"Swindler" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Carabas at this moment. He raved, he stamped, he blasphemed! but the whole of his abuse was levelled against his former "monstrous clever" young friend; of whose character he had so often boasted that his own was she prototype, but who was now an adventurer, a swindler, a scoundrel, a liar, a base, deluding, flattering, fawning villain, ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... degradation would have been voluntarily to pay one." And yet was there great pretension to honor, but a man of honor of those days would in our time be considered a ruffian certainly, and probably a blackleg or a swindler. "It was a favorite boast of his (the first Lord Norbury) that he began life with fifty pounds, and a pair of hair-trigger pistols." "They served his purpose well.... The luck of the hair-triggers triumphed, and Toler not only ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... country never to have peace? While on Friday we recorded the pretensions of a maniac to the great throne of France; while on Saturday we were compelled to register the culpable attempts of one whom we regard as a ruffian, murderer, swindler, forger, burglar, and common pickpocket, to gain over the allegiance of Frenchmen—it is to-day our painful duty to announce a THIRD invasion—yes, a third invasion. The wretched, superstitious, fanatic Duke of Bordeaux has landed at Nantz, and has summoned ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... her telegram out of the pocket of my coat which was hanging over the back of a chair. COME AT ONCE STOP AM IN TERRIBLE TROUBLE ... The only kind of terrible trouble Matilda could be in was if some swindler talked her out of some of her capital! And that definitely would not be easy to do. I grinned to myself at the recollection of her worrying herself sick once over what would happen to her if there was a revolution ...
— The Gallery • Roger Phillips Graham
... ye," thundered Raften; "didn't I say that that dhirty swindler of an architect was playing us into the conthractor's hands—thought we wuz simple—a put-up job, the hull durn thing. Luk at it! They're nothing but ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... lawyer began to look angry. "Mr. Hardy, I will permit neither you nor any other man to face me with such an insinuation. Do you take me for a common swindler? You came and asked if there was not some mode by which you could cheat your creditors out of six or seven thousand dollars; and I, as in duty bound, professionally, told you how the law might be evaded. And now you affirm that ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur
... cowardly, and a humbug, if not a swindler, was enough, Wade thought, to account for any failure. But he did not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... swindler, demanded two dollars as the fee for entering the mosque, which others of our party subsequently saw for sixpence, so we did not care to examine that place of worship. But there were other cheaper sights, which were to the full as picturesque, ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Tristan's energy and love of fair play at home than any of his brothers, proved clearly that I did more good than harm. I was, he declared, a brave fighter, and there was no knowing when they might need an extra hand. I might also be shaped into a swindler. I was very young and very ignorant; but John, perhaps, would endeavour to win me over by kindness, and make my lot less wretched. Above all, he might enlighten me as to my true position, by explaining that I was an outcast from society, and could not return to it without being ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... session, great popular feeling was excited against the coalition. The furious invectives which Fox had been for some years heaping on Lord North's luckless head, were now flung upon his own. Traitor, liar, swindler, were "house-hold words;" and Fox, with all his ability, and that happiest of all ability for the crisis, great constitutional good-humour, found himself suddenly overwhelmed. In the House he was still powerful; but, outside its doors, he was utterly helpless. Like the witches recorded in some of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... met young Meason; it was at her house Grace met that young officer for whom she is crying her eyes out; and it was at her house—yes, I hadn't thought of it before—it was at her house that Willy met that swindler who induced him to put two thousand pounds into the Bond Street shop. The Southdown Road might have remained here for the next five hundred years, and we should have known nothing of it had it not been for Mrs. Horlock; if she likes to know these people ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... the newspaper, and read the first paragraph which caught her eye. It was one of those mournful episodes which are sometimes revealed at the London police-courts. A young girl—a lady swindler—had been brought up for trial there. In her defence came out the story of a life, cradled in shame, nurtured in vice, and only working out its helpless destiny—that of a rich man's deserted illegitimate child. The report added, that "The convict was led from ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... Eagle The Knave of Diamonds The Rocks of Valpre The Swindler The Keeper of the Door Bars of Iron Rosa Mundi The Hundredth Chance The Safety Curtain Greatheart The Lamp in the Desert The Tidal Wave The Top of the World ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... were certain names which he often pronounced to support whatever things he might be saying,—Voltaire, Raynal, Parny, and, singularly enough, Saint Augustine. He declared that he had "a system." In addition, he was a great swindler. A filousophe [philosophe], a scientific thief. The species does exist. It will be remembered that he pretended to have served in the army; he was in the habit of relating with exuberance, how, being ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... and by scraping together all I possess, I can make up eight hundred livres. But may I be damned in the next world, or punished as a swindler in this, and one's as bad as the other to me, if I can raise one ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... lad in surprise, "what can that all imply? Do you suppose he's just some sort of a conspirator, or swindler, sometimes rich and sometimes poor, according to the hauls ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... Swartwout, the New York Collector of Customs, had disgraced the Government by his defalcations; and, although he was a legacy of Mr. Van Buren's "illustrious predecessor," and had been "vindicated" by a Senate committee composed chiefly of his political opponents, he was unquestionably a public swindler, and had found shelter under Mr. Van Buren's administration. He was the most conspicuous public rascal of his time, but was far from being alone in his odious notoriety. The system of public plunder inaugurated by Jackson ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... do your damnedest." Somehow the shadowy Cornelius far off there seemed to be the hateful embodiment of all the annoyances and difficulties he had found in his path. He let himself go—his nerves had been over-wrought for days—and called him many pretty names,—swindler, liar, sorry rascal: in fact, carried on in an extraordinary way. He admits he passed all bounds, that he was quite beside himself—defied all Patusan to scare him away—declared he would make ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... the case was brought the baron was promoted to the rank of captain. As a measure of ecclesiastical discipline, the curate of Saint-Symphorien was suspended. His superiors judged him guilty. The murderer of Sophie Gamard was also a swindler. If Monseigneur Troubert had kept Mademoiselle Gamard's property he would have found it difficult to make ...
— The Vicar of Tours • Honore de Balzac
... coadjutors and rivals. A wretch named Carstairs, who had earned a livelihood in Scotland by going disguised to conventicles and then informing against the preachers, led the way. Bedloe, a noted swindler, followed; and soon from all the brothels, gambling houses, and spunging houses of London, false witnesses poured forth to swear away the lives of Roman Catholics. One came with a story about an ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Bixiou was saying just now, it is a violation of the liberty of the subject to be made to pay in March when you have no mind to pay till October. By virtue of this article of his particular code, Maxime regarded a creditor's scheme for making him pay at once as a swindler's trick. It was a long time since he had grasped the significance of the bill of exchange in all its bearings, direct and remote. A young man once, in my place, called a bill of exchange the 'asses' bridge' in his hearing. ...
— A Man of Business • Honore de Balzac
... attack on M. Morus, with abuse also of Salmasius, who is now in his grave; but that is other people's business, not Ulac's. He cannot pass, however, the defamation of himself inserted in Milton's book.—Ulac then quotes the substance of Milton's account of him as once a swindler and bankrupt in London, then the same in Paris, &c. (Vol. IV. p. 588). This information, Ulac has little doubt, Milton has received from a particular London bookseller, whom Ulac believes also to have been the real publisher of Milton's book, though Newcome's name appears on it. It ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... sight in some uncommonly clever way, by the Greenes themselves, as an excuse for borrowing as much money as they could raise and living without payment of their bills. With reference to the latter hypothesis, I declared to myself that Greene did not look like a swindler; but as to Mrs. Greene—! I confess that I did not feel so confident in ...
— The Man Who Kept His Money In A Box • Anthony Trollope
... ensued, and such epithets as liar, cheat, and swindler were freely interchanged, and then there was a simultaneous spring at each other, the chairs were overturned and they were rolling upon the floor, dealing each other fierce blows and tearing each other's hair like wild beasts. It was the peddler who struck first, but Peter, being the ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... as a malefactor, but as a scarecrow. That is the theory. And the practice is, that we send a child to prison for a month for stealing a handful of walnuts, for fear that other children should come to steal more of our walnuts. And we do not punish a swindler for ruining a thousand families, because we think swindling is ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... can guard against being roped in by a scheming woman the first time; but if it happens twice he deserves it, and he should be turned out to stay an idiot, for the signs are so plain. A man swindler takes a man's money and makes a fool of him; but a woman swindler takes a man's money and leaves a smirch on him. Only a man's nearest and dearest can help him live down such a smirch; so, Agnes, if my son has been this particular variety of ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... chair, Mountjoy. My professional prospects threaten me with ruin—but while I have a roof over my head, there's always a welcome for a friend. My dear fellow, I have every reason to believe that the doctor who sold me this practice was a swindler. The money is gone, and the patients don't come. Well! I am not quite bankrupt yet; I can offer you a glass of grog. Mix for yourself—we'll make a night ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... ago, possessed an assortment of apocryphal letters from almost every one mentioned in history, sacred or profane. The collection of Mr. Samuel Ireland was like this, and an English student possessed autographs of most of the great reformers, carefully written by an ingenious swindler in contemporary books. The lovers of relics are apt to be thus deluded, and perhaps we should not regret this, as long as they are happy. But they should be very careful indeed when they are asked to buy Alvarado's spear, though probably it is extant somewhere, as it certainly ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... been in his mind all the time had developed. He had had proof in divers ways. He said to himself, "That man is a scoundrel, a common swindler, if I know one when I see him." But suspicions as to the girl had never for one minute dwelt in his furthest fancy. He had thought speculatively of the possible complicity of the other women of the household, ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... victim, had come there to punish. Now the old man's courtly grace upon the ship, by which she had been fooled into believing him a person of real eminence, was openly revealed to her as counterfeit and worthless—he was a swindler, almost, indeed, as viciously dishonest as the thing his daughter had been guilty of. Now his manner merely sent a vague reflection through her brain that upon the ocean's other side their peasants were well trained. Now she was bitterly resentful of the fact that, on the ship, she had been ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... cent, you know, but five hundred dollars salary. 'Twas against the old man's will, and he shut his door, and his purse, and his heart. He turned Witchet away; told his daughter that she might lie in the bed she had made for herself; told Witchet that he was a rotten young swindler, and that, as he had married his daughter for her money, he'd be d——d if he wouldn't be up with him, and deuce of a cent should they get from him. They live I don't know where, nor how. Some of her old friends send her ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... own idea to do what he did. For the pleasure of being insolent and showing his boldness, he has pulled down from its pedestal what he adored, consequently the most criminal among the members of the Commune, once a swindler, now a pilferer, is free to say to M. Rossel, who is, I am told, a man of intelligence and honesty, "You are worse than I am, for ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... rest on health; and the union of both should produce the inflorescence of happiness; for the true sense of all successful achievement is in that it makes for the forces of righteousness, and a successful swindler or criminal could hardly be included under these general definitions. And so, to have good health, and to achieve good and noble work, must produce a good degree of personal happiness as inevitably as that certain numerical ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... is, on the face of his own statements, a self-branded swindler and rascal, you run no risk in assuming that the Rev. C.H. Forney, D.D., L.L.D., in acting as his journalistic supporter for pay, is just such ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... bottle of shoe polish," he spluttered, "you're a swindler—that's what you are! You've bought a boarding house with money belonging to your infernal ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... with that exceedingly frank manner he had, the sort of manner particularly taking with reserved people, because it saves them so much trouble—"for otherwise how should you know that I am not an impostor—a swindler—instead of your cousin, which I hope you believe I really am, ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... Have I not always brought her up respectably? Can any one say anything against me? Can any one reproach me with anything? Do not I treasure my daughters as the very light of my eyes? Has any one ever heard an ill word fall from my mouth? Am I a swindler, perhaps, who give my daughters such a bad example that the State feels bound to step in and take them out of my hands? Well, gentlemen, say what you know of me! Am I a thief, or a ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... was so completely cut up, that he could not say a word, but sneaked off, hanging down his head, and looked much more like a detected swindler ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... of money, and that he was aware of his own deplorable shortcomings as a financial administrator. He had made speculations which had been disastrous. He was very credulous, as so many suspicious people are, and he had been duped by a swindler in an affair of maritime armaments. He had had all the more faith in this enterprise because a picture of the boat had been shown him on paper. He had spent ninety thousand francs of the hundred thousand he had had, and was now living on his wife's income. ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... and nephew fell upon Jogesh and belaboured him sorely with their shoes. He did not retaliate, but consoled himself with the thought that he had done his duty, to God and society, by marrying his daughter, whatever fate might await him. After vowing to bring a suit against the swindler, Amarendra Babu and his uncle left the premises and did what they would have done much earlier had they not been in such a desperate hurry to marry the lad. They made inquiries as to Jogesh's position and soon discovered that he was ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... superior poet. The authority of the rogue Kirkman may be likened to the outline or profile of Mr. Mantalini's early loves: it is either no authority at all, or at best it is a "demd" authority. The same swindler who assigned to Webster and Rowley the authorship of "A Cure for a Cuckold" assigned to Shakespeare and Rowley the authorship of an infinitely inferior play—a play of which German sagacity has discovered that "none of Rowley's other works are equal to this." Assuredly ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... Baron de Nucingen, you know, the old certified swindler, is neighing after a woman he saw in the Bois de Vincennes, and she has got to be found, or he will die of love.—They had a consultation of doctors yesterday, by what his man tells me.—I have already eased him of a thousand francs under pretence ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... particular instance it is," thought John, but he did not answer at once, as he was so excited he could hardly control his voice. He did not want the swindler to ...
— Jack Ranger's Western Trip - From Boarding School to Ranch and Range • Clarence Young
... belief that he had entirely reformed. But no sooner was he raised a step, than committing some fresh peccadillo, he was compelled to desert in order to avoid punishment. He came thence to Paris, where his exploits as swindler and pickpocket procured him the unenviable distinction of being pointed out to the police as one of the most skilful in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 379, Saturday, July 4, 1829. • Various
... desert, and brought the hunger and the thirst and the pestilence and the enemy upon them, and weren't quite sure at times whether the thing that ye saw leading was the Lord's pillar of cloud or the devil's, and if ye was now being cast out before the face of men and called a liar and a swindler, and without a dollar in the world, I guess ye'd know what it felt ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... be cheated by an English swindler." The clothier raised his thin voice: "Kate, here's a ...
— My Neighbors - Stories of the Welsh People • Caradoc Evans
... performance served in the end to enhance its brief and brilliant success. The pitiless amasser of wealth, Turcaret, is himself the dupe of a coquette, who in her turn is the victim of a more contemptible swindler. Lesage, presenting a fragment of the manners and morals of his day, keeps us in exceedingly ill company, but the comic force of the play lightens the oppression of its repulsive characters. It is the first masterpiece of the eighteenth-century ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... all control of himself. "It wasn't a trade at all! It's piracy! It's highway robbery! It was a barefaced swindle, and this swindler" ...
— The High School Boys' Canoe Club • H. Irving Hancock
... coal," said he. "The fact that I should have got hold of a piece in the road here, while tracking that diamond swindler in search of his house, strikes me as ...
— With Links of Steel • Nicholas Carter
... his passions strong, and his principles weak. His life was spent in sinning and repenting; in inculcating what was right, and doing what was wrong. In speculation, he was a man of piety and honor; in practice, he was much of the rake and a little of the swindler. He was, however, so good-natured that it was not easy to be seriously angry with him, and that even rigid moralists felt more inclined to pity than to blame him, when he diced himself into a sponging house, or drank himself into a fever. Addison regarded Steele with kindness ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... given up all thought of diplomacy. 'Very well, you yellow-faced devil, you will hear my answer. I would not take my freedom from you, though I were to be boiled alive. I know you for a traitor to the white man's cause, a dirty I.D.B. swindler, whose name is a byword among honest men. By your own confession you are a traitor to this idiot rising. You murdered the Dutchmen and God knows how many more, and you would fain have murdered me. I pray to Heaven ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... the dead Uhlan and of poor Bazard; perhaps of the wretched exposure of Buckhurst—the man she had trusted and who had proved to be a swindler, and a murderous one ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... out that he was no conspirator; but she asked herself in vain whether she was to look for a common swindler, an impudent adventurer, or perhaps even a criminal in him. The day that she had foreseen soon came; the Brazilian's banker "unaccountably" had omitted to send him any money, and so he borrowed some of her. "So he is a male courtesan," she said to herself. ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... clerk took them to Mr. Smith, who was near the counter; he turned them over in his hand, and giving them back to the clerk, with a contemptuous gesture, said, loud enough to be heard by everyone there, "No!—a thousand times no!" Had the customer been a swindler he could not have been treated with greater insult and contumely. It was a fortunate thing for the bank when Mr. Barney became manager. From that time the bank has assumed its proper position. Under its new designation of the "Birmingham and Dudley District ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... food for them, and if you attempted to realize on your hens to keep from bankruptcy, everybody would quit eating chicken and go to eating mutton, and there you are. I decline to invest in a hen ranch right here now, and if you try to inveigle me into it I shall have you arrested as a gold-brick swindler," and Uncle Ike patted the red-headed boy on the shoulder and ran a great hard thumb into ...
— Peck's Uncle Ike and The Red Headed Boy - 1899 • George W. Peck
... bewildered stage, the frozen stage and the stage of blanched apprehension, down to the instinctive prudence of extreme terror—the stillness of the mouse. But when she heard herself called the child of a cheat and a swindler, the very monstrous unexpectedness of this caused in her a revulsion towards letting herself go. She screamed out all at once "You mustn't speak like this ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... soul and body. An ordinary man, finding all the hopes of his future, all the expectations, which had been a part of his very life, taken suddenly from him, would have abandoned himself to a career of vice; he would have become a blackleg, a swindler, a drunkard, a beggar at the doors of the kinsman who had cast him off. But it was not so with Reginald Eversleigh. From the moment in which he found himself cast adrift by the benefactor who had been more than a father to him, he confronted evil fortune calmly and bravely. He cut ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... suspiciously for one moment. Was this a trap? Was this friendly person, who was seemingly as much at sea as she was herself in this wilderness of business streets and crowd of business men, some swindler in petticoats, some decoy who would lead her where she might be robbed of all she had about her that was valuable, of the really precious contents of that shabby, worn satchel? The bare idea of such a thing was enough to lend wings of terror to Miss Trevor's feet; and she was about to dart ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... had discovered to be a common swindler. His play he had stolen from the desk of a well-known dramatist whose acquaintance he had made in Deleglise's kitchen. The man had fallen ill, and Vane had been constant in his visits. Partly recovering, the man had gone abroad to Italy. Had he died there, as at ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... most infernal thieves and scoundrels unhung. If you attempt to hector with me, I will cane you; if you want more, I'll shoot you; if you meddle between me and Dawkins, I will do both. I know your whole life, you miserable swindler and coward. I know you have already won two hundred pounds of this lad, and want all. I will have half, or you never shall have a penny." It's quite true that master knew things; but how was ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... not being deluded or cheated by his cousin, Mr. Ramsay had no further sensitiveness on the subject. The Browns kept what he had told them even from the Ketchums, only to hear him announce in all assemblies that a cousin of his was "goin' about over here,—an awful swindler and 'leg,'—and that the best thing people could do would be to give him the widest sort of berth until he got himself into the penitentiary, as he certainly would,—at least it was quite on the cards," smiling in cheerful enjoyment of the possibility. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... and hardened swindler Peter procured a mule, and arranged to have the animal in the caravansary at daybreak. It was his intention to start for Kialang in search of Eileen with the first ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... nothing more was seen of the indignant fellow, and the boys made up their minds that he was only a swindler who had imagined that as he had only boys to deal with he would obtain a ...
— The Hilltop Boys on the River • Cyril Burleigh
... Susan returned from her unhappy wanderings; and her mother's family, seizing upon her like wolves, hid her from the world in their den. And I was pleased not long after to read that an individual named Clodman, a noted swindler, had recently been shot in a street-fight in St. Louis, by a husband whose ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... should only have spoken French, that he was charged with no swindles, that he made a very poor marriage in place of aiming at a rich union; that he had, somehow, learned de la Cloche's secret; and that, possessing a fatal secret, invaluable to a swindler and blackmailer, he was merely disgraced and set free. Louis XIV. would, at least, have held him a masked captive for the rest of his life. But he was liberated, and, after a brief excursion, returned to Naples, where he died, maintaining that he ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... circumstances important, if highly-to-be-deprecated habit of carrying pocket-pistols. He is not a Byronic hero with a terrible but misty past. He is not like Valmont of the Liaisons Dangereuses,[136] a professional and passionless lady-killer. He is not a swindler nor (though he sometimes comes near to this also) a conspirator like Count Fosco of The Woman in White. One might make a long list of such negatives if it were worth while. He is only an utterly selfish, arrogant, envious, and generally bad-blooded[137] young man, whom circumstances ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... Sparrow-hawk for half as much again as she was worth. Let me assure you that you will do nothing of the kind. I would not give half the sum which you ask for her. From the first I suspected that you were a swindler, and it was to obtain proof of it that my son shipped with you as a cook. Have you anything that you wish to say in your defence, or will ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... about the little office, and the simoom or the bulbul—but I leave this image to persons better acquainted with the East. His appearance, besides, was highly in his favour; the uniform of Sir Faraday, however inconvenient and conspicuous, was, at least, a costume in which no swindler could have hoped to prosper; and the exhibition of a valuable watch and a bill for eight hundred pounds completed what deportment had begun. A quarter of an hour later, when the train came up, Mr Finsbury was introduced to the guard and ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... is so good-natured! If I leave him with this swindler, who knows what he may get out ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... them. Dost thou not see—shortsighted being that thou art, and unlucky mortal that I am!—that if they perceive thee to be a coarse clown or a dull blockhead, they will suspect me to be some impostor or swindler? Nay, nay, Sancho friend, keep clear, oh, keep clear of these stumbling-blocks; for he who falls into the way of being a chatterbox and droll, drops into a wretched buffoon the first time he trips; bridle thy ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... OF AN EXTENSIVE SWINDLER.—A man named William Cairnes, alias Thomas Sissons, with a host of other aliases, was placed before the magistrates at the Borough Court, Manchester, charged with one of the most singular attempts at fraud we ever remember to have heard. The prisoner, ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... wanted," said he, producing a couple of sheets of paper having the name of the hotel stamped on them. "These are for our friend, Dick. I intend to swindle the swindler," he added, as he handed Reg the letter he had ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... permitted himself anything of the kind when talking to Rita); that surly dandy Cabanel (but he only once, from mere vanity), and everybody else at all distinguished including also a celebrated person who turned out later to be a swindler. But he was really a genius. . . All this according to Mr. Blunt, who gave us all those details with a sort of languid zest ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... money, we call the act a forgery. That steward who takes bribes from his master's tenants, and then, pretending the money to be his own, lends it to that master and takes bonds for it to himself, we consider guilty of a breach of trust; and the person who commits such crimes we call a cheat, a swindler, and a forger of bonds. All these offences, without the least softening, under all these names, we charge upon this man. We have so charged in our record, we have so charged in our speeches; and we are sorry that our language does not furnish terms of sufficient force and compass to mark ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... suspiciously in Captain Hawksley's direction, Mr. Narkom, permit me to say that it does not necessarily follow. The clever people of the under-world do nothing by halves nor without careful inquiry beforehand; that is what makes the difference between the common pickpocket and the brilliant swindler." He turned to Ailsa. "Is that all, Miss Lorne, or am I right in supposing that there is even worse ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... been a victim, not a swindler,' sounded from him in a feeble voice. 'You see, he says that Geldershaw has robbed him of all ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... musical matter. Are you not aware that I could hand you over to the sheriff, on two special indictments? In the first place, for an action of assault and batterification, in cuffing me, an elder of our kirk, with a sticked killing-coat, in my own shop; and, in the second place, as a swindler, imposing on his Majesty's loyal subjects, taking the coin of the realm on false pretences, and palming off goat's flesh upon Christians, as if they ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... something like that. Who knows? By the way, what have you to say about the affair? You knew her rather intimately. No hedging, doctor. There she sits in the cell and combs her hair. Can you imagine who is responsible? You know a woman doesn't lose her mind from a mere love affair. And this music swindler down stairs—it is impossible to get him to show his true colours. Yes, we all have ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... the German, as, had we constructed the word for ourselves, we should have made it not 'iceberg', but 'ice-mountain'. I have not found it in our earlier voyagers, often as they speak of the 'icefield', which yet is not exactly the same thing. An English 'swindler' is not exactly a German 'schwindler', yet the notion of the 'nebulo', though more latent in the German, is common to both; and we must have drawn the word from Germany{73} (it is not an old one in our tongue) during the course of the last century. If 'life-guard' was originally, ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... be a fule," said Jim London. "The auld swindler kens the thing's worth mair than he offers. Gar him gie ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... everything that's happened. They caught all of the men except that wretch, Pedro. The sheriff's taken them to Perilla for trial. He says they'll surely be convicted. Better yet, one of them has turned State's evidence and implicated a swindler named Draper, who was ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... "having done so, the mass of people will only remember that there has been something against me, in spite of any justification. It is not worth while to blast Moy's character, and show poor old Proudfoot what a swindler his son was, just for that. The old man was good to me. I should like to let it rest while he lives. If Moy would sign such an exculpation of me as could be shown to Mr. Bowater, and any other whom it might concern, I should be quite willing to have nothing told publicly, ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... FLABE in the Vossische Zeitiung, "the swindler and the cheat is a hero." It will be remembered how popular Count BERNSTORFF said he had been during ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 14, 1917 • Various
... assist the axiom by borrowing money; but he found that his uncle had definitely done with him. He would have assisted the axiom by stealing money, but he had neither the nerve nor the knowledge to be a swindler; he was not even sufficiently expert to ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... knew that I had not enough in the bank to replace it, I went into foolish speculations to regain what I had lost; but until the crash came I had never fairly realised that I had not only ruined myself but was a swindler. I shall never forget the morning when James, who had been up all night going through my papers with my head-clerk, came down and told me what he had discovered. I was still stupid from what I had drunk overnight, but that sobered me. I need not tell you what passed between my ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... sum, so that eventually every one received back the money they had entrusted to the bank; but the whole of the capital and the profits of years of successful enterprise had vanished, and it was calculated by the executors that the swindler must ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... man who did not spare his father the inheritance of his brother? No, vicomte, Pierre Labarre knows his duty, and if to-morrow the name of the Fougereuse should be trampled in the dust and the present bearer of the name be placed in the pillory as a forger and swindler, then I will stand up ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... to the Continent and encompass her there, and had dedicated to her, from the moment of their meeting, all the treasures of his experience. She had judged him in advance—polyglot and universal, very dear and very deep—as probably but a swindler finished to the finger-tips; for he was forever carrying one well-kept Italian hand to his heart and plunging the other straight into her pocket, which, as she had instantly observed him to recognise, fitted it like a glove. The remarkable thing was that these ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... man!" said he sharply, "it seems that you have been making rather free with my good name, of late; representing me as a cheat and a swindler." ...
— True Riches - Or, Wealth Without Wings • T.S. Arthur
... a sort of helper to a horse dealer! I suppose, sir, he was always in the stables in his father's time. Bad company depraves the taste very soon; but that is not the worst. Sharp declares that the man he was talking with, as I told you, is a common swindler. Depend on it, Mr. Arthur, he is incorrigible; all we can do is ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... sewing, serving; in your agent, good sense applied to accounts and affairs. So do you multiply your presence, or spread yourself throughout your estate. But because of the dual constitution of things, in labor as in life there can be no cheating. The thief steals from himself. The swindler swindles himself. For the real price of labor is knowledge and virtue, whereof wealth and credit are signs. These signs, like paper money, may be counterfeited or stolen, but that which they represent, namely, ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... fact that people who live outside the law keep to their own plane. The swindler very rarely commits acts of violence. The burglar who practises card-sharping as a side-line, ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... what I believe,' he said; 'you never spent the whole shilling at all on that; you bought something for yourself with the rest, you young swindler! No wonder you won't ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... "jest made use of the sayin' about curin' with the hair of the dog that bit you. Figgered a swindler wouldn't never suspect nobody of swindlin' him with one of his own tricks. This here Mr. Baxter, or Mr. Bowman, or whatever his name is, used to make a livin' sellin' gold bricks. When I found that there fact out I jest calc'lated he was ripe ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... sir,' replied Captain N——, with almost frightful vehemence, 'as every trickster and swindler IS. You are a contemptible dastard—a despicable, damned villain! Draw your sword, sir, and defend your life, or every post and pillar in this town shall tell ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... become thus afraid of a fellow-creature and of one that she loved best in all the world, she would have repelled him who had told her with disdain. But so it was. How was she to tell her husband that she had been engaged to one whom he had described to her as a gambler and a swindler? ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope
... a few years since, in the heart of the State of New York, a swindler of genius having made and buried a "petrified giant," one theologian explained it by declaring it a Phoenician idol, and published the Phoenician inscription which he thought he had found upon it; others saw in it proofs that "there were ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... 1753, Smollett "obliged the town" with his "Adventures of Ferdinand, Count Fathom," a cosmopolitan swindler and adventurer. The book is Smollett's "Barry Lyndon," yet as his hero does not tell his own story, but is perpetually held up as a "dreadful example," there is none of Thackeray's irony, none of his subtlety. "Here is a really bad man, a foreigner too," Smollett ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... Hippus, with tender approbation of his associate. "Ay, you are great in them—an accomplished swindler. Truly he who gets money from you is lost; it were better for him to jump into the water at once, though water is a despicable element, you confounded little swindler you!" And, raising his head, he fixed his swimming eyes ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... was expected to prove his innocence. Before the next term, the Consul-General took wing, leaving his bail, a simple Frenchman, to pay the forfeit. It would be impossible for me to give anything like a history of his crimes in a letter. Suffice it to say that he is a notorious swindler, the most unblushing and inexhaustible liar and the most finished rascal I ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... their lodger's return. "Mother" had expressed herself freely on the subject of the poet during his absence, and not in terms which would have commended themselves to the poet's fastidious literary sense. Indeed, she did not hesitate to call him a sponger and a low swindler, who had run away to avoid paying the piper. Her fool of a husband might be quite sure he would never set eyes on the scoundrel again. However, Mrs. Crowl was wrong. Here was Denzil back again. And yet Mr. Crowl felt no sense of victory. He had no desire to crow over his partner and to utter ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... forgot to send me that promised form of agreement, didn't you? Thought you'd fooled me, perhaps. Well, I wouldn't be so foolish as to expect anything in the way of fair and honorable dealing when I contract to do up a mining swindler for the benefit of the only meaner creature on God's earth—a patent medicine poisoner. ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams |
