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More "Cunning" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... name, he will give you." The sign of the Cross calls for help and grace through the Blood of Christ shed upon the Cross. Would God deny such prayer? The sign of the Cross is a particularly powerful weapon against the malicious and cunning assaults of the devil. Of this St. Chrysostom says: "When in the fulness of faith you make the sign of the Cross upon your forehead no impure spirit will be able to tarry near you; for he beholds the sword that has given him the death blow." "Write the sign of the Cross upon ...
— The Excellence of the Rosary - Conferences for Devotions in Honor of the Blessed Virgin • M. J. Frings
... surely enough, was the bedstead, of iron, very curiously wrought, and upon it a soft couch which seemed to invite him to lie down and rest. But Theseus, peering about, saw the ax and the ropes with cunning pulleys lying hidden behind the curtains; and he saw, too, that the floor was covered ...
— Old Greek Stories • James Baldwin
... know how to go about it, sir. How could you? All this whispering and tiptoeing is no good. You can't hope to slink past a cunning, wide-awake, evil brute like he was. You never heard him talk. Enough to make your hair stand on end. No! No! He wasn't mad. He was no more mad than I am. He was just downright wicked. Wicked so as to frighten most people. ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... they have their consciousness, Your lips their grave reflective smile, Your hands their cunning for distress: Your hair has only beauteousness And hid flame ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... came to tell us, that as it was past the usual time of the Sultan's going to the mosque, he was afraid he would not come at all to-day; that he had left him with Count Orloff, with whom he was in a towering passion, many angry speeches having passed between the cunning diplomatist and the enraged sovereign. However, soon after, the order to fix bayonets and shoulder arms, both of which were very well executed, announced his approach, and in a few minutes afterwards the band struck up his favourite march. At the head of the ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... brave soldier, a skilful general and a man of letters. Cicero in the first chapter of the second book of the Academica Priora has passed a high eulogium on him. He was fond of wealth and luxury, but humane and of a mild temper. He was no match for the cunning of Pompeius, or the daring temper of Caesar; and he was not cruel enough to have acted with the decision which the troublesome times required that he just lived to see. The loss of his History of ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... soon to undergo will be the greatest of all. We have seen our bairns grow to manhood—we have seen the beauty of youth pass away—we have felt our backs become unable for the burthen, and our right hand forget its cunning.—Our eyes have become dim, and our heads grey—we are now tottering with short and feckless steps towards the grave; and some, that should have been here this day, are bed-rid, lying, as it were, at the gates of death, like ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... seems that the court summoned Hernan Pereira and Henri Marais to accompany them to a lonely spot at a distance, where they thought that their deliberations would not be overheard. In this, however, they were mistaken, having forgotten the fox-like cunning of the Hottentot, Hans. Hans had heard me sentenced, and probably enough feared that he who also had committed the crime of escaping from Dingaan, might be called on to share that sentence. Also he wished to know the secret counsel of these Boers, whose language, of course, he understood as ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... enchanted palace, where, with full freedom, you can decree her fate. Yet you astonish me by this mighty change in your appearance. That figure, that countenance, that costume, perfectly conceal your real being, and I defy the most cunning to see in you to-day the ...
— Psyche • Moliere
... clearing. He was of great size, but he was a cat—a huge cat, but a cat, nevertheless—and like a cat he acted. He dragged his body along the earth, and his eyes, now yellow, now green, in the moonlight, were swung suspiciously from side to side. He felt all that the wolf had felt, but he was even more cunning and his approach was slower. It was his habit to spring when close enough, but he saw nothing to spring at except a tree trunk, and so he still ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... huge cathedral with its spires and arches and rich fretwork of dark stone, seemed to him the model of what all cathedrals should be. The swift river that ran between overhanging buildings, and beneath old bridges that were carved with armorial bearings and decorated with the rare ironwork of cunning smiths, famous long ago, bore in its breast the legends of his own forest home, and was impersonated in many a verse he had learned to sing with his comrades. The shady nooks and corners, the turns in the crooked streets, the dark archways of old inns, the swinging ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... ruffian we have suffered to depart so easily. His assault upon myself I do not choose to treat harshly; but the man is a terror to the country round, committing many an act to which the law awards a very insufficient punishment, but with cunning sufficient to keep within that line, the passage beyond which would enable society to purge itself of such a stain upon it; how to deal with him, I say, embarrasses me greatly. I have committed him two or three times to prison already; ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... you, to disclose the cause of your distress, for few such desperate evils betide mankind as are wholly past cure. It grieves me much that you would hide your grief from me, for I am bound to you by ties that nothing can undo. Tell me, then, your grief, and leave me to try if wealth, art, cunning, force, or persuasion cannot relieve you. If not, it will be time enough after all has been ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... the Vandals, he was a cruel and cunning man, but he had great ability in many ways. He fought in battles even when a boy and was known far and wide for his bravery and skill ...
— Famous Men of The Middle Ages • John H. Haaren, LL.D. and A. B. Poland, Ph.D.
... she was very gentle and sweet for a week. She wore a plain gown and a simple hat and declared she would like to work at home. She rose early and took a seat at her table by five o'clock the first morning and tried to roll her violet stems, but her fingers had lost their cunning in the six months in ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... her with cunning eyes. "You didn't give it all away," he thought. "You've got a little hid somewhere. O Gawd! I want a drink ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... three or four young hares, springing about in the heath and young moss, ran boldly towards the three men; they were so cunning that even Altamont ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... and, with a few other desperadoes like himself, made a descent on Glen Lynden—not, by any means, the first that his fraternity had made. Not so bloodthirsty as the leopard, quite as mischievous as Junkie, and much more cunning than the baboons, Booby chanced to arrive at the gorge already mentioned just at the time when Junkie was approaching it. There was, if you will, somewhat of a coincidence here in regard to time, but there was ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... young. Her latest birth, This weakling man, my craft shall girth With cunning strength. Him I will take, And in stern arts my scholar make. This smoking reed, in which hold The empyrean spark, shall mould Rock and hard steel to use of man: He shall be as a god to plan And forge all things to his desire By alchemy ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... in a storm of diaphanous clinging garments. He stared at them from an adjacent room, where he pretended to be reading, and sighed. Alas, how was his cunning and foresight—even his—to overcome the drift of life itself? How was he to make himself appealing to youth? Braxmar had the years, the color, the bearing. Berenice seemed to-night, as she prepared to leave, to be fairly seething ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... ceilings, the sides of arches, the ribs of groinings—every foot of space, in short—with life and color; and how much more precious is one of those solemn pearly faces than a panel of alabaster or the most cunning mosaic of marbles! In the upper church alone there are twenty-two large frescoes of Cimabue and thirty of Giotto. Over these pours the light from fourteen large colored windows, unimpeded by side-aisles. When the sun beats upon these windows the church seems to be filled with a transparent ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... thorax. Nevertheless the wing can easily revolve about its base like unto a fan. Nor are there lacking tendon ligaments which restrain the feathers and prevent them from opening farther, in the same fashion that sheets hold in the sails of ships. No less admirable is nature's cunning in unfolding and folding the wings upwards, for she folds them not laterally, but by moving upwards edgewise the osseous parts wherein the roots of the feathers are inserted; for thus, without encountering the air's resistance ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... O Uplifter of our hearts!" rattled on Babalatchi, with fussy deference. "Only a very few paces and you shall behold Omar the brave, and a white man of great strength and cunning. ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... this question, the king of the mines had a very cunning purpose; for, you will recollect, if Proserpina tasted a morsel of food in his dominions, she would never afterwards be at ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... from the burning flames of the lusts of the flesh, his only thought has been for the salvation of mankind. Once upon a time there was a certain heretic, called Rokutsuponji, a reader of auguries, cunning in astrology and in the healing art. It happened, one day, that this heretic, being in company with Buddha, entered a forest, which was full of dead men's skulls. Buddha, taking up one of the skulls ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... even before them. From the South, Dutch trappers had come from New York, and these had gained the good will of the Indians, from whom they purchased their furs. The Dutch were very cunning, and while they did not always treat the Indians fairly, they nevertheless maintained their ...
— Three Young Pioneers - A Story of the Early Settlement of Our Country • John Theodore Mueller
... you wait any longer, good-by to our covey: you will certainly find an empty cage, and the birds flown. You smile? Yes, I know you are clever, and can accomplish anything; but they are cunning blades, and as slippery as eels. They know that they are ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... Because of his cunning, his fearlessness, and his long resistance to subjection both by the missionary and by the governments under whose dominion he has lived, but until recent times never recognized, the Apache, in name at least, ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... then, very few were acquainted." Again, in chap. xviii.: "Our pewterers in time past employed the use of pewter only upon dishes and pots, and a few other trifles for service; whereas now, they are grown into such exquisite cunning, that they can in manner imitate by infusion any form or fashion of cup, dish, salt, or bowl or goblet, which is made by goldsmith's craft, though they be never so curious, and very artificially forged. In some places beyond the sea, a garnish of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... upon the western border of Missouri. Even Northern and Eastern Abolitionists, better versed perhaps in the theory of the subject, would prove very incompetent if matched in practical hostility with slaveholding opinion and might—slaveholding vindictiveness, cunning, treachery, and recklessness of every consideration, human or divine, but the gaining of their one end, the retention of their hold ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... cast their eyes over the walls and ceiling without being able to see where the wonder would happen, for the childish and cunning Huns used to amuse their guests ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... willing to die for France, though they hated death, and in spite of the first great rush of the German legions, they had a fine intellectual contempt of that army, which seemed to me then unjustified, though they were right, as history now shows. Man against man, in courage and cunning they were better than the Germans, gun against gun they were better, in cavalry charge and in bayonet charge they were better, ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... enough that women should be able to obtain alcohol as they do by means of devices which may often prevent their habits from being discovered at all until irreparable mischief has been done. Here the cunning and the greed of commercialism have set to work to fool the public and poison it by a systematic practice which is injurious to all sections of the community, but especially to women, and which cannot be too widely reprobated and exposed. All honour is due to the British Medical ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... had mentioned by name, were youths of mould and strength, and they were well inured to toil, no less than to the particular privations and dangers of a border life. Like most men of their years and condition, they were practised too in the wiles of Indian cunning; and though the Province of Connecticut, compared to other settlements, had suffered but little in this species of murderous warfare, they both had martial feats and perilous experiences of their own to recount, during the light labors of the long ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... to a sudden virile determination. Mademoiselle must not cross the road. It was too dangerous. Mademoiselle would be hit. He played on her pity with an innocent, cunning cajolery. "Mademoiselle must not leave me. I do not want ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair
... his songs but only nature. Apart form his melody what strikes us most is his truth; he sang of what he saw, of what he felt and knew. He knew the Scottish peasant through and through. Grave and humorous, simple and cunning, honest and hypocritical, proud and independent—every phase of him is to be found in Burns's poems. He knew love too; and in every phase—happy and unhappy, worthy and unworthy—he sings of it. But it is of love in truth that he sings. Here we have no more the make-believe of the Elizabethan ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... Of the blackness of men's hearts. The very sons Of my body, I reckoned to ken through and through, As every mother thinks she knows her sons, Have been pitch night to me. We never learn. I thought I'd got by heart each turn and twist Of all Jim's stupid cunning: but even he's Outwitted me. Six sons, and not one left; All gone in bitterness—firstborn to reckling: Peter, twelve-year since, that black Christmas Eve: And ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... neighboring hole until nothing is visible but teeth and claws. So far the boss herder had reasoned well. His sheep were safe behind him and his back was against a rock; a hundred men could not dislodge him from his position if it ever came to a fight; but he had not reckoned upon the devilish cunning of horse-taming Jeff Creede. Many a time in driving outlaws to the river he had employed that same ruse—showing himself casually in the distance and working closer as they edged away until he had gained ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... fish requires the boy to reorganize his whole campaign, get a new position on the bank, a new line of approach, and patiently wait for the wind and sun before he can lower his line. This time, cunning and patience are rewarded. The hoop encircles the unsuspecting fish. The boy's eyes almost start from his head as he gives a tremendous jerk, and feels by the dead-weight that he has got him fast. Out he comes, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... were not cunning enough for the white folks, that time. The settlers formed themselves into two parties—one of seven and one of three men. The three men went down very cautiously to the Indian's landing-place, ...
— Oscar - The Boy Who Had His Own Way • Walter Aimwell
... sick and weary; her glass told her of a white, unhappy face, of eyes that were lighted from within and shone with strange thoughts. She was always listening now—listening for the new voice, that she might hear the word it uttered. Her physical illness she hid with some cunning and put a bright face upon life as far as she could do so before those of her home; but the task grew daily more difficult. Then, with a period of greatly increased discomfort, Joan grew alarmed and turned to the kind God of "Mister Jan," and made great, ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... immature male specimens are know to exist, and they are at present in the Life Banks. The others that were taken alive at the time have been destroyed ... often under nearly disastrous circumstances. They are enormously cunning, enormously savage creatures, Miss Amberdon! The additional fact that they can conceal themselves to the point of being virtually indetectable except by the use of instruments makes them one of the most dangerous animals known. Since the young female which you raised as a pet has remained ...
— Novice • James H. Schmitz
... sagacity, mother wit, wit, esprit, gumption, quick parts, grasp of intellect; acuteness &c adj.; acumen, subtlety, penetration, perspicacy^, perspicacity; discernment, due sense of, good judgment; discrimination &c 465; cunning &c 702; refinement &c (taste) 850. head, brains, headpiece, upper story, long head; eagle eye, eagle- glance; eye of a lynx, eye of a hawk. wisdom, sapience, sense; good sense, common sense, horse sense [U.S.], plain sense; rationality, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... as sparrows Brought their wives in their donkey barrows. The clean-legged donkeys, clever and cunning, Their ears cocked forward, their neat feet running, Their carts and harness flapping with flags, Were bright as heralds and proud as stags. And there in pride in the flapping banners Were the costers' selves in blue bandannas, ...
— Right Royal • John Masefield
... have really been here, lately," the Albanian answered, "they have been thoroughly cunning devils; for not an article in or about the hut has been disturbed. I had an eye to that myself, the moment we arrived; for I have thought it far from unlikely that the Hurons would be out, on the ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... deal of individual taste, and as the gardeners were always allowed to supply the Specialities with flowers for their weekly meetings and their special entertainments, Olive had her room quite gaily decorated. Smilax hung in graceful festoons from several vases and trailed in a cunning pattern round the little supper-table; cyclamen, in pots, further added to the decorations; and there were still some very beautiful white chrysanthemums left in the green-house, a careful selection of which had been made by Birchall that day for ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... "Oh, you cunning thing! So you think I don't know that your father has given you a great, great quantity of money, and that we may go away whenever we please, and do just as we like, and live in London, and—and—oh, delightful!" And she bounded and skipped before the ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... little dolls' chairs! Carved, you know, and with beautiful red cushions. I came by there this morning, and that's the reason I was late at school, I stopped so long to look at those cunning chairs." ...
— A Missionary Twig • Emma L. Burnett
... our rabbits, Danna," suggested Luretta. "My brother Paul brought me two little gray rabbits from the forest," she explained; and Melvina listened eagerly to the description of Trit and Trot, and of their cunning ways and bright eyes, and was told that they had already lost their fear of ...
— A Little Maid of Old Maine • Alice Turner Curtis
... and was equally caustic, and this to the astonishment of every one; for all supposed the young member was annihilated—as so many before had been by Randolph—and would not reply. His antagonist was completely taken aback, and evidently felt, with Sir Andrew Ague-cheek: "Had I known he was so cunning of fence, I had seen him damned ere I had fought him." But he was in for it, and must reply. His rejoinder was angry, and wanting in his usual biting sarcasm. McDuffie rose to reply, and, pausing, seemed ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... her features, the clear rich brown of her complexion, the glorious light of her large dark eyes, softened by the long thick lashes that overshadowed them, the full and rounded beauty of every limb, left it impossible even for human heart to do away what nature's cunning hand had done. ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... third doubts are set at rest, by affirming prudence to have no existence apart from virtue. Without a virtuous aim, there is no such thing as Prudence: there is nothing but cleverness degenerating into cunning; while virtue without virtuous prudence is nothing better than a mere instinct, liable to be ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... have the pleasure of a little drive first," said West, with a cunning smile. "I was sure you would enjoy seeing the country before you get down to work, and I was not averse myself to a drive ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... the scheme Bob had undertaken in concert with her. Brooding on her deadly purpose, she had come to regard it as a certain thing that before long her husband would be killed. The details were arranged; all her cunning had gone to the contrivance of a plot for disguising the facts of his murder. Savagely she had exulted in the prospect, not only of getting rid of him, but of being revenged for her old humiliation. A thousand times she imagined herself in Bob's lurking-place, raising ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... fireplace!" To be sure, it was nothing more than a gap in the wall. "And these darling windows. We can put a seat way across, all comfy." She promptly saw, in her mind, Susy curled upon it with a beautiful picture book and a handful of cookies. "Oh, let's see the rest. Look, a cunning kitchen. The children can play cooking. And this room—what can we use ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... innumerable golden stacks and hay-ricks which were, of all his possessions, those most valued by the Master of Monavoe. No one in the country was so clever in selecting time and weather for cutting and carting; no one so cunning in ascertaining the most opportune moments for selling, or so far-seeing with regard to prices. At this very moment Peter Rorke was gazing at an immense rick of "prime old hay" which he had had the prudence to keep back while all his neighbours ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... and sweet was my baby, Blue eyes, and hair of gold; But this is ugly and wrinkled, Cross, and cunning, and old. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... so cunning or so wise, or hath such understanding, save God alone, that he may describe the radiant light of heaven; how, by the might of God, the sun there shineth round about that splendid host, where angels have eternal joy, and saints chant hymns before the face of God. And ...
— Codex Junius 11 • Unknown
... money. Yea, this is she that has bought off many a man from a pilgrim's life after he had fairly begun it. She is a bold and an impudent slut also, for she will talk with any man. If there be one cunning to make money in any place, she will speak well of him from house to house . . . She has given it out in some places also that she is a goddess, and therefore some do actually worship her . . . She has her times and open places of ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... of the "Bobbsey Twins" Books are eagerly welcomed by the little folks from about five to ten years of age. Their eyes fairly dance with delight at the lively doings of inquisitive little Bunny Brown and his cunning, ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue Playing Circus • Laura Lee Hope
... of Sir Godrick, and that means that the Knight deems of him as no mere man-at-arms, but a wise man also. Moreover, I myself have seen the young man, and this I seem to see in him, that he has the lucky look in his eyes; and I am deemed cunning in the judging of men." All this and more did the Carline hear tell of, and she weighed it heedfully, and thought that a ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris
... learning. And let the conclusion of this little tale (i.e. the story of Ailill Aulom son of Mug Nuadat, the beginning of which was contained in the book which Finn returns) be written for me accurately by thee, O cunning Aed, thou man of the sparkling intellect. May it be long before we are without thee. My desire is that thou shouldst always be with us. And let macLonan's Songbook be given to me, that I may understand the sense of the poems that are in it. Et ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... the enthusiasm of the severest critics, he must be granted a most unusual poetic gift, solidity and whimsicality, and a hardly excelled erudition. His orchestration shows a hand lavish with color and cunning in novel effects. Several of his works have been performed with great applause in Germany, where Beck spent many years in study. He was born at Cleveland, in 1856, and is a graduate of the ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... cunning of her kind Lizzie dressed herself in her best; a soiled pink silk shirtwaist with elbow sleeves, a spotted and torn black skirt that showed a tattered orange silk petticoat beneath its ungainly length, a wide white hat with soiled and draggled willow ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... out—you've bored me to my limit of endurance." But the motions of a mind such as he knew Norman had were beyond and high above the client's mere cunning at dollar-trapping. He felt that it was the part of wisdom—also soothing to vanity—to assume that Norman meant only what his words conveyed. When Norman was alone he rang for an office boy ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... of cunning was seen to steal over the face of the madman, as he replied, "That is ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... Bermuda steamer (or did use in the old fifteen-hundred-ton kind) crossing the Gulf Stream. When once comparatively secure in one's chair, the combat with the lunch began. Mrs. Siddons would have been at home there, for there was nothing for it but to stab the potatoes, and all one's cunning of fence was needed to hold one's own with the chops. But how delicious they were! How the first mealed and the last melted in the mouth; and the tea, when once poured from the dizzy height at which the pot had to be held, and the wild whirl in which the cup had ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... lower than the divine, but lower than the human also. It is because the conception of oneself as a being apart from God, if carried out to its legitimate consequences, must ultimately land all who hold it in a condition of things where open ferocity or secret cunning, the tiger nature or the serpent nature, can be the only possible ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... fell into that common mistake, that a beggarly looking cottage, and filthy, ragged children, raised most compassion, and of course drew most charity. But as cunning as he was in other things, he was out in his reckoning here; for it is neatness, housewifery, and a decent appearance, which draws the kindness of the rich and charitable, while they turn away disgusted with filth and laziness: not out of pride, but because they see that it is next to impossible ...
— Stories for the Young - Or, Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. Vol. VI. • Hannah More
... thousand ships, including mine sweepers and auxiliaries of all sorts under Sir John Jellicoe's command, was forced to go to immense expense and pains in combating the submarine campaign. Many submarines were taken; but the Germans kept on building them. It was a war against an unseen and cunning foe, which required ceaseless vigilance and painstaking effort. The amount of material, as well as the amount of ships required in order to combat the submarines and also to keep the patrol intact from the British channel to Iceland, could it be enumerated, would stagger the imagination. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... that would not be necessary. Nor was it. For five years after my marriage I had been my own maid-servant—and those were happy days. My right hand had by no means forgotten her cunning. As for both the Gay Lady's pretty hands—they were very accomplished in household arts. And she had put on the ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... the thin mysterious voice of little Mary Alice Smith herself that so often queried and responded as above— every word accented with a sweet and eery intonation, and a very gaiety of solemn earnestness that baffled the cunning skill of all childish imitators. A slender wisp of a girl she was, not more than ten years in appearance, though her age had been given to us as fourteen. The spindle ankles that she so airily flourished from the sparse concealment of a worn and shadowy calico skirt seemed ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... received back into his office as Christ's Apostle? Did he ever forget how he had sinned? Did he ever forget how Christ had pardoned? Did he ever forget how Christ loved and would keep him? Ah, no! The rope that is broken is strongest where it is spliced, not because it was broken, but because a cunning hand has strengthened it. We may be the stronger for our sins, not because sin strengthens, for it weakens, but because God restores. It is possible that we may build a fairer structure on the ruins of our old selves. It ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... unfrequently with painters, musicians, chemists, and inventors at the present day; or sometimes a creature, with exceptional powers of memory or reflection, would make his appearance in this race or in that. We all profit by our accidents as well as by our more cunning contrivances, so that analogy would point in the direction of thinking that many of the most happy thoughts in the animal and vegetable kingdom were originated much as certain discoveries that have been made ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... mortal wound, Ghastly and gaping wide, upon his throat! The shadow passed—another took his place, Of the same royal race; The noble Yumuri, the only son Of the old monarch, heir to his high throne, Cut off by cunning in his youthful pride; There was the murderer's gash, and the red tide Still pouring from his side; And round his neck the mark of bloody hands, That strangled the brave sufferer while he strove Against their clashing brands. Not ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... fine, up-standing ancient of better physique than his sons and grandsons. In a community of hairless men he was further distinguished by a straggling grey beard. His wits were beginning to fail, but not yet his cunning. He was extremely anxious to learn the reason for the policeman's coming. For Stonor to tell him would have been to defeat his object; to lie would have been to lower himself in their eyes; so Stonor took refuge in an inscrutability as polite as the ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... of dust, the grimy, perspiring faces of some three score of men—all this has stamped itself upon my memory like the Lord's Prayer. And now, too, I have been spending hours at the thrashing and felt intensely happy. When the thrashing engine is at work it looks as though alive; it has a cunning, playful expression, while the men and oxen look like machines. In the district of Mirgorod few have thrashing machines of their own, but everyone can hire one. The engine goes about the whole province drawn by six oxen and offers itself to all who ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... choked her utterance, wrought with the remembrance of her beauty and her disorder in the coach, to set his crafty mind working in a new direction. He saw that she was for the time utterly hopeless; utterly heedless what became of herself. That would not last; but his cunning told him that with returning sensibility would come pique, resentment, the desire to be avenged. In such a case one man was sometimes as good as another. It was impossible to say what she might not do or be induced to do, if full advantage were taken of a moment so exceptional. Fifty thousand pounds! ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... when it comes. "Why," says I, warming up, "the greatest statesmen that you have are editors and self-made men. The fact is, men who have worked their own way in the world, haven't time to be rogues, and very seldom are even grasping. It is your lazy fellow, who lives by the cunning that he calls wits, who is not to be trusted. For my part, as two candidates have to be in the field to have a good run, I am glad that those Cincinnati folks had the sense to take a man right out of the bosom of the people to govern the people. Brought up so close to the public heart, he'll ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... and had lost much of his natural cunning. He knew me, and trusted me; so without speaking, he took his hunting knife from his belt, cut the ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... thou against Arjuna. This thy maternal uncle is possessed of wisdom and observant of Kshatriya duties. O son of Gandhari, let this one addicted to gambling proceed against Arjuna in battle. This one, skilled in dice, wedded to deception, addicted to gambling, versed in cunning and imposture, this gambler conversant with the ways of deceiving, will vanquish the Pandavas in battle! With Karna in thy company, thou hadst often joyfully boasted, from folly and emptiness of understanding, in the hearing of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... been not only a selection, but an election, not by ballot, but by consent some way expressed, and the privileged persons got their positions because they were the strongest, or the wisest, or the most cunning. But the descendants of these privileged persons hold the same positions when they are neither strong, nor wise, nor very cunning. This also is a mystery. The persistence of privilege is an unexplained thing in human affairs, and the consent of ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Darling, smiling, cunning Bess Grasped with tiny hands her dress, And a pretty courtesy making, while the kettle made a bow, "I'll your partner be," said she; "Forward, backward, one, two, three;" And pussy cried, "Bravo! my dears," in one ...
— Harper's Young People, January 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... tree, Solv'd th' Atlantic mystery, Pluck'd the dragon-guarded fruit; While around the charmed root, Wailing loud, the Hesperids Watch their warder's drooping lids. Low he lies with grisly wound, While the sorceress triple-crown'd In her scarlet robe doth shield him, Till her cunning spells have heal'd him. Ye, meanwhile, around the earth Bear the prize of manful worth. Yet a nobler meed than gold Waits for Albion's children bold; Great Eliza's virgin hand Welcomes you to Fairy-land, While your native Naiads bring Native wreaths as offering. ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... all means he can invent for his destruction; the friend of the singing-birds bears him a grudge as the destroyer of their eggs and young; and even the moralist is disposed to condemn him for his cunning and dissimulation. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... on his hind legs and looked around him. He had never seen a fox, but his mother had often told him tales about their cruelty. They were forever hunting little rabbits to eat, and they were as sly and cunning as ...
— Bumper, The White Rabbit • George Ethelbert Walsh
... at least. Yet it was true that the lap of the water, just beyond the tent door, still beat time with his lessening pulses when he realized that he was lying with his eyes open and that another sound had recently introduced itself with cunning softness between the splash and ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood
... sentence cheered his spirits. It was a support to his small, ignorant cunning. "He'll think someone else is biddin' agen him," he said. "Ef there was two of 'em biddin', I could ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... vigilant and cautious in permitting them to accept the society of young men. Parents who desire to save their daughters from a fate which is worse than death, should endeavor by every means in their power to keep them from falling into traps cunningly devised by some cunning lover. There are many good young men, but not all are safe friends to an innocent, ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... that the gang was a most dangerous and unscrupulous one, and that Rayne and his friends would hesitate at nothing so long as they carried out the plans which they laid with such innate cunning in order to effect great and astounding coups—the clever thefts and swindles that from time to time had ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... from the canyon, now swollen to nearly fifty men, were slowly approaching from the direction of the chimney, and making use of every tuft, and bush, and rock, affording Bart a fine view from the gallery of the clever and cunning means an Indian will adopt to get within shot ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... and Lord Davers, and Mr. H. have all rode out."—"Well, niece," strutting with his hands behind him, and his head held up—"Ha!—He has made a fine kettle on't—han't he?—that ever such a rake should be so caught! They tell me, she's plaguy cunning, and quite smart and handsome. But I wish his father were living. Yet what could he have done? Your brother was always unmanageable. I wish he'd been my son; by my faith, I do! What! I hope, niece, he ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... foes, save the few antagonists similarly clad. To-day my life is dependent on the fidelity and vigilance of ten thousand men, and every man I meet has me in his power. Given the malignant will and fiendish cunning necessary, and one single man can kill a thousand human beings and destroy a million dollars at a blow. To sum up, each advance in civilization makes men more dependent upon each other, and increases the advantage and necessity of having ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker
... to New York restaurants, and to quite expensive hotels, for at least once a year, on his birthday, Mr. Pilkings took him to lunch at the Waldorf. While he had apparently been devoting himself to arranging the tables his cunning old brain had determined to order tea and French pastry. Apparently the Tea Shoppe was neutral. There was no French pastry on the bill, but, instead, such curious edibles as cinnamon toast, cream cheese, walnut sandwiches, Martha ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... a lively satisfaction in his diplomatic cunning with a deprecatory cough, retires to the hearth. Lexy folds his arms and leans against the cellaret in a high-spirited attitude. Candida comes in with glasses, lemons, and a jug of hot water ...
— Candida • George Bernard Shaw
... a soothsayer thereon, and that he foretold the future and spake of things not yet come to pass, and many folk believed that things ofttimes happened according as this man had spoken. Now Olaf being minded to make assay of his cunning sent to him the finest and fairest of his men, in apparel as brave as might be, bidding him say that he was the King, for Olaf had become famous in all lands in that he was comelier and bolder and stronger than all other men. Since he had left Garda, howsoever, he had used no more of ...
— The Sagas of Olaf Tryggvason and of Harald The Tyrant (Harald Haardraade) • Snorri Sturluson
... used the sling. With it red-hot stones would be hurled over the palisades, among the rush-thatched huts of an assaulted village, a stratagem all the more difficult to cope with as Maori pas seldom contained wells or springs of water. The courage and cunning developed in the almost incessant tribal feuds were extraordinary. Competent observers thought the Maoris of two generations ago the most warlike and ferocious race on earth. Though not seldom guilty of wild cruelty to enemies, ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... in Africa, we should be saying what is frankly unreasonable. It is every bit as unreasonable to say the mere supineness of the English workmen has put them in the capitalist slave-yard. The capitalist has put them in the capitalist slaveyard; and very cunning smiths have hammered the chains. It is just this creative criminality in the authors of the system that we must not allow to be slurred over. The capitalist is in the dock to-day; and so far as I at least can prevent him, he shall not ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... which event we should have to cut our own fences and let the cattle drift south through an Indian country, with nothing to check them except Red River. A climax was approaching in the company's existence, and the delay of a day or week might mean inestimable loss. In cunning and craftiness our enemies were expert; they knew their control of the situation fully, and nothing but cowardice would prevent their striking the final, victorious blow. My old partner and I were a unit as to the only course to pursue,—one which meant a dishonorable compromise with our enemies, ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... And all with gold were gilded bright To add new splendour to the rite: Twenty-and-one those stakes in all, Each one-and-twenty cubits tall: And one-and-twenty ribbons there Hung on the pillars, bright and fair. Firm in the earth they stood at last, Where cunning craftsmen fixed them fast; And there unshaken each remained, Octagonal and smoothly planed. Then ribbons over all were hung, And flowers and scent around them flung. Thus decked they cast a glory forth Like the great saints who ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... had ten silent centuries, in a very strange way, found a voice. The Divina Commedia is of Dante's writing; yet in truth it belongs to ten Christian centuries, only the finishing of it is Dante's. So always. The craftsman there, the smith with that metal of his, with these tools, with these cunning methods,—how little of all he does is properly his work! All past inventive men work there with him;—as indeed with all of us, in all things. Dante is the spokesman of the Middle Ages; the Thought they lived by stands here in everlasting music. These sublime ideas ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... mother, otherwise he would have had something to say about it, not only to Neipperg himself, but certainly to his friends Prokesch, Baron Obenaus, and Count Dietrichstein, and very naturally his grandfather. It may be that the circumstances of his life made him cautious, and even cunning, in keeping to himself an affair that was generally approved by the most interested parties, but it is hardly likely that the spirit of natural feeling had been so far crushed out of him as to forbid his openly ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... direction of his gaze, she saw that it was fastened on a gentleman who sat at some little distance from them. The position he occupied rendered his countenance visible, and a glance sufficed to show her that the features were handsome, the expression sinister, malignant, and cunning. His entire appearance was foreign, and conveyed the idea of reckless dissipation. Evidently he came there, not for the music, but to scan the crowd, and his fierce eyes roamed over the audience with a daring impudence which disgusted her. Suddenly they rested on her own ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... discovered were afflicting to her hopes, his artless conduct gave her a degree of pleasure, that overcame every other emotion. But she was compelled, even thus early in life, to observe, that good sense and noble integrity are not always sufficient to cope with folly and narrow cunning; and her heart was pure enough to allow her, even at this trying moment, to look with more pride on the defeat of the former, than with mortification on the conquests ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... Father Redbreast, "long after the days of the first robin, old Mah-to the great White Bear dwelt alone in the far Northland. He was the king of all the bears and was very cunning and cruel. He was so selfish that he did not like anybody else even to come into ...
— The Magic Speech Flower - or Little Luke and His Animal Friends • Melvin Hix
... to send in pursuit of us the 'Powhattan,' the 'Niagara,' the 'Iroquois,' the 'Keystone State,' and the 'San Jacinto.'" Any one of these vessels could have blown the 'Sumter' out of water with one broadside, but the cunning and skill of her commander enabled her ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... brought before the committee a number of his "health officers'' and "sanitary inspectors,'' whom he evidently thought best qualified to pass muster; but as one after another was examined and cross-examined, neither the cunning of Boole nor the skill of Mr. Graham could prevent the revelation of their utter unfitness. In the testimony of one of them the whole monstrous absurdity culminated. Judge Whiting examining him before the commission with ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... Craddock permission to carry it out, and to take any steps he liked in order to further the object which he had in view. Sir Edward was not very sanguine, for many attempts had been made upon Sharkey, and their results had shown that he was as cunning as he was ruthless. But this gaunt Puritan with the evil record was cunning aid ruthless also. The contest of wits between two such men as Sharkey and Craddock appealed to the Governor's acute sense of sport, and though he was inwardly convinced that the chances were against him, he backed his man ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... means of knowing the truth say, that the Harems of the East are the hot-beds of every wicked quality whose seeds slumber in the heart of woman. Surrounded by rivals; incessantly watched by those cunning and merciless monsters, the eunuchs; knowing nothing of science, art, literature, or industry— they must be devoured by animal passion, by love of intrigue and deception, by jealousy, envy, and ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... multiplication of effects we have come to a dinner of a dozen courses and wines of as many varieties; and that simple process of appropriating the virtue and the wisdom of the great man that was brought before the feast is now diversified into an analysis of all the men here under the cunning management of many speakers. No doubt, preserving as we do the identity of all these institutions, it is often considered a great art, or at least a great delight, to roast our friends and put in hot water those against whom ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... The man came to see you. If he had been alive you might have been in his toils by now. He was a very cunning person, and those who ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... very different character, had taken his place as chief of the confederacy of tribes. We have met with this savage before, in the adventurous career of Captain John Smith. He was a true Indian leader, shrewd, cunning, cruel in disposition, patient in suffering, skilled in deceit, and possessed of that ready eloquence which always had so strong an influence over the savage mind. Jealous of the progress of the whites, he nourished treacherous designs ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... pick out from the discourse of our interpreters, which we put together as well as we could, being able to understand but here and there a word of what they said, and afterwards making up the meaning of it among ourselves. The men of the country are very cunning and ingenious in handicraft works, but withal so very idle, that we often saw young, lusty, raw-boned fellows carried up and down the streets in little covered rooms by a couple of porters, who were hired for that service. Their dress is likewise very barbarous, for they ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... the ruling passion: There alone The wild are constant, and the cunning known; The fool consistent, and the false sincere; Priests, princes, women, no dissemblers here.' Pope, Moral Essays, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... tell me why you let that cunning man of the world, Colonel Vaughan, give you ten shillings? This has been on my mind for six or seven years, and I have never had an opportunity of getting it off before. You know if you won't have me for a lover, you may ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... the laws of this inner government on others who are of themselves ungoverned. Such liberty is the ground of true distinction; it implies the opposite of an equalitarianism which reserves its honors and rewards for those who attain a bastard kind of distinction by the cunning of leadership, without departing from common standards—the demagogues who rise by flattery. But it is, on the other hand, by no means dependent on the artificial distinctions of privilege, and is peculiarly adapted to an age whose appointed task must be to create a natural aristocracy ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... millions indeed come round, in the course of a generation or two, to the opinions of the wise; but by that time a new race of wise men have again shot ahead of their contemporaries: so it has always been, and so, in the nature of things, it always must be. But with cunning, the matter is quite different. Cunning is not dishonest wisdom, which would be a contradiction in terms; it is dishonest prudence, acuteness in practice, not in thought: and though there must always be some one the most ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... of course, be resisted by the prop on the lee side of the wall, but is often more effectually met, on the side which is attacked, by buttresses of peculiar forms, cunning buttresses, which do not attempt to sustain the weight, but parry it, and throw it off in directions ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... understand; and it is safer to say, on many occasions, that we are possessed by him, than that we possess him. And no wonder;—He scatters the seeds of things, the principles of character and action, with so cunning a hand, yet with so careless an air, and, master of our feelings, submits himself so little to our judgment, that every thing seems superior. We discern not his course, we see no connection of cause and effect, ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... the idea of it: it's cheering-like to a man who tries to do his best. But all people don't think same as we do, and whenever we hear of a castle being attacked and defended, there were always people outside trying to make traitors of those who were in, and temptation's a nasty, cunning, 'sinuating sort of a thing. But you're castellan, and you ought ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... of daylight his ways were such as any man of reserved and diffident ways, having no fixed employment, might follow in a smallish community. He sat upon his porch and read in books. He worked in his flower beds. With flowers he had a cunning touch, almost like a woman's. He loved them, and they responded to his love and bloomed and bore for him. He walked downtown to the business district, always alone, a shy and unimpressive figure, and ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... measure of the distance we have travelled away from Johnson that even plain people to-day, if they care for poetry at all, find much more in it than a piece of cunning craftsmanship. It is always that no doubt: but for us to-day it is also something far higher: a symbol of eternity. And more than a symbol, a sacrament: for it not only {207} suggests but reveals: it is the truth which it signifies; itself a part, as all those ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... an Actress fall down dead in a Tragedy. Not the least Indecency in her Posture. If you have observ'd what pretty Carcasses are carry'd off at the end of a Verse at the Theatre, it will give you a Notion how Dulcissa plumps into a Chair. Here's a little Country Girl that's very cunning, that makes her use of being young and unbred, and outdoes the Insnarers, who are almost twice her Age. The Air that she takes is to come into Company after a Walk, and is very successfully out of Breath upon occasion. Her Mother is in the Secret, and calls her Romp, and then looks round to see ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... would step from a matter as small as three market towns and the grazing of a few thousand head of sheep to a matter as big as the world. What is going to happen to the shipping of the world after this war? The Germans, with that combination of cunning and stupidity which baffles the rest of mankind, have set themselves to destroy the mercantile marine not merely of Britain and France but of Norway and Sweden, Holland, and all the neutral countries. ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... She was cunning, too. I added an imperious: "Allez," and with a strange docility she glided out without another word. All I had to do then was to get dressed and wait till ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... omit this edition of so celebrated a tale pictured by so celebrated an artist, yet Mr. Crane's work breathes mystery and Oriental cunning from every page, and should be given to our youngsters only after examination, as a highly-strung child might be frightened by it. The picture of the resourceful Morgiana filling the oil-jars, while a dreadful robber with saucer-like ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold
... those arts which made the Contessa so fascinating, he felt, with a mingling of self-ridicule which tickled him in spite of his seriousness, that nothing could keep him from interposing. He had been charmed in spite of himself, even while he saw through and laughed at the Contessa's cunning ways; but to see them in a girl who might, for all he knew, have his own blood in her veins was a very different matter. He felt it was in him to interpose roughly, imperiously—and if he did so, would Bice care? She would turn upon him with smiling defiance, or perhaps ask what ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... journeys to London, and he had never seen the inside of Beaumaroy's brown bag—that, like the Tower door, was always locked. He had handled it once, just before the pair set out for London one Wednesday. Beaumaroy, a careless man sometimes, in spite of the cunning which Dr. Irechester attributed to him, had left it on the parlor table while he helped Mr. Saffron on with his coat in the passage, and the Sergeant had swiftly and surreptitiously lifted it up. It was very light, obviously empty, or, at all events, holding only featherweight contents. ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... friend, are, as you should know, a cunning race. Moreover, those of them who dwell along it know the border far better than any white could ever hope to. By the admission of our own secret agents, it has hitherto been impossible to find how the arms, which the Chihuahua rebels ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... strings would vibrate. For a moment he excited religious emotion, then political fervour, then greed, love of glory and adventure, then national pride and hatred of Spain, then all these together by one cunning sentence. The forester out from the west felt his heart beating rapidly, his ears warming and tingling, and his right hand fidgeting with the handle of his sword. His companion could not keep still, and hot ejaculations sprang from his lips. He was a true Devon man of that roaring time, ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... if you can suggest any plan that will not fail. You are very cunning in your way, and your ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... roamed and roared at will. No one having passed twenty-four hours in the country could possibly doubt that his cup of joy was running over. Where his nephew had concealed his fortune was also a source of mystery to him. He certainly had displayed the diabolical cunning that is characteristic of the mentally deranged. Possibly he had concealed it in Mexico, but to combat the institutions of that land was like attempting ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... majestic, snow-crowned head high into the heavens, its serrated slopes softened by a purple haze, its soaring crest limned in blazing glory by the sun. The bay beneath them was like a huge silver shield, flat-rolled and glittering, inlaid with master cunning between wooded hills that swept away into mysterious distances, there to rise skyward in an ever-changing, ever-charming confusion. It reflected fairy-like islands, overgrown till they bowed to their mirrored likenesses. Now a smiling inlet opened up a perspective ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... decrepitude, while their intellectual attainments would only serve as a light to guide them to deeper depths of vice and ruin. A civilization without religion would be a civilization of 'the struggle for existence, and the survival of the fittest,' in which cunning and strength would become the substitutes for principle, virtue, conscience ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... skill, strength, and cunning, Nor do his hosts fill us with despair, For Michael[2] leads us, and Mary's[3] image With ...
— The Bakchesarian Fountain and Other Poems • Alexander Pushkin and other authors
... looked down on the hearth, and there were two cunning little Shoes side by side, and a little Spark of a Light close to them—just as if they were all made out of one of the glowing coals of the wood-fire. Such cunning Shoes as they were—Little Girl could hardly wait to pull off ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... surpassing shrewdness and cunning, attempt to take him with a trap. Rogue that he is, he always suspects some trick, and one must be more of a fox than he is himself to overreach him. At first sight it would appear easy enough. With apparent indifference he crosses ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... Every courier who arrived at Westminster, either from the Hague or from Versailles, brought earnest warnings. [467] But James was under a delusion which appears to have been artfully encouraged by Sunderland. The Prince of Orange, said the cunning minister, would never dare to engage in an expedition beyond sea, leaving Holland defenceless. The States, remembering what they had suffered and what they had been in danger of suffering during the great agony of 1672, would never incur ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... without moving a muscle or uttering a sound, nevertheless his eyes were fixed upon the judge with a kind of stony stare. It seemed to him that there was a kind of malignant cunning in the judge's words, that the man was conjuring up possibilities in support of the evidence which seemed to ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... you, and besides, it would be better that they should be under his orders than under yours. There, I have no more to say, except this—whether they succeed or not, your plans are both excellent; but you cannot expect to do anything by force. This is a case for scheme and cunning. Under the darkness it may be done. What I should like best would be for you to get that breech-block overboard. If you can do the other too, so much the better, but I shall be perfectly satisfied if you can do one, and get back safely into the river. There, ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... Peregrine, who not only considered it as a piece of unmannerly abuse leveled against his own conduct, but also a retrospective insult on the memory of his grandfather, who, as he had been informed, was in his lifetime more noted for his cunning ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... in the picture which Dibdin has extracted from Laneham. 'Captain Cox came marching on, clean trussed and gartered above the knee, all fresh in a velvet cap: an odd man, I promise you: by profession a mason, and that right skilful and very cunning in fence.... As for King Arthur and Huon of Bourdeaux, ... the Fryar and the Boy, Elynor Rumming, and the Nut-brown Maid, with many more than I can rehearse, I believe he has them ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... saying, 'That the water-pot which goes often to the well, gets broken at last,'" I observed. "Such may be the case with regard to old Samson; and you know nothing of the country, or of the cunning of the Redskins, and would be very sure to lose your ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston
... scenes, the habits, and, above all, the grace of action, which is commonly the best where there is the most need of it, surprise the audience, and cast a mist upon their understandings; not unlike the cunning of a juggler, who is always staring us in the face, and over-whelming us with gibberish, only that he may gain the opportunity of making the cleaner conveyance of his trick. But these false beauties of the stage are no more lasting ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... on, the curate and Cardenio had not been idle. For the curate was a cunning plotter, and had hit on a bright idea. He took from his pocket a pair of scissors, and cut off Cardenio's rugged beard and trimmed his hair very cleverly. And when he had thrown his riding-cloak ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... said, "that I am still sane—still alive? But I only live to find my child. I try and keep my reason in order to fight the devilish cunning of a brute on his own ground. Up to now all my inquiries have been in vain. At first I squandered money, tried judicial means, set an army of sleuth-hounds on the track. I tried bribery, corruption. ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... his first sleep, an event which the Sphynx himself, the diviner par excellence, could not have foreseen; but the devil was mixing himself up with Chicot's affairs, and he is more cunning than all ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... the beginning of that celebrated Wiles-Barker feud which has soiled the annals of that part of Kentucky. Its course was marked by murders, assassinations, wounds, burning of buildings, and every injury which cunning could devise ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... himself. Nor does beauty and strength of body, when dwelling in a base and cowardly man, appear comely, but the reverse of comely, making the possessor more conspicuous, and manifesting forth his cowardice. And all knowledge, when separated from justice and virtue, is seen to be cunning and not wisdom; wherefore make this your first and last and constant and all-absorbing aim, to exceed, if possible, not only us but all your ancestors in virtue; and know that to excel you in virtue ...
— Menexenus • Plato
... I will know," she said, her eyes filled with cunning, her voice a strange singsong oddly at variance with the coarse bigness of her body. "Oh, no, she will never escape from ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... draperies of the mind, and they hide the nakedness of truth. Your fireplace is ugly, your mere necessary shelves and seats but planks and crudity, all your surroundings so much office furniture, until the skilful hand and the draperies come in. Then a few cunning loopings and foldings, and behold softness and delicacy, crudity gone, and life well worth the living. So that you ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... that, young man? Would you, mother? Would you come up to the reporters' table, take up a pen and put your name down to such an excuse? You would say, "Let my right hand forget its cunning, and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I ...
— Moody's Anecdotes And Illustrations - Related in his Revival Work by the Great Evangilist • Dwight L. Moody
... the boy; but, since he's food for sharks, I'll call it square. Wreckers have been here before us—there's no doubt of that—and they've cleaned her out pretty thoroughly, too; but we'll take the schooner, and she's a good enough prize to suit me," he laughed, with a cunning glance at Montes. "Yes, good enough, and as lawful a one as was ever picked up on the high seas," he continued, in a rather more positive tone of voice. "All we have to do is to get her off, bend on a sail or two, and head her for Bonacca or Barbette. ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various
... not doubt; the bait had been dangled before his eyes with too much cunning, too much skill. In a casket, in a room in that house in the Corraterie, his life lay hidden; his life, and he could not come at it! His life? Was it a marvel that waking or sleeping he saw only that house, and that room, and that casket ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... the boxes accurately described their contents, the marks on them, and the time they were landed at Falmouth. The wharfinger, as might be expected, was completely put off his guard by the ingenuity and cunning of the thief, and delivered ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... as cunning a red-skin as I ever found, and it's jist my opine every one of 'em did think of that same thing, but they didn't try it for fear they might catch the varmint! They knew their ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... they related stories of wonderful recoveries made by men whose bodies had been beaten to a jelly. One, carried away by enthusiasm, declared that it did a man good to be shattered like glass, for the doctors, with satanic cunning seized the opportunity to knead the broken limbs like putty into a more desirable shape. But their words fell on deaf ears. The woman crouched over the prostrate man, stroking the bruised limbs with a stupid, mechanical movement as an ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... is common for a foe to hedge his adversary about so that fight he must. Thou art a woman and cunning, and lest thou join thyself to another and elude me ere the battle is on, I would better treat thee to a strategy. I shall wed thee ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... at the bottle, then at nurse's wily face, and his own face assumed an expression no less cunning, as much as to say, "You won't catch ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... of a generation, and lined with the stern ciphers of malign experiences. His dark, straight hair was long and unkempt; the finer lines of his cheeks and chin were blurred with the uncropped growth of a week-old beard; his eyes were bright and quick; his glance restless and comprehensive. A cunning reader of features would have found a home for high thoughts behind the fine forehead, the lines of infinite tenderness upon the mobile lips, the light of some noble conflagration in the wild eyes. He was dressed in faded finery of many colours, so ragged and patched and hostile ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... but she did not smile, and seemed to speak in good faith; and being somewhat thick in some matters, though a cunning fellow, he said— ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... within his province: and the consequence was that he increased the evils which he attempted to remedy. He was so much shocked by the distress inseparable from scarcity that he made statutes against forestalling and regrating, and so turned the scarcity into a famine. He was so much shocked by the cunning and hardheartedness of money-lenders that he made laws against usury; and the consequence was that the borrower, who, if he had been left unprotected, would have got money at ten per cent., could hardly, when protected, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... true of the subtlest subject you have to represent, is equally true of inferior ones. Nothing lovely can be quickly represented by white touches. You must hew out, if your means are so restricted, the form by sheer labor; and that both cunning and dextrous. The Florentine masters, and Duerer, often practice the achievement, and there are many drawings by the Lippis, Mantegna, and other leading Italian draughtsmen, completed to great perfection with the white line; but only ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... milch cows were kept, and drove them all out; leaving their goats to straggle in the woods, whither they pleased, that the savages might think they were all bred wild; but the rogue who came with them was too cunning for that, and gave them an account of it all, for they went directly ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... ordinary sort of adversary, yes. But, given an enemy endowed with a certain amount of cunning, the facts are those which he happens to have selected. Take the famous clues upon which you base your inquiry: why, he was at liberty to arrange them as he liked. And you see where that can lead you, into what ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... sort of lasso with a wire ring in it, with which he designed to capture the largest of the great birds, a monster with a wing spread of fully ten feet. Day after day he patiently coaxed the creature near with bits of bread, but the bird, with great cunning, came quite close to get the bread, but as soon as it saw the professor getting ready to swing his ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... sacrosanct priest, and his happy rhyme the divine response vouchsafed to him in answer. Such beauty as he produces is no effluence from a soul mating itself, like Wordsworth's, "in love and holy passion with the universe," but a cunning application of the approved recipes for effective writing current in the ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... winced. He sat upright in his chair and threw back his shoulders. If Jack intended to continue in this way, there would be difficulties to face. Father and son were equally determined. Jack had proved too cunning a pupil. The old aristocrat's own lessons were being turned against him, and the younger man has, as it were, the light of the future shining upon his game in such a case as this, while the elder plays ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... had pierced and hung with red earbobs, seemed to have been crushed flat to the side of his head. His kinked hair was wrapped in little hard rolls close to the skull and bound tightly with dirty thread. His receding forehead was high and indicated a cunning intelligence. His nose was broad and crushed flat against his face. His jaws were strong and angular, mouth wide, and lips thick, curling back from rows of solid teeth set obliquely in their blue gums. The one perfect thing about him was the size ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... room for further evidences of the woman's cunning, she espied a trunk standing open at the foot of the bed, as if some one had been hastily examining the contents and forgotten to shut ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... no means attracted by the man's countenance. He was evidently a confirmed inebriate, though not at that time under the influence of liquor. There was an expression of cunning, which repelled Hector, and he ...
— Hector's Inheritance - or The Boys of Smith Institute • Horatio Alger
... Grampus, who was still glowering at Tom and had not quite finished pushing the cartridges into his gun, shut it up in a hurry and fired first one barrel and then the other. But my father, who was very cunning, jumped into the air at the first shot and ducked at the second, so that he was missed; at least I suppose that is why ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... country. It cherished this, and with the utmost boldness proclaimed doctrines springing from it, at a time when the Democracy, for no other reason than that it had begun as a state rights party, foolishly combated these. Yet Whiggism was mightier in theories than in deeds, in political cunning than in statesmanship. It was far too fearful, on the whole, lest the country should not be sufficiently governed. To secure power it allied itself now with the Anti-Masons, strong after 1826 in New England, New York, and Pennsylvania; and again with the Nullifiers of South Carolina, Georgia, and ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... parents representing the pleasure of man's lower nature and the misuse of man's higher powers on behalf of falsehood and impurity. These parents are the wine-god Bacchus and the sorceress Circe. The former, mated with Love, is the father of Mirth (see L'Allegro); but, mated with the cunning Circe, his offspring is a voluptuary whose gay exterior and flattering speech hide his dangerously seductive and magical powers. He bears no resemblance, therefore, to Comus as represented in Ben Jonson's Pleasure ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... as the man with the strongest motive for nourishing himself, will always take more pains than his fellows to get food. When food is so difficult to get that only great exertions can secure a sufficient supply of it, the glutton's appetite develops his cunning and enterprise to the utmost; and he becomes not only the best fed but the ablest man in the community. But in more hospitable climates, or where the social organization of the food supply makes it easy for a man to overeat, then the glutton eats ...
— Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion • George Bernard Shaw
... the whole interview, his eyes brightened momentarily with a hint of cunning or attempted cunning. Except for these few flashes, he was manifestly beaten, unnerved, suffering from a simultaneous desire and inability to weigh and ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... Cat's master did not build very much upon what he said, he had however often seen him play a great many cunning tricks to catch rats and mice; as when he used to hang by the heels, or hide himself in the meal, and make as if he were dead; so that he did not altogether despair of his affording him some help ...
— The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault • Charles Perrault
... affect hay fever sufferers. The result was that every time I had my shovel poised in readiness to hurl its burden into space a monolithic sneeze overpowered me, shook me to the keel, and all the coal that I had trapped with so much patience and cunning fell miserably around my feet, from whence it had lately risen. Little things like this become most discouraging when strung out for a great period of time. In this manner I sneezed and sweated throughout the course of a sweltering afternoon, and just as I was about to call ...
— Biltmore Oswald - The Diary of a Hapless Recruit • J. Thorne Smith, Jr.
... precipitately into the forest from they had issued, so suddenly and so fiercely, to the attack. One warrior stood alone by the Chief. He was young and handsome, but his countenance was dark and sinister and an expression of cunning was strongly marked in his glittering deep-set eyes and overhanging brows. He saw that it was hopeless to contend any longer with the powerful strangers, and, by words and actions, he was evidently persuading the Chief to retire. The settlers had ceased ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... them in the light of their uneasy fears and prejudices. I refer to the work of the apostle Eliot. His design in founding his villages of Christian Indians was in the highest degree benevolent and noble; but the heathen Indians could hardly be expected to see anything in it but a cunning ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... half-mile a groaning water-wheel lifted the soft water from the river to the crops by way of a mud-built aqueduct. A foot or so wide was the water-channel; five foot or more high was the bank on which it ran, and its base was broad in proportion. Abu Hussein, misnamed the Father of Cunning, drank from the river below his earth, and his shadow was long in the low sun. He could not understand the loud cry which ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... in almost speechless surprise, and then he turned to where the old monkey lay, apparently asleep; but as the boy watched him intently he could see that the cunning animal was really watching him out ...
— Toby Tyler • James Otis
... a bold, uncompromising thinker—of a man resolute for the truth of God, and determined in the strength of God's grace to make that truth clear, to brush away all the fine-spun sophistries and half-truths by which the cunning sins of men have hidden it.... There must be a great and true heart, where there is a great and true preacher. And in that, beyond everything else, lay the secret of Mr. Robertson's influence. His Sermons show ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... three years more, and was always busy. His mind was strong and his conceptions of his subjects had lost nothing, but his ability to execute his works was less; his hand had lost somewhat of its cunning. He went much into society, was fond of the theatre, and under the devoted care of his servant, Wilkens, he enjoyed all that was possible to a man of his age. On the 24th of March 1844, the Baroness von Stampe went to ask him to dine at her house; he said he was not ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... disposition, and a profound belief in the lights of his experience. He was incapable of analogy. What had never happened in his time, he was perfectly persuaded never could happen. Thus, though generally esteemed an able diplomatist, he had the cunning of the intriguant, and not the providence of a statesman. If, however, pride made him arrogant in prosperity, it supported him in misfortune. And in the earlier vicissitudes of a life which had partly been consumed in exile, he had developed many noble qualities of fortitude, endurance, ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Grumkow, a cunning, greedy-hearted, long-headed fellow, of the old Pomeranian Nobility by birth, has a kind of superficial polish put upon his Hyperboreanisms; he has been in foreign countries, doing legations, diplomacies, for which, at least for the vulpine ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... were very wary, cunning animals, keen of scent and sharp of eye. Invariably, when one first sighted them, they would be one or two miles away, going like the wind, their tails and manes flying behind them; and be it noted that when walking or standing ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... mightier strings, assembling, Fell a-trembling, with a trembling Bridegroom's heart-beats quick resembling; Ranged them on the violin's side Like a bridegroom by his bride, And, heart in voice, together cried: "Yea, what avail the endless tale Of gain by cunning and plus by sale? Look up the land, look down the land— The poor, the poor, the poor, they stand Wedged by the pressing of Trade's hand Against an inward-opening door That pressure tightens ever more: They sigh, with a monstrous ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... said the Sheikh, in a low, deep voice. "He speaks of dangers, and of the Mahdi's men, and of fighting with cunning. Will he not fully trust his servant, and make his words and wishes shine with the light of day? Does his Excellency wish to play the spy ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... much energy for getting divorces (this being his third time on earth) as Roosevelt exhibits in the Baby market, has taken to peddling "The Ladies Home Journal," and the "Saturday Evening Post," and if you only knew how cunning he looks with his abbreviated coat and short, quick, little steps, you would give a dollar for a picture of him to paste in your book of curiosities ...
— Letters of a Dakota Divorcee • Jane Burr
... part of the three kingdoms. Last year there were five fishing Colonels at the Greville Arms all at once. Brown-faced people who live in the open air, and who are deeply versed in the mysteries of tackle, cunning in the ways of trout, pike, perch, and salmon, walk the streets clad in tweed suits, with strong shoes and knickerbockers. The Mullingar folks despise the dictum of the American economist who said that every town without ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... stories of the mob are converted to history by the former; the latter is still more culpable; he has held up to the admiration of posterity, and what is worse, to the imitation of succeeding princes, a man whose nearest approach to wisdom was mean cunning; and has raised into a legislator, a sanguinary, sordid, and trembling usurper. Henry was a tyrannic husband, and ungrateful master; he cheated as well as oppressed his subjects,(30) bartered the honour of the nation for foreign gold, and cut off ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... grew legible the calculation busying his thought. At a glance he had taken the measure of Venantius, and gauged the worth of the men behind him. A smile, which could not mask its cunning, came on to his lips, and all of a sudden he exchanged ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... cultivation of books, science and learning. And let the conclusion of this little tale (i.e. the story of Ailill Aulom son of Mug Nuadat, the beginning of which was contained in the book which Finn returns) be written for me accurately by thee, O cunning Aed, thou man of the sparkling intellect. May it be long before we are without thee. My desire is that thou shouldst always be with us. And let macLonan's Songbook be given to me, that I may understand the sense of the poems that are in it. Et vale ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... dyspeptic face lit up with a certain small political cunning and shrewdness that struck Brace with ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... ideals; only, when we are thinking philosophically, we ought to make clear to ourselves that in truth the Ideal is eternally fulfilled, its fulfilment consisting precisely In that process which we are apt to regard as a mere means to its realization. This, as Hegel has it, is the 'cunning' of the Absolute Reason, which deludes us into the belief that there is a purpose to be attained, and by the help of that delusion preserves that energy of action which all the time is really itself ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... his Estate; yet when the Misfortunes of others, and those by much the greater Number, and a Decay of Trade are put in Ballance against that Artifice, I doubt this Charge must be somewhere, tho' I am not cunning enough to tell where. As I see but little Company, and retire for my Ease and the Improvement of my Studies; I was deeply ingaged in Thought the other Night upon this Topick, and in made such a strong Impression ...
— The Theater (1720) • Sir John Falstaffe
... by the 12th. Two days' marching would have brought them to Murfreesboro'. General Breckinridge could not have repulsed it; of course it could have been subsisted for a week off of the country, or its foragers had lost their cunning. In that time General Bragg would have been forced, in all probability, to return to East Tennessee, without a chance to deliver battle with a rational hope of success. His army was footsore, weary, and could not have been readily concentrated. ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... Lapeyrouse, Cook or Captain Peary ever show so much ardor in navigating the ocean towards the Poles as the scholars of the Lycee do in approaching forbidden tracts in the ocean of pleasure? Since girls are more cunning, cleverer and more curious than boys, their secret meetings and their conversations, which all the art of their teachers cannot check, are necessarily presided over by a genius a thousand times more informal than that of college boys. What man has ever heard the moral reflections and ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... verse has never existed and cannot exist of itself alone. Style is not the art of writing melodious words or the craft or cunning of finding a way round the split infinitive. It is the ability so to choose forms of expression as completely to convey to a reader all the twists and turns and outlines of ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... the royal rock and showed the golden crown which he had assumed. Unanimously he was proclaimed fuglekongen (king of the birds), and by this name," concludes the legend, "he has ever since been known, his sunburnt crest remaining as a proof of his cunning and daring." ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman
... messire; a sweet tongue—a tongue attuned to cunning phrases. God gave to women beauty, to flowers ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... cliff-top in that time we shall have an hour's start, or more, for they will take all that to search the under-cliff. And Maskew, too, will keep them in check a little, while they try to bring the life back to so good a man. But if we fall, why, we shall fall together, and outwit their cunning. So shut thy eyes, and keep them tight until I bid thee open them.' With that he caught me up again, and I shut my eyes firm, rebuking myself for my faint-heartedness, and not telling him how much my foot hurt me. ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... lie he tould me! Now I can't put up with that, when I was almost perjuring myself for him at the time. Oh, if I don't fit him for this! And he got the place given to another!—then I'll git him as well sarved, and out of this place too—seen-if-I-don't! He is cunning enough, but I'm cuter nor he—I have him in my power, so I have! and I'll give the shupervizor a scent of the malt in the turf-stack—and a hint of the spirits in the tan-pit—and it's I that will like to stand by innocent, and see how shrunk ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... a man only gets three good days down cellar, that's something. Don't believe 'Siah ever does it. So many notions in's head bothers him." (Uncle Jack is quite right; 'tis not economical to have notions; besides, they are revolutionary, they subvert the order of things.) "Got a cunning little heifer used to have some manners. Lost some of our lambs; read in a book, that, take what care you might, you would lose some lambs at times."—To-day he has gone driving the oxen ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... I shall give you some rules for your conduct and behaviour, in order to defend yourselves against the malice and cunning of false accusers. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... rush to my eyes. She sat down, spread a square of clean fringed linen upon the ground, and laid out crusty rounds of buttered bread that were fragrant in the springing fragrance of the woods, firm slices of cold meat, and a cunning pastry which instantly maddened me. I was ashamed to be ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... was commissioned, on account of the illiterate manner in which the fisherman usually drew them up. From this may be interred what documents he will carry to the court, with a hand so malicious and bold—but with the safety of the father confessor's broad shoulders, and the cunning tendencies of the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... drew off his cunning wee stockings, Unbuttoned each dainty pink shoe, Untied the white slip and small apron, And ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... of the above description may now and then answer popular ends they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterward the very engines which have ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... morning shines upon the marble. Glowing with enthusiasm, the light of a high purpose illuminating his face, the sculptor, with steady hand and eye, begins to work out his ideal. The vision that flits before him is so beautiful that he almost fears the cunning of his hand will be unequal to fashioning it from the rigid mass before him. Patiently he measures each blow of the mallet. With infinite care he chisels each line and ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... and luxury some victories nearly as serious over the revolutionary spirit of the times. His real talent consisted in this, that, while he was quite as accessible and bribable as any other upright senator, he discerned with some cunning the moment when the matter began to be hazardous, and above all by virtue of his superior and venerable appearance acted the part of Fabricius before the public. In a military point of view, no doubt, we find some honourable exceptions of able officers belonging to ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... a full third smaller than the common kind. They are swifter, and go in larger packs. They bring forth their young in burrows on the open plain, and not among the woods, like the other species. They are the most cunning of American animals, not excepting their kindred the foxes. They cannot be trapped by any contrivance, but by singular manoeuvres often themselves decoy the over-curious antelope to approach too near them. When a gun is fired upon the prairies they may be seen starting up on all sides, ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... "What a cunning fellow you are!" said the Otter. "But, holloa, are you going off on the sly?" Yes, surely the Fox was ...
— Seven Little People and their Friends • Horace Elisha Scudder
... the neighbors talked of it, maddened her. When women came in, and in the course of their conversation casually asked, "Where's Maggie dese days?" the mother shook her fuzzy head at them and appalled them with curses. Cunning hints inviting confidence she rebuffed ...
— Maggie: A Girl of the Streets • Stephen Crane
... have to turn the bulk of what they get over to their chiefs for tribute, an' them varmints are getting so foxy they just hoards 'em up. They know the price is goin' up right along. Oh, them pesky varmints are getting cunning these days. But come, boys, we must be getting back ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... with all the sensitiveness of a raw. So when I say that my Auntie's piety was not of the niggerish kind, even Zoe, "The Octoroon," or any other woman or man in whose veins courses the blood of Ham four times diluted, knows that I mean it was not that glory-hallelujah variety of cunning or delusion, compounded of laziness and catalepsy, which is popular among the shouting, shirt-tearing sects of plantation darkies, who "git relijin" and fits twelve times a year. To all such she used to say, "'T ain't de real grace, honey,—'t ain't de sure glory,—you hollers too loud. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... been less interested in Elsa and more concerned about his rehabilitation, self-analysis would have astonished Warrington. The blunt speech, the irritability in argument, the stupid pauses, the painful study of cunning phrases, the suspicion and reticence that figuratively encrust the hearts of shy and lonely men, these vanished under her warm if careless glances. For the first time in ten years a woman of the right sort ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... golden vases—close the bond true metals make; Easily the smith may weld them, harder far it is to break. Evil hearts are earthen vessels—at a touch they crack a-twain, And what craftsman's ready cunning can ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... Mike was, it did not occur to him, in his trepidation and alarm, that the note which he had just read, and which was in Lady Hawley's own handwriting, would clearly exonerate him from all suspicion of his having murdered her. But guilt is sometimes singularly short-sighted, and Mike, as cunning a villain as he was, threw aside or perhaps destroyed the only evidence he could have possibly produced ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... are but breath, and who can report all that passed between the tempter and the tempted? Or who can be sure that the craftiness of the guest was greater than the cunning of the host? The nebulous emanations of Burr's mind were rounding into a definite world of purpose. He invoked the aid of the Hon. John Smith to set the new planet revolving. Conspiracy was planned in the woods and fields of a quiet farm in the ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... horn spectacles: occasionally pausing from his task, and slily noting down some brief memorandum of the bequests contained in it. Every wrinkle about his toothless mouth, and sharp keen eyes, told of avarice and cunning. His clothes were nearly threadbare, but it was easy to see that he wore them from choice and not from necessity; all his looks and gestures down to the very small pinches of snuff which he every now and then took from a little tin ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... weary child. All the hard lines on the thin face were obliterated; the soft hair fell in cunning curls about the neck and ears; the long lashes rested delicately on ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... instructions. The Propaganda is, of course, the primum mobile of the system, set agoing by Satan himself. Hence the mischief that is perpetrated by the unhappy beings who form the operative section of this cunning concern—the handicraft men of blood. It is an awful spectacle, and one that we cannot long avert our eyes from contemplating with the deep interest that personal peril excites. All is preparing for a burst of persecution against the people of ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... a young fellow that undertook to garrote a man who had won his money at cards. The same slender shape, the same cunning, fierce look, smoothed over with a plausible air. Depend upon it, there is an expression in all the sort of people that live by their wits when they can, and by worse weapons when their wits fail them, that we old law-doctors know just as well as the medical counselors know the marks of disease ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... slept in lairs amid the jungle, the purely animal virtues were the only ones they knew and exercised. They adored courage and strength, and swiftness and endurance. They respected keenness of scent and vision, and admired cunning. The possession of these qualities was the very condition of existence, and they valued them accordingly; but in each one of them they found their equals, and in fact their superiors, among the brutes. A lion was stronger than the strongest ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... men clove the rock and sifted the soil, and chained the cataract, but their law was force and cunning, and the only tie they recognized was a partnership in gain. What civilization or true citizenship could there be in a society in which the family circle and its kindred outgrowth—the school and the church—were ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... best of Mr Stevenson's work is Weir of Hermiston. In the few perfectly finished chapters there is a fulness of power and a perfection of style that promised great things. As one read the description of the fierce old judge, his gentle artistic son, the cunning dandified friend, the two Kirsties, and the four black Elliot brothers, one felt that here indeed was congenial matter; and that in the tragedy of fierce human passion about to be played out amid wild moorland surroundings, Mr Stevenson would rise to a greater perfection and a nobler ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black
... Thought cunning Darius, "Now I shan't go Along 'ith the fellers to see the show: I'll say I've got sich a terrible cough! An' then, when the folks have all gone off, I'll hev full swing fer to try the thing, An' practyse a little on ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... happened an affair which served to amuse us not a little on our return to our camp that night. The tories, who, from time to time had fallen into our hands, were often easing their vexation, by saying, that it was true, "Marion had proved too cunning for colonel Tynes and captain Barfield, and other British and loyal officers, whom he had attacked; but that there was still one left behind, who, they were sure, if he could come forward, would soon show us quite a different sort of play; ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... among the flock of sheep, To make the cunning hounds mistake their smell; And sometime where earth-delving conies keep, To stop the loud pursuers in their yell; And sometime sorteth with the herd of deer: Danger deviseth ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... found myself compelled to suffer by the irregularity of others. I have endeavoured to console myself by reflecting that such must ever be the fate of virtue. The industrious must feed the idle. The honest and simple will always be the prey of the cunning and fraudulent. The punctual, who keep none waiting for them, are doomed to wait perpetually for the unpunctual. But these earthly sufferers know that they are making their way heavenwards,—and their oppressors ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... ear to the whispering of prudence; clearly their duty was to leave the spot before their enemies could come back. Bravery, skill, and cunning, when allied to common sense, would permit ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... be that, although I have reason to believe that he is, besides, as determined a smuggler as any on the coast, though he is too cunning to be caught," answered the baronet. "No, no, Master Cheveley; young Mark must be sent to prison unless he is allowed as a favour ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... imagination. White-tailed deer are far more common and more widely dispersed. Men, women also, by the tens of thousands go out with rifles every fall in efforts to get near them; but the night-piercing howl and the cunning ways of the coyote, the panther's track and the rumor of his scream have inspired more folk ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... the people at convenient seasons, and under his leadership they constructed such roads and bridges as were then suited to their purposes. Perhaps it was at this time that Cooper devised the cunning method which he afterward confided to William Sampson: "A few quarts of liquor, cheerfully bestowed, will open a road, or build a bridge, which would cost, if done ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... refuge among the recesses of the mountains, where he still lurked with a few outlaw followers, as desperate as himself. His father had forbidden any search for him, or any efforts for his capture to be made; and such was the dread inspired by his desperate courage, ferocity, and cunning, and such the superstitious terror with which he was generally regarded, that few felt any inclination to transgress this command, or to meddle in any way with him or his followers; and he was consequently left unmolested in his favourite haunts, among the wild and almost inaccessible ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... spirit and truth of it, hath occasioned these men to devise, as Jeroboam did, another way of worship, both for matter and manner, than is revealed in the Word of God (I Kings 12:26-33). But, saith Paul, we must pray as we ought; and this WE cannot do by all the art, skill, and cunning device of men or angels. "For we know not what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit"; nay, further, it must be "the Spirit ITSELF" that helpeth our infirmities; not the Spirit and man's lusts; what man of his own brain may imagine and devise, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... lady, 'I have been very rude, and you are very cunning. I suppose the minx is on the premises. ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... grave. Yes, in that tale that is told, in that skeptic history, there is indeed a great moral. It shows how meaningless and how mean, how treacherous and false, is that man's life who hangs upon the balance of a cunning egotism, and moves only from the impulses of selfish desire-without religion, without virtue, repudiating the idea of morality, ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... 'against God, Christ, and the Scriptures were poured upon my spirit; questions against the very being of God and of his only beloved Son, as whether there was in truth a God or Christ, or no, and whether the Holy Scriptures were not rather a fable and cunning story than the holy and ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... chair of ebony enriched by cunning Etruscan art—four mounted knights charging across its heavy back in armor of wrought gold. She stopped, facing the company, between two columns of white marble beautifully sculptured. Upon each a vine rose, limberly and with soft ...
— Vergilius - A Tale of the Coming of Christ • Irving Bacheller
... and those are the most infamous, are playing the game of corruption with us; among them is Kotzebue, the most cunning and the worst of all, a real talking machine emitting all sorts of detestable speech and pernicious advice. His voice is skillful in removing from us all anger and bitterness against the most unjust measures, and is just such as kings require to put us to sleep again in that old hazy slumber ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... then succeeded by unscrupulous cunning; and, for futile efforts, without hostile collision, to impose a claim of authority upon people who repudiated it, were substituted measures which could ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... you can't touch pitch without being besmirched, and in my case it was, I suppose, only too true. I had come to regard their ingenious plots and adventures with interest and attention, and marvelled at the extraordinary resource and cunning with which they misled and deceived their victims, and obtained by various ways and means those bright little stones which, in regular consignments, made their way to the dark little den of the crafty old Goomans in the Kerk Straat ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... sought by industry and artifice, by merit and crimes, by means good and bad, rational and absurd, according to the prevalence of virtue or vice, of wisdom or folly. Some will always mistake the degree of their own desert, and some will desire that others may mistake it. The cunning will have recourse to stratagem, and the powerful to violence, for the attainment of their wishes; some will stoop to theft, and ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... the device acquitted Dorothy, according to Garrison's judgment. He doubted if any clever woman, perhaps excepting the famous and infamous Lucrezia Borgia, could have fashioned a plan so utterly fiendish and cunning. ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... my Christmas dolly; Her name is French—Celeste; And of my many children, She is the very best. This dress, you see, is finest silk, Her shoes are dainty kid, And underneath this cunning hat Her pretty curls are hid. And do I love my precious doll? Well, I just guess I do (hugging it)! I'll love her even when she's old As well ...
— Christmas Entertainments • Alice Maude Kellogg
... her way: it is a cunning wench That knows to wheedle. Burgos still maintains Its fame for noble fabrics. Since my time The ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli
... night lingered and the stars still shone and the cannon of the two armies challenged each other steadily, that the Firefly of France fought his greatest battle in the air. Since his whole aim was escape, it was bloodless; he had to trust to skill and cunning; he dared manoeuvers that appalled others, dropped plummet-like, looped dizzily, soared to the sheerest heights. He had been wounded. The framework of his plane was damaged. Still he gained on his foes and won through ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... who was somewhat more cunning and worldly, declared that it would be better to throw the hunter into a foul, dark dungeon till he was ready to buy his freedom with all ...
— The Firelight Fairy Book • Henry Beston
... agreed, in the same negative voice, and then showed her friend over the house, which Mrs. Kemp pronounced "sweet" and "cunning." As Milly's manner remained listless, Eleanor Kemp suggested their lunching at the hotel, and they walked over to the large hostelry on the Avenue, where the Kemps usually stayed in ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... were just starting on when Lew heard a peculiar little sound behind some bushes just off the fire trail. Curious to know what might have made the sound, he dropped his pack and went to investigate. Behind the bush he found a cunning, little black animal that did not seem to be at all afraid of him. He picked it up and ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... It is that the Fuegians capture these birds by tying a string to the legs of certain small birds, and force them into the petrels' nests, whereupon the rightful owners, attacking and following the intruders as they are jerked out by the cunning decoyers, are ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... retreats, Fit for thee, and better than Fearful spoils of dangerous man. In thy fat-jowled deviltry Friar Tuck shall live in thee; Thou mayst levy tithe and dole; Thou shalt spread the woodland cheer, From the pilgrim taking toll; Match thy cunning with his fear; Eat, and drink, and have thy fill; Yet ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... servants, she was inquisitive, and never neglected an opportunity to spy and gossip, considering it a part of her duties to learn everything possible of the private affairs of the lodgers. Quite unlike the traditional, smiling, good-natured "mammy" of the South, she was one of those cunning, crafty, heartless, surly Northern negresses, who, to the number of thousands, seek employment as maids with women of easy morals, and, infesting a certain district of New York where white and black people of the lower classes ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... ast him which his sweet toof was, An' he jus' laffed an' showed me where He keeps um, up an' down his mouf— (I guess there's mos' a hundred there). He's got a cunning little house, But you can't climb right in, at all— Ain't hardly big enough for him; I guess it is a size ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... were the famous Pima Scouts! No wonder they took their ease in the Tubacca plaza. Every man, woman, and child in those adobe buildings had reason to be thankful for their skill and cunning—the web of protection Rennie's Pima Scouts had woven in ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... one of peculiar difficulty. As Colwyn sat motionless, with his chin resting on his hand, brooding over the sullen secretive surface of this dark mystery, the feeling grew upon him that the murder had been preconceived with the utmost cunning and caution, and that the facts so far brought to light, including his own discoveries, did not penetrate ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... referred to in THE STUDIO. Yet, at the risk of reiterating what nobody of taste doubts, one must place his work in this direction head and shoulders above the crowd—even the crowd of excellent illustrators—because its amazing fantasy and caprice are supported by cunning technique that makes the whole work a "picture," not merely a decoration or an interpretation of the text. As a spinner of entirely bewitching stories, that hold a child spell-bound, and can be read and re-read by adults, he is a near ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... about my wife—you know how they talk in parables when they mean mischief. I would have shot him for the toddy racket, but I was waitin' for a better reason.... The old hag who bosses my cook-shed said to me as she passed, 'Go and listen to a song of cunning over there'—pointing to a clump of bread-fruit trees. I walked over—quietly. Le-jennabon and her girls were sitting down on mats. Outside the fence was a lad singing this—in a ...
— By Reef and Palm • Louis Becke
... I have need of it." "On my head and eyes," answered the other and voided the house to him, whereupon Kamar al-Zaman took up his abode therein and transported thither all his baggage. The jeweller passed that evening with him, then went to his own house. On the next day, his wife sent for a cunning builder and bribed him with money to make her an underground-way[FN423] from her chamber to Kamar al-Zaman's house, with a trap-door under the earth. So, before the youth was ware, she came in to him with two bags of money and he said to her, "Whence comest ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... I will not hear! I hate you. I see through your cunning wiles. You wish to chain me to a living death. Cease staring at me! Ah, your eyes torment me,— They pierce like daggers through my very soul! Ah, yes, the dagger! Die! ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... had any important effect in hastening final results. I have thought it not amiss, however, to call attention to the fact that a century ago the people of this country were not seeking to gain governmental benefit by clandestine approach and cunning pretense, but were apt to plainly present their wants and grievances, and to openly demand such consideration and care from the General Government as was their due under the mandate of popular rule, and that in making their demands ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... considering and reflecting on these matters, there comes an Arab chieftain, Ariamnes[67] by name, a cunning and faithless man, and of all the misfortunes that were by chance combined to ruin the Romans the chief and crowning mischief. Some of them who had served with Pompeius knew him as one who had received ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... had become wide-spread in England. Reginald Scot a little later declared that every parish was full of men and women who claimed to work miracles.[29] Most of them were women, and their performances read like those of the gipsy fortune-tellers today. "Cunning women" they called themselves. They were many of them semi-medical or pseudo-medical practitioners[30] who used herbs and extracts, and, when those failed, charms and enchantments, to heal the sick. If they were fairly fortunate, they became known as "good witches." Particularly in connection with ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... know wickedness, lest when wickedness seeks a man out in his riper years he shall be fooled and conquered by the beauteous garb in which the Devil has the cunning to ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... speaks in these Terms, "—Quanquam illa Regio, &c. When thy noble Expeditions, O Caesar, have proceeded so far, as to clear and conquer that Country, which the Rhine runs through, with his cunning Maeanders or Windings, [Meatibus callidis, for so it must be read, and not Scaldis, as in some Copies,] and embraces in his Arms a Region, which I can scarce call Land; 'tis so soak'd with Water, that not only the Marshy part of it gives way, but even that which seems more firm, shakes when ...
— Franco-Gallia • Francis Hotoman
... that assembled under one roof these nun-like creatures, wasted and worn with their rigid lives, and the heavy, brutish men, who shambled round the room like plough-horses. Wicked eyes some of them had, mere slits through which a cunning and selfish spirit looked out. Some faces there were of power, but in them the disagreeable traits were even more strongly marked: the ignorant, narrow foreheads were better, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... the matchless tales of All-Father Odin, who crosses the Rainbow Bridge to walk among men in Midgard and sacrifices his right eye to drink from the Well of Wisdom; of Thor, whose mighty hammer defends Asgard; of Loki, whose mischievous cunning leads him to treachery against the gods; of giants, dragons, dwarfs and Valkyries; and of the terrible last ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum
... the Irishman felt a genuine impulse of anger. His whole face assumed a cunning, savage expression which would have very much astonished those that only knew the good and loyal Jenkins; but he took good care not to push further an explanation which he feared perhaps as much as he ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... with her apron still to her eyes, was gliding to the door, but her mother looked, with a coarse sort of cunning in her eye, steadily at the poor young lady, in some sort her victim, and added ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... the bench of magistrates, nay, even the county member returned to Parliament without a dis-sentient voice! His fancy runs riot, and there is no limit to the bright future which the skilful hand of the cunning knight of the hammer unfolds ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... Nor did the cunning harmony end here. In form as well as tint he cheated observation. His outline, as he lay at rest, formed the most perfect ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... ordare, By often brushing and much diligence; Full goodly bound in pleasaunt coverture, Of damas, satten, or else of velvet pure: I keepe them sure, fearing least they should be lost, For in them is the cunning ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... These cunning plans were, however, nearly being crossed by a very simple incident. Annoyed at finding that her feelings could be consulted only by sacrificing those of another woman, Miss Dacre, quite confident that, as Lady Aphrodite was innocent in the present instance, she must be immaculate, ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... embroideries. The daily struggle for bare existence, the ever-shadowing menace of unemployment, of illness, leaving them helpless amid the grinding forces crushing them down on every side. The ceaseless need for courage, for cunning. For in the kingdom of the poor the tyrant and the oppressor still sit in the high places, the ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... irresistible charm, of her audacity, her cunning, her genius for diplomacy and statecraft, far exceeding Elizabeth's—when we read of all this and think of the blood of the Guises in her veins, and the precepts of Catharine de Medici in her heart, we realize what her usurpation ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... with vehemence. "It may hang somewhere, in after years, in goodly company, and keep the artist's memory warm. Think of being known to mankind after some such fashion as this! of hanging here through the slow centuries in the gaze of an altered world; living on and on in the cunning of an eye and hand that are part of the dust of ages, a delight and a law to remote generations; making beauty a force and ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... in his house but the word "mafinge," and not until he went to school did he correct the word "bewhind," for in the nursery he learned the line "wagging their tails bewhind them." Baby talk is very cunning, and often the adult members of the family pick it up and keep it up for years, and only when they are exposed in public, as one mother was on a suburban platform by her four-year-old lad shouting, "Mamma, too-too tain tumin, too-too tain tumin," do they sense their responsibility and realize ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... shop among others a red-faced woman with a cunning look in her eyes. She sidled out of the place and was waiting for Elizabeth ...
— Little Saint Elizabeth and Other Stories • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... soon this silly little fly, Hearing his wily, flattering words, came slowly flitting by. With buzzing wings she hung aloft, then near and nearer drew, Thinking only of her brilliant eyes, her green and purple hue,— Thinking only of her crested head—poor foolish thing! At last, Up jumped the cunning spider, and fiercely held her fast! He dragged her up his winding stair, into his dismal den, Within his little parlor,—but she ...
— The Little Mother Goose • Anonymous
... were pressed with that strange blend of industry, stupidity, mendacity and cunning which characterize the Prussian and all his acts. Under our noses a German solidarity was attempted here, and in part achieved. Organizations having Prussian ends in view were numerous, large, popular and unsuspected. ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... and place, and one that dresseth indecently. A person, however distressed, should never solicit a miser for alms, or one that speaketh ill of others, or one that is unacquainted with the shastras, or a dweller in the woods, or one that is cunning, or one that doth not regard persons worthy of regard, or one that is cruel, or one that habitually quarrels with others, or one that is ungrateful. A person should never wait upon these six worst of men, viz., one that is a foe, one that always ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... popularity, who think to please the abolitionists by their zeal for emancipation, and the slaveholders by the flattering hope of ridding them of the free colored people at the public expense; lastly, some cunning slaveholders, who see that the plan may be carried far enough to produce the effect of raising the market price of their slaves. But, of all its other difficulties, the most objectionable is that it obviously includes the engrafting a colonial establishment upon the ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... the cowardice of the majority, and in the willing acquiescence and co-operation of Danton and the other members of the party of violence. The commissioners seized on a room in the Hotel by the side of the regular council-room, and their first measures were marked with a cunning and unscrupulousness which largely contributed to the success of their more active comrades in the streets. Even Petion himself was not wicked enough or resolute enough for them. The authority which Mandat had wrung from him on the previous morning ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... me there to kill me, he said. The cunning old fox told me that I would find Helen in the Mortel hut, and offered to take me to her by a short cut over Corvatsch. And I believed him! I was mad, I suppose. We did the Marmore ascent by the light of the stars. Do you realize what that means? ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... gave little hint of remorse; and the gloating delight with which he added something about the devil having assisted him to make it a safe blow as well as a deadly one, was proof not only of his having used all his cunning in planning this crime, but of his pleasure in ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men, will be enabled to subvert the power of the people, and to usurp for themselves the reins of government; destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... surprise one's friend with an unexpected favour, "which, ten to one," says he, "fails to oblige your acquaintance, who had some reasons against such a mode of obligation, which you might have known but for that superfluous cunning which you think an elegance. Oh! never be seduced by such silly pretences," continued he; "if a wench wants a good gown, do not give her a fine smelling-bottle, because that is more delicate: as I once knew a lady lend ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... had been aroused by English gold, had searched the forest far and near for the regicides. Their knowledge of the forest and cunning in following a trail had two or three times brought them face to face with Cromwell's stern old battle-trained warriors. Then they had learned to their cost that they had roused a pair of lions in their lairs; but the regicides finally disappeared. ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... of respect for age. The former vice may be ascribed to the business habits of the country, which leave so little time for parental instruction, and, perhaps, in some degree to the acts of political agents, who, with their own advantages in view, among the other expedients of their cunning, have resorted to the artifice of separating children from their natural advisers by calling meetings of the young to decide on the fortunes and policy of ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... must pause, to point out to you the short-sightedness of human contrivance. This ingenious young man, Mr. David Faux, thought he had achieved a triumph of cunning when he had associated himself in his brother's rudimentary mind with the flavour of yellow lozenges. But he had yet to learn that it is a dreadful thing to make an idiot fond of you, when you yourself are not of an affectionate disposition: ...
— Brother Jacob • George Eliot
... rest amaz'd stood still, Expecting which should take or kill. This HUDIBRAS observ'd; and fretting Conquest should be so long a getting, He drew up all his force into 820 One body, and that into one blow. But TALGOL wisely avoided it By cunning sleight; for had it hit, The upper part of him the blow Had slit as sure as ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... existence. I have remarked that at first it is of a yellowish color; in the prime of life it is blackest, and when he has numbered many years, but still is in the full enjoyment of his power, it assumes a yellowish-gray, pepper-and-salt sort of color. These old fellows are cunning and dangerous, and most to be dreaded. The females are utterly destitute of a mane, being covered with a short, thick, glossy coat of tawny hair. The manes and coats of lions frequenting open-lying districts utterly destitute of trees, such as the borders ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... a note of animosity, if not of hatred. Mildred did not like meeting this woman, something told her that it would be wiser not, but she wanted to see Ralph, and an expression of vindictiveness came into her cunning eyes. 'If she dares to try to oppose me, she'll soon find out her mistake. I'll very soon settle her, a common woman like that. Moreover she has been his mistress, I have not, she will quail before me, I shall have no difficulty in ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... trudged along the canal bank; bridge after bridge I tried, but it was no use, for each one in the centre for about ten or twelve feet was destroyed—and, stretched between the gap, I found a length of wire netting covered over with straw—a cunning trap set for the first one across. Not a bridge was passable—they were ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... "Wise?—cunning, you would say," replied Richard; "elegant in a lady's chamber, if you will. Oh, ay, Conrade of Montserrat—who knows not the popinjay? Politic and versatile, he will change you his purposes as often as the trimmings of his doublet, and you shall ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... to sober her—or perhaps her passion had run its course. She turned to him, and her lips parted with a smile, a cunning and—if my opinion be asked—loathsome smile; and she caressed the lapel of his coat with her hand. And the duke, who was smoking, smoked on, so that the smoke blew in her face, and she coughed and choked: whereat the duke also ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope
... before. Still, something had alarmed it. Faintly there came to this wilderness outlaw that most thrilling of all things to the denizens of the forest—the scent of man. He came down the ridge with the slow indifference of a full-fed animal, and with only a half of his old cunning; trotted across the softening snow of an opening and stopped where the man-scent was so strong that he lifted his head straight up to the sky and sent out to his comrades in forest and plain the warning signal that he had ...
— The Gold Hunters - A Story of Life and Adventure in the Hudson Bay Wilds • James Oliver Curwood
... feature,—you would have said, "How very distinguished it is to be so plain!" Knowing the great world from the core to the cuticle, and on that knowledge basing authority and position, Colonel Morley was not calculating, not cunning, not suspicious,—his sagacity the more quick because its movements were straightforward; intimate with the greatest, but sought, not seeking; not a flatterer nor a parasite, but when his advice was asked (even if advice ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of nature, but certainly not with greater simplicity and earnestness. In the Saracen Friends there is just Ariosto's balance of passion and levity; and in the story which I have entitled Seeing and Believing, his exhibition of triumphant cunning. During the lives of Pulci and Boiardo, the fierce passions and severe ethics of Dante had been gradually giving way to a gentler and laxer state of opinion before the progress of luxury; and though Boiardo's enamoured Paladin retains a kind of virtue not ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... possessed of a sufficient share of low cunning to enable him, finally, to hit upon a plan by which he hoped this catastrophe might be averted. There upon he proceeded to unfold to the astonished partner of his joys and sorrows, that he was glad Miss Graystone had left the house, for he considered her a dangerous person to enter any family ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... vapors from damp humus, moisture from lush leaves and I know not what other pure though common elements into the precious glow that began to haze the west soon after noon. The old belief that the alchemist at his utmost cunning could recreate rose blooms from their own ashes had sure foundation. I have seen the sun do it every June in countless gardens where, out of this same humus and soft rains, his potency works the transmutation as if in a night. So on July days this father of transmuters ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... himself thus inveigled by the cunning of Abbot Bilson, Lord Marnell was beside himself with passion. He burst into a torrent of the most fearful language. Abbot Bilson stood calmly by, as if quite accustomed ...
— Mistress Margery • Emily Sarah Holt
... accompanied their departure. But when the Japanese saw that he was going out of this port and that their design was known, they had recourse to arms, trying to do by force what they had not been able to do by cunning. But our men defended themselves so well, inflicting some loss on those of that kingdom, that they returned to these islands, which was a very fortunate outcome. Those who were left there, not being able to embark with their commander, have all returned ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson
... religioun Amonges us, would infect* all a town, *deceive Though it as great were as was Nineveh, Rome, Alisandre,* Troy, or other three. *Alexandria His sleightes* and his infinite falseness *cunning tricks There coulde no man writen, as I guess, Though that he mighte live a thousand year; In all this world of falseness n'is* his peer. *there is not For in his termes he will him so wind, And speak his wordes in so sly a kind, When he commune shall with any wight, That ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... knowledge; and having been assured, in answer to their first question, that we were not French, they immediately added, "Then you must be English." They did not appear, however, to be without some degree of cunning, for as long as we paused in replying to their query, they were silent; but no sooner had we answered in the negative than they launched forth into the most violent invectives against the French; convincing us that the animosity of the mother-country towards its ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... going down to Dunraven, to the Children's Home," and then she began on the story of Phronsie's company of children, and how they lived, and who they were, with many little side stories of this small creature, who was "too cunning for anything," and that funny little boy, till the old gentleman sat helplessly listening in abject silence. And the latch was lifted, and young Mr. Loughead put his head in the doorway, looking as if he had finished ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... antique would have proven inestimable. As for the emerald itself, in its original state, before cutting, it must have been worth the ransom of an emperor; much had certainly been sacrificed to fashion it in its present form. The cunning of a jewel-cutter whose art was lost before Tyre and Nineveh upreared their heads must have been taxed by the task. Its innumerable facets reproduced with wonderful fidelity a human eyeball, unwinking, sleepless. In the enigmatic ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... this is the most intensely human. Not a fish, or reptile, bird, or beast; not a thing crawling, swimming, flying, or walking, but the human creature, humbugs himself. 'Man was made to mourn,' I would change into, Man was made to be humbugged. It is better to be greatly gullible, than a 'cunning dog,' for gulled we will be. It is better to be caught at once, than to have our gills torn by wriggling off the hook the twenty times, to be caught at last. It is better to walk straight into the net than to fatigue ourselves by coming to it in a roundabout way. A Nova-Scotian ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... "Ha-ha! the cunning northern birds knew this was coming," said Marian. "Depend upon't, they keep just in front o't all the way from the North Star. Your husband, my dear, is, I make no doubt, having scorching weather all this time. Lord, if he could only see his pretty wife now! Not that this weather ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... "it is the very sense and cunning of this fellow which has so long maintained his reign—a mere Highland robber would have been put down in as many weeks as he has flourished years. His gang, without him, is no more to be dreaded as a permanent annoyance—it will no longer ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... appearance of stupid apathy they veil a great depth of cunning. They are grave and gentle and rather sad in their appearance, when not under the influence of pulque; but when they return to their villages in the evening, and have taken a drop of comfort, their white teeth light up their bronze countenances like lamps, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... do his best. But all people don't think same as we do, and whenever we hear of a castle being attacked and defended, there were always people outside trying to make traitors of those who were in, and temptation's a nasty, cunning, 'sinuating sort of a thing. But you're castellan, and you ought to do as ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... Pontiac, Nott,' sez he. 'You bet!' sez I. 'What'll you take for her and the lot she stands on?' sez he, short and sharp. Some fellers, Rosey," said Nott, with a cunning smile, "would hev blurted out a big figger and been cotched. That ain't my style. I just looked at him. 'I'll wait fur your figgers until next steamer day,' sez he, and off he goes like a ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... story of the house was occupied by a bar and oyster saloon; the pungent testaceous odors, mounting from those lower regions, gave the offended nostrils no respite or rest; in a few minutes, a robust appetite, albeit watered by cunning bitters, would wither, like a flower in the fume of sulphur. Half-a-dozen before dinner, have always satiated my own desire for these mollusks; before many days were over, I utterly abominated the name of the species; familiarity only made the nuisance more intolerable, ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... not willingly have allowed another to attend him and watch over him; but he didn't believe that he should see any Christmas Eve garden. He thought the whole thing a snare which Robber Mother had, with great cunning, laid for Abbot Hans, that he might fall into her ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... which they knew must contain treasure of some sort, and it was because of this state of mind, most likely, that Cardatas lost his temper and got himself shot, and so opened the fight. Cardatas was a cunning fellow, and, if he had not been upset by the sight of those bags, Garta believed that he would have regularly besieged Captain Horn's party, and must have overcome them in the end. He was anxious to have the captain believe that, when he had said there were only two men on board, ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... to what this unusual movement could mean; but when we got into the boat they, all of them, set to work and howled in wild despair; thinking, probably, that they would never see us again. Some of them swam after us, while two cunning ones, "Pan" and "Kvik," conceived the brilliant idea of galloping round the pool to the opposite side to meet us. A few days afterwards I was dismayed to find the pool dried up; a hole had been worn through the ice at the bottom, and all the fresh water had drained out into the sea. So ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... plainly and frankly, I think William, my lord, hath a keen desire to welcome in person a chief so illustrious as Harold, and I guess that he keeps the hostages to make thee come to claim them." The knight, as he spoke, smiled gaily; but the cunning of the Norman gleamed in the quick glance of his ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... cause of the slave, and of playing into the hands of the Whigs. All the editor had ever said about that pro-slavery ex-President was cast into its teeth by Democratic, Liberty Party and Garrisonian papers, which, one and all, held that Van Buren was a cunning old fox, as pro-slavery as in those days when, as President of the U.S. Senate, he gave his casting vote for the bill which authorized every Southern post-master to open all the mail which came to his office, search for and ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... they were," answered Paul—"my rat Socrates and Mrs. Socrates and a whole lot of little Soc rats. I meant to tell you, Derrick; he brought them out this morning, his wife and a family of such cunning little fellows." ...
— Derrick Sterling - A Story of the Mines • Kirk Munroe
... the guise of tapestried chronicles, ancient as those of Bayeux, describing deeds of gallant chivalry—so my fancy pictured—and love, and knight-errantry, painted over with oriental arabesques in crimson gilding, the cunning handiwork of the potent sun-god. Her coming in effected ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... of his uncle, for instance, or Monsieur des Barres. He did not believe that the Paris authorities knew anything of it, yet; but he did believe that Simon knew what he was doing; that Real, the well-known head of the police in the western arrondissement, trained under Fouche in suspicion, cunning and mercilessness, would make unscrupulous use of any means of knowing the present state of Royalist opinion in Anjou. He would be all the more severe, probably, because the mildness of the Prefect of the Loir had more than once irritated him. So Angelot thought he ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... Isaac, a wanderer like the first fugitive, with his brother's curse upon him. Until this hour all Jacob's views and feelings seem earthly and grovelling. Until now, there has been no indication of that trust and piety which afterwards marked his life. He had seemed worldly, cunning, ready to snatch any personal advantage. From this period he seems to awaken to a higher—a spiritual life. He seems to have comprehended the deeper meaning of promise and prophecy. We cannot tell what remorseful and despairing thoughts filled his soul as he left his home—how strange and ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous
... the blade buried in the wall. This Woolfolk successfully blocked. In the supreme effort to bring the struggle to a decisive end neither dealt the other minor injuries. There were no blows—nothing but the straining pull of arms, the sudden weight of bodies, the cunning twisting of legs. They fought swiftly, whirling and staggering from place ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... opinions were the same in regard to this man; therefore, he smiled at the rascal's knavery. Chico Velasques was followed in his chieftainship by Blanco, who did his utmost to walk in the footsteps of his illustrious predecessor; but, he was not so cunning, and was less successful in his encounters with the Americans and Mexicans, and therefore had not that influence with his tribe which the former possessed. Still, he performed his quantum of mischief, and yet lives to play his part in ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... They said that Perry Blair had just been lucky, that was all; lucky in being selected as the one least calculated to damage Fanchette after a whole year in which the latter had steadfastly refused to fight. Lucky in having that fox, Devereau, for a manager, cunning enough to decoy Fanchette ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... old savage really have hurt him had he not found out who he was? The little girl was a wonder: evidently she had muffled his last name on purpose—not knowing it herself—and it was a quick and cunning ruse. He owed her something for that—why did she try to protect him? Wonderful eyes, too, the little thing had—deep and dark—and how the flame did dart from them when she got angry! He smiled, remembering—he ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... it was Snarley Bob who had made him so. Now Snarley was a cunning breeder of sheep. For three-and-forty years he had applied his intuitions and his patience to the task of producing rams and ewes such as the world had never seen. His system of "observation and experiment" was peculiarly his own; it is written down in no ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... looked tired. The realization that all his cunning, all his work, had been for nothing, tormented him. He had set his trap and baited it, and it had worked perfectly—save that the teeth of the trap had closed over thin air. At the denouement of the sheriff's story there should have been the barking ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... the officer, "we know that there is a gang of men who infest the coast. For a long time we have tried to lay hands on them in vain. They are very cunning, and, although we have suspicions, we as yet have not been able to bring any positive evidence against them, and we believe that he is ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... haven't that style of face; they are thin, sharp, and cunning in feature as in nature. Hoffman has large, well-moulded features, and a mild, manly expression, which ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... shorthorned Hereford hidden in the innermost recesses of that tick and sand-fly infested ti-tree that knew not the cunning of a stockman's hand." ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... on the part of the Sabines, and this was by far the most formidable: for nothing was done under the influence of anger or covetousness, nor did they give indications of hostilities before they had actually begun them. Cunning also was combined with prudence. Spurius Tarpeius was in command of the Roman citadel: his maiden daughter, who at the time had gone by chance outside the walls to fetch water for sacrifice, was bribed by Tatius, to admit ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... he was superior. The men recognized it, not sullenly nor defiantly, but with the unquestioning attitude of the New Jerseyman when he is really below the scale in birth and education. Still their faces all expressed malicious cunning and cruel curiosity, which they hesitated to put into words. They knew that Elliot was to marry Gordon's niece; they were overawed by both men, but they were afraid ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... steel or shot 'gainst that charmed life secure, Till cunning France, in last resource, tossed up the golden lure; And the carrion buzzards round him stooped, faithless, to the cast, And the wild hawk of the desert is caught ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... virtues gave vigor to her genius, and dignity to her mind; she was sometimes inconsiderate, and violent; but never mean or cunning. ...
— Mary - A Fiction • Mary Wollstonecraft
... whatever she pleased. She persuaded him to confer honors and rewards in a very liberal manner upon those whom she favored, and to degrade, and sometimes even to destroy, those who displeased her. She would occasionally resort to very cunning artifices to accomplish her ends. For example, she conceived at one time a violent hatred against the husband of her mother. His name was Silanus. He was not the father of Messalina, but a second husband of ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... the process by which this result is achieved be justified. For evolution works through a universal struggle for existence, in which the life and well-being of some can be secured only through the suffering and final extinction of others; and even in its higher stages, cunning and unscrupulous strength frequently overcomes humane wisdom fettered by weakness. "Nature, red in tooth and claw, with ravin shrieks against the creed" of the Theist. If God is working through ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote
... the giants come, fathered of bestial humans and mothered of monsters. And many and diverse were the creatures which had some human semblance; and intelligence, mechanical and cunning; so that certain of these lesser Brutes had machinery and underground ways, having need to secure to themselves warmth and air, even as healthy humans; only that they were incredibly inured to hardship, as they might ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... After breakfast I'm going to show you my chickens and my calf. Did you know, I've a whole calf all to myself?—a black-and-whitey one. There are some cunning pigs, too. Maybe you'd like to see them. And then I 'spect you'll want to go out to the hay-field, ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... Cunning, as the Italian peasant is by nature, Masin made a sign to his master that the man, if he were really below, could hear all ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... of the Nation. We fight for what that word means of hope and confidence and freedom and advancement to the groaning and bewildered world. We say, let all else perish,—wealth, commerce, agriculture, cunning manufacture, humanizing art. We expend all to save the Nation. That priceless possession we shall hold intact to the end, for ourselves, our ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... hesitated. "Say you will give them each a bunch of plantains if they will ferry you over," again whispered the cunning Arab. ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... is struck in this chorus of praise. This fierce invective stands upon an altar at Rome:[31] "Here for all time has been set down in writing the shameful record of the freedwoman Acte, of poisoned mind, and treacherous, cunning, and hard-hearted. Oh! for a nail, and a hempen rope to choke her, and flaming pitch to burn up ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... northward of the line, from which islands came in a great number of canoas, having in some of them four, in some six, and in some also fourteen men, bringing with them cocos and other fruits. Their canoas were hollow within and cut with great art and cunning, being very smooth within and without, and bearing a gloss as if it were a horn daintily burnished, having a prow and a stern of one sort, yielding inward circle-wise, being of a great height, and full of certain white shells for a bravery; and on each side of them ...
— Sir Francis Drake's Famous Voyage Round the World • Francis Pretty
... one half of the apartment. He then proceeded to the alcove, and drew forth from it his violin. The strings were thrummed to make sure of their accord, the heel was set in the hollow of the shoulder, and the bow executed a rapid prelude. The old man smiled as if satisfied with the cunning of his hand, and well he might, for these simple touches revealed ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... in teaching men to die, should after teach them to live. Dicearcus made one of that title, but of another and lesse profitable end. Some man will say to mee, the effect exceeds the thought so farre, that there is no fence so sure, or cunning so certaine, but a man shall either lose or forget if he come once to that point; let them say what they list: to premeditate on it, giveth no doubt a great advantage: and it is nothing, at the least, to goe so farre without dismay or alteration, or ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... ingenious and cunning, and fond of roving adventure. In running away from home, he embarked on board a ship, as such characters generally do at the present day, and went to sea. After meeting with various adventures, he established himself ...
— Darius the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... clear-sighted, and able investigator of the Baconian remains. It was buried in the lowest depths of the lowest deeps of the deep Elizabethan Art; that Art which no plummet, till now, has ever sounded. It was locked with its utmost reach of traditionary cunning. It was buried in the inmost recesses of the esoteric Elizabethan learning. It was tied with a knot that had passed the scrutiny and baffled the sword of an old, suspicious, dying, military government—a knot that none could cut—a knot ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... to rescue its people from the degrading Dollar-craze. But now, well!—those who make fortunes there leave it as soon as they can, shaking its dust off their feet and striving to forget that they ever experienced its incalculable greed, vice, cunning, and general rascality. There are plenty of decent folk in America, of course, just as there are decent folk everywhere, but they are in the minority. Even in the Southern States the 'old stock' of men is decaying and dying-out, and the taint of commercial vulgarity is creeping ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... too well all the folds and refolds of his Porthos, not to find a secret if there were one there; like those regular, minute old bachelors, who know how to find, with their eyes shut, each book on the shelves of their library and each piece of linen in their wardrobe. So if he had found nothing, our cunning D'Artagnan, in rolling and unrolling his Porthos, it was because, in truth, there was nothing ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... label said it was bound for Barnes—stood aghast, and their questions died on their lips. Policemen put up their hands against it,—it ran over them. It even learned the trick of avoiding the nimble business man by a cunning little skid just as he thought he had caught it. You will hardly believe me, but that 'bus ran seven times round Trafalgar Square, until the lions' tails twisted for giddiness, and Nelson reeled where he stood. I don't know where ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... play, To watch her make her toilet. She would stand, And turn her head first this, and then that way, Trying effect of ribbon, bow or band. Then she would pick up something else, and curve Her lovely neck, with cunning, bird-like grace, And watch the mirror while she put it on, With such a sweetly grave and thoughtful face; And then to view it all would sway and swerve Her lithe young body, ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... blocks too subtle for you. In short, the entire ship is a riddle. Why, you green ones wouldn't know if she were unseaworthy; but still, with thumbs stuck back into your arm-holes, pace the rotten planks, singing, like a fool, words put into your green mouth by the cunning owner, the man who, heavily insuring it, sends his ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... enemies, besides man. The Killer Whale is one of the fiercest, swiftest terrors of the sea. It is tiny, compared with the Greenland Whale, but much quicker and more cunning. Several Killers band together and spring to the attack at the same time, Like wild cats, they dash at the poor helpless Whale, and tear its sides with ...
— Within the Deep - Cassell's "Eyes And No Eyes" Series, Book VIII. • R. Cadwallader Smith
... red leather, and really he looked so handsome in it, that we thought he ought to like to wear it when he went out for a walk; but he didn't one bit. He used to rub his head on the sidewalk, and fuss and squirm, and, when he didn't get rid of his bonnet in that way, the cunning fellow used to hide it when ...
— The Nursery, Number 164 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... were last at the "kids," when their unfortunate partners were high upon the spars; chummies, who affected awkwardness at the needle, and conscientious scruples about dabbling in the suds; so that chummy the simple was made to do all the work of the firm, while chummy the cunning played the sleeping partner in his ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... the midst of her sins; and London, that light-minded, reprobate city, was a heap of graves. Now he, Hilarius, having seen much evil and the justice of the Almighty, would get him in peace to Wymondham, there to learn to be a cunning limner; and having so learnt would joyfully hie him back to Prior Stephen and ...
— The Gathering of Brother Hilarius • Michael Fairless
... pearls is wreathed around his hair, which is arranged in symmetrical rolls. He has drooping eyelids, a straight nose, and a heavy and cunning expression of countenance. At the corners of the dais, extended above his head, are placed four golden doves, and, at the foot of the throne, two enamelled lions are squatted. The doves begin to coo, the lions to roar. The Emperor rolls his eyes; Antony steps ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... kylix borne by beautiful Ganymede, and it was godlike to look upon as a thing fashioned by the hands of the god. But the clay was not tempered sufficiently and warped in the drying. Then Zeus Pater fashioned another shape with more cunning, and this was tempered well and warped not. And he bent down to breathe between its lips the living soul. But as he stooped, Hephaistos, jealous of the divine gift about to be conferred upon the mortal race, sent from his forges smoke and vapour, which ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... antiquities of a barbarous people, with legendary fables of the most wild and monstrous character. Yet these puerile conceptions afford an inexhaustible mine for the labors of the antiquarian, who endeavours to unravel the allegorical web which a cunning priesthood had devised as symbolical of those mysteries of creation that it was beyond their power to comprehend. But Sarmiento happily confines himself to the mere statement of traditional fables, ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... with its like, and some loss is involved in the issue. It is not the general idea that is implicated in opposition and combat, and that is exposed to danger. It remains in the background, untouched and uninjured. This may be called the cunning of reason—that it sets the passions to work for itself, while that which develops its existence through such impulsion pays the penalty and suffers loss. For it is phenomenal being that is so treated, and, of this, a portion is of no value, another is positive and real. The ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... quickened intelligence which, for a while, accompanies ruined women: the unnatural sharpening of the duplicity, the firmer grasp on man as the animal, the study of the proprieties of life, and apparent impatience with all misbehavior. Her timid voice assisted her cunning as if with a natural gentleness, and invited onward the man who expected in her ample charms a bolder spirit. She betook herself to the church for penance, perhaps, but remained there for a character. My wife, if I have suffered, it ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... from the dead man's throat, and showed the others how the cord had been slipped round the neck in a running-knot and fastened tightly with a cunning twist. ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... found were equally notorious; the Earl's project was as plain as if he had pronounced it viva voce; and before we parted for the night, which did not occur until the sun was blazing through the curtains of our banqueting room, I had made up my mind, once for all, that neither character nor cunning can be concealed in this world; that the craftiest impostor is but a clumsier kind of clown; and that the most dexterous disguise is but a waste ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... you; I shall go to Paris without him: he is drawn on the jury for the 2 September till...no one knows. It is a tiresome task. Aurore is very cunning with her arms, she offers them to you to kiss; her hands are marvels and they are incredibly clever ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... Marriage of Wit and Wisdom! that, my lads; I'll none but that; the theme is very good, And may maintain a liberal argument: To marry wit to wisdom, asks some cunning; Many have wit, that may come short of wisdom. We'll see how Master poet plays his part, And whether wit or wisdom grace his art.— Go, make him drink, and all his fellows too.— ...
— Sir Thomas More • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... method and spoke of espial and discovery. This young man might be rich. If so, marriage should be thought of. Against the shell of her ear broke the waves of worldly cunning. The arrows of craft shot by her. She saw the thin lips moving, ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... greatest service to us. They go around in every direction and bring the reindeer together. They seem to know that there is some unseen danger. When the wolves come into the herd, the dogs attack them fiercely and act with great cunning, taking care not to be bitten by them and waiting for the opportunity ...
— The Land of the Long Night • Paul du Chaillu
... lo! upon his breviary, which was on a low stool near his feet, ruffling all his feathers with a single pull, and smoothing them as suddenly, and cocking his bill this way and that with a vast display of cunning purely ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... building he came to, he asked Aladdin if he did not think it fine; and the youth was ready to answer when any one presented itself, crying out: "Here is a finer house, uncle, than any we have seen yet." By this artifice, the cunning magician led Aladdin some way into the country; and as he meant to carry him farther, pretending to be tired, he took an opportunity to sit down in one of the gardens on the brink of a fountain of ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... whether he was a Roman Catholic; and he had not concealed the dislike which he felt for that Celtic Parliament which had repealed the Act of Settlement and passed the Act of Attainder. [78] The discontent, fomented by the arts of intriguers, among whom the cunning and unprincipled Henry Luttrell seems to have been the most active, soon broke forth into open rebellion. A great meeting was held. Many officers of the army, some peers, some lawyers of high note and some prelates of the Roman ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... now, as there were in our Lord's time; men who go about with the name of God on their lips, and the Bible in their hands, in sheep's clothing outwardly; but inwardly ravening wolves. In sheep's clothing, truly, smooth and sanctimonious, meek, and sleek. But wolves at heart; wolves in cunning and slyness, as you will find, if you have to deal with them; wolves in fierceness and cruelty, as you will find if you have to differ from them; wolves in greediness and covetousness, and care of their own interest and their own pockets. And wolves, too, in hardness of heart; in the hard, ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... touching enterprise and the business man; this theory that success is created not by intelligence, but by a certain half-witted and yet magical instinct. For Bernard Shaw, apparently, the forests of factories and the mountains of money are not the creations of human wisdom or even of human cunning; they are rather manifestations of the sacred maxim which declares that God has chosen the foolish things of the earth to confound the wise. It is simplicity and even innocence that has made Manchester. ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... took shape—nay, took life; the intricate, elaborate design ceased to be a design, and became a procession, a saturnalia; became a sinister comedy, which, when first visualized, shocked Soames immoderately. The horrors presented by these devices of evil cunning, crowding the walls, appalled the narrow mind of the beholder, revolted him in an even greater degree than they must have revolted a man of broader and cleaner mind. He became conscious of a quality of evil which pervaded the room; the entire place seemed to lie beneath a spell, beneath the ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... as to life, what is it after all? When you've got all you require, and you know that you will never want, that is all. I have friends, good friends, like you, Dr. Seward." This was said with a leer of inexpressible cunning. "I know that I shall never lack the means ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... "martin-box"!— Made like a sure-enough house—with roof, and doors And windows in it, and veranda-floors And balusters all 'round it—yes, and at Each end a chimney—painted red at that And penciled white, to look like little bricks; And, to cap all the builder's cunning tricks, Two tiny little lightning-rods were run Straight up their sides, and twinkled in the sun. Who built it? Nay, no answer but a smile.— It may be you can guess who, afterwhile. Home in his stall, "Old Sorrel" munched his hay And oats and corn, ...
— A Child-World • James Whitcomb Riley
... manipulations, roused him from his slumber. The most portentous of his wonders, however, are those which he wrought after his own death by means of his relics and otherwise; they have been sworn to by many persons. Nor did his hand lose its old cunning, in these posthumous manifestations, with the finny tribe. A certain woman, Maria Scuotto, was enabled to resuscitate a number of dead eels by means of an image of the deceased saint which ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... of peace and quietness I admitted hurriedly that I couldn't: persuaded that now he would leave off. But the only result was to make his moist face shine with the pride of cunning. He removed his hand for a moment to scare a black mass of flies off the sugar-basin and caught hold of ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... its burden day after day. Something of the same idle notion comes to me to-day, when from the street-window I look on the slow stream of human life creeping past, night and morning, to the great mills. Masses of men, with dull, besotted faces bent to the ground, sharpened here and there by pain or cunning; skin and muscle and flesh begrimed with smoke and ashes; stooping all night over boiling caldrons of metal, laired by day in dens of drunkenness and infamy; breathing from infancy to death an air saturated with fog and grease and soot, vileness ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... consequence, stopped half-way, as if undecided whether to lie flat or remain erect, producing the effect that would have been presented had he been decorated with a pair of horns. His baldness might have given an air of benevolence to his face, but for the shaggy eyebrows that over-shadowed his cunning-looking grey eyes. His cheekbones were high, and the cadaverous skin was so tightly drawn across them, as to give it a very parchment-like appearance. Around his thin compressed lips there was a continual nervous twitching, that added greatly to the ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... by the author of the "Bobbsey Twins" Books are eagerly welcomed by the little folks from about five to ten years of age. Their eyes fairly dance with delight at the lively doings of inquisitive little Bunny Brown and his cunning, ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue in the Sunny South • Laura Lee Hope
... off to find a censor. Censors, though I did not know it then, are very shy birds and conceal their nests with the cunning of reed warblers. Hardly any one has ever seen a censor. But M. found one, and we submitted to his scrutiny letters which we had succeeded in writing. After that I insisted on getting something to eat. I had breakfasted at an unholy hour. I had crossed the sea. I had endured great mental strain. ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... yonder like a great dawn. Man's spirit, tutored by lost illusion after lost illusion, advances to an ever deeper reality. The race, too, like the individual and the nation, is subject to the Law of Tragedy. Once more, in the way of a thousand years, it knows that it is not in time, nor in any cunning manipulation or extension of the things of time, that Man the Timeless can find the word which sums his destiny, and spurning at the phantoms of space, save as they grant access to the Spaceless, casts itself back upon God, and in art, thought, and action pierces ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... rats?" The maid laughed and showed all her big white teeth. "I can't see any rats. There are none here, Pani," and she looked at her mistress with a half stupid, half cunning leer on her face. "Pani must have been dreaming, there's not a living thing in the cellar except Pani and Marianna. Sh! sh! hark!" She bent her head and listened for a moment; then she shook it and laughed again. "Rats would patter, but there's ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... put it! Of course I like him well enough as a leader; he is clever, and sort of cunning, and I enjoy his funny ways; but what in the world should I do with a great yellow-haired laddie who could put me in his pocket, and yet is so meek that I should never find the heart to henpeck him? You are welcome to him; and since you ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott
... the Roman Church, the second from a Father of the Anglican, and the third from a Father of Modern English poetry. The Puritan divines would furnish me with many more such. St. Bernard says, Sapiens nummularius est Deus: nummum fictum non recipiet; 'A cunning money-changer is God: he will take in no base coin.' Latimer says, 'You shall perceive that God, by this example, shaketh us by the noses and taketh us by the ears.' Familiar enough, both of them, one would say! But I should think Mr. Biglow had ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... that life meant to her, how could you destroy her without a qualm? The crime you committed was that you refused to see God in that woman's soul, when he had revealed himself to you. You looked for wile, for cunning, for self-seeking,—and they were not there. Love had obliterated them. When you saw how meekly she obeyed you, and agreed to go away, why did you not have pity? If you had listened to your conscience, you would have ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... shall you hear Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters, Of deaths put on by cunning, and forc'd cause, And, in this upshot, purposes mistook Fall'n on the ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... inspection would have shaken the foundation of so simple a belief for Mr. Alfred Bolt's eyes were not of the honest kind worn by men who go down to the sea in ships. They were close set, narrow lidded, cunning, piggy little eyes that caused unrest to ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... was natural, but not based on subtle knowledge of Paul's character. He possessed marvelous cunning and much personal courage. No one but Alice saw him in the boat, and he thinks she is at the bottom of the lake. His coming to Northfield was in disguise, known only to Pierre Lanier. In the same manner Paul ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... one stock in which he could safely plunge. Casting aside all apprehension, so far as Swearengen Jones was concerned, he prepared for what was to be his one and only venture on the Stock Exchange before the 23d of the following September. With all the cunning and craftiness of a general he laid his plans for the attack. Gardner's face was the picture of despair when Brewster asked him to buy heavily in ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... Spence, for it is indeed true. I made every effort in my power to prevent what I knew was threatening. Until he began to practise deceit, trickery of every kind. What more could I do? If he was determined to deceive me, he would do so; what was gained by my obliging him to exert more cunning? Then I turned sick at heart, and ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... she just nervous from events—or was I causing her any personal trouble? The moment I felt that perhaps I was, a feeling of assurance and triumph came over me—! Then I used every bit of the cunning I possess—I tried to say subtle things—I made her talk about the ridiculous book, and the utterly unimportant furniture—I made her express her opinion about styles, and got out of her that a simple ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... lie in mamma's room. And then I sweep the door-steps off, and do not leave a crumb, And wipe the dishes, too, and oh, it is the bestest fun! And then, when mamma starts to bake, she says that maybe I Can make all by my very self a cunning little pie. When I am big enough for school I think I'll like to go, But truly I would rather stay at home, you know, And help my mamma do the work, and bake a little pie, For mamma says all little girls, if they would only ...
— A Jolly Jingle-Book • Various
... low and smooth; he seemed to have decided to accept the "charity" offered him by Lawler. But there was mockery in his voice, and his eyes were alight with cunning. In the atmosphere about him was complacency which suggested that Warden knew exactly what he was doing; that he had knowledge unsuspected by Lawler, and that he had no doubt that, ultimately, Lawler would ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... Ha, ha! Mum's the word, gents, (looking killingly cunning.) Come, gentlemen, let's fill up. Ha, ha! me pulling the—ha, ha! Well, here's to the old Constitution; let's hang by her, while there's a—a—a button on ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... appalling thing for Sinclair to watch. He was used to power in men and beasts. He understood it. A cunning devil of a fighting outlaw horse was his choice for a ride. "The meaner they are, the longer they last," he used to say. He respected men of evil as long as they were men of action. He was perfectly at home and contented among men, where one's purse and life were at constant hazard, ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... revile, And banish from their councils! Worse than all When the great man, succumbing to the mass, Yields up his mind as a low instrument To vulgar fingers, to be played upon:— Yields to the vulgar lure, the cunning bribe Of place or profit, and makes sale ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... days, when if behoved respectability to use unlovely turned rails and pierced gable-ends, or during the Colonial craze, which means white paint and fluted pillars, or in the latest domestic era, a most pleasant mixture, that is, of stained shingles, hooded dormer-windows, cunning verandas, and recessed doors. Seeing these things, one begins to understand why the Americans visiting England are impressed with the old and not with the new. He is not much more than a hundred years ahead ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... back they beheld the fiery eyes swarming along the road after them. They had begun to abandon hope, when all at once they heard the sound of advancing horsemen in front of them, accompanied by the clank of arms. The wolves heard it too, and with all the cunning cowardice of their race scampered away from their intended prey, just as Alfred and Oswy avoided impaling themselves upon the lances of ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... gone I stole out to examine his tracks. Then I noticed for the first time that the old path near the deadfall was getting moss-grown; a faint new path began to show among the alders. Some warning was there in the trap, and with cunning instinct all the wood dwellers turned aside, giving a wide berth to what they felt was dangerous but could not understand. The new path joined the old again, beyond the brook, and followed it straight ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... most subject to wounds and death. And the physical energy which led to any one tribe delighting in war might lead to its extermination by inducing quarrels with all surrounding tribes and leading them to combine against it. Again, superior cunning, stealth and swiftness of foot, or even better weapons, would often lead to victory as well as mere physical strength. Moreover this kind of more or less perpetual war goes on among all savage peoples. It could lead ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... was a man of about fifty, but from his appearance might well have been taken for at least ten years older. Small and skinny, with eyes bright and cunning, a hooked nose, a short yellow beard, unkempt hair, huge feet, and long bony hands, he presented all the typical characteristics of the German Jew, the heartless, wily usurer, the hardened miser and skinflint. As iron is attracted by the magnet, so ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... Frost very cunning, and they looked at Dolly more than Susie, but Cordelia Running Bird did not care. And my father was so happier he laughed and laughed when Dolly nipped her nose and pinched her toes just right, and when the song stopped he slapped his knees and cried very loud, ...
— Big and Little Sisters • Theodora R. Jenness
... in pursuit. There was no need for secrecy, for the fugitives had now laid aside their caution, and could be heard riding for all they were worth, and the result of the chase would depend on speed, not cunning. So thick was the darkness that more than once Gerrard was obliged to draw rein, and in the silence palpitating with the breath of excited men and horses, listen for the pursued, but it was soon clear that they were maintaining a fairly straight line for the north. There they must sooner or later ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... afforestation, Scanno continues its system of draconic severity. It is worth while, in a country which used to suffer so much from reckless grazing of goats on the hill-sides, and the furious floods of water. The Sagittario stream is hemmed in by a cunning device of stones contained within bags of strong wire; it was introduced many years ago by an engineer from Modena. And if you care to ascend the torrents, you will find they have been scientifically dammed by the administration, whereas the peasant, when they overflow and ruin his crops, contents ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... surprised me, but I was too full of Raoul to pay much attention to his servant. Still, I noticed he was a small, weazened, mean-looking fellow, quite a dwarf, in fact, with sharp, keen eyes and a general air of cunning. ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... through the smells and the sights. That nibble of cheese had been like a drop of human blood to a man-eating tiger. It made her bold, cunning, even while it maddened. She stopped at this counter and demanded a slice of summer sausage. It was paper-thin, but delicious beyond belief. At the next counter there was corned beef, streaked fat and lean. Jennie longed to bury ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... account of the cubs he did not want them to be too far away from or too close to his lair, and Tera followed him at a little distance in an undecided mood, for she was troubled. Her first thought was for her little ones, and with the cunning of the tiger she wished to lead the beaters away from her cubs. So it was that, with stealthy, but hesitating steps, she followed Tranta, who had come out earlier than usual, in order to provide against to-morrow's danger. But on the way to find the korinda bush, something happened that turned ...
— Rataplan • Ellen Velvin
... were approaching Flinders' Bay on our return, a kangaroo was started some distance ahead of us; presently I observed an old dog, who was wont to "run cunning," suddenly stop close in front of me. The next moment the game, closely pursued, dropped in a bound, not six yards from where I stood, and before he could rise again, old "Ugly" had his prize by the throat. This proved to be a doe, and on examining her pouch a foetus was found in it, perfectly ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... Vee. "But look at that old Dutch roof with the wide eaves, and the recessed doorway, and the trellises on either side, and that big clump of purple lilacs nestling against the gable end. Oh, and there's a cunning little pond in the rear, just where it ought to be! I do wish we might go in and ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... deep design in the presence of those articles, and we can add that our hero sadly feared that the motive suggested by the mother was the truth, that the girl had been the victim of some heartless villain, and he concluded that if such were indeed the fact the smooth, cunning, adroit and skillful ...
— A Successful Shadow - A Detective's Successful Quest • Harlan Page Halsey
... my fine fellow, that you don't be laughing at the wrong side of your mouth before long, for I've a notion that you're cursedly in the wrong box, as cunning a fellow as you think yourself. D—n your stupid head, can't you tell what brings ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... shone and the cannon of the two armies challenged each other steadily, that the Firefly of France fought his greatest battle in the air. Since his whole aim was escape, it was bloodless; he had to trust to skill and cunning; he dared manoeuvers that appalled others, dropped plummet-like, looped dizzily, soared to the sheerest heights. He had been wounded. The framework of his plane was damaged. Still he gained on his foes and won through to the lines ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... born within two hours of midnight on Saturday could not have been ready for christening at the kirk next day without the breaking of the Sabbath. Had the secret of the nocturnal light been mine alone all might have been well; but Betsy Munn's evidence was irrefutable. Great had been Bell's cunning, but Betsy had outwitted her. Passing the house on the eventful night, Betsy had observed Marget Dundas, Bell's sister, open the door and creep cautiously to the window, the chinks in the outside shutters of which she cunningly closed up with "tow." As in a flash the disgusted Betsy saw what ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... the men who had come to bring the law into the Lone Lands did not relax their vigilance. They knew West's crafty, cunning mind. This might be a ruse to trap them. When they left the sled and moved forward, it was with rules ready. The hunters stalked their prey as they would have done a musk ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... she said vehemently, "that if the poor thing didn't bark at every one who passes it wouldn't be kept there. I do think men are cunning brutes. I've let it go twice, on the sly; it's nearly bitten me both times, and then it goes simply mad with joy; but it always runs back home at last, and they chain it up again. If I had my way, I'd chain that man up." Jon saw her teeth and her eyes gleam. "I'd brand ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... from Bornoo, Bambarra, Jinnie, Beni Killeb[86] (sons of dogs), and Beni Aree (sons of the naked); they are, generally, prisoners of war, though many are stolen when young, by people who make a trade of this practice. The laws are very severe against this crime; it requires, therefore, great cunning and duplicity; no men of any property are ever guilty of it. The slave stealers take the children by night out of the town, and sell them to some peasant, who sells them to a third, and so from hand to hand, till they are carried out of the country; if ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... playing the part of a spy, but it must be remembered that he was an old college officer, and had something of the detective's sagacity, and a certain cunning derived from the habit of keeping an eye on mischievous students. If any underhand contrivance was at work, involving the welfare of any one in whom he was interested, he was a dangerous person for the plotters, for he had plenty ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... however, I was cunning enough not to give the least room to any in the family to suspect me, or to imagine that I had the least correspondence with this young gentleman. I scarce ever looked towards him in public, or answered if he spoke to me when anybody was near us; but for all that, we had every now and then a little ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe
... for trial)—"You certainly effected the robbery in a remarkably ingenious way; in fact, with quite exceptional cunning." ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... complying with its demands, and the penalty would be my election when a man who had seized his manhood at the peril of his life should claim of me shelter and the means of escape. Before I refuse that, "may my right hand forget its cunning and my tongue cleave to the roof of ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... sprang to her eyes. She stood looking sadly down upon the money for a moment, then, with a weary sigh, replaced it in her purse, together with the ticket, and left the shop without a word; while the tricky pawnbroker looked after her, a smile of cunning triumph wreathing his coarse lips, as he gleefully washed his hands, behind the counter, with "invisible soap ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... intertwined figures thereon took shape—nay, took life; the intricate, elaborate design ceased to be a design, and became a procession, a saturnalia; became a sinister comedy, which, when first visualized, shocked Soames immoderately. The horrors presented by these devices of evil cunning, crowding the walls, appalled the narrow mind of the beholder, revolted him in an even greater degree than they must have revolted a man of broader and cleaner mind. He became conscious of a quality of evil which pervaded the room; the entire place seemed ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... power with cunning," suggested the Queen. "Take my advice, and steal over to Regos at night, when it is dark, and capture or destroy the ...
— Rinkitink in Oz • L. Frank Baum
... Prudence never asked such questions. But she would like to know if that gold pen cost so very much, and that glass inkstand shaped like a pyramid, and all that cream note-paper with maple tassels and autumn leaves and butterflies and ever so many cunning things painted in its left corners. And there was a pile of foolscap on the table, and some long, yellow envelopes, and some old books and some new books and an ivory paper-cutter; all something apart ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
... inaction. His lack of strength was never a check upon his high stomach; he would fight with boys of twice his size, and accept the certain defeat in a cheerful spirit of dogged pugnacity. Moreover, if his arms were weak, his cunning was as keen-edged as his tongue; and, before his stricken eye had paled, he had commonly executed an ample vengeance upon his enemy. Nor was it industry that placed him at the top of the class. A ready wit made him master ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... time while he stole under the cedars and through the thickets, spying out the cunning coyotes. Then Naab's yell pealing out claimed his attention; he answered and returned. When they met he recounted his adventures ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... drawing-room, he perceived Donna Serafina and Advocate Morano on either side of the chimney-piece, whilst behind the calm yet passionate visage of Benedetta appeared the smiling face of Monsignor Nani, with cunning eyes and ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... which islands came in a great number of canoas, having in some of them four, in some six, and in some also fourteen men, bringing with them cocos and other fruits. Their canoas were hollow within and cut with great art and cunning, being very smooth within and without, and bearing a gloss as if it were a horn daintily burnished, having a prow and a stern of one sort, yielding inward circle-wise, being of a great height, and full of certain white ...
— Sir Francis Drake's Famous Voyage Round the World • Francis Pretty
... our huts. Three Indians came in a canoe with mats, roots, and the berries of the sacacommis. These people proceed with a dexterity and finesse in their bargains which, if they have not learned it from their foreign visitors, may show how nearly allied is the cunning of savages to the little arts of traffic. They begin by asking double or treble the value of what they have to sell, and lower their demand in proportion to the greater or less degree of ardor or knowledge of the purchaser, who, with all his management, is not able to procure an article for less ...
— Lewis and Clark - Meriwether Lewis and William Clark • William R. Lighton
... it was vigorously played; but had Marjorie's arm lost its cunning? Her bowling went wide of the mark, Eric proposed that he should bowl, and she should bat. This made matters no better. Finally he stopped the game ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... earth except the deserts and the river bottoms, and men lived on the fruits and berries they found and the wild animals which they could shoot or snare, when they dressed in skins and lived in caves, there was little time for thought. But as men grew stronger and more cunning and learned how to live together, they had more time to think and ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... sound rule among civilised people that games which may be won by disabling your adversary, or wearing out his strength, or killing him, ought to be prohibited, at all events among its youth. Swiftness of foot, skill and agility, quickness of sight, and cunning of hands, are things to be encouraged in education. The use of brute force against an unequally matched antagonist, on the other hand, is one of the most debauching influences to which a young man can be exposed. The hurling of masses of highly trained athletes against one another ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... back dead, but alive you'll never get him into that boat, depend on it," answered Captain Rendall, laughing. "However, take care he is not too much for you; for those bears are cunning fellows, remember; and I should advise you to take a couple of muskets, and ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... to consult Master Blane, who advised that the younger pigs should be either sold, or killed and salted, and nothing left but the sow, who was a cunning old animal, and could pretty well take care of herself, besides that she was so tough and lean that one must be very hungry indeed to be greatly tempted by ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... my saddle with my armour on my back, under the correction of bragging, be it spoken, I should quickly leap into a wife. But, before Heaven, I cannot look greenly,[11] nor gasp out my eloquence, nor I have no cunning in protestation; only downright oaths, which I never use till urged, nor never break for urging. If thou canst love a fellow of this temper, Kate, whose face is not worth sun-burning, that never looks ...
— King Henry the Fifth - Arranged for Representation at the Princess's Theatre • William Shakespeare
... poles of the worship of past ages. Men have thus far bowed down before stocks, stones, insects, crocodiles, golden calves,—graven images, often of cunning workmanship, wrought with Phidian skill, of ivory, of ebony, of marble, but all false gods. Let them worship in future the true God, our Father, as He is in heaven and in the beneficent labors of His children on earth. Then farewell to the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... Prout afterwards found material suited to his genius in other directions, and left his first love; but Turner retained the early affection to the close of his life, and the last oil picture which he painted, before his noble hand forgot its cunning, was the Wreck-buoy. The last thoroughly perfect picture he ever ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin
... heaven is the power of a Grecian king over a Grecian state:—the social life of the gods is the life most coveted by the Grecian heroes;—the uncertain attributes of the deities, rather physical or intellectual than moral—strength and beauty, sagacity mixed with cunning—valour with ferocity—inclination to war, yet faculties for the inventions of peace; such were the attributes most honoured among men, in the progressive, but still uncivilized age which makes the interval so pre-eminently Grecian— between ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of her husband's did not please the wife, and she proposed their going up together, but the slippery fellow used all his cunning, and she ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things to become potent engines, by which cunning ambitions and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people, and to usurp to themselves, the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to ...
— Count The Cost • Jonathan Steadfast
... effendi, none should tell the truth in this place, unless in hope of being disbelieved!" He laid a finger on his right eye, as I have seen Arabs do when they mean to ascribe to themselves unfathomable cunning. "Since you entered this common room you have not ceased to observe me closely. The other sportman has watched those Zingarri. What ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... turning 'em up cut all to slices. Only the very last fall I went to move some tulips, when I found every bulb upside down, and the stems crooked round. He had turned 'em over in the spring, and the cunning creatures had soon found that heaven was not where it ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... that fact alone was abundantly conclusive as to the disordered state of his intellect. He now ordered brandy and water, a pipe, and a screw of tobacco. These ministrants to a mind disturbed somewhat calmed the doctor's excitement, and his cunning gray eyes soon brightly twinkled again through ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 431 - Volume 17, New Series, April 3, 1852 • Various
... chauffeur under like supervision. He was one of their kind, and with the cunning of a diplomat obtained the permit to buy petrol, most precious of all treasures in the field of war. Indeed, gasoline, along with courage and discipline, completed the trinity of success in ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... braces her woman's energy, her womanly electricity. Hence, you may see her endowed with two gifts. One is the inspiration of lucid frenzy, which in its several degrees, becomes poesy, second-sight, depth of insight, cunning simplicity of speech, the power especially of believing in yourself through all your delusions. Of such a gift the man, the wizard, knows nothing. On his side no beginning ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... his opinions[598] with a vehemence contrasting somewhat unfavourably with the patience and humility of Law's reply.[599] As for the Moravians, not Warburton, nor Lavington, nor Stinstra, nor Duncombe, ever used stronger words against 'these most dangerous of the Antinomians—these cunning hunters.'[600] Count Zinzendorf, on the other hand, published a notice that his people had no ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... is daily in the blatant mouths of preachers and moralists, the very cant of emptiness and folly. It means nothing, nor can any play of words or cunning twisting of conception ever give it meaning. For the "self" is the divine, imperishable portion of the eternal God which is in man. I may control my limbs and the strength that is in them, and I may force under the appetites and passions of this ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... of babyhood, and therefore could be held to do no wrong, she would certainly have fallen into general disgrace; but then it was "Ally," and that was apology for all things, and the exploit was related in half whispers as so funny, so cunning, that Miss Curlypate was in nowise disconcerted at the head shakes and "naughty Allys" ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... would keep over to the next slack season, so that every one would have less than ever. Sooner or later, by this plan, they would have all the floating labor of Chicago trained to do their work. And how very cunning a trick was that! The men were to teach new hands, who would some day come and break their strike; and meantime they were kept so poor that they could not ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... solid, illusion is yielding, also illusion never issues victorious from a combat with it; during a struggle illusion endeavors vainly to display its subterfuges and cunning; illusions disappear one by one, crusht by the powerful arms ...
— Common Sense - - Subtitle: How To Exercise It • Yoritomo-Tashi
... the committee a number of his "health officers'' and "sanitary inspectors,'' whom he evidently thought best qualified to pass muster; but as one after another was examined and cross-examined, neither the cunning of Boole nor the skill of Mr. Graham could prevent the revelation of their utter unfitness. In the testimony of one of them the whole monstrous absurdity culminated. Judge Whiting examining him before the commission with reference to a case of small-pox which had occurred within ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... for thread, and Taro got Grannie to help him. Grannie would do almost anything in the world for the Twins. And pretty soon there were two cunning little paper wagons ...
— THE JAPANESE TWINS • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... been empty. She would appeal to the absence of the diamonds, and the thieves,—who would be known as thieves,—would be supposed, even by their own friends and associates, to have disposed of the diamonds before they had been taken. There would be a mystery in all this, and a cunning cleverness, the idea of which had in itself a certain charm for Lizzie Eustace. She would have all the world at a loss. Mr. Camperdown could do nothing further to harass her; and would have been, so far, overcome. She would be saved from the feeling of public defeat in the affair of the necklace, ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... against which these countries are theoretically in revolt, and which they only tolerate as chains are borne, is greeted in Germany as the dawning of a splendid future, which as yet scarcely dares to translate itself from cunning[3] theory into the most ruthless practice. Whereas the problem in France and England reads: Political economy or the rule of society over wealth, it reads in Germany: national economy or the rule of private property over nationality. ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... to come, when stealthy change Hath stolen the cider-press away And the gnarled orchards of the grange Have fallen before a slow decay, Were I so cunning, I would carve From some time-scorning monolith A sculpture that should well preserve The fame of old ...
— Songs, Merry and Sad • John Charles McNeill
... queer anecdote take this: a 'cute negro barber had persuaded me to have my hair cut, to which suggestion, as it was hissing hot weather, I agreed. He had a neat little shop close to a jeweller's; next morning I passed that shop and noticed my name placarded there, surrounded by gold lockets, for that cunning nigger and his gilded friend were making a rich harvest of my shaved curls. Sambo can be as sharp as Jonathan, when ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... Bliss is permanent; it was not long before a Discovery was made that I was a married Man. Here I had Occasion for the Exercise of all my Cunning. To deny it, I knew was to no purpose, because it would be proved; and to own it, might be the means of ruining my Design. Now, in order to steer safely between Scilla and Charibdis, I fairly owned the Charge; but at the same Time intimated, ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... Polly very slowly, "Mamsie doesn't want a big party in the evening to see her married, but to have a cunning little company of friends come in ...
— Five Little Peppers Midway • Margaret Sidney
... got a heavy fall in the House of Lords the other night on the St. Sulpice question.[14] He brought it forward in an elaborate speech the week before, with his usual ability and cunning; and he took the Duke of Wellington in; for, after hearing the Bishop protest, and apparently make out, that 'a great blow had been struck at the Reformation,' he got up, and, in total ignorance of the subject, committed ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... certainly wished to make others believe, that he was sovereign, and that it was absolutely in his power to do or refuse to do anything. He little regarded the safety of the people as the supreme law, as clearly appeared in the war, although when the spit was turned in the ashes, it was sought by cunning and numerous certificates and petitions to shift the blame upon others. But that happened so because the war was carried too far, and because every one laid the damage and the blood which was shed to his account. La Montagne ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • J. F. Jameson, Editor
... the soul doth come: Seek I myself from pain to disengage, Hope sustains me then, whoso scourges, tires;—(altrui rigor mi lassa) Love doth exalt and reverence abase me What time I yearn towards the highest good. High thoughts, holy desires, and mind intent Upon the labours and the cunning of the heart Towards the immense divine immortal object, So do, that I be joined, united, fed, That I lament no more; that reason, sense, attend, Discourse ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... unable to meet them with truth and honesty, and he has resorted to counter-acts of dishonesty and falsehood, and become warped and distorted; without any health or freedom or sincerity in him he has grown up to manhood, and is or esteems himself to be a master of cunning. Such are the lawyers; will you have the companion picture of philosophers? or will this be ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... to conjecture. In the pages of his diary Adams painted the portrait of his adversary as he saw him—"cold, calculating, wily, always commanding his temper, proud because he is a Spaniard but supple and cunning, accommodating the tone of his pretensions precisely to the degree of endurance of his opponents, bold and overbearing to the utmost extent to which it is tolerated, careless of what he asserts or how grossly it ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... deuce did she get that? Good idea of hers, too, to cultivate the soft style. And there's sadness in her face, too. Can it be real? By Heavens! if I thought it could be real I'd—but pooh! what insanity! It's her art. There never was such cunning. She cultivates the soft, sad style so as to attract lovers—lovers—who adore her—who save her life—who become her obedient slaves! Oh yes; and I—what am I? Why they get together and laugh at me; they giggle; ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... softest fur, And the sweetest little purr, And such little velvet paws With such cunning little claws, And blue eyes, just like the sky! (Must they turn green, by and by?) Two are striped like tigers, three Are as black as black can be, And they run so fast and play With their tails, and are so gay, Is it not a pity that Each must grow ...
— Child Songs of Cheer • Evaleen Stein
... wilde, And ever against eating Cares, Lap me in soft Lydian Aires, Married to immortal verse Such as the meeting soul may pierce In notes, with many a winding bout Of lincked sweetnes long drawn out, With wanton heed, and giddy cunning, The melting voice through mazes running; Untwisting all the chains that ty The hidden soul of harmony. That Orpheus self may heave his head From golden slumber on a bed Of heapt Elysian flowres, and hear Such streins ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... satisfied with his cunning detective work, slipped out and joined his impatient companion, Perkins, who agreed to communicate straightway with Lieutenant Gaines, commandant at Fort Stoddart, a post on the Tombigbee. Having secured a canoe and a colored boy to paddle it, Colonel Perkins, on the following ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... he was no match for Duval, and knew that what he lacked in this respect he must make up in agility and cunning. ...
— The Boy Allies in the Trenches - Midst Shot and Shell Along the Aisne • Clair Wallace Hayes
... myself," murmured Trude, as she patted her old, wrinkled cheeks. "I was as cunning and wise as Solomon. There, shriek for Trude, order her to open it. Trude is not there, and she ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... at [5066]Rome," saith Aretine's Lucretia, "in the flower of my fortunes, rich, fair, young, and so well brought up, my conversation, age, beauty, fortune, made all the world admire and love me." Night alone, that one occasion, is enough to set all on fire, and they are so cunning in great houses, that they make their best advantage of it: Many a gentlewoman, that is guilty to herself of her imperfections, paintings, impostures, will not willingly be seen by day, but as [5067]Castilio ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... wrenched the animal's head as if he would snap it off. The wrench was in reality so violent that the thick neck seemed to have lost its stiffness and to become half-paralyzed, whilst the nose dropped blood. The premeditated human contrivance of the nose-ring was too cunning for impulsive brute force, ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... or unorganized societies or associations pick their leaders in this way. The strongest, the most courageous, the most cunning, press to the front in an emergency, and their leadership is accepted as a matter of course by those who are less strong or courageous or cunning. The leaders of a miscellaneous mob are apt to be thus self-selected. The leaders of new activities, ...
— The Next Step - A Plan for Economic World Federation • Scott Nearing
... of the Jockey Club, was that form of disgust which set a pistol in the hands of a young Werther, bored to death less by Charlotte than by German princes. It was a thoroughly German face, full of cunning, full of simplicity, stupidity, and courage; the knowledge which brings weariness, the worldly wisdom which the veriest child's trick leaves at fault, the abuse of beer and tobacco,—all these were there to be seen in it, and to heighten the contrast of opposed qualities, ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... deserve your confidence in him," he answered. "You want to know why Miss Westerfield called here. Her object in view was to twist me round her finger—and I beg to inform you that she has completely succeeded. My dear Randal, this pretty creature's cunning is remarkable even for a woman. I am an old lawyer, skilled in the ways of the world—and a young girl has completely overreached me. She asked—oh, heavens, how innocently!—if Mrs. Norman was likely to make a long stay at ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... war, and the like. They believe likewise in four evil spirits, dwelling in four separate mountains, and whatever ill befalls them they attribute to the agency of one of these demons. On such occasions they apply to one of their cunning men, who has recourse to his art, and by cutting a lemon ascertains which of these has been the author of the mischief, and by what means the evil spirit may be propitiated; which always proves to be the sacrificing a buffalo, hog, goat, or whatever animal the ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... almost ready to believe that, but cunning was not the only weapon in his enemies' arsenal. How would this lean lawyer stand up under intimidation, ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... he knew the man only too well. It was Zminis, the chief of the spies to the night patrol; a man who was particularly inimical to Heron, and whose hatred included the son, by whom he had been befooled and misled in more than one wild ploy with his boon companions. This spy, whose cruelty and cunning were universally feared, might do him a serious mischief, and he therefore did not tell his sister, to whom the name of Zminis was well known, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... all the graceful contemplative air of a prowling Tom, was just the person to deal with her. A more suavely cunning and opportunistic soul never was. His motto might well have been, speak ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... with a pitchfork, and in terror then, for his slyness and cunning were on a par with his other pleasant peculiarities. One of the poor devils he killed entered the stable all unsuspecting. Geronimo had broken his chains, and stood close against the wall of his stall in the ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... very cunning," answered Mrs. Spencer, "and I'm glad you have them. Though four seems a good many. Don't you want to give ...
— Marjorie's New Friend • Carolyn Wells
... wits to work with hellish cunning. They wanted to surround Great Britain with a sea of death so full of mines and submarines that no ship could live. The mines were not placed at random, but where they would either kill their victims ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... Siegfried / the sightless mantle wore, Had he within it / of strength as good a store As other men a dozen / in himself alone. The full stately princess / anon by cunning art he won. ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler
... began to understand all she had flung away for this man, when the mother in her was at last fully aroused, and all her wits were driven headlong to discover a way by which to satisfy her all-consuming desire for her children, now the native cunning of the woman asserted itself. She saw in one revealing flash her position, she saw where lay her power at the moment, and she clung to it desperately, determined to play the man while she could to gain ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... son, Paul, was born on the 20th of September, 1753. He was unquestionably the son of Count Sottikoff, a nobleman alike distinguished for the graces of his person and of his mind. Through a thousand perils and cunning intrigues, Catharine and the count prosecuted their amour. Woe was, as usual, to both of them the result. The empress gives a very touching account of her sufferings, in both body and mind, on the occasion of the ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... The two laborers he had mentioned by name, were youths of mould and strength, and they were well inured to toil, no less than to the particular privations and dangers of a border life. Like most men of their years and condition, they were practised too in the wiles of Indian cunning; and though the Province of Connecticut, compared to other settlements, had suffered but little in this species of murderous warfare, they both had martial feats and perilous experiences of their own to recount, during the light labors of ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... that Martin was monstrous well-disposed to regard his position in that light, after his recent experience of the Screw, and of Mrs Pawkins's boarding-house. The consequence was that he made himself very agreeable indeed; and by the time the tea and coffee arrived (with sweet preserves, and cunning tea-cakes in its train), was in a highly genial state, and much ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... engagement that he wrote to his friend Lieutenant-Colonel Rickson: "I have this day signified to Mr. Pitt that he may dispose of my slight carcass as he pleases, and that I am ready for any undertaking within the compass of my skill and cunning. I am in a very bad condition both with the gravel and rheumatism; but I had much rather die than decline any kind of service that offers. If I followed my own taste it would lead me into Germany. However, it is not our part to choose, ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... towards us; as they rolled they disengaged little avalanches of rapid sparks, and when they reached the ground they sometimes fell against a vine stump and set it in a blaze for a moment. They said that this is Etna's cunning way of taking a glass of wine; he opens a mouth and consumes a vineyard. All the time there was a roaring noise like coals being thrown on the fire, only much louder, and the great sloping wall glowed in the ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... Familiarize yourselves with the chains of bondage and you prepare your own limbs to wear them. Accustomed to trample on the rights of others, you have lost the genius of your own independence and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises among you. And let me tell you, that all these things are prepared for you by the teachings of history, if the elections shall promise that the next Dred Scott decision and all future decisions will be quietly ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... shop he suspendeth the said purse and crieth out, saying, 'Where are ye, O sharpers of Egypt, O prigs of Al-Irak, O tricksters of Ajam-land? Behold, Zurayk the fishmonger hath hung up a purse in front of his shop, and whoso pretendeth to craft and cunning, and can take it by sleight, it is his.' So the long fingered and greedy-minded come and try to take the purse, but cannot; for, whilst he frieth his fish and tendeth the fire, he layeth at his feet scone-like circles of lead; and whenever a thief thinketh ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... thought himself singular. "This much sunk me. I thought my condition was alone; but how to get out of, or get rid of, these things I could not." Again the very ground of his faith was shaken. "Was the Bible true, or was it not rather a fable and cunning story?" All thought "their own religion true. Might not the Turks have as good Scriptures to prove their Mahomet Saviour as Christians had for Christ? What if all we believed in should be but 'a think-so' too?" So powerful and so real were his ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... devil's bird, Shut in the pommel of his sword, And taught him all the cunning pranks, Of ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... bridled her head and half shut one eye that gave her an unpleasant look of cunning. "He swore me not to tell and said little girls were often ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... stripped and painted as he was—contemplating, if anything, himself. The figure is just as Vasari describes it, ritratto dal' vivo e senza artificio niuno. The royal saint of Alexandria is a sister in refined elegance of beauty and costume, as in cunning elaboration of coiffure, to the St. Catherine of the Madonna del Coniglio, and the not dissimilar figure in our own Holy Family with St. Catherine at the ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips
... intercourse, and of many mutual good offices. It seemed probable that, as long as Rochester continued to submit himself, though tardily and with murmurs, to the royal pleasure, he would continue to be in name prime minister. Sunderland, therefore, with exquisite cunning, suggested to his master the propriety of asking the only proof of obedience which it was quite certain that Rochester never would give. At present,—such was the language of the artful Secretary,—it was impossible to consult with the first of the King's servants respecting the object ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... girls, buxom wenches, stalwart youths, and the middle-aged—the grave, serious ones whom misfortune had driven from their old masters, and the ill-reputed ones, the trickish, thievish, lazy, whom the cunning of the negro-trader alone could keep in circulation. All were marketable, all were bought and sold, all passed in one door and out the other—all except her, little Mammy. As with her lameness, it took time ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King
... reality: I must shrink before the eye of man lest he should read my father's guilt in my glazed eyes: I must be silent lest my faltering voice should betray unimagined horrors. Over the deep grave of my secret I must heap an impenetrable heap of false smiles and words: cunning frauds, treacherous laughter and a mixture of all light deceits would form a mist to blind others and be as the poisonous simoon to me.[44] I, the offspring of love, the child of the woods, the nursling of Nature's bright self was to submit to ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... of this great aunt, except that she had once sent her a most beautiful doll, with a cunning trunk filled with such neat, old-fashioned frocks and aprons, together with a real little slate and books. Aunt Elizabeth had written a tiny letter which the doll had brought pinned to her muff. In the letter the doll's name was said to be Ada, and many instructions ...
— A Dear Little Girl • Amy E. Blanchard
... possessed him—a crock of gold. When he put together one thing and another, he considered it almost certain that Ben had flung away among the lot no mere honey-pot, but perhaps indeed a money-pot: Burke hadn't half the cunning of a child; more fool he, and maybe so much the better for me, thought money-bitten, selfish Roger. Thus, in the night's hot imaginations, he resolved to find the spoil; to will, was then to do: to do, was then to conquer. However, Nature's sweet restorer ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... so seriously—indeed, I meant nothing of the kind. It would be quite natural if a young man like you did use some pains to look at such a 'cunning piece of Nature's handiwork' as ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... gentleman had been with his grand, moral remarks; and certainly its little shrill pipe was not half so bad as the old tobacco pipe. Sarah said that although she loved her grandfather, she could not help being pleased to have him a baby again; he was so cunning and droll, and she did so like to toss him about, and feed ...
— The Magician's Show Box and Other Stories • Lydia Maria Child
... having him in my court, this Justin Chevassat, alias Maxime de Brevan. He must be a cool swindler, brimful of cunning and astuteness, familiar with all the tricks of criminal courts, and not so easily overcome. It will be no child's play, I am sure, to prove that he was the instigator of Crochard's crimes, and that he has hired him with his own money. Ah! There will be ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... had a fatal ending for the cub. However, such experiences were to be expected. They were a part of the education that fitted him for the battle of life. He had at last learned that, at least for the present, he was no match for the ant-eater. He possessed cunning, stealth, agility and intelligence. The other creature could boast of none of these things; but in their stead it had formidable as well as useful claws, and was covered with a leathery hide that rendered it immune to assaults that he could not hope to withstand. It was evident that their paths ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... palace, where, with full freedom, you can decree her fate. Yet you astonish me by this mighty change in your appearance. That figure, that countenance, that costume, perfectly conceal your real being, and I defy the most cunning to see in you to-day the ...
— Psyche • Moliere
... would have had the scrap of conversation properly focused in his mind, and would not have swallowed the bait as greedily as he did. But we all make mistakes. Irish made the mistake of underestimating the cunning of his enemies. ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... deservedly lie under. They excel in dancing and music, for they are active and lively, though of a thicker make than the French; they cut their hair close on the middle of the head, letting it grow on either side; they are good sailors, and better pirates, cunning, treacherous and thievish; above three hundred are said to be hanged annually at London; beheading with them is less infamous than hanging; they give the wall as the place of honour; hawking is the general ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... Newfoundland. Sailing from Placentia for Nantucket Shoals, he seized a whaling vessel, the Mary Anne. As the skipper of the whaler knew the coast well, Bellamy made him pilot of his small fleet. The cunning skipper one night ran his ship on to a sand-bank near Eastman, Massachusetts, and the rest of the fleet followed his stern light on to the rocks. Almost all the crews perished, only seven of the pirates being saved. These were seized and ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... familiar with the Navaho admire their energy, industry, independence, and cheerful disposition, and their ability to attack the problems of life in a way that no other wandering tribe has exercised. On the other hand, cunning and trickery are among their characteristics, and they are expert horse-thieves. With the Indian, as well as with civilized man, honesty may be interpreted in various ways. If one should leave his camp equipage unprotected in a tent, it would ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... the exercise of our best wit and ingenuity, and although a knowledge of mathematics and a certain familiarity with the methods of logic are often of great service in the solution of these things, yet it sometimes happens that a kind of natural cunning and sagacity is of considerable value. For many of the best problems cannot be solved by any familiar scholastic methods, but must be attacked on entirely original lines. This is why, after a long and wide experience, ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... everything about this just too cunning? Did these used to be Miss Dorothy's?" said Ethelwyn in ...
— What Two Children Did • Charlotte E. Chittenden
... have Medea here," she said; "I play her part myself, and I make her different. She was too cunning and had wicked thoughts in her heart, and so the poor Heroes suffered. If she had been good and true and had not killed Absyrtus, things might have had a different ending. I never like to think of Absyrtus in any case—because, do you know, I once hated my baby brother, and would ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... fiendish tower puts out into the hands of its agents many new devices, either for poisoning or wounding the disciples who travel on the King's Highway, and who by any kind of negligence come within reach of Satan's forces. "Seest thou," continued my guide, "with what cunning Satan hath builded this tower? By its exterior beauty he gaineth the confidence of the unwary, and thus winneth countless thousands to his cause. And seest thou the depth to which it reaches, not six thou ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... in me I would often be filled with uneasiness and some alarm; asking myself what all this could mean, and if it could be the way of martyrs or saints, for I had no courage or liking to be one or the other and was very frightened of suffering. And I think my cunning heart would have liked to take all the sweets and leave the bitter. How well He knew this, and how exquisitely He handled me, never forcing, only looking at me, inviting me with those marvellous perfections of His! ...
— The Golden Fountain - or, The Soul's Love for God. Being some Thoughts and - Confessions of One of His Lovers • Lilian Staveley
... was very cunning, and she finally thought of a trick that would give her what she wanted. She placed a bar of iron in the middle of the kitchen floor, and then by her magic arts made the iron invisible to human eyes. So that when Dorothy walked across ...
— The Wonderful Wizard of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... note once more, while his inscrutable face assumed an expression of malicious cunning. Then he glanced at ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... and this time savagely. "This empire flattered and entangled by cunning, this country irritated, this deceived, this drawn into argument, this and this and this treated with professed friendship, these tricked and juggled with—And then, when his plans are ripe and he is made drunk with belief in himself—just one sodden insult or monstrous breach of faith, which all ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... accursed cunning of our adversary Confounds all codes of honourable war, Which ever have held as granted that the track Of armies bearing hither from the Rhine— Whether in peace or strenuous invasion— Should pierce the Schwarzwald, and through Memmingen, And meet us ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... love all creatures well, but esteem them in that order which is according to God's laws and not according to our own human passions and predilections, not looking for swiftness, and strength, and cunning, rather than for patience and kindness, still less delighting in their animosity and cruelty one towards another, neither, if it may be avoided, interfering with the working of nature in any way, nor, when we interfere to obtain service, judging from ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... the drawing-room, I found the company seated round the fire, listening to the parson, who was deeply ensconced in a high-backed oaken chair, the work of some cunning artificer of yore, which had been brought from the library for his particular accommodation. From this venerable piece of furniture, with which his shadowy figure and dark weazen face so admirably accorded, he was dealing forth strange accounts ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... crushed. She remained motionless, the letter on her lap, seeing through the cunning of this girl who had had such a hold on her son for so long, and had not let him come to see her once, biding her time until the despairing old mother could no longer resist the desire to clasp her son in her arms, and would weaken and ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... fogie" is in this neighbourhood frequently applied to old men remarkable for shrewdness, cunning, quaintness, or eccentricity. This use of the term is evidently figurative, borrowed from its application to veteran soldiers. Cannot some of the military correspondents of "N. & Q." give the origin of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 218, December 31, 1853 • Various
... is, in what light do the priests in Italy regard their own system? Do they look upon it as an unrivalled compound of imposture and tyranny,—a cunning invention for procuring mitres, tiaras, purple robes, and other good things for themselves? or do they regard it as indeed founded in truth, and clothed with the sanction of heaven? They are behind the scenes, and have ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... father-long-legs, and put it out of window before it had succeeded in deranging her mother's equanimity either by bouncing into her face, or suspending itself by two or three legs in the wax of the candle. Mr. Keith seconded her efforts, but the insect was both lively and cunning, eluding them with a dexterity wonderful in such an apparently over-limbed creature, until at last it kindly rested for a moment with its wooden peg of a body sloping, and most of its thread-like members prone upon a newspaper, ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 1650. This council was presided over by the Archbishop of Turin, as regards one committee. The Marchioness Pianezza filled the same office over another whose members were ladies! She seems to have breathed the same spirit of ferocity and cunning as that which characterized the conduct of her husband, who commanded the fifteen thousand troops whose gentle entreaties were to win the Vaudois to the orthodoxy of Rome! This army fitly included three regiments of French soldiers, red-handed ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold
... to learn the wisdom of Solomon. But it was a very different wisdom that Herod professed, and in which he was verily a high authority, nor was the subtle daughter of the Ptolemies a docile pupil, but a practised expert in the same arts of cruelty and cunning; wherewith both pursued their several courses of ambition and sought to wheedle from their Roman masters cities and provinces. The reunion of Antony and Cleopatra must have greatly alarmed Herod, whose plans were directly thwarted by the freaks of Antony, and he must have been preparing ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... good reason to worry. In these wide seas empty of islands, it was no longer feasible to jump ship. Nor did we have any way to counter Captain Nemo's whims. We had no choice but to acquiesce; but if we couldn't attain our end through force or cunning, I liked to think we might achieve it through persuasion. Once this voyage was over, might not Captain Nemo consent to set us free in return for our promise never to reveal his existence? Our word of honor, which we sincerely would have kept. However, this delicate question would have to be negotiated ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... success? The effort, indeed, to investigate the materials from which some rare literary flavour is extracted is seldom satisfactory. We are reminded of the automaton chess-player who excited the wonder of the last generation. The showman, like the critic, laid bare his inside, and displayed all the cunning wheels and cogs and cranks by which his motions were supposed to be regulated. Yet, after all, the true secret was that there was a man inside the machine. Some such impression is often made by the most elaborate demonstrations of ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... thought that if he were to ask for a small apartment he would doubtless have been refused, on account of his want of consequence, he hastened to close at once with the innkeeper's remark, and deceive him with a cunning equal to his own. So, smiling as a man would do for whom whatever might be done was but simply his due, he said, "My dear host, I shall take the best and the ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the dupe of his protestations than he was himself of his own purposes. Ten years he had been married to her, yet her health was good, and her faculties were unimpaired; eagerly he had watched for her dissolution, yet his eagerness had injured no health but his own! So short-sighted is selfish cunning, that in aiming no further than at the gratification of the present moment, it obscures the evils of the future, while it impedes the perception of integrity ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... nay, in so wide a Universe there was even, unconsciously, by Commerce, some mutual helpfulness between them. How then? Simpleton! their Governors had fallen out; and, instead of shooting one another, had the cunning to make these ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... without feeling any distrust of this act of submission on her part; it was such a common experience, in my life, to find my sister guiding herself by my advice. But experience is not always to be trusted. Events soon showed that I had failed to estimate Eunice's resources of obstinacy and cunning at their true value. ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... their earlier and later work is contrasted; with a writer like Trollope, the newer method completely triumphs. Even in so confirmed a romance-maker as Wilkie Collins, to whom plot was everything and whose cunning of hand in this is notorious, there is a concession to the new ideal of Truth. He was touched by his time in the matter of naturalness of dialogue, though not of event. Wildly improbable and wooden as his themes may now seem, their manner is realistic, realism of speech, in fact, ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... speech she had said to him to-night that the old love of the morning of life was still the one living thing. Did she mean it or had she merely planned another triumph for her vanity in his second conquest, knowing that his high sense of honour would hold him silent and yet her slave. With a lawyer's cunning he put her to little tests to try the genuineness of her feeling. He threw off his restraint and led her back to the scenes of their youth. With a frankness that delighted her he told of his own struggles of the past nine years and watched with patient furtive ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... lover. And the evidence shows that you committed a crime based on passionate jealousy and hatred of a rival. You knew that Martinez was to dine with your mistress in a private room; you arranged to be at the same restaurant, at the same hour, and by a cunning and intricate plan, you succeeded in killing the man you hated. We have found the weapon of this murder, and it belongs to you; we have found a letter written by you full of violent threats against the murdered man; ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... country, by which he forms and cultivates matters of state for the rest of the world. His reasonings upon politics are with great profusion at all meetings; and he leaves the company with entire satisfaction that he hath fully convinced them. He is well provided with that inferior sort of cunning, which is the growth of his country, of a standard with the genius of the people, and capable of being transferred into every condition of life among them, from the boor to the burgomaster. He came into England with instructions, authorizing him to accommodate all differences ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... continued the king, still with a cunning smile on his lips, "I have a little adventure to propose to you, and as you are a brave and enterprising youth, you will doubtless look upon it as a great piece of good luck to have so rare an opportunity of distinguishing ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... yield me RATIONE OFFICII—that is it, ye see. He has pouched my fee, and drucken a mutchkin of brandy, and now he's ower the march, and left my cause, half won half lost—as dead a heat as e'er was run ower the back-sands. Now, I was advised by some cunning laddies that are used to crack a bit law wi' me in the House, that the best thing I could do was to take heart o' grace and set out after him; so I have taken post on my ain shanks, forby a cast in a cart, or the like. ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... von Bronsart—with a demand for a surrender. Just as this officer was starting off, I remarked to Bismarck that Napoleon himself would likely be one of the prizes, but the Count, incredulous, replied, "Oh no; the old fox is too cunning to be caught in such a trap; he has doubtless slipped off to Paris"—a belief which I found to prevail pretty ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... the gods, and the numerous and extravagant demands of a cunning and avaricious priesthood, made the heathenism of Samoa a ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... a Rich Merchant Man, That had both Ship and all; And he would cross the salt Seas, Tho' his cunning it ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various
... who say to you that you may keep dark thoughts, spite, suspicion, envy, cunning, covetousness in your hearts day after day, year after year, provided you do not openly act on them so as to do your neighbours ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... have shifted to give it right of way, for the weed is very prickly; but again the authority he did not question held him in his place, and the three, the man, the horse, and the plant, came together. Then it was the finale began, the real test, the matching of human cunning ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... mention of the true King. He was a usurper, caricaturing the true Monarch. Like most kings who have had 'great' tacked to their names, his greatness consisted mainly in supreme wickedness. Fierce, lustful, cunning, he had ruled without mercy; and now he was passing through the last stages of an old age without love, and ringed round by the fears born of his misdeeds. He trembles for his throne, as well he may, when he hears of these strangers. Probably he does not suppose them mixed ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... steward, a very stupid but cunning man who saw perfectly through the naive and intelligent count and played with him as with a toy, seeing the effect these prearranged receptions had on Pierre, pressed him still harder with proofs of the impossibility and above all the uselessness of ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... him a feeling of confidence and safety; tonight he knew why. What they said was, that men could still die for an idea; and would burn all they had made to keep their dreams. He knew the future of the world was safe; the careful planners would never be able to put it into a strait-jacket,—cunning and prudence would never have it to themselves. Why, that little boy downstairs, with the candlelight in his eyes, when it came to the last cry, as they said, could "carry on" for ever! Ideals were not archaic things, beautiful and impotent; they were the real sources of power among men. ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... showing us some consideration in not riding the beast down to the settlement," Blake remarked with a dubious smile, feeling strongly annoyed with himself for not taking more precautions. With the cunning which the lust for drink breeds in its victims Benson had outwitted him by feigning acquiescence. "Anyway," he added, "I'll have to go after him. We must have the horse, for one thing; but I suppose we'll lose four days. ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... was peculiar. His hair was of a tawny red and thickly matted, falling over his shoulders and completely covering his narrow brow. His small pale-grey eyes twinkled with an expression of horrible ferocity and cunning, from deep sunken hollows. The complexion was of a dark olive colour; the teeth were strong and white, and the canine teeth protruded over the lower lip when the mouth was closed. The boy's hands were large and powerful, the nails black and pointed like ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... rats were not made by the bills of mortality, but by the bills of fare: it was getting rid of a nuisance by the unheard-of process of stomaching a nuisance! Day after day passed on, and rats disappeared by hundreds, never to return. What could all their cunning and resolution avail them now? They had resisted before, and could have resisted still, the ordinary force of dogs, ferrets, traps, sticks, stones, and guns, arrayed against them; but when to these engines of assault were added, as auxiliaries, smothering onions, scalding stew-pans, ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... to the harangues of this leader of American "conservatism." Never before did the first office in the gift of the people appear so poor an object of human ambition, as when Andrew Johnson made it an eminence on which to exhibit inability to behave and incapacity to reason. His low cunning conspired with his devouring egotism to make him throw off all the restraints of official decorum, in the expectation that he would find duplicates of himself in the crowds he addressed, and that mob diffused would heartily sympathize with Mob impersonated. Never was blustering demagogue ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
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