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Knavery   Listen
noun
Knavery  n.  (pl. knaveries)  
1.
The practices of a knave; petty villainy; fraud; trickery; a knavish action. "This is flat knavery, to take upon you another man's name."
2.
pl. Roguish or mischievous tricks.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Knavery" Quotes from Famous Books



... in M. Ferdinand de Coralth's affair, brought that young nobleman to his office. The trouble arose from a little stock exchange operation which M. Ferdinand had engaged in—an affair which savored a trifle of knavery. It was strange, but Pascal rather took a liking to M. de Coralth. The honest worker felt interested in this dashing adventurer; he was almost dazzled by his brilliant vices, his wit, his hardihood, conceit, marvellous assurance, and careless impudence; and he studied this ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau

... Kerry. "I'm for Leman Street in three hours. If there's double-dealing behind it, then the mugs are in the East End, and it's folly, not knavery, I'm looking for. It's a race, Mary, and the credit of the Service is at stake! No, my dear, I'll have a snack when I ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer

... this court, some very near me if I remember rightly. In what are their characters superior, or their claims to respect greater, that you should thus single me out as the fool or knave who could not only commit so wild and despicable an act, but go so far in folly—let alone knavery—as to conceal ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green

... rose. The man was a sanctimonious Chadband. He had come with nefarious designs on Judith's slender capital. I saw knavery in the whites of ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... me out of every dollar that I put into his hands. It would take just about as much evidence to prove that young crows would be black when their feathers are grown, as it would to satisfy the community that these statements are true, especially where he is known. For knavery, untruthfulness, and wickedness, I have never seen anything, in all my business experience of forty years, that will compare with this. He would not have taken such a course with me once, but he took advantage of my age and misfortunes to commit these frauds, ...
— History of the American Clock Business for the Past Sixty Years, - and Life of Chauncey Jerome • Chauncey Jerome

... and scoundrels. For one man that may have been shot or hanged, there will have been a hundred who have gained the confidence of the British to betray it either to their own use or that of the enemy. No one could ever know or assess the extent of the knavery which has arisen, flourished, and grown fat in this long-protracted war. And what a field for sharps and knaves! Was not the control of the whole country in the hands of straightforward and fair-thinking English officers,—men whose word was their bond, and who never thought to distrust ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer

... chance. About the first there clung some flavour of good birth and training, as about a fallen angel; something long, lithe, and courtly in the person; something aquiline and darkling in the face. Thevenin, poor soul, was in great feather: he had done a good stroke of knavery that afternoon in the Faubourg St. Jacques, and all night he had been gaining from Montigny. A flat smile illuminated his face; his bald head shone rosily in a garland of red curls; his little protuberant stomach shook with silent chucklings as he ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Ismail, starting. "He is true to me—Sadik is true to me?" he urged, with a shudder; for if Sadik was false in this crisis, with Europe clamouring for the payment of debts and for reforms, where should he look for faithful knavery? ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... eagerness of a maiden for the dance. Seeing the splendor reserved for itself, it groans and travails unceasingly. Similarly, we Christians groan and intensely desire to have done at once with the Turks, the Pope, and the tyrannical world. Who would not weary of witnessing the present knavery, ungodliness and blasphemy against Christ and his Gospel, even as Lot wearied of the ungodliness he beheld in Sodom? Thus Paul says that creation groaneth and travaileth while waiting for the revelation and the glorious liberty of the ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther

... urchin does when he first possesses himself of a nest which he has been watching for weeks. This would, indeed, be a dreary world if we had not some excitement, some stimulus to lead us on, which occupies our thoughts, and gives us fresh courage, when disheartened by the knavery, and meanness, and selfishness of those who surround us. How sad is the analysis of human nature—what contradictions, what extremes! how many really brave men have I fallen in with, stooping to every meanness for patronage, court favour, or gain; slandering those ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat

... to those of the purchaser. These 'sale-speakers' exercise no other trade. They go from market to market, to promote business, as they say. They have generally a great knowledge of cattle, have much fluency of tongue, and are, above all, endowed with a knavery beyond all shame. They dispute by turns furiously and argumentatively as to the merits and defects of the animal, but as soon as it comes to be a question of price, the tongue is laid aside as a medium, and the conversation ...
— Harper's Young People, August 3, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... Knavery, damn'd Sedition, Libels, Treason, Successions, Rights and Privileges, with a new-fashion'd Oath of Abjuration, call'd the Association.—Ah, Rogue, what will you say when these shall be ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn

... Visions of gallantry, knavery, robbery, flocked into her brain and rendered her afraid to question him. She rocked herself upon a chair, wringing her hands and weeping bitterly. The baby in the cradle woke up and cried; the boy in the clothes-basket fell over on his back with the basket ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... day when desponding I read in thine aspect the story Of those that were slain when defending Their homes and their mountains of glory. And curst be the guile Of treacherous knavery That throws o'er our isle In its tyranny vile ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... carried on this amazing mad war of theirs, in violation of all human instincts of self-respect and self-preservation, to say nothing of the obligations of religion and morality observed among mankind from the first dawnings of civilization. The knavery, the villainy, and the besotted bestiality of it can never be forgotten, and must never be forgiven, and Louis Raemaekers, gifted as he is with the rare dramatic genius that discriminates his Cartoons, has but discharged an obvious patriotic duty ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers

... without inclosures or bounds by which horses can be secured: they must be turned into the woods for their subsistance, and feed upon leaves and young shoots of trees. Many projects, such as belts, hobles, &c., were tried, but none of these were a security against the wildness of the country and the knavery of the people we were obliged to employ: by these means we lost our horses almost as fast as we could collect them, and those which remained grew very weak, so we found ourselves every day less able to undertake the extra-ordinary march ...
— Conestoga Wagons in Braddock's Campaign, 1755 • Don H. Berkebile

... faithfully as if we had breakfasted with them this morning in their actual drawing-rooms, or should meet them this afternoon in the Park! What a genius! what a vigour! what a bright-eyed intelligence and observation! what a wholesome hatred for meanness and knavery! what a vast sympathy! what a cheerfulness! what a manly relish of life! what a love of human kind! what a poet is here!—watching, meditating, brooding, creating! What multitudes of truths has that man left behind him! What generations he has taught to laugh wisely and fairly! What scholars ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... companies for foreign trade are subject; but they had an immense capital divided among an immense number of proprietors. It was naturally to be expected, therefore, that folly, negligence, and profusion, should prevail in the whole management of their affairs. The knavery and extravagance of their stock-jobbing projects are sufficiently known, and the explication of them would be foreign to the present subject. Their mercantile projects were not much better conducted. The first trade which they engaged in, was that of supplying ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith

... imposition, not imagining that a person so rich as an Englishman MUST be, would go out in a cold night for the sake of obtaining a reasonable bargain. They were, however, much mistaken, as I told them that rather than encourage them in their knavery, I should be content to return to Lisbon; whereupon they dropped their demand to three and a half, but I made them no answer, and going out with Antonio, proceeded to the house of the old man who had accompanied us ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... nothing. Indeed, I have heard some things which appear to entitle her to compassion and respect. But as to Peschiera, all who prize honor suspect him to be a knave—I know him to be one. Now, I think that the longer we preserve that abhorrence for knavery which is the generous instinct of youth, why, the fairer will be our manhood, and the more reverend our age. You agree with me?" And Harley suddenly turning, his eyes fell like a flood of light upon ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various

... poems were published in 1668; he translated-likewise the second Epod of Horace, several pieces out of Claudian, and likewise a dramatic piece from Aristophanes, which he calls Hey for Honesty, Down with Knavery, a pleasant comedy printed in 4to. London 1651. A gentleman of St. John's College, writes thus in honour of ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber

... spectacle, and the noise of their chains with the roaring of the beaten waters has something of the strange and fearful to one unaccustomed to it. They are chastised on the least disorder, and without the least humanity; yet are they cheerful and full of knavery. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... if I say it myself, a superior woman. Her father, Captain Baltus Van Hoorn, had been a burgher of substance in old Dorp, until the knavery of a sea-captain who turned pirate with a ship owned by my grandfather drove the old gentleman into poverty and idleness. For years his younger daughter, my mother, kept watch over him, contrived by hook or by crook to collect ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic

... may form habits of honesty, or knavery; truth, or falsehood; of industry, or idleness; frugality, or extravagance; of patience, or impatience; self-denial, or self-indulgence; of kindness, cruelty, politeness, rudeness, prudence, perseverance, circumspection. In short, there, ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols

... protest from Grandier and the barefaced knavery of the exorcist, M. de Laubardemont prepared a report of the expulsion of the three devils, Asmodeus, Gresil, and Aman, from the body of sister Jeanne des Anges, through three wounds below the region of the heart; ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - URBAIN GRANDIER—1634 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... now, Herr Schmick," I made haste to exclaim, seeing lachrymose symptoms in his blear old eyes. Then I became firm once more. This knavery must cease, or I'd know the reason why. "The next man who comes here to cart away so much as a single piece is to be kicked out. Do you understand? These things belong to me. Kick him into the river. Or, better still, ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon

... and women I have known and who left with me a love of my kind that even a wide experience with knavery and misfortune has never dissipated. For my knowledge of Mr Greeley I am chiefly indebted to David P. Rhoades, his publisher, to Philip Fitzpatrick, his pressman, to the files of the ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller

... tell, not what they had to demand, that excited him to trembling; the assembled neighbourhood seemed to strike him in the light of a safeguard. When, however, he found the incomers were inclined to accuse him of trick or knavery, ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall

... be confessed, that the farmers were justly punished for their knavery, brutality, and folly. But neither are the squires and landlords to be excused; for to them is owing the depopulating of the country, the vast number of beggars, and the ruin of those few sorry ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift

... "Honesty is the best policy;" and it is only by scrupulous honesty that enduring success can be obtained. Trickery and sharp practice may earn wealth rapidly, but depend upon it they have their reward; for it is a curious fact in the history of man that wealth acquired by knavery rarely stays with its possessors for more than a generation, ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.

... colleague Bergier have the vehicles unloaded, putting the most valuable effects on one cart, which they appropriate to themselves, and drive away with it to some distance out of sight, paying the driver out of their own pockets: "No doubt whatever exists as to the knavery of Montbrion and Bergier; administrators and commissioners of the administration of the department."—De Sades, the author of "Justine," pleads his well-known civism and the ultra-revolutionary petitions drawn up by him in the name of the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... happiness, Alas! for human sorrow; Our Yesterday is nothingness, What else will be our Morrow? Still Beauty must be stealing hearts, And Knavery stealing purses; Still Cooks must live by making tarts, And Wits by making verses; While Sages prate and Courts debate, The same Stars set and shine; And the World, as it roll'd through ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 351 - Volume 13, Saturday, January 10, 1829 • Various

... do duty for two meals. We took it at a rough table in the tower, lighted by a flambeau that sent sparks flying like pigeons into the sombre height of the building which tapered high overhead as a lime-kiln upside down. From this retreat we could see the proof of knavery in the villages below. Far down on Knapdale, and back in the recesses of Lochow, were burning homes, to judge ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro

... he cried in a tempest of wrath. "A murrain upon his greedy, crafty lust! The gods blast him in his knavery! Now is my precious amulet in his hands. Would it were white-hot and clung to him ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller

... these passions: Now do I sound the depth of all their drifts, The devil's[154] device and Churms his knavery; On whom this heart hath vow'd to be reveng'd. I'll scatter them: the plot's already in my head. Nurse, hie thee home, commend me to my sister; Bid her this night send for Master Churms: To him she must recount her ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various

... parish of St Giles it was gotten into several streets, and several families lay all sick together; and, accordingly, in the weekly bill for the next week the thing began to show itself. There was indeed but fourteen set down of the plague, but this was all knavery and collusion, for in St Giles's parish they buried forty in all, whereof it was certain most of them died of the plague, though they were set down of other distempers; and though the number of all ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe

... with those of the neighbouring islands, are mostly black, or of a mixed colour, very encroaching in their manners, and much addicted to knavery. The island is extremely rocky and uneven, but the vallies are fertile. The inhabitants raise cotton, and they have several sugar works; the quantity they raise of both, does not, however, much exceed their own consumption, but there is no doubt that it might be considerably ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry

... man, a toiler, austere in his morals, had slowly made his way in that particular ministry which develops both honesty and knavery at the same time. A clerk in the ministry of Foreign Affairs, he had charge of the most delicate division of its archives. Jacquet in that office was like a glow-worm, casting his light upon those ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac

... I beshrew your knave's heart, Ere I take part in your knavery: I will speak fair, by our[544] lady. Sir, I beseech your maship to be As good as ye ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley

... strike Colson favorably. The two held a whispered consultation, which seemed to yield mutual satisfaction. They were, indeed, congenial spirits, and agreed upon one point, that it was better to make a living by knavery than by doing honest work for honest wages. Yet there is no harder or more unsatisfactory way of living than this. Ill-gotten gains seldom benefit the possessor, and the plans of wicked ...
— In A New World - or, Among The Gold Fields Of Australia • Horatio Alger

... practising his father's maxims upon him, and cheating him. JOHNSON. 'I am much pleased with this design; but I think there was no occasion to make the son honest at all. No; he should be a consummate rogue: the contrast between honesty and knavery would be the stronger. It should be contrived so that the father should be the only sufferer by the son's villainy, and thus there ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell

... made of the Rover," returned the countryman; "but never to enter into any of the intricate particulars of his knavery." ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper

... and when he saw the numerous advantages which Francisco's good character procured. Such had been Piedro's wretched education, that even the hard lessons of experience could not alter its pernicious effects. He was sorry his knavery had been detected, but he still thought it clever to cheat, and was secretly persuaded that, if he had cheated successfully, he should have been happy. "But I know I am not happy now," said he to himself ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth

... those two short words—'The Parish!' And with how many tales of distress and misery, of broken fortune and ruined hopes, too often of unrelieved wretchedness and successful knavery, are they associated! A poor man, with small earnings, and a large family, just manages to live on from hand to mouth, and to procure food from day to day; he has barely sufficient to satisfy the present ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... was overwhelmed with despair for what he had done, and he tried to make his peace with Francis; but while that monarch did not punish him directly for his knavery; he would have no more to do with him, and this was the worst punishment the artist could have had. However, his genius was so great that other than French people forgot his dishonesty and he began life anew in ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon

... are the titles of some of his works, viz. Collections in Defence of the King. Toleration Discussed. Relapsed Apostate. Apology for Protestants. Richard against Baxter. Tyranny and Popery. Growth and Knavery. Reformed Catholic. Free-born Subjects. The Case Put. Seasonable Memorials. Answer to the Appeal. L'Estrange no Papist; in answer to a Libel, intitled L'Estrange a Papist, &c. with Notes and Animadversions ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber

... acquire her regard in that fashion. He would have preferred to take the chances of a rifle-shot, for while he had few scruples he had been born with a pride which, occasionally at least, prevented his indulgence in petty knavery; and, crushing down his anger, he set himself to consider by what means he ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss

... sooth the door of device is straitened upon me!" Replied she, "At once I will devise for thee to do away his life." "How so?" asked he; and she answered, "By means of our female slave the so-called Bakun." Now this Bakun was past mistress in all kinds of knavery and was one of the most pestilent of old women, in whose religion to abstain from wickedness was not lawful; she had brought up Kuzia Fakan and Kanmakan who had her in so great affection that he used to sleep at her feet. So when ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... gave himself up for dead, and made answer meekly, "Sir Knight, this youth that I am chastising is my servant, employed by me to watch a flock of sheep that I have hard by, and he is so careless that I lose one every day, and when I punish him for his carelessness and knavery he says I do it out of niggardliness, to escape paying him the wages I owe him, and before God, and on my ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... is the same to touch one of their parishioners and the apple of their eye. At times they make use of unjust and compromising expressions: Thus the tobacco monopoly is "an imposition" or "a bit of knavery." The impost for elections of gobernadorcillos, the signing of a passport, or any other accidental expense which is incurred [by the Indian], is "a theft." The services for the repairing of roads and bridges are "annoyances" ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various

... Knave of Clubbs, 1600 (Percy Soc. ed. p. 18). The word Shifter is employed by Rowlands in the Knave of Harts, 1613, and by others of our elder writers in the same sense. In the following passage, shift is used to signify a piece of knavery:— ...
— Shakespeare Jest-Books; - Reprints of the Early and Very Rare Jest-Books Supposed - to Have Been Used by Shakespeare • Unknown

... you news from court; Marke, these things will make you good sport. All the French that lately did prance There, up and downe in bravery, Now are all sent back to France, King Charles hath smelt some knavery. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... deuce, thought I, wasn't he expending this precious acquirement on a platoon of agricultural recruits? The officer who suffers such gladly has his name inscribed on the Golden Legend (unfortunately unpublished) of the British Army—"but when it comes," he went on, "to low-down lying knavery, then I'm done. I don't know how to tackle it. All I can do is to get out of the knave's way. I've found Gedge to be a beast, and I'm very honourably in love with Gedge's daughter, and I've asked her to marry me. I attach some value, Major, to your opinion of me, and I want ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke

... be made whole of the ailment in which his simplicity caused him believe, to publish the privy diversions of his wife; and this hath brought to my mind somewhat of contrary purport to itself, to wit, a story of how one man's knavery got the better of another's wit, to the grievous hurt and confusion of the over-reached one, the which it pleaseth me to relate ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio

... friend Mrs. Grundy—that is,'the World'—without injury to any one. We must suppose that that footman of Trevanion's was out of his mind,—it is but a charitable, and your good father would say a philosophical, supposition. All great knavery is madness! The world could not get on if truth and goodness were not the natural tendencies of sane minds. Do ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... one to be discussed on its merits, in order to arrive at a distinct opinion how far it may be connected with facts insufficiently appreciated and explained by science, and how far with superstition, delusion, and sheer knavery. Such investigation, pursued by careful observation in a scientific spirit, would seem apt to throw light ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang

... earnest, something practical, is a fitful and fantastic and extravagant thing. How poorly prepared are that young man and woman for the duties of to-day who spent last night wading through brilliant passages descriptive of magnificent knavery and wickedness! The man will be looking all day long for his heroine in the tin-shop, by the forge or in the factory, in the counting-room, and he will not find her, and he will be dissatisfied. A man who gives himself up to the indiscriminate reading of novels will be nerveless, ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller

... through its horrors, (and which yet, through that single want, had nearly perished)—they persued a long and dlifficult march through a dreary country, scantily peopled, dotted with robber clans, and exhibiting impediments of all kinds in the knavery and villany of the native authorities; until they reached the borders of Abyssinia. We had by no means been aware that volcanoes had made so large a share of this portion of Africa. The whole border seems to be volcanic, and to retain in its blasted ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various

... look, an oily voice, downcast eyes, immovable spectacles, clothes like sacristans as if of black wood, almost all told thin beads ostentatiously, and with more strategy and more knavery than the wicked, took toll from ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans

... Nemours, where we met with an innkeeper who exceeded in knavery all we had met with, either in France or Italy: for supper, we had a soupe maigre, a partridge and a chicken roasted, a plate of celery, a small cauliflower, two bottles of poor vin du Pays, and a dessert of two biscuits and four apples: here is the ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... a speech in favor of the constitutionality of appropriations for the improvement of Western rivers and harbors. The debate was continued between the conflicting absurdities of the Southern Democracy, which is slavery, and the Western Democracy, which is knavery." Under the leadership of Jackson and other Southerners, the Democrats, notwithstanding their long ascendency, had adhered to their position on internal improvements more consistently, perhaps, than to any other of the contentions which they ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown

... it, that he will find no occasions of doing any good: the ill company will sooner corrupt him, than be the better for him: or if notwithstanding all their ill company, he still remains steady and innocent, yet their follies and knavery will be imputed to him; and by mixing counsels with them, he must bear his share of all the blame that ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various

... Plot; to produce it here would be to swell the volume far beyond its present dimensions. One point, however, must not be omitted. There have been two raids on the Public Record Office, two acts of abstraction and knavery with respect to these Gunpowder Plot papers; and it can be certainly stated, from the extracts made from them by Dr Abbott and Archbishop Bancroft, that the stolen papers were precisely those which proved Garnet's guilt most conclusively. A Manuscript letter from Dr Jardine to Mr ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt

... thankful for her humiliation than she could suspect, with her narrow knowledge of the world. Perhaps that sudden downfall of her fancied queenship was needed, to shut her out, once and for all, from that downward path of spiritual intoxication, followed by spiritual knavery, which, as has been hinted, was but too ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley

... bulk of the members stayed in the Great Chamber. I was informed that this was one trick among others concerted to ruin me, and, telling the Duc d'Orleans of it, he said that if the old buffoon, the Keeper of the Seals, was concerned in such a complication of folly and knavery, he deserved to be hanged by the side of Mazarin. But the sequel showed that I was not ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz

... said anything to them; but we will pass them and proceed. You have heard of the sins of his youth, of his apprenticeship, and how he set up, and married, and what a life he hath led his wife; and now I will tell you some more of his pranks. He had the very knack for knavery; had he, as I said before, been bound to serve an apprenticeship to all these things, he could not have been more cunning, he could not have been more ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... reality made but a small part of the motive force; one may almost say they were no more than the turning of the handle which admits the driving power into the machine. Only once does he appear to see something of the truth. It is when he uses the phrase 'to plume up my will in double knavery.' ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley

... solicitor to threaten the printer with a prosecution for having taken so much liberty with his name—take notice, too, that he had accepted the money! Dodsley, you may believe, laughed at the lawyer; but that does not lessen the dirty knavery.... I have done with countenancing kings." After he had remained in prison more than six years, "he took the benefit of the Act of Insolvency, and went to the Old Bailey for that purpose: in order ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell

... remote parts of North America are now able to pay for the linens, woollens, and iron ware, they are furnished with by English traders, though Indians have nothing but what they get by hunting, and the goods are loaded with all the impositions fraud and knavery can contrive, to inhance their value; will not industrious English farmers," employed in the culture of hemp, flax, silk, &c. "be able to pay for what shall be brought to them in the fair way of commerce;" and especially when it is remembered, that ...
— Report of the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations on the Petition of the Honourable Thomas Walpole, Benjamin Franklin, John Sargent, and Samuel Wharton, Esquires, and their Associates • Great Britain Board of Trade

... his money-bags I think that La Chesnaye's servile nature would have bargained to send souls in job lots blindfold over the gangplank. But, as La Chesnaye said when Pierre Radisson remonstrated against the knavery, the gin was ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut

... miserable fall, and for such a purpose! To expect to find the streaked daffodil unguarded in an outhouse! To sell it for five pounds and think to spend the money on creature comforts! It is hard to say which of the three was the worst. The really good have little idea how such fool's knavery looks to the shadily clever; it brings home to them the wrongness of wrong, disgusting them with it and with themselves, as no preaching in the ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad

... it. I have an inward shame and a sharp remorse, if sometimes a lie escapes me: as sometimes it does, being surprised by occasions that allow me no premeditation. A man must not always tell all, for that were folly: but what a man says should be what he thinks, otherwise 'tis knavery. I do not know what advantage men pretend to by eternally counterfeiting and dissembling, if not never to be believed when they speak the truth; it may once or twice pass with men; but to profess the concealing their thought, and to brag, as some of our princes ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... John Cockle, I'll pledge you a pottle, Were it the best ale in Nottinghamshire: But then, said our king, now I think of a thing; Some of your lightfoot I would we had here. Ho! ho! quoth Richard, full well I may say it, 'Tis knavery to eat it, ...
— The Book of Brave Old Ballads • Unknown

... head. Colonel Murray did tell him in the House, that, if any lives were lost, his Lordship should join the number. Nor yet is he so lunatic as to deserve pity. Besides being very debauched, he has more knavery than mission. What will be decided on him, I do not know; every man that heard him can convict him of the worst kind of sedition: but it is dangerous to constitute a rascal a martyr. I trust we have not much holy fury left; I am persuaded ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole

... on the land system confirmed some of the conditions as set forth by Randolph's report. Stating that the country was "ill peopled" despite the headright system, they explained that "The first great abuse of this design arose from the ignorance and knavery of surveyors, who often gave out drafts of surveys without even coming on the land. They gave their descripton [sic] by some natural bounds and were sure to allow large measure, that so the persons for whom they surveyed should enjoy much larger tracts than they paid quit-rents ...
— Mother Earth - Land Grants in Virginia 1607-1699 • W. Stitt Robinson, Jr.

... you going, Great-Heart? "To end the rule of knavery; To break the yoke of slavery; To give the world delivery." Then ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood

... Romans would make the sign of the cross, and pass more quickly by the walls of this garden, which thenceforth they called "The Charmed Garden." It was indeed a charmed garden! It was an island of happiness, behind these walls, concealed from the knavery of the world. Like an eternal smile of the Divinity rested the heavens over this ever-blooming, ever-fragrant garden, in whose myrtle-bushes the nightingales sang, and in whose silver-clear ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach

... mental recreation of "'swapping lies;" their respective exchanges consisting on this occasion of feats of stealing; the experiences of one I recollect in particular. He had stolen an axe from a man on the North Pacific Railroad and a few days later sold him the same article. This Piece of knavery was received as the acme of cuteness; and I well recollect the language in which the brute wound up his self-laudations: "If any chap can steal faster than ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler

... &c.; To be but imaginary Erronious conceptions and novelties; Wherein also the lewde, unchristian practises of Witchmongers, upon aged, melancholy, ignorant and superstitious people in extorting confessions by inhumane terrors and Tortures, is notably detected. Also The knavery and confederacy of Conjurors. The impious blasphemy of Inchanters. The imposture of Soothsayers, and infidelity of Atheists. The delusion of Pythonists, Figure-casters, Astrologers, and vanity of Dreamers. The fruitlesse ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... same for policemen—those 'Finders out of Occasions,' as Othello styles them—those 'rough and ready' to choke ideas, as the bud is bit by the venomous worm 'ere it can spread its sweet leaves to the air.' I was about to encounter the assailing eyes of knavery. A gentleman of the administration welcomed me in. 'Sir,' I said, coldly, 'I was invited to meet the prefect of the police. I wish to know what is deemed an outrage to the established ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett

... the large sanctified hat, and the little precise band, with a swinging long spiritual cloak, to cover carnal knavery—not forgetting the black patch, which Tribulation Spintext wears, as I'm informed, upon one eye, as a penal mourning for the ogling offences of his youth; and some say, with that eye he first discovered the ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve

... the Lines of Wickedness to the Eye at one view: Besides, they fancied some sort of Analogy in the Rotundity of the Figure, with the continued Circular Motion of all Court-Policies, in the stated Round of Universal Knavery. ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe

... made it a Fashion, Let's send for a Black Coat, whilst we're in the Mind. But it is damn'd Slavery, And Priestly Knavery, That Parsons must conjure e're ...
— The City Bride (1696) - Or The Merry Cuckold • Joseph Harris

... place I could safely revel in his friendship, and as an author I certainly found him a most charming companion. The adventures of his rogue of a hero, who began life as the servant and accomplice of a blind beggar, and then adventured on through a most diverting career of knavery, brought back the atmosphere of Don Quixote, and all the landscape of that dear wonder- world of Spain, where I had lived so much, and I followed him with all the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... fool confided in the spendthrift. My dear, I understand. In nature Pevensey gave the gems to some nymph of Sadler's Wells or Covent Garden. For I was out of England. And so he capped his knavery with insolence. It is an additional reason why Pevensey should not live to scratch a gray head. It is, however, an affront to me that Umfraville should have believed him. I doubt if ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell

... the foreigner to be a villain. Knowing that it would be impossible for him to relinquish his reason into what he now denominated the partial hands of his aunt and cousin, he persisted in his opinion to both the ladies, that their unsuspicious natures had been rendered subservient to knavery and artifice. ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... last, we asked them for some peaches, and they answered, "Go and pick them," which showed their politeness. However, in order not to offend them, we went off and pulled some. Although they are such a poor, miserable people, they are, nevertheless, licentious and proud, and given to knavery and scoffing. Seeing a very old woman among them, we inquired how old she was, when some young fellows, laughing and jeering, answered twenty years, while it was evident to us she was not less than an hundred. ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts

... Prussia, Malmesbury declared that he could find no quality but "great and shabby art and cunning; ill-will, jealousy, and every sort of dirty passion." From the head quarters of Moellendorf he wrote to a member of Pitt's Cabinet: "Here I have to do with knavery and dotage.... If we listened only to our feelings, it would be difficult to keep any measure with Prussia. We must consider it an alliance with the Algerians, whom it is no disgrace to pay, or any impeachment of good sense to ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... master hand we watch with bated breath the unfolding of a story of unparalleled interest. Ever the unexpected happens, surprise follows surprise, plot is succeeded by counterplot. Vice and virtue, honor and knavery, true love and duplicity, struggle desperately and incessantly for mastery until the mind is bewildered and the heart and soul are stirred to ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor

... would have reckoned so much for the good air, and so much for the view of the country. Thus he built up a tidy fortune with other people's money, became as round as a butt, larded with fat, and was called Monsieur. At the time of the last fair three young fellows, who were apprentices in knavery, in whom there was more of the material that makes thieves than saints, and who knew just how far it was possible to go without catching their necks in the branches of trees, made up their minds to amuse themselves, and live well, condemning certain hawkers or others in all the expenses. ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac

... said of them is that they are drawn from a wrong point of view; but from that point of view their honesty is unquestionable. He does not distinguish men by their party. The folly of his own side is exhibited as relentlessly as the knavery of his opponents. Of no one did he write a more unfavourable character than the Earl of Arundel. He explains the failure of Laud, and he does not conceal the weakness ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various

... expresses the national faith and feeling as regards the inevitable righteousness of England, the Almighty's consequent respect and partiality for that redoubtable little island, and his presumed readiness to strengthen its defence against the contumacious wickedness and knavery of all other principalities or republics. Tennyson himself, though evidently English to the very last prejudice, could not write half so good a song for the purpose. Finding that the entire dinner-table struck in, with voices of every pitch between rolling thunder and the squeak of a ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... represented real transactions, with the names, dress, gestures, and likeness, in masks, of whomsoever it thought fit to sacrifice to the public derision. In a state where it was held good policy to unmask whatever carried the air of ambition, singularity, or knavery, comedy assumed the privilege to harangue, reform, and advise the people upon their most important interests. No one was spared in a city of so much liberty, or rather licentiousness, as Athens was at that time. Generals, magistrates, ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin

... superficial contact with the person. How is it to penetrate within? The necessary conditions will be fulfilled when mechanical rigidity no longer requires for its manifestation a stumbling-block which either the hazard of circumstance or human knavery has set in its way, but extracts by natural processes, from its own store, an inexhaustible series of opportunities for externally revealing its presence. Suppose, then, we imagine a mind always thinking of what it has just done and never of what it ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson

... him with delight. It had accomplished two objects, both of which gave him keen pleasure. Bert's most dangerous rival for the prize had been put out of the way, and Cohen, whom he cordially disliked, had been well punished for his knavery. ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley

... common law, or countors (quos banci narratores vulgariter appellamus) as of an order of men well known. And we have an example of the antiquity of the coif in the same author's history of England, A.D. 1259. in the case of one William de Bussy; who, being called to account for his great knavery and malpractices, claimed the benefit of his orders or clergy, which till then remained an entire secret; and to that end voluit ligamenta coifae suae solvere, ut palam monstraret se tonsuram habere clericalem; ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone

... quality as well—something elfin, wayward, mischievous. They peep and whisper. It is said they can cast spells. To sleep upon a daisied lawn is to run a certain risk. There is this hint of impudence in their attitude, half audacity, half knavery, that shows itself a little in the way they stare unwinkingly all day at everything above them—at the stately things that tower proudly in the air—then just shut up at sunset without a word of explanation or apology. They see everything, ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood

... had to undergo infinite annoyance from one of her neighbors, who was a witch and whom she was fain to conciliate with all sorts of attention, for this witch could throw a charm upon children which made them cry themselves to death. A pastor having punished her for some knavery, she cast a spell upon him by means of some earth upon which he had walked, and which she bewitched. The poor man hereupon fell sick of a malady which no remedy could remove, and shortly ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various

... Saint Giles's and the desperate neighbourhood of Saffron Hill in our own time. And yet, on the very site of the sordid tenements and squalid courts we have mentioned, where the felon openly made his dwelling, and the fraudulent debtor laughed the object of his knavery to scorn—on this spot, not two centuries ago, stood the princely residence of Charles Brandon, the chivalrous Duke of Suffolk, whose stout heart was a well of honour, and whose memory breathes of loyalty and valour. Suffolk House, as Brandon's ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth

... in fetters. When his steward, Diomedes, left him to the mercy of a wild boar, which suddenly attacked them while they were walking together, he considered it rather a cowardice than a breach of duty; and turned an occurrence of no small hazard into a jest, because there was no knavery in his steward's conduct. He put to death Proculus, one of his most favourite freedmen, for maintaining a criminal commerce with other men's wives. He broke the legs of his secretary, Thallus, for taking a bribe of five hundred denarii to discover the contents of one of his letters. ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus

... obligation of our hospitable entertainment there: though nameless fugitives we were still under the spell of the standards of our former lives. We admitted to each other that he might steal an axe from that farm and I condone the knavery and avail myself of its proceeds; but we agreed that such baseness must be stooped to only as a desperate last resort. He was to ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White

... chance to take offence, the higher life they were to lead began at once. And yet it seemed at times to Honora as though this higher life were the gift the fates would most begrudge: a gift reserved for others, the pretensions to which were a kind of knavery. Merriment, forgetfulness, music, the dance; the cup of pleasure and the feast of Babylon—these might more readily have been vouchsafed; even deemed to have been bargained for. But to take that ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... everything and everywhere: "in the great manufacturers who drive along the streets of the village, crushing men and beasts; in the bailiff and the recorder, who are such bad characters that their very faces betray their knavery;" and finally, in the central figure of the story, Axinia, the wife of Stepan, the youngest son of ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky

... conducts himself in this way is said to have his hands and feet well-controlled. One should not indulge in vociferous abuse or censure. One should not speak words that are vain. One should forbear from knavery and from calumniating others. One should observe the vow of truthfulness, be sparing of speech, and always heedful. By conducting oneself in this way one will have one's organ of speech well-restrained. One should not abstain entirely from food. One ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... of his assistance. The committee, incensed by the treachery and appalled by the danger, knew not what course to take. But Clive was more than Omichund's match in Omichund's own arts. The man, he said, was a villain. Any artifice which would defeat such knavery was justifiable. The best course would be to promise what was asked. Omichund would soon be at their mercy; and then they might punish him by withholding from him, not only the bribe which he now demanded, but also the compensation which all the other ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... Governor's action, and maybe had counseled with him, siding against Bigot. If that were so—as it proved to be—he was in a nest of scorpions; for who among them would spare him: Marin, Cournal, Rigaud, the Intendant himself? Such as he were thwarted right and left in this career of knavery ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... elections of the great cities of today, elections that control taxation and expenditure, the mass of the voters vote in absolute ignorance of the candidates. The citizen who supposes that he does all his duty when he votes, places a premium upon political knavery. Thieves welcome him to the polls and offer him a choice, which he has done nothing to prevent, between Jeremy Diddler and Dick Turpin. The party cries for which he is responsible are: "Turpin and Honesty," "Diddler and ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton

... biographies of the good and great. She read ennobling works of poetry and counsel. She brought before his mind by example how superior was earnestness to trivialty, strict integrity to knavery and falsehood, goodness and piety to wickedness and infidelity. As she read and commented, her voice became to Philip as the voice of an angel. Her work was indeed accomplished when, after having listened to her rendering of St. Paul's grand epistles, ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee

... less title to the hostile name of the Lycophron of philosophy.[194] But the comedy of The Philosophers was a scandalous misrepresentation, introducing Diderot personally on the stage, and putting into his mouth a mixture of folly and knavery that was as foreign to Diderot as to any one else in the world. In 1782 the satirist again attacked his enemy, now grown old and weary. In Le Satyrique, Valere, a spiteful and hypocritical poetaster, is intended partially at least for Diderot. A colporteur, not ill-named as M. Pamphlet, comes ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley

... Juno. "I see, Juno," said he, "you mischief-making trickster, that your cunning has stayed Hector from fighting and has caused the rout of his host. I am in half a mind to thrash you, in which case you will be the first to reap the fruits of your scurvy knavery. Do you not remember how once upon a time I had you hanged? I fastened two anvils on to your feet, and bound your hands in a chain of gold which none might break, and you hung in mid-air among the clouds. All the gods in Olympus ...
— The Iliad • Homer

... with a grievous beating, what while he cried out for succour, but none succoured him, and besought protection, but none protected him. Then said he to them, "O folk, ye are quit[FN295] of that which ye have taken from me; but now restore me to my lodging." They replied, "Leave this knavery, O rascal! thine intent is to sue us for thy clothes on the morrow." The youth cried, "By the truth of the One, the Eternal One, I will not sue any for them!" but they said, "We find no way to this." And the Prefect ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... age, [19] the man stands before us. We see the crisp, erect figure, bristling with aggressive vigour, the coarse, red hair, the keen, grey eyes, piercingly fixed on his opponent's face, and reading at a glance the knavery he sought to hide; we hear the rasping voice, launching its dry, cutting sarcasms one after another, each pointed with its sting of truth; and we can well believe that the dislike was intense, which could ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell

... - me has run up and down mine Country and learn many fine thing, and mush knavery, now more and all dis me know you'll jumbla de fine vench and fill her belly with garsoone, her name ...
— The Noble Spanish Soldier • Thomas Dekker

... shall make a shift yet, old as I am, To find your knavery: you are sent here, Sirra, To discover certain Gentlemen, a spy-knave, And if ye find 'em, if not by perswasion To bring 'em back, ...
— Beggars Bush - From the Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher (Vol. 2 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... without a snib, and next morning when the dominie reached his desk he was surprised to find on it a little cotton glove. He raised it on high, greatly puzzled, and then, as ever when he suspected knavery, his eyes sought Tommy, who was sitting on a form, his arms proudly folded. That the whelp had put the glove there, Cathro no longer doubted, and he would have liked to know why, but was reluctant to give him the satisfaction of asking. So the gauntlet—for gauntlet it was—was laid aside, the ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie

... court with falsehood's blackness, And stained by the yoke of slavery, Full of godless flattery, of vicious lying, And ev'ry possible knavery. ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow

... this person was dark, and his age somewhat advanced. He wore his own hair, combed smooth down, and cut very short. It was jet black, slightly curled by nature, and already mottled with grey. The man's face expressed rather knavery than vice, and a disposition to sharpness, cunning, and roguery, more than the traces of stormy and indulged passions. His sharp quick black eyes, acute features, ready sardonic smile, promptitude and effrontery, ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... the former days are these days, he says in his foreword to Ha-Shahar. Thirty or twenty years ago we had to fight the enemy within. Sanctimonious fanatics with their power of darkness sought to persecute us, lest their folly or knavery be exposed to the light of day.... Now that they, who hitherto have walked in darkness, are beginning to discern the error of their ways, lo and behold, those who have seen the light are closing their eyes against ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin

... and they looked at him. The two men in the runabout resembled each other, and were evidently brothers. Carroll's eyes on the men were sharp, so were theirs on him. Carroll's eyes were looking for knavery, and the men's were looking ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... Folly and knavery were, for a time, completely in the ascendant. The sharpers of society were let loose, and jobbers and schemers became more and more plentiful. They threw out railway schemes as lures to catch the unwary. They fed the mania ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles

... thought of women, and as to the harshness of men, was stirred constantly by the remembrance of his irresolute looks, and his not having dared to speak nobly for Dahlia, even though he might have had, the knavery to think evil. As the case stood, there was still mischief to counteract. Her father had willingly swallowed a drug, but his suspicions only slumbered, and she could not instil her own vivid hopefulness and trust into him. Letters from Dahlia came regularly. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... the powers and every charm of verse, Each science opening in his ample mind, His fancy glowing and his taste refined, See Trumbull lead the train. His skilful hand Hurls the keen darts of satire round the land. Pride, knavery, dullness feel his mortal stings, And listening virtue triumphs while he sings; Britain's foil'd sons, victorious now no more, In guilt retiring from the wasted shore, Strive their curst cruelties to hide in vain; The world resounds them ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow

... upon making the Adams administration odious. In referring to the President and his secretary of state, he did not personally join in the cry of bargain and sale, of fraud and corruption, of treachery and knavery; nor did he speak of them as "the Puritan and the Blackleg;" but for three years his criticisms had so associated the Administration with Federalism and the offensive alien and sedition laws which Jefferson condemned and defeated in 1800, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... again dearth and famine; one runs, another rides, wrangles, laughs, weeps, &c. This I daily hear, and such like, both private and public news, amidst the gallantry and misery of the world; jollity, pride, perplexities and cares, simplicity and villainy; subtlety, knavery, candour and integrity, mutually mixed and offering themselves; I rub on privus privatus; as I have still lived, so I now continue, statu quo prius, left to a solitary life, and mine own domestic discontents: saving that sometimes, ne quid mentiar, as Diogenes went into the city, and Democritus ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... people—a pure fool-like Parsifal, who could not conceive such treachery and knavery because it was incapable of such things itself—toiled and worked day by day, enjoyed the blessings of peace, was happy in its existence and ignorant of the looming clouds gathering on its frontiers. All hail to our chosen leaders who kept watch and ward over ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith

... ostler's work," he announced. "There was knavery and treachery writ large upon his ugly face. I always felt it, and this business proves how correct were my instincts. The rogue was bribed when he discovered how things were with you, you greasy sots. But you, La Boulaye," he cried suddenly, "were ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini



Words linked to "Knavery" :   actus reus, quackery, treason, falsification, falsehood, dishonesty, perfidy, misconduct, charlatanism, trick



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