"Cheat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... over, and after that I thought a deal of yer. I thought that if you was King of England, I'd have 'listed and gone for a soldier. I don't think much of queens myself, but I'd have fought for you, and welcome. And I thought as I wouldn't have had you see me cheat Jim of his coppers. I dunno why;" and a look of real perplexity came into Wikkey's face as the problem ...
— Wikkey - A Scrap • YAM
... Mediums cheat certainly. So do people who are not mediums. I congratulate you on liking anybody better. That's pleasant for you at any rate. My changes are always the other way. I begin by seeing the beautiful in most people, and then comes ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... great hopelessness. She was too expensive—that was the irremediable difficulty. Suddenly he hated her. He wanted to throw her down and kick at her—to tell her she was a cheat and a leech—that she was dirty. Moreover, she must give ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... ground under the oak, where they found nothing to reward them but a great quantity of slates, marked with hieroglyphics. It was now Prelati's turn to be angry; and he loudly swore that the devil was nothing but a liar and a cheat. The marshal joined cordially in the opinion, but was easily persuaded by the cunning Italian to make one more trial. He promised at the same time that he would endeavour on the following night to discover the reason why the devil had broken his word. He went out alone ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... Ferguson would cheat me out of my fair share?" thought Tom, but he only harbored the suspicion for an instant. He had seen too much of his friend to believe such a thing, and he quietly waited for ...
— The Young Miner - or Tom Nelson in California • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... over-estimate the value of her work, for the result of it would be nothing less than a revolution in our judgments upon some of the principal characters of the eighteenth century. To make it certain that Diderot was a cad and a cheat, that d'Alembert was a dupe, and Hume a liar—that, surely, were no small achievement. And, even if these conclusions do not follow from Mrs. Macdonald's data, her work will still be valuable, owing to the data themselves. Her discoveries are important, ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... fighters, as he drew his black bean, said, in a joyous tone, 'Well, they don't make much out of me anyhow: I know I've killed twenty-five of them.' Then demanding his dinner in a firm voice, he added, 'They shall not cheat me out of it!' Saying this, he ate heartily, smoked a cigar, and in twenty minutes after had ceased to live! The Mexicans fired fifteen shots at Whaling before he expired! Young Torrey, quite a youth but in spirit a giant, said that he 'was perfectly willing to meet his fate— for the glory of ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... Chaffinch, 'Sweet, sweet, sweet! Pretty lovey, come and meet me here!' 'Chaffinch,' quoth I, 'be dumb awhile, in fear Thy darling prove no better than a cheat, And never come, or fly when wintry days appear.' Yet from a twig, With voice so big, The little ...
— Sixteen Poems • William Allingham
... says the Doctor, looking very stern, "to let this boy impose on you as a lord; and knave enough to charge him double the value of the article you sold him. Take back the boots, sir! I won't pay a penny of your bill; nor can you get a penny. As for you, sir, you miserable swindler and cheat, I shall not flog you as I did before, but I shall send you home: you are not fit to be the ...
— The Fatal Boots • William Makepeace Thackeray
... whole expense had been. And what do you think could have been his conduct in matters of which no one had any knowledge but himself, and which he managed alone, when in transactions which were carried on through others, and were not difficult to find out, he had the hardihood to cheat his daughter's children out of twenty-four minae. Now bring ...
— The Orations of Lysias • Lysias
... coachman; necessitated to lodge or bait at the worst inn on the road, where there is no accommodation fit for gentlemen; and this merely because the owners of the inns and the coachmen are agreed together to cheat the guests?" Hence the writer loudly called for the immediate suppression of stagecoaches as a ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... voices till there seemed no limits to their united power, was almost magical. But beyond this, in the words of an able weekly journalist, "no means of forming any opinions were before us—the whole affair might be a cheat and a delusion—we had no test by which to try it. We have hitherto," continues the writer, "spoken of these exhibitions at Exeter Hall as realities, as being what they were affirmed to be. This is no longer possible. If Mr Hullah ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... You're a gentleman," said Sam. "You wouldn't cheat a poor boy that hasn't had any ...
— The Young Outlaw - or, Adrift in the Streets • Horatio Alger
... may be counterfeited or stolen, but that which they represent, namely, knowledge and virtue, cannot be counterfeited or stolen. These ends of labor cannot be answered but by real exertions of the mind, and in obedience to pure motives. The cheat, the defaulter, the gambler, cannot extort the knowledge of material and moral nature which his honest care and pains yield to the operative. The law of nature is, Do the thing, and you shall have the Power; but they who do not the ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... fireside talks best," replied Edna willfully; "and I am not inclined to sleep yet. I do hate the night!" with sudden petulance. "It is so stupid to lie awake and watch the fire go out, and count sheep jumping through a gap in the hedge; anything to cheat one's self into oblivion. Do you ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... and who would sooner put a bullet through their head than return to the filth and degradation of such a life. Ah, it is the hardness of the laws which drives men to be freebooters on the road! The rich may fatten and batten, rob, cheat, bleed their fellows to death; but let one of us lesser men dare to lay hands upon their fat purses, full of other men's gold, and we are branded as felons, and pay the ransom with our lives! That is not justice. That is not to be borne patiently. I tell you, Tom, that I have ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... scorner! Smooth Jacob still robs homely Esau: Now up, now down, the world's one see-saw. —So, I shall find out some snug corner Under a hedge, like Orson the wood-knight, 910 Turn myself round and bid the world good night; And sleep a sound sleep till the trumpet blowing Wakes me (unless priests cheat us laymen) To a world where will be no further throwing Pearls before swine ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... capable man moreover, and a man who conducts his business honorably, set examples of dishonesty to the canton? If you allow such proceedings as this to be taken against you, how can you expect that the poor will remain honest people and will not rob you? Your laborers will cheat you out of part of their working hours, and every one here will be demoralized. You are in the wrong. Your barley was as good as delivered. If the man from Saint-Laurent had fetched it himself, you would not have gone there to ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... not named, and here the town of Russell is now established, said to possess one of the finest harbours in the world, into which vessels of any draught can enter in all weathers and at any state of the tide. The natives were found difficult to deal with, and "would cheat whenever they had an opportunity." The ship left its anchorage, but was after a time driven back again, and Cook, with a party, took the opportunity to land. They were followed up by the Maoris, and were soon surrounded by about two hundred of them, some of whom tried to seize ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... house—leave my park!" he cried in a shrill falsetto, "or I'll send for the constable to turn you off. Bah! You came to steal. You're no nephew of mine; I disown you! You're a common cheat—a ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... wrangle has not been determined, and critics still disagree. However, what Miranda says is, "you might cheat me for a score of kingdoms and yet I would call ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... so unique about Christ. Of course just as there are false dawns before the dawn itself, and winter days so full of sudden sunlight that they will cheat the wise crocus into squandering its gold before its time, and make some foolish bird call to its mate to build on barren boughs, so there were Christians before Christ. For that we should be grateful. The unfortunate ...
— De Profundis • Oscar Wilde
... artist, however, on the day appointed, drove a cook across before he suffered any one to pass over it. His majesty stationed himself under the middle arch of the bridge, awaiting his prey; but enraged at the cheat, he tore the unfortunate fowl in pieces and broke two holes in the arch, saying they should never be built up again. The golden cock was erected on the bridge as a token of the event, but the devil has perhaps lost some of his power in these latter days, for the ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... anything but agreeable. Nor did they escape the gnawings of hunger, traveling day and night. And whilst these "articles" were in the very act of running away with themselves and their kind master's best horses and carriage—when about one hundred miles from home, in the neighborhood of Cheat river, Maryland, they were attacked by "six white men, and a boy," who, doubtless, supposing that their intentions were of a "wicked and unlawful character" felt it to be their duty in kindness to their masters, if not to the ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... d—d ruse!' he shouted, brandishing his pistol like a madman. 'It is a cheat and a fraud! By God! you have no commission! I see through it! I see through it all! You have come here, and you have hocussed us! You are of their side, and this is your last shift ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... barater, to barter or cheat), in English criminal law, the offence (more usually called common barratry) of constantly inciting and stirring up quarrels in disturbance of the peace, either in courts or elsewhere. It is an offence both at common ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... infatuation, it is probable that their number would exceed the enormous havoc made by gunpowder or the sword." Another reputable writer makes the following terse remark on this subject: "As matters stand at present," says he, "it is easier to cheat a man out of his life, than of a shilling: and almost impossible either to detect or punish the offender. Notwithstanding this, people still shut their eyes, and take every thing upon trust, that is administered by any pretender to medicine, without daring to ask ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... freezing. I was never so miserable in my life. I move around here like a piece of meat. Finally someone comes over: An extremely well-dressed man— But in this life one can't tell much By appearances. He's also quite older. (they have more money, Young ones tend to cheat you.) We are face-to-face. I raise my clothes above the knee. I can get away with that. That's the big draw.. Like flies to the light The guys are drawn to us goats... The John is certainly standing over ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... be well enough to walk by its side; for, since we left Beszeyra he had been constantly complaining of rheumatic pains in his legs. I saw that all this was done to gain time, and to put me out of patience, in order to cheat me of the wages he had already received; but, as we were to proceed on the following day to another encampment at a few hours distance, I did not choose to say any thing more to him on the subject in a place where I had nobody but women ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... cheap novelettes, in the police reports, in the Sunday papers; he had heard a street preacher declaim against it, and warn young women of the serpent-like wiles of tempters of the Stratton variety. But even now Jack failed to recognize Stratton as a serpent, or indeed anything but a blundering cheat and clown, who had left his dirty 'prentice work on his (Jack's) hands. But the girl was helpless and, it seemed, homeless, all through a certain desperation of feeling which, in spite of her tears, ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... was given in favour of the plaintiff, whom the better portion of the community thought had wilfully conspired to cheat ...
— Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom • William and Ellen Craft
... "Time to cheat me out of a little more houseroom. If I was agoing to live on charity, Mr. Ringgan, I'd come out and say so, and not put my hand in a man's pocket this way. You'll quit the house by the day after to-morrow, or if you don't ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... words, in the handwriting of Rale, meant as a fling at the English invaders: "It [the church] is ill built, because the English don't work well. It is not finished, although five or six Englishmen have wrought here during four years, and the Undertaker [contractor], who is a great Cheat, hath been paid in advance for to finish it." The money ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... I love To see the fair one bind the straggling pink, Cheer the sweet rose, the lupin, and the stock, And lend a staff to the still gadding pea. Ye fair, it well becomes you. Better thus Cheat time away, than at the crowded rout, Rustling in silk, in a small room, close-pent, And heated e'en to fusion; made to breathe A rank contagious air, and fret at whist, Or sit aside to sneer and ...
— The Botanical Magazine Vol. 8 - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... carried out except by the cooeperation of the whole community. For it is not enough to say that a woman ought to rest during pregnancy; it is the business of the community to ensure that that rest is duly secured. The woman herself, and her employer, we may be certain, will do their best to cheat the community, but it is the community which suffers, both economically and morally, when a woman casts her inferior children into the world, and in its own interests the community is forced to control both employer and employed. We can no ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... sunny Italy, the preponderance was clearly the other way. And, though very palpably a stranger, and specially exposed by my ignorance of the languages spoken here to imposition, no one has attempted to cheat me from the moment of my entering the Republic till this, while in Italy every day and almost every hour was marked by its peculiar extortions. Every where I have found kindness and truth written on the faces and evinced in the acts of this people, ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... breath sharply, stared at the money for a moment in dumb amazement, then let it fly with all her might straight at Mr. Hartman's head, screaming in a frenzy of anger and disappointment, "You numscullion of a cheat! Do you s'pose you will ever get to heaven? There are your old berries! You can hire your chickens to pick them up! I'll never work for you again!" One shove of the crates, and the beautiful, tempting fruit lay in a scattered heap inside the chicken yard! And Peace, ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... Brumpton, and that he was married to her half a year before she was married to my Lord Brumpton; but as my lord happened to fall in love with her, they agreed to keep their marriage concealed, in order that she should marry my lord, and cheat him in the manner she had done; and the reason that Cabinet came to confess all this was, that he looked into a closet and saw my lord writing, after he thought he was dead, and, taking it for his ghost, was by that means frightened ...
— The Governess - The Little Female Academy • Sarah Fielding
... to make money by fraudulent representations, and had actually dealt with two or three sums in a way which had made him rather uncomfortable. He had unfortunately made light of it and pooh-poohed the ailment, until circumstances eventually presented themselves which enabled him to cheat upon a very considerable scale;—he told me what they were, and they were about as bad as anything could be, but I need not detail them;—he seized the opportunity, and became aware, when it was too late, that he must ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... slowly staggers the hunter. Two bucks' thighs on his shoulders. Twenty deers' tongues in his belt. "Go, gather wood, kindle a fire, old woman!" Off flew the crow—liar, cheat and deceiver. Wake, oh sleeper, awake! ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... As a Sportsman (and war is fundamentally the sport of hunting and fighting the most dangerous of the beasts of prey) he feels free. He will tell you himself that the true sportsman is never a snob, a coward, a duffer, a cheat, a thief, or a liar. Curious, is it not, that he has not the same confidence in other ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... turning to go, "I ain't goin' to stand it, if I can help it. I've been doin' some thinkin' on my own account and there's two ways of gettin' even. That Caleb critter is marryin' into our family 'cause he knows I'm well off. I'll cheat him, by godfreys! I'll will every cent of my fifteen hundred dollars to the poor or the heathen or ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... had his discretion she had her perfect manner, which was her decorum. Mrs. Stringham, he had, to finish with the question of his delay, furthermore observed, Mrs. Stringham would have written to Mrs. Lowder of his having quitted the place; so that it wasn't as if he were hoping to cheat them. They'd know he ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... came to meet me In rain and thunder, With guile to cheat me,— My heart to plunder. Was't mine he captured? Or his I raptured? Half-way both met, in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... ready to hang my self with the Thoughts that I have danced my self out of Favour with her Father. I hope you will pardon the Trouble I give; but shall take it for a mighty Favour, if you will give me a little more of your Advice to put me in a write Way to cheat the old Dragon and obtain my Mistress. ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... broke sooner than, upon a fair triall, five threads of that against four of Riga yarne; and also that some of it had old stuffe that had been tarred, covered over with new hempe, which is such a cheat as hath not ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... plundering each other. The restraints then necessary, are restraints from plunder, from acts of publick violence, and undisguised oppression. The ferocity of our ancestors, as of all other nations, produced not fraud, but rapine. They had not yet learned to cheat, and attempted only to rob. As manners grow more polished, with the knowledge of good, men attain likewise dexterity in evil. Open rapine becomes less frequent, and violence gives way to cunning. Those who before ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... Cheat-the-Woodie, as we ca' him, that's Charlie Foster of Tinning Beck, has promised to keep her in Cumberland till the blast blaw by. She saw me, and kend me in the splore, for the mask fell frae my face for a blink. I am thinking it wad concern my safety if she were to come back here, for ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... miss our nature's goal, Why strive to cheat our destinies? Was not my love made for thy soul? Thy beauty for mine eyes? No longer sleep, Oh, listen now! I wait and weep, But where ...
— Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan • Toru Dutt
... discovered, and so Eric be got once more into a scrape. He was in an agony of apprehension, and when put on, was totally unable to say a word of his Repetition. But far as he had yielded, he would not cheat like the rest; in this respect, at any rate, he would not give up his claim to chivalrous and stainless honour; he kept his eyes resolutely turned away from the guilty paper, and even refused to repeat the words which were prompted ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... find persons willing to buy slaves from Mississippi or Alabama on account of the fears entertained that such property may be already mortgaged to the banks of the above named states. Our moneyed men and speculators are now wide awake. It will take a pretty cunning child to cheat them."[37] ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... leader of the Amandabele, one of the royal blood, lie like a Mashona or a Makalanga slave? Does he do worse—tell half the truth only, like a cheat who buys and keeps back half the price?" she asked contemptuously. "Maduna, you promised me not one life, but two, two lives and the goods that belong to both. Ask of your brother there, who was witness of ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... in the denunciation of lying, but in giving the child opportunity to experience realities that cannot be treated untruthfully. To this end various kinds of hand work and scientific study have been useful. It is impossible for the child to cheat the tools of the workshop or his instruments of precision; it is impossible to make a spool of thread do the work of two or three; or one cannot make the paint go farther by applying the brush faster. It is concrete reality that can teach the imaginative ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... said. "Watch Dal, Max; he will cheat in the score if he can. Kit, don't have another clam while I am in this house. I have eaten so many lately my waist rises ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... reflecting her changing emotions, perplexity, surprise, finally indignation. "'A matter for the police,'" she quoted, scornfully, handing her father the letter. "'A matter for the police' indeed! My but that Mr. Rae is the clever man! The police! Does he think my brother Allan would cheat?—or steal, perhaps!" she panted, in ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... should be destined to transmit to future ages the example of such puerilities seriously and gravely practiced? To be the dupe of another, is bad enough; but to employ all the forms and ceremonies of legislation in order to cheat one's self,—to doubly cheat one's self, and that too in a mere mathematical account,—truly this is calculated to lower a little the ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... able to tell him all about it, he will understand. At present I feel shamed and degraded. I feel myself a cheat! I, whom he believes a good and virtuous wife, have actually been kissed by a man who thought I was the sort to permit an intrigue! Don't you see, that if I behaved as though nothing wrong had happened, I would be putting myself ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... and at once—as he might have known—was hungry again. Until dark he struggled along, drinking water continually, chewing chips of wood, toothpicks, bits of straw, anything so that the action of his jaws might cheat the demands of his stomach. Toward half-past seven in the evening he returned to his room in the Reno House. If he could get to sleep that would be best of all. On the stairs of the hotel, while going up to his room, the strong smell of cooking onions came suddenly to his nostrils. It was delicious. ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... board, and said that they had heard of us. To two of them, who appeared to be chiefs, I gave presents; but when these were gone out of the ship, the others became exceedingly troublesome. Some of those in the canoes began to trade, and, according to their custom, to cheat, by refusing to deliver what had been bought, after they had received the price: Among these was one who had received an old pair of black breeches, which, upon a few small shot being fired at him, he threw into the sea. All the boats soon after paddled off to some distance, and when they ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... small sum they thought too little reward for so much labour and such huge and manifest dangers as they had so often exposed their lives unto. But Captain Morgan was deaf to all these and many other complaints of this kind, having designed in his mind to cheat them of ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... that it is no respecter of persons: it will cheat friends as well as foes; and, were it possible, ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... "She's a cheat, that Madame Lebeau. I shall make Benoite write her a French letter, and tell ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... the Chinese, Sir John Bowring (late Governor of Hong-Kong) affirms that the Chinese respect their writings and traditions, whilst they do not believe a lie to be a fault, and in some of their classical works it is especially recommended, in order to cheat and confuse foreign intruders (vide "A Visit to the Philippine Islands," by Sir John Bowring, LL.D., F.R.S. Manila, 1876 Spanish edition, ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... truly expressive, and a high tragical strut, are all that can be imparted. The truth of the old Roman teachers of rhetoric is here witnessed afresh, to be a good orator it is first of all necessary to be a good man. Good style is the greatest of revealers,—it lays bare the soul. The soul of the cheat shuns nothing so much. "Always be ready to speak your minds" said Blake, "and a base man will avoid you." But to insist that he also shall speak his mind is to go a step further, it is to take from the impostor his wooden leg, ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... do that, either. I've lived a queer life; I've seen women like Laure—in fact, I was raised among them—and nothing they do surprises me very much. But I've learned a good many lessons around saloons and gambling-places. One is this: never cheat. Father taught me that. He gave everybody a square deal, including himself. It's a good thing to think about— a square deal all ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... revolution, and that right gave to the world this splendid Government. This was the first precedent; it will stand for all time. It will always be acted upon when the people have lost confidence in the Government. I hate that word secession, because it is a cheat! Call things by their right names! The Southern States have framed another Government; they have originated a revolution. There is no warrant for it in the Constitution, but it is like the right of ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... American, and seated herself at the table, beginning a brisk shuffle of a dim, dog-eared pack. "You sit there!" She nodded to the opposite side of the table. "Very well, move the lamp then." Genesmere had moved it because it hid her face from him. "He thinks I cheat! Now, Senor Don Ruz, it shall be for the guitar. ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... held I might have known that that broken muttering over the fire was the swan-song of Charlie Mears. But I thought it the prelude to fuller revelation. At last and at last I should cheat the Lords ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... that will better my condition will not stand long waiting my acceptance, as you shall have reason to know, sir, when you make me the offer. Mind ye, I have followed the wretched life of a critic so long that I am compelled to cheat my tailor, and depend on a friend to invite me to dinner. As to my accomplishments, you will find them out by inquiring at the Press Club, which is composed of as nice gentlemen as any lady of taste could wish; and I swear, sir, they have so much learning that they have killed several magazines ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... salve for every sore, cheat you to your face, and insult you into the bargain; nor can you help yourself without exposing yourself, or putting yourself ...
— Everybody's Business is Nobody's Business • Daniel Defoe
... fortune, at Bobbio, being nightly provoked by the insolence of a priest, retorted with great severity; and among other things, said, that the pope was Antichrist, mass idolatry, purgatory a farce, and absolution a cheat. To be revenged, the priest hired five desperate ruffians, who, the same evening, broke into the gentleman's house, and seized upon him in a violent manner. The gentleman was terribly frightened, fell on his knees, and implored mercy; but the desperate ruffians ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... I consider life, 't is all a cheat, Yet fooled by hope, men favour the deceit; Trust on and think, to-morrow will repay; To-morrow's falser than the former day; Lies more; and whilst it says we shall be blest With some new joy, cuts off what we possessed; ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... the greenhorn's part To cheat the inexperienced fair, Sometimes by pleasing flattery's art, Sometimes by ready-made despair; The feeble moment would espy Of tender years the modesty Conquer by passion and address, Await the long-delayed caress. Avowal then 'twas time to ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... our "Lowell Drillings" stand preeminent over the world, we should so far neglect the Brazilian, La Platan, New-Granadian, Venezuelan, and East-Indian trade, that Manchester shall continue, as she now does, to manufacture an inferior fabric, post it off by her steamers, forestall the market, and cheat us out of our profits; and that, by means of the reputation which our skill has produced. And a few more crises like the one through which we have just begun to pass, will open our eyes to the necessity ...
— Ocean Steam Navigation and the Ocean Post • Thomas Rainey
... as her maid. "Oh! I shall find one at Florence if I get there—or a nurse. But just for these few days I wanted to be free! In the winter there were so many people about—so many eyes! I just pined to cheat them—get quit of them. A maid would have bothered me to stay in bed and see doctors—and you know, William, with this illness of ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... very extravagant; and rich men love gain as well as poor men do! He had no excuse but the grand excuse of all vice—SELFISHNESS. Young as he was he became the fashion, and he fattened upon the plunder of his equals, who desired the honour of his acquaintance. Now, I had seen my uncle cheat, but I had never imitated his example; when the man of fashion cheated, and made a jest of his earnings and my scruples—when I saw him courted, flattered, honoured, and his acts unsuspected, because his connections embraced ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a business deal with Harmon Andrews," said Anne. "I've heard him say that's the only time a man needs to be particular about his appearance, because if he looks prosperous the party of the second part won't be so likely to try to cheat him. I really feel sorry for Mr. Harrison; I don't believe he feels satisfied with his life. It must be very lonely to have no one to care about except a parrot, don't you think? But I notice Mr. Harrison doesn't like to be ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... it is, stands in the way again, we will protect every voter in his right to vote wherever the constitution gives the right to vote. Local elections must be regulated by state laws. Southern voters may cheat each other as they please in local elections. The Republican party never trenched on the rights of states, and does not ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... and perish in it; as indeed they did, for every one who trusted to his word was put to death. Moreover, Androkleides relates a story which shows Lysander's extreme laxity with regard to oaths. He is said to have remarked, that "We cheat boys with dice, and men with oaths!" In this he imitated Polykrates, the despot of Samos—an unworthy model for a Spartan general. Nor was it like a Spartan to treat the gods as badly as he treated his enemies, or even ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... child in your bosom.' Ahmi, Ahmi, sleep, little one, wake not. Over the mountains slowly staggers the hunter. Two bucks' thighs on his shoulders with bladders of fat between them. Twenty deers' tongues in his belt. Go, gather wood, old woman! Off flew the crow, liar, cheat, and deceiver! Wake, little sleeper, and call to your father. He brings you back fat, marrow and venison fresh from the mountain. Tired and worn, he has carved a toy of the deer's horn, While he was sitting ...
— Kalitan, Our Little Alaskan Cousin • Mary F. Nixon-Roulet
... that was holy that I didn't know what they were talking about. Then Yaunie and Patrovish asked them in Russian to have some refreshment aboard my ship, and they kicked up a devil of a row when they found you had gone without saying good-bye. Yaunie swore it was to cheat the pilotage, and Patrovish said he couldn't have believed it of you. I said you always were a bowdikite, and that you were putting on 'side.' The Russians were very jolly. They had a thimbleful or two of whisky, ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... moment a hazy view of being ordained. Noll's radiant apparel, laughing eyes, and merry face, made the bewildered prelate diffident. Contarine procured his nephew a tutorship, which was held for twelve months, until one night, playing cards, Noll called his employer a scoundrel and a cheat. With thirty pounds in his leaking pockets, later he set out from home for Cork, and thence, according to his magnificent plans, for America. He was not destined to become an Empire-builder in the Colonies. Six weeks saw him home again as happy ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • E. S. Lang Buckland
... the four rogation seasons, and the vigils of festivals; so Granville was not at first aware of the regular recurrence of these Lenten meals, which his wife took care should be made dainty by the addition of teal, moor-hen, and fish-pies, that their amphibious meat or high seasoning might cheat his palate. Thus the young man unconsciously lived in strict orthodoxy, and worked out his ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac
... your own quick movements up the road there came that steadily mounting thrill which is not excitement, or anything in the least like excitement, because of its extreme quietness. This thrill is apt to cheat you by stopping short of the ecstasy it seems to promise. But this time it didn't stop short; it became more and more steady and more and more quiet in the swing of its vibration; it became ecstasy; it became ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... basest forms of fraud, such as robbing the poor by the light-weight and short-weight trick, [Footnote: These forms of cheating exist at present to a greater extent than ever before. It is estimated that manufacturers and shopkeepers cheat the people of the United States out of $200,000,000 a year by the light-weight and short-weight frauds. In 1907 the New York State Sealer of Weights and Measures asserted that, in that State alone, $20,000,000 was robbed from the consumers ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... imbecility be pleasing to him? If there were such a thing as faith, proceeding from grace, it would be the privilege of seeing things otherwise than as God has made them; and if that were so, it follows, that the whole creation would be a mere cheat. No man can believe the Bible to be the production of God without doing violence to every consistent notion that he is able to form of Deity! No man can believe that one God is three Gods, and that those three Gods are one God, without renouncing all pretension ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... afterwards a four-fold price?—what is the half-naked soldier who takes your garment away with his sword, to the lawyer, who takes your whole estate from you with a goose's quill, without any claim or bond upon it?—and what is the pickpocket who takes five pounds, to the cogger of dice who will cheat you of a hundred in the third part of a night?—and what is the jockey who tricks you in some old unsound horse, to the apothecary who chouses you of your money, and your life also with some old unwholesome physic?—and ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... minarets gleaming in the sunshine. "Ah!" he thought, "that is the place for me. I will go down there, and see if I can find a nice house to live in, and some people to make friends with, who will not try to kill me or to cheat me, but love me and be grateful to me for any kindness ...
— Hindu Tales from the Sanskrit • S. M. Mitra and Nancy Bell
... the inhabitants of the western coast, isolated, as it were, regard those of the east almost as strangers. Each town in that quarter seems to be a great family, suspicious of every other, allowing none to cheat them but themselves; and, right or wrong, they support one another in the face ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... to the English for 10,000 francs; and Jeanne was accordingly taken to Arras, and thence to Cotoy, where she was delivered to the English by Philip's officers. So far, all is clear; but here it may be asked, WAS she really delivered to the English, or did Philip, pocketing his 10,000 francs, cheat and defraud his allies with a counterfeit Jeanne? Such crooked dealing would have been in perfect keeping with his character. Though a far more agreeable and gentlemanly person, he was almost as consummate and artistic a rascal ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... eyes: Each vacant space shall then, enrich'd, dispense True force of eloquence and nervous sense; Inform the judgment, animate the heart, And sacred rules of policy impart. The spangled cov'ring, bright with splendid ore, Shall cheat the sight with empty show no more; But lead us inward to those golden mines, Where all thy soul in native lustre shines. So when the eye surveys some lovely fair, With bloom of beauty, graced with shape and air, How is the rapture heightened when we find ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... reflections we could discover no other resource than in flight. To effect this it would be requisite to cheat the vigilance of Manon's guardian, who required management, although he was but a servant. We determined, therefore, that, during the night, I should procure a post-chaise, and return with it at break of day to the inn, before he was awake; that we should steal away quietly, and go straight ...
— Manon Lescaut • Abbe Prevost
... considered to have won the game. It was really a much more difficult business than it sounds, for some of the passengers were "butter-fingers" and would fail to catch the bags, and much valuable time was wasted in picking them up, while others were apt to cheat, and in order to get on quicker would throw to No. 9 instead of to No. 8, an error which the umpire's sharp eyes would immediately detect, and he would cause the bag to go ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... one eye," said Esau. "Strikes me that he's pretending to be so innocent, and all the while he's just the sort of fellow to try and cheat you." ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... banished him, or condemned him to death.' As if the statesman should not have taught the city better! He surely cannot blame the state for having unjustly used him, any more than the sophist or teacher can find fault with his pupils if they cheat him. And the sophist and orator are in the same case; although you admire rhetoric and despise sophistic, whereas sophistic is really the higher of the two. The teacher of the arts takes money, but the teacher of virtue or politics takes no money, because this is ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... strength of God, and true. How beautiful to see Once more a shepherd of mankind indeed, Who loved his charge, but never loved to lead; One whose meek flock the people joyed to be, Not lured by any Cheat of birth, But by his clear-grained human worth, And brave old wisdom ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... That wherever he goes, he fills the whole room. Exclude him we will, with the old Dromedary,[23] The Elephant[24] cunning, and Fox[25] too, so wary, That though I don't know it for certain, I'm told They cheat at Ecarte, like Hermes ...
— The Emperor's Rout • Unknown
... like an old man's voice!" whispered a superstitious fellow, who feared some bad spirit hid in the small child to cheat them by and by. ...
— Old Indian Legends • Zitkala-Sa
... me? I'll let them hear me. I want them to hear me. I've nothing to hide, and I'll not shelter any scoundrel who will rob and cheat a lonely widow. Maybe others will not stand by and see an unfortunate poor weak woman ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... and unchristian hostility. He was in advance of his time; perhaps, if he were living now, he would still be so; for the spirituality of his nature cannot yet be understood. There were not wanting those who decried him as a pretender, a hypocrite, and a cheat. Those who knew him best depose to the honesty of his heart, the depth of his convictions, the fervor of his faith; and many yet live who will indorse this eloquent tribute of his biographer:—"To him, mean thoughts and unbelieving hearts were the only things miraculous and out of Nature"; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... scheming, and trickery—he couldn't see any further through a millstone than another. So he burst out in his frank warrior fashion, and swore that the King of England was being treacherously used, and that Joan of Arc was going to be allowed to cheat the stake. But they whispered ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... there are who deem themselves most free, When they within this gross and visible sphere Chain down the winged thought, scoffing ascent, Proud in their meanness: and themselves they cheat With noisy emptiness of learned phrase, Their subtle fluids, impacts, essences, Self-working tools, uncaused effects, and all Those blind Omniscients, those Almighty slaves, ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... dear, how dreadful! Men will drink and cheat and swear, but a cruel man seems so unnatural, ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... wire-pullers of the Tariff Reform League are accustomed to exhibit on provincial platforms. But I hope you will not let these pretexts or complaints move you or prevent you from calling a spade a spade, a tax a tax, a protective tariff a gigantic dodge to cheat the poor, or the Liberal Unionist party the most ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... wrongs, and her disregard of the expedient when principles were concerned,—much as young people think of the immaculate qualities of their own parents. According to the decisions of judges of this latter class, there would not be a liar, a swindler, a cheat, or a mercenary scoundrel living; but the earth would be filled with so many suffering saints that are persecuted for their virtues. According to the notions of most American citizens of my age, the very name they bore ought to be a protection to them in ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... behind them," Yaspard said quickly. "Men who cheat in trade, who scamp work, evade taxes, rack-rent the poor, are no better ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... interests. It is a system that would soon become impossible without trustfulness and honesty. On both sides there must be fair dealing. The colon must feel that the landlord will help him in time of trial and need, and the landlord must feel that the colon is not trying to cheat him. In the great majority of cases, the man who does the ploughing, the sowing and the harvesting quite realizes that honesty with him is the best policy, and the owner of the soil knows that it is to ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... universally true, that there must be no surprises for the audience, except, it may be, in farcical plays that do not pretend to represent life truly and in matters of detail. No doubt, unconscientious readers often commit an act of treason to the author, and cheat him by beginning at the end. One may urge that no one expects a play to do full justice to the novel, and that it is permissible to leave out much. The important fact, however, is that the much necessarily left out in the case of good novels as a rule is exactly that ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... crucified on tree. I love all who love truth, if poor or rich In what they have won of truth possessively. No altars and no hands defiled with pitch Shall scare me off, but I will pray and eat With all these—taking leave to choose my ewers— And say at last "Your visible churches cheat Their inward types; and, if a church assures Of standing without failure and defeat, The ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... all true. In the first excitement of the new life he had bored her. She had looked upon Mrs. Porter as a saviour who brought her freedom together with an easy conscience. It had been so simple to deceive herself, to cheat herself into the comfortable belief that all that could be done for him was being done, when, as concerned the essential thing, as Kirk had said, there was no child of the streets ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... am particularly fond of Michael. Also he will play to us after dinner, and though I don't know one note from another, it will relieve me of sitting in a stately circle watching Robert cheat at patience. I always find the evenings here rather trying; they remind me of being in church. I feel as if I were part of a corporate body, which leads to misplaced decorum. Ah! there is the sound of ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... been four times created and destroyed," say the fragments of what is called the Chimalpopoca manuscript. Probably this theory of a series of kalpas is only one of the devices by which the human mind has tried to cheat itself into the belief that it can conceive a beginning of things. The earth stands on an elephant, the elephant on a tortoise, and it is going too far to ask what the tortoise stands on. In the same way the world's beginning seems to ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... on. This varlet, Wellborn, lives too long, to upbraid me With my close cheat put upon him. Will nor cold Nor hunger ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... have recommended it to invalids with weak digestions with great success. This rage for white bread has introduced adulterations of a very serious character, affecting the health of the whole community. Potatoes are added for this purpose; but this is a comparatively harmless cheat, only reducing the nutritive property of the bread; but bone-dust and alum are also put in, which are ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... had just entered his mind should be confirmed, no course remained save to extinguish the only new light which now illumined the darkness of his night, or to become a cheat. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... I. He's such an eel, he may wriggle out of our clutches. But can't you give a party and invite Lord George and Hay, and then get them to play cards. Should Hay cheat, denounce ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... that gentleman soon discovered the vaunted security was a second mortgage, with interest overdue on the first; and so he told Guy, who then merely remarked, "I expected as much. When had a tradesman any sense of honor in money matters? This one would cheat his very ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... limits of the United States! There never has been, and there never will be. The white and the black races have never co-existed under the same government, on equal footing, and never can. Their liberty is only nominal! "It is all a lie and a cheat!" Is the negro free any where in the Northern States? No, he is not. There is no sympathy between the two races. Northern people loathe and despise free negroes. They cannot bear the sight or smell of them. The negro then is ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... admired her taste; a few were shocked and puzzled by it. All the men of her acquaintance either pitied or despised her for it. Her father said nothing. Her brothers were less cautious, and summed up their opinion of Lionel in the curt, scornful assertion that he showed a tendency to cheat at tennis. But May would never hear ill of him; he was a god to her, and she could not hide her worship. For more than a year, until lately, she had been almost sure of him, and then came a faint vague rumour concerning Lionel and May ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... people talk in such a way as to indicate that they are yet unable to conceive of the negro as possessing any rights at all. Men who are honorable in their dealings with their white neighbors will cheat a negro without feeling a single twinge of their honor. To kill a negro they do not deem murder; to debauch a negro woman they do not think fornication; to take the property away from a negro they do not consider robbery. The people boast that when they get freedmen affairs in their own hands, ...
— Report on the Condition of the South • Carl Schurz
... thought through the argument from illusions, like that when we look at the shore from a moving ship, and others which cheat ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... drosky-drivers, of most demoralised appearance, all clamorous for "a fare." "We want to go to Goat Island; how much is it?" "Five dollars." "I'll take you for four dollars and a half." "No, sir, he's a cheat and a blackguard; I'll take you for four." "I'll take you as cheap as any one," shouts a man in rags; "I'll take you for three." "Very well." "I'll take you as cheap as he; he's drunk, and his carriage isn't fit for a lady to step into," shouted the man who at first asked five dollars. ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... Tongue River on the Rosebud so that my family and children could be reared and have a home. All that I have told you is true. General Miles told me that when I settled down and took this land, there might be some people who would come along and try to cheat us out of our land, but not to pay any attention to them, that it was our land. There are a great many people settled in Montana in the land that belonged to the Indians. These people are raising lots of cattle ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... and were perfectly acquainted with the motions of the heavenly bodies, and have many instruments, well contrived and divided, by which they very accurately compute the course and positions of the sun, moon, and stars. But for the cheat, of divining by the stars by their oppositions or conjunctions, it has not so much as entered into their thoughts. They have a particular sagacity, founded upon much observation, in judging of the weather, by which they know when they may ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... word, being resolved to cheat her as he had done before. He went to find out little Day, and saw him with a little foil in his hand, with which he was fencing with a great monkey, the child being then only three years of age. He took him ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... so we'll make certain; but it wouldn't surprise me a bit to have it turn out that the Dixwell Hardley who wants me to help him recover the Pandora treasure is the same one who is trying to cheat Mr. Keith." ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton
... see how it fared with the public who depended upon these stores for their dry-goods. From our old gentleman's account it would seem that every transaction was a sort of battle between the buyer and seller to see which should cheat the other. On the first day of his attendance he witnessed a specimen of the mode in which a dexterous clerk could sell an article to a lady which she did not want. An unskillful clerk had displayed too suddenly the entire ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... there, Councillor," said the man whom they had known as McMurdo. "And you, Baldwin, if you don't take your hand off your pistol, you'll cheat the hangman yet. Pull it out, or by the Lord that made me—There, that will do. There are forty armed men round this house, and you can figure it out for yourself what chance you have. Take their ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... too!—without a spark of generosity, or an emotion of pity—reading the condition of the sufferers from their countenances, with the coolest imaginable calculation—thus ascertaining from their looks the urgency of their respective cases, that the utmost possible advantage might be taken, and the intended cheat be made the greater. The pick-pocket, moreover, the thief, and the purloining servant, received with equal readiness, and the spoils divided between them, with the fullest understanding that no questions were to be asked! O 'tis monstrous! ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... that. When the greatest and most honorable statesmen of Europe and America will lie and cheat each other to their utmost extent, under cover of the term 'diplomacy,' and get rewarded and praised by their respective countries for their knavery, provided it is successful, I think 'dishonest' is a strong word for a merely partisan press. Certain ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... can say, "I will not do this or that, I will not lie, I will not play the rogue, I will not cheat, I will not scheme." For this is in our power, and is no small but great help to ease of mind. As on ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... Mas'r Hugh, now. I 'tected it de fust minit. Can't cheat dis chile," and, with a chuckle, which she meant to be very expressive, the fat old woman ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... pitiless and unjust than the injured themselves have bitterness to paint him. Another shall be charitable to the poor, uncharitable in his censures and opinions of all the rest of the world besides: temperate in his appetites, intemperate in his tongue; shall have too much conscience and religion to cheat the man who trusts him, and perhaps as far as the business of debtor and creditor extends shall be just and scrupulous to the uttermost mite; yet in matters of full or great concern, where he is to have the handling of ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... good deal of persons who were said to possess great knowledge of the Indian character, and I have seen enough of the red man to estimate at its real worth the possession of this knowledge. Knowledge of Indian character has too long been synonymous with knowledge of how to cheat the Indian—a species of cleverness which, even in the science of chicanery, does not require the exercise of the highest abilities. I fear that the Indian has already had too many dealings with ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... and looks down on his congregation, one would think he would despair. What can he say to them? He knows nothing of human nature, of its struggles and sins, its temptations in the shop and the street. Men do not curse at him, nor try to cheat him, nor entice him into bar-rooms, oyster-cellars, billiard-rooms, and theatres. He cannot speak to men of their vices, their stony and hard hearts, their utter unbelief, their crying selfishness, for he knows nothing of it. He must speak of sin in ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... to be meek and submissive were only trying to beguile a man. In his heart he knew that this gentle obedience was not natural to Alice, who had a high spirit and plenty of fortitude; and instead of attributing it to the grace of God, which was its real source, he set it down to a desire to cheat him ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt |
