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Connive at   /kənˈaɪv æt/   Listen
Connive at

verb
1.
Give one's silent approval to.  Synonym: wink at.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Connive at" Quotes from Famous Books



... piano-tuner, who had just spent an hour tuning my Bechstein, had departed when a cart drew up in front of the door. What do you think it was? Nothing less than the King's own piano, an upright one, though it did connive at deception, as you will see. It was one of those pianos with which one could, by turning a key, lower the whole keyboard by half-tones, so that a barytone could masquerade as a tenor and spare the ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone

... it. I will not connive at your coming here without the knowledge of your parents! It is not at all a proper thing for a young ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald

... be not justifiable homicide, I am virtually abetting the crime. If I refuse to bale out a boat because I am in doubt whether my efforts will keep her afloat, I am really helping to sink her. If in the mountain precipice I doubt my right to risk a leap, I actively connive at my destruction. He who commands himself not to be credulous of God, of duty, of freedom, of immortality, may again and again be indistinguishable from him who dogmatically denies them. Scepticism in moral matters is an active ally of immorality. Who ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James

... long remain here myself, Mr. Crabb," said Hector. "I came here with the full intention of making the most of the facilities the institute affords for education, but I find the principal incompetent, and disposed to connive at injustice and brutality. The only good I have got here has ...
— Hector's Inheritance - or The Boys of Smith Institute • Horatio Alger

... full of the exploits of these pugnacious heroes. At one time La Tour appears in person at Boston, to beat up recruits, as more than two hundred years after, another power attempted to raise a foreign legion, and, although the pilgrim fathers do not officially sanction the proceeding, yet they connive at it, and quote Scripture to warrant them. Close upon this follows a protest of D'Aulney, and with it the exhibition of a warrant from the French king for the arrest of La Tour. Upon this there is a meeting of the council and a treaty, offensive ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens

... nice type of an ideal citizen!' I was addressing myself, 'A first chop specimen of a low-down idiot,—to connive at the escape of the robber who's been robbing Paul. Since you've let the villain go, the least you can do is to leave a card on the Apostle, and ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh

... came out of his litter near the temple, where he was met by a number of priests, who carried him up the steps. They had sacrificed four Indians the night before to their accursed idols, as all our endeavours were insufficient to stop that abominable practice, which we were forced to connive at for a season, being afraid to do any thing which might occasion an insurrection. After remaining a short time at his devotions, Montezuma came down from the temple, and returned to our quarters in much good humour, and made presents to all of us who ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr

... contagious to others, above fifteen or sixteen days at farthest; and on that score it was, that when a house was shut up in the city, and any one had died of the plague, but nobody appeared to be ill in the family for sixteen or eighteen days after, they were not so strict but that they[266] would connive at their going privately abroad; nor would people be much afraid of them afterwards, but rather think they were fortified the better, having not been vulnerable when the enemy was in their house: but we sometimes found it had ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe

... speculation whether Lord John Russell's bold declaration will have the effect of breaking up the Government by disgusting the Radicals to such a degree as to make them in spite withdraw their aid on some important occasion. Those gentry are still very irate and sulky, but I do not expect they will connive at the overthrow of the Government; they know better than to open the doors of office to the Tories. Lord Brougham has taken the field with a violent Radical speech, and he seized an occasion to set his tongue wagging against the Chancellor; in short he seems bent on mischief. He has written word ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... conspiracy among more than 300 men. And by the Metropolitan Police system every man promoted is transferred to another division, so that the rank and file would have to induce a continually changing series of strangers to connive at their malpractices. It is on the face ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot

... extraordinary. Well, now, to continue our supposititious case, the couple—not necessarily a guilty couple—realize after the murderer is gone that they have placed themselves in a position in which it may be difficult for them to prove that they did not themselves either do the deed or connive at it. They rapidly and rather clumsily met the situation. The mark was put by Barker's bloodstained slipper upon the windowsill to suggest how the fugitive got away. They obviously were the two who must have heard the sound of the gun; so they gave the alarm exactly as they ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... interfered with his designs. In a moment, without intention, with the very kindest of motives, she had broken her word to her brother, and she was as miserable as a woman could be over the unhappy slip. And Sophy's proposal added to her remorse. It made her virtually connive at Sophy's intercourse with Archie Braelands, and she felt herself to be in a great strait. In order to favour her brother she had spoken hastily, and the swift punishment of her folly was that she must now either confess her fault or tacitly ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr

... this generosity on the part of the poor prodigal. 'I will not deny that this is the very thing she suggested; she even begged me to propose this to you, but I refused. Do you suppose that either I or my cousin, Dr. Ross, would connive at such deceit and falsehood? It is quite true that Mrs. Blake and her children may refuse to have anything to do with you, but that is solely their affair. In a few hours, Mr. O'Brien, your eldest son will be made aware of ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... requisite also, to smell out work for the other senses. I see this is the time that the unjust man doth thrive. What an exchange had this been without boot? what a boot is here with this exchange? Sure, the gods do this year connive at us, and we may do anything extempore. The prince himself is about a piece of iniquity,—stealing away from his father with his clog at his heels: if I thought it were a piece of honesty to acquaint the king withal, I would not do't: ...
— The Winter's Tale - [Collins Edition] • William Shakespeare

... afraid we couldn't think of it. Barker's is too old established a house to connive at these sharp modern ways of doing business," said Mr. Barker ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson

... Standing with his back against the halberd to ascertain his height, and, finding he is rather under the mark, he endeavours to reach it by rising on tiptoe. This artifice, to which he is impelled by towering ambition, the serjeant seems disposed to connive at—and the serjeant is a hero, and a great man in his way; "your hero always must be ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler

... inspect, overhaul, examine, neglect, disregard, skip, slight, ignore; condone, connive at, forgive. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... "What, the King's Parliament at Oxford?" He answered, "No; the Country's Parliament at Westminster." I sayd, I was sorrie, for manie poore hard-working Men had no other Holiday. He sayd, another Holiday woulde be given them; and that whether or no, we must not connive at Evil, which we doe in permitting an holy Daye to sink into a Holiday. I sayd, but was it not the Jewish Law, which had made such Restrictions? He sayd, yes, but that Christ came not to destroy the moral Law, of which Sabbath-keeping was ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning

... and so short, that we cannot too soon bring the little it can yield into the great commonwealth of the Beautiful or the Honest; and both belong to and make up the Useful. But in politics, and in a highly artificial state, what doubts beset us! what darkness surrounds! If we connive at abuses, we juggle with our own reason and integrity—if we attack them, how much, how fatally we may derange that solemn and conventional ORDER which is the mainspring of the vast machine! How little, too, can one man, whose talents may not be in that coarse road—in ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... and shrinking into an old and desolate figure] What am I to do? I am a most perplexed and wretched man. [He falls on his knees, and stretches his hands in entreaty over the abyss]. I invoke the oracle. I cannot go back and connive at a blasphemous lie. I ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw

... treasure, and the seat of empire, were all in their hands. To divert the Praetorian bands from these dangerous reflections, the firmest and best established princes were obliged to mix blandishments with commands, rewards with punishments, to flatter their pride, indulge their pleasures, connive at their irregularities, and to purchase their precarious faith by a liberal donative; which, since the elevation of Claudius, was enacted as a legal claim, on the accession of every new ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon

... much reason to suspect that the petty constables and divisional watchmen are either extremely negligent in the performance of their duty, or that they suffer themselves to be prevailed on by the house-breakers to be less vigilant than that duty requires, and to connive at their depredations on the inhabitants. A continuance of this unpardonable remissness upon their part must dispose the more respectable inhabitants to believe them partakers with the thieves. It is, therefore, hereby particularly recommended by the governor to ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins

... Nancy, realizing that Lloyd could prove she was a rebel spy, resorted to murder to silence the one man whose evidence would hang her. I fear, I greatly fear, Nancy will have a hard time convincing the commission that, if not actually the criminal, she did not connive at Captain ...
— The Lost Despatch • Natalie Sumner Lincoln

... Beecher regularly attended the meetings of the Ministerial Union of Elmira every Monday morning, and they received him into their fellowship, and never objected to the doctrines which he taught in his church. So, in an unfortunate moment, he conceived the strange idea that they would connive at the teaching of the same doctrines in the same way in a larger house. Therefore he secured the Opera House and proceeded to preach there every Sunday evening to assemblages comprising from a thousand to fifteen hundred ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... a Spaniard," said another, "and hence his yellow complexion. Or most likely he is from the Havana or from some port on the Spanish main and comes to make investigation about the piracies which our governor is thought to connive at. Those settlers in Peru and Mexico have skins as yellow as the gold which they dig out of ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various

... hope of other outlet. Now there was space to view it calmly, I saw how foolish was the thought that Margery would connive at any breaking of the marriage bond. She would bear my name, and hate me for the giving of it; would go on hating me, I thought, to all eternity; but she would never take her freedom back again, save at a dead ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde

... Beaurepaire to that hotel in Paddington and poisoned her; it was just as undoubtedly Schmall who took Ebers to the hotel in London Docks and got rid of him. But, I tell you, Merrifield swears that neither he nor Van Koon knew of these things, and did not connive at them." ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher

... of the minor dilemmas in which a too sensitive humanitarian ever finds himself is whether he should destroy a spider's web, and so, perhaps, starve the spider to death, or whether he should leave the web, and so connive at the death of a multitude of flies. I have long been content to leave Nature to her own ways in such matters. I cannot say that I like her in all her processes, but I am content to believe that this may be owing to my ignorance of some of the facts of the case. There are, on the other hand, two acts ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd

... every day. Now comes the thought: What is God doing? Why does he not punish his enemy? Does he sleep and care no longer for human affairs? The delay of judgment causes the righteous anguish. They themselves cannot come to the succor of a stricken religion and they see God who could help, connive at the fury of the popes, who securely sin against the first and the second ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther

... severe and unapproachable. Apparently the mother also will prove unapproachable if the adult son desires her as a wife. [The male child, on the other hand, frequently has erotic experiences with the mother. The parents connive at these, because they do not understand the significance even of their own caresses. They generally do not know how to fix the limits between moderation and excess.] The wanderer has no luck with blandishments in the case of the lion. He begins indeed to fondle him (cf. Sec. ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer

... practise and profess religion in that mode, which, under the impulse of conscience, they had adopted. This reasonable and moderate request was refused. James had already established the church of England in Virginia; and, although he promised to connive at their non-conformity, and not to molest them while they demeaned themselves peaceably, he positively refused to give that explicit and solemn pledge of security, which they required. This, for a short time, suspended their removal; but the causes of their discontent ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall

... city has been buying coal wholesale at the pit mouth at three fifty—utterly worthless stuff, he tells me. He has heard it said that everyone of these scoundrels has been paid from twenty-five to fifty dollars a winter to connive at it." ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock

... interferences at chance times than add special vindictive impulses to those of general irritation and dislike? Some truth there was in this, it cannot be denied: innumerable cases arise, in which a man the most just is obliged, in some imperfect sense, to connive at injustice; his chance experience must convince him that injustice is continually going on; and yet, in any attempt to intercept it or to check it, he is met and baffled by the insuperable obstacles of household necessities. Dr. S. therefore ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... inclination happens to lay hold of a majority of their constituents, incompatible with the provisions in the existing Constitution, would, on that account, be justifiable in a violation of those provisions; or that the courts would be under a greater obligation to connive at infractions in this shape, than when they had proceeded wholly from the cabals of the representative body. Until the people have, by some solemn and authoritative act, annulled or changed the established form, it is binding upon themselves collectively, as well as individually; and ...
— The Federalist Papers

... been put to any despot of Europe,—we had almost said, to any despot of Asia,—his answer would undoubtedly have been an indignant negative. Yet the South confidently expected so to wheedle or bully us into dragging our common sense through the mud and mire of momentary expedients, that we should connive at the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various

... world, how much anxiety I have suffered, to see of how little benefit my Lucubrations have been to my fellow-subjects. Men will go on in their own way in spite of all my labour. I gave Mr. Didapper a private reprimand for wearing red-heeled shoes, and at the same time was so indulgent as to connive at him for fourteen days, because I would give him the wearing of them out; but after all this I am informed, he appeared yesterday with a new pair of the same sort. I have no better success with Mr. Whatdee'call[1] as to his buttons: Stentor[2] still roars; ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift

... One way would be to kill Hassan of Aleppo; but he wants a lot of killing—I've tried! Moreover, directly we'd done it, another Sheikh-al-jebal would be nominated and he'd carry on the bloody work. We'd be worse off than ever. Right! we've got to connive at letting the blood-stained fanatic escape, and we've got to ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer

... lawful impost; but every demand of His Majesty might be construed into an exaction. Fearful to indispose the minds of subjects, pecuniary levies were cautiously resorted to; hence the officers were compelled to connive at plunder, and the destitute soldier often had no other means to supply his imperious wants. For the same reasons discipline was relaxed; every man who had largely contributed to the King's cause felt himself independent of his authority. Obliged beyond all probable power ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West

... have taken off one trouble from you, of defending it, by acknowledging its imperfections; and though some part of them are covered in the verse (as Ericthonius rode always in a chariot to hide his lameness), such of them as cannot be concealed you will please to connive at, though in the strictness of your judgment you cannot pardon. If Homer was allowed to nod sometimes, in so long a work it will be no wonder if I often fall asleep. You took my "Aurengzebe" into your protection with all his faults; and I hope here cannot be so many, because ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden

... classes of men—the ordinary man who has no compunction in resorting to force when the requirements of life demand it, and the idealist who refuses to have any lot or part in violence; there is also a hybrid. This male hybrid will descant on the general iniquity of violence, and then not only connive at those forms of violence which minister to his personal comforts, but also make a virtue of trying to abate by legal violence some particular form of physical suffering which happens to offend in a quite ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright

... responsibility,' said he, 'rests with those who, possessing commanding influence, refrain from requisite action, and who, instead of seeking to cure proved and acknowledged evils, connive at driving them beneath the surface, where, in secret, they steadily grow and expand.' And all this for the sake of the 'young person,' to whose mythical innocence the welfare of a whole nation is often sacrificed. M. Zola's views are summed ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly

... Hacket would connive at nothing underhand. Besides, I have never seen any thing sly or deceitful in poor Dolores. She will not make friends with us, that is all, and that may be ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge

... by its frequency, has been a temptation to Dishonesty. Who will fear to be a culprit when a legal sentence is the argument of pity, and the prelude of pardon? What can the community expect but growing dishonesty, when juries connive at acquittals, and judges condemn only to petition a pardon; when honest men and officers fly before a mob; when jails are besieged and threatened, if felons are not relinquished; when the Executive, consulting ...
— Twelve Causes of Dishonesty • Henry Ward Beecher

... to plead for. And if Darrell were to marry again and to have sons, what a dreadful dilemma it would be for the Voice of Nature! Jasper was not long in discovering that Caroline's engagement was not less unwelcome to Mrs. Lyndsay than to himself, and that she was disposed to connive at any means by which it might be annulled. Matilda was first employed to weaken the bond it was so desirable to sever. Matilda did not reproach, but she wept. She was sure now that she should he an outcast—her ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... admission into office, he did not only neglect to report to the Collector and Controller of Yarmouth or to the Board the misconduct of his Mate, in unlawfully taking from the said ship the four cases of Geneva in question, but did take out of them for his own use, and by so doing did connive at and sanction the aforesaid unproper conduct of his Mate." It was also brought against Riches that he had not entered any account of this incident into his ship's journal, or made any record of the mate boarding ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton

... to invent. That is all I have to say. To-night I tell the vicar all that I have just told you. And from this moment, please, we are strangers. I shall come into the room no more than necessity dictates. On Friday we resume our real parts. My husband—Arthur—to—to connive at... Phh!' ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare

... or not I cannot tell; but this I know, that it is the most horrible picture that ever was made of any country. It might be said that these were excuses for omissions,—sins of omission he calls them. I will show that they were systematic, that Mr. Hastings did uniformly profess that he would connive at abuses, and contend that abuses ought to be connived at. When the whole mystery of the iniquity, in which he himself was deeply concerned, came to light,—when it appeared that all the Company's orders were contravened,—that contracts were given directly contrary ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... designs of the emperors. But the policy of a well-ordered government must sometimes have interposed in behalf of the oppressed Christians; * nor was it possible for the Roman princes entirely to remove the apprehension of punishment, or to connive at every act of fraud and violence, without exposing their own authority and the rest of their subjects to the most ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... piece of service, was forced to connive at Saturninus, now proceeding to the very height of insolence and violence, and was, without knowing it, the instrument of mischief beyond endurance, the only course of which was through outrages and massacres to tyranny ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... practice is resorted to by landlords, to enable them to complete the crews which they have contracted to furnish to vessels. The owners and masters of these vessels are fully aware of the infamous manner in which men are procured for them, but say they must either connive at it, or let their vessels go to sea shorthanded. In "Shanghaiing" a sober man, resort is had to false promises. He is induced to go on board of a vessel, "to see how he likes her." He is then detained by force until the ship has left port. His true name ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... at the Turks-head neere the Miter Taverne in Fleetstreet. 1646." There are some lines "In laudem Authoris" by J.S., and the following:—"Gentle Reader,—Thinke it not amisse to peruse this Peece, yet connive at the Style: for it hath neede thereof, since wrought by an uncouth and rough File of one greene in yeares; as being aged under eight. Hence, worthy Reader, shew not thy self too-too-rigid a Censurer. This his ...
— George Washington's Rules of Civility - Traced to their Sources and Restored by Moncure D. Conway • Moncure D. Conway

... creatures as we now call Radicals, of whom I know not that I can better express the illiterate and blind ignorance and vulgarity than by saying that the best informed of them have probably never heard of Lord Byron. No, no, Lord Byron may be indulgent to these jackal followers of his; he may connive at their use of his name—nay, it is not to be denied that he has given them too, too much countenance—but he never can, I should think, now that he sees not only the road but the rate they are going, continue to take ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles

... every ball-room, no matter whether in the country or in town, there are usually at least three crinolines to one tail-coat, and that dancing bachelors are becoming so scarce that it is a question whether hostesses ought not, for their own peace of mind, to connive at the introduction of the Oriental nautch. Yet even the alarming scarcity of marriageable men is not so serious an evil as their growing ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous

... vintner, pulling him back, 'sheer madness. Hear reason, sir. My good sir, hear reason. I could never make myself heard by knocking at a window now; and even if I could, no one would be bold enough to connive at my escape. Through the cellars, there's a kind of passage into the back street by which we roll casks in and out. We shall have time to get down there before they can force an entry. Do not delay an instant, but come with me—for both our ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... them, and walk soberly with them. Things cannot always go on as you would be glad to have them. Therefore do you see to it that you act like a husband, and have so much the more discretion, when it is lacking in the wife, while you are to connive at some matters, tolerate and pardon some things,[2] and give to the wife, ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther

... to be married. I want to take her off by myself and growl over her all alone for a while. Then I want Prince Charming to come along and snatch her up quickly, and set her behind his milk white charger and ride away with her. If we've all got to get together and connive at marrying her off there won't be any comfort ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley

... Eli's Sons to lie with the Women, in the very Doors of the Tabernacle, when they came to bring their Offerings to the Priest; and he tempted poor Eli to connive at them, or not sufficiently ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe

... literal sense, since they have no hope of relief in them, but only the tragic rage against tyranny which will sometimes blaze up in victims—and on the other hand there are officials who will resign their positions rather than connive at abuses. But every means is taken to avert this last; for guards know things, and the System could be shaken by men who not only know, but, unlike prisoners, have a chance to make ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne

... killed a man, the beast, said Jehovah, shall be slain, and his flesh shall not be eaten. The owner must lose the whole of him as a testimony to the sacredness of human life, and a warning to all not to do any thing, or connive at any thing that tended to destroy it. But the owner, if he did not know that the beast was dangerous, and liable to kill, was not otherwise to be punished. But if he did know, if it had been testified to the owner that the beast was dangerous, and liable to kill, and he did ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society

... to give you up. Now if it were only one subject—however important—on which we disagreed, I might still do my best, though the responsibility of all you make me connive at is certainly heavy. But if you are entirely to set at defiance not only my advice and wishes as to this illegal society to which you belong, and as to the violent action into which I understand you may be led when you go to town, but also in such a matter as we have just ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... whom she regarded as the enemy of GOD Himself, may have seized her while she stood in the door of the tent,—weighing Sisera's petition against Deborah's prophecy. Be this as it may,—would you have had the woman connive at Sisera's escape,—the enemy of GOD'S people, when GOD Himself had unexpectedly put him ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon

... to the Queen's presence, she seems to have read memorials he drew up on the subject of Ireland. It is impossible not to reprobate his sentiments on the treatment of the native Irish. His correspondence with Cecil shows, that he was as willing to connive at their treacherous murder as other contemporary English statesmen, though not Burleigh, or perhaps Burleigh's son. But he believed honestly in the rectitude of his doctrines. He was patriotic in insisting upon their application for the benefit of a Government which, he thought, ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing

... connive at any depravity among themselves, but must duly rebuke it. Those who have acquired the respect of the believers, and would be exemplary Christians, must take heed lest they accustom themselves to flattery and luxury; they must even submit to sharp admonitions and ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland

... very walls of Gaza; and wherever his government is acknowledged no violence can be committed with impunity on European travellers. But the Syrian pashas, equally deficient in inclination and vigour, still permit the grossest extortion, and sometimes connive at the most savage atrocities. Besides, there is a class of lawless Arabs who scour the borders of the wilderness, holding at defiance all the restrictions which a civilized people impose or respect. Sir ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell

... lest they acquire the force of precedents. Four hundred years ago such minute vigilance might well seem unnecessary. A nation of hardy archers and spearmen might, with small risk to its liberties, connive at some illegal acts on the part of a prince whose general administration was good, and whose throne was not defended by a ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... mind George and Esther, but I grudge Catherine to that man Wharton. He may be a good artist, but I think his merits as a husband beneath criticism. I believe every woman would connive at a love affair though the man had half a dozen living wives, and had been hung two or ...
— Esther • Henry Adams

... both despised and hated the men of Wessagussett, and he was willing that they should he treated as they seemed disposed to treat such of his race as they could get into their power. He even made an attempt to persuade Bradford to leave them to the fate they so well deserved, and to connive at their destruction, which would remove an increasing evil from ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb

... only one little incident. Trouble like this we're having to-day is constantly arising. No money-making graft is too petty or too immoral for the MacMorroghs to connive at. They rob and starve their laborers, and cheat the company with bad work. I've got to have a free hand in dealing ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde

... adventurer, half patriot, half author, a miserable man, always in such depths of distress, with such squadrons of enemies, that no charity could relieve, and no intervention save him. He believed Europe banded for his destruction, and America corrupted to connive at it. Margaret listened to these woes with such patience and mercy, that she drew five hundred dollars, which had been invested for her in a safe place, and put them in those hapless hands, where, of course, the money was only the prey of new rapacity, to be bewailed by new reproaches. ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... my beloved creature, you will but connive at the imperfections of your adorer, and not play the wife with me: if, while the charms of novelty have their force with me, I should happen to be drawn aside by the love of intrigue, and of plots that ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson

... other side. Will the servant of the Lord take orders from man? Will the ambassador of God submit to be muzzled? Will a pastor of Christ's flock hold his position for what he finds in the flesh-pot? Will the preacher of righteousness connive at wickedness? Will the herald of Gospel liberty become a slave to vilest men? Such was the other outlook. Which way will ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters

... landlord would not fail to recommend his crowning cup of sack or claret. The coachman, who might now and then feel some anxiety to proceed, would yet merely admonish his fare that the day was wearing on; but his scruples would vanish before a grace-cup, and he would even connive at a proposal to take a pipe of tobacco, before the horn was permitted to summon the passengers to resume their places. Hence the great caution observable in the newspaper advertisements of coach-travelling. We have now before us an announcement of the ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne

... to which it belonged. This was owing to various circumstances. The high-road had been turned aside from the place, the steepness of the street being murder (so the postilions declared) to their post-horses. It was thought that Meg's stern refusal to treat them with liquor, or to connive at their exchanging for porter and whisky the corn which should feed their cattle, had no small influence on the opinion of those respectable gentlemen, and that a little cutting and levelling would have made the ascent easy enough; but let that pass. This alteration of the highway ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... moral duty I owe to the com- mandment of God, and the natural respect that I tender unto the conservation of my essence and being, I would not perish upon a ceremony, politick points, or indiffer- ency: nor is my belief of that untractable temper as, not to bow at their obstacles, or connive at matters wherein there are not manifest impieties. The leaven, therefore, and ferment of all, not only civil, but re- ligious, actions, is wisdom; without which, to commit ourselves to the flames is homicide, and (I fear) but to pass through ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne

... for the highest degree of national sagacity; they felt, that they had themselves acquired, by force, the independence which they enjoyed; and they trusted that the British administration, through apprehensions of renewing an unpopular and disastrous war, would be induced to connive at, if not confirm, the privilege the Americans affected to claim under the very Navigation Act of Great Britain, the most beneficial effect of which they were thus artfully ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison

... chief pleaders were heard to express great satisfaction, that there had been but few state trials of late years. Several attorneys demanded the return of fees that had been given the lawyers; but it was answered, the fee was undoubtedly charged to their client, and that they could not connive at such injustice, as to suffer it to be sunk in the attorneys' pockets. Our sage and learned judges had great consolation, insomuch as they had not pleaded at the bar for several years; the barristers rejoiced in that they were ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift



Words linked to "Connive at" :   encourage, wink at, advance, promote, boost, further



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