"Deuce" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... deuce with me. I have felt it my duty to act as counsel for Science, and was well satisfied with the way things are going. But on Thursday, when I was absent, —- was examined; and if what I hear is a correct account of the evidence he gave, I might as well throw up my brief. I am told he openly professed ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... deuce are you going to sleep to-night, St. George? You came down hither all the way from London, did you not? You surely do not mean to ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... governess!" he repeated. "Deuce take me if I had not forgotten! Excuse me," he continued, "necessity compels me to make ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... of man, Desire is for men who are men—but Delusion, which is only for cowards, hampers them. Because delusion keeps them wrapped up in past and future, but is the very deuce for confounding their footsteps in the present. Those who are always straining their ears for the call of the remote, to the neglect of the call of the imminent, are like Sakuntala [19] absorbed in the memories of her lover. The guest comes unheeded, ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... cried, sitting up in bed, "what the deuce am I doing here? Nothing. Nothing on earth. Let's get out of it." So out he had got, and could not ask for breakfast at ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... replied Robin. "There's the deuce of a current running over there, and Ann's not an experienced enough swimmer to tackle a ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... "What the deuce are you doing here?" he asked. "Thought you were shooting down at Monkwell's place, or somewhere. Jolly glad Lucy didn't take my bet. And where ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... you and Elizabeth into a deuce of an unpleasant position. I've told you what a fine woman my mother is, and how she'd welcome Elizabeth with open arms, and now I find I was all wrong. My mother isn't a fine woman; she's an ancestor-worshiping, ...
— Cupid's Understudy • Edward Salisbury Field
... if he hadn't put his cloas into bed an hung hissen ovver th' cheer back. Awm sure aw connot tell where all this marchin' is likely to lead us to at last, but aw hooap we shall be all reight, for aw do think ther's plenty o' room to mend even yet, but the deuce on it is,' ther's soa monny different notions abaat what is reight wol aw'm flamigaster'd amang it. Some say drink is the besetting sin; another says 'bacca is man's ruination. One says we're all goin' to the devil becoss we goa to church, an' another says we'st niver goa to heaven if we goa to ...
— Yorkshire Ditties, Second Series - To which is added The Cream of Wit and Humour - from his Popular Writings • John Hartley
... imaginable possibilities of politics and diplomacy, revolution or invasion. To his vexation, not less than his surprise, he found the king in dishabille, engaged with a Siamese-English vocabulary, and mentally divided between "deuce" and "devil," in the choice of an equivalent. His preposterous Majesty gravely laid the case before the consul, who, though inwardly chafing at what he termed "the confounded coolness" of the situation, ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... looked unutterably bored. "Why, he gave up tryin' to talk business with me long ago. I can't get interested in it, 'pon my word. Of course I knew he thought the deuce and all of you, but I hadn't an idea they were goin' to take ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... continued that worthy, 'Morris and Levison would never have given you such a deuce of a tick unless they knowed your resources. Trust Morris and Levison for that. You done up, sir! a nob like you, that Morris and Levison have trusted for such a tick! Lord! sir, you don't know nothing about it. I could afford to give them fifteen shillings in the pound ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... doing something on the Popish and Protestant affray. I think I could do some good, and I have the sincere wish to do it. I heard the merry birds sing, reviewed my dogs, and was cheerful. I also unpacked books. Deuce take arrangement! I think it the most complete bore in the world; but I will try a little of it. I afterwards went out and walked till dinner-time. I read Reginald Heber's Journal[272] after dinner. I spent some merry days with him at Oxford when he was writing his prize poem. He was ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... "The deuce there are!" ejaculated the skipper. "Which do you think will be the easier plan of the two: to climb the tree, or to make our way through the bush ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... grumbled, bringing his horse's gait down to an amble. "There ought to be good hounds about, judging from the hang-dog look of the natives. Why in thunder did the old boy want to bury himself and his heirs forever in this god-forsaken land's end, and what in the deuce have mother and Aunt Kesiah done with themselves down here for the last twenty years? Two thousand acres? Damn it! I'd rather have six feet on the good English soil! Came to get rid of one woman, did ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... "What the deuce brings Tom Raymond to us in such a hurry? I thought the order of the General was that he should on no account leave his post, unless summoned by signal," observed one of the group of younger officers who had first quitted the council hall, and who now ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... Never did he say outright, "You played the wrong card at such and such a point." No, he always employed some such phrase as, "You permitted yourself to make a slip, and thus afforded me the honour of covering your deuce." Indeed, the better to keep in accord with his antagonists, he kept offering them his silver-enamelled snuff-box (at the bottom of which lay a couple of violets, placed there for the sake of their scent). In particular did the newcomer pay attention to ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... me thrice daily that Elsa is timid. Princess Heinrich has made no sign yet; when she frowns I must kiss. So stands the matter. I must go hence to pray her to walk in the woods with me. She will flush and flutter, but, poor child, she will come. What I ask she will not and must not refuse. But, deuce take it, I ask so little! There's the rub! I hear your upbraiding voice, 'Pooh, man, catch her up and kiss her!' Ah, my dear Varvilliers, you suffer under a confusion. She is a duty; and who is impelled by duty to these sudden ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... on, plaintively enough—"I lose the things, you know; put 'em into a drawer, or with a lot of other manuscripts and papers, and I can't lay my hands on 'em when they are sent for, and then, oh, goodness! there's the deuce and all to pay; for I can assure you that no mother thinks more of her first-born baby than a young author thinks of his first play, and if you are not of the same opinion he regards you as the biggest idiot in the world." "Well, but," I ventured to remark—"why ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... his Daddy Chip, concerning the proper care of horses. He stood with his hands upon his hips and his feet far apart, and spat into the corral dust and told Big Medicine that nobody but a pilgrim ever handled a horse the way Big Medicine was handling Deuce. Whereat Big Medicine gave a bellowing haw-haw-haw and choked it suddenly when he saw that the Kid desired him to take the ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... who are initiated, and who have raised the veil of Isis: there is no such thing as either good or evil; there is vegetation. Let us seek the real. Let us get to the bottom of it. Let us go into it thoroughly. What the deuce! let us go to the bottom of it! We must scent out the truth; dig in the earth for it, and seize it. Then it gives you exquisite joys. Then you grow strong, and you laugh. I am square on the bottom, I am. Immortality, Bishop, is a chance, a waiting for dead men's ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... say," Clancey replied. "You see, we only got the report in from France quite late. I sent your man to watch her while I went to see Froelich. I was sure he was all right, but I wanted to satisfy myself. By the time I reached our place I found the chief in the deuce of a stew. Your man had got back, and reported that she'd gone. They'd kicked up the devil's delight at Headquarters, and the chief was out for blood. He was determined to arrest somebody, and I suggested Ramsey, but he ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson
... "What the deuce does this mean?" he burst out, in an angry tone. "I wrote both the Superintendent and McIntyre last week that it was a piece of folly to plant a man here, that we didn't require and didn't want a man. The community is well supplied ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... round score of men—in case of natives, buccaneers, or the odious French—and I had the worry of the deuce itself to find so much as half a dozen, till the most remarkable stroke of fortune brought me the very man that ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "Well, deuce a much indeed," returned Doctor Mangan, equably, "but it mightn't be so bad as that altogether! I have my little girl out for the first time to-day, Major. I wonder might I ask your man, that's looking after your young ladies, to have an eye ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... the deuce can't he say what he's found and who's with him?" complained old Mr. Bowdoin to his wife and son for the ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... deuce are you afraid of?" said Everett. They had then come up the greater part of the length of the Birdcage Walk, and the lights at Storey's Gate were just visible, but the road on which they were then walking was very dark. The trees were black over their head, and not ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... commenced thus: 'It has been truly said that those whom the gods love die young!' and then on it went, dragging in memories of Chatterton and Shelley and Keats, till I found myself yawning and wondering what the deuce the writer was driving at. Presently, about the end of the second column, I came to the assertion that 'the posthumous poem of "Nourhalma" must be admitted as one of the most glorious productions in the English language.' This woke me up considerably, and I read on, groping my way through ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... a day, and care not now to see men abuse good liquor and addle their silly pates to fill my purse. And I have something, boy, put snug away in Dorchester town that will give us bread to eat and beer to drink, even if the throws run still deuce-ace. But we must seek a roof to shelter us when the Why Not? is shut, and 'tis best we leave this Moonfleet of ours for a season, till Maskew finds a rope's end long enough to hang himself withal. So, when our work is done tomorrow night, ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... to wreck Europe! I almost wish I'd never godfathered you into this blessed little stoke-hole. Why the deuce didn't you enlist at home instead of ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... bank robber, eh? Thought I'd quit a game where I hold all the aces, an' horn in on one where I don't hold even a deuce to draw to? Bitin' off more'n he c'n chaw has choked more'n one feller. Right here in Choteau County they's some several of 'em choked out on the end of a tight one, because they overplayed their hand. I'm a horse-thief—an' a damn ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... Hiram," remonstrated the motor wizard, drawing his tow-headed friend apart, "if you're convinced your father is in San Diego, what the deuce are you expecting to see ...
— Owen Clancy's Happy Trail - or, The Motor Wizard in California • Burt L. Standish
... he had the hundred pounds, I couldn't fancy what the deuce and all he meant by such prattle. I was half afraid he might be having me on, as I have known him do now and again when he fancied he could get me. I fearfully wanted to ask questions. Again I saw the dark, absorbed face of the gipsy as he studied ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... "And who the deuce is Mr. Hudson?" asked Rowland. But he was absorbed; he lost her immediate reply. The statuette, in bronze, something less than two feet high, represented a naked youth drinking from a gourd. The attitude was perfectly simple. The lad was squarely planted on his feet, with his legs a little ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... when the ever-late actor was heard coming on the run down the passage. In he tore, flinging things right and left, overturning make-ups, and knocking down precious silk hats. He grabbed his shoes, jammed his foot into one, scowled and exclaimed disgustedly, "What the deuce! there's something in this shoe. Bah," he went on, "and in this ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... "No! The deuce! We should have to explain everything to him. He knows what's what, and would find the idea too good, and want a share of the spoil. No! Sign that, and don't be alarmed. The sheep will be back in the fold before the ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... sweep inferior races from his path wherever he goes. There are few who love the Indian so deeply that they would wish this continent restored to its original condition, peopled by savage nomads instead of civilized colonists. "The Deuce and Your Add", by Melvin Ryder, is a bit of light philosophy whose allegorical case is well maintained. "To a Warbler", by Roy W. Nixon, is a meritorious piece of verse whose rhythm moves with commendable sprightliness, though the first line of the first stanza might be made to correspond ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... I know it is a hard thing for me to say. I know it will sound heartless. But I am bound to say so. It is for your sake. I can't hurt myself. It does me no harm that everybody knows that I am philandering after you; but it is the very deuce for you." She was silent for a moment. Then he said again emphatically, ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... "What the deuce are you grumbling for, then?" interrupted John Jr. "Do you want me yourself? If you do, just say the word, and it shall be done! I'm bound to be married, and I'd sooner have you than anybody else. ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... whose portraits adorned the staircase. The type of Catholic woman which he most admired rose in his mind; compassionate, tender, infinitely soft and loving—like the saints; save where "the faith" was concerned—like the saints, again. This Protestant rigidity and self-sufficiency were the deuce! ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... stop him? If Claudia and Eugene have fixed up things it would be charitable to prevent him making a fool of himself. Why the deuce haven't I heard anything from that young rascal? ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... that I wish he would go to the deuce with it, he will leave it to a hospital. Is that ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
... want to see old Rainham. It is stupid of me not to have written to him—yes, stupid! Wonder if he has heard? I mustn't give him up, at any rate. We'll—we'll ask him to dinner, and all that sort of thing. And what the deuce am I going to send to the Academy? Thank goodness, I have enough Swiss sketches to work up for the other galleries to last me for ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... 'Pooh, pooh! Deuce take it, Mr Richard, how dull you are!' cried Brass, relaxing into a smile. 'Did he say ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... wonder? I will stay here a week or a month if—What nonsense! I must have distinguished myself, staring at her like a gawk. When she said she was the Queen of Sheba, I ought instantly to have replied—what in the deuce is it I ought to have replied? How can a man be witty with a ton of sole-leather pressing on ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... the mischief is all this?" exclaimed the bewildered Mr Pitskiver; "this isn't the jeanie-ass you promised me a sight of. Who the deuce is this?" ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... and joined them. He was evidently not in the secret, for he looked intensely puzzled when Jim Goodman, who had next shot, hit his bird fairly, but it only hopped about and descended unbroken. "What the deuce!" he said. ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... What course we took I hardly remember, but we roamed slowly about for an hour, my companion delivering by snatches a sort of moon-touched aesthetic lecture. I listened in puzzled fascination, and wondered who the deuce he was. He confessed with a melancholy but all-respectful ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... current half-year, had prevented the drain of gold, had made all that matter right about the glut of the raw material, and had restored all sorts of balances with which the superseded noblemen and gentlemen had played the deuce - and all this, with wheat at so much a quarter, gold at so much an ounce, and the Bank of England discounting good bills at so much per cent.! He might be asked, he observed in a peroration of great ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... "The deuce I did! I don't remember. I must have been drunk when I got home. I took the 'fizz' to sober up on. Why ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... with Godunov. Or play false with the Jesuits of the Court, Than with a woman. Deuce take them; they're beyond My power. She twists, and coils, and crawls, slips out Of hand, she hisses, threatens, bites. Ah, serpent! Serpent! 'Twas not for nothing that I trembled. She well-nigh ruined me; but I'm resolved; At daybreak I will put my ...
— Boris Godunov - A Drama in Verse • Alexander Pushkin
... the friend of colonel Tamper, and the plighted hnsband of Mdlle. Florival.—G. Colman, sen., The Deuce ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... mine were. But, the truth is, I manage better; I know where my money goes to, and you don't; I work hard, and you don't; I spend my money on what's necessary to my style of living, you spend yours on what's not necessary. What the deuce have the fellows in Mayo and Roscommon done for you, that you should mount two or three rascals, twice a-week, to show them sport, when you're not there yourself two months in the season? I suppose you don't keep the horses and ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... dualism; duplicity; biplicity^, biformity^; polarity. two, deuce, couple, duet, brace, pair, cheeks, twins, Castor and Pollux, gemini, Siamese twins; fellows; yoke, conjugation; dispermy^, doublets, dyad, span. V. pair [unite in pairs], couple, bracket, yoke; conduplicate^; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... his own situation. A bird of passage is always at its ease, having no house to build, and no responsibility. He talked freely with Philip about Ruth, an almighty fine girl, he said, but what the deuce she wanted to study ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... "The deuce it is! I doubt if I've done the kind thing, then. I seem to have roused passions which will never be satisfied. When she ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... greatly elated him. Dobbin, who was a friend of the general commanding the division in which their regiment was, came laughing one day to Mrs. Osborne, and displayed a similar invitation; which made Jos envious, and George wonder how the deuce he should be getting into society. Mr. and Mrs. Rawdon, finally, were of course invited, as became the friends of a general commanding a ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... 'Now, the deuce is in it,' muttered Pancks, tracing out a line in her hand with his clumsy finger, 'if this isn't me in the corner here! What do I want here? ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... reached her, lo! the Captain, Gallant Kidd,[4] commands the crew; Passengers their berths are clapt in, Some to grumble, some to spew. "Hey day! call you that a cabin? Why't is hardly three feet square! Not enough to stow Queen Mab in— Who the deuce can harbour there?" "Who, sir? plenty— Nobles twenty Did at once my vessel fill."— "Did they? Jesus, How you squeeze us! Would to God they did so still! Then I'd 'scape the heat and racket Of the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... silly as to go and make myself lean with any such grief. Your heart guarantees your fidelity; besides, I have too good an opinion of myself to believe that any other could please you after me. Where the deuce could you find any ...
— The Love-Tiff • Moliere
... and fanning Mrs. Curwen: "There! there! Wake up, Mrs. Curwen. I didn't mean to scold you for joking. I didn't, indeed. I—I—I don't know what the deuce I'm up to." He gathers Mrs. Curwen's inanimate form in his arms, and fans her face where it lies on his shoulder. "I don't know what my wife ...
— The Elevator • William D. Howells
... inhabitants of other portions of the world remote from the Hub of the Universe. A Boston grumble consists of an upward movement of the eyebrow, a slight twitch of the mustache and a murmur cross-bred from "Deuce take it!" and "Scoundrelly!") "Young man," he said, "my father said that such a hazardous venture as copper should return at least thirty per cent. to be safe, and I feel if I receive but twenty per cent. that something is radically and unpardonably ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... whispered. "Deuce knows how many more there'll be, but I know of two at least. We won't have to make much noise over them, either; down here ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... the stage, they spied at Nesta's box, during the thunder of the rounds of applause, after shaking hands with Mr. Dubbleson, Sir Abraham Quatley, Dudley Sowerby, and others; and with Beaves Urmsing—a politician 'never of the opposite party to a deuce of a funny fellow!—go anywhere to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... between her and Noel d'Arnaye; the host of the Crowned Ox had been garrulous that evening. But it was Francois whom she loved. She was well-to-do. Here for the asking was a competence, love, an ingleside of his own. The deuce of it was that Francois ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... in the deuce of a tight place," he reflected; "it's seven to one against my ever reaching Kohara, and the ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... deuce was I to do? I wrote to Mrs. Perkins; and that kind lady replied, that she would receive the Mulligan, or any other of my friends, with the greatest cordiality. "Fancy a party, all Mulligans!" thought I, ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... deuce are you about, Chapeau, with all this rhodomontade? didn't I tell you that she would go ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... bargain; and I hold with the schoolmen that she who does not exist cannot disappear. Poikilus, a puffing detective. S. I., Secret Inquiry. I spell Enquiry with an E—but Poikilus is a man of the day. What the deuce can Ned Severne want of him? I suppose I ought not to object. I have established a female detective at Hillstoke. So Ned sets one up at Islip. I shall make my own secret arrangements. If Poikilus settles here, he will be drawn through the horse-pond by small-minded rustics ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... looking," he philosophised (to himself, for no man knew of his secret project) and grinned with a sort of amused tolerance for the sentimental side of his nature. "I'm a silly ass to have even dreamed of finding her as I passed along, and if I had found her what the deuce could I have done about it anyway? This isn't the day for mediaeval lady-snatching. I dare say I'm just as well off for not having found her. I still have the zest for hunting farther, and there's a lot in that." Then aloud: "Hobbs, are ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... must be fitting that Cossack strength should be wasted in vain, that a man should disappear like a dog without having done a single good deed, that he should be of no use to his country or to Christianity! Why, then, do we live? What the deuce do we live for? just tell me that. You are a sensible man, you were not chosen as Koschevoi without reason: so just tell me ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... to arrive, he found the old lady alone in the drawing-room. "Well! little one," he asked, with his smiling familiarity, "are your affairs going on all right? Why the deuce do you make ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... continued Stubby, confidentially. "Usually it's pretty dull here, and all we can do is ride and hunt—play cards and quarrel. But your coming has created no end of excitement and this dance will be our red-letter day for a long time to come. The deuce of if is, however, that there are only two girls to dance with thirteen men. We limit our community to fifteen, you know; but little Ford and old Rutledge have backed down and won't have anything to do with this enterprise. I don't know ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... a class of men belonging to these soul-forsaken years: Third-rate canvassers, collectors, journalists and auctioneers. They are never very shabby, they are never very spruce — Going cheerfully and carelessly and smoothly to the deuce. Some are wanderers by profession, 'turning up' and gone as soon, Travelling second-class, or steerage (when it's cheap they go saloon); Free from 'ists' and 'isms', troubled little by belief or doubt — Lazy, purposeless, and useless — knocking ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... in exchange," said Porthos, covered with perspiration and soiled by dust, "in exchange, I have torn many skins. Those wretches wanted to take away my sword! Deuce take 'em, what a popular commotion!" continued the giant, in his quiet manner; "but I knocked down more than twenty with the hilt of Balizarde. A ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... well) but how the deuce can you be funny in the Baltic? Why call it Baltic? For days and nights at sea, sometimes up, more often down, and a sense of inability coming over me in the middle of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 9, 1890. • Various
... is all a mass of steam." What in the world does that mean? The man has gone out — if not out on to the Barrier, then certainly into it — into snow-ice, and then he comes back and says that it is all a mass of steam. It seems ridiculous — absurd. I send Sherlock Holmes to the deuce, and watch Hassel with increasing excitement; if he takes any more off — I felt I was blushing, and half turned my head, but there he stopped. Then he picked up a towel, and away we went: out through the pent-house ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... been a run, and an infernally daring one,' said Mr Rattenbury; 'in Lealand Cove, not half an hour ago. And the deuce of it is we had warning of ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... gamblers, (it is a serious truth) though shot dead, still held the cards hard gripped in his hands. Led by curiosity to inspect this strange sight, a dead gambler, we found that the cards which he held were ace, deuce, and jack. Clubs were trumps. Holding high, low, jack, and the game, in his own hand, he seemed to be in a fair way to do well; but Marion came down upon him with a trump that spoiled his sport, ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... really want to," Vernon capitulated, in deadly fear of further revelations. "Only keep mum about it or there'll be the very deuce to pay." ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... if she gets married to any on 'em. One cools off, and another cools off, and before she brings any one on 'em to the right weldin' heat, the coal is gone and the fire is out. Then she may blow and blow till she's tired; she may blow up a dust, but the deuce of a flame can she blow up agin, to save her soul alive. I never see a clever lookin' gal in danger of that, I don't long to whisper in her ear, You dear little critter, you, take care! you have too many irons in the ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... army not to be seen on the surface. There had been private dramas in private drawing-rooms. Some of the older men had been "churned up," as they would say, because this sudden war had meant a leave-taking from women, who would be in a deuce of a fix if anything happened to certain captains and certain majors. Love affairs which had been somewhat complicated were simplified too abruptly by a rapid farewell, and a "God bless you, old girl. ... I hate to leave ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... 6/4. It was in the second set that the real struggle took place. In spite of all my efforts, Miss Sugden won game after game, until the game stood at 5/1 against me and 30 all; but by good luck I snatched that game and the two following. At 5/4 and my service we had deuce quite ten or twelve times, but in the end I managed to win and took the set at 7/5. After that I felt better, and with renewed confidence and steadier nerves I won the final ...
— Lawn Tennis for Ladies • Mrs. Lambert Chambers
... be given this evening, and will be forced—if it does not succeed—to leave this marvellous scenery, these rich stuffs at a hundred francs the yard, unpaid for. His fourth failure is staring him in the face. But, deuce take it! our manager has confidence. Success, like all the monsters that feed on man, loves youth; and this unknown author whose name is entirely new on the posters, ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... what the deuce was the matter with you this evening on the Elysium road?" The suddenness of the question wrenched an answer from ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... him, sir, we'll try him. After having escaped the Arabs, the deuce is in it, if we cannot weather upon John Bull! I beg your pardon, Mr. Sharp; but this is a question that must be settled by some of the niceties of the ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... Janice one day, after hearing Mobray through his lines in "The Deuce is in Him," "I'd give a finger but to ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... the story of the times:—a contemporary wit has recorded this literary injury, by repeating it.[342] And Swift, who once exclaimed to Pope, "The deuce take party!" was himself the greatest sinner of them all. He, once the familiar friend of Steele till party divided them, not only emptied his shaft of quivers against his literary character, but raised the horrid yell of the war-whoop in his inhuman ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... deuce did you come across it? I've never seen a beast of yours within fifty miles of it—the country is too rough even for cattle—and I thought that my troopers and I were the first that ever ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... merely a bogey prince. Naturally, we don't care about being made to look fools. The dear old Mater, you know, is one of those simple, trusting natures that, if they once discover they have been taken in by a sham title, why, they kick up the row of a deuce! And, as for the Governor, he's the sort of old retiring chap that has a downright loathing of publicity, when it makes him ridiculous. If he came across you just now, there's really no saying what he mightn't do. He's such a ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... haggard and ill, but Sir Hugh only laughed at him; there was nothing the matter, he said, carelessly; he was tough, like all the Redmonds, and he had never been ill in his life. If he only slept better he should be all right, but want of sleep plays the very deuce with a ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... "if Time thought no more of me than I do of Time, I believe I should bid defiance, for one while, to old age and wrinkles; for deuce take me, if ever I think ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... safe enough in some Sanatorium, depend upon it. And what if she did come? Do you think, my dear good woman, that I—a sensible clear-headed general practitioner, who have found out all I know for myself—would let her play the deuce with me as she did with poor HALVARD? No, general practitioners don't ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, March 11, 1893 • Various
... "Oh, to the deuce with your nonsense!" the attorney replied, his cheek flushing as he lighted his cigar. "If you had listened to the twaddle that I have all day, you would be glad to talk to almost any ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... himself Quintus Januarius Fronto. More and more absurd, said the emperor. You seem to have a great deal of impertinent knowledge about a great many impertinent people; but proceed in your story: whence came you? Mynheer, said she, I was born in Holland—The deuce you was, said the emperor, and where is that? It was no where, replied the princess, spritelily, till my countrymen gained it from the sea—Indeed, moppet! said his majesty; and pray who were your countrymen, before you had any country? Your majesty asks a vey shrewd question, said ...
— Hieroglyphic Tales • Horace Walpole
... "The deuce you are!" said Kelly. "You're not going to ask much then, my son. Moreover, it's well on the likely side that he'll refuse to budge. Better leave him alone till he's tired ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... felt that it would be a relief to get away from his son-in-law: "If the fellow would only speak!" he exclaimed when he was alone with his wife. "What the deuce he's always thinking about ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... of gratitude, rather than lessen it. Staniford smoked with him, and told him stories; he walked up and down with him, and made a point of parading their good understanding, but his spirits seemed to sink the lower. "Deuce take him!" mused his benefactor; "he's in love with her!" But he now had the satisfaction, such as it was, of seeing that if he was in love he was quite without hope. Lydia had never relented in her abhorrence ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... note the nearest domino seen distinctly. This will be the number of dioptries expressing the nearest point at which he can read. This number permits us to know whether it is necessary to add or subtract dioptries in order to allow him to read nearer by or farther off. If, for example, he sees the deuce and the ace distinctly, say 3 dioptries or 0.33 meter, and we want to allow him to read at 0.25 meter, corresponding to four dioptries, it will be necessary to increase the power of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 620, November 19,1887 • Various
... waters the Sea Puss is found, Cat-like, forever chasing round and round. She has no claws, but crouching sly and low She stealthily puts out her undertow. And when an old seadog comes in her way I'll warrant you there is the deuce ...
— A Phenomenal Fauna • Carolyn Wells
... "The deuce he has!" exclaimed Gilbert with a blank expression, as he walked away with a hasty step, leaving Reams to adjust himself to his book again. He soon collected a group of card-players and sat down to his game; while young Wayland Morris and sweet Alice Orville promenaded the hurricane ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... send broadcast a story that would only arouse international hatred? That's their method. Ours—I mean our government's—is to give hatred a chance to die down. If our papers got hold of the Bundesrath story they'd make a deuce ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... disciplining him—when he'd go on a big tear they'd fire him for a few days and then take him back. But they can't git him now—not if I can help it. A better cook never throwed dishwater over a guy-rope than that same old Mose, but—" He stopped and looked at Ford hesitantly. "Say! I hate like the deuce to tie a string on you as soon as you hit the ranch, Ford, but—if you've got anything along, you won't spring it on Mose, will you? A fellow's got to watch him pretty ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... longer," said Dr. Archie. "He's been making a tank of himself lately. He'll be pulling his freight one of these days. That's the way they do, you know. I'll be sorry on your account." He paused and ran his fresh handkerchief over his face. "What the deuce are we all here for anyway, Thea?" ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... slowly putting down his saucer without tasting its contents, is laughingly beginning, "Why, what the deuce, Phil—" when he stops, seeing that Phil is counting on ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... room in a hurry. He was not in the best of humors; why the deuce couldn't Fraser manage without dragging him there? He had carte blanche as ...
— The Rider in Khaki - A Novel • Nat Gould
... his papers, slung the spruce white drill coat over his arm, and unlocked the door. "Captain Rabeira," he said, "you have my full permission to resume your occupation of going to the deuce your own way." With which parting salutation, he went below to the steamer's bathroom and ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... in my life!" he panted. "But, you young scaramouch! what the deuce d'you mean by stopping to chatter to ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... got very bored, for I had nothing to read and my pipe was verboten. People passed now and then in the corridors, but no one offered to enter. No doubt they saw the big figure in uniform and thought he was the deuce of a staff swell who wanted solitude. I thought of stretching my legs in the corridor, and was just getting up to do it when somebody slid the door back and a ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... doorway and looked up and down the street with open disgust. "Come on down to Picardo's, Jack; what the deuce is there here to hold you? How a man that knows horses and the range, can stand for this—" he waved a gloved hand at the squalid street—"is something I can't understand. To me, it's like hell with the lid off. What's holding you ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... "You're having hallucinations, my love. You'll feel better in the morning. Where the deuce did you get such ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... feel afraid, that he ought to feel "queer." He said to himself, "Here you are, as nervous and temperamental a youth as ever stepped, with a mental laziness that amounts to moral cowardice, in the deuce of a hole that I don't expect you'll ever get out of. You ought to be in an awful state. Your cheeks ought to be white, and there they are looking like two raw beef-steaks. Your tongue ought to cleave to the roof of your mouth; and it isn't. You ought to feel pains in the pit of your stomach, ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... that this wretched war will play the very deuce with our foreign friends. If you Germans do not give that crowned swindler, whose fall I have been looking for ever since the coup d'etat, such a blow as he will never recover from, I will never forgive ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... a letter which simply said that the bearer, Gulab Lal Singh, would look after me and my belongings. So I paid attention to the man. He was a strapping fellow, handsome as the deuce, with a Roman nose, and the eye of ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... magnifying glass which he used in studying all the niceties of handwriting. He suddenly felt unnerved. "Whom is it from? This hand is familiar to me, very familiar. I must have often read its tracings, yes, very often. But this must have been a long, long time ago. Whom the deuce can it be from? Pooh! it's only somebody ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... more than the deuce,' says Mrs Pipchin. 'He never does me the honour to speak to me. He has his meat and drink put in the next room to his own; and what he takes, he comes out and takes when there's nobody there. It's no use asking me. I know no more about him than the man ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... to his sister-in-law. "She can't but see Anderson every day, and that goes a long way. She, of course, puts on a resolute air as well as she can. They all know how to do that. Do you be resolute in return. The deuce is in it if we can't have our way with her among us. When you talk of ill usage nobody wants you to put her in chains. There are different ways of killing a cat. You get friends to write to you from England about young Annesley, and I'll do the same. The ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... She is frightened out of her wits—that is all. These Yankee horses of yours have been playing the very deuce. Clear the way there, ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... big fellows can prevent it. If he's caught there'll be the deuce to pay. Our Pillars of Finance will topple.... No, ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... "What the deuce am I to do with them?" thought the artist. "Well, if they will have it so, Psyche shall go;" and he said aloud—"I must trouble you to give me a few minutes more—I should like ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... "Well, McTavish, how the deuce do I see you here? You ought to be up at the fort. But, say, old man, I'm glad you broke out. That thirty-day term smelled to heaven when the old man ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... The Duchess is a girl in pink, with a great wedge-comb erect among her ringlets, the Beau tres degage, his head averse, his chin most supercilious upon his stock, one foot advanced, the gloved fingers of one hand caught lightly in his waistcoat; in fact, the very deuce of a pose. ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... Sapt. "If you stay here, the deuce a man in all Ruritania will doubt of it—or a ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... "I wish Arend had let the horse go to the deuce. It was not worth following into ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... deuce he does!—but I want to get at his views in relation to the present state of the Ottoman Empire. Tell him the Houses of Parliament have met, and that there has been a speech from the throne, pledging England to preserve the ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... after a minute's interval, "it's bad business for you to run off like that. Suppose you played hide and seek with me till a storm wiped out your track? You'd be in a deuce ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... painful gabbling in all the rows, pathetic whisperings and "go ons" or eager urgings of one and another to sacrifice himself upon the altar of necessity, insistences by the ex-trumpeter that he had blown trumpets in his day as good as any one—what the deuce had got into him anyhow? ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... The deuce you had. Cool, too. Any of those confounded bandits about? I thought that ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... minutes ago I thought her plain!" said Sir Wilfrid to himself as he moved away. "Upon my word, for a dame de compagnie that young woman is at her ease! But where the deuce have I seen her, ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... was the deuce of a place To drink and to fight, and to gamble and race; The height of choice spirits from near and from far Were ...
— Saltbush Bill, J.P., and Other Verses • A. B. Paterson
... "Deuce take the Witch of Endor and you also. There's a shilling. Go and drink yourself into a more cheery ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... Spanish, thought Luck, why the deuce hadn't he done it at first? But there is no fathoming the reticence of an Indian—and Luck, by a sudden impulse, hid his own knowledge of the language. He stood up and turned toward the rocks, cupped his hands around his lips and called for the Native Son. "And leave ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... and be served with a cutlet, or buttered eggs with asparagus tips, and the butler, knowing his tastes, would bring him a fine bottle of old Leoville, lying in its basket, and which he would pour out with the greatest care. The deuce take it! That was a good time, all the same, and he would never become accustomed to this life ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... "The deuce you do," Cuthbert exclaimed; "what on earth put such an idea into your head? Why, man, the idea is absurd! If it was a forgery it must have been done by Brander, and what possible motive could he have ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... ill you look! More fitted for the sick list than the sentry's duties. What the deuce ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... Ste.-Foy Murray sent the frigate "Racehorse" to Halifax with news of his defeat, and from Halifax it was sent to England. The British public were taken by surprise. "Who the deuce was thinking of Quebec?" says Horace Walpole. "America was like a book one has read and done with; but here we are on a sudden reading our book backwards." Ten days passed, and then came word that the siege was raised ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... Big and his eternal kids. [He sighs. They exchange meaning glances. CURT seems to feel ashamed of his grumpiness and tries to fling it off—with a cheerful smile.] But what the deuce! I must be getting selfish to grudge Martha her bit of fresh air. You don't know what it means to outdoor animals like us to be pent up. [He springs to his feet and paces back and forth nervously.] We're used to living with the ...
— The First Man • Eugene O'Neill
... brave Kurzbold who spoke, as he playfully kicked, not too gently, those of his comrades who lay nearest him. He was answered by groans and imprecations, as one by one the sleeping beauties aroused themselves, and wondered where the deuce ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... think," said he, musing; "but the postmark is Plymouth. How the deuce—!" The two first lines of the letter were read, and the old man's countenance fell. Susan, who had been all alive at the mention of McElvina's name, perceived the alteration in her ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... with them to the door. "There's your dog-cart; it's paid for, and here's a little bag of French money—no thanks, my dear fellow; we can settle all that later. But what the deuce you two children are going to Sedan for is more than my old ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... darlings haven't had any new clothes for nearly a month, and the old man wants to buy a new drag from Calcutta,—solid silver railings and silver lamps, and trifles of that kind. I've tried to make him understand that he has played the deuce with the revenues for the last twenty years and must go slow. ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling |
