gaze rose back to her face, lingering on her
lips, then meeting her eyes. Even giving away her nerves with the telltale sign of her pinched fingers, she
refused to look away.
"Andreas, I think I've fallen in love."
"Roman." There was a wealth of unspoken meaning in that one word, so darkly uttered. But Roman's
too-beautiful mouth crooked, head cocked, eyes watching. — Anne Mallory

When he [Colin] reached the center of the field, he paused to catch his breath and scan the area for telltale tufts of wool. When the lamb failed to appear, he cupped his hands around his mouth and tried again. "Dinner!"
This time, his call earned an answer. Several answers. In fact, the ground shook with the collective bestial response. He spied several large, dark forms lumbering toward him through the twilight dusk. He blinked, trying to make them out. These weren't sheep. No, they were ...
Cows. Large cows. Remarkably fast and menacing cows. A small herd of them, all thundering straight for him where he stood in the center of the field.
Colin took a few steps backward. "Wait," he said, holding up his hands. "I didn't mean you. — Tessa Dare

I've always thought that if little straight boys were taught that the one surefire, telltale sign of repressed homosexuality was the beating and killing of gay men - and the truth is lurking around that idea somewhere - then gay-bashing would shrivel away within a generation. — Wesley Gibson

Sam Vimes could parallel process. Most husbands can. They learn to follow their own line of thought while at the same time listening to what their wives say. And the listening is important, because at any time they could be challenged and must be ready to quote the last sentence in full. A vital additional skill is being able to scan the dialogue for telltale phrases such as "and they can deliver it tomorrow" or "so I've invited them for dinner?" or "they can do it in blue, really quite cheaply. — Terry Pratchett

I bow my head submissively and see that my chest is heaving, already dotted with the telltale flush of sexual arousal. — Donna George Storey

Hiding. Covering up. Self-protection. Feeling exposed. They are telltale signs of shame. — Edward T. Welch

How admirable is the Western method of submitting all theory to scrupulous experimental verification! That empirical procedure has gone hand in hand with the gift for introspection which is my Eastern heritage. Together they have enabled me to sunder the silences of natural realms long uncommunicative. The telltale charts of my crescograph 49 are evidence for the most skeptical that plants have a sensitive nervous system and a varied emotional life. Love, hate, joy, fear, pleasure, pain, excitability, stupor, and countless appropriate responses to stimuli are as universal in plants as in animals. — Paramahansa Yogananda

Just then, a telltale scent reached Trez's nose and rocketed through his blood, the impact wrenching his head and his body around ...
Whereupon he lost all thought. All breath. And all of his soul.
Selena stood at the head of the bloodred-carpeted steps, her lovely hand resting on the gold-leafed balustrade, her body held stiffly, as if she weren't sure about her shoes, or her dress, or maybe even her hair.
There was absolutely nothing to worry about.
Unless she had a problem with being an H-bomb. — J.R. Ward

The idealistic world-improver was his mask,I'd realized. — Cora Reilly

And I went through a lot of detours and I took a lot of roads and things so yes, that's all there, but it's not meant to be shocking or telltale. — Kim Novak

I'm very glad you asked me that, Mrs Rawlinson. The term 'holistic' refers to my conviction that what we are concerned with here is the fundamental interconnectedness of all things. I do not concern myself with such petty things as fingerprint powder, telltale pieces of pocket fluff and inane footprints. I see the solution to each problem as being detectable in the pattern and web of the whole. The connections between causes and effects are often much more subtle and complex than we with our rough and ready understanding of the physical world might naturally suppose, Mrs Rawlinson.

"Let me give you an example. If you go to an acupuncturist with toothache he sticks a needle instead into your thigh. Do you know why he does that, Mrs Rawlinson?

No, neither do I, Mrs Rawlinson, but we intend to find out. A pleasure talking to you, Mrs Rawlinson. Goodbye. — Douglas Adams

Many police officers watch for vehicles without headlights because it's a telltale of a drunk driver. — Robert James Thomson