"Rascality" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... want to enter upon other topics, and to leave all this rascality alone awhile, I am forced to narrate what happened at the termination of this five years' contract. Instead of abiding by their promised word, those two rogues declared they meant to give me up my farm, and would not keep it any longer upon lease. I not unnaturally complained, but they retorted ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... service done him to slaughter those who were not able to defend themselves. Go; get yourself better instructed in the meaning of the Koran." He was a thorough Corsair, with the rough code of honour, as well as the unprincipled rascality of the sea-rover. ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... which is a revelation from God of justice, of fair dealing, of scorn of mean advantages; which contemns the selling of stock which one KNOWS is going to fall, to a man who BELIEVES it is going to rise, as much as it would contemn any other form of rascality or of injustice or of meanness — it is this which must in these latter days organize its insurrections and burn up every one of the cunning moral castles from which Trade sends out its forays upon the ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... We must compromise with him, if we can find him in time. Of course, even if the bank closed, we would pay everything when there was time to realize. But that is not the point. It would mean trouble and disaster, and would probably result in other failures all through one man's rascality." ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... was surprised. I sat there open-mouthed. It is extraordinary how a man may become suddenly aware of unsuspected heights and depths in human life. It may be that I have always been less sophisticated than most. I am continually overlooking the shabbiness and rascality of the world, I find, in spite of the early apprenticeship which I served among business friends. I have often envied men this alertness of mind, this ever-present consciousness of the obliquity of human nature. And ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... what rascality it was that made these two friends?" murmured Muller, putting Theo's letter with the three he had already read. But before he slipped it in his pocket he glanced at the postmark. The letters of the three women had ...
— The Lamp That Went Out • Augusta Groner
... A god that can create something out of nothing ought not to have complained of the loss of an apple. I can hardly have the patience to speak upon such a subject. Now, that absurdity gave birth to another—that, while we could be rightfully charged with the rascality of somebody else, we could also be credited with the virtues of somebody else; and the atonement is the absurdity which offsets the other absurdity of the fall of man. Let us leave them ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... to trace the career of several others of that body, the tracks would be through the sloughs and conduits of shame and turpitude, rascality and crime, and finally to self-murder. It was as bad—it could hardly have been worse, except in numbers, proportioned to the greater numerical force—in the Vigilance rank and file. It is against reason and sense to expect that ...
— The Vigilance Committee of '56 • James O'Meara
... which has caused me to alter my opinion of you. You have a small smattering of learning and you can put on a very wise look when occasion requires. But that is all there is to it, except that behind it all you are a thorough-paced scoundrel and only lack a certain courage to do some daring bit of rascality." ...
— The Rover Boys in the Jungle • Arthur M. Winfield
... d'Ernemont protested against that piece of rascality. But what could she do against so many? Besides, now that she was rich, she got back her young man. I haven't heard of ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... subordinate officers of the law (and indeed some high in office, it was hinted), the sheriff's followers, bailiffs, tipstaves, and others, were all in their pay; besides a host of myrmidons,—base, sordid knaves, who scrupled not at false-swearing, cozenage, or any sort of rascality, even forgery of ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... his retreat; "I know I did, and that if I had to begin again I should do differently. I should go more slowly but more surely, and I should not expose the state and my own person to the dangers which may attend the derangement of a general system." "There was neither avarice nor rascality in what he did," says St. Simon; "he was a gentle, kind, respectful man, whom excess of credit and of fortune had not spoilt, and whose bearing, equipage, table, and furniture could not offend anybody. He bore with singular patience and evenness ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... a youth who had hitherto lived on pure sensations and among those ideas which are nearest to sensations. There were no longer heroic Romans in Rousseau's universe. "The vilest tastes, the meanest bits of rascality, succeeded to my simple amusements, without even leaving the least idea behind. I must, in spite of the worthiest education, have had a strong tendency to degenerate." The truth was that he had never had any education in its veritable sense, as the process, on its negative side, of counteracting ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... you will see how the means of evading it will be sought, and this is for the very reason that the legislators have overlooked the fact that the more an object is hidden, the more a sight of it is desired. Why are rascality and astuteness regarded as great qualities in the Spanish people, when there is no other so noble, so proud, so chivalrous as it? Because our legislators, with the best intentions, have doubted its nobility, wounded its pride, challenged its chivalry! ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... ends by the man rushing from the house. Then for the first time the pair find that they have to deal with the whole forces of society; in their rage they would gladly part and meet no more—or they think so—but inexorable society steps in and declares that the alliance is fixed until death or rascality looses it. For a little while the estrangement lasts, and then there is a reconciliation, after which all goes well for a time. But the shocking thing about the ill-assorted marriage is that the estrangements grow longer ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... duty is to spy Upon our King's illicites, And keep a watchful eye On all his eccentricities. If ever a trick he tries That savours of rascality, At our decree he ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... accepted Christianity early and has sent many a son within the church to pipe divinity. But the hurdy-gurdy—a younger son, wild, and a bit of a pagan like its progenitor—took to the streets. In its life there it has acquired, among much rascality, certain charming vices that are beyond the capacity of its brother in the loft, however much we may admire the deep rumble of his ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... part of the town. Prominent Churchmen who sought to end these disgraceful scenes suffered both in person and property. A word of remonstrance sufficed to turn into new channels the tide of hatred and greed; for, as happened in the Gordon riots of 1780, rascality speedily rushed in to ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... politics and has held an important position in many political campaigns. The details that comprise this problem have been indicated to some extent in the preceding pages—the speculative character of much railroad building, the rascality of some railroad promoters, the corrupting influence which the railroad has too frequently exerted in legislatures and even in the courts. The attempts to subject this new "monster" to government regulation and control have furnished many of the liveliest legislative ...
— The Railroad Builders - A Chronicle of the Welding of the States, Volume 38 in The - Chronicles of America Series • John Moody
... and filthy lanes black with shadow, its reeking markets, its broad, sun-scorched piazzas, its glittering, blue waters, its fringing forest of tall masts, and innumerable, close-packed hulls of oceangoing ships! Naples, city of glaring contrasts—heaven of rascality, hell of horses, unrivaled all the western world over for natural beauty, for spiritual and moral grossness! Naples, breeding, teeming, laughing, fighting, festering, city of music, city of fever and death! Naples, ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... precarious and suspicious clan of pseudo artists, mountebanks who vegetate on the outskirts of art; "buckeye painters," who turn out a dozen 20x30 canvases a day for the export trade to Africa and Australia; unscrupulous fabricators of Corots and Daubignys, picture drummers who make such rascality profitable, illustrators of advertising pamphlets, and so-called frescoe painters, who ornament ceilings with sentimental clouds, with two or three cupids thrown in according to the price they extort from ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 3, May 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... and pushed the logs together as he answered. The deliberateness of the action would not have prepared one for the intensity of his words. "I never wanted to be a detective before," he said, "but I'd give a good deal to catch the man who did that. It was such planned rascality, such keen-witted scoundrelism, that it gives me a fierce desire to show him up. I'd like to teach the beggar that honesty can be as intelligent as knavery; that in spite of his strength of cunning, law and right are stronger. I wish I could catch him," and the brass poker gleamed ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... iracund mayor, turning red again. "It's a piece of confounded rascality. It ought to ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... remained immaculate in the brothels, this church remained intact amid infamous surroundings, when all near it in the streets from the Chateau Rouge to the Cremerie Alexandre, only two paces off, the modern rabble of rascality combine their misdeeds, mingling with prostitutes their brewage of crime, their ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... presence there in person before Randolph can present himself, thanks to our uncle's foolish will that puts a premium on rascality. Yes, it's a bitter pill I have to swallow. I'd do anything under the sun if only I could hope to beat that scheming cousin out! But it's useless; so I'll just have to grin ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... is my love for your daughter." He struck the table and the flame of the student-lamp rose violently. "She must be mine, mine! I have tried to win her as an honorable man tries to win the woman he loves; now she must be won by an act of rascality. Heaven nor hell shall force me to give her up. Yes, I love her; and I lower myself to your level ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... regard, moreover, the two new-comers, however different they might seem in build of body and in habit of apparel, resembled each other more closely than they resembled any of the earlier occupants of the Inn room. There are castes in rascality as in all other trades, classes, professions, and mysteries, honorable or dishonorable, and this latest pair of knaves belonged patently to the more amiable caste of ruffianism—a higher or a lower caste, as you may be pleased to look at it. In the bold eyes of the gaudily clad Gascon, as ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... have witnessed such a thing, and cannot but say that it appeared to me one of the most revolting and disgusting phases which it is possible that human nature should assume. I think I see the dirty, oily-looking animal, at once servile and insolent, with trickery and rascality in every line of his countenance, rubbing his hands in the hour of his triumph, and bustling about to make immediate preparation for availing himself of it. And following him, also sneakily exulting, I see an object more dirty, more oily-looking, ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... averse to initiating it. Besides, it will not be permissible in this case to drag my wife's name into any publicity. My only alternative, therefore, is to remain content with the private discovery of your rascality, and hereafter to forbid you any association with what pertains ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Furlong, with that affectation of propriety which belongs to his time-serving tribe, pleaded the "regard to appearances"— "so soon after the ever-to-be-deplored event,"—and other such specious excuses, which were but covers to his own rascality, and used but to postpone the "wedding-day." The truth was, the moment Furlong had no longer the terrors of O'Grady's pistol before his eyes, he had resolved never to take so bad a match as that with Augusta appeared to be—indeed was, as far as regarded money; though Furlong should only have ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... and so are morals. Out of two people who have dipped into Sir Richard Burton's Thousand and One Nights, one shall have been offended by the animal details; another to whom these were harmless, perhaps even pleasing, shall yet have been shocked in his turn by the rascality and cruelty of all the characters. Of two readers, again, one shall have been pained by the morality of a religious memoir, one by that of the VICOMTE DE BRAGELONNE. And the point is that neither need be wrong. We shall always shock each other both in life and art; we cannot get ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of chastisement on him; and thus, while he thinks he is impressing you with an overpowering sense of his bygone rank and fashion, he really unfolds the history of a feeble unworthy fellow who carries a strong tinge of rascality about him. He is always a victim, and he illustrates the unvarying truth of the maxim that a dupe is a rogue minus cleverness. The final crash which overwhelmed him was of course a horse-racing blunder. He would ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... everything is all mixed up in a motley confusion, just as praying and eating and rascality and ecstasy are mixed up in life. Well, good night. Oh, why is it that I cannot at least be with you in my dreams—be really with you and dream in you. For when I merely dream of you, I am always alone. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... are set down as perturbators of the repose of nations; and that they who are shocked at the contemplation of the inhuman and unjust persecutions which have been excited by priestly ambition and rascality, are men who have no idea of justice, and in whose bosoms the sentiments of humanity are necessarily stifled. They who despise the false and deceitful motives by which, to the present time, it has been ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... much surprised at the progress thee makes considering the man, as I am that any man could be found to do me such a service. I hope thee will not get weary; I am sure thee will not. I hope the Committee will not act so unjustly as to turn their backs on all cases because there is 'rascality' in some; because there is rascality in some cases, why should a just cause suffer? The facts in my case can be easily proved. I made no money during the existence of my patent, or I might say I made less than I would have made if I had held an under-clerk's position in the ...
— Obed Hussey - Who, of All Inventors, Made Bread Cheap • Various
... that we forget its departures from the possibilities of life. In "The Alchemist" Jonson represented, none the less to the life, certain sharpers of the metropolis, revelling in their shrewdness and rascality and in the variety of the stupidity and wickedness of their victims. We may object to the fact that the only person in the play possessed of a scruple of honesty is discomfited, and that the greatest scoundrel ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... be perhaps a radiating center of altruism, devoted to his friends, a level-headed protector of the working classes, a patron of the arts in his own clearminded, unlettered way. But whatever point of view one gets at him, he spares one dullness. Will you explain to me, my dear, why picturesque rascality is so much ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... in which he is plannin' and conthrivin' all sorts of villainy and rascality; that is the period of youth and innocence. The second is that in which he is puttin' into practice the villainy and rascality he contrived before; that is the prime of life or the flower of manhood. The third and last period is that in which he is makin' his soul and preparin' for another world; ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... allowed to return to Sarawak, and, as it was hoped he could not be ungrateful for so much kindness and forbearance, he was permitted; but he was only biding his time. After his return to Sarawak he married his daughter to Seriff Bujang, the brother of Seriff Messahore, whose rascality and bad faith were on a par with his own. Bujang was a quiet creature enough, drawn into the wicked plots of his brother and father-in-law, but they were bad to the core. A Seriff is supposed to be a descendant of the Prophet ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... cited as another well-imagined and well-executed character, with his downright impetuous honesty, his hatred of "raskills," and his disposition to see rascality everywhere; his resolution to stand on his rights, his good-natured contempt for his wife, his very justifiable dislike of her sisters, his love for his children, and his determination that they shall have a good education, cost what it may,—the benefits of ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... "That is," said Mr. Oakhurst, sotto voce to the Innocent, "if you're willing to board us. If you ain't—and perhaps you'd better not—you can wait till Uncle Billy gets back with provisions." For some occult reason, Mr. Oakhurst could not bring himself to disclose Uncle Billy's rascality, and so offered the hypothesis that he had wandered from the camp and had accidentally stampeded the animals. He dropped a warning to the Duchess and Mother Shipton, who of course knew the facts of their associate's defection. "They'll find out the truth about us ALL, ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... excessive. He had quite failed to imagine the race-meeting; he had imagined an organism brilliant, perhaps, but barbaric and without form and style; he had imagined grotesque contrasts of squalor, rascality, and fashion; he had imagined an affair predominantly equine and masculine. The reality did not correspond; it transcended his imagination; it painfully demonstrated his jejune crudity. The Hippodrome was as formalized and stylistic as an Italian garden; the only contrasts were ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... third; while the fourth, who seemed to be much pleased that he was left out of the galaxy of rascality, remained ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... there had been no adventures of note, except such as grew out of the ill-nature and rascality of the Indians, who swarmed upon the banks of the stream, where they were assembled for their annual salmon-fishing. More than once the officers found it necessary to use harsh measures, in dealing with cases of theft. ...
— Lewis and Clark - Meriwether Lewis and William Clark • William R. Lighton
... stirring the envy of men no better than they, but less enabled by wealth or position to gratify their passions. They succeeded in arousing the loathing not merely of honest men, but even of the knaves and fools whose rascality was not so rotten and whose folly was not so foul as that of the noblemen and statesmen who rioted ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... within thee, ere again ill-using me. Art thou aware Of nothing there Which might abuse thee, as thou art abusing me? A brain that mourns THINE unredeemed rascality? A soul that weeps at THY threadbare morality? Both grieving that THEIR individuality ...
— The Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... Principum," an attempt is made by Cosmo de' Medici to uphold some of them as "worthy of all praise and commendation for their learning and estimable qualities," the passage follows, as the reply of Niccoli (already quoted), of the hypocrisy and rascality of all men, consequently, of the hypocrisy and rascality of kings, ministers and their agents and servants. Nay, more: Cosmo de' Medici is made to express his astonishment at the spirit of detraction in Niccoli, but is not surprised ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... and so abused the quality of the tobacco smoked—though admitting its medicinal virtue. Dekker suggests, probably with truth, that one reason why the young gallant liked to push his way to a stool on the stage, notwithstanding "the mewes and hisses of the opposed rascality"—the "mewes" must have been the squeals or whistles produced by the instrument which was later known as a cat-call—was the opportunity such a prominent position afforded for the display of "the best and ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... to his wife, who is in the other room): There! I have given it him in earnest now; I don't think he will forget that thrashing! What do you say?—And I say that you are an injudicious mother! You make excuses for him, and countenance any sort of rascality on his part—Not rascality? What do you call it, then? Slipping out of the house at night, going out in a fishing boat, staying away till well on in the day, and giving me such a horrible fright when I have so much to worry me! And then the young scamp has the audacity to ...
— Pillars of Society • Henrik Ibsen
... rent,' which was indeed but fifty marks, and which was paid, and has carried off 500 milch kine from the poor settlers whom he has planted there, and forcibly thrust him out of possession of a castle. Moreover, the whole Irish estates are likely to come to ruin; for nothing prevails but rascality among the English soldiers, impotence among the governors, and rebellion among the natives. Three thousand Burkes are up in arms; his 'prophecy of this rebellion' ten days ago was laughed at, and now has come ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... women. Even Mrs. Hannaford, though a mother's reasons set her against him, had felt this seductive quality in Olga's lover, and liked though she could not approve of him. Powers of fascination in a man very often go together with lax principle, if not with active rascality; Kite was an instance to the contrary. He had a quixotic sensitiveness, a morbid instinct of honour. If it is true that virile force, preferably with a touch of the brutal, has a high place in the natural woman's heart, none the less does an ideal of ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... and I dread the return of these "labourers," when they are brought back. They bring guns and other things, which enable them to carry out with impunity all kinds of rascality. They learn nothing that can influence them for good. They are like squatters in the bush, coming into the town to have their fling. These poor fellows come back to run riot, steal men's wives, shoot, fight, and use their newly acquired possessions ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... presented bills for nearly $3,000,000 in nine months. The New York Times and the cartoons of Thomas Nast in Harper's Weekly were the chief agents in arousing the people of the city to their situation. The former obtained and published proofs of the rascality of the Ring, mass meetings were held and an election in November, 1871, overturned Tweed and his associates. Some of them fled from the country, while ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... But his rascality is dead: dead but not forgotten! Saints! what a dear sweet life it gave him while it lived, that same rascality. 'Where are the snows of Yester Year?' That is the cry of all the years after, say, four- or ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... stunted little old man, drunk all his life, formerly an upholsterer, then a peddler of quackeries in the shape of four-penny boxes of hangman's grease, to cure pains in the loins,[33114] afterwards chief of the claque in the galleries of the Constituent Assembly and driven out for rascality, restored under the Legislative Assembly, and, under the protection of a groom of the Court, favored with a spot near the Assembly door, to set up a patriotic coffee-shop, then awarded six hundred francs as a recompense, provided with national quarters, appointed inspector of the tribunes, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... aside Napoleon and began to talk about something that interested Eddie Deever far more than all else—Elias Droom himself and such of his experiences as he cared to relate. The rid man told stories about the dark sides of New York life, tales of murder, thievery, rascality high and low, and he told them with blood-curdling directness. The Walker wife-murder; the inside facts of the De Pugh divorce scandal; the Harvey family's skeleton—all food for the dime-novel producer. Eddie revelled in these recitals even while he shuddered at the way in which ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... schemes readily enough, and even marveled that such numbers of them could find sufficient prey to keep them going. Their rascality and general dubiousness was so transparent that he could not understand how any one could be taken ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... life. Even the voice of yonder sturdy woodsman, who has just appeared above the brow of the hill, seems to set in vibration the slumbering chord of some memory of things past; yes, and he is vehemently declaiming to the comely matron who trudges beside him about the rascality of that fellow Cadet, the most rapacious of the greedy underlings of Monsieur the Intendant! Truly it is no other than our friend Jean Baptiste Boulanger, who is just hot from a visit to Quebec on some business pertaining to his craft, and whose fond ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... himself, and, unluckily for Lucien, love shed its magic over the path. The admiration that is given too readily is a sign of want of judgment; a poet ought not to be paid in the same coin as a dancer on the tight-rope. We all felt hurt when intrigue and literary rascality were preferred to the courage and honor of those who counseled Lucien rather to face the battle than to filch success, to spring down into the arena rather than become a trumpet ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... remind me of that base, dishonourable Presbyterian fellow, Bridgenorth," said Sir Geoffrey; "and I would as lief think of a toad:—they say he has turned Independent, to accomplish the full degree of rascality.—I tell you, Gill, I turned off the cow-boy, for gathering nuts in his woods—I would hang a dog that would so much as kill a hare there.—But what is the matter with you? ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... are as lofty as those sung by Homer in his great work, and the characters brought upon the stage still more interesting. I think Hotspur as much of a hero as Hector, and young Henry more of a man than Achilles; and then there is the fat knight, the quintessence of fun, wit, and rascality. Falstaff is a creation beyond the genius even ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... rascality have added to your plausibility. I almost believe you—but not quite. You seem to be extremely vulnerable to feminine blandishments. There's Sally, the milkmaid. Remember that I saw you kiss her with rather more than brotherly ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... twins in rascality of Piso, scurf and famisht of the earth, you before my Veraniolus and Fabullus has that prepuce-lacking Priapus placed? Shall you betimes each day in luxurious opulence banquet? And must my cronies quest for dinner invitations, [lounging] ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... seems not to have occurred to the dupes who pay for it. In the universal madness everybody believes whatever monstrous and obvious falsehood is told by the leaders of his own ytrap, and nobody listens for a moment to the exposures of their rascality. Reason has flown shrieking from the scene; Caution slumbers by the wayside with unbuttoned pocket. It ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... College, in Virginia, there is "a band," says a correspondent, "calling themselves 'Ranters,' formed for the purpose of perpetrating all kinds of rascality and mischievousness, both on their fellow-students and the neighboring people. The band is commanded by one selected from the party, called the Grand Ranter, whose orders are to be obeyed under penalty of expulsion of the person offending. Among the tricks commonly indulged ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... this rascality, it can not appear very creditable to the citizens of Steuben County, that Capt. Helm and Thomas McBirney should both hold high and important offices at the time, and after they had been tried ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... gone. He had found that "that boy" was not to be trifled with. "That boy" had possessed himself of the fearful secret of their evil practices, had probed the mystery of their iniquity, and was ready to come down upon them like an avenging spirit, to expose their rascality, and to publish to the world the story ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... an established principle with our fellow-citizens, that no man is happy, or ought to be, who lives under any other system of government than our own. Let a lawyer pronounce the magic formula, "Liberty to the oppressed," or "Free institutions to the victims of despotism," and, presto!—rascality is metamorphosed into merit. After all, it makes such a difference, when it is only our neighbor's ox ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... superstition. No wonder the Church hated him. At a famous banquet he proposed the toast, "The eradication of the two phylloxeras—the phylloxera of the vine and the phylloxera of the Church." His handbook on the Morality of the Jesuits was a frightful exposure of the duplicity and rascality of priestcraft. About twelve months before Grambetta's death, that great statesman took the chair at one of Paul Bert's atheistical lectures. It was a bold thing to do, but Gambetta was a bold man. ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... done his best to detach the poor doctress from Vizard and his family, in which the reader probably discerns his true motive, now bent his mind on slipping back to Homburg and looking after his money. Not that he liked the job. To get hold of it, he knew he must condense rascality; he must play the penitent, the lover, and the scoundrel over ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... not generally considered a family failing of the Wyndhams. Every other rascality under the ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... "It is rascality! It is monstrous!" squeaked the lieutenant. "It is against the rules of war! What shall I ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... fools seems to be inexhaustible. There can only be one end for such a man as SHEEF. The cool, callous, and calculating knave may get clear through to the end; but SHEEF always was stupidly good-natured, and good-nature hangs like a millstone round the neck of rascality. I cannot myself detest him as I ought to do. He was so near to completely successful respectability. But crookedness ruined him, in spite of his better wishes. Was it ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, February 6, 1892 • Various
... his white colleagues, though Washington had suspicions concerning the fate of certain lambs which had vanished while in his care. Indeed the overseers all and several were suspected from time to time of drunkenness, waste, theft and miscellaneous rascality. In the last of these categories Washington seems to have included their ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... by the window and converse politely with the manners of an educated man. It was thus that the Coupeaus learnt little by little the details of his life. During the last eight years he had for a while managed a hat factory; and when they asked him why he had retired from it he merely alluded to the rascality of a partner, a fellow from his native place, a scoundrel who had squandered all the takings with women. His former position as an employer continued to affect his entire personality, like a title of nobility that ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... are not an attractive class of men, considering them in the light of guardians of the law. With a good deal of pomposity and laziness, they mingle much filth and rascality. The emperor may have great confidence in them, based upon some knowledge of their talents and virtues not shared by casual tourists; but if he would trust one of them with ten kopeks, or agree to place the life ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... what the same writer says of these corrupters. "If it is difficult," says he, "to explain the excesses of the savage, it is also difficult to understand the extent of the greed, the hypocrisy and the rascality of those who supply them with these drinks. The facility for making immense profits which is afforded them by the ignorance and the passions of these people, and the certainty of impunity, are things which they cannot resist; the attraction of gain acts upon them as drunkenness ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... of no use, Judge," answered the darky, "to try to 'splain dis yer thing to yo' 't all. Ef yo' was to try it, like as not yo' would get yer hide full o' shot, an' get no chicken, nuther. Ef yo' wants to engage in any rascality, Judge, yo' better stick to de bench whar yo' ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... pleasant sort of compromise. Why, he asked, did I not pay the bill as it stood, and then, on dismissing my carriage—he had learnt that I was not returning to Catanzaro—deduct as much as I chose from the payment of the driver? A pretty piece of rascality, this, which he would certainly not have suggested but that the driver was a mere boy, helpless himself and bound to render an account to his master. I had to be content with resolutely striking off half the sum charged for the lad's wine (he was supposed to have drunk four litres), and ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... consideration of the treasure which Captain Horn had brought to France from Peru. He considered it from every possible point of view, and when at last he heard of the final disposition which it had been determined to make of the gold, he considered it from the point of his own cupidity and innate rascality. ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... the rarest wines that money could buy. A Madame Jacquieres, who resided at Gros Caillon, near Paris, who was greatly devoted to the Bourbon family, also came under the influence of Bruneau's agents, and finally fell a victim to his rascality. This good lady was an ardent Catholic, and having some lingering doubt as to the honesty of the prisoner of Rouen, in order to its perfect solution she visited many shrines, said many prayers, and personally repaired ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... a shiftless, irresolute way. Unable to see that China had vastly changed, and that government by rascality had become a physical and moral impossibility, the Legations in Peking adopted an attitude of indifference leaving Yuan Shih-kai to wreak his will on the people. The horde of foreign advisers who had been appointed merely as a piece of political ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... humbly submits that, in his poem, no man shall mistake virtue for vice, no man shall allow a single sentiment of pity or admiration to enter his bosom for any character of the piece: it being, from beginning to end, a scene of unmixed rascality performed by persons who never deviate into good feeling. And although he doth not pretend to equal the great modern authors, whom he hath mentioned, in wit or descriptive power; yet, in the point of moral, he meekly believes that he has been their superior; feeling ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... that matter against himself too, for he then and there confessed before everybody that he was no true priest. And as he preached,— what think you?—a young man fired a pistol shot at him for his rascality, as everyone supposed, and when the gendarmes would have taken the assassin, this same Abbe stopped them, and refused to punish HIS OWN SON! What do you think of that for a marvel? And something still more marvellous ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... Bruno during his stay in Paris are "Il Candelajo" and "Umbrae Idearum." The former, says Levi, is a work of criticism and of demolition; in this comedy he sets in groups the principal types of hypocrisy, stupidity, and rascality, and exhibiting them in their true colours, he lashes them with ridicule. In the "Umbrae Idearum" he initiates the work of reconstruction, giving colour to his thought and sketching his idea. The ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... this happened so long ago, I still feel the pain of mere shame when I have to tell you that it was more than a danger: that such rascality often happened; indeed more than once the whole combination seemed dropping to pieces because of it: but at the time of which I am telling, things looked so threatening, and to the workmen at least the necessity of their ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... very old-looking boy, Tom thought. His spine had been deformed through an accident in infancy, and to Tom he was simply a humpback. He had a vague notion that the deformity of Wakem's son had some relation to the lawyer's rascality, of which he had so often heard his ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... Norris, for in spite of his rascality she was sorry that he had fallen into the hands of the ruthless ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... the creatures as mere drones, only injuring the hive by what they cost: but there are others, backward in toil and forward in greed, and these are the captains in villainy: for not seldom can they show that rascality has its advantages. Such as they must be removed, cut out from among us, root and branch. [26] And I would not have you fill their places from our fellow-citizens alone, but, just as you choose your ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... dambd by being smothrd to death in darknesse. But on the very rushes, where the comedy is to daunce, yea and under the state of Cambises himselfe must our fethered Estridge be planted valiantly, because impudently, beating downe the mewes and hisses of opposed rascality" ("Works," ed. Grosart, vol. ii. p. ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... I liked this claim of brotherhood. Not all the warnings which I heard against their rascality could hinder me from feeling kindly towards my fellow-Christians in the East. English travellers, from a habit perhaps of depreciating sectarians in their own country, are apt to look down upon the Oriental Christians as being “dissenters” from the ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... your hats"; and on the right stalked in the gaunt figure of James Henry Monahan. Triumph, animosity and fear marked his night-bird face. Even yet it was hoped the great opponent of his "government," whom by rascality alone he could convict, would strike his colours, and sue for mercy. Even yet it was feared that a rescue would be attempted. How possible the former was, the reader may judge. The latter was rendered impossible by the council ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... Veronica's friendly glances at Carlos, the fact that Rooksby had proposed to Veronica on the very day that Carlos had come again into the neighbourhood with the runners after him. I saw very well that there was no more connection between the Casa Riego and the rascality of Rio Medio than there was between Ralph himself and old drunken Rangsley on Hythe beach. There was ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... guerrilla aspect of the Boer War, and shows how George Ransome is compelled to leave his father's farm and take service with the British. He is given the command of a band of scouts as a reward for gallantry, and with these he punishes certain rebels for a piece of rascality, and successfully attacks Botha's commando. Thanks to his knowledge of the veldt he is of signal service to his country, and even outwits the redoubtable ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... all his rascality he has many curious and interesting ways. In fact, I hardly know another bird that so well repays a season's study; only one must be very patient, and put up with frequent disappointments if he would learn much of a crow's peculiarities by personal observation. ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... that more girls WILL be ruined there? They may take either horn of the dilemma they like, but I beg to state that the issue here raised cannot be obscured by dragging me around with a rope. When Jonah was caught in a scheme of vindictive rascality he thought he "did well to be angry." The best thing the Baylorites can do is to 'fess up and reform—it's too late in the century to suppress truth with six-shooters. I have heard of no "deplorable accidents" at Add-Ran, the Christian college, consequently it has no complaints to file against ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... were utterly ignorant of their late father's affairs,—indeed, with any affairs that did not partake of the nature of "sports." A solicitor "most respectable,"—a phrase that has become almost synonymous with rascality,—a regular church-goer,—accounts kept with scrupulous exactness,—a man of honest face, distinguished for probity of speech and integrity of heart,—what could the Trevannions do? What more than the Smiths and the Browns and the Joneses, who, notwithstanding their presumed greater skill in the ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... 'that every man is as good as another, and a little better.' And he himself always is the better man. The people won't stand that. The 'holier than thou' will defeat a man quicker in this country than will any rascality he ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... involuntary victims. The feeble, characterless man quietly submits to his chains; the bold, generous, strong man breaks his fetters, and helps others to do the same. A very ingenious defence of all kinds of rascality, isn't it?" ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... enemy at its mercy; but pusillanimity, to say that it was also in the game, not having dared to meddle in the first act of danger, takes as its part the second, of blood and massacre. The murders in victories are commonly performed by the rascality and hangers-on of an army, and that which causes so many unheard of cruelties in domestic wars is, that this canaille makes war in imbruing itself up to the elbows in blood, and ripping up a body that lies prostrate at its feet, having no sense ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... will against roguery and cheating, rail as they may at the rapacity and rascality one meets with, I declare and protest, after a good deal of experience, that the world is a very poor world to him who is not the mark of some roguery! When you are too poor to be cheated, you are too insignificant to be cherished; ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... detailing this rascality on the part of Orry, that had reached the King just before that respecting the Abbe d'Estrees. The two disclosed a state of things that could not be allowed any longer to exist. Our ministers, who, step by step, had been deprived of all control over the affairs ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... of his dispatches from a sealed parcel, which was rifled in some unexplained way on its passage home;[61] and finally he even reached the extremity of alleging financial dishonesty in the public business, and insinuated an opinion that the doctor's great rascality indicated an intention never again to revisit his native land. In all this malevolence he found an earnest colleague in the hot-blooded Izard, whose charges against Franklin were unmeasured. "His abilities," ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... by the carelessness or the rascality of the servants in whom he was obliged to trust. He writes in his diary: "Nancy is too uneducated for a housekeeper—indeed, quite a beast." "My precious servants were occupied from seven o'clock till ten trying ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... dear!" replied her grandfather;—"but such little-minded rascality is not just the vice one would expect to find in ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... his demeanor, reviewed his cautious phrases, and had even provided a desperate denunciation, which, when he considered the privileged rascality of his royal auditor, he felt assured would at once conclude the ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... newcomers were garbed in that debonair and "cultured" modishness so dear to the hearts of magazine illustrators. Faces, weak with sunken cheek lines, strong in creases of selfishness, darkened by the brush strokes of nocturnal excesses and seared, all of them with the brand mark of inbred rascality, identified them to Shirley as members of that shrewd class of sycophants who feast on the follies of the more amateurish ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... me, but for the sake of a little money would have condemned me to death. You are a coward, or you would meet your fate boldly. A man who risks so much should not cry out for mercy when his rascality fails. I will not ...
— The Hero of Ticonderoga - or Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys • John de Morgan
... them and surrounded them on all sides, and King Rumzan shouted his war cry, and thus also did his nephew Kanmakan, and ere long they made prize of them all, to the number of near three hundred horsemen, banded together of the refuse of rascality.[FN115] They took what they could find of the merchant's goods and, binding them tightly, brought them to Baghdad, where King Rumzan and his nephew, King Kanmakan, sat down together on one throne and, passing the prisoners in review before them, questioned them of their case and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... Eliza Haywood" and bore her name in full prominently displayed on the title-page. That her signature possessed a distinct commercial value in selling popular fiction was amusingly illustrated by a bit of literary rascality practiced in 1727, when Arthur Bettesworth, the bookseller, issued a chapbook called "The Pleasant and Delightful History of Gillian of Croydon." After a long summary of the contents in small type came the statement, "The Whole done much after the same Method as those celebrated ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... to get as much from every boy as could by possibility be screwed out of him. On this point they were both agreed, and behaved in unison accordingly. The only difference between them was, that Mrs Squeers waged war against the enemy openly and fearlessly, and that Squeers covered his rascality, even at home, with a spice of his habitual deceit; as if he really had a notion of someday or other being able to take himself in, and persuade his own mind that he ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... Amade'us (4 syl), and also of his son and successor Charles Emmanuel, king of Sardinia. He took his color from the king he served; hence under the tortuous, deceitful Victor, his policy was marked with crude rascality and duplicity; but under the truthful, single-minded Charles Emmanuel, he became straightforward and honest.—R. Browning, King Victor ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... half-speculative smile. The letter—that was paramount now. What new venture did the night hold in store for him? What sudden emergency was the Gray Seal called upon to face this time—what role, unrehearsed, without warning, must he play? What story of grim, desperate rascality would the papers credit him with when daylight came? Or would they carry in screaming headlines the announcement that the Gray Seal was caged and caught at last, and in three-inch type tell the world that the ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... nothing but nonsense in Madrid," exclaimed the Centaur violently, accompanying his affirmation with a string of tongue-blistering vocables. "In Madrid there is nothing but rascality. What do they send us soldiers for? To squeeze more contributions out of us and a couple of conscriptions afterward. By all that's holy! if there isn't a rising there ought to be. So you"—he ended, looking banteringly at the young man—"so ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... minute to comprehend the rascality in which he'd been an unconscious partner, but when he finally got it through his head that Jim had substituted the child of a base-born churl for the Earl's daughter, he fairly raged. Threatened him with exposure and arrest if he ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... its enemies charge. If it be popular, or in so far as it is popular, direction is likely to fall to the great persuaders and not to the great directors. Never did a "peoples party" yet escape the control of the unscrupulous. No political movements result in so much political and Social rascality as so-called popular movements originated by earnest and honest men. I see no reason to suppose that the Socialistic direction of industrial affairs in any city would be directed from any other source than the back rooms of the saloons where political movements are now shaped. If the Socialistic ...
— The Inhumanity of Socialism • Edward F. Adams
... all likely he would have attempted anything so bold as that in broad daylight if he had not been drinking too freely, and the very evil "spirit" which had prompted him to his rascality unfitted him for its immediate consequences. These latter, in the shape of Dab Kinzer and the lower "joint" of a stout fishing-rod, had been bounding along up the road from the landing at a tremendous rate ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... Irish Parliament became dominant, intolerance would make itself felt. Not as of old by the fires and tortures of the Inquisition, for nineteenth-century public opinion would not stand that; and not by manifestly illegal means either, but by boycotting, by every species of rascality. How can you expect tolerance from a church the very essence of whose doctrine is intolerance? When everybody outside the pale of that Church is outside the pale of salvation, condemned beforehand to eternal damnation, anything and everything is permissible to compel them to come in. That is ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... cut off from life. It would appear that Jack Ketch the headsman got them when they were rubbed and shining for the feast. We'll not squint upon his writ. It is enough that they were apprehended for some rascality. When he came thumping on his dreadful summons, here they were already set, fopped from shoes to head in the newest whim. Spoon in hand and bib across their knees—lest they fleck their careful fronts—they waited for the anchovy to come. And on a sudden they ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... the rioters have already recommenced their work of destruction. To-day there must be no child's play. Some of the troops under your command should be sent immediately to attack and stop those who have commenced their infernal rascality in Yorkville and Harlem." ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... city, who calls himself E. Andrews, M. D., prints a "semi-occasional" document in the form of a periodical, of which a copy is lying before me. It is an awful hodgepodge of perfect nonsense and vulgar rascality. He calls it "The Good Samaritan and Domestic Physician," and this number is called "volume twenty." Only think what a great man we have among us—unless the Doctor himself is mistaken. He says: "I will ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... to work—would work now if I was able. And I'd rather work in the field any day as work in the house. The people where I lived can tell you how I worked. I didn't make my living by rascality. I worked like my father raised me. Oh, I haven't forgot how my old ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Arkansas Narratives Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... caste. I've a notion"—the Resident leaned back and searched the shadows for an eavesdropper—"I've a notion," he continued, lowering his voice, "that the Rana has got himself in rather deep in some rascality or other, and wants to get out before he's put out. There's bazaar gossip.... Hmm! Do you speak ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... must suffer, it may go hard with me: but here's the devil on't, there's a great man, and a holy man too, concerned with me; now, if I confess, he'll be sure to escape between his greatness and his holiness, and I shall be murdered, because of my poverty and rascality. ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... London, and was partly designed by Inigo Jones, who built the west side, called the Arch Row; the east side was bounded by the garden wall of Lincoln's Inn; on the north was Holborn Row; the south side was Portugal Row. The history of Lincoln's Inn Fields is a curious combination of rascality and of aristocracy. The rascals infested the fields, which were filled with wrestlers, rogues and cheats, pick-pockets, cripples and footpads; the aristocrats occupied the stately houses on the west side. Among the residents here were Lord ...
— The Strand District - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... heavy toil to earn kopeks,—and we shall be amazed that all these people should remain working people, and that they do not all of them take to an easier method of getting gain,—by trading, peddling, acting as middlemen, begging, vice, rascality, and even robbery. Why, we, the participants in that never-ceasing orgy which goes on in town, can become so accustomed to our life, that it seems to us perfectly natural to dwell alone in five huge apartments, heated ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... then, as in those times, the sound of arms, but all tending to far other ends than the welfare of a reigning family, or to satisfy the revengeful whim of a royal mistress, or the bigotry of a monarch. Public opinion has its say now in all things. Even the rascality of which the conservative complains is individual rascality for private aims, tempered by public opinion, and no longer the sublimely organized rascality of all power and government. Do these things prove nothing? Do they ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... for that side," as the other towns had done. Of course they stuck to the bad people part of the legend; but I was getting quite callous as to the moral character of new acquaintances, feeling sure that for good solid murderous rascality several of my old Fan acquaintances, and even my own party, would take a lot of beating; and yet, one and all, they had behaved well to me. Esoon gave me to understand that of all the Sodoms and Gomorrahs that town of Egaja was an easy first, and it would hardly ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... the police. You can't hope to hide it for more than a day or two longer. Your firm is bankrupt through the rascality of a partner. He's gone with all the money he could scrape together. He converted everything into cash; he lied, swindled, stole, and skipped. And what he didn't take must remain to satisfy the firm's creditors. You can't conceal conditions, slyly pocket what Puma has left and then call in an ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... most unnatural crimes is beyond computation. A wide-spread and deep-seated dishonesty and corruption has, like some poisonous virus, inoculated the great body of our public men in national, state, and municipal positions, so much so that rascality seems to be the rule, and honesty the exception. Real statesmanship has departed from amongst us; neither the men nor the principles of the ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... hugeness of great crimes; he wished to equal the worst. This striving after the horrible has given him a special place to himself in the menagerie of tyrants. Petty rascality trying to emulate deep villainy, a little Nero swelling himself to a huge Lacenaire; such is this phenomenon. Art for art, ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... Keith to determine he would uncover this rascality,—his desire to repay Hawley, and his interest in the girl rescued on the Salt Fork. This gossamer web of intrigue into which he had stumbled unwittingly was nothing to him personally; had it not involved both Hawley ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... Merton to write for me, and will explain to him, as well as I can, the depth, and the blackness, and the cruelty,—the unfathomable, heathen cruelty, together with the falsehoods, the premeditated lies, and the general rascality on all subjects,—of my son Augustus. I will explain to him that, of all men I know, he is the least trustworthy. I will explain to him that, if led in a matter of such importance by Augustus Scarborough, he will be ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... in a row, hunched up against the bare wall, waiting their turn to perform. Then suddenly he shook his head, tucked in his chin and laughed. His whole face was transformed from craven fear to vivacious rascality. While he laughed he looked at Batouch, who was ordering four cups of coffee from the negro attendant. The poet took no notice. For the moment he was intent upon his professional duties. But when the coffee was brought, and set upon a round wooden stool between ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... cove's a yokel; ta'nt creditable to waste science on him. You're my man, if you please, sir,'—and the little wiry lump of courage and conceit, rascality and good humour, flew at Lancelot, who was twice his size, 'with a heroism worthy of a better cause,' as respectable papers, when they are not too frightened, ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... riff-raff, then "his position is found out by those who want to use him. He is for sale to the highest bidder, either to defeat his own party by treachery, or to procure a nomination for any scoundrel who will pay for it. He has no politics of any kind. He has rascality to sell, and there are those who are willing to purchase it, in order that they may traffic in it, and sell it to themselves again at a very high profit.... We have heard of a case in one of the Lower Wards of the city, in which ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... realistic are not so real as his tragedies. They are, as he himself insists, entertainments; to which jovial sensuality, witty falsehood, and even hypocrisy when it is not morose are admitted, as diverting in their very aberration from the mean rule of life. So that a touch of rascality is a genuine element in comedy, as a touch of danger in sport, and the provocation of the moral sense is part of the fun. But they are all under guard. The moment they pass a certain boundary and break into reality, the moment that intemperance leads to disorder, and vice to suffering, as in ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... slink. Upon occasions 'twas manifest to all the world that following evil he walked in shame and terror. These times were periodic, as shall be told: wherein, because of his simplicity, which was unspoiled—whatever the rascality he was in the way of practising—he would betray the features of hang-dog villany, conceiving all the while that he had ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... to this confession with an interest that outweighed the aversion he felt for these—not uncommon—manoeuvres of Galician traders. He contented himself with saying to the delinquent, "Your rascality has cost Mr. Schroeter a wounded arm; and, had we not appeared upon the scene, you would have stolen from us twenty ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... years (1734-1744) Diderot's history is the old tale of hardship and chance; of fine constancy and excellent faith, not wholly free from an occasional stroke of rascality. For a time he earned a little money by teaching. If the pupil happened to be quick and docile, he grudged no labour, and was content with any fee or none. If the pupil happened to be dull, Diderot never came again, and preferred going supperless to ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... of the chief journals of India (the Pioneer) shows that in some respects the native of to-day is just what his ancestor was then. Here are niceties of so subtle and delicate a sort that they lift their breed of rascality to a place among the fine arts, and almost ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Barter had a prodigious idea of this gentleman's astuteness. He had no particular belief in his honesty, and he believed him, not altogether unreasonably as the sequel proved, to be initiated into most of the mysteries of modern rascality. This was merely a general notion, based upon statements made by Steinberg himself, and supported by the opinion of his intimates. Nobody spoke ill of Steinberg; it was only understood that there was no move upon the board with which he was not familiar. Young Barter, meeting him one evening ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... advantage of a larger ownership and of a more equitable distribution of profits, and at the same time a better service to the commonwealth. We believe that the administration should be for the benefit of the many; and that greed and rascality, practiced on a large scale, should be punished as relentlessly as if practiced on ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... body of horsemen to give him an honourable reception on his return to Kukawa. Here he had to remain four months, greatly troubled by financial difficulties, and finding that a considerable portion of his property had been stolen by the rascality of one of his servants. His health, too, ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... it. All them secret confabs an' trickery to win votes can't be on the square. Don't talk to me! Politics is another name for rascality!" ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work • Edith Van Dyne
... knew for whom those missiles had been intended and from whom they had come. It was a clever piece of rascality. Had the assassin succeeded, punishment would ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... to Lavalette to prepare the way, and in the afternoon he took me to see him. I was well enough pleased to see the man, whose rascality had destroyed the infamous work of many years. He welcomed me with great politeness, and as soon as we were alone he shewed me ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt |
