"Knavish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... more than a beggar's bag, bottle and staff, suitable to their present condition, but so little satisfying, that Newfangle receives a terrible drubbing for his trick. Judge Severity arrives on the scene conveniently to lecture him severely and witness his second knavish device, which is no other than to hand over to the Judge the two fugitives from justice, Cutpurse and Pickpurse, for the piece of land of which he spoke is the gallows. Hankin Hangman takes possession of his victims, and the Devil, entering with a 'Ho, ho, ho!', carries Newfangle ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... he travelled over Europe, with no other capital than his knavish audacity, deep depravity, ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... introduced to him a knavish lawyer named Vholes, who made him believe the great chancery suit must soon end in his favor, and who (when Richard had put the case in his hands) proceeded to rob him of all he had. He poisoned his mind, too, against Mr. Jarndyce, so that Richard began to think ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... line betrayed a Grecian origin, that the plot was not Roman, that the scene was not Roman, that the customs were not Roman; he would say, if he had patience to reason with his antagonist, that a fashionable rake, a grasping father, an indulgent uncle, a knavish servant, an impudent ruffian, and a timid clown, were the same at Rome, at Thebes, and at Athens, in London, Paris, or Madrid. He would ask, of what value were such broad and general features common to a species, when the fidelity ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... Marry, how? Tropically.[82] This play is the image of a murder[83] done in Vienna: Gonzago is the Duke's name; his wife, Baptista: you shall see anon;—'tis a knavish piece of work: but what of that? your majesty, and we that have free souls, it touches us not: Let the galled jade wince,[84] our withers[85] ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... machines, and the Lord-only-knows-what machines; all of which announce the era when that refractory animal, the working or serving man, shall be a buried by-gone, a superseded fossil. Shortly prior to which glorious time, I doubt not that a price will be put upon their peltries as upon the knavish 'possums,' especially the boys. Yes, sir (ringing his rifle down on the deck), I rejoice to think that the day is at hand, when, prompted to it by law, I shall shoulder this gun and go ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... was nonplussed at such an adventure, which was turning out so seriously, first of all, flew into a terrible rage, and nearly rushed off to the lawyer's office, and threatened to cut off his knavish ears for him, but when his access of fury was over, and thinking better of it, he shrugged his ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... The knavish fanatic closed his eyes and raised his face heavenwards. There was a rapturous look on it, and his lips moved. He was calling upon the Almighty to give them the sign which he obligingly indicated. The new head of the church ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... the confines of the Kikuyu country, along which our further route to the Naivasha led. The evil reports of the knavish, hateful character of this people were repeated to us in a yet stronger form by the Kapte Masai, their immediate neighbours. But we had in the meantime received from another source a very different representation. Our ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... no one could be a scoundrel among us," Liputin grinned suddenly, his knavish little eyes seeming to peer into Stepan ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... to the regular practitioner, and to the scientific student of mind and body and of the properties of the materia medica. Why, even here in Connecticut, it is impossible to get a law to protect the community from the imposition of knavish or ignorant quacks, and to require of a man some evidence of capacity and training and skill, before he is let loose to experiment upon suffering humanity. Our teachers must pass an examination—though the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... race is perfectly illiterate,' said the man in black; 'they are possessed, it is true, of a knavish acuteness, and are particularly noted for giving subtle and evasive answers—and in your answers, I confess, you remind me of them; but that one of the race should acquire a learned language like the Armenian, and have a general ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... gnoles, but to quit this sinister wood in the nick of time and retire from business at once and buy a place in the country. Then he descended softly and beckoned to Nuth. But the gnoles had watched him though knavish holes that they bore in trunks of the trees, and the unearthly silence gave way, as it were with a grace, to the rapid screams of Tonker as they picked him up from behind—screams that came faster and faster until they ...
— The Book of Wonder • Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany
... please.[3] It is exactly the same thing in a state: an avaricious man in office is in confederacy with the whole clan of his district or dependence, which in modern terms of art is called, "To live, and let live;" and yet their gains are the smallest part of the public's loss. Give a guinea to a knavish land-waiter, and he shall connive at the merchant for cheating the Queen of an hundred. A brewer gives a bribe to have the privilege of selling drink to the Navy; but the fraud is ten times greater than the bribe, and the public ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... first time in history behave like an organism."[257] Private capitalism and consequent competition are responsible not only for waste and muddle, but also for the adulteration of food and other necessaries of life. "Every man who knows anything of trade knows how general is the knavish practice of adulteration. Now all adulteration is directly due to competition. Did not Mr. John Bright once say that adulteration is only another form ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... now setting in, and the situation of the embassy became more comfortless from day to day. Notes were written, and answers received from the monarch, but the royal interview was still postponed, partly by the artifice of the knavish governors, who kept a longing eye on the presents, and partly by the barbarian etiquette of showing the natives the scorn with which their king was entitled to treat all the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... considerations, not the situation of the "unredeemed" Italians in Trent and Trieste. But Austria, in that grudging maximum of concession which she finally offered to Italy's minimum of demand, insisted upon taking the sentimental or knavish view of the Italian attitude: she would yield the more Italianated parts of the territory in dispute, not the vitally strategic places. Nor would she deliver her concessions until after the conclusion of the war—if ever!—after she had ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... New England his Dream was the daily subject of the conversation of thousands, and was thought worthy to appear in the most superb binding. He had numerous admirers in Holland and among the Huguenots of France. With the pleasure, however, he experienced some of the pains of eminence. Knavish booksellers put forth volumes of trash under his name, and envious scribblers maintained it to be impossible that the poor ignorant tinker should really be the author of the book which was ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... French; and they have lost nothing in the translation, either of their wit or malice. I need not name them: but the one I like the most, is that of Cupid in search of Venus's doves. No one could insinuate a knavish plot, a tender point, a loose moral, with such unconscious archness, and careless raillery, as if he gained new self-possession and adroitness from the perplexity and confusion into which he throws scrupulous imaginations, and knew how to seize ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... the manner in which it is developed from the modern fashion of composition. The lover remains in the country and the heroine in her chamber during the whole action, leaving their fate to be decided by a foolish father, a cunning mother, and two knavish servants. Machiavelli has executed his task with judgment and taste. He has accommodated the plot to a different state of society, and has very dexterously connected it with the history of his own times. The relation of the trick put on the doting old lover is exquisitely humorous. It is far ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the same trick again, and trying who can keep silence longest? Remember that all tricks are either knavish or childish; and that it is as foolish to make experiments upon the constancy of a friend, as upon the chastity of ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... the foliage (alas, of a tree not too sturdy!) on which its devilish meshes are wrought! There is no exaggeration in stating that the financial history of the past three decades in America has been one of peerless turpitude. Rome under the dying glories of the empire scarcely parallels its knavish gluttonies of illegal seizure. And Wall Street has been the boiling point of all this infectious train of outrages against a patient people—one that presumes to rate itself really democratic, and to sneer at countries over seas in which to-day a Credit Mobilier, a Pacific Railroad ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... volitional power into the minds of their intended victims, so that at last they come to believe themselves to be self-acting, when in fact they are the merest shuttlecocks bandied about between the battledores of knavish devils on one side, and devilish knaves upon the other, and between the two the poor fallen wretches are ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... nations, an honest sincerity and persevering courage. We sometimes judge with tolerable correctness; at others are wholly mistaken, and not unfrequently run into such extremes, that having established a principle, that a particular people are knavish, or cowardly, or stupid, we are unwilling to admit any exceptions, but include the whole race in our sweeping censure. We are prejudiced at first sight against a Portuguese or Italian, and are careful of our communications with him, even though we meet him on the high road, or by mere ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 331, September 13, 1828 • Various
... at such an adventure turning out so seriously, first of all flew into a terrible rage, rushed off to the lawyer's office and threatened to cut off his knavish ears for him. But when his access of fury was over, and he thought of it, he shrugged his shoulders ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... minds of their brothers. They have imbibed, in your great towns, the seeds of vices, which were unknown in the forest. They become discouraged and dissipated, —despised by the Indians, neglected by the whites, and without value to either,—less honest than the former, and perhaps more knavish than the latter." [Footnote: Washington had always been earnest in his desire to civilize the savages, but had little faith in the expedient which had been pursued, of sending their young men to our colleges; the true means he thought, was to introduce the ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard
... elves with fairies in deriving all alike from fauns and dryads. Robin is "mad-merry," "jocund and facetious," "a cozening idle friar or some such rogue" [in origin], and so forth—simply described by Shakespeare as a "shrewd and knavish sprite." The forms of mischief in which he delights are described in A Midsummer-Night's Dream, II. i. 33-57, and all these "gests" may be found in the contemporary Robin Goodfellow literature;[86] though we have observed that some of the functions attributed to Queen Mab in Mercutio's famous ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... political officer in Cabul, went still further, and in April 1840 not only urged a march on Bokhara, but also contemplated sending a Mission to Kokand, in order, as he said, 'to frustrate the knavish tricks of the ...
— Indian Frontier Policy • General Sir John Ayde
... cheerfulness in their heart and money in their purse, if they had for their enjoyment a Cecilia, a Marinetta, and even a more lovely beauty in perspective, they would soon entertain a very different opinion of life! I hold them to be a race of pessimists, recruited amongst beggarly philosophers and knavish, atrabilious theologians. If pleasure does exist, and if life is necessary to enjoy pleasure, then life is happiness. There are misfortunes, as I know by experience; but the very existence of such misfortunes proves ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... others they become occasions of merrymaking; a peculiar feature of these gatherings among the Maidu and other tribes is the presence of a clown who mimics the acts and words of the dancers and performs knavish tricks; the origin of this feature of the dances is not clear. In all such ceremonies the tendency to regulate the details of religious performances is apparent, and such regulation is found in so many parts of the world that it may be ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... to distrust and rejection. Had she refused to believe him, he knew not how he would have persisted in his villainy; for, even in concluding his story, it seemed to him that he must betray himself; so perfidious sounded to him the voice which he could hardly believe his own, and so slinking-knavish did he feel the posture of his body, the movements of his limbs. The distress which should have smitten him to the heart restored his baser courage. Again he spoke with the sad ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... the like of my beloved is not in this world! Art thou mad to fellow thy beloved with my beloved?" He said, "Allah upon thee, O my lady, go back with me and look upon my mistress, and after I will with thee and look upon thy beloved." She answered, "It must needs be so, O accursed, for thou art a knavish devil; but I will not go with thee nor shalt thou come with me, save upon condition of a wager which is this. If the lover thou lovest and of whom thou boastest so bravely, prove handsomer than mine whom I mentioned and whom I love and of whom I boast, the bet shall be shine ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... officer who set on dishes and tasted them, Shaft-mon, handbreadth, Shaw, thicket, Sheef, thrust, Sheer-Thursday, Thursday in Holy Week, Shend, harm, Shenship, disgrace, Shent, undone, blamed, Shour, attack, Shrew, rascal, Shrewd, knavish, Sib, akin to, Sideling, sideways, Siege, seat, Signified, likened, Siker, sure, Sikerness, assurance, Sith, since, Sithen, afterwards, since, Skift, changed, Slade, valley, Slake, glen, Soil (to go to), hunting term for taking the water, Sonds, messages, Sort, company, Sperd, bolted, ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... perfectly illiterate," said the man in black; "they are possessed, it is true, of a knavish acuteness; and are particularly noted for giving subtle and evasive answers—and in your answers, I confess, you remind me of them; but that one of the race should acquire a learned language like the Armenian, and ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... character; and, on that account, we have endeavoured, as much as possible, to bring them before the reader, and to make them speak for themselves. They are a half-civilised, unlettered people, proverbial for a species of knavish acuteness, which serves them in lieu of wisdom. To place in the mouth of such beings the high-flown sentiments of modern poetry would not answer our purpose, though several authors have not shrunk from such ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... those who foretell the future and perform prodigies have more powerful souls, or whether they receive power from some strange spirit, replies that, according to appearance, all these things are done by means of certain evil spirits that are naturally knavish, and take all sorts of shapes, and do everything that one sees happen, whether good or evil; but that in the end they never lead men to what ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... them with insults. "In truth one churl is leading another, for the god ever bringeth like to like. Whither art thou taking this glutton, this evil pauper, a kill-joy of the feast? He hath learned many a knavish trick and is like to refuse to labour; creeping among the people he would rather ask alms to fill his insatiate maw." Leaping on Odysseus, he kicked at him, yet failed to stir him from the pathway. Swallowing the insult Odysseus walked towards his house. ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... wife sitting patiently by, from sunset till some time after daybreak. The dwarf's tastes, however, were catholic. A little later in the book the reader finds him, when encamped in the back parlour of the old man's shop, smoking pipe after pipe, and compelling that knavish attorney, Sampson Brass, to do the same. Tobacco-smoke always caused Brass "great internal discomposure and annoyance"; but this made no difference to Quilp, who insisted on his "friend" continuing to smoke, while he inquired: "Is it good, Brass, is it ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... himself, that yesternight The said young gentleman came to me, And then desired that he might This morning betimes married be; But now I doubt it will be high noon, Ere that his business be quite ended, Unless the knavish fool come very soon, That this same thing may be despatched; And therefore, since that this naughty pack Hath at this present me thus served, He is like henceforward my good-will to lack, Or else unwise I might be judged. I am taught ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... to themselves light-minded souls. With such great show as they exhibit in their knavish life, as going through with mass, begging, singing, &c., do they allure and draw light-minded and unstable souls, who are without faith, to imagine that everything is spiritual; and all is shaped to this end, that men may think that in that ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther
... fishes and bid them be thrown into the water again, and to forbid killing any but wild animals, much more noble is it, in dissensions and differences with human beings, to be a generous, just and true enemy, and to check and tame all bad and low and knavish propensities, that in all intercourse with friends a man may keep the peace and abstain from doing an injury. Scaurus was an enemy and accuser of Domitius, but when one of Domitius' slaves came to him to reveal some important matters which ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... it was a hoary-haired scoundrel of a bus; a very reprobate of a bus; an envious, evil-thinking, ill-conditioned, flagrantly thieving, knavish blackguard of a bus. Under no circumstances am I proud of the acquaintance. But then, in extenuation, be it said that it was never anything but an acquaintance of Shadow-Land, conjured up, perhaps, by a material repast that ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... detected, and rendered naught (such as rolling up, in a handkerchief, a long, slender "skin" of grog, like a sausage, and in that manner ascending to the deck out of a boat just from shore; or openly bringing on board cocoa-nuts and melons, procured from a knavish bum-boat filled with spirits, instead of milk or water)—we will only mention here two or three other modes, coming ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... replied, "whether he be Chinee or any other he, is always up to tricks. Was not England specially prepared by an all-wise Providence to frustrate these knavish tricks? Which of such particular tricks may you be referring to at the moment, ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... but one that would not have a Protestant servant leave his religion, which he was going to do, thinking to recommend himself to his master by it; saying, that he had rather have an honest Protestant than a knavish Catholique. I was not called in to the Council and therefore home, first informing myself that my Lord Hinchingbroke hath been married this week to my Lord Burlington's daughter: so that that great business is over; and I am mighty glad of it, though I am not satisfied that I have ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... say, sir. I know this man well: he hath been since an ape-bearer; then a process-server, a bailiff; then he compassed a motion of the Prodigal Son, and married a tinker's wife within a mile where my land and living lies; and, having flown over many knavish professions, he settled only in rogue: ...
— The Winter's Tale - [Collins Edition] • William Shakespeare
... Then the first knavish wight took his needle so bright And threaded its eye with a wee ray of light From the Rhine, sunny Rhine; And, in such a deft way, patched a mirror that day That where it was mended no expert could say— Done so fine 't was ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... government. In the latter instance, the natives were perfectly in the right. At that time, the law against the traffic in ardent spirits (every now and then suspended and revived) happened to be in force; and finding a large quantity on the premises of Victor, a low, knavish adventurer from Marseilles, ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... was no other than a hired servant. I likewise detected him in some knavery, in the course of our journey; and plainly perceived he had a fellow-feeling with the inn-keepers on the road; but, in other respects, he was very obliging, serviceable, and even entertaining. There are some knavish practices of this kind, at which a traveller will do well to shut his eyes, for his own ease and convenience. He will be lucky if he has to do with a sensible knave, like Joseph, who understood his interest too well to be guilty of very ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... that the beggarly knavish Crew will be this year also printing Prophecies and Predictions in my name, to cheat the country as they used to do. This is therefore to give notice, that if there is anything of that kind done ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... were mixed up as silent partners with people who are involved in the most knavish and hazardous market in the world, it would soon have to hand in its schedule. It has, even now, immense difficulty in protecting itself against forgeries and false circulations of all kinds. Where would it be if it had to take account ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... criticism. But although we may fail to distinguish in Chopin's composition the flirting of the grandee Don Juan with the peasant-girl Zerlina, the curses of the duped lover Masetto, and the jeers and laughter of the knavish attendant Leporello, which Schumann thought he recognised, we all obey most readily and reverently his injunction, "Hats off, gentlemen: a genius!" In these words lies, indeed, the merit of Schumann's review as a criticism. Wieck felt and expressed nearly the same, only he felt it less ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... Mrs Quarles the biter is going to be bit, eh? It generally is so in this world's government. You, who brought in your estimable nephew to aid and abet in your own dishonest ways, are, it seems, going to be robbed of all your knavish gains by him. This is taking the wise in their own craftiness, I reckon: and richly you deserve to lose all your ill-got hoard. At the same time, Mrs. Quarles—I will be just—there are worse people in the world than you are: in comparison with your nephew, I consider you a grosser ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... Moerocles of Mantinea. He's a knavish fellow; his backers are recalling their bets. But he hopes to win on a trick; beware, lest he trip you in ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... grasp of his conductors. He was hurried along, nor did there appear the remotest possibility of escape. Just as they turned into a sort of corridor, leading to the passages more immediately connected with the place of their destination, they encountered Humphry Lathom. The same half-stupid, half-knavish expression of face was now lighted up by a grin of ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... the air?" thought Little John. "Some knavish business doubtless, or my friend Roger would not be in it. By my faith, I ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... father; if we could get together some thirty trusty fellows, and the means of carrying our provisions, we would march from one end of the country to the other, and compel those knavish Indians at the point of our swords to deliver up their prisoners," answered Roger; "we might then, perchance, fall in also with Captain Audley, if he is, as I trust, still in the land of ...
— The Settlers - A Tale of Virginia • William H. G. Kingston
... be difficult. The proper and only thing to do was to keep him in custody as long as possible. When he should be brought back to a region of law and justice, it might be that the Pole could be prevented, for a time, at least, from using the results of his knavish observations. ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton
... defeat, utter and pitiful. His tone was too confident, he was too sure of his ground to leave me a doubt as to what would befall if I made appeal to his knavish followers. My arms fell to my sides, and I looked at Gervasio. His face was haggard, and his eyes were very full of sorrow ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... through this magnificent land, must make up his mind to submit to much fatigue, some danger, and innumerable annoyances; such as filth, bad fare, the continual torment of vermin; lodgings, to which a stable with clean hay would be in comparison a paradise; knavish attempts at imposition of various kinds, etc. He must mount on a mule whose saddle is of rude and of abominable construction; whose bit is a sort of iron vice, which clasps the animal's nose and under-jaw, and every day wears ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... are standing here," said the apprentice; "and if you want further proof, behold, he is closing his visor. He thinks to hide himself from our notice; but the trick shall not avail him. A groan for the knavish extortioner, my masters—a deep ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... much of mine own, was adventured to found an empire in America. Great were our hopes, both of glory and of gold, in the kingdom of Powhatan. But it grieves me much to say that all hath resulted in infelicity, misfortune, and an unhappy end. Our ships were wrecked, or captured by the knavish Spaniards. Our brave sailors are perished. As I was blameworthy for thy risk, I send by the messenger your L50, which you shall not lose by my over-hopeful vision. For its usance I send a package ...
— Shakespeare's Insomnia, And the Causes Thereof • Franklin H. Head
... I baffled many a knavish trick to gain possession of the fine fellow; but, after all, I lost him in the middle of the day, when I thought the boldest rogues would not have run the risk. The shouts and laughter of some officers ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... knavish, servile attorney, affecting great sympathy with his clients, but in reality ...
— 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.
... Pat,—the wise woman of her tribe,—was in the habit of visiting us, with her hopeful grandson, who had "a gift for preaching" as well as for many other things not exactly compatible with holy orders. He sometimes brought with him a tame crow, a shrewd, knavish-looking bird, who, when in the humor for it, could talk like Barnaby Rudge's raven. He used to say he could "do nothin' at exhortin' without a white handkercher on his neck and money in his pocket,"—a fact going far to confirm the opinions of the Bishop of ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... When the aims and the experiences of the old fighting and sporting days had passed away, and nothing was left but ceaseless toil, these essentially combative people, to whom violent and continuous excitement was the very breath of life, became, for a while at least, knavish and immoral, sunk almost to one dead social level, and totally uninteresting because, in their new life of peaceful tillage—a life far more suited to their English law-givers than to themselves—they were apparently incapable of maintaining that complete, vigilant interest ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... consideration, however your advice is good, and displays prudence, as your offense shows adventurous courage. Well then, and gave him the knight-stroke so I raise you to nobility, who begged for grace for your offense now kneels before me, rise as knight; knavish you have acted, and Knave of Bergen shall you be called henceforth, and gladly the Black knight rose; three cheers were given in honor of the Emperor, and loud cries of joy testified the approbation with which the Queen danced still once with the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... upon the wire, were carefully packed up, and sent home safe. By seizing and boxing up in the Tower mere bystanders, wholly unconcerned in the sport, he made his 'little tin soldiers' fancy that he did not see their antics. The only hitch in his 'knavish piece of work' arose when, too assured, he placed upon the boards a real live judge, who refused to take the bench in the manager's sham Court of Justice. In every other respect the mystery play was a complete success; everybody was puzzled, players, spectators, and the gentlemen of the press; ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... chambers, but could not see the three fine MSS. again, the Doctor his brother having locked them up. He openly bid for his own books, merely to enhance their price, and the auction proves to be, what I thought it would become, very knavish'; and on the 11th of February he adds: 'Yesterday at five I met Mr. Noel and tarried long with him; we settled then the whole affair touching his bidding for my Lord [Oxford] at the roguish auction of Mr. ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... the old honest family of the Brigellas. As you can hear by the way I talk, I was born in Ferrara. There are lying rogues, drat 'em, as say as how you can tell any one that comes from Ferrara by his knavish face. Concerning my own person, though I says it as shouldn't, I've a heart of gold. Not half. Talking about gold now, you'll be wondering, sure enough, what brought me from Ferrara to Pekin. ...
— Turandot, Princess of China - A Chinoiserie in Three Acts • Karl Gustav Vollmoeller
... additional weapons for his own cause, can never be too often studied. It is instructive to observe the wiles of the Macchiavelian school employed by a master of the craft, to frustrate, not to advance, a knavish purpose. This character, in a great measure, marked his whole policy. He was profoundly skilled in the subtleties of Italian statesmanship, which he had learned as a youth at the Imperial court, and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... with unwonted honors. The President of the Royal Geographical Society, at a special meeting held to welcome him, formally invited him to give to the world a narrative of his travels. Some knavish booksellers paid him the less acceptable compliment of putting forth spurious accounts of his adventures, one at least of which has been republished in this country. Livingstone, so long accustomed to a life of action, found the preparation of his book ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... knavish hypocrite; one of the four guardians of Anne Lovely, the heiress. Colonel Feignwell personates Simon Pure, and obtains the Quaker's consent to his marriage with Anne Lovely.—Mrs. Centlivre, A Bold ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... person, he stands behind that other and turns towards the moon the letters written in the glass. The other looking fixedly on the shining orb reads in it all that is written on the mirror as if it were written on the moon. [278] This is precisely the modus operandi by which the knavish have imposed upon the foolish in all ages. The manipulator of the doctrine stands behind his credulous disciple, writing out of sight his invented science or theology, and writing too often with the blood of ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... emphatically, "the short and the long of it is, that I am a subject of His Most Gracious Majesty King George the Third;" Miss Pross curtseyed at the name; "and as such, my maxim is, Confound their politics, Frustrate their knavish tricks, On him our hopes we fix, God ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... my childhood, No one ever appear'd so prudent and wise as my parents, Who in the darker days of childhood carefully watch'd me. Much indeed it has been my lot to endure from my playmates, When with their knavish pranks they used to embitter my temper. Often I little suspected the tricks they were playing upon me: But if they happen'd to ridicule Father, whenever on Sundays Out of church he came with his slow deliberate footsteps, ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... not in a state of health at present to be deeply vexed at anything. Had I intended it for the public, I should have been more exact and full. Many temperaments and explanations there would have been, if ever I had had a notion that it should meet the public eye." He was justly indignant at the knavish publisher, whose conduct surpassed that of the Dublin pirates, or Edmund Curll. But he was at a loss to know how the publisher obtained a copy. He did not suppose that the Duke of Portland had given up his, and he remembered only "the rough and incorrect papers" constituting the first ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... niceties of his art, who knows how to shift and ward dexterously, to put the change upon his adversary with art and subtlety, and to improve the least advantages, must not be confounded here with the cowardly and knavish cunning of one who, without regard to the laws prescribed, employs the most unfair means to vanquish his competitor. Those who disputed the prize in the several kinds of combats, drew lots ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... its radical sense shrew-ed, malicious, like a shrew. Comp. M. N. D. ii. 1, "That shrewd and knavish sprite called Robin Goodfellow." Chaucer has the verb shrew to curse; the ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... he out of sight than the young man began to walk off rapidly with the bundle. It was an old trick, that has been many times played upon unsuspecting boys, and will continue to be played as long as there are knavish adventurers who prefer dishonest methods of getting a living ...
— The Telegraph Boy • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... the bench, that the pretended plot was no other than a contrivance between himself and Lunt in order to procure money from the government. The prisoners were immediately acquitted, and the ministry incurred a heavy load of popular odium, as the authors or abettors of knavish contrivances to insnare the innocent. The government, with a view to evince their abhorrence of such practices, ordered the witnesses to be prosecuted for a conspiracy against the lives and estates of the gentlemen who had been accused; and at last the affair was brought into the house of commons. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... clean?" The blood stains upon his hands have doubtless worried Dr. Jose somewhat, and all the others who joined with him in the work of carnage. But the blood stains are on their hands still, and the groans and wails of innocents must ever ring in their ears. "It was a knavish piece of work." "Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Askelon, lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice, lest the daughters of the uncircumcised ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... her mouth, it was like flame, and her eyes were flames too, though of another hue, having a greenish light in them that could delight or frighten as she pleased. She went her ways in great state, having two small knavish blackamoor pages in gold tissue at her heels, and a little ways off she was followed by a brace ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... quite unparalleled in its native soil. Unscrupulous persons take advantage of this extraordinary accident. From a country so near and so readily accessible they can get plants home, pot them up, and sell them, before the withering process sets in. May this revelation confound such knavish tricks! The moral is old—buy your orchids from one of the great dealers, if you do not care to ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... Broadway associations to the Ilyinka. A translator can only strive to be colloquial and familiar, giving up the effort to render the varying atmosphere of the different plays. And Ostrovsky's characters are as natural as his language. Pig-headed merchants; apprentices, knavish or honest as the case may be; young girls with a touch of poetry in their natures, who sober down into kindly housewives; tyrannical serf-owners and weak-willed sons of noble families: such is the material of which he builds his entertaining, wholesome, mildly thoughtful dramas. Men and women ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... woids," demanded Axtell. "Flunker," he went on meditatively, "it hath a right knavish sound. Beshrew me, if I fling it not back in the teeth of any caitiff knight that dare put such ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield
... the familiar air of a privileged servant, "did you see that knavish-looking Gabinius following Madame Fabia all the way back to the Temple ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... not thou death! Fie, there's a knavish itch In that salt blood, an utter foe to smarting. Had Jaffier's wife prov'd kind, he'd still been true. Faugh, how that stinks! thou die, thou kill my friend! Or thou! or thou! with that lean wither'd face. Away, disperse all to your several charges, And meet to-morrow where your honour calls you. ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy • Thomas Otway
... result to the negotiators themselves, as well as to others! I give a literary curiosity of this kind. A member of the House of Commons, in the reign of Elizabeth, made a speech entirely composed of the most homely proverbs. The subject was a bill against double payments of book-debts. Knavish tradesmen were then in the habit of swelling out their book-debts with those who took credit, particularly to their younger customers. One of the members who began to speak "for very fear shook," and stood silent. The nervous orator was followed by a blunt and ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... the failure of his plans came quickly to Philip's knavish ears, and he wrote in haste to his confederate, "the devil is loose; take care of yourself," an admonition which John was quite likely to obey. His hope of seizing the crown vanished. There remained to meet his placable brother with ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... gear They spend the one half of the year; In gathering gear and knavish art They somehow ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... Volosova, though the redoubtable M. de Mortillet denounced them as forgeries; they had the misfortune to corroborate other Italian finds against which M. de Mortillet had a grudge. But Dr. Munro thinks that the two plaques of Volosova may have been made for sale by knavish boys. In that case the boys fortuitously coincided, in their fake, with similar plaques, of undoubted antiquity, and, in some prehistoric Egyptian stones, occasionally ...
— The Clyde Mystery - a Study in Forgeries and Folklore • Andrew Lang
... longer Can I bear him, I will snare him, Knavish sprite! Ah, my terror waxes stronger! What a look! what ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... One may observe here, that this lay Pharisee, Ananias, is we have seen he was, sect. 39, took upon him to appoint a fast at Tiberias, and was obeyed; though indeed it was not out of religion, but knavish policy.] ...
— The Life of Flavius Josephus • Flavius Josephus
... impostors have the talent of captivating the confidence and good opinion of the multitude, by pretending to perform miracles in the public streets. This trade descends from father to son; and is so lucrative, that the most fertile parts of the country swarm with these knavish hypocrites. When they die, the neighbouring tribes erect a sort of mausoleum to their memory, consisting of a square tower, surmounted by a cupola of the most fantastical architecture. To these tombs, called likewise marabouts, the devout repair in crowds, ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... more painful to the guests. The Devil, to whom the mayor confided the plan, highly approved of it; but Faustus murmured in the ear of Leviathan, "I command thee to play this rascal, who has prostituted his wife for ambition's sake, a thorough knavish trick; and to revenge me, at the same time, on all these sheep-headed magistrates, who so long forced me to pay my ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... him did not continue permanently. For at the death of Marcius he behaved in a knavish way to the latter's two sons and made the kingdom his own. The senate and the people were intending to elect the children of Marcius, when Tarquinius made advances to the most influential of the senators;—he ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio
... So a man indicted under an act against stealing from ships on navigable rivers escaped, because the barge from which he stole happened to be aground. Gangs could afford to corrupt witnesses or to pay knavish lawyers skilled in applying these vagaries of legislation. Juries also disliked convicting when the penalty for coining sixpence was the same as the penalty for killing a mother. It followed, as he ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... penchant lay snugly latent in his heart, unchecked and unmodified. He flattered himself that he was achieving a capital imposition upon the world at large, that he was actually hoaxing mankind in general, and that such an excellent piece of knavish tranquillity had never been ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... on himself. But when he turned his gaze outward, he knew that these were not the spur of human energy. In striving restlessly to get plunder and power and joy, men wove the mysterious web of life for ends no human mind could know. Carson built his rickety companies and played his knavish tricks upon the gullible public, of whom Webber was one. Brome Porter rooted here and there in the industrial world, and fattened himself upon all spoils. These had to be; they were the tools of the hour. But ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... A KNAVISH attorney asking a very worthy gentleman what was honesty, "What is that to you?" said he; "meddle with those things ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... beyond the limits of the lands ceded by the treaty. Oh, those patents! those patents! What wrongs were perpetrated by those remorseless instruments; what evil councils prevailed when they were hatched; what corrupt, what base, what knavish hands formed them; what vile, what ignoble, what ponderous lies has history assumed to maintain, or to excuse them, and the acts committed ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... for dealing with neutral merchantmen. As for the position into which Sweden has been lured by allowing her diplomatic agents to assist Germany's secret service, Mr. Punch would hardly go the length of saying that it justifies the revision of the National Anthem so as to read, "Confound their Scandi-knavish tricks." But he finds it hard to accept Sweden's professions of official rectitude, and so does ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... resemble in point of honor, the policy of a merchant who, with abundant resources and prosperous business, should devise a plan for throwing discredit on his own notes with the view of having them bought up at a discount, ruinous to the holders and immensely profitable to his own knavish pocket. This comparison may faintly illustrate the wrongfulness of the policy, but not its consummate folly—for in the case of the Government, unlike the merchant, the stern necessity would recur of making good in the end, by the payment ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... "Hark to those devils of dogs; they are howling yet; they would have had my stags by this time but for you. Well, well; send for your portmanteau, and take up your quarters at Crompton; you shall have a hearty welcome; only don't be late for dinner—seven, Sir, sharp. Here are my knavish grooms at last." ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... he was not the knavish spirit that frightened the maidens of the villagery, that skimmed milk, and sometimes laboured in the green, and bootless made the housewife churn, and sometimes made the drink to bear no barm, and whether ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... weighed my plans, and took a greater interest in them than I did myself. At first, when I was unaware of this interest of his in my affairs, he had to divine my intentions, as, for instance, at Papeete, when I contemplated going partners with a knavish fellow-countryman on a guano venture. I did not know he was a knave. Nor did any white man in Papeete. Neither did Otoo know, but he saw how thick we were getting, and found out for me, and without my asking him. Native sailors from ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... Mr. Longfellow ought to have expressed a much deeper indignation at the base, knavish, and heartless conduct of the English and Colonial persecutors than he has done. He should have put far bolder and deeper tints in the picture of suffering. One great, if not the greatest, end of ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... has been abused by the malice of that knavish attorney, Potts, who has always manifested the greatest hostility towards Alizon," said Nicholas; "but he will not prevail, for she has only to show herself to ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... farewell, with a plaintive reminder that a girl not likely to be proposed to every day might do worse than Tony Dalziel. I, in turn, reminded her that any knavish juggling with Captain March's faith would be dealt with severely by me; and so we parted, she to go her way to California en automobile, I to go mine to ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... sir," he said. "That fool, Jan Lubber Fiend, will ever be at his tricks. 'Tis my young mistress that encourages him, more is the pity! For poor serving-men are held responsible for his knavish on-goings. Why, I had just set him cross-legged in the yard with a basket of pease to shell, seeing how he grows as much as a foot in the night—or near by. But so soon as my back is turned he will be forever ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... cause of fear Can justly rise—your king secures you here; Your king, who scorns the haughty prelate's nod, Nor deems the voice of priests the voice of God. 600 Let me, (though lawyers may perhaps forbid Their monarch to behold what they wish hid, And for the purposes of knavish gain, Would have their trade a mystery remain) Let me, disdaining all such slavish awe, Dive to the very bottom of the law; Let me (the weak, dead letter left behind) Search out the principles, the spirit find, Till, from the parts, made master of ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... when I recovered consciousness. I lay stretched upon the bed across which that blackguard Belville had struck his knavish blow. The suit-case was on the floor, but its dastardly ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... who shares it with the King. Both have wagered that they know who is the lady of my heart; and I have wagered to the contrary. No one more than myself hates the English, who took my estates in Piccadilly. Is it not a knavish trick to put justice in motion against me? Ho! Ho! my lord constable, a chamberlain is worth two of you, and I will beat you yet. My dear Petit, I give you permission to search by night and by day, every ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... look a bit of a Bogey, but then he may prove just a big Benefactor, And if he should work on the cheap, kill Corruption, and kick out the knavish Contractor, Without piling Pelion on Ossa (of rates) on my back, till my legs with the "tottle" limp, I shall "learn to love him" as Giant Beneficent, not ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 3, 1892 • Various
... did not long remain present at his brother's interview with his bailiff, a tall, thin man with a sweet consumptive voice and knavish eyes, who to all Nikolai Petrovitch's remarks answered, 'Certainly, sir,' and tried to make the peasants out to be thieves and drunkards. The estate had only recently been put on to the new reformed system, and the new mechanism worked, ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... attended Mr. Brooke's wise and earnest efforts to restore peace and plenty to the poor persecuted Dyaks; what incessant vigilance on his part was still requisite to check the inveterate propensity of the knavish Malays to plunder and oppress them; and with what well-directed activity he pursues his labors for the physical welfare and the moral regeneration ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... in London, where you pay half-a-crown at least for a bed that would cost only a shilling in the provinces. In the midst of his knaveries, and what were even more shocking to my remembrance, his confidential discoveries in his rambling conversations of knavish designs, (not always pecuniary,) there was a light of wandering misery in his eye at times, which affected me afterwards at intervals when I recalled it in the radiant happiness of nineteen, and amidst the solemn tranquillities of Oxford. That of itself was interesting; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... our God, arise, Scatter his enemies, And make them fall. Confound their politics, Frustrate their knavish tricks, On Thee our hopes we fix, ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... deal about that daemon in his "Phaedo"—that wonderful story to which I have just alluded, and which lives so vividly in my memory. Sometimes I think that Mr. Gladstone has the same superstition. He has moments—especially if there be the stress of the sheer brutality of obstructive and knavish hostility—when he seems to retire into himself—to transfer himself on the wings of imagination to regions infinitely beyond the reach, as well as the ken, of the land in which the Lowthers, the Chamberlains, and the Bartleys dwell. At such moments he gives one the impression of communing with ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... tragedy, red-heeled, patched, and be-periwigged, lies in the grave; and it is only the ghost of it that we see, which the fair Jewess has raised. There are classical comedies in verse, too, wherein the knavish valets, rakish heroes, stolid old guardians, and smart, free-spoken serving-women, discourse in Alexandrines, as loud as the Horaces or the Cid. An Englishman will seldom reconcile himself to the roulement of the verses, and the painful recurrence of the rhymes; for my ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... spirits are described, or where the power of fairies is introduced; when such was the credulity of the times respecting these imaginary beings, and when that belief was made a science of, and kept alive by artful and superstitious, knavish, and enthusiastic teachers; what Lilly relates of these people, considered only as matter of fact, is ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly
... a rigorous code of laws. His observation in moving for a parliamentary committee to inquire into the present practice and effect of imprisonment for debt is worthy of quotation: "it was desirable to distinguish the unfortunate debtor from the knavish one, to place the creditor in that situation which afforded the fairest and the speediest means of compensation, and to regulate the jails of this country in such a manner as to prevent unnecessary hardship and restraint. Whether they considered ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - No. 555, Supplement to Volume 19 • Various
... a pillar, round which stood a set of men, some rough, some knavish-looking, with the blue coats, badges, short swords, and bucklers carried by serving-men. They were waiting to be hired, as if in a statute fair, and two or three loud-voiced bargains were going on. In the middle aisle, gentlemen in all the glory of plumed ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... credit which these knavish traders gave their customers, who could not conveniently pay their money down, was carried to an exorbitant charge; since, even in Elizabeth's reign, it was one of the popular grievances brought into Parliament—it is there called, "A bill against Double ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... to charge some of this loss to Seward. "The clamour against Sewardism lost us many votes," it declared the morning after the election. Two or three days later, as the reduced majority became more apparent, it explained that "A knavish clamour was raised on the eve of election by a Swiss press against Governor Seward's late speech at Rochester as revolutionary and disunionist. Our loss from this source is considerable." The returns, however, showed plainly that one-half of the Americans, following the precedent ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... But at least he is consistent; for neither will he take medicine from the hand of a Sahib, however ill he may be; nor have I ever known him to decline or postpone the performance of this or that duty because it was Sunday,—as many knavish bhearers do when they have set their hearts on a cock-fight. To compound for sins one is inclined to, by damning those one has no mind to, it is not indispensable that one should ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... covetous and worldly will dislike that man, for they believe that the world is governed, not by God, but by money. Politicians will dislike that man, because they think that not God, but they, govern the world, by those very politics and knavish tricks, which we pray God to confound, whenever we sing "God save the Queen." And the common people—the masses—who ought to hear such a man gladly, for his words are to them, if they would understand them, a gospel, and good news of divine ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... condemned those citizens as thieves. "They are," he said, "the strength of Anti-Christ; they are adversaries to Christ; they are an evil rabble; they are bold in wickedness; and though they pretend to follow the truth, they will sit at tables with wicked people and knavish followers of Judas." For true Christians, therefore, there was only one course open. Instead of living in godless towns, they should try to settle in country places, earn their living as farmers or gardeners, and thus keep as ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... that I knew and had in mind a year after I left London—six years ago. But I kept it to myself. I had to do my work under frightful disadvantages. Oliver, my professor, was a scientific bounder, a journalist by instinct, a thief of ideas—he was always prying! And you know the knavish system of the scientific world. I simply would not publish, and let him share my credit. I went on working; I got nearer and nearer making my formula into an experiment, a reality. I told no living soul, because I meant to flash my work upon the world ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... of heroic self-deception made use of by unheroic self-indulgence? What are we to say when we see asceticism preached to the poor by fat and comfortable retainers of the rich? What are we to say when we see idealism become hypocrisy, and the moral and spiritual heritage of mankind twisted to the knavish purposes of class-cruelty and greed? ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... lost no time in his journey to Edinburgh. They travelled in the Colonel's post-chariot, who, knowing his companion's habits of abstraction, did not choose to lose him out of his own sight, far less to trust him on horseback, where, in all probability, a knavish stable-boy might with little address have contrived to mount him with his face to the tail. Accordingly, with the aid of his valet, who attended on horseback, he contrived to bring Mr. Sampson safe to an inn in Edinburgh—for hotels in those days there ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... miller's eels, Laudate dominum de coelis: and all they that have consented thereto, Benedicamus domino:' why then, beware! look about you, my neighbors. If any of you have a sheep sick of the giddies, or a hog of the mumps, or a horse of the staggers, or a knavish boy of the school, or an idle girl of the wheel, or a young drab of the sullens, and hath not fat enough for her porridge, or butter enough for her bread, and she hath a little help of the epilepsy or cramp, to teach her to roll her eyes, wry her mouth, gnash ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham |
