"Artfulness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thing in woman, and that while she thought so she must remain a broken column. It was a great task he saw before him—nothing less than to make her think that what she had done was not shameful, but exquisite; that she had not tarnished the flag of love, but glorified it. Artfulness, you will see, was needed; but, remember, he was now using all his arts in behalf of the ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... hours later. I had not read two pages before I became satisfied that the book had more truth than fiction in it. To have assumed it wholly the work of imagination, I should have had to admit that the author was an artist of artists, exceeding, through his artfulness, in naturalness, all other fiction-writers. No; there was truth behind the statements in the little book—truth at second or third hand, but truth. Now this little book pretended to tell, and I believe did tell, the story of a sailor under Sir ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... whom he hath use for. If he sent my child through the artfulness of that young chief to the brow of the big hill, he hath also called the wolf, because he hath need of him; let him go. I ...
— Birch Bark Legends of Niagara • Owahyah
... But Evanitalina knew that O'olo was no coward, and her misgiving was that he was dead, which deepened with the passing of months, and no sign nor token coming to prove the contrary. Viliamu, too, was assiduous in declaring it, which he did with artfulness and pretended sorrow, urging all the while his own suit, like a squid of apparent harmlessness on the surface, but with its suckers ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... occurrences they might have witnessed, he came to the main point—I mean, to the expressions used by Alexander. My children gave very proper replies; such, in fact, as were suited to their respective dispositions. And notwithstanding the artfulness of a mischievous man whose object is to discover guilt, the frankness of my son and the quick penetration of my daughter disconcerted his low cunning, and even defeated the ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... see the extreme artfulness of the plot, but in all wrongdoing there is sooner or later a slip up. Be the plot ever so artful, or however safe the wrongdoing may appear, the unforeseen something ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... hare and hounds, can fully appreciate the excitement, the interest, and the pleasure of the game; or the proud feeling of the hare, who finds that he is successfully baffling his pursuers when he is distancing them by the rapidity of his pace, or by the artfulness of his dodges; still all the time, whatever twists and turns he may make, knowing that he is bound to leave traces of his scent sufficiently strong to lead on ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... maidenhood made itself master of this old man and subdued him, for in the name of the sweet face of Venus, Blanche, endowed with the natural artfulness of women, made her old Bruyn come and go like ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... except that he ever saith Yea to the world which he created: thus doth he extol his world. It is his artfulness that speaketh not: thus is he ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... both sides exhibited the most extraordinary artfulness, cunning and ingenuity in the discovery, adaptation and invention of "cover." The great desideratum, of course, was to hide where we could see without being seen, to shoot from where there was least danger of ...
— A Soldier's Sketches Under Fire • Harold Harvey
... protruding out of his head. He would have given anything to get away, but his returning reason informed him that it would not do to let go the door handle. What was it—madness, a nightmare, or a trap into which he had been decoyed with fiendish artfulness? Why—what for? He did not know. Without any sense of guilt in his breast, in the full peace of his conscience as far as these people were concerned, the idea that he would be murdered for mysterious reasons by the couple Verloc passed not so much across his mind as across ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... "Artfulness," said the night-watch-man, smoking placidly, "is a gift; but it don't pay always. I've met some artful ones in my time—plenty of 'em; but I can't truthfully say as 'ow any of them was the ...
— Captains All and Others • W.W. Jacobs
... moreover, that he had less excuse for being without it, for he rested on the goodness of men, and not, as theologians rest, on their vileness. It is a most interesting thing, we may notice in passing, to consider what was the effect upon the Revolution of this artfulness or prudence with which its theoretic precursors sowed the seed. Was it as truly wise as Condorcet supposed? Or did it weaken, almost corrupt, the very roots? Was it the secret of the thoroughness with which the work of demolition was done? Was it, too, the secret of the many and ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley
... Corporal had slipped his feet from the cords, and paid dearly for his folly. Julius had him down on the ground, daring him to move a limb or even turn his head on pain of unheard-of laceration. The wretched fellow had cursed a thousand times his own artfulness. For three hours he had lain thus, not daring to stir a muscle; and if ever a night's experiences are enough to turn the hair grey, Corporal should not have a single black ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... mere worthless sham. It was evident enough that Merlani had been her lover—most probably her accepted lover—when I appeared upon the scene; and that, dazzled by my appearance of superior wealth, she had in the most heartless and cruel manner thrown him overboard; and, with a cunning and artfulness which even then seemed incredible to me, laid herself out only too successfully to ensnare me, and by becoming my wife to secure for herself those comforts and luxuries which Merlani—poor shiftless scamp that he was—could ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... him upon his artfulness, and, with some confidence in a man of such resource, walked home in a more cheerful frame of mind. His heart sank as he reached the house, but to his relief the lights were out and his ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... instruct her to poison the King when she is alone with him. If he is once dead, his army will retire without a battle." The King adopted this advice, and prepared rich presents, and summoned a beautiful girl, whose artfulness and malice were well known. Her name was Kamrya (Moonlight). The King said to her, "I have resolved to send you as a present, for a secret object. I will give you poison, and when you are alone with the Prince to whom I will send you, drop ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... irreconcilable with his whole course and character that he should carry Bebelle off in state, or receive any compliments or congratulations on that feat, he devoted the next day to getting his two portmanteaus out of the house by artfulness and stealth, and to comporting himself in every particular as if he were going to run away,—except, indeed, that he paid his few debts in the town, and prepared a letter to leave for Madame Bouclet, enclosing a sufficient sum of money in lieu ...
— Somebody's Luggage • Charles Dickens
... is that Boveney Weir is full of "rum uns." This I take to be a confession of faith in the existence of large trout, and at the same time a delicate compliment to their wariness. All Thames trout are wary, and it is probably their outrageous artfulness which adds to the rapture of circumventing them. Old Nottingham George would tell many a tale of cunning trout which had been angled for so often and pricked so many times that they were supposed to have become as learned in the matter of fishermen and fishing tackle as humanity itself. The ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... examining the elegant furniture and luxurious accommodation with his usual resentful enviousness. Clarence had got a "soft thing." That it was more or less the result of his "artfulness," and that he was unduly "puffed up" by it, was, in Hooker's characteristic reasoning, equally clear. As his host smilingly advanced with outstretched hand, Mr. Hooker's efforts to assume a proper abstraction of manner and contemptuous indifference to Clarence's ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... Whitehall lovers—a legion of them, from the Duke of Buckingham to the youngest page at Court, she treated in precisely the same way. Was it innocence or artfulness, this assumption of childish prudery? "She was a child," says Count Hamilton, "in all respects save playing with dolls"—a child who refused to grow into a woman, and yet, one shrewdly suspects that behind her childishness was a motive deeper than is usually ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... enough, ma'am,' sighed the man; 'there's no getting to the bottom of their artfulness: but I'm an old hand, and I know all the ins and outs of the complaint. It isn't possible for Mr. Wendover to get any drink in this house, and he never goes out of it without me. Every drop of wine ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... every trapper knows, when you cannot get a fox into a steel trap by any amount of artfulness. What the reason is, I do not know, unless some fox that has been trapped and that has escaped passes the word round among all the other foxes. There were plenty of foxes coming to the clearing; we never ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... a legend. Consider its artfulness! The Comte Armand had been a hard liver, a dissipated scoundrel, a reckless beast, but a mighty hunter of the stag. It was said that on one of these occasions he had been warned by the apparition of St. Hubert; but he had laughed,—for, ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... reached the town and said "good-bye." He pressed the young man's hand sympathetically, and a wink of intense artfulness gave ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... was attending regular one of them schools. That was where she went to in the afternoons, when we all thought she was visiting girl friends. It all come out after, but she fooled us then. Girls are like monkeys when it comes to artfulness. She called me Uncle Bill, because she said the name Henry always reminded her of cold mutton. If it had been young Andy that had said it I'd have clumped him one; but he never said anything like that. Come to think of it, ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... the surfeit of luxuries and lack of company on the leave boat, our gallant warriors continue to volunteer in thousands for that desperate enterprise known as "Proceeding on leave to the U.K." There is however a certain artfulness in the business, if only artfulness ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 31, 1917 • Various
... Northbrook and his advisers saw that the Ameer was seeking to frighten them about Russia in order to improve his own family prospects in Afghanistan; and, paying too much attention, perhaps, to the oriental artfulness of the method of request, and too little to the importance of the questions then at stake, he decided to meet the Ameer in regard to non-essentials, though he failed to satisfy him on the one thing held to be needful at the ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... "The artfulness of her!" she ejaculated indignantly. "Asking me to go along to the chemist's and bring her back some aspirin for her headache! And me, like a fool, suspecting nothing, off I goes! There's the stuff!"—viciously flinging the chemist's ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler |
