"Cunning" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Excellency," said the Captain, twisting his hard features into an inimitable expression of cunning and intelligence, "if they do not put my head in a poke, which I have known practised upon honourable soldados who have been suspected to come upon such errands as the present, your Excellency may rely ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... Yankee, and intrigue to the Italian, is finesse, which is a union of insight and address, to the French. This normal attribute is another proof how the economy of Gallic life is reduced to an art. It is the expression in manners of Rochefoucauld's maxims, of Richelieu's policy, of Talleyrand's cunning. It is favored by the tendency to minuteness of excellence and love of system before noted. To understand what superior range is afforded to such a principle in France, it is only requisite to consult the memoirs of a celebrated woman, or even an old Guide or Picture of Paris, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... [D] Thaleth; 'tis strange my Tongue should be longer than my Arms, without eking. 'Tis hard for Dunces to understand this as all willful Fools are. Humble humility is better than the miserable wisdom of the merciless knowledge of error. Cunning fooleries and vanities unlock'd for, to spell the same sound diverse ways, and when you have all done, you are but where you was, as prayes, praise, prasy. For why may not y stand for nothing after s, as well as after a, as may: But where no reason there is for custom, ...
— Magazine, or Animadversions on the English Spelling (1703) • G. W.
... luggage in the arms of nurses and porters. Once arrived, however, they display considerable mobility in distributing themselves through the three or four hundred widely-separated cottages which await them for hire. As you wander through the lanes of these cunning little houses, you catch strange fragments of conversation. Gentlemen living vis-a-vis, and standing with one leg in the grave and the other on their own piazzas, are heard on sunny mornings exciting themselves with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... which eventually overcame my aversion to change. The basement story of the house was occupied by a bar and oyster saloon; the pungent testaceous odors, mounting from those lower regions, gave the offended nostrils no respite or rest; in a few minutes, a robust appetite, albeit watered by cunning bitters, would wither, like a flower in the fume of sulphur. Half-a-dozen before dinner, have always satiated my own desire for these mollusks; before many days were over, I utterly abominated the name of the species; familiarity only made ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... very brilliant. Her eyes are a bright blue, her hair auburn, and her face would be rather handsome were it not for the long curved chin, which gives, as it always does to most persons who have this facial defect, a cunning, cruel expression. ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... the endless and malicious intrigues of others. However affectionate, generous, and open he seemed to be with those who followed him worshipfully, even they were not trusted with his secrets, and, if he was always cunning and crafty toward his enemies, he never had a friend that he did not use to his profit. Volatile in his fitful changes toward men and movements, rudderless as he often seemed to be in the incoherence of his ideas and of his policies, there nevertheless ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... But the cunning artifice of woman is such that, I think, in the long run, no man, were he Machiavel himself, could escape from it; and though I had ample proofs in the above transaction (in which my wife's perfidious ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... possible that Sampson could be a deep eyed, cunning scoundrel, the true leader of the cattle rustlers, yet keep that beautiful and innocent girl out on the frontier and let her give parties to sons and daughters of a community he had robbed? To any but remorseless ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... business "conducting great financial operations," as the saying is now, down to the beggar- woman who comes to ask charity, the rule of the world is, that honesty is not the best policy; that falsehood and cunning are not only profitable, but necessary; that in proportion as a man is in trouble, in that proportion he has a right ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... then, and the expression of her face was changing into one from which Mrs. Trent involuntarily turned her eyes. Cunning and avarice predominated, and in the woman's throat was a curious clicking sound, as if she had lost and were trying to find her voice. Which, when found, seemed not to belong to the good-natured Elsa, so changed ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... naturally out of the peace of Elizabeth's reign, and which a growing sense of danger to the order and prosperity around it was fast turning into a passionate loyalty to the Queen. It was not merely against Cecil's watchfulness or Elizabeth's cunning that Mary and Philip and the Percies dashed themselves in vain; it was against a new England. And this England owed its existence to the Queen. "I have desired," Elizabeth said proudly to her Parliament, "to have the obedience of my subjects by love, and not by compulsion." Through the fourteen ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... not bother to search him, or else, with the cunning of the crazed, Winters concealed from them his journal. If they had happened upon it, they would surely have appropriated it. Their dumping him off on Kim Chee was not so heartless as it sounds—the sick ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... swung his foot thoughtfully to and fro, his ratty eyes lost in dreamy revery. Brandes tossed his half-consumed cigar out of the open window and set fire to another. Stull waited for Curfoot to make up his mind. After several minutes the latter looked up from his cunning abstraction: ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... author of the "Bobbsey Twins" Books are eagerly welcomed by the little folks from about five to ten years of age. Their eyes fairly dance with delight at the lively doings of inquisitive little Bunny Brown and his cunning, trustful sister Sue. ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Uncle Fred's • Laura Lee Hope
... It "skips like the hare over the meshes of good counsel," says Shakspeare. "Then let our nets and snares of benevolence be laid with the more cunning. Youth is a continual intoxication," says Rochefoucauld; "it is the fever of reason." We must cool this fever, spread around it cheering flowers of truth, bathe it in the water-brooks of gentleness and self-sacrifice. "Young men," according to Chesterfield, "are apt to think themselves ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... long as to which side of the line any given act of man or beast belongs. When the fox resorts to various tricks to outwit and delay the hound (if he ever consciously does so), he exercises a kind of intelligence—the lower form of which we call cunning—and he is prompted to this by an instinct of self-preservation. When the birds set up a hue and cry about a hawk, or an owl, or boldly attack him, they show intelligence in its simpler form, the intelligence that recognizes its enemies, prompted again by the instinct of self-preservation. ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... treacherous, was extremely cunning, and upon turning the matter over in his mind, he began to dread, or rather to feel that Hanlon had so far over-reached him. Still it might be possible, he thought, that the prophet had betrayed him, and he resolved to put a query ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... burned down to the nails, these would become detached, releasing the counter-weights and automatically discharging the revolver aimed straight at her body. Fantomas had no need to return. His infernal cunning had found a means to ...
— A Royal Prisoner • Pierre Souvestre
... I built in his arms—his right arm first—and mortised the stones, then his left arm in the same way. I was careful not to look in his face. No, no! I didn't look in his face." Knightley repeated the words with a horrible leer of cunning, and hugged himself with his arms. To Wyley's thinking he was strung almost to madness. "After his arms I built in his feet, and upwards from his feet I built in his legs and his body until I came to his neck. All this while he had been crying out for pity, babbling prayers, and the rest of ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... have had to go through, one after the other, all their children's diseases, and try their funny little moral experiments on the world. They thought they could lie at first. They thought it would be cunning, and that it would work. They did not realize at once that the bigger a boy you were, even if you were anonymous, the more your lie showed and the more people there were who suffered from it who would be bound sooner or later to call you to ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... 'tis thought; marry, how, or by whom, that's left for some cunning woman here o' the Bank-side to resolve. For my part, I know nothing more than that we are like to have an exceeding melancholy ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... healed. Not only did the scars remain; the sore places often festered and bled afresh. The letters consisted for the most part of compliments, thanks, offers of service, assurances of attachment. But if anything brought back to Frederic's recollection the cunning and mischievous pranks by which Voltaire had provoked him, some expression of contempt and displeasure broke forth in the midst of eulogy. It was much worse when anything recalled to the mind of Voltaire ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... bigger than his father's thumb, which was not a large thumb either; but as he grew older he became very cunning, for which his mother did not sufficiently correct him, and by this ill quality he was often brought into difficulties. For instance, when he had learned to play with other boys for cherry-stones and had lost all his own, ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... were to tell you what I have endured from my brother. My father's wealth was divided equally between us. His own share he ran through in five years, and he has tried since then by every trick of a cunning, low-minded man, by base cajolery, by legal quibbles, by brutal intimidation, to juggle me out of my share as well. There is no villainy of which the man is not capable. Oh, I know my brother Jeremiah. I know him and I ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle
... profession, and I would rather have my bracelets on him than on any criminal in London. He's a remarkable man, is young John Clay. His grandfather was a Royal Duke, and he himself has been to Eton and Oxford. His brain is as cunning as his fingers, and though we meet signs of him at every turn, we never know where to find the man himself. He'll crack a crib in Scotland one week, and be raising money to build an orphanage in Cornwall the next. I've been on his track for years, and have never set eyes ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... should be regulated if they are found to exercise a license working to the public injury. It should be as much the aim of those who seek for social betterment to rid the business world of crimes of cunning as to rid the entire body politic of crimes of violence. Great corporations exist only because they are created and safeguarded by our institutions; and it is therefore our right and our duty to see that they work in ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Supplemental Volume: Theodore Roosevelt, Supplement • Theodore Roosevelt
... which the recital of verse may give, or which constant singing may leave in a minstrel's ordinary speech. "I cannot tell, but my fiddle might play her to you in a rhapsody that should set the music in your soul vibrating. There are women whose image cunning fingers may catch with brush and pigment and limn it on canvas; there are women whose image may be traced in burning words so that a vision of her rises before the reader or the hearer; and there are women whose beauty can ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... training that Ambrose had received was now of the highest value, and his experience of men and the world acquired in Rome preserved him from making many mistakes and giving ear to lying stories. The cleverest rogues in Milan knew that the most cunning tale would never deceive the bishop, and would only earn for themselves a heavy fine or imprisonment. 'Some,' he writes, 'say they have debts; make sure that they speak truly. Others declare they have been robbed by brigands; ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... population is the question of the hour." This will be a rude awakening to those conservative Catholic churchmen who have in recent years been insisting that things as they are were altogether lovely, and that the talk about the misery of the poor was only the exaggeration of a few cunning agitators who wanted to excite the people so that in a general upheaval these agitators themselves might personally profit. Pope Leo's voice of sympathy is heard declaring that there is a social problem, and that "it is shameful ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... by a secret road, And he bade the Monks themselves prepare; I tell to ye for a verity That Ranild practis’d cunning rare. ...
— Marsk Stig - a ballad - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... "He was a cunning fellow, and he put out an investigatin' paw at the piece of pork before trying his jaws on it; so instead of gettin' a bullet in the head, he merely had a bit of his paw shot away. There were but two claws left on that foot, as his bloody ...
— The Youth's Companion - Volume LII, Number 11, Thursday, March 13, 1879 • Various
... She was very cunning, I am afraid. She pretended to read diligently, and not to listen to a word that was said, while in fact she heard all sounds, even to Jem's long, deep sighs, which wrung her heart. At last she took up her Bible, and as if their conversation ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Austrian dominions; and, finally, while the Queen had scarcely taken possession of her throne, a new claimant appeared in the person of Frederick of Prussia, who acted with "such consummate address and secrecy"—as it is called by the historian—that is, with such unprincipled hypocrisy and cunning, that his designs were scarcely even suspected when his troops ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... know if the young cicadas are like the old ones. Indeed, they would be cunning little things if they were, and—yes, they would look very much ...
— The Insect Folk • Margaret Warner Morley
... may be borne on a bier to meet her lover. This occurs not only in Scotland, but in the popular songs of Provence (collected by Damase Arbaud) and in those of Metz (Puymaigre), and in both countries an incongruous sequel tells how the lover tried to murder his bride, and how she was too cunning, and drowned him. Another familiar feature is the bush and briar, or the two rose trees, which meet and plait over the graves of unhappy lovers, so that all passers-by see them, and say in ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... have plotted red murder by night, and securely contemplate their victims. But wary and armed to the teeth are the resolute Frenchmen and ready, If need be, to grapple with death, and to die hand to hand in the desert. Yet skilled in the arts and the wiles of the cunning and crafty Algonkins, They cover their hearts with their smiles, and hide their suspicions of evil. Round their low, smouldering fire, feigning sleep, lie the watchful and wily Dakotas; But DuLuth and his ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... original and daring as he is," Theodora said regretfully. "My iniquities were trite; his are fresh from the recesses of his own brain. He is a cunning child, Hu, and a pretty one; but his ways are past finding ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... granted; did not even argue from it the certainty that he had seen her. Her mind was made up for the lie and she did not possess that agility of purpose which, at a moment's notice, could enable her to twist her intentions—a mental somersault that needs the double-jointedness of cunning and all the consummate flexibility of tact. He might know that she had followed them, but she must never admit it. It seemed a feasible argument to her, in the whirling panic of her thoughts, that her admission would be fatal—just as the prisoner in the dock ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... is a notable piece of cunning; when he was moved by Alderman Smith and others, all this while he names no man; but now he was under an action, he would have them go with himself out of the Liberties, and yet saith never a word to take the man; he knew very well it was out of the Liberties. ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various
... which these countries are theoretically in revolt, and which they only tolerate as chains are borne, is greeted in Germany as the dawning of a splendid future, which as yet scarcely dares to translate itself from cunning[3] theory into the most ruthless practice. Whereas the problem in France and England reads: Political economy or the rule of society over wealth, it reads in Germany: national economy or the rule of private property over nationality. Thus England and France are faced with ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... blent, whose red and white Nature's own sweet and cunning hand laid on: Lady, you are the cruell'st she alive If you will lead these graces to the grave And ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... was prowling along close by her tree, in hopes of catching her; he smelt about some time, and at last went in. Poor little Downy was in a sad fright; she knew not what to do, for she saw his head peeping out of her hole, and his cunning black eye ...
— Little Downy - The History of A Field-Mouse • Catharine Parr Traill
... was not to be thus tricked, and he raised a regiment of one-eyed men. In other instances they are said to have knocked out the fore-teeth to avoid biting a cartridge, or to have cut off a joint of the first finger to prevent their drawing a trigger. Even thus they are not able to escape the cunning Pasha. But this shows the natural horror of the conscription; and we are not surprised that men should adopt any expedient to escape so great a curse and scandal to society. It is extraordinary that in this 19th century, even of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... very much frightened for you, Mesty," said Jack; "but still I thought you quite as cunning as the friar, and so it has turned out; but the thousand dollars ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... at the foot of the stair. It was held by Jacques Morin, grey-haired, stooping, dogged. The Morin family—man, wife and daughter—were huddling close together. They, too, were all looking at him, not with the wrath and contempt to which Madge had risen, but with cunning desire for revenge, mingled with the cringing of fear. There was a minute's hush, too strong for expression, in which each experienced more intensely the shock of ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... my messenger, With cunning arrows poisonous and keen, To take forthwith her laughing life from her, And ...
— Poems of the Past and the Present • Thomas Hardy
... Lady Emlyn who in London was the leader of a coterie devoted to the excitements of high-play,—a coterie that felt privileged to inveigh with horror against 'gambling,' because its members ventured their thousands on games where cunning tempers the fortuities of chance,—on the manoeuvres of ecarte and whist instead of the dare-all risks of hazard and rouge-et-noir,—had now removed her card-table from Grosvenor-square to a splendid hotel in the Rue Rivoli; where she had ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 548 - 26 May 1832 • Various
... 'savour of the secular.' In the same year, in dedicating Epictetus his Manuall to Florio, he bombastically pronounces the book to be 'the hand to philosophy; the instrument of instruments; as Nature greatest in the least; as Homer's Ilias in a nutshell; in lesse compasse more cunning.' For other examples of Thorpe's pretentious, half-educated and ungrammatical style, ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... to those beasts which live by preying on others, nature has given either strength or swiftness. On some animals she has even bestowed artifice and cunning; as on spiders, some of which weave a sort of net to entrap and destroy whatever falls into it, others sit on the watch unobserved to fall on their prey and devour it. The naker—by the Greeks called Pinna—has ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... profit. It is unfortunately true that the successful cleverness which sacrifices honor to gain is more easily condoned by public opinion than honest dullness which is caught in the snares laid for it by the cunning manipulators of speculation. The man who fails to deliver what he has bought, to meet his paper at maturity and make good the certifications of his banker, loses at once his business standing, and is practically excluded from business competition; ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 530, February 27, 1886 • Various
... seen. The faces were those of a higher order of anthropoid apes: the lower portion—jaws, lips, and teeth—salient; the nostrils opening at almost right angles, the eyes tiny and bright, the forehead seamed and wrinkled—unnaturally old. Their general expression was of simian cunning and a ferocity that was utterly devoid ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... which bubble in the breast of youth hurrying to the chase. Is there any moment in life so dear to memory as those we have passed on horseback, in the fine air of morning, when we hurried along towards the haunt of cunning Reynard, and expected every instant to see him break cover? Less exciting by far is hunting in Australia, but still it is hunting, and we are on horseback, and eager as ever for a gallop. Passing over two well-built wooden bridges, connected by a causeway, we crossed the river, ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... for Sinclair to watch. He was used to power in men and beasts. He understood it. A cunning devil of a fighting outlaw horse was his choice for a ride. "The meaner they are, the longer they last," he used to say. He respected men of evil as long as they were men of action. He was perfectly ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... the news to Madame Lind and her daughter. Oh yes; it is good news, this deliverance of the Englishman; Madame Lind is an old friend of mine; she and her daughter will be grateful. But you perceive, Granaglia, that what the cunning old dog was determined to avoid was the reporting to Madame Lind that her husband had been sentenced. That was no part of the original programme. And now Calabressa holds his mouth shut; he keeps out ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... tittle of that plighted faith fall to the ground. For myself, having twelve months ago, in this place, moved you, that George Washington be appointed commander of the forces raised, or to be raised, for defense of American liberty, may my right hand forget her cunning, and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I hesitate or waver in the support ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... her!" he yelled once more; but Nakpa was too cunning for them. She dodged in and out with active heels, and they could not afford to waste many arrows on a mule at that stage of the fight. Down the ravine, then over the expanse of prairie dotted with gray-green sage-brush, she ...
— Old Indian Days • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... of multiplication of effects we have come to a dinner of a dozen courses and wines of as many varieties; and that simple process of appropriating the virtue and the wisdom of the great man that was brought before the feast is now diversified into an analysis of all the men here under the cunning management of many speakers. No doubt, preserving as we do the identity of all these institutions it is often considered a great art, or at least a great delight, to roast our friends and put in hot water those against whom ...
— Model Speeches for Practise • Grenville Kleiser
... expectation, the day arrived, Alec could not rest. He wandered about all day, haunting his mother as she prepared his room for Kate, hurrying away with a sudden sense of the propriety of indifference, and hurrying back on some cunning pretext, while his mother smiled to herself at his eagerness and the transparency of his artifice. At length, as the hour drew near, he could restrain himself no longer. He rushed to the stable, saddled his pony, which was in nearly as high ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... at Upthorne had become a creature matchless in cunning and of subtle and marvelous resource. She had been terrified and tortured, shamed and cowed. She had been hounded to her marriage and conveyed with an appalling suddenness to Upthorne, that place of sinister and terrible suggestion, and the bed in which John Greatorex ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... named ought to be expelled from the churches as manifest heretics; and no opportunity whatsoever ought to be allowed them henceforth of obtaining episcopal churches(133) that the priestly orders of the true and Nicene faith may remain pure and no place be given to evil cunning, according to the evident form of ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... from a mortal wound, Ghastly and gaping wide, upon his throat! The shadow passed—another took his place, Of the same royal race; The noble Yumuri, the only son Of the old monarch, heir to his high throne, Cut off by cunning in his youthful pride; There was the murderer's gash, and the red tide Still pouring from his side; And round his neck the mark of bloody hands, That strangled the brave sufferer while he strove Against their clashing brands. Not with unmoistened eyes did the chief note His noble ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... royalty, and another material of riches, than those usually acknowledged. I had even intended to ask your attention for a little while on trust, and (as sometimes one contrives, in taking a friend to see a favourite piece of scenery) to hide what I wanted most to show, with such imperfect cunning as I might, until we unexpectedly reached the best point of view by winding paths. But— and as also I have heard it said, by men practised in public address, that hearers are never so much fatigued as by the endeavour to follow a speaker who gives them no clue to ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... Giles, and Grampus, who was still glowering at Tom and had not quite finished pushing the cartridges into his gun, shut it up in a hurry and fired first one barrel and then the other. But my father, who was very cunning, jumped into the air at the first shot and ducked at the second, so that he was missed; at least I suppose that ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... larger compass than the earliest of such, but with its democracy and its elective kingdom preserved. The older Sweden was, in regard to its constitution, a rudimentary union of states. The realm had come into existence through the cunning and violence of the king of the Sviar, who made way with the kings of the respective lands, making their communities pay homage to him. No change in the interior affairs of the different lands was thereby effected; they lost their outward political independence, but ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough
... spent on the river or in the woods, and, when weary of this sport, the orchards and melon-patches around the village, although closely guarded, were sure to suffer at their hands; and they planned and executed their plundering expeditions with so much skill and cunning, that they were ...
— Frank, the Young Naturalist • Harry Castlemon
... as we had! One man got bitten; but after a while foxy was caught. Then what did the cunning little thing do but make believe he was dead! Foxes are very cunning: they can play dead ...
— The Nursery, June 1873, Vol. XIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest People • Various
... "Lay," if you want to learn lessons from poetry. It is a rude legend, perhaps, as the critics said at once, when critics were disdainful of wizard priests and ladies magical. But it is a deathless legend, I hope; it appeals to every young heart that is not early spoiled by low cunning, and cynicism, and love of gain. The minstrel's own prophecy is true, and still, ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... two or three men, and perhaps a dozen women, with twice that number of children came from the tepees to look at them, and when the dogs came to a halt, one of the men stepped forward. He was an old man, and withered-looking, but with a light of cunning in his bleared eyes. ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... Maerchen went down upon the earth. With beating heart she approached the city, in which the cunning watchmen dwelt: she dropped her head towards the earth, wrapped her fine robe closely around her, and with trembling step ...
— The Oriental Story Book - A Collection of Tales • Wilhelm Hauff
... Janet, going round to him; 'don't you see the cunning woman wants to dress you in our garments, and means to boast of it to us while you're finishing ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and all harmony upon earth, whether in the song of birds, the whisper of the wind, the concourse of voices, or the sounds of those cunning instruments which man has learnt to create, because he is made in the image of Christ, the Word of God, who creates all things; all music upon earth, I say, is beautiful in as far as it is a pattern and type of the everlasting music which is in heaven, which was ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... child, Warble his native wood-notes wild. And ever, against eating cares, Lap me in soft Lydian airs, Married to immortal verse; Such as the meeting soul may pierce, In notes, with many a winding bout Of linked sweetness long drawn out, With wanton heed and giddy cunning, The melting voice through mazes running, Untwisting all the chains that tie The hidden soul of harmony; That Orpheus' self may heave his head From golden slumber on a bed Of heap'd Elysian flowers, and hear Such strains as would have won the ear Of Pluto, to have quite set free His half-regain'd ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... cast their eyes over the walls and ceiling without being able to see where the wonder would happen, for the childish and cunning Huns used to amuse their guests with ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... begin to tip your tongue with cunning, I pray dip your pencil in colours; and fall to that you must do, not that you ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... better, therefore, not doubting Annie to be the guilty person, to count the few lumps of sugar he might lose, as an additional trifle of interest, and not quarrel with his creditor for extorting it. So with the weak cunning of his kind, he went to the shop, and bringing back a bit of sugar-candy, about the size of a pigeon's egg, said ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... affection at the moment when his dart has wounded her, form a picturesque underplot of considerable interest. Both plot and underplot are so connected in the main action and so interwoven by links of mutual dependency that they form one richly varied fabric. Regarded as a piece of cunning mechanism, the complicated structure of the Pastor Fido leaves nothing to be desired. In its kind, this pastoral drama is a monumental work of art, glittering and faultless like a polished bas-relief of hard Corinthian ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... or not truly, or sometimes correctly and sometimes not, as often befalls mortal men. For Herodotus, he said, was chiefly concerned to steal the lore of those who came before him, such as Hecataeus, and then to escape notice as having stolen it. Also he said that, being himself cunning and deceitful, Herodotus was easily beguiled by the cunning of others, and believed in things manifestly false, such as the story ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... man hath served you of his cunning, And furthered well your law in his writing, All be it that he cannot well indite, Yet hath he made unlearned folk delight To serve you in praising ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... rede craft we find out what other men have done; we get our book learning, we are made heirs to thoughts that breathe and words that burn, we enter into the life, the acts, the arts, the loves, the lore of the wise, the witty, the cunning, and the worthy of all ages and all places; we learn, as says ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... the matchless tales of All-Father Odin, who crosses the Rainbow Bridge to walk among men in Midgard and sacrifices his right eye to drink from the Well of Wisdom; of Thor, whose mighty hammer defends Asgard; of Loki, whose mischievous cunning leads him to treachery against the gods; of giants, dragons, dwarfs and Valkyries; and of the terrible last battle that destroyed ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum
... prank he played on Philip and his advisers would be regarded as unworthy cunning, and an outrage on the rules of high honour. Good Protestant Christians disapproved then, as now, the wickedness of thus gambling with religion to attain any object whatsoever, and especially of swearing by the Mother of God the ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... love and little confidence in her, and sometimes thought proper to shew her grief at such treatment by a pretended hysteric fit, always ready at call to come to her assistance, though really so unnecessarily lavished on one easily duped without those laborious means, that it appeared a wantonness of cunning, which was thus exerted only for its own indulgence. She soon perceived that Miss Melvyn rather chose to submit to any aspersions, than to render her father unhappy by undeceiving him; and taking advantage of this generosity, would sometimes, to establish his opinion of her veracity, ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... That roped area was something new, something they had not been expecting. Also the thing Dade told them sounded strange to these hot-blooded ones, who had looked forward to a whirlwind battle, with dust and swirling riatas and no law except the law of chance and superior skill and cunning. ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man: and, therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit; and if he read little, he need have much cunning to seem to ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... charitable institutions to which he had written had neglected to answer his letters, for such an offer coming from such a source required time for consideration, and his brain, neither a subtly trained nor naturally cunning one, was incapable of those shifting drifts of thought which occupy themselves with idly fitting certain acts to certain individuals. His literal mind had always connected. Miss Clairville, from the day ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... Oregon in vast numbers a species of wood-rat, and our inspection of the graveyard showed that the canoes were thickly infested with them. They were a light gray animal, larger than the common gray squirrel, with beautiful bushy tails, which made them strikingly resemble the squirrel, but in cunning and deviltry they were much ahead of that quick-witted rodent. I have known them to empty in one night a keg of spikes in the storehouse in Yamhill, distributing them along the stringers of the building, with apparently no other purpose than amusement. We anticipated great fun ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... Dick Cronk was very cunning. "That's funny. I've been with it just three weeks. Say, I bet I know who put up this job on you." He turned to his friends. "It was that darned Jim Hopkins. He's always up to a gag ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... none the worse for a little silence. As it is, we earth-wallahs hear such a lot of high-falutin and observe so much low cunning that no wonder youth, as it grows more "knowing," becomes more cynical. It is only when a young man has arrived at years of discretion that he realises that the most discreet thing to do is to be indiscreet while holding a moral mask up. When he realises this, he will find it more politic to keep ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... and detached from the heavenly vault, not by color or consistence, but solely by the light and shade of their salient and retreating outlines.] The most sanguine believer in indefinite human progress hardly expects that man's cunning will accomplish the universal fulfilment of the prophecy, "the desert shall blossom as the rose," in its literal sense; but sober geographers have thought the future conversion of the sand plains of Northern ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... bold rider," said Lady Mabel, "but those red foxes are too cunning for you. What made you chase them? What harm ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... must look for in Holy Writ, not cunning of words. All Scripture ought to be read in the spirit in which it was written. We must rather seek for what is profitable in Scripture, than for what ministereth to subtlety in discourse. Therefore we ought to read ...
— The Imitation of Christ • Thomas a Kempis
... our printing-office when we first brought our newspaper to the place, and who was just then a machinist because he was tired of being many other things, and had not yet made up his mind what he should be next. He could have been whatever he turned his agile intellect and his cunning hand to; he had been a schoolmaster and a watch-maker, and I believe an amateur doctor and irregular lawyer; he talked and wrote brilliantly, and he was one of the group that nightly disposed of every manner of theoretical and practical question at the drug-store; it was quite indifferent to him ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... on such a day that a hunter with a pack of trained fox hounds entered the forest a mile to the west of Silver Spot's den. It was not long before the dogs had found the trail of the big fox and the chase was on, a chase destined to try the cunning and strength of the ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... a reason can be given for requiring the abstinence; it should; but if not tell the child that the reason is such that he could not comprehend it, and he will remain satisfied. But if trick or scheming be resorted to, the child will have learned the two improper lessons of first being cunning, and then telling a ...
— Trials and Confessions of a Housekeeper • T. S. Arthur
... Ha, ha, ha! Mark me, Mary; young folks think old folks to be fools; but old folks know young folks to be fools. Why, I knew all about this affair:—This was only a cunning way I had to bring it about. Hark ye! I was in the closet when you and he were at our house. [Turns to the company.] I heard that little baggage say she loved her old father, and would die to make him happy! Oh! how I loved the ...
— The Contrast • Royall Tyler
... know—a street urchin in a camp, that was all I was. If I got licked, and I did, I was a coward for years and had to give up my pennies. I used strategy, cunning, because I was afraid to fight till I whipped Red. That made a difference. If the old fellow I liked so hadn't given Red a quarter to lick me, I'd have been a coward yet. It made me so ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... The catawampuss, cunning as the dread jerboa, crept to the edge of the pool, took a header into it, and then, still true to the feline instincts, swimming on its back, made its way to the crocodile. In this manner it caught the crocodile by the tail and waked it. When the ...
— HE • Andrew Lang
... have been on his own part a lack of that administrative ability which, acquired through discipline, imparts the skill and power to enforce it. At all events, it is the sympathy and humor with which he portrays his innumerable "blood-brothers"—greedy, cunning, and capricious, but untainted with ferocity, and consequently manageable, like children, by a judicious blending of severity and indulgence—that give interest and charm to his narrative. It has many faults and deficiencies which in a work of greater literary pretensions would be inexcusable. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... the bereaved king, affairs were already in train to provide him with a new wife, a plan being laid for that purpose at the very funeral of his queen, as some writers say, between the ambitious Princess Orsini and a cunning Italian named Alberoni, while they, with a show of grave decorum, followed Maria ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men, will be enabled to subvert the power of the people, and to usurp for themselves the reins of government; destroying afterwards the very engines which have ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... conceived and his skill executed. Jans, being now a very old man, and having no son of his own, gave to Claus his forge and workshop, and taught him those secret arts which he in youth had learned from cunning masters. Right joyous now was Claus; and many, many times the Northern sky glowed with the flames that danced singing from the forge while Claus moulded his pretty toys. Every color of the rainbow were these flames; for they reflected the bright colors of the beauteous things strewn round that ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... exclaimed Ruth. "Did you ever see such cunning little beds? They wouldn't be much too big for Edna ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe
... his den and looked at his children—two very cunning little cubs, lying on the floor. And one of ...
— The Story of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... pretty bright young man, Mr. Crocker," he went on, a look of cunning coming into his little eyes, "but I guess you ain't had too many cases to ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... leave in our Lady's leisure. There will be a learned young divine with some new doctrine—a learned leech with some new drug—a bold cavalier, who will not be refused the favour of wearing her colours at a running at the ring—a cunning harper that could harp the heart out of woman's breast, as they say Signer David Rizzio did to our poor Queen;—these are the sort of folk who supply the loss of a well-favoured favourite, and not an old steward, ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... A more cunning hand than mine is needed to depict adequately the great soldier-statesman. But this I would say. There has been much foolish talk as to this individual and to that having won the war. That any one person could have won the war is on the face of it an absurdity. ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... that which she held in her hand, and the removal of which had produced so wonderful a transformation? One of those masks of dark red golden wire, so fine as to be almost impalpable, and wrought by fingers of such cunning skill that while it concealed the natural skin of the face, every lineament and even every sweep and dimple was copied, as if the moulder had been working in wax—the eye looking through as naturally as in the ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... cultivated people a little more and your flowers a little less, you would know that the dowry and the hopes you have sown, and watered, and tilled, and weeded are on the point of being gathered now by cunning hands." ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... With the cunning of a woman she was trying to woo this man back to the joy of earth, to wind herself into his heart, and so to fill his hours with her brightness that he would ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... will sell off all, and come over to this African Paradise. The drawback I speak of is this:—Although I have never seen any one of the creatures, it is too certain that the mountains are inhabited by a race of monkeys, whose cunning and mischievous talents exceed even the most incredible stories of their tribe. No human art or vigilance seems of avail: we have planned ambuscades, and watched night after night, but no attempt has been made; yet the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 402, Supplementary Number (1829) • Various
... come. The two men were alone,—Bat furious and desperate with jealousy; Sampey fearful, but determined; brutality against wit, strength against cunning, fury against patience, a bulldog matched with a mink, a ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... woods. They stay in the cities, Where policemen are thick and the streets are all lighted. In the woods men trail with their ears and eyes open, And sleep when they sleep with their hands on their rifles. Why? Well, panthers are plenty and cunning and quiet, And a man is a fool that goes carelessly stumbling Under trees where they crouch, under crags where they gather. Furthermore, with the saints, now and then there are sinners That live in the woods; and some half-breeds are wicked, And know nothing of law unless taught by a bullet. ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... influence was to be dreaded. The policy of the Koordi determined that he would overthrow the power of Quat Kare, and after having vainly laid snares for his capture, the old king fled from the governor of Fashoda as David fled from Saul and hid in the cave of Adullam. The Koordi was clever and cunning in intrigue; thus, he wrote to Djiaffer Pacha, the governor-general of the Soudan, and declared that Quat Kare the king of the Shillooks was DEAD; it was therefore necessary to elect the next heir, Jangy for whom he ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... that he—but never mind. That girl she come running this afternoon to where I am shut in way back in the palace, and she say that a foreign gentleman is painting a picture out in the street, and he stare very cunning at her. So I tell her to find out if he is the one for me, and to tell him to come quick this night. She was afraid to take note—afraid the eunuch catch her. So she went to you. She told afterwards that you ask her if there ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... shutting my eyes. My God! I thought, shall I ever sleep again? The old Third stood near me, his eyes all bloodshot, the crease in his cheek working, his dyed moustache all draggled, his breath—Humph! He was cunning enough to pretend he was all right, helping the Second with the reversing gear. Now and again the Chief would come down and give an order, his glass eye fixing me in a queer way. I never got used to that glass eye. It wasn't part of him, so to speak, ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... it conciliated the good-will of the people, severed, at once, all relations with the viceroy. There was in the Audience a lawyer, named Cepeda, a cunning, ambitious man, with considerable knowledge in the way of his profession, and with still greater talent for intrigue. He did not disdain the low arts of a demagogue to gain the favor of the populace, and trusted to find his own account in fomenting a misunderstanding with Blasco Nunez. The latter, ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... cunning little boy, the next one to the baby, did you?" asked Ann Bray, turning round quickly at last, and going cheerfully on with the conversation. "Now, hush, Mandy, dear; they'll think you're childish! He's ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... Romer, despite his eagerness, did very well indeed. At last I espied our quarry, and indeed the sight was thrilling. Wild turkey gobblers to me, who had hunted them enough to learn how sagacious and cunning and difficult to stalk they were, always seemed as provocative of excitement as larger game. This big fellow hopped up from limb to limb of the huge dead pine, and he bobbed around as if undecided, and tried each limb for a place to roost. Then he hopped farther up until we lost sight of him in ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... dawdled over his cup of muddy coffee he had a curious sense that his mind was intent on keeping at bay some half-formulated fear. He felt pursued, as by an indistinct dream. Yet he was cunning enough to pretend that this something was too illusive to capture outright, so he turned his thoughts to all manner of remote things. But there are times when it is almost as difficult to deceive oneself as to cheat others. In the midst of his thoughts ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... look with nothing amiss in it (Piers Plowman). 'Daft' was modest or retiring; 'orgies' were religious ceremonies; the Blessed Virgin speaks of herself in an early poem as 'God's wench.' In 'crafty' and 'cunning' no crooked wisdom was implied, but only knowledge and skill; 'craft,' indeed, still retains very often its more honourable use, a man's 'craft' being his skill, and then the trade in which he is skilled. 'Artful' was skilful, and not tricky ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... they were already aware of his desire and his friendly disposition. During the voyage the king of Chanpan, like the tyrant and pirate that he is, treacherously robbed and captured them, and held them in that captivity until they were obliged to leave in flight, with much cunning and craft, alone and taking nothing with them. After suffering immense hardships, they arrived at his city poor and in ill condition. The said king of Canvoja received them kindly, treated them well, and lent aid to their needs. He was much pleased with them when he ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume IX, 1593-1597 • E. H. Blair
... when during his frequent absence from Rome he had need of a higher organ there, the person destined for this purpose was, significantly enough, not the legal deputy of the monarch, the prefect of the city, but a confidant without officially-recognized jurisdiction, usually Caesar's banker, the cunning and pliant Phoenician merchant Lucius Cornelius Balbus from Gades. In administration Caesar was above all careful to resume the keys of the state-chest—which the senate had appropriated to itself after the fall of the regal power, and by means of which it had possessed itself of ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... work, that other poor souls perish not, whilst we can save. The nosferatu do not die like the bee when he sting once. He is only stronger, and being stronger, have yet more power to work evil. This vampire which is amongst us is of himself so strong in person as twenty men, he is of cunning more than mortal, for his cunning be the growth of ages, he have still the aids of necromancy, which is, as his etymology imply, the divination by the dead, and all the dead that he can come nigh ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... sweepingly the whole groundwork of cunning and amazing misrepresentation on which this unparalleled tirade ...
— A Public Appeal for Redress to the Corporation and Overseers of Harvard University - Professor Royce's Libel • Francis Ellingwood Abbot
... meet there this man who boasted that he could get blood out of a stone, and the object of the meeting was to bribe him to silence. But however loosely Jentham alluded to his intention of picking up gold, he was cunning enough, with all his excitement, to hold his tongue as to how he could work such a miracle. Undoubtedly there was a secret between Dr Pendle and this scamp; but what it might be, Cargrim could by no means guess. Was Jentham a disreputable relation of the bishop's? Had Dr Pendle ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... man? Would you, mother? Would you come up to the reporters' table, take up a pen and put your name down to such an excuse? You would say, "Let my right hand forget its cunning, and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if ...
— Moody's Anecdotes And Illustrations - Related in his Revival Work by the Great Evangilist • Dwight L. Moody
... soldier and steadier character must be warned to be on the watch against being taken in by cunningly disguised flattery. An open flatterer any one can detect, unless he is an absolute fool the covert insinuation of the cunning and the sly is what we have to be studiously on our guard against. His detection is not by any means the easiest thing in the world, for he often covers his servility under the guise of contradiction, and flatters by pretending to dispute, and then at last giving in and ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... refuge among the recesses of the mountains, where he still lurked with a few outlaw followers, as desperate as himself. His father had forbidden any search for him, or any efforts for his capture to be made; and such was the dread inspired by his desperate courage, ferocity, and cunning, and such the superstitious terror with which he was generally regarded, that few felt any inclination to transgress this command, or to meddle in any way with him or his followers; and he was consequently left unmolested in his favourite haunts, among the wild and almost ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... me to tell you the truth," she went on. "He asked me who you were, last night on our way home. I knew that you were rich, and that he wanted money. I told him I knew nothing of your position in the world. He was too cunning to believe me; he went out to the public-house and looked at a directory. He came back and said, 'Mr. Germaine has a house in Berkeley Square and a country-seat in the Highlands. He is not a man for a poor devil like me to offend; I mean ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... city, yet the day of its fall tarried, because certain of the gods loved it well and defended it, as Apollo and Mars, the god of war, and Father Jupiter himself. Wherefore Minerva put it into the heart of Epeius, Lord of the Isles, that he should make a cunning device wherewith to take the city. Now the device was this: he made a great horse of wood, feigning it to be a peace-offering to Minerva, that the Greeks might have a safe return to their homes. In the belly of this there hid themselves certain of the bravest of the chiefs, as Menelaues, ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... a new and singular pleasure to Barry. He was accustomed to the exhaustless, elastic strength of Satan, with the cunning brain of a beast of prey and the speed of an antelope. On the black horse he could have ridden circles around that posse all day. But Grey Molly was a different problem. She was not a force to be simply directed and controlled. ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... a little put wrong when you do not come in," said Lucy. The cunning which weakness finds refuge in when it has to defend itself came to her aid. "Jock is shy when you are not here. He thinks he bores Lady Randolph; and so we ladies are ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... sounding, and can express so many things. For example, formica; can you guess? O, no, you will never guess," added he, with a knowing tone. "Very well! formica means crumb carriers, because the little cunning beasts carry all ...
— Piccolissima • Eliza Lee Follen
... eh? Want to be sure that I know, do you? Want to see if Oliver Swinnerton is a fool, blind in both eyes? All right." His voice dropped yet lower, and he blinked with cunning eyes as he finished. "You are up to the same game I am! You are going to slip the knife into John Crawford clean up to the hilt. You are going to make a bluff at getting work done until the last minute, and then you are going to have nothing done. You are going to throw ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... come in from the fields at sundown and fall like rushing waters on the tree-tops is an even more memorable sound. To the sportsman, above all, the woodpigeon shows itself a splendid bird of freedom, more cunning than any hand-reared game bird, swifter on the wing than any other purely wild bird, a welcome addition to the bag because it is hard to shoot in the open, and because in life it was a sore trial to a class already harassed with their share of ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo
... desire to have life served up to them in many courses. Greed lies at the bottom of their being, and so they preach content to the masses, though for the workers they have nothing in their shallow souls but contempt. This cultured leisure class has had the time and cunning to perpetrate one great and tragic trick. They have made social falsehoods so complicated that they themselves neither understand nor wish to understand.... Why is it that in all the great authors I detect an air of condescension, marking their contempt for those who make and ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions, Guides us by vanities. Think now She gives when our attention is distracted And what she gives, gives with such supple confusions That the giving famishes the craving. Gives too late What's not believed ...
— Poems • T. S. [Thomas Stearns] Eliot
... is in him united with matchless cunning," they said. "Everything is in danger if ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... Spirit. During the first bitter winters, it was the Indians who fed the colonists from their supplies of grain; guided them to the better lands, and shared with them their knowledge of hunting, fishing and agriculture. The whites retaliated with that cunning, grasping, bestial ferocity which has spread terror through the earth during the ...
— The American Empire • Scott Nearing
... her intellect made her more cunning and false than before, or whether it confused her between what she had assumed to be and what she really had been, or whether it had awakened any glimmering of remorse, which could neither struggle into light nor get back into total darkness, or whether, in the jumble of ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... say that my Auntie's piety was not of the niggerish kind, even Zoe, "The Octoroon," or any other woman or man in whose veins courses the blood of Ham four times diluted, knows that I mean it was not that glory-hallelujah variety of cunning or delusion, compounded of laziness and catalepsy, which is popular among the shouting, shirt-tearing sects of plantation darkies, who "git relijin" and fits twelve times a year. To all such she used to say, "'T ain't de real grace, honey,—'t ain't de sure glory,—you hollers too loud. When you ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... and again I had detected in his eyes were not to my liking. Assuredly few men are responsible for any physical repulsiveness; we cannot all be 'Belvedere' Apollos; but then the envoy was not only of the ugly, but also the cunning-looking class. Yet a more honourable man never breathed. He at once thrust one hand into the depths of a capacious inner pocket, produced the mysterious envelope, and opened it in our presence. It ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... Commodities. Or their Measures. Their Weights. Measures bigger than the Statute punishable; but less, not: And why. Of their Coin. Of their Play. A Play or a Sacrifice: For the filthiness of it forbid by the King. A cunning Stratagem of an Officer. Tricks and Feats of Activity. At leisure times they meet and discourse of Newes. Drunkenness abhorred. Their eating Betel-Leaves. How ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... to have no one with me," Blossett roared. "Do you think I am going to be treated like a blooming kid? I tell you, I am the best man of the lot of you. There isn't one of you can hold a candle to me. Fenwick, with all his cunning, is a child compared with Ned Blossett. Ask any of the old gang in New York, ask the blistering police if you like; and as to the rest of you, who are you? A set of whitefaced mechanics, without pluck enough to rob a hen-roost. Take ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... to confront it, and ascertain the worst at once. What had we to fear? Personal violence was out of the question. He would never bring his own life into jeopardy by attempting ours. She believed he was quite capable of the most dastardly and treacherous crime; but she thought he was too cunning, cautious, and selfish, to contemplate a mode of revenge which could not be accomplished without risk to himself. In any case, however, she was clearly convinced that the best plan was to go boldly upon him at once. It was like taking the sting out of a nettle, by ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... was going to play him false after all. He had got the money, every farthing of it, and now he was going to retain the bill which contained Loman's promise to pay the whole amount! Poor Loman, he was no match in cunning for this rogue. Who would believe him that he had paid, when Cripps was still able to produce the promise signed with his own name to ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... to see some alligators, and to buy Gulf beans and alligator's teeth, ornamented, for watch-charms and other wear. Miss Margie had seen an alligator six feet long, and thought he was very terrible. The baby reptiles she considered "very cunning little pets." ...
— Down South - or, Yacht Adventure in Florida • Oliver Optic
... poor Jem and I love Temple, and, though I am only a woman who never has been the least clever, I know them both. I know neither of them could lie or do a wicked, cunning thing. Temple is ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... doing anything but cower from the weather. Only the great eyes of him, peering aloft from under the peak of his sou'wester, showed that the man was awake; and the ready turns of the helm, that brought a steering tremor to the weather leaches, marked him a cunning steersman, ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... skill,—more notably yet does the hand come in play with the painter. Here the material is little, the imagination mighty indeed, but less overwhelming than with poet and musician; but the technique, the God-given and labor-trained cunning of retina and wrist, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... he quoth, "I abided in the city of the Great King,—there was I born and there I abided. I was of good stature, and I asked favor of none. I was an artisan, and many came to my shop, and my cunning was sought of many,—for I was exceeding crafty in my trade; and so, therefore, speedily my pride begot an insolence that had respect to none at all. And once I heard a tumult in the street, as of the cries of men and boys commingled, and ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... flowers and curtains adorned the immense saloon, the ceiling whereof was inlaid with precious stones, while the floor was fashioned entirely of mother-o'-pearl—he who set his foot thereon might fancy he was walking on rainbows. Moreover, cunning artificers had wrought upon this mother-o'-pearl floor flowers and birds and other most wondrous fantastical figures, so that it was a joy to look thereon, for no carpet, however precious, was suffered to cover all this splendour. Yet lest the cold surface of the pavement ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... to carry her on a second komatik, while my driver broke the path with our impedimenta. Things did not go altogether well. Since I have enjoyed the luxury of a driver, or a "carter" as we call them, my cunning in wriggling a komatik at full speed down steep mountain-sides through trees has somewhat waned. Comparatively early in the day we looped the loop—and we were both heavy weights. It was nearly dark when ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... now filled my mind was what my relations were with this dangerous man who walked by my side. His conduct and bearing had filled me with abhorrence. I had seen the depth of cunning with which he had duped and betrayed his companions, and I had read in his lean smiling face the cold deliberate cruelty of his nature, as he stood, pistol in hand, over the whimpering coward whom he had outwitted. Yet I could not deny that when, through my own foolish curiosity, ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... for trial)—"You certainly effected the robbery in a remarkably ingenious way; in fact, with quite exceptional cunning." ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... impenetrable armour. They ride fast bound to their horses, which are not very great in stature, but exceedingly strong, and mainteined with little prouender. They vse to fight constantly and valiantly with iauelines, maces, battle axes, and swords. But specially they are excellent archers, and cunning warriers with their bowes. Their backs are slightly armed, that they may not flee. They withdraw not themselues from the combate, till they see the chiefe Standerd of their Generall giue backe. Vanquished, they aske no fauour and vanquishing, they shew no compassion. They all persist in their ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... had never known his mistress of so bland a temper, and he ascribed it to the presence of the strange priest. Personally, he believed in Brahmins, though, like all natives, he was acutely aware of their cunning and their greed. Still, when Brahmins but irritated with begging demands the mother of his master's wife, and when she sent them away so angry that they cursed the whole retinue (which was the real ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... sobbed Bessie. "It won't be Roselle Geraldine. It won't have a blue silk hat and such cunning ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... days were destined to reveal the fact that the cunning and guile of Protopopov had overreached itself; that the soldiers could not be relied upon to crush any uprising of the people. There was some rioting in Petrograd on March 3d, and the next day the city was placed under martial law. On March 7th ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... opponents. Justus Jonas studied physiognomy and manners. He pretended "to see in Zwingli a certain tincture of rustic arrogance; in [OE]colampadius a wonderfully mild nature; in Hedio, no less humanity and liberal culture; in Bucer, under the mantle of sagacity and penetration, fox-like cunning." ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... contemplate this edifice, was no other than the gentleman so frequently named as Mr. or Squire Doolittle. He was of a tall, gaunt formation, with rather sharp features, and a face that expressed formal propriety mingled with low cunning. Richard approached him, followed by Monsieur Le ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... let's take him; he's so cunning," said Joy. Joy was totally unused to children, having never had brothers and sisters of her own, and since she had been there, Winnie had not happened to develop in any of his characteristic methods. Moreover, he had speedily discovered that Joy laughed at everything he said; even his most ordinary ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... six shirts or twelve were bought in July last, and what could be the harm of making those eight handkerchiefs a dozen? He was a strange old gentleman; lived by himself—and the books might be referred to, and speak boldly for themselves." Yes, cunning Jehu, so they might, with those interpolations and erasures that would confound and overcome a lawyer. When customers did not die, it was pastime to be dallying with the living. In adding up a bill with haste, how many times will four and four make nine? They ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... headquarters at least a regular resort of Dr. Fu-Manchu, was not too much to hope. The usefulness of such a haunt was evident enough, since it might conveniently be employed as a place of rendezvous for Orientals—and furthermore enable the cunning Chinaman to establish relations with persons likely to prove of ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... in their own craftiness, And the counsel of the cunning is thwarted; Wherefore they encounter darkness in the daytime, And at noonday ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... see you through?" and what the judge intended for a smile of fatherly affection became a leer of infinite cunning. ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... gatherings, and absent-mindedly prate about this or that without ever taking the trouble to think what they are saying and to whom they are saying it! Would a young mother describe twenty or thirty cunning tricks and sayings of the baby to a bachelor who has been helplessly put beside her at dinner if she thought? She would know very well, alas! that not even a very dear friend would really care for more than a hors d'oeuvre of the subject, at ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... low cunning and heartless cruelty in obtaining his wife. Laying in ambush, with club in hand, he would watch for the coveted woman, and, unawares, spring upon her. If simply disabled he carried her off as his possession, ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols |
