"Knave" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the breakfast was over, that everybody whom this Gowan knew was either more or less of an ass, or more or less of a knave; but was, notwithstanding, the most lovable, the most engaging, the simplest, truest, kindest, dearest, best fellow that ever lived. The process by which this unvarying result was attained, whatever the premises, might have been stated by Mr Henry Gowan thus: 'I claim to be always book-keeping, ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... limitation of desire, with its corollary of self-sufficience, contains in itself the great maxim that Emilius and every one else must learn some trade. To work is an indispensable duty in the social man. Rich or poor, powerful or weak, every idle citizen is a knave. And every boy must learn a real trade, a trade with his hands. It is not so much a matter of learning a craft for the sake of knowing one, as for the sake of conquering the prejudices which despise it. Labour for glory, if you have not to labour from necessity. Lower yourself to the ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... twelve month," said Rob-in, "Under this green wood tree. It were great sham-e," said Rob-in, "A knight alone to ride, Without squy-er, yeoman or page, To walk-e by his side. I shall thee lend Little Johan my man, For he shall be thy knave; In a yeoman's stead he may thee stand ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various
... shamefaced, bringing before us the blushing roses of a lovely face. The Vikings, mere pirates from the viks or creeks of Scandinavia, have, by the same process, been raised to the dignity of kings; just as coat cards—the king, and queen, and knave in their gorgeous gowns—were ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... of an Eagle The Knave of Diamonds The Rocks of Valpre The Swindler The Keeper of the Door Bars of Iron Rosa Mundi The Hundredth Chance The Safety Curtain Greatheart The Lamp in the Desert The Tidal Wave The Top of the World The ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... my knave advance, To draw this company? he hung out no banners Of a strange calf with five legs to be seen, Or a huge lobster with ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... no cunning a knave to ken, An[9] a man but hear him speak; An it were not for bursting of my bow, John, I ...
— The Book of Brave Old Ballads • Unknown
... hath turned A bitter knave of late, and lost his mirth, And mutters riddling warnings and wild tales Of the great days of heathen Rome; and prates Of peace, and liberty, and equal law, And mild philosophy, to us the knights And warriors of this warlike age, who rule By the bright ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 338, Saturday, November 1, 1828. • Various
... the New England seaman—he who had been cast away in the boat—should lead him about, and, above all, that he should sit beside him when he played cards and count the number of the pips, for unaided he could not tell the king from the knave. ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... unfold their tales at once, Both wished their tales, like simial ones, prehensile, That they might seize his ear; fool! knave! and dunce! Flew zigzag back and forth, like strokes of pencil In a child's fingers; voluble as duns, They jabbered like the stones on that immense hill 110 In the Arabian Nights; until the stranger Began to think his ear-drums in ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... may remember, must reckon as the knave; and therefore is consistently regarding an ominous trisyllable, which rhymes to "knavish tricks" in the national anthem; our suit now leads us in regular succession to the queen, a topic (it were Milesian to say a subject) whereon now, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... you he is a boy, and I shall bring him up; while Gondi is already an accomplished conspirator, an ambitious knave who sticks at nothing. He has dared to dispute Madame de la Meilleraie with me. Can you conceive it? He dispute with me! A petty priestling, who has no other merit than a little lively small-talk and a cavalier air. Fortunately, the husband himself ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... game") for three players. All the tens, nines and eights are removed from an ordinary pack; the order of the cards is three, two, ace, king, queen, &c. In scoring the ace counts 3; the three 2; king, queen and knave 1 each. The last trick counts 3. Each separate hand is a whole game. One player plays against the other two, paying to each or receiving from each the difference between the number of points that he ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... could act their enthusiastic agitations. At this time he did not profess any particular religion, but something of all on occasion; was very ignorant of the world, and had, as I afterward found, a good deal of the knave in his composition. He did not like my lodging at Bradford's while I work'd with him. He had a house, indeed, but without furniture, so he could not lodge me; but he got me a lodging at Mr. Read's before mentioned, who was the owner of his house; and, my chest and clothes being come by this ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... Man. "The woman, I tell you, who fathoms heroism in the fellow that every one else thought was a knave—she's got something to brag about! The fellow who's shrewd enough to spy unutterable lovableness in the woman that no man yet has ever even remotely suspected of being lovable at all—God! It's like being Adam with the ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... wine. I truly hold it for an honour and praise to be called and reputed a Frolic Gualter and a Robin Goodfellow; for under this name am I welcome in all choice companies of Pantagruelists. It was upbraided to Demosthenes by an envious surly knave, that his Orations did smell like the sarpler or wrapper of a foul and filthy oil-vessel. For this cause interpret you all my deeds and sayings in the perfectest sense; reverence the cheese-like brain that feeds you with these fair billevezees and trifling jollities, and ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... to treat virtue in threadbare apparel with a cordiality as great as that which he would show to the same virtue endowed with prosperity. Scarcely a man is to be found who would not behave with more civility to a knave in broadcloth than to a knave in fustian. Though for the deference which they have shown to the vulgar rich, or the dishonestly successful, men afterwards compound with their consciences by privately venting their contempt; ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... little knave, Now senseless, floating on the fragrant wave; Why not content the cakes alone to munch? Dearly thou pay'st for buzzing round the bowl; Lost to the world, thou busy sweet-lipped soul— Thus Death, as well as Pleasure, ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... uncertain,—hovering, after dropping the cards, aimlessly about Tommy, and being only recalled by a strong nervous effort. Yet, notwithstanding this incapacity for even honest manipulation, Mr. Johnson covertly turned a knave from the bottom of the pack with such shameless inefficiency and gratuitous unskilfulness, that even Tommy was obliged to cough and look elsewhere to hide his embarrassment. Possibly for this reason the young gentleman was himself constrained, ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... of his 20,000,—aided by Boy Dietrich (KNABE, "Knave Dietrich," as one might fondly call him) and the Moravian Meal-wagons,—accomplished his Troppau-Jablunka Problem perfectly well; cleaning the Mountains, and keeping them clean, of that Pandour rabble, as he was the man to do. Nor would his Expedition require mentioning farther,—were it not for ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... honour than to be an accomplice with a pack of rascals that walk the streets on nights, and disturb good people in their beds. But he is out, if he thinks the whole World is blind! for there is one JOHN PARTRIDGE can smell a knave as far as Grub street, although he lies in the most exalted garret, and writeth himself "Squire"! But I will keep my temper! ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... have miss'd the irreverent doom Of those that wear the Poet's crown: Hereafter, neither knave nor clown Shall hold their ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... This is the only consistent trait in his character. In the same sentence, he frequently joins the most fulsome flattery and some insidious question; that asks the person, whom he addresses, if he do not confess himself to be both knave and fool. Delicacy of sentiment is one of his pretensions, though his tongue is licentious, his language coarse, and he is occasionally seized with fits of the most vulgar abuse. He declaims against dissimulation, yet will smilingly accost the man whom—'Ha! Migrate! How do you do? Give ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... hear the vagabonds in the street adjuring Venus and Bacchus; and my shoemaker swore "by the aspect of Diana," that he would not take less than ten pauls for what was worth about three;—yet was the knave forsworn. ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... peaceful years I have been allowed to live peacefully here at home. The time has now come when my master needs the help of all his loyal servants. He calls me to his help, and do you think I am going to play the coward and knave, and hide here in idleness while every rogue is striking at the crown? Come: be a woman. ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... latter had been able to make of the whole movement nothing but either a delusion or a fraud inspired by refined and calculated policy. The philosophers saw deeper into the matter than that; though for them, also, religion was false, originating, as Voltaire put it, when {707} the first knave met the first fool. But they were able to see causes of religious change and to point ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... forty and odd years past. The plot, what there is of it, concerns the clandestine love of Claire, the petted younger daughter of the Gley house, for an officer in the conqueror's host, whom she had met during a visit to Strasburg. Claire marries her Kurt, a shady worthless knave, and, as the book ends with the outbreak of war, is left to an unknown fate. Very stirring are the chapters that tell of the tumult of emotion that broke loose when the French guns were heard in Mulhouse; though here—as in all those war stories whose only satisfactory end is the final confusion ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, June 7, 1916 • Various
... thou so sure, varlet? Well, well, Be as familiar as thou wilt, my knave; Tis this ...
— Sir Thomas More • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... got, to forswear and suborn. He can rap his own raps[1] and has the true sapience, To turn a good penny to twenty bad halfpence. Then in spite of your sophistry, honest Will Wood Is a man of this world, all true flesh and blood; So you are but in jest, and you will not, I hope, Unman the poor knave for the sake of a trope. 'Tis a metaphor known to every plain thinker, Just as when we say, the devil's a tinker, Which cannot, in literal sense be made good, Unless by the devil we mean Mr. Wood. But some will object that the devil oft spoke, In heathenish times, from the trunk ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... court-room, I will enter. [He enters, sweeps, and puts a seat in its place.] There! I have tidied up the court-room and put the seats in readiness, and now I will go and tell the magistrates. [He walks about and looks around him.] But see! Here comes that arrant knave, the king's brother-in-law. I will go away without attracting his attention. [He stands apart. Enter Sansthanaka, ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... superiors. However, the difficulty must be got over somehow, and at any rate the plan seems to promise better than anything I had thought of. The first difficulty is how to get the ruffians for such a business. I cannot go up to the first beetle-browed knave I meet in the street and say to him, Are you disposed to aid me in the abduction ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... back to the lady's side. "Mademoiselle, for these two lying there, the honest man and the knave, what can be done at present has been done. Come, I pray you! ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... protectorate over a number of petty powers that have no valid excuse for existing; still it works no injury to any European government not bent on international buccaneering. Uncle Sam's promulgation of the Monroe Doctrine proves him a fool; Europe's frantic objection to it demonstrates that she is a knave. ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... took breath, and began again. "I don't see how you can forgive me, or how I can, so to speak, look myself in the face again. I have played the knave so long with you that it is perhaps the greatest knavery I can commit to be honest at last. But I am going to do it, Mary. I want to tell you the whole story. You ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... "Hah! knave," cried a voice beside her. "Let the child alone! And answer to me. What business had you with this canoe? Child, where are ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... degrade, A stern example must be made, To Coventry go, you tipsy bee!" So off to Coventry town went he. Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz. There, classed with all who misbehave, Both plausible rogue and noisome knave, In dismal dumps he lived to own The folly of trying to swarm alone! Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz. All came of trying to ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... I am but a fool, look you; and yet I have the wit to think my master is a kind of a knave: but that's all one, if he be but one knave] [W: but one kind] This alteration is acute and specious, yet I know not whether, in Shakespeare's language, one knave may not signify a knave on only one occasion, a single knave. We still use a double villain ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... and rehearse our parts?" asked the count: "for methinks everything is prepared, except the headsman and the spectators. A plague on the inhospitable knave!" ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... time, is handy with the spade, and uses his mother-wit in rounding off a capital story. Jonathan is all these, and something more. He astonishes his trans-atlantic comrades by the incomprehensible manner in which the knave will turn up when he deals the "pictures;" and the neat manner in which he mends the rent in his coat sleeve; is one short of funds, he will generously lend him a safe amount until "next pay day," provided, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... who calls himself a Christian and does not conduct his daily life in accordance with the precepts of the Sermon on the Mount, is one of two things—a fool who cannot understand the meaning of plain words, or a knave, who, for many reasons, which most of my hearers will understand, pretends to be that which he is not. I may remind you here that knavery is not by any means confined to the limits of what is conventionally termed criminality. For every crime ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... flowers, as it were, it stands a branded sinner. Doubtless its ancestors were industrious, honest creatures, seeking their food in the soil, and digesting it with the help of leaves filled with good green matter (chlorophyll) on which virtuous vegetable life depends; but some ancestral knave elected to live by piracy, to drain the already digested food of its neighbors; so the Indian Pipe gradually lost the use of parts for which it has need no longer, until we find it to-day without color and its leaves degenerated into mere scaly bracts. Nature had manifold ways of illustrating ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... to suppose It was by some shavings this fire first arose. "But yet," says the 'hero,' "I greatly suspect This fire was caused by the grossest neglect. But I'm glad it's put out, let it be as it will," Says the "heroic" watchman of Calversyke Hill. So, many brave thanks to this "heroic" knave, For thousands of lives no doubt he did save; And but for this "hero" the disaster had spread And smothered the nation while sleeping in bed; But to save all His people it was the Lord's will, Through the ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... On that day, Oates gave his lying evidence before the Council: he was allowed to go on a Jesuit drive, with warrants and officers; he caught several of the most important Jesuits. On September 29, the King heard his tale, and called him a 'lying knave.' None the less he was sent on another drive, and, says Mr. Pollock, 'before dawn most the Jesuits of eminence in London lay in gaol.' But Le Fevre, 'the Queen's confessor,' and the other 'Jesuits' whom Mr. Pollock suspects of Godfrey's murder, were not taken. Is it likely ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... thoughtful men to note are the principles and deeds on which the American pulpit and American public men plume themselves. We always allow our opponents to paint their own pictures. Our humble duty is to stand by and assure the spectators that what they would take for a knave or a hypocrite is really, in American estimation, a Doctor of Divinity ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... England! come tyrant, come knave, If you rule o'er our land, ye shall rule o'er our grave! Our vow is recorded—our banner unfurl'd, In the name of Vermont, we defy ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... be punished by the native authorities until their Vice-Consul has been cited to appear in their defence, and, in short, they are put above the law of their own country and enabled to amass considerable wealth. The fact that the foreigner who protects them is often a knave and a thief is a draw-back, but the popularity of protection is immense, for the protector may possibly not combine cunning with his greed, while the native Basha or his khalifa quite invariably does. British subjects may not give protection,—happily the British ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... your father's establishment,' Bazarov began again. 'The cattle are inferior, the horses are broken down; the buildings aren't up to much, and the workmen look confirmed loafers; while the superintendent is either a fool, or a knave, I haven't quite ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... they be these—the Wood, the Weed, the Wag: The Wood is that that makes the gallows tree; The Weed is that that strings the hangman's bag; The Wag, my pretty knave, betokens thee. ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... ye fause traitour! Gae oot until the street; It's shame that Kings and Queens should sit Wi' sic a knave ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... Reason the bias turns to good from ill And Nero reigns a Titus, if he will. The fiery soul abhorred in Catiline, In Decius charms, in Curtius is divine: The same ambition can destroy or save, And makes a patriot as it makes a knave. This light and darkness in our chaos joined, What shall divide? The God within the mind. Extremes in nature equal ends produce, In man they join to some mysterious use; Though each by turns the other's bound invade, ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... Ursulines. Here came once upon a time a sprightly lady who added a thousand lively interests. This was Louise de Cabris, sister of the great Mirabeau, "who, when a mere girl, had been married to the Marquis de Cabris. Part knave, part fool, the vices of de Cabris sometimes ended in attacks of insanity. His marriage with one who united the violence of the Mirabeaus to the license of the Vassans was unfortunate; ... and after Louise began to reign in the big dark house of the Cours of Grasse, life never lacked ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... stamp them with the mark of greatness at the outset of the journey. Horatio was a happy stroke for Nelson, but how few Horatios win immortality, or deserve it! And how disastrous if Horatio turns out a knave and a coward! If young Spinks has any Miltonic fire within him, it will shine through plain John more naturally and lustrously than through any borrowed patronymic. You may be as humble as you like, ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... did; but now, when they beheld their force that it was but little, they sent Hilding their fosterer to Frithiof to bid him come help them against King Ring. Now Frithiof sat at the knave-play when Hilding came thither, who spake thus: "Our kings send thee greeting, Frithiof, and would have thy help in battle against King Ring, who cometh against their realm with violence ...
— The Story Of Frithiof The Bold - 1875 • Anonymous
... church and nation, through her marrying the Dauphine of France, when he left her bubbling and greeting, and came to an outer court, where her Lady Maries were fyking and dancing, he said, 'O brave ladies, a brave world, if it would last, and heaven at the hinder end! But fye upon the knave Death, that will seize upon those bodies of yours; and where will all your fiddling and flinging be then?' Dancing being such a common evil, especially amongst young professors, that all the lovers of the Lord should hate, has caused me to insist the more upon it, especially that foolish ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... a knave, or fool, Or bigot, plotting crime, Who, for the advancement of his kind, Is wiser than his time. For him the hemlock shall distil; For him the axe be bared; For him the gibbet shall be built; For him the ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... at last!" she muttered, cutting the cards, and glancing at the under one. It was only a knave, not ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... traitor knave? Wha can fill a coward's grave? Wha sae base as be a slave? Let him turn ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... interest of his in my affairs, he had to divine my intentions, as, for instance, at Papeete, when I contemplated going partners with a knavish fellow-countryman on a guano venture. I did not know he was a knave. Nor did any white man in Papeete. Neither did Otoo know, but he saw how thick we were getting, and found out for me, and without my asking him. Native sailors from the ends of the seas knock about on the beach in Tahiti; and Otoo, suspicious ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... coin, which, however, gave out during our first mile. Hawthorne attempted to explain our inability further to supply their demands, having, as he said to them, nothing less than a sovereign in his pocket, when a voice from the crowd shouted, "Bedad, your honor, I can change that for ye"; and the knave actually ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... spies, Mr. Ratcliffe, will soon find themselves without any, if any such dares to continue his abode in a family where his coming was an unauthorized intrusion, where his conduct has been that of a presumptuous meddler, and from which his exit shall be that of a baffled knave, if he does not know how ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... Passion's fiery Sun! Immersed in thought or study, and indifferent to the din around him, sat the boy. A careless guardian was he of the treasures confided to him. The crowd passed in Chepe; he never marked it. The sun shone on Chepe; he only asked that it should illumine the page he read. The knave might filch his treasures; he was heedless of the knave. The customer might enter; but his book was ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... not to my gentleman's taste, but he was too shrewd a knave to press his point. Honesty was his best policy. He did demand hotly that I should be taken in charge, but I had the better of him in French, and after a moment he let that iron go. He fought very hard for the services of a mechanic, but I was determined ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... press. He had been one of the French prophets, and knew how to imitate their supernatural agitations. At the time of our first acquaintance he professed no particular religion, but a little of all upon occasion. He was totally ignorant of the world, and a great knave at heart, as I had afterward ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... pit of feares, 10 And bound in chaines; Truth seldome decks kings eares. Slave flattery (like a rippiers legs rowl'd up In boots of hay-ropes) with kings soothed guts Swadled and strappl'd, now lives onely free. O, tis a subtle knave; how like the plague 15 Unfelt he strikes into the braine of man, And rageth in his entrailes when he can, Worse than the poison of a ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... Fairservice, who just escapes being a hypocrite by dint of some sincere old Covenanting leaven in his veins. We make bold to say that the creator of Parolles and Lucie, and many another lax and lovable knave, would, had he been a Scot, have drawn Andrew ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... damsel rest at his castle, and entertained them right gladly until the morn, when the two rode forth again. Presently, they drew near to a deep river where two knights kept the ford. "How now, kitchen-knave? Will ye fight or escape while ye may?" cried the damsel. "I would fight though there were six instead of two," replied Sir Gareth. Therewith he encountered the one knight in mid-stream and struck him such a blow on the head that he fell, stunned, into the water and was drowned. Then, ...
— Stories from Le Morte D'Arthur and the Mabinogion • Beatrice Clay
... now, sirrah! Dost thou slander the horse which is a gift from Mother Church to the king's work? Thou art a knave, and no doubt art but unfit for thy task this morn through over-late ...
— A Boy's Ride • Gulielma Zollinger
... with whom friendships may be formed and those with whom friendships may not be formed. One that is covetous, one that is pitiless, one that has renounced the duties of his order, one that is dishonest, one that is a knave, one that is mean, one that is of sinful practices, one that is suspicious of all, one that is idle, one that is procrastinating, one that is of a crooked disposition, one that is an object of universal ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... you did the soldier, "whose dog's that?" you would have stammered a little—and almost, in your affection, have gone down upon your knees to have begged him as a gift; and it is fearful to think what a sum any knave as cunning as yourself had been, would have got out of you. Now, my dear Eusebius, I entreat you, when you shall read or hear read—"Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this thing," that you think of Chance, and not of his doing, but yours. I dare to say, you have never quite looked ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... a knave, brother? I swear to you, that next to my Queen, my father, and the memory of her who once loved me, you have the chiefest right to say, 'Ludar, help me,' and if I forget you, 'twill be that I have forgotten I am ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... the price was ruinous. But it all added to the reputation of the firm. And the best hotels thought it worth while to advertise that the pickles and preserves they provided were by Messrs. Pentlove, Postlethwaite and Sharper. It may be as well to add that Arthur Dobson was a knave. When he was talking to Cain he always slated Sharper. When he was talking to Sharper he always slated Cain. His specialty was the continuous discovery of some cheaper place in which to lunch. He would ask Luke Sharper to join him in these perilous adventures, ...
— If Winter Don't - A B C D E F Notsomuchinson • Barry Pain
... the proceeding—but the guests were brimful of fun and mischief, and wouldn't listen to him. It was evident that nothing would satisfy the company but the exhibition of the misery to which they resolved to subject the unhappy knave forthwith. The Dwarf implored, threatened, cursed; he struck about him like a madman, screamed, roared, and struggled to escape; all in vain. The untractable little fellow was held fast, and then, amidst the jokes and gibes of the assembly, securely tied, with his fiddle in his hand, against ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... whined Elmendorf, shrugging his shoulders. "Would not my statement be promptly denied? Noblesse oblige, sir; the first business of these Knights of the Sword is to stand together, and woe betide the knave who dare accuse one of them. But if you'll be guided by my advice, Mr. Allison, you'll look well to your own vine and fig-tree, ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... severally owned to me, that all men, who espouse a party, must expect to be blackened by the contrary side; that themselves knew nothing of it, nor of the authors of the "Reflections." It remains, therefore, to be considered, whether, if I were as much a knave as they would make me, I am fool enough to be guilty of this charge; and whether they, who raised it, would have made it public, if they had thought I was theirs inwardly. For it is plain, they are glad of worse scribblers ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... might stand in need of his efficient arm. We found an opportunity of conferring apart from the Indians—for the scalp-dance now engrossed their whole attention. Withdrawing some distance from the noisy ceremony, we proceeded to discuss the possibility of rescuing Lilian Holt from the grasp of that knave into whose power the innocent ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... German intrigue. Giolitti became overnight traditore, the arch-conspirator, the enemy of his country! It must have staggered the politician, this sudden fury which his innocent advice had roused. And, to condemn him, it is not necessary to believe him to have been a knave ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... poor sheep cotes have, And mate with everybody; The honest now may play the knave, And wise men play the noddy. Some youths will now a mumming go, Some others play at Rowland-ho And twenty other gambols mo, ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... and the paltriness of our aims, smiled at our exploded superstitions, wondered how this man should be considered great, who is now clean forgotten (as copious Guthrie before mentioned); how this should have been thought a patriot who is but a knave spouting commonplace; or how that should have been dubbed a philosopher who is but a dull fool, blinking solemn, and pretending to see in the dark; when he shall have examined all these at his leisure, smiling in a pleasant contempt ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... as I can stir I'll dog him.—Yesterday, To serve me so, and knowing that he owes The best of all he has to me and mine. But 'tis all over now.—That good old Lady Has left a power of riches; and I say it, If there's a lawyer in the land, the knave Shall give ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... a ninny; and when they know what you did to-night, they will believe you are a knave," replied Donald. "You didn't cover your tracks so that I couldn't find them; and I can prove all I say. I didn't think you were such ...
— The Yacht Club - or The Young Boat-Builder • Oliver Optic
... Queen of Hearts she made some tarts, All on a summer's day. The Knave of Hearts he stole those tarts, And hid them clean away. The King of Hearts he missed those tarts, And beat the Knave right sore, The Knave of Hearts brought back the tarts, And ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... in History, forsooth!—has been a place of ignominy, accusation, blackness, and disgrace; and here, this day, who knows if it is not rash in me to be among the first that ever ventured to pronounce him not a knave and liar, but a genuinely honest man! Peace to him. Did he not, in spite of all, accomplish much for us? We walk smoothly over his great rough heroic life; step-over his body sunk in the ditch there. We need not spurn it, as we step on it!—Let the Hero ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... Virtue skulk where none may see In the great world's corners dim? And the just man mark the knave go free, While the penalty falls ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... understood the speech of birds As well as they themselves do words; Could tell what subtlest parrots mean That speak and think contrary, clean; What member 'tis of whom they talk, Why they cry, rope and—walk, knave, walk. He could foretell whatever was By consequence to come to pass; As death of great men, alterations, Diseases, battles, inundations: All this without th' eclipse o' th' sun, Or dreadful comet, he hath done By inward light, a way as good, And easy to be understood: But with more lucky ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... reign? How long shall mortals bend to gain? How long shall virtue hide her face, And leave her votaries in disgrace? ——Let indignation fire my strains, Another villain yet remains— Let purse-proud C——n next approach, With what an air he mounts his coach! A cart would best become the knave, A dirty parasite and slave; His heart in poison deeply dipt, His tongue with oily accents tipt, A smile still ready at command, The pliant bow, ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... shrunk from the profession lest it should necessarily involve some dishonesty Lincoln wrote earnestly and wisely, showing him how false his impression of the law was, but concluding with earnest entreaty that he would not enter the profession if he still had any fear of being led by it to become a knave. ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... scoffed at me, dour bachelor of Glasgow,[E] If I existed not for him, the knave, 'Twas all his fault who let some bonnie lass ...
— Briefless Ballads and Legal Lyrics - Second Series • James Williams
... happened. In his chamber in the Rue St. Honore, at Paris, sat a man ALONE—a man who has been maligned, a man who has been called a knave and charlatan, a man who has been persecuted even to the death, it is said, in Roman Inquisitions, forsooth, and elsewhere. Ha! ha! A man who ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... is the business; be ingenuous, tell the truth: Oh! how hard the truth is to come out of a lying Presbyterian knave. Prithee, friend, consider the oath that thou hast taken, and that thou art in the presence of a God that cannot endure a lie, nor whose holiness will not admit him to dispense with a lie; consider that that God is an infinite being of purity, holiness and truth; and it would be inconsistent ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various
... your leave, Lady Christina, he is no knave, or I am much mistaken. To my knowledge, he has carried his whole salary, and all the little presents he has received from us, to his brother's wife and children. I have seen him chuck his money, thus, at those poor children, ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... the sententious. If it were not for the prospect of immortality, he considers, it would be wise and agreeable to be indecent or to murder one's father; and, heaven apart, it would be extremely irrational in any man not to be a knave. Man, he thinks, is a compound of the angel and the brute; the brute is to be humbled by being reminded of its "relation to the stalls," and frightened into moderation by the contemplation of death-beds and skulls; the angel is to be developed by vituperating this world and exalting the next; and ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... Professor Gray, "it's not fair to judge, Colonel, on what must have been rather an extraordinary moment in the school's history. I take it that you don't put on a representation of 'The Knave Unmasked' every morning." ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... contend, that a Bookseller has a relative honesty towards Authors, not like his honesty to the rest of the world. B[aldwin], who first engag'd me as Elia, has not paid me up yet (nor any of us without repeated mortifying applials), yet how the Knave fawned while I was of service to him! Yet I dare say the fellow is punctual in settling his milk-score, &c. Keep to your Bank, and the Bank will keep you. Trust not to the Public, you may hang, starve, drown yourself, for anything that worthy Personage cares. I bless every star that ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... away with him! the slave! the pompous, empty, fawning knave! Does he think with idle speeches to delude and cheat us all, As he does the doting elders that attend his daily call? Pelt him here, and bang him there; and here, ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... baron, casting his eyes up to heaven, and singing psalms through his nose! The instant I laid eyes on that whining old hypocrite, I hated him; and I vowed I'd never rest again till I'd shown him as he is... a coward and a knave! And I tell you, Gerald, before I get through with him... Ah, there ...
— Prince Hagen • Upton Sinclair
... ground, Gold and silver are there to be found. It's dropped by the priest, picked up by the knave, For the one is a coward, ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... Cressi called him an impious knave. Then he asked him if he had plenty of arrows, because if not he would find four dozen of the best that could be made in Norwich done up in a cloak on the grey horse he was to ride, and a spare ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... misrepresentation, so much insolent lying, may be found scattered through modern literature, respecting the great Genevan, that Dr. Henry deserves well the thanks of the christian world for exhibiting the chief facts of his history, so plainly that every partisan knave who would repeat the old slanders, shall be silent hereafter for very shame. John Calvin was unquestionably subject to the infirmities of our human nature; so was John Milton; but the inherent and indefectable ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... of South America. The alleged Don Benito was in early manhood, about twenty-nine or thirty. To assume a sort of roving cadetship in the maritime affairs of such a house, what more likely scheme for a young knave of talent and spirit? But the Spaniard was a pale invalid. Never mind. For even to the degree of simulating mortal disease, the craft of some tricksters had been known to attain. To think that, under the aspect of infantile weakness, the most savage energies might be couched—those ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... be a bawd, in way of good service and art nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pandar.' King Lear, act ii. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... cumbrous methods through which no man could find his way without the guidance of the initiated, and in which a long purse and unscrupulous trickery gave the advantage over the poor to the rich, and to the knave over the honest man. One fruitful source of all these evils was the 'judge-made' law, which Bentham henceforth never ceased to denounce. His ideal was a distinct code which, when change was required, should be changed by an avowed and intelligible process. The ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... instant he hated Dick, and felt a wild impulse to defend himself; but second thoughts came quickly. She loved Dick and was therefore slow to impute evil to him. Dick loved her, and if he had for once played the petty knave, it was the place of a friend to protect her against that knowledge. That had been the instinctive reason for Norris' words, and he was not going back on them now. Yet Ellery's brain whirled to think how swiftly ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... who had been in France, told the captain that the children had been presented as a token of friendship and security, and that he Domagaia was willing to accompany us to Hochelega. On this high words arose between Taignoagny and Domagaia, by which we inferred that the former was a crafty knave, and intended to do us some treacherous act of mischief as indeed sufficiently appeared from his former conduct. The captain sent the children to our ships, whence he caused two swords and two brass basons to be brought, which he presented ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... great knave. He has set the laws of his country at defiance, and should be punished most severely. And Mountjoy Scarborough has proved himself to be unfit to have any money in his hands. A man so reckless is little better than a lunatic. ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... so with matrimonial intent was a thriving young apothecary, but Mr. Blandy quickly made it plain that Mary and her L10,000 were not to be had by any drug-compounding knave who might make sheep's eyes at her, and the apothecary returned to his gallipots for healing of his bruised affections. His place was taken by Mr. H——, a gentleman grateful to the young lady and personally desirable, but of means too ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... the English People are rendered provoking by his extraordinary language concerning his opponents. 'Numskull,' 'beast,' 'fool,' 'puppy,' 'knave,' 'ass,' 'mongrel-cur,' are but a few of the epithets employed. This is doubtless mere matter of pleading, a rule of the forum where controversies between scholars are conducted; but for that very reason it makes the pamphlets as provoking to an ordinary reader as an old bill ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... Than two churchwardens, and mortality. Should we go now a-wand'ring, we should meet With catchpoles, whores and carts in ev'ry street: Now when each narrow lane, each nook and cave, Sign-posts and shop-doors, pimp for ev'ry knave, When riotous sinful plush, and tell-tale spurs Walk Fleet Street and the Strand, when the soft stirs Of bawdy, ruffled silks, turn night to day; And the loud whip and coach scolds all the way; When lust of all sorts, and each itchy blood From the Tower-wharf to Cymbeline, and Lud, ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... perjury which almost always attends it, would, in most countries, be regarded as one of those pedantic pieces of hypocrisy which, instead of gaining credit with anybody, serve only to expose the person who affects to practise them to the suspicion of being a greater knave than most of his neighbours. By this indulgence of the public, the smuggler is often encouraged to continue a trade, which he is thus taught to consider as in some measure innocent; and when the severity of the revenue laws is ready to fall upon him, ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... all ill weeds Of error, evil, and neglect grow rank And ugly there, I dare forgive myself That error, sin, and sloth and foolishness. God knows that yesterday I played the fool; God knows that yesterday I played the knave; But shall I therefore cloud this new dawn o'er With fog of futile sighs ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... "minister talk," and that it would be unbecoming in her to assert opinions contrary to those of her lord. "Is it so, sweetheart?" said Henry; "then are we perfect friends;" and when Lord Chancellor Wriothesley came to arrest her, he was, we are told, abused by the King as a knave, a ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... the company perplexed their wits about this riddle the cook played upon them a merry jest. In the midst of their deep thinking and hot dispute what should the cunning knave do but stealthily take away both the pie and the pasty. Then, when hunger made them desire to go on with the repast, finding there was nought upon the table, they called clamorously for ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... Allah, O my lady,' answered he, 'methought my servant Behadir had robbed me of some necklaces of jewels, worth ten thousand dinars each; however, when I went out but now, in concern for this, I sought for them and found them in their place. I know not why the knave tarries thus, and needs must I punish him for it.' She was satisfied with his answer, and they drank and sported and made merry, till near upon sundown, when Behadir came in to them, having changed his clothes and girt his middle and put on shoes, such as are worn of servants. He saluted ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous
... the stoniest hearts, And bare the cruel knave's design; How through thy fascinating arts We discount Hope, O gracious wine! And passing rich the poor man feels As through his veins thy ...
— Echoes from the Sabine Farm • Roswell Martin Field and Eugene Field
... princess, "there will be no lack of entertainment with this knave under the same roof. Too much entertainment, I fear me. ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... 'The corn has all been cut, but it has not yet been put into barns; let the knave collect all the grain in the kingdom into one big heap before to-morrow night, and if as much as a stalk of corn is left let him be put ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... patient. I have seen some ready to be executed, Give pleasant looks, and money, and grown familiar With the knave hangman; so do I; I thank them, And would account them nobly merciful, Would ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... unsparing pomp of noble sentiments, but withal most strangely associated with atrocious baseness. Not unfrequently does an injured fair one dispatch a despised lover to stab the faithless one from behind. In almost every piece there is a crafty knave who plays the traitor, for whom, however, there is ready prepared some royal magnanimity, to make all right at the last. The facility with which base treachery is thus taken into favour, as if it were nothing more than an amiable ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... know with whom to deal.—Two rules. How to detect a knave. All men by nature, avaricious. Avoid those who boast of good bargains. ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... himself in the company of the Queen's Marys and other ladies, to whom he gave a religious admonition. "Oh, fair ladies," he said, "how pleasing is this life of yours if it would ever abide, and then in the end that you pass to Heaven with all this gay gear! But fie upon the knave Death, that will come whether we will or not, and when he has laid on his arrest, the foul worms will be busy with this flesh, be it never so fair and tender; and the silly soul, I fear, shall be so feeble, that it can neither ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... "I'm the biggest fool that ever came to this burnt-up wilderness; and I'm a knave because I persuaded the sweetest girl in England ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... rapid return to Whiggery—in which there is no romance at all—the moment he took his seat in the Irish House of Lords. There is only one way to explain the zeal with which he now advocated the Orange cause: he must have been either a very designing knave, or a very unprincipled fool. As he gained nothing by the change but a dukedom for which he did not care, and as he cared for little else that the government could give him, we may acquit him of any very deep motives. On the other hand, his life and some of his letters show that, with a vast amount ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... Prince, abruptly, looking at him with a fiery glance, "you are either a knave or a fool—a fool, doubtless, since you seem too stupid to be a knave—and you very nearly made me ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson |
