"Petard" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with his burden, but shaking with laughter. He was hoist with his own petard, but his burden grew lighter all the same. I ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... days after he had taken over the command, Sir William Waller, a Parliament General, rode up at the head of his dragoons and demanded surrender. Of course Sir John refused, and Sir William proceeded to fix a petard to the gate, to blow it in. A military genius like Wither would have ordered his men to fire their muskets at the enemy; but all the soldiers on both sides escaped that day. The explosive was securely fastened in position, the gate was shattered, the assailants ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... I agree to what you propose, it is, after all, you who triumph, not I. And I doubt if I could stop him now, even if I tried." He laughed again, for the third time, savagely. "You are hoist with your own petard, Verney. You wanted to see me sacked; and now that there is a chance in a thousand that Caesar will be sacked, you squirm. I swore to get my knife into you, and, ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... criticism for the guidance of commentators in questions of this nature," so appropriate and valuable, that I cannot except to be bound by it in these remarks; and if in the sequel his own argument (and his friend's proposition to boot) shall be blown up by his own petard, it will show the instability of the cause he ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 65, January 25, 1851 • Various
... from the eastern shore and her men jumped on board. The intention was to explode two charges of powder with a slow match over the chains, and a torpedo by electricity under the bows of the hulk, a petard operator being on board. The charges were placed, and the Pinola cast off. The operator claims that he asked Bell to drop astern by a hawser, but that instead of so doing, he let go and backed the engines. Be this as it may, the ship went rapidly astern, the operator ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... less than to hoist these German blokes with their own petard, so to speak. We were going to fool them by giving them signals in their own code. Well, after stumbling and groping about for half an hour," McNab continued, "we arrived at the spot near where we had overlooked ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... frantic gestures. Not a muscle stirred! Whereupon Lemaitre seemed to break down utterly under his grief, let go of the body, and it fell hard upon the stage like an inert mass. The effect was superb. The whole house applauded, the bravos became frantic, the great actor was hoist with his own petard. Lemaitre passed the night in solemn reflection on the seriousness of the case. The result was that at the next representation, while carrying in his little dead brother, he delicately tickled him under the arms. The unhappy defunct could not stand this. He came to life, burst ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... in Ireland," his humorous wife reminded him. "What if Don Mike has hoisted you on your own petard? Few men have done as much," and she pinched his ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... seen service which was no child's play. One had been knighted by Charles the First, after the battle of Edgehill. Another still wore a patch over the scar which he had received at Naseby. A third had defended his old house till Fairfax had blown in the door with a petard. The presence of these old Cavaliers, with their old swords and holsters, and with their old stories about Goring and Lunsford, gave to the musters of militia an earnest and warlike aspect which would otherwise have been wanting. Even those country gentlemen ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... marry; and while he could carry on an intrigue with a woman of inferior station and society would wink in innocency, it was different with a woman of quality—his very life might have paid the penalty, and she would have been hoisted high by the social petard. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... word—obedience, even if, as in this instance, he is ordered to commit suicide. Let them hatch their diabolical plots. We will see if the Lord does not still reign, and the devil is not a fool. It shall go hard, but that they are 'hoist with their own petard!'" ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... just in its first stage; and there was the same dreary and universal emptiness of the House generally. At last, as eleven o'clock approached, the Unionists prepared themselves for a dramatic effort. Mr. Chamberlain prepared an educational bombshell, but Mr. Healy hoisted the engineer with his own petard. ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... maddening thing was, she had afterward to admit, that the disaster had been largely of her own contriving. She had been caught in the net of her own stratagem—hoist by her own petard. ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... forwarding, while the traveller enjoyed (to him an exquisite gratification) the amusement of countermining as fast as Bulmer could mine, and had in prospect the pleasing anticipation of blowing up the pioneer with his own petard. For this purpose, as soon as Touchwood learned that his house was to be applied to for the original deeds left in charge by the deceased Earl of Etherington, he expedited a letter, directing that only the copies should be sent, and thus rendered nugatory ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... chamber at St. James's Hall. You have seen the man: it was M'Guire, the most chivalrous of creatures, but not himself expert in our contrivances. Hence the necessity of our meeting; for I need not remind you what enormous issues depend upon the nice adjustment of the engine. I set our little petard for half an hour, the scene of action being hard by; and, the better to avert miscarriage, employed a device, a recent invention of my own, by which the opening of the Gladstone bag in which the bomb was carried should instantly determine ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... nice reward for you!" she snapped. "Let you be hoist by the same petard that's always lying around to hoist me! What do you think of me, Duffer—and after all the proofs we've just had of the dangerous creature I am? Why, the whole trouble at Luxor was on my account. Even you must see that. Monny and I wouldn't have been let into Rechid's ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... philosophic man of the world who thinks that a woodland Artemis is a bad wife for an English peer, and that no woman who has a habit of saying exactly what she means can possibly get on in smart society. The would-be philosopher is ultimately hoist with his own petard, as he falls in love himself with Margaret Dalrymple, and as for the weak young hero he is promptly snatched up, rather against his will, by a sort of Becky Sharp, who succeeds in becoming Lady Erinwood. However, ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... very various changes,—the resistance of Hougomont; the tenacity of La Haie-Sainte; the killing of Bauduin; the disabling of Foy; the unexpected wall against which Soye's brigade was shattered; Guilleminot's fatal heedlessness when he had neither petard nor powder sacks; the miring of the batteries; the fifteen unescorted pieces overwhelmed in a hollow way by Uxbridge; the small effect of the bombs falling in the English lines, and there embedding themselves in the rain-soaked soil, and only succeeding in producing volcanoes ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... of these little couriers in crimson or scarlet livery, running on your vital errands day and night as long as you live, sixty-five billions, five hundred and seventy thousand millions. Errors excepted.—Did I hear some gentleman say, "Doubted? "—I am the Professor. I sit in my chair with a petard under it that will blow me through the skylight of my lecture-room, if I do not know what I am talking about and whom I ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... obstacles may occur? Municipalities there are, paralyzed by War-minister; Commandants with orders to stop even Federation Volunteers; good, when sound arguments will not open a Town-gate, if you have a petard to shiver it! They have left their sunny Phocean City and Sea-haven, with its bustle and its bloom: the thronging Course, with high-frondent Avenues, pitchy dockyards, almond and olive groves, orange trees on house-tops, and white glittering ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... Fleet-street. At every door they came they winded the Temple-horn, and if at the second blast or summons they within opened not the door, then the Lord of Misrule cried out, 'Give fire, gunner!' His gunner was a robustious Vulcan, and the gun or petard itself was a huge overgrown smith's hammer. This being complained of to my Lord Mayor, he said he would be with them about eleven o'clock on Sunday night last; willing that all that ward should attend him with their halberds, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... landed in dead silence, and the column formed up. The sappers ran on ahead, laid the powder bag, and masked it, then a sergeant of sappers lighted the match and shrank back behind a projecting bit of wall. Bang! The mask of the petard just grazed our heads, and one side of the gate lay on the ground. At the same moment firing began in the direction of Parseval's column. "Forward! God save the King!" We caught sight of the guard at the gate bolting off, and then lost ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... stick a nail into his stomach. But this morning, at last, he got himself driven out like a dog. While the master was giving to Garrone the rough draft of The Sardinian Drummer-Boy, the monthly story for January, to copy, he threw a petard on the floor, which exploded, making the schoolroom resound as from a discharge of musketry. The whole class was startled by it. The master sprang to his ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... recently sent abroad to study and report on the institutions of the Western world. Its [Page 243] departure was delayed by the explosion of a bomb in one of the carriages just as the commission was leaving Peking. The would-be assassin was "hoist with his own petard," leaving the public mystified as to the motive ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... certain old targets, for monuments rather than use, and many engines of war; as, a screw to force open a gate, an instrument like a jack, with wheels to carry match for certain hours' space, and just at the set time to give fire to a mine, petard, or the like. There were, in all, arms for about fifteen hundred horse and fifteen thousand foot. They keep a garrison constantly in pay of twelve hundred soldiers, and they have forty companies of their citizens, two hundred in each company, proper men; whose interest ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... ineffusive, Schurz was as a death's head at the board; Halstead and I through sheer bravado tried to enliven the feast. But they would none of us, nor it, and we separated early and sadly, reformers hoist by their own petard. ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... unluckily coinciding with the execution of your projects, I can only account by supposing that those who make it their trade to impose on others do sometimes egregiously delude themselves. The engineer is sometimes killed by the springing of his own petard.—For what is to follow, let it depend on the event of this solemn inquiry.—Bring hither ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... leaves at the distant lights, nor the prayer I said that I might not shame my race, nor how my heart beat when Henry, who was that day twenty-seven years old, gave the order to advance in the voice of one going to a ball. Two men with a petard—then a strange invention—led the way through the gloom, attended by ten picked soldiers. After them came fifty of the King's guards, and the King with two hundred foot; then the main body of a thousand. We had the long bridge with its three gates to pass; and beyond ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... the Place of St. Mark, and on the different promenades. Even the churches are not exempt from these demonstrations: I was present at the Te Deum performed on the Emperor's birthday, in St. Mark's, when the moment of elevating the host was signalized by the bursting of a petard in the centre of the cathedral. All this, which seems of questionable utility, and worse than questionable taste, is approved by the fiercer of the Italianissimi, and though possibly the strictness of the patriotic discipline in which the members of the Committee keep their fellow- ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... Lautner has recently placed a small petard under the European world of Art, and given it a hoist to starboard, by asserting that Rembrandt did not paint Rembrandt's best pictures. The Professor makes his point luminous by a cryptogram he has ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... a sort of sublime Guy Fawkes, lurking in the infernal cellar, preparing the train of that stupendous Gunpowder Plot by which he hopes, on the day of judgment, to blow up the world parliament of unbelievers with a general petard of damnation. Will the King connive at this nefarious prowler and permit him to ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... Her scorn of Marcia was ineffable, and I think the girl at the tea-urn had a sense of being at a disadvantage, for the idea of Una's frank admission had never entered Marcia's pretty intriguing head. She was hoist with her own petard and covered her confusion by a light laugh which ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... set his port vent to his mouth, rapidly filled his bag, while the man stared as if it were a petard with which he was about to blow the door to shivers, and then sent from the instrument such a shriek, as it galloped off into the Lossie Gathering, that involuntarily his adversary pressed both hands to his ears. With a sudden application of his knee Malcolm ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... conceive that I was overjoyed at this seemingly safe and easy planting of the petard which was to blow my Lord Cornwallis's plans into the air; and in anticipation I saw the tide-turning battle and heard the huzzas of the mountaineer victors. But 'tis a good old saw that cautions against hallooing before ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... but, encouraged by their officers, they rallied, and pushed forward at a run. The fire of the townspeople at once became hurried and irregular, but the Scots picked off their men with steady aim. The leader of the Imperialists, who carried a petard, advanced boldly to the edge of the ditch. The fosse was shallow and contained but little water, and he at once dashed into it and waded across, for the drawbridge had, of course, been raised. He climbed up the bank, and was close to the gate, when Malcolm, leaning far over the wall, discharged his ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... certainly carried a pike at Vinegar Hill; and probably had stolen a pair of boots at Furnes, when he kindly made a call at the Deanery, in passing through that place to the field of battle. It is always a pleasure to see the engineer of mischief "hoist with his own petard;" [Footnote: "Hamlet," but also "Ovid:"— "Lex nec justior ulla est, **Quam necis artifices arte perire sua."] and it happened that the horses assigned to draw a post-chariot carrying Lord Westport, myself, and the dean, on our return journey to Dublin, were a pair utterly ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... suffered. It was plain that she had not slept; equally plain that she had wept copiously. She sighed, she groaned, she drew in her breath, she shook her head, as she waited on table. In short, she seemed in so precarious a state, like a petard three times charged with hysteria, that I did not dare to address her; and stole out of the house on tiptoe, and actually ran downstairs, in the fear that she might call me back. It was plain that this degree of tension could not ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... suspected of carrying me "vi et armis" across the frontier. But they were, in turn, subjected to as close an espionage by several members of the expedition, who were prepared for any emergency. "The engineer would have been hoisted with his own petard" probably, if they had attempted the arrest. That dare-devil Thompson, in fact, proposed one night that I should take a walk alone along the canal, and see what would come of it, but I declined ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... mistake, father; but, to be quite fair, it was all my doing, and I was hoist with my own petard." ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... thoroughness. The rules of the game meant that everyone had to follow my example! When I had dried my face I powdered it, and then darkened my eyebrows. I wished to be quite frank about the harmless little bit of artifice which Mrs. Seymour had exaggerated into a crime. She was now hoist with her own petard, for, being heavily made up, she could not and would not follow the leader. After this Charles Reade acquitted me of the use of "pigments red," but he still kept up a campaign against "Chalky," as he humorously christened my powder-puff. ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... a petard, it may be incidentally remarked, which, sprung within the bounds of pastoral, is of power to pulverize in an instant the whole artificial ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... head into our tent-door, and favored us with the few observations we had lost by reason of our hasty departure. Keifer turned his face to the wall and groaned. Poor man! he had been hoisted by his own petard. I think Uncle Jacob suspected that the young men had set ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... this votive class of citizens. But, unfortunately, Hon. Joseph Howe, in alluding to the riot, took the Scotch side of the broil. This was sufficient. At the election following he was a defeated candidate, and politely advised to retire to private life. Thus was the Hon. J. H. "hoist by his own petard," the first man to fall by ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... boot-sole took Hugh John full on the chest. Another "plunked" Sir Toady in a locality which he held yet more tender, especially, as now, before dinner. Both warriors shot backward as if discharged from a petard, disappearing from view down the slope into the big drifts at the foot. Maid Margaret, who had not been touched at all, but who had stood (as it were) in the very middle of affairs, uttered one ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... the open air, it would have been too late. As it was, in placing Woodville on the ground, I stumbled over him. My senses left me. Even as they went I was conscious of exclaiming,—remembering the saying about the engineer being hoist by his own petard, ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... ensued amongst those without, in which Roland distinguished the remarkable harsh voice of Lindesay in reply to Sir Robert Melville, who appeared to have been using some soothing language—"No! no! no! I tell thee, no! I will place a petard against the door rather than be baulked by a profligate woman, and ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... Aztecs watched the construction of this machine with certain fear. It was completed and set to work, but the builder, a Spanish soldier of inventive faculty, nearly played the part of the engineer hoist with his own petard, for the great stone fired rose, it is true, but went straight up and descended again upon the machine, which was ever afterwards the laughing-stock of ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... first place, I haven't the beads. In the second place, I want to make him all the trouble I possibly can. Now that he has me, he doesn't know what to do with me. Hoist by his own petard. Do you want the truth? Well, I'm not worried in the least. I feel as if I'd been invited to some ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... course what he says is true enough—I did let him choose the date, and I did ask these people because I thought it would be good for him, and I did insist on doing so when he begged me not to. Well, I'm hoist with my own petard this time, though I wouldn't confess as much to him if my life depended on it. But the trickery of the little wretch! It's ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... habit of the enemy and ourselves when the trenches are near enough, to enliven each other by the casting of homely but effective hand-grenades made out of tins. When a grenade drops in a British trench somebody seizes it instantly and throws it back. To hoist the German with his own petard is particularly sweet to the British mind. When a grenade drops into a German trench everybody runs. (At least that is what I am told happens by the men from our trenches; though possibly each side has its exceptions.) ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... witchcraft and black magic she refused to make answer, save that she denied harming man, woman, child, or beast. She was still hoist with her own petard: the pitiful belief in the potency of ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... failure to let them take a hand in the capture of Monkey Rae. They rallied Jack not a little on his grand effort at heroism and Rand even dug up an old schoolbook quotation about an engineer who had been hoist with his own petard. The boys took their disappointment out in various good natured gibes, and mock congratulations to "the Sherlock Holmes of the good steamer Queen" were a daily occurrence until the arrival at Ketchikan and new scenes drove the incident from the boys' memories. ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Yukon • Ralph Victor
... it occurred to him, won a but barren victory. That she was alienated and resentful he could hardly doubt, while the riddle he had rather meanly used to procure her discomfiture remained unanswered as ever, dipped indeed only deeper in mystery. He was hoist with his own petard, in short; and stood there nonplussed, vexed alike ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... concern. Caput's momentarily returning self-possession forsook him. What portended his ominous silence? Had he made some horrible mistake? Had he overlooked some important jurisdictional fact? Was he now to be hoist for some unknown reason by his own petard? ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... interconvertible, but the first is the legal one) were sometimes benevolently inclined. But occasionally they conceived the happy idea of being paid for their silence and services. The brigand, then, was hoist with his own petard and forced to disgorge his ill-gotten summer gains to these blood-suckers, who extorted heavy blackmail under menaces of disclosure to the police, thriving on their double infamy to such an extent that they acquired immense riches. One of the wealthiest men in Italy descends ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... upstairs has arranged it all. No doubt she consulted her priests. I must regain my self-respect. Let her die first." I heard him make a dash for the foot of the stairs. I was appalled; yet to think of Therese being hoisted with her own petard was like a turn of affairs in a farce. A very ferocious farce. Instinctively I unlocked the door. Dona Rita's contralto laugh rang out loud, bitter, and contemptuous; and I heard Ortega's distracted screaming as if under torture. "It hurts! It hurts! It hurts!" I hesitated ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... and a high zest, and something of the morally awful and solemnly remonstrative, in the way in which the past is evoked to visit its ghostly retribution upon us. The old sting rankles in the English breast. She is looking on now to see us hoist by our own petard. These pamphlet pages, with their circumscribed limits and their less ambitious aims, do not invite an elaborate dealing with the facts of the case, which would expose the sophistical, if not the vengeful spirit of this English ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... together in each country in order to make their respective governments fulfil just two functions: the first is at home to act as a strong police force, to keep the ring in which the strong are beating down the weak; the second is to act as a piratical body-guard abroad, a petard to explode the doors which lead to the markets of the world: markets at any price abroad, uninterfered-with privilege, falsely called laissez-faire, {1} at any price at home, to provide these is the sole business ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... lightning-like dart of the snake, which was aimed straight at his foot, that being the part of the body which was nearest his coil. The fangs struck the side of his shoe, which happened to move at the very instant the blow was made, and, piercing the leather, held the reptile fast,—"Hoist by his own petard," as it were,—so that, when Ned scrambled out from his shelter, he felt the horrid ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... of plum-cake, cold mince-pie and continual wet feet will put the petard under even the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... I do not know the Highland custom in the matter," she was continuing complacently when Aileen hoist her with her own petard. ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... days for Isabelle. Percy and Jack were always under foot. They furnished comic relief when her military intrigue threatened to become serious. Then her "god-son," Jean Jacques Petard, who was wounded and in a hospital, replied to her maternal solicitude with prolonged and passionate devotion. Isabelle shared the treasure with Agnes, who protested that none of her godsons wrote to her like that; and she asked to have Jean back. Isabelle stoutly refused. A gift ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke
... you!" cried Fandor. "Here's a go! What a pretty petard in prospect!... Jacques Dollon was innocent; you arrest him; he is so terrified that he hangs himself! Well, old boy, I must say you make some fine blunders ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... machine and the young aviator were both at their best. There was a last fading picture of a forlorn man convulsed with rage and despair. Then the two boy aeronauts turned their back on the enemies who had been hoisted by their own petard. ...
— Dave Dashaway and his Hydroplane • Roy Rockwood
... he adduces points to a marvellous diversity of interests, and even to close and careful reading. But on the whole he was self-taught, and a self-taught man is never educated. Without intercourse with other living minds, education is impossible. This is indeed hoisting De Lammenais with his own petard. For, according to "Traditionalism," the mind is paralyzed by isolation, and can be duly developed only in society. An overweening self-confidence and slight regard for the labours of other thinkers usually characterizes self-taught genius. This it was that led him to cut all connection with ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... act of making it commodious and interesting, according to the remarkable ideals of Neo-Georgian aestheticism. Such is the illogical quality of humanity that Holsten, fresh from work that was like a petard under the seat of current civilisation, saw these changes with regret. He had come up Heath Street perhaps a thousand times, had known the windows of all the little shops, spent hours in the vanished cinematograph theatre, and marvelled ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... Goodrich to the Torpedo Station." "Yes," he rejoined, complacently; "and I sent you to the War College." It was literally true, doubtless; his act, though not his selection; but in view of the cold comfort and the petard with which he there favored me, for Whitney to fancy himself a patron to me, except on a Johnsonian definition of the word,[16] was as humorous a ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... fallen. Once, Ford thought he heard groans from the black shadow where the fat cook had disappeared, but he could not be sure. On the other side of the private car, and half-way between it and the forty-thousand-pound load of high explosives, the petard oyster-tin lay undisturbed, with the carving-knife sticking in ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... enemies won't stay above ground. Is that newspaper man above ground? And for a little job of clever mining, believe me, that there is not a better engineer going than Lady Glen;—not but what I've known her to be very nearly 'hoist with her own petard,'"—added Madame Goesler, as she remembered a certain circumstance in their ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... been a regular admirer of the lady who presides at the bar, and always stops to have a little badinage with her en passant. He has his regular walks on the Boulevards and in the Palais Royal, where he sets his watch by the petard fired off by the sun at midday. He has his daily resort in the Garden of the Tuileries, to meet with a knot of veteran idlers like himself, who talk on pretty much the same subjects whenever they meet. He has been present at all the sights and shows and rejoicings ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... the engineer hoist with his own petard, and the purizing (so to speak) of the purist has been a tempting game since Lucian baited Lexiphanes; may I yield to the temptation? During the war our amateur and other strategists have suppressed the English word morale and combined to force upon us in its stead the French (or Franco-German?) ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 3 (1920) - A Few Practical Suggestions • Society for Pure English
... conviction that betrayed it was bound to be, and that since that was inevitable the thing had better come from him—for Wilding's sake—than from Richard Westmacott. He had taken the bull by the horns in a most desperate fashion when he had determined to hoist Richard and Blake with their own petard, hoping that, after all, the harm would reach no further than the destruction of these two—a purely defensive measure. But now this girl threatened to wreck his scheme just as it was being safely steered to harbour. Suddenly he ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... own crooked Mexican policy. Curly flinging, with his dying hands, the boomerang that was to strike Brown down. That incidentally it would pull Fowler down, moved Enoch little. Fowler too would be hoist by his own petard. ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... "that Byam has been somewhat too zealous. I begin to suspect, also, that kitchen-gossip is a mischancy petard, and rather more than apt to hoist the engineer who employs it. So, you thought I was Peter Blagden,—the rich Peter ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... her face to see whether she really was not hoisting him with his own petard. Perceiving that she was sincerely acting according to her sense of principle, he fumed, and departed to his privacy, unable to stand ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... from us to wish a fellow creature in Hell, but there is always a certain pleasure in seeing the engineer hoist with his own petard. All tragedy has a touch of comedy. Fancy Spurgeon in Hades groaning "I sent other people here by the million, and ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... moralist March was flattered to be hoist with his own petard, but as a husband he was not going to come down at once. "I thought probably you had told her that. You had it pat from having just been over it with me. When ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... field of action during those two years, whether with their sappers and miners or assaulting columns, there they found him alert, dauntless, invincible—their sappers and miners hoisted with their own petard, their assaulting columns routed and driven to cover before the withering, the deadly fire from the flashing cannon of his facts, his logic, his law, and his eloquence. Sir, God knows that I would rather have fought ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... ideal, we are also told, is an elevating influence in life; but unless one is very careful one may get hoist with one's own petard to a pitifully transitory soar above common humanity. The soar itself is not unpleasant, but the sequel ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... succeeded in placing their petards under the gate. The shot whistled like a whirlwind of iron round Henri's head, and twenty men fell in an instant before his eyes. "Forward!" cried he, and rushed on through the midst of the fire, and arrived just as the soldiers had fired the first petard. The gate was broken in two places; the second petard was lighted, and a new opening was made in the wood; but twenty arquebuses immediately passed through, vomiting balls on the soldiers and officers, and the men ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... collected in the six volumes of his Elements de Litterature (1787), were full of instruction for his own time, delicate and just in observation, as they often were, if not penetrating or profound. In his earlier Poetique Francaise—"a petard," said Mairan, "laid at the doors of the Academy to blow them up if they should not open"—he had shown himself strangely disrespectful towards the fame of Racine, Boileau, and ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... adjusting the mechanism, and the wheels had ceased their whirring. He tried to expostulate in a dazed way, realizing that for once the department was working with a vengeful promptness. He was hoist by his own petard! ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... Perversion malkonverto, malverigo, malverigxo. Pervious penetrebla. Pest pesto. Pester enui, turmenteti. Pestiferous pesta. Pestilence pesto. Pestilential pesta, pestiga. Pestle pistilo. Pet dorloti. Petal florfolieto. Petard petardo. Petition petegi. Petition petskribo. Petrify sxtonigi. Petroleum petrolo. Petticoat subjupo. Pettish malgxentila. Petty malgranda. Petulance petoleco. Petulant petola. Pew pregxbenko. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... Then for two minutes Peter talked, or rather listened, to that young lady, though sighing internally. Then, Laus Deo! up came the poor little chap, whom Peter had libelled in age and affections, only ten minutes before, and set Peter free. He turned to see how Leonore's petard was progressing, to find her and Pell deep in tennis. But just as he was going to expose his ignorance on that ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... de Beaufort, regarding Richelieu fixedly, "that is because we were more eager to take Rochelle than Perpignan at the time that Italian came. Here we have not an engine ready, not a mine, not a petard beneath these walls; and the Marechal de la Meilleraie told me this morning that he had proposed to bring some with which to open the breach. It was neither the Castillet, nor the six great bastions which surround it, nor the half-moon, we should have attacked. If we ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... banker and myself, and her indignation made him laugh more and more. "Oh, it serves him right," he said. "Don't you see that he is hoist with his own petard? Let him alone. He's in ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... began To see the failure of his plan, And then resolved (I quote the Bard) To "hoist him with his own petard." ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... thing to be done was to depose the other two prophets, Robins and Tannye, and to hoise them on their own petard. It had to be seen who could damn hardest. For one moment even Muggleton's stout heart failed, he would take another with him to be present at the great trial of strength. He called upon a certain Thomas Turner to accompany him, "else you must ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... what is most particularly desired at Charleston, and, I believe, throughout the Cotton States. Certainly, when I was there, the war-party, the party of the "Mercury," was not in the ascendant, unless in the sense of having been "hoist with its own petard" when it cried out for immediate hostilities. Not only Governor Pickens and his Council, but nearly all the influential citizens, were opposed to bloodshed. They demanded independence and Fort Sumter, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... read the editorial page of the Dallas News thirty days in succession without degenerating into a driveling idiot. It is a mental impossibility, of course; but perhaps my good friend "Dorry" can be persuaded to attempt it—to hoist himself with his own petard. No man born of woman will ever accomplish it. Massillon would become a mental bankrupt within the month and Socrates have to be tapped for the simples before reaching ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... cast stones of 12 to 18 hundredweights; and when the Venetians were besieging the revolted city of Zara in 1346, their Engineer, Master Francesco delle Barche, shot into the city stones of 3000 lbs. weight.[8] In this case the unlucky engineer was "hoist with his own petard," for while he stood adjusting one of his engines, it went off, and ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... and his holding Reduced to eternal noise and scolding,— The conjugal petard that tears Down all portcullises of ears. Hudibras. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... my two schoolfellows,— Whom I will trust as I will adders fang'd,— They bear the mandate; they must sweep my way And marshal me to knavery. Let it work; For 'tis the sport to have the enginer Hoist with his own petard: and 't shall go hard But I will delve one yard below their mines And blow them at the moon: O, 'tis most sweet, When in one line two crafts directly meet.— This man shall set me packing: I'll lug the guts into the neighbour ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... the dignity of his official position in his intercourse with Fauchet, the late French ambassador, whose correspondence with his government, thrown overboard from a French packet, had been fished up by a British man-of-war, and forwarded to Grenville, by whom it was returned to America. Thus petard answered petard, and the charge by the Republicans upon the Federalists of taking British gold was returned with interest, and the accusation of receiving bribe money was brought close home to Randolph, if ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... a petard," said the knight, with great composure. "I have noted thee for a clever wench, Phoebe, and I will explain it to thee: 'Tis a metal pot, shaped much like one of the roguish knaves' own sugarloaf hats, supposing ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... now the buzz is hushed, and hark! Now the soft peace-march beats, home, brothers, home! The caps and helmets are all garlanded 145 With green boughs, the last plundering of the fields. The city gates fly open of themselves, They need no longer the petard to tear them. The ramparts are all filled with men and women, With peaceful men and women, that send onwards 150 Kisses and welcomings upon the air, Which they make breezy with affectionate gestures. From all the towers rings out the merry peal, The joyous vespers of a bloody ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... money is being offered out of my own inheritance so I feel that I should have some say in where it should go. Third, the fact that I steer it into the hands of someone I'd prefer to get it tickles my sense of humor. The trapper trapped; the bopper bopped; the sapper hoist by his own petard." ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... chance it though sometimes with their favorite gunpowder. If you're very wrong with the trade, and they can't DO you any other way, they'll blow your house up from the cellar, or let a can of powder down the chimney, with a lighted fuse, or fling a petard in at the window, and they take the chance of killing a houseful of innocent people, to get at the one that's on the black books of the trade, and ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade |
