"Stiletto" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the hearth. It was the fragments of the toy stiletto, broken by an uncontrollable twitch of the small fingers that ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... subject to fits of tender melancholy, and, like Miss Cornelia, adored moonlight, pensive music, and sentimental poetry. But she would have shrunk from contact with a brigand, in a sugar-loaf hat, with a carbine slung across his shoulder, and a stiletto in his sash, with precisely the same kind and degree of horror and disgust that would have affected her in the presence of a vulgar footpad, in a greasy Scotch-cap, armed with a horse-pistol and a sheath-knife. Her romantic tastes differed in many respects from her Aunt Cornelia's. She, too, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... shriek of pain should arise, it is not noticed in the din, and when they part, if one should stagger and fall bleeding to the ground, who can tell who has given the blow? There is naught but an unknown stiletto on the ground, the crowd has dispersed, and masks tell no tales anyway. There is murder, but by whom? for ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... only feel he ought to have rendered her some service—saved her from a capsized boat in the bay or at least recovered her dressing-bag, filched from her cab in the streets of Naples by a lazzarone with a stiletto. Or it would have been nice if he could have been taken with fever all alone at his hotel, and she could have come to look after him, to write to his people, to drive him out in convalescence. Then they would be in possession of the something or other that their actual show seemed to lack. ...
— The Beast in the Jungle • Henry James
... in private life exercised a kindred influence. So long as this habit continued, society was darkened by personal combat, street-fight, duel, and assassination. The Standing Army is to the nation what the sword was to the modern gentleman, the stiletto to the Italian, the knife to the Spaniard, the pistol to our slave-master,—furnishing, like these, the means of death; and its possessor is not slow to use it. In stating the operation of this system we are not left to inference. As France, according to Sir Thomas More, ...
— The Duel Between France and Germany • Charles Sumner
... Lutwyche and Mrs. Masham. It was not a fortunate circumstance that the dispositions of these two ladies, so far from being accommodating, were murderous. That is, they would have been so had it happened to be the Middle Ages, just then. But it wasn't. Tempers had ceased to find expression in the stiletto and the poison-cup, and had been curbed and stunted down to taking the other party up short, showing a ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... Austrian bands play during the time of vespers their martial music jarring with the organ notes—the march drowning the miserere and the sullen crowd thickening round them—a crowd which if it had its will would stiletto every soldier that pipes to it. And in the recesses of the porches, all day long, knots of men of the lowest classes, unemployed and listless, lie basking in the sun like lizards; and unregarded children—every heavy glance of their young ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... upon prompt justice; take that belief from him, he, too, like Harry Gow, would "fight for his own hand." In the half-organized society of the less civilized parts of the United States, the pistol and bowie-knife are as frequent arbiters of disputes as the stiletto is among the Italians. But it would be a gross error to argue from this, that the Americans are violent and passionate by nature; for, among the same people in the older States, where justice is cheaply and strictly administered, the pistol and bowie-knife are almost unknown. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... dragged her to an adjoining room, whither Bonaparte, near fainting from the sudden alarm his friend's interference had occasioned, followed him, trembling. In the right sleeve of Madame Encore's gown was found a stiletto, the point of which was poisoned. She was the same day transported to this capital, under the inspection of Duroc, and imprisoned in the Temple. In her examination she denied having accomplices, and she expired on the rack without telling ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... Miss Horsman, Mr. Craw, my dear Mrs. Ravenswing, shall we begin the trio? Silence, gentlemen, if you please; it is a little piece from my opera of the 'Brigand's Bride.' Miss Horsman takes the Page's part, Mr. Craw is Stiletto the Brigand, my accomplished pupil is the Bride;" ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Sanchia's side at the top of the stair, chatting pleasantly about every new-comer, when he suddenly stopped. "Hulloa," he said, "here's Morosine, as smooth as a glass stiletto. He'll ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... I'll kill you!" said Cassy, drawing a small, glittering stiletto, and flashing it before ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... at my breast. The grenadiers of the legislative body, whom I had left at the door of the hall, ran forward, and placed themselves between me and the assassins. One of these brave grenadiers (Thome) had his clothes pierced by a stiletto. ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... Tony, and Tony tells me nothing; but I saw them talking together to-night, and he was very angry. I overheard some words. I heard him say he would see your father to-night and make him sorry he had not done as he agreed, and he showed Tony a little stiletto which he carries with ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... to mining, with no previous history of the Blue Poppy to guide him, and with no help against the enemies who seemed everywhere. Now he saw that it was impossible. More, the incidents of the night showed how swiftly those enemies were working, how sharp and stiletto-like their weapons. ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... slipping the whale-bone into its case or fold of stuff, pierce holes in it, top and bottom, with a red hot stiletto. Through these holes, make your stitches, diverging like rays or crossing each other ...
— Encyclopedia of Needlework • Therese de Dillmont
... the firebrands of the French Revolution; "rose into furor almost Pythic; highest where many were high," but veered round to royalism, which he at length intrigued on behalf of—to death by the stiletto (1765-1812). ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... of late when conferring on the finest passages of Ovid. My dress could but add to such resemblance—did I tell you, my boy, that I wore only a shirt? Seeing me, Mosaide's eyes vomited fire. Out of his dirty yellow greatcoat he drew a neat little stiletto and shook it through the window with an arm in no way weighed down by age. He roared bilingual curses on me. Yes, Tournebroche, my grammatical knowledge authorises me to say that his curses were bilingual, that Spanish, or rather Portuguese, was mixed in them with Hebrew. I ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... her hand inside the reja when a dark, scowling face made its appearance at her side, her hand was rudely seized, and with a scream she disappeared. The young officer fancied he saw the bright gleaming of a stiletto within the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... came up to my poor friend as we were resting in a posada on the road from San Felipe; and, while engaging him in an apparently friendly conversation respecting the political points of the rising, he suddenly stabbed the dear old man in the back with a long stiletto which he had hidden up ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... mountain villages. No doubt some of our readers have come across the old pin poppets which boys and girls carried with them to the village school half a century or more ago. The girls filled them with pins and needles, bodkin and stiletto, and the boys with pencils and pens. In Fig. 75 two curious old pin boxes are illustrated. The pins shown on the same page are, however, of much older date; they are, in fact, merely thorns; these interesting and authentic relics of the "common objects of ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... told how they Saw Cupid bitten by a flea; And thereupon, in tears half drown'd, He cried aloud: Help, help the wound! He wept, he sobb'd, he call'd to some To bring him lint and balsamum, To make a tent, and put it in Where the stiletto pierced the skin; Which, being done, the fretful pain Assuaged, and ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... inexact in the details of business, and we excuse them heartily from blame. But show us a miserable, unbreeched, human entity, whose whole profession it is to take a tub for a fortified town and a shaving-brush for the deadly stiletto, and who passes three-fourths of his time in a dream and the rest in open self-deception, and we expect him to be as nice upon a matter of fact as a scientific expert bearing evidence. Upon my heart, I think it less than ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was too late. The herald had raised his arm, turned round his head, and plunged the sharp stiletto into his mother's breast.' ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... jealous Greek and his watcher, and before Demetri Agryopoulo could form the faintest notion as to how the thing had happened, a sudden thunderbolt seemed launched against him, and he was lying all abroad with a sprained wrist. The stiletto flew clean over the wall, so swift and dexterous was the twist which Barndale gave the murderous ...
— An Old Meerschaum - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... incredulous, but they showed cuts and bruises and demanded their money, saying that a joke had been played on them. When Owen refused one of them drew a stiletto and ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... things which the children thought likely to interest the Ancient Egyptians. Anthea brought dolls, puzzle blocks, a wooden tea-service, a green leather case with Necessaire written on it in gold letters. Aunt Emma had once given it to Anthea, and it had then contained scissors, penknife, bodkin, stiletto, thimble, corkscrew, and glove-buttoner. The scissors, knife, and thimble, and penknife were, of course, lost, but the other things were there and as good as new. Cyril contributed lead soldiers, a cannon, a catapult, a tin-opener, a tie-clip, and a tennis ball, and a padlock—no ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... combatants, Stuart had consented to spend the evening with us, and did not retire till late. On the way to his hotel he was exposed to no molestation, but just as he stepped within the portico, a swarthy and malignant figure started from behind a column. and plunged a stiletto into ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... no gaping thrusts or cuts. My teeth are not like yours when you are fasting—even cooked food must not be too tough for them to chew it, now-a-days. If you soak yourself in drink and fail in your blow, and I am not ready with the poisoned stiletto the thing won't come off neatly. But why did not the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... allow me to touch upon a more delicate subject; allow me to enquire the cause why our men display so little military ardour. They expose their lives freely when impelled by love and hatred; and a stab from a stiletto given or received in such a cause, excites neither astonishment nor dread. They fear not death when natural passions bid them brave its terrors; but often, it must be owned, they prefer life to political interests, which seldom affect them because they possess no national independence. ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... simple over and over stitch forming a smooth, round edge. Like satin stitch, all outlines are run with an even darning stitch, except the very small eyelet holes, made with a stiletto. Long or oval openings must be cut through ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... such frames, animated by such spirits, could prolong so exhausting a struggle. It was not doubtful now which of the two would come off victorious. During the whole course of the fight Gascoyne had acted entirely on the defensive. A small knife or stiletto hung at his left side, but he never attempted to use it, and he never once tried to throw his adversary. In fact, it now became evident, even to the widow's perceptions, that the captain was actually ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... signal to Reve de Noir, who again stepped up to the canvas, and, with a short knife or stiletto, removed a small portion of the outer layer of paint, disclosing a very ancient ground of some other and inferior work, over which the copy seemed to have been painted. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... during the time of vespers, their martial music jarring with the organ notes,—the march drowning the miserere, and the sullen crowd thickening round them,—a crowd, which, if it had its will, would stiletto every soldier that pipes to it. And in the recesses of the porches, all day long, knots of men of the lowest classes, unemployed and listless, lie basking in the sun like lizards; and unregarded children,—every heavy glance of their ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... the last and lowest group of insects, the stiletto-sheath is reduced to the size of a kind of little tube-shaped beak, which, when not in use, folds down like the fangs of ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... and he unbuttoned his scarlet uniform coat and drew from his left side a slender dagger or stiletto. ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... joke more than they feared a hit, would run the risk of an occasional thrust of the doctor's stiletto, for the sake of enjoying the mangling he gave other people; and such rollicking fellows as Murphy, and Durfy, and Dawson, and Squire Egan petted this ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... hundred times as great as that of the newly-hatched grub of the Scolia. Here certainly is a quarry which, were it active and capable of wriggling and biting, would expose the nurseling to terrible attacks. The danger has been averted by the mother's stiletto; and the fragile grub attacks the monster's paunch with as little hesitation as though it were sucking ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... with the black side downwards; then place a pattern above it, with the right side uppermost; place a weight here and there, to prevent it slipping; then trace over the outline with a rather blunt stiletto. On removing the paper, you will find the outline of the pattern transferred to the surface of the screen. Trace over the outline, and shade, in lines, with a fine camel's-hair pencil dipped in Newman's lamp-black; fill in with ...
— The Lady's Album of Fancy Work for 1850 • Unknown
... she said, stepping back to put on her own hat, fastening it with a dangerous-looking weapon of war shaped like a stiletto, thrust most recklessly in. ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... I perceived myself all on a fire; For the two forenamed things had so heated my blood, That a little phlebotomy would do me good: I sent for chirurgeon, who came in a trice, And swift to shed blood, needed not be called twice, But tilted stiletto quite thorough the vein, From whence issued out the ill humours amain; When having twelve ounces, he bound up my arm, And I gave him two Georges, which did him no harm: But after my bleeding, I soon understood It had cooled my devotion as well as my blood; For I had no more mind to ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... escaped all these plottings, Antonio Perez adopted another plan, viz., that we should kill him some evening with pistols, stilettoes, or rapiers, and that without delay. I started, therefore, for my country, to find one of my intimate friends, and a stiletto with a very thin blade, a much better weapon than a pistol for murdering a man. I travelled post, and they gave me some bills of exchange of Lorenzo Spinola at Genoa, to get money at Barcelona, and which, in fact, I received ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... very sensitive, very high-spirited, very impulsive, very patriotic, and singularly truthful. The letter of Mr. Seward to such a man was like a buffet on the cheek of an unarmed officer. It stung like the thrust of a stiletto. It roused a resentment that could not find any words to give it expression. He could not wait to turn the insult over in his mind, to weigh the exact amount of affront in each question, to take counsel, to sleep over it, and ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... and private dealings. In respect to the latter point, what has already been said about Machiavelli is enough.[3] Loyalty was a virtue but little esteemed in Italy: engagements seemed made to be broken; even the crime of violence was aggravated by the crime of perfidy, a bravo's stiletto or a slow poison being reckoned among the legitimate means for ridding men of rivals or for revenging a slight. Yet it must not be forgotten that the commercial integrity of the Italians ranked high. In all countries ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... spurge, when its stems begin to shoot, and its sombre flowers open in the sunlight? "It is the work of an insect. It is the shelter in which the Cicadellina deposits her eggs. What a miraculous chemist! Her stiletto excels the finest craft of the botanical anatomist" by its sovereign art of separating the acrid poison which flows with the sap in the veins of the most venomous plants, and extracting therefrom ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... in spite of long training in the kind of warfare attaching, of necessity, to Circulating Libraries, was very near to tears—also murder. She would have been delighted to pierce Joan's heart with a bright stiletto, had such a weapon been handy. She saw the softest, easiest, idlest job in the world slipping out of her fingers; she saw herself, a desolate and haggard virgin, begging her bread on the Polchester streets. She saw...but never mind her visions. They were terrible ones. ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... you—but send back the daughter of old De Bedros to her home, with a pledge to her father that she shall have a dowry of ten thousand lire when she marries. The father is pleased, the daughter is not. She sits and cries. She talks of herself getting at him with a stiletto." ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... boots, 2 muffetees, 1 pair of gaiters, 1 pair of boots, 8 copper pens, 1 pair of slippers, 1 black leather bag, 1 pair of new boots, 1 coat, 1 waistcoat, 5 pairs of gloves, 1 pair of braces, a necktie, a dressing box, 2 brushes, 3 razors, a stiletto, a pair of spectacles, and 2 pieces of teeth set in gold.—12 book covers, 7 small ditto, 1 small box, 4 ditto in one.—A large box of toys.—A collar.—A large tea chest, containing 160 articles of ladies' dress, etc.—A ...
— The Life of Trust: Being a Narrative of the Lord's Dealings With George Mueller • George Mueller
... when the servant, rushing from the parlour, fired a pistol at the Count; the ball of which struck, but did not injure him. It, however, so much surprised him as to throw him off his guard, when the wretch struck him with a stiletto between the shoulders. The Count at first reeled on the step of the door, but instantly rushed up stairs, as is supposed, to get arms from his bed-chamber, which he reached, but only to fall dead on the floor. ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... to be swarming with glittering pink-winged thoughts all singing. He walked on air, holding tightly to the hand of his goddess, seeing nothing but a blur of green and sunshine. Then a clean-cut idea stabbed him like a stiletto: was this Vanessa or Iole? And, to his own astonishment, ...
— Iole • Robert W. Chambers
... Maecenas; for observe, I should be sorry to fare like my foolhardy colleagues and cousins, who, armed with stiletto and pocket-pistol, hold their court in gloomy ravines, or mix in the subterranean laboratory the wondrous polychrest, which, when taken with proper zeal, tickles our political noses, either too little or too much, with throne vacancies or state-fevers. D'Amiens and Ravaillac!—Ho, ho, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... sure to have no peace for them. Prithee, Fairfax, tell me how the Contessa behaved, when she found I had escaped from her amorous pursuit. She began to make me uneasy; and I almost thought it was as necessary for me to have a taster as any tyrant in Christendom. Poison and the stiletto disturbed my dreams; for there were not only she, but two or three more, who seemed determined to take no denial. I congratulated myself, as I was rolling down mount Cenis, to think that I was at length actually safe, and that the damned black-looking, ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... on the Orpheum circuit. Five of them were boys he had grown up with; the other was the little mulatto, Babe Divine, who was a wharf nigger round New York, and long before that a plantation hand in Bermuda, until he stuck an eight-inch stiletto in his master's back. Almost before Carlyle realized his good fortune he was on Broadway, with offers of engagements on all sides, and more money than he had ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... danced singing down to breakfast, she found by her plate another present—a pretty scarlet housewife from Cousin Charlotte, containing a little pair of scissors, a silver thimble, a case of needles, a stiletto, a bodkin, and two of the tiniest reels of silk she had ever seen. When the case was closed it looked like ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... ascertain whether the interview was preliminary or subsequent to the corpse's kiss was not acute enough to induce him to buy the book. There was another about a kiss, Bacio Infame, on which a lady with a stiletto was defending herself from a bad man. All these were enticing, but we hoped to do better, and I began to blush for the somewhat thin plot of Tristram Shandy and to be thankful that my copy was not in Italian. Finally he took La Mano ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... laborers and illiterate; so are the Italians. The Irish came mainly from agricultural sections and herded in the great cities; so do the Italians. The handy weapon of the Irish was the shillalah, that of the Italian is the stiletto. The Irish found ready employment by reason of the demand for cheap unskilled labor created by the vast material enterprises of a swiftly developing country, with cities and towns and railroads to build; ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... off his feet by a gray ball of fury that leaped at him wielding a stiletto-thin knife. He caught at the Rumi's arm with both hands but the creature was not only fast but strong. It twisted out of his grasp and slashed at him and only a quick sideward roll saved him. Desperately he brought his fist down ...
— Narakan Rifles, About Face! • Jan Smith
... clerics led our devotion, one Master Mungo Law, a Lowlander, and the other his lordship's chaplain—Master Alexander Gordon, who had come on this expedition with some fire of war in his face, and never so much as a stiletto at his waist. ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... their presence and their fears, he found means to persuade his wife to take the children for a visit to their grandfather, and setting his affairs in order and providing himself with two revolvers, a bowie knife, and an Italian stiletto, he even began to look forward to the approaching struggle with something of that pleasure which man experiences in the anticipation of any contest; and there is indeed a certain keen zest in playing the game where ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... of cut work is that known as broderie anglaise, and sometimes as Madeira work, over which our grandmothers spent much time, perhaps without adequate result. The pattern is followed out by round holes pierced in the linen with a stiletto and then overcast round the edges. At the present day the work is done mostly by machinery, though hand ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie
... showed him a kind of hidden poniard, a keen, triangular stiletto of genuine steel, capped by a large glass pearl that served ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... lambing, and kujur or kunjur are names for weapons of the lance or spear kind; the pedang, rudus, pamandap, and kalewang are of the sword kind, and slung at the side, the siwar is a small instrument of the nature of a stiletto, chiefly used for assassination; and the kris is a species of dagger of a particular construction, very generally worn, being stuck in front through the folds of a belt that goes ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... man," thought Jennings. "No woman would have such a weapon in her possession; and if she bought one to accomplish a crime, she would purchase a stiletto or a pistol. It would take a considerable exercise of muscle to drive this ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume
... leaves of wood or metal coated over with wax, upon which the ancients wrote with a stylus, or iron pen, or point rather, for it was a solid sharp-pointed instrument, some 6 to 8 inches in length, like a lady's stiletto upon a large scale. In the middle of each leaf there appears to have been a button, called umbilicus, intended to prevent the pages touching when closed, and obliterating the letters traced on the ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... better class of hotel keepers, and was always called the "Dodger" by them, being viewed in much the same light as the treacherous miscreant was by the Italian nobleman of the dark ages, who, because he was skilled in the use of the stiletto, was employed to remove a ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... which waters all the stables as well as dwelling quarters. It is the home of the famous Cyllene, whose offspring we expect to see winning races in the near future; Polar Star, scarcely less known, and Ituzaingo, a native of this country, are his present companions; while the remains of Gay Hermit, Stiletto, Pietermaritzburg, and Kendal, all of whom are well known among turf circles at home, rest beneath its soil. There are several other equally famous stud farms, such as the "San Jacinto," the present home of Val d'Or, who won the Eclipse Stakes from Cicero, the Derby ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... carvings have been esteemed so highly that artists came to study them all the way from Flanders. The altar is coloured, like most of the Spanish retablos. Cano was a pugnacious character, always getting into scrapes, using his stiletto, and being obliged to shift his residence on short notice. It is remarkable that his erratic life did not interfere with his work, which seems to have gone calmly on in spite of domestic and civic difficulties. Among his works at various places, where his destiny ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... where you please? No, Monsieur, I am too deeply impressed with the respect I owe to Madame la Marquise, to give her an opportunity of saying to me: 'Grandchamp, my son has been killed with a shot or with a sword; why were you not before him?' Or, 'He has received a stab from the stiletto of an Italian, because he went at night beneath the window of a great princess; why did you not seize the assassin?' This would be very disagreeable to me, Monsieur, for I never have been reproached with anything of the kind. Once Monsieur ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... she left than Winston rushed into his own apartment. Amongst the curiosities which he had collected in Italy was a genuine stiletto. This had sometimes accompanied him in his solitary rambles; and of late he had sometimes, in his moods of despondency, contemplated that instrument, thinking the while of some other purpose than that of striking a foe to which it might be applicable. They ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... which had been tried for producing manuscript in duplicate had all proved distasteful and unsatisfactory. My husband was particularly irritated by the delay caused by having to press down the hard lead-pencil or stiletto. He could not bear any slow process for expressing the swiftly running thoughts, and he tried another plan which enabled him to write very nearly as fast as the ideas came. Using glazed paper and a soft pencil he made a rough draft without attempt at polish ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... drew forth a long, glittering Spanish stiletto, not much thicker than a coarse needle, but strong and glittering and ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... the same detestation and has consequently been more frequent. No man, who is at all aware of the operation of moral motives, can doubt for a moment, that if every murder in Italy had been invariably punished, the use of the stiletto in transports of passion would have ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... voice into a meaning whisper. "In Venice," said he, "this upstart might be mastered without an army. Think you in Rome no man wears a stiletto?" ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... A stiletto—perhaps a kitchen knife. A long narrow blade. It gleamed. And his eyes gleamed. His white teeth, too. I could see them. He was very ferocious. I thought to myself: 'If I hit him he will kill me.' How could ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... not sustained by corresponding courage. Ben Jonson had many quarrels with him, both literary and personal, and mentions one occasion on which he beat him, and took away his pistol. His temper was Italian rather than English, and one would conceive of him as quicker with the stiletto than the fist. His connection with the stage ceased in 1613, after he had produced a number of dramas, of which nine have been preserved. He died about twenty years afterwards, in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... out, But the stubborn wind resisted, And, for spite, dasht through the crevice Of the window. "Foolish girl, then, Thus to wait for me!" he muttered. When a shriek—so wild, so piercing— Weirdly wild—intensely piercing— Struck him like a sharp stiletto. Then another—and another! Purging clear his turbid senses. "Blanche!" he cried; and sprang towards her Just in time to save her falling; And her child fell from her bosom, Like a snow-fall from the house-top To the earth. "Blanche! Blanche!" he gaspt out; "Tell me what ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... arrived, but her fatal letter gave the first intelligence, and no other letter, at that period, found its way to me. She sent hers, I think, by some trusty returned prisoner. She little knew my then terrible situation ; hovering over my head was the stiletto of a surgeon for a menace of cancer yet, till that moment, hope of escape had always been held out to me by the Baron de Larrey— hope which, from the reading of that ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... atmosphere, in which every thought, every thing showed with an unbearable intensity. The terrible clearness of it all—how it made her eyes, her heart ache! Her blood was beating hard against every pore. She felt that she would go mad if he did not come. Once she took out the stiletto she had concealed in the bosom of her cloak, and looked at it. She had always carried it when among the beasts at the menagerie, but had never ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... one-sided romance. Romance is an atmosphere breathed by two, not an emotion felt by one. To be sure, he was the most appallingly in earnest lover woman ever had. He wept for a kiss with his fingers twiddling on the hilt of his stiletto. ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... while you, who are in the very town where Catherine de' Medici was born, and within a stone's throw of Rome, where Borgia and his holy father sent cardinals to the other world by hecatombs, are surprised to hear that there is such an instrument as a stiletto. The papal is now a mere gouty chair, and the good old souls don't even waddle out of it ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... all, Drake. My wife did. I must say that Miss Denham's credentials were good. She had been governess in an Italian family, and ha!——" He stopped suddenly, and started up. "In Italy she might have procured a stiletto. From the nature of the wound—which is small and deep—I should think it was inflicted with ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... like that, Biff," she said, her first impulse, as always, to see justice done; "but singers are a different breed. I don't think he's bluffing, altogether. If he got a real good chance some place in the dark, and was sure that he wouldn't be caught, he might use a stiletto on you." ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... he said, with a laugh, and caught the girl by the wrist. "I will make you pay for that." As he tried to draw her to him, she whipped from her dress a small stiletto which she wore as an ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... to be in just a little while," she put in, following the confident assertion with a query that came as suddenly as a stiletto stab: "Who ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... the riddle in the Florentine's favour. And lastly, the course of political events in Europe have seemed to many the final justification of the teaching of The Prince. The leaders of the Risorgimento thought that they found in letters, 'writ with a stiletto,' not only the inspirations of patriotism and the aspirations to unity, but a sure and trusted guide to the achievement. Germany recognised in the author a schoolmaster to lead them to unification, and a military instructor to teach them of an Armed People. Half Europe snatched at the principle ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... the hands of a cardinal, in order that he might instruct her in the duties of the devout. This wicked shepherd found the lamb so magnificently beautiful that he attempted to debauch her. Theodora instantly stabbed herself with a stiletto, in order not to be contaminated by the evil-minded priest. This adventure, which was consigned to the history of the period, made a great commotion in Rome, and was deplored by everyone, so much was the ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... also, in their wassail; and their quarter of the camp was prone to be a scene of loud revel and sudden brawl. They were, withal, of great pride, yet it was not like our inflammable Spanish pride: they stood not much upon the pundonor, the high punctilio, and rarely drew the stiletto in their disputes; but their pride was silent and contumelious. Though from a remote and somewhat barbarous island, they believed themselves the most perfect men upon earth, and magnified their chieftain, the Lord Scales, ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... yet I was obliged to venture forth; for being supposed to dine out, I could not of course remain at home. Where to go I knew not: I was like my first father—"the world was all before me." I flung my coat round me, and hurried forth with the feelings of a bandit longing for a stiletto. At the foot of the stairs, I staggered against two or three smiling rascals, priding themselves upon their punctuality. They had just arrived—to make the tour of Turkey. How I hated them!—As I rushed by the parlor, a single glance disclosed to me a blazing fire, with Lucy and several ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... devoured them, their bones are yet about three feet under the floor of that iron foundry. Under the lee of the Northernmost promontory, near a rock marked with peculiar crosses made by the point of the stiletto which I constantly carried in my red silk sash, I buried tons of plate, and doubloons, pieces of eight, pistoles, Louis d'ors, and galleons by the chest. At that time galleons somehow meant to me money pieces in use, though since then the name has been given to a species of boat. The rich ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock
... peaceful walks of literature we are startled at discovering genius with the mind, and, if we conceive the instrument it guides to be a stiletto, with the hand of an assassin—irascible, vindictive, armed with indiscriminate satire, never pardoning the merit of rival genius, but fastening on it throughout life, till, in the moral retribution of human nature, these very passions, by their ungratified cravings, have tended to annihilate ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... various adventures, the band got diminished in numbers, they stuck no handbills on the walls to invite people to elect new brigands to fill up the vacant places; they simply chose among the vagabonds and such like individuals those, who seemed to them, the most capable of dealing a blow with a stiletto or stripping a traveller of his valuables, and the band, thus properly reinforced, went about its usual occupations. The devil! Messieurs, one must say what is what, and call things by their names. Let us call a cat a cat, and ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... ocean instructed a crocodile to carry Hohodemi to his home. This was accomplished, and in token of his safe arrival, Hohodemi placed his stiletto on the crocodile's neck for conveyance ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... almost nothing to what it was. The Roman, no longer pent in ignorance and crouching beneath espionage, no longer stabs in the dark. His energies have true vent; his better feelings are roused; he has thrown aside the stiletto. The power here is indeed miraculous, since no doubt still lurk within the walls many who are eager to incite brawls, if only to ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... Oriental workmanship that any museum might have valued; the haft was of silver, exquisitely chased, the blade was straight and slender, narrowing to a needlelike point, so that it belonged rather to the stiletto type than the dagger. An inscription ran lengthwise down the steel, which was of a distinct bluish tinge where it was not darkly stained. About an inch from the tip a tiny triangular nick had been made in one of the sharp ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... a fisherman of the Lagunes of sufficient importance to be struck by a stiletto? Do thy work, then!" he added, glancing at his brown and naked bosom; "there is ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... of the prickly pear, suggested themselves as fit for the purpose. I gathered a stock of them, laid them to dry in the sun, pulled apart the reticulated layers, and of these had soon begun to fashion two loose garments, one to hang from her waist, the other from her shoulders. With the stiletto-point of an aloe-leaf and various filaments, I sewed together three ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... stiletto?" Kerry's fierce eyes challenged him. "Did you ever see a wound made by ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... as I am concerned, take him, comrade, and free of cost. Only I warn you, watch him well or you will find a stiletto in your back.' ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... had made up his mind, that, come what might, enemy or no enemy, live or die, he would solve the mystery of Elsie Venner, sooner or later. He was not a man to be frightened out of his resolution by a scowl, or a stiletto, or any unknown means of mischief, of which a whole armory was hinted at in that passing look Dick Venner had given him. Indeed, like most adventurous young persons, he found a kind of charm in feeling that there might be ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... herself ill at ease with certain types of women; even in her own house she was often aware of being furtively watched by hostile eyes; or she found herself suddenly the goal of some sharp little pleasantry that pricked like a stiletto. She supposed that she was often forgetful and indiscreet. Perhaps the large court she held so easily on these occasions beneath the trees or in the great drawing-rooms of the old house had more to do with the matter. If so, she never guessed the riddle. ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... knife-shops in the Boulevard du Palais, where every description of stiletto may be purchased, where, indeed, the enterprising may buy a knife which will not only go shrewdly into a foe, but come right out on the other side—in front, that is to say, for no true Corsican is so foolish ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... and turned its face, and put it in the best light the room afforded, and coiled himself again on his chest, with his eye, and stiletto, glittering. ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... otherwise than as an ordinary mortal with ordinary knowledge. The pretender is on the offensive, challenging attention: the dissembler is on his defence against notice. "Simulation," says Bolingbroke, "is a stiletto, not only an offensive but an unlawful weapon, and the use of it may be rarely, very rarely, excused, but never justified. Dissimulation is a shield, as secrecy is armour: and it is no more possible to preserve secrecy in the ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... dignity that I had seen in life was there—calm, composed, serene. The inanimate clay was clothed in the simple black of a citizen of the Republic; the only mark of office being the red silken sash that covered the spot in the breast where the stiletto-stroke of hate had ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... irony. When the melamed spoke of the fish Leviathan, so large that the whole world stood on it, and which, in the day of the Messiah, the scholars would eat from the head and the ignorant from the tail, a smile appeared on Meir's thin lips. It was a smile similar to the stiletto. It pierced the one on whose lips it appeared, and it seemed as though it would like to pierce the one who caused it. Ber answered this smile by a sigh. But the four young men who sat opposite Meir noticed it, and on their faces Meir's smile was reflected. ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... the hired men hastily clicked something under the table, while Helen turned pale, but quickly drew a small stiletto from a fold ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... declaring firmly that she would not divulge anything, a struggle took place for a paper which she picked off a table; and before her attendants could come to her assistance she received a severe cut from a stiletto. The assassin was seized, condemned, and ordered for execution, without the last offices ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... implored pity, he openly spoke of suicide, and he hinted at murder. But Maggie passed him, pushing him out of the way with the watering-pot, threatening to water him too, until one day he drew a revolver. She screamed, and the revolver was put away, but on the next occasion a stiletto that he had brought from Italy was produced, and with a great deal of earnestness life was declared to be a miserable thing. It was absurd, no doubt, but at the same time it was not a little pathetic; he was so good-looking, and so sincere. Maggie put down the watering-pot, ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... Hayden knew a pang of jealousy, like a stab of a stiletto. What "he" was of such interest to Marcia that he should send her telegrams announcing his return home, or his failure to come? And why should this person, whoever he might be, also telegraph Ydo? His thoughts reverted ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow |
