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More "Cunning" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... holiness holy? And are justice and holiness opposed to one another?'—'Then justice is unholy.' Protagoras would rather say that justice is different from holiness, and yet in a certain point of view nearly the same. He does not, however, escape in this way from the cunning of Socrates, who inveigles him into an admission that everything has but one opposite. Folly, for example, is opposed to wisdom; and folly is also opposed to temperance; and therefore temperance and wisdom are the same. And holiness has been already admitted ...
— Protagoras • Plato
... pageant of Shakespeare imitated; his use of the word road ("This Doll Tearsheet should be some road") illustrated; mentioned in Captain Underwit Sharpe, play at. (Cf. Swetnam the Woman Hater, 1620, sig. G. 3:— "But cunning Cupid forecast me to recoile: For when he plaid at sharpe I had the foyle.") Shellain Sherryes Ship, the great Shipwreck by land Shirley, James, author of Captain Underwit; quoted Shoulder pack't Shrovetide, hens thrashed at ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... reflection I was about to shut my window, when suddenly I perceived, in a spot of sunshine on my right, the shadow of two pricked-up ears; then a paw advanced, then the head of a tabby-cat showed itself at the corner of the gutter. The cunning fellow was lying there in wait, hoping the crumbs would bring ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... don't know. They're half-wild sort of fellows—very cunning, and all that sort of thing. I daresay I should have done as they did if I had been a gipsy. But, never mind that now. They'll keep away from Greythorpe ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... cried Frederick, painfully agitated "Yes, yes, Rose will be yours; how came I, unhappy wretch that I am, ever to hope for such happiness?" "You are forgetting, my brother," Reinhold went on to say; "you are forgetting that Rose herself has not confirmed this, which our cunning Master Martin no doubt is well aware of. True it is that Rose has always shown herself kind and charming towards me, but a loving heart betrays itself in other ways. Promise me, brother, to remain quiet for three days longer, and to go to ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... Dominie, with great complacency, 'I did wrestle, and was not overcome, though my adversary was cunning in his art.' ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... influences and ways of acting, and to work as near as 'tis possible incognito; upon which supposal it is easy to conceive a reason why they most commonly work by and upon the weak and the ignorant, who can make no cunning observations or tell credible tales to detect their artifice.'[46] The act of bewitching is defined to be 'a supernatural work contrived between a corporal old woman and a spiritual devil' ('Discoverie,' vi. 2). The method of initiation is, according to a writer on the ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... turned it loose to graze. Then he sat down in the shade of a tree, while the others still held guard over the narrow pass. He had made up his mind that he would not offer them money. He would watch his chance to outwit them, he would match his intelligence against their cunning, his patience against their brute force. It would be worth a week's captivity to turn the tables on these two rogues and get back to civilization in time to set at work the police machinery of a hundred cities, so that, whatever ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... and kept him on the qui vive for any word, or look, or circumstance that might give him a clew to the mystery. And thus it followed that with a mother so simple and unguarded as Valerie, and a son so cunning and watchful as Archibald, the secret she wished to keep be soon discovered. But he kept his own counsel for the sake of gaining still more information. And, at length, the full revelation and confirmation of all that he had suspected came to him in a manner and ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... grilling by the keen, astute Hemingway. Dick and his chums told what they had heard Tip say before they pounced upon him. Tip, who was a round-headed, short, square-shouldered fellow of twenty-four, possessed more of the cunning of the prize ring than the cleverness of the ...
— The High School Freshmen - Dick & Co.'s First Year Pranks and Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... my eyes. She sat down, spread a square of clean fringed linen upon the ground, and laid out crusty rounds of buttered bread that were fragrant in the springing fragrance of the woods, firm slices of cold meat, and a cunning pastry which instantly maddened me. I was ashamed ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... Esau was a cunning hunter, a man of the field; and Jacob was a plain man, dwelling in tents. And Isaac loved Esau; but ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... bright, Dolly. He's cunning, like some animals, and that makes him seem cleverer than he is. But I think that he really just acts by instinct most of the time, and that that's one reason he's ...
— The Camp Fire Girls on the Farm - Or, Bessie King's New Chum • Jane L. Stewart
... weakness and cunning; and the strong, though ignorant, Barbarian was often entangled in the net of sacerdotal policy. The Vatican and Lateran were an arsenal and manufacture, which, according to the occasion, have produced or concealed a various collection of false or genuine, of corrupt or ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... cunning of the fox, the brutality of Cain, using modern science and invention! Feint and draw your enemy into a cul-de-sac; screen your flank attacks; mask your batteries and hold their fire till the infantry charge is ripe for decimation! ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... seen, the pirate of the brook— The pike, whose jaunty hulk denotes his speed— Swings pivoting about, with wary look Of low and cunning greed. ...
— Riley Farm-Rhymes • James Whitcomb Riley
... manner of streams or currents, by fair things or persons visibly present—green fields, for instance, or children's faces—into the air around them, acting, in the case of some peculiar natures, like potent material essences, and conforming the seer to themselves as with some cunning physical necessity. This theory,* in itself so fantastic, had however determined in a range of methodical suggestions, altogether quaint here and there from their circumstantial minuteness. And throughout, the possibility of some vision, as ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... attributed by mankind to the instinctive nobleness and generosity of the spirit of chivalry; but, in reality, as is indeed too often the case with the pretended nobleness and generosity of rude and violent men, a cunning and far-seeing selfishness lay at the bottom ...
— Richard I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... deep. One of the nurses, however, volunteered for the journey, and I arranged to carry her on a second komatik, while my driver broke the path with our impedimenta. Things did not go altogether well. Since I have enjoyed the luxury of a driver, or a "carter" as we call them, my cunning in wriggling a komatik at full speed down steep mountain-sides through trees has somewhat waned. Comparatively early in the day we looped the loop—and we were both heavy weights. It was nearly dark when we reached the last lap—an enormous bay with a direct ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... wilderness lay his road and his destiny; out of it he must win his way, by strategy, by cunning, by violence — creep out, lie his way out, shoot his way out — it scarcely mattered. He was going out! He was going back to life once more. Who could forbid him? Who stop him? Who deny him, now, when, in his pockets, he held all that ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... threaten to split the door with an axe if not immediately opened.' I begged her to say no more, for I was well acquainted with all such matters—to leave the ladies and everything else to my management. She said 'Yes; but do not ruin us: be artful and cunning, or Mr. White may be hanged and all our houses burnt over our heads.' We both secretly returned, she to the room where the young ladies were, and I to the piazza I had just left."*1* This little narrative will give some idea of the straits to which the ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... without delay the realization of that one idea which now possessed him—a crock of gold. When he put together one thing and another, he considered it almost certain that Ben had flung away among the lot no mere honey-pot, but perhaps indeed a money-pot: Burke hadn't half the cunning of a child; more fool he, and maybe so much the better for me, thought money-bitten, selfish Roger. Thus, in the night's hot imaginations, he resolved to find the spoil; to will, was then to do: to do, was then to conquer. However, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... immediate attendants, who thereupon kissed their hands with a grave face, and pressed them to their hearts. Then one of the girls, leaving the apartment for a moment, returned with a nargileh of crystal, set by the most cunning artists of Damascus in a framework of golden filigree crusted with precious stones. She presented the flexible silver tube, tipped with amber, to the lady, who, waving her hand that the room should be cleared, smoked a confection of roses and rare nuts, while she listened to a volume ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... you prefer, as I suspect, To philosophize, why, then, reflect: If the cunning rascal upon the limb Hadn't tempted her ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... field-rat of Martinique is, in Martinique folk-lore, the symbol of all cunning, and probably ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... possession of the Lodge of Antiquity, at London, that "no Master or Fellow shall supplant others of their work; that is to say, that, if he hath taken a work, or else stand Master of any work, that he shall not put him out, unless he be unable of cunning to make an end of his work." And, hence, no lodge can pass or raise a candidate who was initiated, or initiate one who was rejected, in another lodge. "It would be highly improper," says the Ahiman Rezon, "in any lodge, to confer a degree on a Brother who is not of their house-hold; for, every ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... barrow, mixed myself a glass of whisky, sat beside it for half an hour, and then aroused the servants. I was cunning, sir; and no one could trace my footprints on the turf and rock of Woeful Ness. The missing hand-bag, and the disarray I had been careful to make in the bed-room, provided them at once with a clue—but it did not lead them to the Quick-Boy. For two days they searched; ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... her arms swinging listlessly at her side. A spy, this man to whom she had joyously given the flower of her heart and soul? There was some mistake; there must be some mistake. She shivered; for the word spy carried with it all there was in deceit, treachery, cunning. In war time she knew that spies were necessary, that brave men took perilous hazards, without reward, without renown; but in times of peace nothing but opprobrium covered the word. A political scavenger, the man she loved? No; there ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... have helped her over a temporary difficulty, but when she found the house the servants told her he was away. She confided these things, leaning in Charlie's arms on a little striped divan by a gas fire. She made him a drink, and showed him the cunning and luxurious little contrivances for comfort about the flat. He loved it. She didn't try to conceal from him her real vocation, for that would have been too silly. Even Charlie might not have been such ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... Shag—"at the Pound; I know that death-trap. Half a Herd I lost there once through the conceit of a young Bull hardly out of the Spike Horn age. Well I know the Pound—even the old Indian of deep cunning who made it, Chief Poundmaker—that's how he came by his name, A'tim. But, as I was saying, when I tried to turn the Herd, knowing what was meant, this Calf Bull led a part of them straight into the very trap. Served him right, ...
— The Outcasts • W. A. Fraser
... kindle the peaks of Loch-na-Gar; tell me my heart does not beat, and I will believe you; but do not tell me the Bible is not divine. I have found its truth illuminating my footsteps; its consolations sustaining my heart. May my tongue cleave to my mouth's roof and my right hand forget its cunning, if I every deny what is my deepest inner experience, that this blessed book is the book of God.'"—"Church Before ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... prepares for himself, and knows how to cast up dikes around it, to preserve himself by the neighbouring inundation. Another, like a mole, has so pointed and so sharp a snout, that in one moment he pierces through the hardest ground in order to provide for himself a subterranean retreat. The cunning fox digs a kennel with two holes to go out and come in at, that he may not be either surprised or trapped by the huntsmen. The reptiles are of another make. They curl, wind, shrink, and stretch by the springs of ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... understand the freedom of an American girl, or that an heiress may have something else to do with her money than to expend it on the Baron's mortgages. But"—he stopped, and his simple, honest face assumed an air of profound and sagacious cunning—"I am glad to talk about it with you, who of course are perfectly familiar with the affair. I shall now be able to know what to say. My word, my friend, has some weight here, and I shall use it. And now you ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... Leghorn, he repaired to the house of a Jew, a dealer in precious stones, to whom he disposed of four of his smallest diamonds for five thousand francs each. Dantes half feared that such valuable jewels in the hands of a poor sailor like himself might excite suspicion; but the cunning purchaser asked no troublesome questions concerning a bargain by which he gained a round profit of at ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... well as a likeness to all the characters—heroes and villains impartially—who figured therein, just as a suspicious man finds in himself the signs of every possible disease when reading a book on medicine. I took pleasure both in the cunning designs, the glowing sentiments, the tumultuous events, and the character-drawing of these works. A good man was of the goodness, a bad man of the badness, possible only to the imagination of early youth. Likewise ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... opening to democratic influences. But the consular office he left untouched; because all its power was transferred to the imperator, by the entire command of the army, and by the new organization of the provincial governments. [Footnote: In no point of his policy was the cunning or the sagacity of Augustus so much displayed, as in his treaty of partition with the senate, which settled the distribution of the provinces, and their future administration. Seeming to take upon himself all the trouble and hazard, he did in effect appropriate all the power, and left to ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... based on the well-known facts that man-eating tigers are few, and exceptionally wary and cunning. The conditions which predispose a tiger to man-eating have been much discussed. It seems to be established that the animals which seek human prey are generally, though not invariably, those which, owing to old wounds ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... came out of the field of Bostworth a vistor, and ascended the throne of a nation whose leading nobles had been swept away. The sword had vied with the axe. Henry VII. was prudent and cunning; and in the absence of any preponderating oligarchical influence, planted the heel of the sovereign upon the necks of the nobles. He succeeded where the Plantagenets had failed. His accession became the advent of a series of measures which altered most materially the system of landholding. ...
— Landholding In England • Joseph Fisher
... instance) refused to accompany him—when the Thebans were being worsted and had lost a battle, and a trophy had been erected to celebrate their defeat—it was impossible for him to cross the Pass, if you rallied to its defence; and that if he made the attempt he would regret it, unless some cunning could be called in to aid him. How then, he asked, can I avoid open falsehood, and yet accomplish all that I wish without appearing perjured? How can it be done? It can be done, if I can get some of the Athenians to deceive the Athenians. ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes
... words was apparent to all. It was chance and not their cunning that had saved them from discovery. Had the owner of the camel but continued another hundred yards along the beach, he could not have failed to see the double "trail" made by the sailor, and of course would have followed it to the spot where they ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... Welsh fairies had learned the trick of catching farthings, pennies and sixpences from the folks who have more curiosity in them than even fairies do. These human beings, cunning fellows that they are, let the curtain fall on a show, just at the most interesting part. Then they tell you to come next day and find out what is to happen. Or, as they say in a story paper, "to be continued ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... purpose, suddenly set Niagara pouring very near the spot where it is pouring now; laid the various strata, and sprinkled the fossils through them like plums through a pudding; scratched the glacial grooves upon the rocks, and did a vast multitude of things, subtle and cunning, little and great, in all parts of the world, required to delude geologists of modern times into the conviction that all these things were the result of a steady progress through long epochs. On a similar plan, Mr. Southall proposed, at the very beginning of his ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... There was cunning in the plans of the pursuers of Mrs. McNamara's burglar this time. Three of them, each aided by several eager volunteers, dashed around Mertonville, searching every shop in which any sort of face-blacking might be used, and Deacon Abrams himself went to the station with a justice of the peace, ...
— Crowded Out o' Crofield - or, The Boy who made his Way • William O. Stoddard
... the birds are doing on every farm, in every garden, and about every home in the land. Think of the millions of beautiful wings, of the graceful and attractive figures, of the cunning nests, and of the singing throats! Do you think that the whole service of the birds is to be beautiful, to sing charmingly, and to rear their little ones? By no means is this their chief service to man. Aside from these services the greatest work of birds is to destroy insects. ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett
... died, you shall send home into this realme certaine Mowsters or pieces of Shew to be brought to the diers hall, there to be shewed, partly to remooue out of their heads, the tootoo great opinion they haue concerned of their owne cunning, and partly to mooue them for shame to endeuour to learne more knowledge to the honour of their countrey of England, and to the vniuersall benefit ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, v5 - Central and Southern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... me why you let that cunning man of the world, Colonel Vaughan, give you ten shillings? This has been on my mind for six or seven years, and I have never had an opportunity of getting it off before. You know if you won't have me for a lover, you may for ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... with the carob, apricot, and walnut. In all directions the grade sloped gently from the centre, where there was a reservoir, or deep marble basin, broken at intervals by little gates which, when raised, emptied the water into sluices bordering the walks—a cunning device for the rescue of the place from the aridity too prevalent elsewhere ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... in the lists in full armour Richard stopped the fight, and to preserve peace, as he said, banished Norfolk for life and Hereford for ten years, a term which was soon reduced to six. There was something of the unwise cunning of ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... must feel of it!—the cunning baby horse!" and down went Bab inside the rope to pat and admire the pretty creature, while its mother smelt suspiciously at the brown hat, and baby lazily opened one eye to see what was ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... kinds—the Rusa or Sambur (Rusa Aristotelis), the Kijang or roe, and the Plandok, or mousedeer, the latter a delicately shaped little animal, smaller and lighter than the European hare. With the natives it is an emblem of cunning, and there are many short stories illustrating its supposed more than human intelligence. Wild pig, the Sus barbatus, a kind distinct from the Indian animal, and, I should say, less ferocious, is a pest all over Borneo, breaking down fences and destroying ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... against eating cares, Lap me in soft Lydian airs, Married to immortal verse; Such as the meeting soul may pierce, In notes, with many a winding bout Of linked sweetness long drawn out, With wanton heed and giddy cunning, The melting voice through mazes running, Untwisting all the chains that tie The hidden soul of harmony; That Orpheus' self may heave his head From golden slumber on a bed Of heap'd Elysian flowers, and hear ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... this book which I have translated after mine author, as nigh as God hath given me cunning, to whom be given the laud and praises ... I have practised and learned, at my great charge and dispense, to ordain this said book in print, after the manner and form as ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 38, Saturday, July 20, 1850 • Various
... patience and humility of Law's reply.[599] As for the Moravians, not Warburton, nor Lavington, nor Stinstra, nor Duncombe, ever used stronger words against 'these most dangerous of the Antinomians—these cunning hunters.'[600] Count Zinzendorf, on the other hand, published a notice that his people had ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... of April, 1802, and in his sixty-ninth year, he sunk into his chair and expired. "Thus in one hour (says his affectionate biographer) was extinguished that vital light, which the preceding hour had shone in flattering brightness, promising duration; (such is often the cunning flattery of nature), that light, which through half a century, had diffused its radiance and its warmth so widely; that light in which penury had been cheered, in which science had expanded; to whose orb poetry had brought all her images; before whose influence disease had continually retreated, ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... impossible to raise the Indian to the standard of the white man. The head chief of the Winnebagoes was well known to me, and we became fast friends. He was a friendly man to all the settlers, but I knew the characteristics of the Indian well enough to trust none of them. He never overcomes the cunning and trickery in his nature and I learned to know that when he seemed most amiable and ingratiating was the time to look out for some deviltry. The Indians were great gamblers, the squaws especially. They would gamble away everything they owned, ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... Mr. Higgins, the new District Commissioner for Takwa, entered Tumento about 3 P.M. The carriers hired in addition to my canoe-men would now be wanted, said the cunning old chief, for the 'Government man,' with whom he wished to stand well. As the porters had received an advance of pay I objected to this proceeding. The fresh arrivals had to find other hands, and were not very successful in the search. Their detachment ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... many of thy kith and kind, Dug from thy native Asiatic clay, Fashioned by cunning hand and curious mind Into all shapes and features, grave ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... hundred times save one, On the sarcophagus, by cunning hand, Then lined with gold ere they pronounced it done; But then the grandest tomb in ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant
... sometimes been said that the style of Browning is essentially undramatic, that Pompilia, Guido, and the lawyers all talk in the same way, that is, like Browning. As a matter of fact nothing is more remarkable than the variety of style, the cunning adjustment of language and of rhythm to the requirements of every speaker. From the general construction of the rhythm to the mere similies and figures of speech employed in passing, each monologue is absolutely individual, and, though each monologue ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... and he was greatly perplexed as to what to do. On the one hand, he was tempted by the prospect of wealth; on the other hand, he knew that the sorcerer must have derived his knowledge from devils, and he feared to have anything to do with the powers of darkness. The cunning man strove hard to persuade him, and at length made him promise to shew the place where ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... having been careful to teach her how to live by her talons. Preciosa was rich in hymns, ballads, seguidillas, sarabands, and other ditties, especially romances, which she sang with peculiar grace; for the cunning grandmother knew by experience that such accomplishments, added to the youth and beauty of her granddaughter, were the best means of increasing her capital, and therefore she failed not to promote their cultivation in every way she could. Nor was the aid ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... acknowledged him as the chiefest among their football-kickers. He has the simple frankness of a man who feels himself to be perfectly sound in bodily, mental, and moral structure; and his self-revelation is a thousand times nobler than the assumed impersonality which is a common trick with cunning speakers who never forget their own interests. Thus it is, that, wherever Mr. Beecher goes, everybody feels, after he has addressed them once or twice, that they know him well, almost as if they had always known him; and there is not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... wind mills were very small indeed; and there were two or three which looked so "cunning," as Rollo said, that he wished very much that he had one of them to ...
— Rollo in Holland • Jacob Abbott
... poet's dream, He forms a scene beyond Elysium blest — Where sculptur'd elegance and native grace Unite to stamp the beauties of the place, 5 While sweetly blending still are seen The wavy lawn, the sloping green — While novelty, with cautious cunning, Through ev'ry maze of fancy running, From China borrows aid to deck the scene — 10 There, sorrowing by the river's glassy bed, Forlorn, a rural bard complain'd, All whom Augusta's bounty fed, All whom her clemency sustain'd; ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... be tolerably handsome, and has any share of cunning, the apprentice or her master's son is enticed away and ruined by her. Thus many good families are impoverished and disgraced by these pert sluts, who, taking the advantage of a young man's simplicity and ...
— Everybody's Business is Nobody's Business • Daniel Defoe
... treachery which accompanied their departure. But when the Japanese saw that he was going out of this port and that their design was known, they had recourse to arms, trying to do by force what they had not been able to do by cunning. But our men defended themselves so well, inflicting some loss on those of that kingdom, that they returned to these islands, which was a very fortunate outcome. Those who were left there, not being able ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson
... one of its passages is quoted with unction in many a shooting party. "Johnson, who was placed forward, again stood under a canopy of pheasants, and shot with brilliant success into the gaps.... The only theory which is accepted as explaining the catastrophe is one that imputes a malignant cunning to the birds." ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... Anselmo. He was shrewd and prudent, Wisdom and cunning had their shares of him; But he was shrewish as a wayward child, And pleased again by toys which childhood please; As-book of fables, graced with print of wood, Or else the jingling of a rusty medal, Or the rare melody of some old ditty, ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... was landless and penniless but for that one promise; and as for the sword, he said, he was but as a child playing before the sword of Don Alderon. And this Don Alderon said was in no wise so, though there were a few cunning passes that he had learned, hoping that the day might come for him to do God a service thereby by slaying some of the Moors: and heartily he gave his consent and felicitation. But this Rodriguez would not have: "Come with me," he said, "to the forest to the place where I met this man, and ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... figure like thine, such a hand, such an eye, Most brilliant accomplishments, statuesque face, Manners, carriage distingu and queenlike in grace,— Nothing wanting whatever, save only a heart, But, instead, double portions of cunning and art. ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... yet it thrilled the hearer. His face seemed the epitome of cunning, and the captain recoiled from it ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... Said the cunning spider to the fly: "Dear friend, what can I do To prove the warm affection I've always felt for you? I have within my pantry good store of all that's nice; I'm sure you're very welcome—will you please to take a slice?" "Oh no, no," said the little fly; "kind sir, that cannot be: I've heard what's ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... by discovering their histories and affairs, and, where facts failed, calling in the aid of fancy; and when there was nothing more to be discovered or invented, to lighten their money-chests by all the tyranny that power dare venture on, or the effrontery that cunning could devise and execute. Their curiosity regarding Tchitchikof was soon baffled, by discovering, like Socrates, that all they knew was, that nothing could be known. In vain did mine host essay to pump him: with a show of the most voluble confidence, Tchitchikof contrived always virtually ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 460 - Volume 18, New Series, October 23, 1852 • Various
... be true; and if so, they are a compound of every thing that is terrific in the rudest of the species, and of every thing that is odious in human nature, when corrupted to the extreme. Desperadoes in courage, and gluttons in revenge, they have also the low cunning and the treacherous plausibility with all the licentious propensities of the most designing and profligate of mankind. Their advancement in the arts which render life comfortable, and sometimes, too, embellish even vice, cannot in any measure redeem ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... place full of slackers, of lazy good-nature, of inefficiency. Into that softness he had come with a high explosive and an aim. He moved through life as a hunter among a covey of tame partridges—a brief flutter and a tumble of soft flesh. He had the cunning lines about the mouth, the glint in the eye, of the successful man. He had the easy generosities, too, of the man who, possessing much, can express power by endowing helpless things which he happens to like. There was an abundant sentiment in him, sentiment about his daughter and his flag, ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... his agent in Germany, to exert himself to induce the Protestant princes to send "special messengers" to England and persuade Elizabeth to join in "a confederacy of all parts professing the Gospel." In fact, the cunning secretary of state went even farther, and dictated to Mundt just what he should write to the queen. He was to tell her Majesty "that if she did not attempt the furtherance of the Gospel in France, and the keeping asunder of France and Spain, she would be in ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... wings, while the father-bird sat on the topmost bough of the apple-tree and sang to them. In time they grew and grew, and, instead of a nest full of little red mouths, there was a nest full of little, fat, speckled robins, with round, bright, cunning eyes, just like their parents; and the children began to ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... trade, pen and ink, and their account-books. The Gahois are Vaishnava Hindus, and abstain from all flesh and alcoholic liquor. They trade in grain and groceries, and are bankers and moneylenders. They are considered to be cunning in business, and a proverb says that a Gahoi will ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... it,—and there are all manner of things. In power of expression I pronounce it to be supreme; never did anybody who had such things to explain explain them better. And the bit of Egypt'n mythology, the cunning Dreams ab't Pthah, Neith, etc., apart from their elucidative quality, wh'h is exquisite, have in them a poetry that might fill any Tennyson with despair. You are very dramatic too; nothing wanting in the stage-direct'ns, in the pretty little indicat'ns: a very pretty ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... for a woman, even if she were born close to a throne, to acquire before the age of five-and-twenty the encyclopaedic knowledge of trifles, the practice of manoeuvring, the important small things, the musical tones and harmony of coloring, the angelic bedevilments and innocent cunning, the speech and the silence, the seriousness and the banter, the wit and the obtuseness, the diplomacy and the ignorance which make ...
— Another Study of Woman • Honore de Balzac
... such as swerve in faith With them, who, as our wise Apostle saith, Entangled are at unawares, with those Cunning to trap, to snare, and to impose By falsifyings, their prevarications: No, these are slyly taken from their stations, Unknown to nature; yea, in judgment they Think they have well done to forsake ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... and a look of cunning gradually pervaded the fellow's features. "No!" he said, "I've never found any of those things, but if you'll give me your word to say nothing about it, I'll show you something I once dug up over yonder ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... "What a cunning fellow you are!" said the Otter. "But, holloa, are you going off on the sly?" Yes, surely the ...
— Seven Little People and their Friends • Horace Elisha Scudder
... are some sins that cannot be taken away—the sins of faithless women, the "LITTLE" sins as they are called nowadays—for we have grown very lenient in some things, and very severe in others. We will imprison the miserable wretch who steals five francs from our pockets, but the cunning feminine thief who robs us of our prestige, our name and honorable standing among our fellow-men, escapes almost scot-free; she cannot be put in prison, or sentenced to hard labor—not she! A pity it is that Christ ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... wheat scattered in the basket. The number caught at once, is frequently more than theory would suggest; the contentions of a few that have entered, seldom failing to bring others to the combat. These mischievous birds, however, soon grow too cunning to be taken in any sort of trap to any extent, which has a chance of extirpating and destroying the race; consequently some more effectual and certain plan, such as that suggested above, or some other, ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... love will show; he is a bounteous man;"— And so they let Gayferos go, and turned them to Galvan. The heart and the small finger upon the board they laid, And of Gayferos' slaughter a cunning ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... to let out spirits and copper-colored birds which killed the farm animals. They also stole babies, leaving in their place changelings, goblins who were old in wickedness while still in the cradle, possessing superhuman cunning and skill in music. One way of getting rid of these demon children was to ill-treat them so that their people would come for them, bringing the right ones back; or one might boil egg-shells in the sight of the changeling, who ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... tansies run Nor weather-wisest bird gone home. How then Should wry eels in the pebbled shallows ken Lightning coming? troubled up they stole To the deep-shadowed sullen water-hole, Among whose warty snags the quaint perch lair. As cunning stole the boy to angle there, Muffling least tread, with no noise balancing through The hangdog alder-boughs his bright bamboo. Down plumbed the shuttled ledger, and the quill On the quicksilver ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... pity the Bee— For a cunning old hypocrite spider was he— "I'm sorry to see you so poorly," he said; And he whispered his wife, "He will ...
— The Diving Bell - Or, Pearls to be Sought for • Francis C. Woodworth
... enormities in France, was extremely prodigal and vicious; of a dark melancholy complexion, and cloudy countenance, such as in vulgar physiognomy is called an ill look. For the rest, his talents were very mean, having a sort of inferior cunning, but very small abilities; so that a great man of the late m[inist]ry, by whom he was invited over,[10] and with much discretion raised at first step from a profligate popish priest to a lieutenant-general, and colonel of a regiment of ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... bells peal far at sea Cunning fingers fashioned me. There on palace walls I hung While that Consuelo sung; But I heard, though I listened well, Never a note, never a trill, Never a beat of the chiming bell. There I hung and looked, and there In my grey face, faces fair Shone from under shining ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the king to plead any misunderstanding of the constitutional law of the kingdom. And the charter, no doubt, accomplished very much in this way. After Magna Carta, it required much more audacity, cunning, or strength, on the part of the king, than it had before, to invade the people's liberties with impunity. Still, Magna Carta, like all other written constitutions, proved inadequate to the full accomplishment ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... remained motionless, the letter on her lap, seeing through the cunning of this girl who had had such a hold on her son for so long, and had not let him come to see her once, biding her time until the despairing old mother could no longer resist the desire to clasp her son in her arms, and would weaken and grant ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... and I soon got over my feeling of depression. But even in play I was made to realise that I was not the master of the house. She ruled me with the utmost despotism, but I didn't mind. She permitted me to sip honey from that cunning place in her little neck and managed to call me Unko. My heart grew warm and soft again ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... wrote a little primer, a little body of autocratic laws, called the Manual of The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and put those laws in force, in permanence. Her government is all there; all in that deceptively innocent-looking little book, that cunning little devilish book, that slumbering little brown volcano, with hell in its bowels. In that book she has planned out her system, and classified and defined its purposes ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... acquisition of territory at the expense of their neighbours, and the treaty of Westphalia, though, as we have said, it was long the Public Law of Europe, was an embodiment, not of principles of justice or of the rights of nations, but of the relative force and cunning of what are happily called the powers. France obtained, as the fruit of the diplomatic skill with which she had prolonged the agony of Germany, a portion of the territory which she has recently disgorged. The independence of Germany was saved; and though it was not a national ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... impression that Rena was a fine, pure spirit, born out of place, through some freak of Fate, devoting herself with heroic self-sacrifice to a noble cause. Well, he had imagined her just as pure and fine, and she had deliberately, with a negro's low cunning, deceived him into believing that she was a white girl. The pretended confession of the brother, in which he had spoken of the humble origin of the family, had been, consciously or unconsciously, the most disingenuous feature of the whole miserable performance. They had tried by a show ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... their people, laden with heavy packs of sarongs,—the native skirts or waist-cloths,—trudging in single file through the forests and through the villages, hawking their goods to the natives of the place, with much cunning haggling or hard bargaining. But though they came to trade, they stayed long after the contents of their packs had been disposed of, for Haji Ali took a fancy to the place. Therefore he presently purchased a compound, and with his two sons set to work upon planting cocoa nuts, and cultivating a ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... green lawns, shaded with huge pyramids of the chenar trees, the terraced gardens where the marble steps climbed from one to the other, and the mountain streams flashed singing and shining down the carved marble slopes that cunning hands had made to delight the Empress of Beauty, between the wildernesses of roses. Her pavilion stands still among the flowers, and the waters ripple through it to join the lake—and she is—where? Even in the glory ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... do such big things; and I had just enough intelligence to want to understand you; to feel what you were thinking, to grasp its meaning, however dimly. Yet I have no real intellect. I am only quick and rather clever—sharp, as Jigger would say, and with some cunning, too. I have made so many people believe that I am brilliant. When I think and talk and write, I only give out in a new light what others like you have taught me; give out a loaf where you gave me a crumb; ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... man's design, was sufficiently apparent, as soon as that design began to be gainful; for, in a few years, a multitude of magazines arose and perished: only the London Magazine, supported by a powerful association of booksellers, and circulated with all the art and all the cunning of trade, exempted itself from the general fate of Cave's invaders, and obtained, though not an equal, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... lingering foot; He sang as loud as a bird, he whistled hoarse as a flute; He broiled in the sun, he breathed in the grateful shadow of trees, In the icy stream of the rivers he waded over the knees; And still in his empty mind crowded, a thousand-fold, The deeds of the strong and the songs of the cunning ...
— Ballads • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the lake are innumerable, but they are more difficult to catch than those in the stream, a fact which pleases the true fisherman, who fishes to match his skill and science against the instinct and cunning of the fish, rather than with the one sole intention of making his bag larger than that ...
— Black Bass - Where to catch them in quantity within an hour's ride from New York • Charles Barker Bradford
... Albany, this lady prefers the knight Ariolant. She thereby so enrages her noble suitor that he finally bribes her maid to personate her and admit him by night to her chamber by means of a rope ladder. With fiendish cunning he has advised Ariolant to watch Ginevra, so this true lover, witnessing what he considers irrefutable proof of his lady-love's unchastity, departs in despair to commit suicide. His brother, deeming ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... lies your grief? Or, What good love may I perform for you? Many a poor man's son would have lain still, And ne'er have spoke a loving word to you: But you at your sick service had a prince. Nay, you may think my love was a crafty love, And call it cunning: do, and if you will: If Heaven be pleased that you should use me ill, Why, then you must. Will you put out mine eyes?— These eyes, that never did, nor never shall, So much as frown on you? Hub. I have sworn ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... to be my class. First, I chose the dearest little Irish girl. Her name is Norah, and she's just as pretty as she can be, only her face was dreadfully dirty, and her clothes all rags. Then her little sister Kathleen cried to come; so I took her too. Then I chose a cunning little German tot named Gretchen. She has yellow hair, braided in tight little tails down her back, and is a good deal cleaner than the rest, but not very clean, you know; and she hadn't any shoes at all. Then Mrs. ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... could get. Presently we were boarded by a Custom House officer, and for some time longer I was engaged in getting out our luggage and in bargaining with the captain to put us on shore. When I had completed these arrangements I was very much surprised to see the cunning old soldier I had talked with the evening before sitting in the Custom House boat, which was just putting off from the side. Demetria had been looking on when the old fellow had left the ship, and she now came to ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... had been captured, had taught them in their first lesson, that man's will was superior to their own; and they were thenceforth either too cunning or too ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... went into his den and looked at his children—two very cunning little cubs, lying on the floor. And one of them ...
— The Story of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... A cunning use of the square mesh of canvas has sometimes been made to guide the worker upon other fabrics, such as velvet. This was first faced with net: the design was then worked, over that, on to and into the velvet, and the threads of ...
— Art in Needlework - A Book about Embroidery • Lewis F. Day
... chance that doth afford Th' occasion fair and happy, Upon this page to thus record My gratitude to Patty. Within my album she hath wrought A picture of red roses, All painted with most cunning skill, The prettiest of posies. Had I but talent, in return A masterpiece I'd draw her, But failing that, I pen these lines Which ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... form technical skill,—more notably yet does the hand come in play with the painter. Here the material is little, the imagination mighty indeed, but less overwhelming than with poet and musician; but the technique, the God-given and labor-trained cunning of retina and wrist, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... wrongs of much-abused Sicily, thus memorable in history, were small by the side of the wrongs of Kansas, where the very shrines of popular institutions, more sacred than any heathen altar, have been desecrated; where the ballot-box, more precious than any work, in ivory or marble, from the cunning hand of art, has been plundered; and where the cry, "I am an American citizen," has been interposed in vain against outrage of every kind, even upon life itself. Are you against sacrilege? I present it for your execration. ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... a kingdom and without an army, was nevertheless more powerful than the king. Like him, he had been a disciple of Charles V., and had learned the art of elevating thrones and hurling them down; like him, he was cunning and inscrutable, and yet he divined the future with keener intellectual vision than Philip. Like his enemy, he had the power of reading men's souls, but he also had the ability to win their hearts. He had a good cause to uphold, but he was acquainted with all the artifices that are used to ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... in the excitement at Palura's, and with the cunning of a drunken man had shadowed her. He followed her down to Mousa Bayou, and saw her go on board her cabin-boat. He watched, with more cunning, to see for whom she was waiting. He had in his pocket a heavy automatic pistol with which ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... volume of the Dorking romance. Ah, what a life it is we lead in the tents of Ishmael, the cast-away! through what tortuous pathways wander the nomad tribes who call Hagar, the abandoned, their mother! what lies, what evasions, what prevarications! Horatio Paget and I watch each other like two cunning fencers, with a stereotyped smile upon our lips and an eager restlessness in our eyes, and who shall say that one or other of our rapiers is not poisoned, as in the famous duel before Claudius, usurper of Denmark? My dear one's letter is all sweetness and love. She is coming home; and ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... man than he went away. When the absences were longer, they went in search of him, and could usually prevail on him to return home with them. But this last absence had been much longer than usual before they found him. He was as cunning and artful as a fugitive from justice in concealing his haunt. At last he was discovered in the old garret store-room over the Brick Row. The marvel was that he had not died of cold there. He was not far from it, however; for he was so ill ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... says Gizur, "though I knew that my life lay on it; but it is easy for thee to find out some plan, such a cunning man as thou art ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... O'er the three fractions of the groaning globe: Venice is crushed, and Holland deigns to own A sceptre, and endures the purple robe; If the free Switzer yet bestrides alone His chainless mountains, 'tis but for a time, For tyranny of late is cunning grown, And in its own good season tramples down The sparkles of our ashes. One great clime, Whose vigorous offspring by dividing ocean Are kept apart and nursed in the devotion Of Freedom, which their fathers fought for and Bequeathed—a heritage of heart and hand, And proud distinction ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... metal, workers in glass and in enamel, workers in weed, workers in every substance on earth, or from the waters under the earth, that can be made commercially valuable. In Clerkenwell the demand is not so much for rude strength as for the cunning fingers and the contriving brain. The inscriptions on the house-fronts would make you believe that you were in a region of gold and silver and precious stones. In the recesses of dim byways, where sunshine and free air are forgotten things, ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... to myself, "is the cause of it all; she alone has conceived these crimes, and has consummated them. But by what means? Has she had recourse to cunning alone, or has she obtained the intervention of invisible powers?" I walked to and fro in my retreat. An inward voice cried out: "It is not in vain that Providence permitted you to see Fledermausse contemplating the agonies of her victim. It is not in vain that the soul of the poor ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... its huge heathen temples blazing with jewels and gold, its scores of cunning idol-priests, who deceived the people by pretending to tell fortunes and make charms, and its countless images, here, at last, God's chosen people began to see the greatness of the gift with which the Lord had blessed them, when He ...
— The Bible in its Making - The most Wonderful Book in the World • Mildred Duff
... fight blacks with fishing-rods," muttered the boy as he again began to run, and he made his way homeward more quickly than he had come, and did not pause once to look back, though if he had it was doubtful whether he would have seen the cunning black face peering from out of the wattle scrub, watching him as he ran in and out through the trees, and then disappearing as soon as Nic was ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... But no, there were two jolly strong-looking little fellows with wheelbarrows. "We've got the gold all right," they said. "Don't you be afraid. We've put some dirty old potatoes at the top," they continued with a cunning expression on their faces, "just in case we meet anyone on the way you know—we should have to hop skip and jump—one, two, three and off, and it ...
— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt
... victorious hand of God had not herein derided the cunning deuises and purposes of the Spaniards, if it had not scattered so great a terrour to all Christendome, and drenched their carkases in the Sea, what should the state of the said Hanse marchants haue bene, so busily ...
— A Declaration of the Causes, which mooved the chiefe Commanders of the Nauie of her most excellent Maiestie the Queene of England, in their voyage and expedition for Portingal, to take and arrest in t • Anonymous
... apartments at ten o'clock, and the twelve-year-old little maid whom your friend brought downstairs at eleven, pretending that he was going in search of the lost child's mother. Besides, everything conspired to aid your friend to escape. He was too cunning for us, and got such a start of his pursuers that there was no use trying to follow him. We do not even know in ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... trap our cunning lovers having laid, One eve this message brought the smiling maid; My lady, sir, is ill, and rest requires, To sleep alone to-night she much desires. To grant the master's wish the girl was led, And they together hurried ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... Prophet Mahomet, at any rate he is an Arab, and Messahore was said to be invulnerable and sacred in his person. He was a fine, handsome creature, with insinuating manners, but there was nothing more to say in his favour. He was at the bottom of every disturbance in the country, but was cunning enough to keep himself in the background. Directly a plot miscarried, he came forward ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... I see more cunning men evade With colder tact, the blunders that I made; Sometimes I wonder if the better part Is not still mine, who lacked their subtle art. For I have conned my book in harsher schools, And learned from struggling what they worked by rules; Learned—with some pain—more ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... both cunning and cruel, played around the lips of the witness, as she answered, with peculiar emphasis and with a ring of triumph ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... five blocks, running something less than a mile a minute, the uplifter's brain functioned with the cunning which enables the fragrant fox to overcome the handicap with which nature has equipped him, when the hounds begin the cross country obesity cure. During this time a plan had flowered in Honey Tone's brain whereby ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... the morrow the roar of battle began. The air was shaken by the crash and thunder of the guns from both sides. But it was plain to all eyes how that the cunning disposition of our pieces, set just where they could deal most effectively with a weak point in the fortifications, or a gateway less capable than others of defence, were doing far more hurt to the enemy than their ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... and, where he did not find, he was quick to invent; and, where he failed in finding or inventing, he not the less believed the bad motive was there, and followed the slightest seeming trail of the cunning demon only the more eagerly. What a smile was his when he heard, which truly he was not in the way to hear often, the praise of some good deed, or an ascription of high end to some endeavor of one of the vile race to which he belonged! Do those who abuse their kind actually believe they are of ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... him differently. Custer knew the bloodthirsty character of the Sioux, their treachery and cunning—he showed scars by way ...
— The Mintage • Elbert Hubbard
... shone hot on the stunted cedars. The tides crept in lazily. All one weary afternoon, in the hum and stir of the dusty school-room, little Bessie Sartell—Captain Sartell's youngest, and his darling—sat stringing lilac blossoms together in a chain. She was such a cunning edition of the big Captain. She had the same strong Saxon physique in miniature, the same clear pink and white complexion, eyes hardly more limpidly blue than his, and hair that was sunniest flax, like the ends of the Captain's beard. And how patient the chubby ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... the creature was swift. Now I was to find out to my cost that it was also very cunning. I had imagined that it was in panic flight, and that I had only to pursue it. The idea that it might turn upon me never entered my excited brain. I have already explained that the passage down which I ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... doubt; the bait had been dangled before his eyes with too much cunning, too much skill. In a casket, in a room in that house in the Corraterie, his life lay hidden; his life, and he could not come at it! His life? Was it a marvel that waking or sleeping he saw only ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... world, so it always was; and so it always will be. From statesmen ruling nations, and men of business "conducting great financial operations," as the saying is now, down to the beggar- woman who comes to ask charity, the rule of the world is, that honesty is not the best policy; that falsehood and cunning are not only profitable, but necessary; that in proportion as a man is in trouble, in that proportion he has a right ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... tendency to vice and folly. Lady Emlyn who in London was the leader of a coterie devoted to the excitements of high-play,—a coterie that felt privileged to inveigh with horror against 'gambling,' because its members ventured their thousands on games where cunning tempers the fortuities of chance,—on the manoeuvres of ecarte and whist instead of the dare-all risks of hazard and rouge-et-noir,—had now removed her card-table from Grosvenor-square to a splendid hotel in the Rue Rivoli; where she had the honour of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 548 - 26 May 1832 • Various
... dementia in its worst phase, perhaps; acute mania; but its duration would be very brief, and it would only arise under extreme mental pressure. The lady is not mad; but she has the hereditary taint in her blood. She has the cunning of madness, with the prudence of intelligence. I will tell you what she is, ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... gate when another boy came shuffling along—a tall, raw-boned lad, with an insinuating smile and shifty, cunning eyes. The newcomer nodded familiarly ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... reassured, but his cunning eyes fixed on Iver observed that the young painter was looking around, in quest, doubtless, ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... little hole that lights up its inside, defies the good dog who cannot approach, by constantly putting out at him its fiery tongue. The clock, bored in its oak case, before striking the august hour of meal time, swings its great gilt navel to and fro; and the cunning flies tease your ears. On the glittering table lie a chicken, a hare, three partridges, besides other things which are called fruits—peaches, melons, grapes—and which are all good for nothing. The cook guts a big silver fish ...
— Our Friend the Dog • Maurice Maeterlinck
... overpower me by force, I thought (and instinctively I squared my shoulders against the cushions, that he might realise the impossibility of overpowering me), but I felt he had enough 'science' to make me less than a match for him. I tried to look cunning and determined. I longed for a moustache like his, to hide my somewhat amiable mouth. I was thankful I could not see his mouth—could not know the worst of the face that was staring at me in the lamplight. And yet what could be worse than his eyes, gleaming from the deep shadow ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... that have designs on her chickens. Her plan of campaign is very original. The children cry "Crows, mother!" and she rushes out and aims a broomstick at the birds as though it were a gun, and says "Bung!" The crows leave in a hurry; they are cunning, but ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... other animals? Dost thou often make use of that reason, in which thou gloriest, and to which religion commands thee not to listen? Are those brutes, which thou disdainest, because they are less strong or less cunning than thou art, subject to mental pains, to a thousand frivolous passions, to a thousand imaginary wants, to which thou art a continual prey? Are they, like thee, tormented by the past, alarmed at the future? Confined solely ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... Stannard and Jack went off among the pines and built a little blaze all by themselves, and there talked gravely over the strange events of the summer now so fully set before them in those volumes from Russell. All Wolf's wild infatuation. All Gleason's cunning malice, and—ah! De mortuis nil nisi bonum. May God forgive him! All Ray's loyal and devoted services, and his cruel suffering and wrongs. What wonder was it that for days the regiment could talk of nothing but Ray? What wonder that they could not fathom ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... assistance. But they ought to have charged the deceit upon the weakness of the intellectual powers, and upon the manner of collecting and concluding upon the reports of the senses. This I speak, not to disable the mind of man, but to stir it up to seek help; for no man, be he never so cunning or practised, can make a straight line or perfect circle by steadiness of hand, which may be easily done by help of ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... the intelligent reader that the gipsy was so punctual to her promise to Fisher, but we must recollect that her apparent integrity was only cunning; she was punctual that she might be employed again, that she might be intrusted with the contribution which, she foresaw, must be raised amongst the famishing garrison. No sooner had she received the money than her end ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... a look of hate). Would that you might have the chance, my lord, so it were in fair fighting. Methinks Roger's sword-arm will not have lost its cunning in ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... these tools of destruction were baffled by the cunning subtlety or the subtle cunning (which you please) of fortifiers, he lately invented cannons, field-pieces, culverins, bombards, basiliskos, murdering instruments that dart iron, leaden, and brazen balls, some of them outweighing ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... Again he averted his face. He was cunning in his overthrow. He did not give in to them really—no, not if they ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... during the latter part of the narrative, a look of dubious cunning twinkling in the pale eyes; but now this look died away, and the eyes resumed their ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... frightened for you, Mesty," said Jack; "but still I thought you quite as cunning as the friar, and so it has turned out; but the thousand dollars ought ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... somewhat uncertainly. Then he lifted his hat a couple of inches from his head and replaced it at an entirely new angle, pulling the rim down so far over the left eye that the right eye alone was visible. This shift of the hat instantly transformed him into a figure of speech; he became as "cunning as a fox." People in Tinkletown had come to recognize this as an unfailing symptom of shrewdness on his part. He always wore his hat like that when he was deep in the process ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... himself! Ah, Land once mine, That seem'd to me too sweetly wise, Too sternly fair for aught that dies, Past is thy proud and pleasant state, That recent date When, strong and single, in thy sovereign heart, The thrones of thinking, hearing, sight, The cunning hand, the knotted thew Of lesser powers that heave and hew, And each the smallest beneficial part, And merest pore of breathing, beat, Full and complete, The great pulse of thy generous might, Equal in inequality, That soul of joy ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore
... ascetics and that is extremely difficult to go through (without transgressions). He should be satisfied with his own wedded wife and should never approach her except her season. He should observe the ordinances of the scriptures, should not be cunning and deceitful. He should be abstemious in diet, devoted to the gods, grateful, mild, destitute of cruelty, and forgiving. He should be of a tranquil heart, tractable and attentive in making offerings to the gods and the Pitris. He should always be hospitable to the Brahmanas. He should ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... he stood perfectly still, watching the officer out of small pig eyes. He was chewing something slowly, turning it about and about inside a small, narrow slit of a mouth, and his whole expression was cunning and evil. Leh Shin followed Hartley's glance and saw the boy, and the sight of him seemed to recall him to actual life, for he spoke in words that sounded like stones knocking together and ordered ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... the influx of strangers. As early as the time of Hadrian, it was the just complaint of the ingenuous natives, that the capital had attracted the vices of the universe, and the manners of the most opposite nations. The intemperance of the Gauls, the cunning and levity of the Greeks, the savage obstinacy of the Egyptians and Jews, the servile temper of the Asiatics, and the dissolute, effeminate prostitution of the Syrians, were mingled in the various multitude, which, under the proud ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... advises all who wish to become true alchemists to leave the circuitous paths of pretended philosophers, and to follow nature, which is simple; the complicated processes described in books are said to be the traps laid by the "cunning ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir
... Atene prophesy of ill, and Amenartas and Atene are one. Well, let the spear fall, if fall it must, and I will not flinch from it who know that I shall surely triumph at the last. Perhaps the Khania does but think to frighten me with a cunning lie, but if she has read aright, then be sure, beloved, that it is still well with us, since none can escape their destiny, nor can our bond of union which was fashioned with the universe that bears ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... of John, but he wished his realm to be rid of one whom he regarded as a dangerous leader; so he did not arrest Jesus but tried to put him to flight. The Pharisees were asked to bear this message to the king because Jesus saw that they were one with the king in the malicious cunning ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... articles about 'bondage' and 'sum of all villanies,' and 'poor, toil-worn slaves.' Toil-worn! I never saw such a lively set of people. Do see that little mite of a round black child, in black jacket and pants; he looks like a drop of ink; Oh, isn't he cunning! ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... thought themselves patriots when they rebelled against the power of Moses and Aaron. They doubtless moved the people by cunning speeches about their own short-lived honor; yet they brought destruction on themselves and a plague upon Israel. There is nothing more plain in the Bible than God's great regard to the righteousness or wickedness of individual men. Suppose that there had been found ten ...
— The Boy Patriot • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... all disputes of this kind, and to put it out of the power of the king to plead any misunderstanding of the constitutional law of the kingdom. And the charter, no doubt, accomplished very much in this way. After Magna Carta, it required much more audacity, cunning, or strength, on the part of the king, than it had before, to invade the people's liberties with impunity. Still, Magna Carta, like all other written constitutions, proved inadequate to the full accomplishment of its purpose; for when ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... that will protect its contents from the dampness of the earth. In this place the goods to be concealed are carefully stowed away; and the aperture is then so effectually closed as to protect them from the rains. In caching, a great deal of skill is often required to leave no sign whereby the cunning savage may discover the place of deposit. To this end, the excavated earth is carried some distance and carefully concealed, or thrown into a stream, if one be at hand. The place selected for a cache is usually some rolling point, sufficiently elevated to be secure from inundations. ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... arrived, however, they display considerable mobility in distributing themselves through the three or four hundred widely-separated cottages which await them for hire. As you wander through the lanes of these cunning little houses, you catch strange fragments of conversation. Gentlemen living vis-a-vis, and standing with one leg in the grave and the other on their own piazzas, are heard on sunny mornings exciting themselves with the maddest abuse of each other's doctor. There ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... acquainted with the nature of these animals. We found that of the wild creatures that inhabited our valley, the prairie wolf was by far the most sagacious of all. Even sly Reynard himself, who has been so long famous for his craft and cunning, is but a stupid when compared to his own cousin, the barking wolf. This we proved satisfactorily, when we endeavoured afterwards to trap these animals. We first tried them with a 'cage-trap,' similar to that which Frank ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... wagon is one of a race as old as Thebes and as new as Porkopolis; his brazen face is older than the invention of bronze, but I think he never had to do with a more credulous crowd than this. The very cunning in the face of the peasants is that of the fox; it is a sort of instinct, and not an ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... ships on Nelson River. Jean at once sent out scouts, who found a tribe of Indians on the way home from trading with the ships that had fired the cannon. The scouts brought the Indians back to the French fort. Young Groseillers admitted the savages only one at a time; but the cunning braves pretended to run back for things they had forgotten in the French house. Suspecting nothing, Jean had permitted his own men to leave the fort. On different pretexts, a dozen warriors had surrounded the young trader. ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... labours of those on whom I and the Fatherland rely. Fresh from the great battles on the West which are gnawing at the vitals of our hereditary enemies, I come to those whose glorious mission it will be to strike relentlessly at our most deadly and cunning enemy—cursed Britain. God is on our side and will protect you at sea for, in the striking at the nation which openly boasts that it aims at starving our women and children, you are engaged on a mission of ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... didn't seem so bad. We had entered the desert by noon; the warm, red sands fell away from the wheels with soft, hissing sounds. Occasionally a little horned toad sped panting along before us, suddenly darting aside to watch with bright, cunning eyes as we passed. Some one had placed a buffalo's skull beside a big bunch of sage and on the sage a splendid pair of elk's antlers. We saw many such scattered over the sands, grim reminders of a past ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... in the extreme— it has none of the painful, restless vivacity of its kindred, the Cebi, and no trace of the surly, untameable temper of its still nearer relatives, the Mycetes, or howling monkeys. It is, however, an arrant thief, and shows considerable cunning in pilfering small articles of clothing, which it conceals in its sleeping place. The natives of the Upper Amazons procure the Coaita, when full grown, by shooting it with the blowpipe and poisoned darts, and restoring life by putting a little ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... pronounce her an unfit guardian for the little Maharajah, her son. This clever woman, a constant source of vexation to the Resident, had long forfeited the respect of friend and foe; but her intrepidity, cunning, and unscrupulous thirst for power conspired to render her formidable to the one, and to the other a partisan to be courted and retained. Her messages of insolent defiance to the Durbar are historic, but ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... myself without passion, and so resolved at last not to go, but to go down by water, which we did by H. Russell—[a waterman]—to the Half-way house, and there eat and drank, and upon a very small occasion had a difference again broke out, where without any the least cause she had the cunning to cry a great while, and talk and blubber, which made me mighty angry in mind, but said nothing to provoke her because Creed was there, but walked home, being troubled in my mind also about the knavery and neglect of Captain Fudge and Taylor, who were to have had their ship for Tangier ready by ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... them a flag of stripes, on which no star of glory had ever shone for them—feeling I had wronged them in the past, and believing what was the future of my country to them—among my dead comrades there, I swore to myself a solemn oath—'May my right hand forget its cunning, and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth,' if I ever fail to defend the rights of those men who have given their blood for me and my country that day and for their race forever, and God helping me, I ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... meet there this man who boasted that he could get blood out of a stone, and the object of the meeting was to bribe him to silence. But however loosely Jentham alluded to his intention of picking up gold, he was cunning enough, with all his excitement, to hold his tongue as to how he could work such a miracle. Undoubtedly there was a secret between Dr Pendle and this scamp; but what it might be, Cargrim could by no means guess. Was Jentham a disreputable relation of the bishop's? Had ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... utter an appeal to conscience with anything like so compelling a simplicity. His failure lies in a growing tendency to discard an instinctive emotionalism for a calculated astuteness which too often attempts to hide its cunning under the garb of honest sentiment. His intuitions are ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... and the detective went to find the patient, who was busy and cheerful in the sewing room with Mrs. Carruthers. He told her that she was not looking well, and had better come with him to see the doctor; but, with all the cunning of insanity, she refused to go. He had to go after Coristine in the garden, and take him away from Marjorie. With the lawyer she went at once, identifying him, as she did not the detective, with her brother Stevy. Mechanically, she sat down by the kind doctor's ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... shrink before the eye of man lest he should read my father's guilt in my glazed eyes: I must be silent lest my faltering voice should betray unimagined horrors. Over the deep grave of my secret I must heap an impenetrable heap of false smiles and words: cunning frauds, treacherous laughter and a mixture of all light deceits would form a mist to blind others and be as the poisonous simoon to me.[44] I, the offspring of love, the child of the woods, the nursling of Nature's bright self was to submit ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... and we end where we began," said he. "The cunning rascal! He knew our number, knew that Sir Henry Baskerville had consulted me, spotted who I was in Regent Street, conjectured that I had got the number of the cab and would lay my hands on the driver, and so sent back this audacious message. I tell you, Watson, this time we have got a foeman ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... came to my house, I had a white man living on my land, who had a Nanticoke squaw for his wife, with whom he had lived very peaceably; for he was a moderate man commonly, and she was a kind, gentle, cunning creature. It so happened that he had no hay for his cattle; so that in the winter he was obliged to drive them every day, perhaps half a mile from his house, to let them feed on rushes, which in those days were so numerous as to nearly ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... the pirate of the brook— The pike, whose jaunty hulk denotes his speed— Swings pivoting about, with wary look Of low and cunning greed. ...
— Riley Farm-Rhymes • James Whitcomb Riley
... that young Hepworth eventually offered to help his brother again, on the condition that he would go away by himself. To this the other agreed. He seems to have given a short display of remorse. There must have been a grin on his face as he turned away. His cunning eyes had foreseen what was likely to happen. The idea of blackmail was no doubt in his mind from the beginning. With the charge of bigamy as a weapon in his hand, he might rely for the rest of his life upon a steady ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... conscientiously to stuff ballot boxes in order that his election may be secured as Poet Laureate of Rascals. Leaving out John Silver and Billy Bones and Alan Breck, whom every privately shriven rascal of us simply must honor and revere as giants of courage, cunning and controlled, conscience, Stevenson turned from singles and pairs, and in "The Ebb Tide," drove, by turns, tandem and abreast, a four-in-hand of scoundrels so buoyant, natural, strong, and yet each so totally unlike the others, that every ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... voting and luxury some victories nearly as serious over the revolutionary spirit of the times. His real talent consisted in this, that, while he was quite as accessible and bribable as any other upright senator, he discerned with some cunning the moment when the matter began to be hazardous, and above all by virtue of his superior and venerable appearance acted the part of Fabricius before the public. In a military point of view, no doubt, we find some honourable exceptions of ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... upon the mossy sward, would make trial of their strength and valour, whereby he both took and gave right lusty knocks; or again, when work failed, he would lie upon the grass, chin on fist, poring over some ancient legend, or sit with brush and colours, illuminating on vellum, wherein right cunning was he. Now it chanced that as he sat thus, brush in hand, upon a certain fair afternoon, he suddenly espied one who stood watching him from the shade of a tree, near by. A very tall man he was, long and lean and grim of aspect, with a mouth wry-twisted by reason ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... keen, indeed, that if placed in a running stream they would fairly divide an object, however slight, which was borne against them by the water, and who eventually married a king's daughter, by whom he had a son, who was as bold a knight as his father was a cunning blacksmith. I never see a forge at night, when seated on the back of my horse, at the bottom of a dark lane, but I somehow or other associate it with the exploits of this extraordinary fellow, with many other extraordinary things, amongst which, as I have hinted before, ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... Sarah, eagerly—"he was as cunning as a fox, Mrs. Foote owned herself, and played her off finely; but Mrs. Foote was cunninger than any half-dozen foxes, and got it all out of him ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... opposite Little's house, and watched in a dark room so persistently, that, at last, he saw the nun appear, saw her stealthy, cat-like approaches, her affected retreat, her cunning advance, ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... philosophies, and of rabid special-pleading historical studies, the carnival of all gods and myths, and the poetical affectations and fooleries which a drunken spirit may be responsible for. In this respect they were quite right; for the Philistine has not even the privilege of licence. With the cunning proper to base natures, however, he availed himself of the opportunity, in order to throw suspicion even upon the seeking spirit, and to invite people to join in the more comfortable pastime of finding. His eye opened to the joy of Philistinism; he saved himself from ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... straight about his mermaid. So Pappa founded his Museum of Natural Varieties, all of them honest Injun. Here the lecturers show off the freaks, and explain how Nature works them, and how she can always see them and go one better. We have the biggest gold nugget and the weeniest cunning least gold nugget; the biggest diamond and the smallest diamond; the tallest man and the smallest man; the whitest negro and the yellowest red man in the world. We have the most eccentric beasts, and the queerest fishes, and everything is explained by lecturers of world-wide reputation, ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... straight to the kraal, and denounce Noma before the chief, my father, and all the people. But I was young in those days, and did not know the heart of Noma. He had not been a witch-doctor till he grew old for nothing. Oh! he was evil!—he was cunning as a jackal, and fierce like a lion.. He had planted me by him like a tree, but he meant to keep me clipped like a bush. Now I had grown tall and overshadowed him; therefore he would root ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard
... something. Don't believe 'Siah ever does it. So many notions in's head bothers him." (Uncle Jack is quite right; 'tis not economical to have notions; besides, they are revolutionary, they subvert the order of things.) "Got a cunning little heifer used to have some manners. Lost some of our lambs; read in a book, that, take what care you might, you would lose some lambs at times."—To-day he has gone driving the oxen ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... be a music-loving lad, very much under the cunning thumb of his grim old aunt, who, rumour averred, wore a black beard, and was the scourge of her little kingdom. All that might be changed when the prince would reach his majority; his failing health and morbid melancholy had frightened the grand ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... and go to man; {14} for whom as the other things are, so it seemeth in him her uttermost cunning is employed; and know, whether she have brought forth so true a lover as Theagenes; so constant a friend as Pylades; so valiant a man as Orlando; so right a prince as Xenophon's Cyrus; and so excellent a man every way as Virgil's AEneas? Neither let this be jestingly conceived, ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... as two peas, cunning as he can be. There, boy, look at your Uncle Bobby!" Bobby bent forward and with his forefinger gently tilted the little face upward. "Lorimer's eyes to perfection," he observed. Then, as he met Beatrix's eyes, he suddenly understood their wild appeal. ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... master professed to be a pattern of chastity and decorum. But he had face for any thing. Seeing that airs of independence would turn to good account, even in the royal closet, provided he was servile at heart, he sometimes, with great cunning, huffed the King himself; and he did as much with the Prince of Wales, and with the like success. What he really could have done best, had his industry equalled his acuteness, and his ambition been less towards the side of pomp and power, would have ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... adventures of a Viking had been written many times before; the history of a Greek galley-slave was no new thing, and though I wrote both, who could challenge or confirm the accuracy of my details? I might as well tell a tale of two thousand years hence. The Lords of Life and Death were as cunning as Grish Chunder had hinted. They would allow nothing to escape that might trouble or make easy the minds of men. Though I was convinced of this, yet I could not leave the tale alone. Exaltation followed reaction, not once, ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... us to the fort," said Henry. "They've got such a big start. Oh, that Girty is a cunning man! If we could only warn the garrison! Surprise is what they have ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... MICE. 1. I will tell you the story of three little mice, If you will keep still and listen to me, Who live in a cage that is cozy and nice, And are just as cunning as cunning can be. They look very wise, with their pretty red eyes, That seem just exactly like little round beads; They are white as the snow, and stand up in a row Whenever we do ...
— McGuffey's Third Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... reminiscently. "Everywhere, pretty nearly. You know that cunning little freshman that had ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... said Hester. "The most cunning allegory that ever was devised is plain and easy in comparison with the simplest true story,—fully told: and a man is a poet in proportion as he fully tells a ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... continued the role of spectators. This looked as if they did not believe the fellow was in need of assistance, and they were simply waiting with confidence in the result of the piece of treacherous cunning. ...
— The Young Ranchers - or Fighting the Sioux • Edward S. Ellis
... maniac, is almost soothing. They had clearly their little worries even a century ago. The CASTLES, as everybody knows, have always had the trick of adventurous fiction; The Black Office, etc., proves that their hands have lost nothing of their cunning. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 8, 1917 • Various
... rage. HAMET was still unmoved; but ALMEIDA threw herself at the feet of ALMORAN, and embracing his knees was about to speak, but he broke from her with sudden fury: 'If the world should sue,' said he, 'I would spurn it off. There is no pang that cunning can invent, which he shall not suffer: and when death at length shall disappoint my vengeance, his mangled limbs shall be cast out unburied, to feed the beasts of the desert and the fowls of heaven.' During ...
— Almoran and Hamet • John Hawkesworth
... under their very eyes, is made plain to them. It is so easy to look at things without seeing them. Then, as the full revelation of this new diablerie dawned upon him, he grew very angry. I think this is the most charming thing about my curate, that he is a thorough hater of everything cunning and concealed, and breaks out into noble philippics against whatever is foul and vicious. But I know he will be now on the alert; and God help any unfortunate that dares to peddle unwholesome wares under the necklaces ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... for the first time—for before he had only caught a glimpse of him,—the stranger had black and brilliant eyes, a yellow complexion, a brow a little wrinkled by the weight of fifty years, bonhomie in his features collectively, but some cunning in his look. ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... not easily rebuked, but returns to the charge unabashed by new repulses; and be obtains by teasing more than by persuasion; but a man by whom Bonaparte suffers, himself to be teased with impunity is no insignificant favourite, particularly when, like this Cardinal, he unites cunning with devotion, craft with superstition; and is as accessible to corruption ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... thought Adam lost his estate through a cunning notary who persuaded his wife to break the lease he held; and poor Adam lost possession because he could not find a second notary to ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... what adverse issue it can, I will put it in practice. Be cunning in the working this, and thy fee ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... smiled as before, and chuckled to himself, while a leer of cunning triumph flashed for a moment from his wandering eyes. "Trapped!" he ejaculated, softly. "Trapped! The keeper! The keeper trapped! She thought she was my keeper! And so she was. But she was trapped—yes, trapped. The keeper trapped! Ha, ha, ha! She thought it was an inn," he ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... the campaign, letting drive such a brisk fire the next day that the Sitkans came suing for peace by the afternoon. Three days the cunning savages stayed the Russian attack on pretence of arranging hostages. Hailing the fort on the morning of the 6th and securing no answer, Lisiansky again played his cannon on the barricade. That night a curious sound, that was neither ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... The cunning constable held carefully on to his tongue, however. He quietly produced a knife and staggered in his turn to the cask, unobserved by the unsuspecting Buzzard, whose eyes were tightly closed in the realization of a dream of ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... besides man. The Killer Whale is one of the fiercest, swiftest terrors of the sea. It is tiny, compared with the Greenland Whale, but much quicker and more cunning. Several Killers band together and spring to the attack at the same time, Like wild cats, they dash at the poor helpless Whale, and tear its sides with ...
— Within the Deep - Cassell's "Eyes And No Eyes" Series, Book VIII. • R. Cadwallader Smith
... and he said kindly: 'You may be thankful that you were not drowned. I will land you at Kungla free of payment, as you are so anxious to get there. So he gave him dry clothes to wear, and a berth to sleep in, and Tiidu and his friend secretly made merry over their cunning trick. ...
— The Crimson Fairy Book • Various
... deed in my safe deposit vault yesterday. Come in here. Isn't this a cunning little guest chamber nested in the trees? Be becoming to Betty's style of beauty, wouldn't it?" He held the door open for her ingratiatingly, and she passed under ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... of the greater activity and muscular power of the lizard, the combat seemed unfair, for in the cunning persistency of the frail but determined little snake there was something uncanny and nerve-shaking. For fully ten minutes the fight continued. The violent antics of the lizard became less and less frequent. Obviously the tactics of the snake were wearing it down. Though ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... life and activity the instant he witnessed Mr. Wentworth's cunning manoeuvre, for he knew what it meant. Giving a pull at his left rein, at the same time touching his horse lightly with the spurs, the animal wheeled like a flash on his hind feet, and, dashing through the line behind Bob Owens (some of the troopers afterward declared that he jumped clear over Bob's ...
— George at the Fort - Life Among the Soldiers • Harry Castlemon
... lesson that you may profit by; it is always best to avoid anything that, even remotely, is likely to set sailors talking together. All crews are not as trustworthy as the Tiger's, and you would be astonished what mischief two or three cunning plausible rascals can do among a crew, if they have got ever so small a ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... that in this tale, symbolically, the forest represents night; the crumbs and pebbles, stars; and the Ogre, the sun. Little Thumb, because of his cunning and invention, has been called the Ulysses of the fairy tales. His adventure with the Ogre at the rock, while not a parallel one, reminds one of Ulysses and Polyphemus. Both succeeded in getting the better of the giant. An English edition of this ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... fine architect, surrounds his domes With paper-foliage, and suspends his combs; Secured from frost the Bee industrious dwells, And fills for winter all her waxen cells; The cunning Spider with adhesive line Weaves his firm net immeasurably fine; The Wren, when embryon eggs her cares engross, Seeks the soft down, and lines the cradling moss; Conscious of change the Silkworm-Nymphs begin Attach'd to leaves ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... of little use, had those of the Dane been of any available thickness, which they were not. Then, the position of the ship, lying a little on one side, with her bows towards the land, exposed her to being swept by a raking fire; a cunning enemy having it in his power, by making a cover of the bank, to pick off his men, with little or no exposure to himself. The odds were too great to sally upon the plain, and although the rocks offered a tolerable cover towards the land, they had none towards the ship. Divide his force he dared ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... Sterbohol with firm grip, backed by those batteries from Homoly Hill. Redoubts, cannon-batteries, as we said, stud all the field; the Austrian stock of artillery is very great; arrangement of it cunning, practice excellent; does honor to Prince Lichtenstein, and indeed is the real force of the Austrians on this occasion. Schwerin must have Sterbohol, in spite of batteries and ranked Austrians, and Winterfeld's recoil tumbling round him:—and rarely had the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... defective at one point, there were in her whole regions of unexplored excellence, of faculties never encouraged, and an affection to which he offered no response.' There is more philosophy in the cunning way in which those happy lovers in the lane accommodate their strides to the comfort of each other than we have been accustomed to suspect. It is done very easily; it is done almost unconsciously; but they must be very careful to go on doing it long after they have left the leafy ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... infinite delight of those with whom he associated. He could assume any character that he pleased: he could be the Castilian, haughty and reserved; the Asturian, stupid and plodding; the Catalonian, intriguing and cunning; the Andalusian, laughing and merry,—in short, he was all things to all men. Nor was he incapable of passing off, when occasion required, for a Frenchman; but, as he spoke the language with a strong German accent, he called himself an Alsatian. He ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... feel confidently, vaingloriously at ease. He joined in the general conversation determined to rout the brilliant Miss Cantillon, who knew so many things. Now the rule for such preeminence is simple and some acquire it by cunning and others by instinct. Deny the obvious. Reputations have fattened on nothing else. When inevitably the moment arrived to discuss Maude Adams, and her latest play, Skippy announced that he did not like ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... ALAR. She has her way: it is a cunning wench That knows to wheedle. Burgos still maintains Its fame for noble fabrics. Since my ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli
... mountains" turned up—as villainous-looking a person as I have ever set eyes on. He was sullen and furtive. I judged him at sight to be half Hindu, half Tibetan. He had a dark complexion, between brown and tawny; narrow slant eyes, very small and beady-black, with a cunning leer in their oblique corners; a flat nose much broadened at the wings; a cruel, thick, sensuous mouth, and high cheek-bones; the whole surmounted by a comprehensive scowl and an abundant crop of lank black hair, tied up in a knot at the nape of ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... that imposed belief on its hearers had said to each of them:—"This is your sister of those long bygone years—slain, for you, by a cunning lie; living on, and mourning for a death that never was; dreaming, as you dreamed, of a slowly vanishing past, vanishing so slowly that its characters might still be visible at the end of the longest ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... sea-eggs! How little can the higher powers of the mind be brought into play: what is there for imagination to picture, for reason to compare, for judgment to decide upon? to knock a limpet from the rock does not require even cunning, that lowest power of the mind. Their skill in some respects may be compared to the instinct of animals; for it is not improved by experience: the canoe, their most ingenious work, poor as it is, has remained the same, ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... taking him, carried him to the slave-dealer and said, "Sell me this old man." Said the dealer, "Who will buy this wight, and he a son of eighty years?"[FN337] Then quoth he to the king, "In what crafts art thou cunning?" and quoth he, "I ken the quintessence of jewels and I ken the quintessence of horses and I ken the quintessence of men; brief, I ken the quintessence of all things." So the slave-dealer took him and went about, offering him for sale to the folk; but none would buy. Presently, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... of this, and even more notable was his first meeting with Major Jack Ragstaff of the Cavalry Club, a meeting which took place after the office had been closed, but which led to the unmasking of perhaps the most cunning murderer in the annals ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... foolishly all the time, as if it were a game. Once or twice when Pelle's back was turned, he tried to get up; his eyes had almost disappeared, but there was a cunning expression about his mouth, and he was like a naughty child. Suddenly he fell back ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... Harry has promised (he's ever so kind, I'm sure) To lend them his beautiful yacht when they sail on their wedding tour. We make believe it's the ocean, the lake in the Park, you know; And Charlie, the little sailor, is so delighted to go. Oh, my! he does look cunning in his suit of navy blue. His mother, my most particular friend, is ...
— Harper's Young People, November 18, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the wide walls, the ceilings, the sides of arches, the ribs of groinings—every foot of space, in short—with life and color; and how much more precious is one of those solemn pearly faces than a panel of alabaster or the most cunning mosaic of marbles! In the upper church alone there are twenty-two large frescoes of Cimabue and thirty of Giotto. Over these pours the light from fourteen large colored windows, unimpeded by side-aisles. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... need is some sure, cunning messenger to send to him; a man whose heart and head, soul and body are bound up in the cause he advocates. General, where shall we find ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... of a sensation was the last time my governess was allowed to box my ears. But yet I do myself and your unfortunate enchanted palace some injustice. Here is the last - O positively!' And she told him the story from behind her fan, with many glances, many cunning strokes of the narrator's art. The others had drawn away, for it was understood that Madame von Rosen was in favour with the Prince. None the less, however, did the Countess lower her voice at times to within a semitone of whispering; and the pair leaned ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... learn, and inwardly digest." By rede craft we find out what other men have done; we get our book learning, we are made heirs to thoughts that breathe and words that burn, we enter into the life, the acts, the arts, the loves, the lore of the wise, the witty, the cunning, and the worthy of all ages and all places; we learn, as says ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... insuperable loathing. From that day she no longer regarded herself as a blameless wife. Had she not been false to herself? Why should she not play a double part in the future, and display astounding depths of cunning in deceiving her husband? In her there lay a hitherto undiscovered latent depravity, lacking only opportunity, and her ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... turned over a few boulders, and exposed the sand that lay beneath them. Half a shovelful of this he placed in a tin dish, which he half-filled with water. Then squatting on his heels, he rotated the dish with a cunning movement, which splashed little laps of water over the side and carried off the lighter particles of sand and dirt. When all the water in the dish was thus disposed of, he added more and renewed the washing process, till but a tablespoonful of ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... moment it was clear that something most certainly was arousing the people. The village was in an uproar. "Stay!" cautioned Rolla, catching her friend's arm. "Let us use cunning! ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... men grow better as they grow older; wiser they may grow, but it is the wisdom of the serpent. We scarce grow less sensual, less vain, less eager after what we think pleasure; I would we continued as generous and as warm. We gain the cunning to veil our passions, to regulate even our vices according to the scale (and that no parsimonious one) which what we call "society" allows; we lose the enthusiasm which in some degree excused our follies, with the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... know very well," said Miss Palmer, "when he could learn nothing at the printer's, took the trouble to go all about Snow Hill, to see if he could find any silversmith's." "Well, he was a cunning creature!" said Mrs. Thrale; "but Dr. Johnson's ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... canaries in the bushes as he passed, for once failed to thrill him with joy of life. He was wondering whether to go straight to the house and search it if necessary to make sure that she had not been there, or whether Indian cunning would serve him best. His whole being ached for direct action; his heart trembled with fear lest he should jeopardize Marian's safety by his ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... sympathy on it: it was to him the house in which Europe was stifling its soul; and he knew that our utter enervation and futilization in that overheated drawingroom atmosphere was delivering the world over to the control of ignorant and soulless cunning and energy, with the frightful consequences which have now overtaken it. Tolstoy was no pessimist: he was not disposed to leave the house standing if he could bring it down about the ears of its pretty and amiable voluptuaries; and he wielded the pickaxe with a will. ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... green cathedral whose doors stood invitingly open ... and now he found himself in the hospital ward. Sometimes he felt a desire to question the blue-and-white nurse, but it seemed too much trouble to move his lips. Then in a flash came the solution of the puzzle, and he chuckled to himself over his cunning. Of course it was a dream. The nurse was a dream-nurse, who wanted to make him believe that she was real. But she was not clever enough. The best way to pay her out for her deception was to take no notice of her whatsoever. So comforted, he would go ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... queen bade of craftsmen deft at large to seek the skilfullest, the most curious and cunning to work structures of stone;— upon that chosen site God's temple to grace as the Guarder of souls gave her rede from on high. She the Rood hight with gold to inlay and the glory of gems, with the most prized of precious stones to set with high art;— and in a silver chest ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... and will," was the reply. "Soldiers are the simplest race of mankind, when they come in contact with the cunning men of cities. An army, showy and even successful as it may be, is always an instrument and no more—a terrible instrument, I grant you, but as much in the hands of the civilian as one of your howitzers is in the hands of the men who load and fire it. At this moment sixty commissioners, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... keen swords, so keen, indeed, that if placed in a running stream, they would fairly divide an object, however slight, which was borne against them by the water, and who eventually married a king's daughter, by whom he had a son, who was as bold a knight as his father was a cunning blacksmith. I never see a forge at night, when seated on the back of my horse at the bottom of a dark lane, but I somehow or other associate it with the exploits of this extraordinary fellow, with many other extraordinary things, amongst which, as I have hinted before, are particular passages of ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... a true story. And the Beautiful Wicked Witch said he could see the bird himself if he would come to her house. He could stroke its bright breast, and it would sing perhaps. Then there were other things caged in her house, cunning little animals, and some big ones, worth any ...
— The Little House in the Fairy Wood • Ethel Cook Eliot
... majority of the Legislature of his State, who gave him whatever legislation he wanted. Every advantage seemed to be on his side. He would undoubtedly have succeeded but for the opposition of Blair. In him he encountered an equal in cunning, and more than a match ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... devised against "the gods their sons." The inscription being very mutilated here, its full drift cannot be gathered, but from the complete portions which come later it would seem that Mummu's plan was not a remarkably cunning one, being simply to make war upon and destroy the ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Theophilus G. Pinches
... motionless eagerness with which these anglers dwelt upon their floats, grave as herons, could not have been exceeded. There they were day after day, always patient and always hopeful. Occasionally a small catch—a mere "bait "—was handed round for inspection; and once a cunning fisherman, acquainted with all the secrets of his craft, succeeded in drawing forth three perch, perhaps a quarter of a pound each, and one slender eel. These made quite a show, and were greatly admired; but I never saw the same man ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... characters in the dawn of a new age, exploiting the contrast as a form of social commentary. The four former musketeers are now drawn to each represent a virtue. D'Artagnan is Loyalty, Athos is Nobility, Porthos is Strength, and Aramis is Cunning. When Louis XIV dishonors Raoul and casts off Athos, he sheds the ideal of Nobility as he in reality broke the power of the French nobles and brought the entire country under his control. When he tames ...
— Dumas Commentary • John Bursey
... had entered the hive and fixed itself against the glass side. The bees, unable to penetrate it with their stings, the cunning economists fixed it immovably, by cementing merely the edge of the orifice of the shell to the glass with resin, (propolis), and thus it became a prisoner for life." Now the instinct that prompts the gathering of propolis in August, and filling every crack, flaw, or inequality about the ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... dealings with the youth of Chisley, and set himself to work to cultivate his physical qualities. All that the pugilists and wrestlers could teach him he picked up with extraordinary quickness, and to the arts thus acquired he added cunning tricks of offence and defence of his own contriving. He had a peculiar aptitude for wrestling and pugilism, delighted secretly in his strength and swiftness, and would walk five miles to plunge like a porpoise in ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... of the four quarters of the globe. Here are the well-known Newfoundland dog, the wild dogs of different climates, the four-toed hunting dog of Abyssinia and South Africa, the Cape of Good Hope dog, with its long ears; the varieties of fox and wolf; all expressing great activity and extraordinary cunning. Ladies will be pleased to notice a lap-dog almost hidden by his long hair, placed under a particular glass-case: this exclusive little aristocrat ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... whom he disposed of four of his smallest diamonds for five thousand francs each. Dantes half feared that such valuable jewels in the hands of a poor sailor like himself might excite suspicion; but the cunning purchaser asked no troublesome questions concerning a bargain by which he gained a round profit of at least ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... A CUNNING juryman addressed the clerk of the court when administering the oath, saying, "Speak up; I cannot hear what you say."—"Stop; are you deaf?" asked Baron Alderson.—"Yes, of one ear."—"Then you may leave the box, for it is necessary that jurymen ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... was his and the style of address, so that it was evidently one of those queer little bits of transparent cunning which were characteristic of him, to make it come from his wife, that he might not lay himself open to a direct rebuff. The address, curiously enough, was that very Cadogan Terrace at which I had lodged, ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... contrary, was rather abrupt with his valet and spoilt two white ties, and swore at himself because his old Eton hand had lost its cunning. But finally he too went down the shallow steps, and, joining his hostess at the door, sailed in with her to the George I saloon, his fine eyes shining and his bearing more ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... and forth, carrying orders from the castle to various quarters. The ministers were called to meet at twelve o'clock. Underneath all the bustle there was a tremendous impulse of American cunning, energy and resourcefulness. Everyone caught the fever. Reserved old diplomats were overwhelmed by their own enthusiasm; custom-bound soldiers forgot the hereditary caution and fell into the ways of the new leaders without a murmur. The city was wild with excitement, ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... had made the fatal mistake of anticipating the success in which he so firmly believed. Those notes—he dashed his hand before his face; suddenly the air of the room seemed to stifle him, courage and cunning had left him; there was only North to whom he could turn for a few hundreds with which to quiet Gilmore. Let him but escape the consequences of his folly this time and he promised himself he would retrench; he would live within his income, he would apply himself to his ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... theories to different results. If I am right, if he is wrong, in our attempts to untie this old Gordian knot, he loses little indeed. That fame of his, the most steady and brilliant light of all which crown the brows of contemporary scholars, is the well-earned reward, not of mythological lore nor of cunning fence in controversy, but of wide ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... recognising the strangers' handicraft from their clothing, stepped up to them without more ado, and asked Wacht if he understood how to manage the machine any better since he looked so cunning about it. "Ah, well!" replied Wacht, without being in the least disconcerted, "ah well; it's a doubtful point whether I know better, for every fool thinks he understands everything better than anybody else; but I can't help wondering ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... constitutional principles, while Jefferson always denounced the political partiality of the federal courts, and above all the "rancorous hatred which Marshall bears to the government of his country, and ... the cunning and sophistry within which he is ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams
... to grow excited, and he looked like a distorted image of his former self. Anger, suspicion, fear, and cunning were all blended in his face, but he so far mastered himself as to assume a wheedling tone and manner as he came toward her and said, "Nan, it was only a little tonic that I found beneficial while in the South. You must ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... Louis did not travel at night, for fear of passing Charles on the road, alive or dead. He knew his cousin better than any in the Frauengasse had learnt to know this gay and inconsequent Frenchman. A certain cunning lay behind the happy laugh—a great capacity was hidden by the careless manner. If ready wit could bring man through the dangers of the retreat, Charles had as good a ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... her to him, and requested her to sit down. The enchantress readily complied, anticipating a successful issue to her artful stratagems; but the intended victim of her sorcery was too cunning to be imposed upon. He soon perceived what she was, and forthwith cast his kamund over her, and in spite of all her entreaties, bound her too fast to escape. In this extremity, she successively assumed the shape of a cat, a wolf, and a decrepit old man: and so ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... that of any living person that he possessed a form and features of rare beauty; that his courage was surpassed by none, for, when but a stripling, he had handed a knife to the furious Tecumseh, and dared him to fight unto the death, and that his cunning and subtlety were beyond the ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... himself acceptable. A bitter, caustic, and backbiting humour, a malicious wit, and an envy of others more prosperous than the possessor of such amiable qualities, have not, indeed, always been found obstacles to a courtier's rise; but then they must be amalgamated with a degree of selfish cunning and prudence, of which Sir Mungo had no share. His satire ran riot, his envy could not conceal itself, and it was not long after his majority till he had as many quarrels upon his hands as would have required a cat's nine lives to answer. In one of ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... that here, maybe, was to overtake him such an adventure as that which he had just a moment before been desiring so ardently. Nor was he mistaken; for the negress, first looking this way and then that, with an extremely wary and cunning expression, and apparently having satisfied herself that the street, for the moment, was pretty empty of passers, beckoned to him to draw nearer. When he had approached close enough to her she caught ...
— The Ruby of Kishmoor • Howard Pyle
... her so," I exclaimed, warmly. "There isn't an honest or straightforward thing about her. She is weak, too; her only strength is her suppleness and cunning." ...
— Richard Vandermarck • Miriam Coles Harris
... these destroyers of mankind know their enemy, when they impute the insurrection in Greece to the same spirit before which they tremble throughout the rest of Europe, and that enemy well knows the power and the cunning of its opponents, and watches the moment of their approaching weakness and inevitable division to wrest the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... chagrin experienced in the United States when the Johnson-Clarendon treaty was made public. It gave almost personal offense to the mass of people in the loyal States. It overlooked, and yet by cunning phrase condoned, every unfriendly act of England during our civil war. It affected to class the injuries inflicted upon the Nation as mere private claims, to be offset by private claims of British subjects,—the whole to be referred to a joint ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... letter he refers to the machine as a "cunning devil, knowing more than any man that ever lived." That was a profound truth, though not as he intended it. That creation of James Paige's brain reflected all the ingenuity and elusiveness of its creator, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... you mair afore you're done wi' him," the atheist said maliciously. "I ken the ways o' thae ministers preaching for kirks. Oh, they're cunning. You was a' pleased that Mr. Dishart spoke about looms and webs, but, lathies, it was a trick. Ilka ane o' thae young ministers has a sermon about looms for weaving congregations, and a second about ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... as the Irish will, They gave him credit for cunning and skill, They buried their dead, they bolted their beef, And started anew on the track of the thief Till, in place of the "Kalends of Greece", men said, "When Crook and his darlings come back ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... been so, our judgment of the conduct of individuals proves. Do we go about the streets giving prizes to octogenarians, or put down to wickedness the early death of a child? Why then, should we otherwise regard long life in a whole people? Do we applaud the superior strength or cunning of Cain, or pretend that the discovery of gun-powder strengthened the arm of the good? No, neither loyalty, nor victory is the true test;—it is by their fruits that ...
— A Comparative Study of the Negro Problem - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 4 • Charles C. Cook
... (tasting it, and finding it a cunning compound of curried bananas and chicory). ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 17, 1892 • Various
... of Imperialism. It is the grim expression of a faith that is everlasting, of a love that shall endure the shocks of years, and all the cunning devilry of such as the Barbarous Huns. Hence this little book. It is an inspiration of the Dardanelles, where I met many of our Australasian friends. It is not an official history. I have, in my own way, endeavoured ...
— The Kangaroo Marines • R. W. Campbell
... time the man was flung from the saddle as from a gigantic catapult, to fall upon his shoulders and back in the corral dust, where he lay still. The horse, rid of his enemy, leaped again; then with catlike quickness and devilish cunning whirled, and with wicked teeth bared and vicious, blazing eyes, rushed for the ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... ingenious oven of stones and a glorious fire of brush; and the girls made cunning dishes out of big, clean-washed leaves. Then, when the potatoes and eggs were ready, all was devoured with a zest that paid its own tribute to the fair young cooks; and the health of the fair young cooks was drunk in Swan Creek water, cupped in sturdy masculine hands; and even the girls tried ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... beginning to end of the affair I was wholly concerned in defending myself; this much I achieved successfully for some moments, and I heard Mr Jermyn say, "But he stands his ground well"; then came a cunning feint followed by a fierce attack and a sharp pang in my left arm near the shoulder, while the sleeve of my shirt went red in a moment. The seconds darted in between us, and Darrell caught me round ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... intense satisfaction and cunning at the news. He waved the servant away, picked up his hat and stick, and ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... and that within two months." Without vouching for the absolute accuracy of this intelligence, he implored the Queen to be more upon her guard than ever. "For there is no doubt," said the envoy, "that she is a chief mark to shoot at; and seeing that there were men cunning enough to inchant a man and to encourage him to kill the Prince of Orange, in the midst of Holland, and that there was a knave found desperate enough to do it, we must think hereafter that anything may be done. Therefore ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... remission of sins by compounding for them. And there are many ways of compounding for them. We English have beautiful little quiet ways of buying absolution, whether in low Church or high, far more cunning than any ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... attendants, but the girl saw the movement and instinctively suspected his treachery. He meant her to come to the table, when he would ring the bell and then catch her and hold her by main force till help came. Her faculties were furiously awake under the strain she bore, and outran his slow cunning. ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... Helictis are arboreal in their habits. Then it was accused of eating to such a pitch of distention that it had to squeeze itself between two close-growing trees for relief ere it returned again to the repast. There is no doubt, however, that it is to a great extent voracious and extremely cunning; and what it cannot eat it will carry off and hide. The trappers complain bitterly of it, and spare no pains to kill every one they can come across; but it is not easily to be caught, and only a very cunningly-devised bait ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... reports of rumor. But yet, somehow or other, the abolitionists, with all their fiery, restless zeal, never succeed in laying their hands on the offender himself. He must, indeed, be a most adroit, a most cunning, a most wonderful rogue. He boldly goes into a community in which so many are all eye, all ear, and all tongue, in regard to the black man's rights; he there steals a free negro, who himself has the power to tell when, where, ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... from doing something to which he is naturally inclined by arousing fear of disagreeable consequences if he persists. But he may be left in the position which exposes him later on to influences which will lead him to do even worse things. His instincts of cunning and slyness may be aroused, so that things henceforth appeal to him on the side of evasion and trickery more than would otherwise have been the case. Those engaged in directing the actions of others are always in danger of overlooking the importance of the sequential development ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... his counselors gathered round about Beowulf, and looked with wonder and amazement on the head of the fierce sea monster and read with strange thrills of awe the wondrous history of the sword and the cunning work ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... is puss in the study; how cunning she looks! She likes rats and mice far better than books. Ah! that poor little mouse, it is out of its pain, And will never feel pussy's sharp talons again. I hope it has not left some young ones at home, Who with hunger may die ere their mother shall come. ...
— Rhymes Old and New • M.E.S. Wright
... cupidity had been aroused by English gold, had searched the forest far and near for the regicides. Their knowledge of the forest and cunning in following a trail had two or three times brought them face to face with Cromwell's stern old battle-trained warriors. Then they had learned to their cost that they had roused a pair of lions in their lairs; but the regicides finally disappeared. They had last been seen near Hadley, ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... sinks ankle-deep in velvet moss, The shroud of some dead giant of his race; Dun gold and green and brown thick interlace, Their tiny exquisite leaves in cunning trace, Weaving their ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... then, in waking delirium or feverish sleep, was the charm that was to control his future. Be it bird or beast, dream or mystic revelation, it was his totem or tomanowos, and gave him strength, cunning, or swiftness, sometimes knowledge of the future, imparting to him its own characteristics. But what it was, its name or nature, was the one secret that must go with him to his grave. Woe unto him if he told the name of his totem. ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... The lights at the tables were turned low. From the darkness laughter arose. McGregor stared about. The people seated at the tables on the terrace caught and held his attention and he began looking sharply at the faces of the men. How cunning they were, these men who had been successful in life. Were they not after all the wise men? Behind the flesh that had grown so thick upon their bones what cunning eyes. There was a game of life and they had played it. The garden was a part of the game. It was ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... the midst thereof. For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land? If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... arrived, and my vakeel, with his usual cunning, came to ask me whether I intended to start tomorrow. He said there was excellent shooting in this neighborhood, and that Ibrahim's camp not being more than five hours' march beyond, I could at any time join him, should I think proper. ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... undoubtedly the cause of M'Mahon's disgrace, as well as of his projected marriage with Kathleen having been broken up, they did not perceive that she was equally a sufferer; or, if they did, they were either too cunning or too hardened to acknowledge it. For this particular circumstance, Kate, inasmuch as it involved deep ingratitude on their part, could not ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... way to outwit rogues except with their own weapons—cunning and deceit," murmured the fair prisoner, bitterly, as she began to eat her breakfast. "I will be very wary and apparently submissive until I have matured my plans, and then they may chew their cud of defeat as long as it pleases them ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... me?" rejoined the nun, laughing a little. "Edward of Westminster was dead ere I was born. But I have heard of him from them that did remember him well. He was a goodly man, of lofty stature, and royal presence: a wise man, and a cunning [clever]—saving only that he opposed our ...
— The Well in the Desert - An Old Legend of the House of Arundel • Emily Sarah Holt
... of his position was made patent. His rough philosophy was good. Had she been his by mere conquest, no man in the Klondyke would have disputed it. Being his wife, legally, his position was doubly strong. Only cunning could win through. She meant to exercise that faculty as soon as opportunity presented itself. And the opportunity was ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... There was hardly a face among that gang of wild riders which did not outdo the face of Texas Smith in degraded ferocity. Almost every man and boy was obviously a liar, a thief, and a murderer. The air of beastly cruelty was made even more hateful by an air of beastly cunning. Taking color, brutality, grotesqueness, and filth together, it seemed as if here were a mob of those malignant and ill-favored devils whom Dante has described and the art of his age has painted ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... was met with address and ability that all but matched his own. The animal he embraced had muscles like tempered springs and the cunning and fury of a wild beast in a trap. For a moment Lanyard was able to accomplish no more than to smother resistance in a rib-crushing embrace; no sooner did he relax it than all attempts to shift his hold were anticipated and met half way, forcing ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... good name and merited reputation would surely find his memory out in this world yet. She had no material possessions save a few of his gorgeous, gruesome, hieroglyphical pictures, and what she had borrowed or inherited of his lower cunning in tinting, a more marketable commodity in the ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... War, Each able to undo mankind, Death's servile emissaries are; Nor to these alone confined, He hath at will More quaint and subtle ways to kill; A smile or kiss, as he will use the art, Shall have the cunning skill to break ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... but unluckily she is as judicious there as in everything else, and the child gets more deplorable every year. She has got the look of deformity, and yet she is not deformed; and the queer sullen ways of deficiency, but she has more wit than her father already, and more cunning.' ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... them the flower of minstrels came, And to their cunning harps did frame In doleful numbers piercing rhymes, Such strains as in the older times Had sooth'd the spirit of Fingal, Echoing thro' ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... ever wished his enemy dead more than I did, and no man ever spent more cunning on the deed. Master in my own house, I contrived a device by which the man who held my fate in his hands fell on my library hearth with no one near and no sign by which to associate me with the act. Does this seem like the assertion of a madman? Go to the old chamber familiarly ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... last Wednesday noon, on Hanover street, that wasn't so coarse for an urchin hardly out of his swaddling clouts. He was a cunning-looking little fellow, and poking his head into a shoe shop, he bawls out in a very ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... assumption of a role is another noteworthy and frequent medium of plot motivation. In As. 407 ff. Leonida tries to palm himself off as the atriensis. Note the violent efforts of the two slaves to wheedle the cunning ass-dealer (449 ff.). In Cas. 815 ff. Chalinus enters disguised as the blushing bride. In Men. 828 ff. Menaechmus Sosicles pretends madness in a clever scene of uproarious humor. In the Mil. (411 ff.) ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... eventually overcame my aversion to change. The basement story of the house was occupied by a bar and oyster saloon; the pungent testaceous odors, mounting from those lower regions, gave the offended nostrils no respite or rest; in a few minutes, a robust appetite, albeit watered by cunning bitters, would wither, like a flower in the fume of sulphur. Half-a-dozen before dinner, have always satiated my own desire for these mollusks; before many days were over, I utterly abominated the name of the species; familiarity only made ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... Society, as it exists, is founded on class distinctions which largely consist in the exaltation of idleness and wealth. Against this we have much eloquent protest. "Venerable to me is the hard hand; crooked, coarse; wherein notwithstanding lies a cunning virtue, indefeasibly royal, as of the Sceptre of this Planet. Venerable too is the rugged face, all weather-tanned, besoiled, with its rude intelligence; for it is the face of a Man living man like." How far away ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... has produced a fifth toe under some influence of the poultry-yard, but no natural bird has more than four. Except in swifts, which never perch, but cling to rocks and walls, one is turned backwards, and, by a cunning contrivance, the act of bending the leg draws them all automatically together. So a hen closes its toes at every step it takes, as if it grasped something, and, of course, when it settles down on its roost, they grasp that tight and hold it fast till morning. But to birds that ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... ruffler shook back the matted hair from his lean, harsh face, and a pair of eyes that of a sudden seemed ablaze glared at his companion; then the lids drooped until those eyes became two narrow slits—catlike and cunning—and again he laughed. ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... give out that we know he has got clear away to America,' said Curtis, with an air of intense cunning. 'And to lull his suspicions, we have notices in print to say that no further rewards are to be given for his apprehension; so that he'll get a false confidence, ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... rational way than that set forth as orthodox by later priestcraft, which taught that to the believer who simply turned round the revolving library containing the canon, the merit of having read it all would be imputed. The rin-z[o][24] found near the large temples,—the cunning invention of a Chinese priest in the sixth century,—soon became popular in Japan. The great wooden book-case turning on a pivot contains 6,771 volumes, that being the number of canonical volumes enumerated in ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... every effort in my power to prevent what I knew was threatening. Until he began to practise deceit, trickery of every kind. What more could I do? If he was determined to deceive me, he would do so; what was gained by my obliging him to exert more cunning? Then I turned sick at ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... of the financial legislation of this session, there were some episodes which deserve to be related. Those members, a numerous body, who envied and dreaded Montague readily became the unconscious tools of the cunning malice of Sunderland, whom Montague had refused to defend in Parliament, and who, though detested by the opposition, contrived to exercise some influence over that party through the instrumentality of Charles Duncombe. Duncombe indeed had his own reasons for hating Montague, who had turned him ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... country, believing that it was being brought to ruin by the counsels of evil men. She prayed daily to be delivered from dissenters, radicals, and wolves in sheep's clothing,—by which latter bad name she meant especially a certain leading politician of the day who had, with the cunning of the devil, tempted and perverted the virtue of her own political friends. And she was one who thought that the slightest breath of scandal on a young woman's name should be stopped at once. An antique, pure-minded, anxious, self-sacrificing matron was Mrs. ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... hardly right to omit this edition of so celebrated a tale pictured by so celebrated an artist, yet Mr. Crane's work breathes mystery and Oriental cunning from every page, and should be given to our youngsters only after examination, as a highly-strung child might be frightened by it. The picture of the resourceful Morgiana filling the oil-jars, while a dreadful robber with saucer-like ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold
... Colonel and he immediately says, with remarkable cunning, 'Oh—that! I was just quizzing you, Barbara. I hope you will be as happy, dear, staid Barbara, as if you had married——' He sees that he has nearly given away the situation. He looks triumphantly at granny as much as to say, 'Observe me; I'm ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... discipline, expert in strategy, pitiless and rich. They looked wearied of prolonged cares. Their flaming eyes expressed distrust, and their habits of travelling and lying, trafficking and commanding, gave an appearance of cunning and violence, a sort of discreet and convulsive brutality to their whole demeanour. Further, the influence of the god ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... which you will perceive, and especially in the one from New York, much valuable matter. That society mentions a species of kidnapping, which to the disgrace of humanity, has been carried on in that city in a manner at once evincing the barefaced hardiness of its perpetrators, and the wicked and cunning arts practiced, by the enemies of freedom, on an oppressed people. There is good reason to believe, that similar practices are secretly pursued in other parts of the Union. We therefore earnestly press your vigilant ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... and gave right lusty knocks; or again, when work failed, he would lie upon the grass, chin on fist, poring over some ancient legend, or sit with brush and colours, illuminating on vellum, wherein right cunning was he. Now it chanced that as he sat thus, brush in hand, upon a certain fair afternoon, he suddenly espied one who stood watching him from the shade of a tree, near by. A very tall man he was, long and lean and grim of aspect, ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... William Gladstone. Doesn't the mill village look cosy? The cunning little houses with their porches and gardens and neat palings. Such a lot of folks living together should ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... was delighted with the account of ma belle's cunning manoeuvres and witty speeches, even to the point of laughing heartily at her satire on himself; and he reveled in L'Isle's ill-concealed mortification, exclaiming: "What a pity the plot failed by Mabel's unmasking too soon. That and your good horse enabled you to keep your appointment ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... and mischief; and had led him into the riot and gambling to which he was not naturally prone. Gilbert Kendal, with more sense and principle, had been led on by the contagion around him, and at last an outrageous wine party had brought matters to a crisis. The most guilty were the most cunning, and the only two to whom the affair could actually be brought home, were Dusautoy and Kendal. The sentence was rustication, and the tutor wrote to Mr. Dusautoy, as the least immediately affected, to ask him to convey the intelligence to ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a great deal it leaves out! Are there no other stories in the world except yours; and are all men busy with your business? Suppose we grant the details; perhaps when the man in the street did not seem to see you it was only his cunning; perhaps when the policeman asked you your name it was only because he knew it already. But how much happier you would be if you only knew that these people cared nothing about you! How much larger your life would be if your self could ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... give us some heavenly manna or other!" Little Margaret made a wry face; "I see 'Tis, after all, a gift horse," said she; "And sure, no godless one is he Who brought it here so handsomely." The mother sent for a priest (they're cunning); Who scarce had found what game was running, When he rolled his greedy eyes like a lizard, And, "all is rightly disposed," said he, "Who conquers wins, for a certainty. The church has of old a famous gizzard, She calls it little whole lands to devour, Yet never a surfeit got to this ...
— Faust • Goethe
... Bella bridled her head and half shut one eye that gave her an unpleasant look of cunning. "He swore me not to tell and said little girls were often better than ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... Who loves his own smart shadow in the streets, Better than e'er the fairest she he meets; Much specious lore, but little understood, (Veneering oft outshines the solid wood), His solid sense, by inches you must tell, But mete his cunning by the Scottish ell! A man of fashion too, he made his tour, Learn'd "vive la bagatelle et vive l'amour;" So travell'd monkeys their grimace improve, Polish their grin—nay, sigh for ladies' love! His meddling vanity, a busy fiend, Still making ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... shall not say that Mrs. Jameson is greater than the writers just mentioned; but we must say, that female tact and deep devotional feeling cut the Gordian knot which has puzzled more cunning heads. Not that Mrs. Jameson is faultless; we want something yet, in the telling of a Christian fairy-tale, and know not what we want: but never were legends narrated with more discernment and simplicity ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... refused to accompany him—when the Thebans were being worsted and had lost a battle, and a trophy had been erected to celebrate their defeat—it was impossible for him to cross the Pass, if you rallied to its defence; and that if he made the attempt he would regret it, unless some cunning could be called in to aid him. How then, he asked, can I avoid open falsehood, and yet accomplish all that I wish without appearing perjured? How can it be done? It can be done, if I can get some of the Athenians to deceive the Athenians. In that ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes
... father's guilt in my glazed eyes: I must be silent lest my faltering voice should betray unimagined horrors. Over the deep grave of my secret I must heap an impenetrable heap of false smiles and words: cunning frauds, treacherous laughter and a mixture of all light deceits would form a mist to blind others and be as the poisonous simoon to me.[44] I, the offspring of love, the child of the woods, the nursling of Nature's bright self was to submit ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... up with this other girl—a mere nobody. Worse than a nobody, of course. She must be both a bad and a cunning woman to have done what it was plain she had done. She had wound Tunis Latham around her finger, and had hoodwinked the old people ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... family from the quacke or pose, wherewith, as then, very few were acquainted." Again, in chap. xviii.: "Our pewterers in time past employed the use of pewter only upon dishes and pots, and a few other trifles for service; whereas now, they are grown into such exquisite cunning, that they can in manner imitate by infusion any form or fashion of cup, dish, salt, or bowl or goblet, which is made by goldsmith's craft, though they be never so curious, and very artificially forged. In some places beyond the sea, a garnish of good flat English pewter ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... known on the border for their athletic prowess, and for their knowledge of Indian warfare and cunning. They were all powerful men, exceedingly active and as fleet as deer. In appearance they were singularly pleasing and bore a marked resemblance to one another, all having smooth faces, clear cut, regular features, dark ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... . . One rather gets the impression that the stoop is a reflection of the man's nature, which seems vindictive and suggests a low cunning. His eyes are small, deep set, and glitter when he talks. But they are steady and cold—almost merciless. One's thoughts go instantly to the tiger. I shall try to create that impression in the ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer
... watching him anxiously, though apparently taken up with the children. A pitying expression would have made Pelle furious. Brun guessed that there was some money trouble, but dared not offer his assistance; every time he tried to begin a conversation Pelle repelled him with a cunning look which said: "You're seeking for an opportunity to come with your money, but you won't get it!" Something or other had gone wrong with him, but it would all come right in ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... the valley lookin' for your drowned body the while! Women 'mazes me more the wiser I graw. Come this way, to the linhay. There's a sweet bed o' dry fern in the loft, and you must keep out o' sight till mother's told cunning. I'll hit upon a way to break it to her so soon as she's rose. An' if I caan't, Phoebe will. Come along quiet. An' I be gwaine to lock 'e in, Chris, if't is all the same to you. For why? Because you might fancy the van folks was callin' ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... guard against complacency. We must not underrate the enemy. He is powerful and cunning—and cruel and ruthless. He will stop at nothing that gives him a chance to kill and to destroy. He has trained his people to believe that their highest perfection is achieved by waging war. For many years he has prepared for this very conflict—planning, ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt • Franklin D. Roosevelt
... him, and always behaves to him with insolence; and yet the poor Jew must suffer with patience. It is true, that he indemnifies himself after his own manner; that is to say, by the address with which he disposes of his merchandise to advantage, and by the cunning by which he overreaches an Arab. The latter, in general, are ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... and back again to the safety of her room with a tin of sweetened condensed milk under her arm. So low in comfort had she sunk it needed but this to make her happy. She had never known so sharp, so sweet a sense of luxury as that with which she prepared the delicacy she had seized by her own cunning. It had not taken her long to learn the possibilities of the American Y.M.C.A., the branch in Bar, or any other which she might pass in ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... the rubicund visage of Mr. Fogg appeared like the head of the Medusa. He said that 'Captain' had ordered the blue roan to be saddled and brought over to me, but I knew that this was a cunning device on his part, to revisit the dwelling. Miss Bell, somehow caught the idea that Fogg was enamored of her, and the poor fellow was subjected to a volley of tender innuendos and languishing glances, that by ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... realized. Near him stood men who apparently had barely enough humanity left to make their dominating animal natures more dangerous and difficult to control. To the instincts of a beast was added something of a man's intelligence, but so developed that it was often little more than cunning. If, when throwing away his manhood, man becomes a creature more to be dreaded than a beast or venomous reptile, whichever he happens most to resemble, woman, parting with her womanhood, scarcely finds her counterpart even in the most noxious forms of earthly ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... man and he may have struck without intention to kill; but this mess means more than a blow with a fist. I think that he was a homicidal maniac and probably plotted the job beforehand with a madman's limited cunning; and if that is so, there's pretty sure to be news waiting for us at Princetown. Before dark we ought to know where are both the dead and the living man. These footprints mean a bather, or perhaps two. We'll study them later and drag the pond, ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... now the more ignominious would be his downfall. The free baron had not hesitated to use any means to obliterate his one foeman from the scene; and he repeated to himself that he would meet force with cunning, and duplicity with stealth, spinning such a web as lay within his own capacity and resources. But in estimating the moves before him, perhaps in his new-found trust, he overlooked the strongest menace to his ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... the great painter (Pulcher, Pictor Magnus), the golden one (Aureus) the excellent one (Excellens) or the strong (Strenuus); or from their deeds, such as Naso the Brave (Nason Fortis) or the cunning, or the great, or very great conqueror; or from the enemy any one has overcome, Africanus, Asiaticus, Etruscus; or if any one has overcome Manfred or Tortelius, he is called Macer Manfred or Tortelius, and so on. All these cognomens ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... twins, in anticipation of success crowning their efforts to become professional instructors in the two country clubs, outlined a splendid and cunning campaign for themselves. By inspiring a fierce rivalry between the would-be golfers of the two clubs, they could build up a thriving practice in their chosen profession. The rivalry was already bitter along other lines. If ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... dikes around it, to preserve himself by the neighbouring inundation. Another, like a mole, has so pointed and so sharp a snout, that in one moment he pierces through the hardest ground in order to provide for himself a subterranean retreat. The cunning fox digs a kennel with two holes to go out and come in at, that he may not be either surprised or trapped by the huntsmen. The reptiles are of another make. They curl, wind, shrink, and stretch by the springs of their muscles; they creep, twist about, ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... a scout, and, recalling his experience on the other side of the river, he was sure to put forth all the cunning of his nature to escape any surprise from his enemies. He was alert, and glanced from side to side, and indeed in all directions, while advancing on a slow, loping trot. It was easy enough to avoid discovery from him, but, in moving round the trunk of the tree (so as to interpose it as a guard), ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... a wagon load of monkeys," Collier complained, "he looks like a baby and is as cunning as a Chinaman. I wonder how we can ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... is more delightfully absurd than to see a hen find a large morsel which she cannot deal with at one gulp? She has no sense of diplomacy or cunning; her friends, attracted by her motions, close in about her; she picks up the treasured provender, she runs, bewildered with anxiety, till she has distanced her pursuers; she puts the object down and takes a couple of ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... woman. "Take off your cloak and warm yourself." She held her own shrivelled arms towards the blaze, as though her short exposure to the night air had chilled her. Glancing at her, Kate saw that her face was sharp-featured and cunning, with a loose lower lip which exposed a line of yellow teeth, and a chin which bristled with a tuft ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... I found my aunt James, a poor, religious, well-meaning, good soul, talking of nothing but God Almighty, and that with so much innocence that mightily pleased me. Here was a fellow that said grace so long like a prayer; I believe the fellow is a cunning fellow, and yet I by my brother's desire did give him a crown, he being in great want, and, it seems, a parson among the fanatiques, and a cozen of my poor aunt's, whose prayers she told me did do me good ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... laugh at the man who had helped her? She was kind to her cats, the neighbors all liked her, to everyone else she seemed human; but when it came to him she was a devil of hate, a fiend of ruthless cunning. She would tell him to his face—at three in the morning, when he had caught her running away from the mill—that she hoped his old mill would be ruined. And now, when the trammer or some other soft-head had sent one of his sledges through the crusher, she was laughing up her sleeve. ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... that would not be dangerous. Might not she and Alice together so work upon him, that he should cease to stand ever on the brink of some half-seen precipice? To risk herself for her brother was noble. But when she used her cunning in inducing her cousin to share that risk she was ignoble. Of this she had herself some consciousness, as she walked up and down the old dining-room at midnight, holding her cousin's ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... both lay your bones, and many shall grudge you that abiding-place. Keep ye heedfully from wiles, for marvellously have my dreams gone. Be well ware of sorcery; yet none the less shall ye be bitten with the edge of the sword, for nothing can cope with the cunning of eld.' And when she had thus spoken she wept right sore. Then said Grettir, 'Weep not, mother; for if we be set upon by weapons it shall be said of thee that thou hast had sons and not daughters.' ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... proof argues that the world can owe its origin only to an intelligent first cause. The evidence for this is furnished by the cunning contrivances and beneficent adaptations of nature. These could not have come about through chance or the working of mechanical forces, but only through the foresight of a rational will. This argument originally infers God from the character of nature and ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... dispositions are the same, and I credit them with cunning enough to know it. At the same time I credit ourselves with having kept the existence of the steel traps completely secret. They will assume (so I've reasoned) that we intend to rely entirely upon our superior vigilance, therefore ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... 'Road Kid Line'? Don't you think that we are the luckiest tramps that ever rambled over any railroad to make a catch of two healthy and good-looking lads as these two are?" And then after he had permitted his cunning eyes to wander back over the forms of the peacefully sleeping lads he continued: "And wasn't it funny to see how they appreciated the breakfasts we bought for them, the new store suits we paid for, and how eagerly they accepted our offer to permit them to hobo with us to Chicago, and how ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... spoke, Heyton turned his head and looked at him curiously, with a furtive, cunning expression; but he said nothing; indeed, his lips closed tightly, as ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... sorrow which braves it and wrests souls from its clutches. Moments, flashes; I took refuge, as in times past, in the embrace of the cross; but, little by little, the cross turned to unfeeling, dead wood in my arms, and this was not as in times past! I told myself, "Spirits of evil, strong and cunning powers of the air, are conspiring against me, against my mission." I answered myself, "Pride, be gone!" And then the first idea took possession of me once more. In this sad manner I rocked to and fro, every day, and ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... construction of the muskrat's dwelling, with its water-passage, would afford all the means of escape from its ordinary enemies—the beasts of prey—and, perhaps, against these alone nature has instructed it to provide. But with all its cunning it is, of course, outwitted by the ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... life which animated himself. All his fictions are as deeply coloured as dreams. From the highest of the aristocracy to the lowest of the mob, all the actors in his Human Comedy are keener after living, more active and cunning in their struggles, more staunch in endurance of misfortune, more ravenous in enjoyment, more angelic in devotion, than the comedy of the real world shows them to us. In a word, every one in Balzac, down to the very scullions, has ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... afterthought that the greater the other's successes now the more ignominious would be his downfall. The free baron had not hesitated to use any means to obliterate his one foeman from the scene; and he repeated to himself that he would meet force with cunning, and duplicity with stealth, spinning such a web as lay within his own capacity and resources. But in estimating the moves before him, perhaps in his new-found trust, he overlooked the strongest menace to his success—a hazard ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... gentler arts of peace, we find that the one-time artist had always hoped that some day he could resume his brush, which the labors incident to the invention of the telegraph had compelled him to drop. But it seems that his hand, through long disuse, had lost its cunning. He bewails the fact in a letter of January 20, 1864, ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... always ready to do so," cried John, laughing bitterly, "but what good will it do? They will wind cunning shackles enough round my feet to make me fall to the ground; they will manacle my hands again, and put my will into the strait-jacket of loyalty and obedience. I cannot do what I want to; I am only a tool in the hands of others, and this will cause both my ruin ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... replied, and he will be a good man (which is my answer to your question); for he is good who has a good soul. But the cunning and suspicious nature of which we spoke,—he who has committed many crimes, and fancies himself to be a master in wickedness, when he is amongst his fellows, is wonderful in the precautions which he takes, because he judges of them by himself: ...
— The Republic • Plato
... step closer, and as he did so I noticed that his face had assumed a look of indescribable cunning, that was evidently intended to be of an ingratiating nature. He spoke in little jerks, pressing his fingers together ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... to our purpose, giving him half of our taking in payment of our entertainment. This did Jack, thinking from our late ill-luck we should get at the most a dozen people in the sixpenny benches, and a score standing at twopence a head. But it turned out, as the cunning landlord had foreseen, that our hanger was packed close to the very door, in consequence of great numbers coming to the town in the afternoon to see a bull baited, so that when Jack Dawson closed the doors and came behind our scene to dress for his part, he told us he ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... years the youngest of the family, Hiram, while a child, was the pet and plaything of the older ones, and especially of Frank, who in his college vacations took pleasure in training the little fellow, who was just learning his letters, and in teaching him smart sayings and cunning expressions. As Hiram grew up and began to display the characteristics I have already so fully described, Frank, who was quick and sensitive in his appreciation of qualities, could not, or at least ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... you know what happened to me an hour ago? I was paddling your canoe into the Hurryon Inlet, and I suppose I made no noise in disembarking, and I came right on a baby wild boar in the junipers. It was a tiny thing, not eighteen inches long, Kathleen, and so cunning and furry and yellowish, with brown stripes on its back, that I tried to catch ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... gone. It has quite gone when he is called upon to advance or hold the ground in face of the enemy's artillery. For all human qualities are of no avail against those death-machines. What are quickness of wit, the strength of a man's right arm, the heroic fibre of his heart, his cunning in warfare, when he is opposed by an enemy's batteries which belch out bursting shells with frightful precision and regularity? What is the most courageous man to do in such an hour? Can he stand erect and fearless under a sky which is raining down jagged pieces of steel? Can he adopt ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... finally complete, it did great credit to the counsel for the defence. So far as Mr. Braham knew, only two could read, one of whom was the foreman, Mr. Braham's friend, the showy contractor. Low foreheads and heavy faces they all had; some had a look of animal cunning, while the most were only stupid. The entire panel formed that boasted heritage commonly described as the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... devil is surpassingly cunning, and, if he can, he will mix an opiate even with the sacramental wine. He will lure me among the winsome poppies, and put me ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... man? Would you, mother? Would you come up to the reporters' table, take up a pen and put your name down to such an excuse? You would say, "Let my right hand forget its cunning, and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, ...
— Moody's Anecdotes And Illustrations - Related in his Revival Work by the Great Evangilist • Dwight L. Moody
... happened were attributed to his cunning. How blind were men who would not see the hand of Providence in its merciful dispensations, who ridiculed as the visions of enthusiasm the observations "made by the quickening and teaching Spirit!" It was supposed that ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... not heard, I believe, about the three little boys I call "my babies." They are yet in dresses, and as cunning as can be, very regular in attendance. Harry, Eddie, and—well I must tell you about the other name. Down here, many nick-names are used, such as son, bubba, or boysa for the boys, and sister or missy for the little girls. When this little ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 6, June, 1889 • Various
... harp was carved and cunning, His sword prompt and sharp, And he was gay when he held the sword, Sad when he ...
— The Ballad of the White Horse • G.K. Chesterton
... craft or malice; harmlessness like the dove's, but not without the other safeguard of 'wisdom.' The combination is a rare one, and the surest way to possess it is to live so close to Jesus that we shall be progressively changed into His likeness. Then our prudence will never degenerate into cunning, nor our simplicity become blindness to dangers. The Christian armour and arms are meek, unconquerable patience, and Christ-likeness, To resist is to be beaten; to endure unretaliating is to be victorious. 'Be not overcome of evil, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... not old Richelieu was better fitted with a set of arrant scoundrels. There was the cunning right hand of Hawk Rufe, the slick, villainous intriguer, Lem Marks. No diplomatic imp, serving his master in the kingdoms of the world, moved with more unscrupulous smoothness. There was Malan with his clubfoot, owned by the devil, the drovers said, and leased to Woodford for a lifetime. ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... the party was as a blot to her I cannot delay; but I request you, that are here privileged I detest anything that has to do with gratitude Love, with his accustomed cunning No nose to the hero, no moral to the tale Nor can a protest against coarseness be sweepingly interpreted One of those men whose characters are read off at a glance The majority, however, had been snatched out of this bliss Their way was down a green lane ...
— Quotations from the Works of George Meredith • David Widger
... and her cunning, and resolved to be equal to all her wiles. When she brought the chocolate I noticed that there were two cups on ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... having been essentially a sporting man and a free and a robust tiller of the soil, has come under the influence of schemers, who have played upon his natural avarice, and polished his inherent cunning, till these qualities have expanded to the detriment of those earlier qualities for which the Boer of to-day still gets credit, but which are fast dying out ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... Distained his royal bosom, and that found Its way, still issuing, from a mortal wound, Ghastly and gaping wide, upon his throat! The shadow passed—another took his place, Of the same royal race; The noble Yumuri, the only son Of the old monarch, heir to his high throne, Cut off by cunning in his youthful pride; There was the murderer's gash, and the red tide Still pouring from his side; And round his neck the mark of bloody hands, That strangled the brave sufferer while he strove Against their clashing brands. Not with unmoistened eyes did the chief note ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... way assailed. The idea seemed too madly far-fetched. At first she refused to realise that this apportioning of a continent three thousand miles distant from Germany was anything but a pipe-dream of diplomats in their dotage. It was inconceivable that it could be the practical and achievable cunning of military bullies and strategists. The truth dawned too slowly for her to display any vivid burst of anger. "It isn't true," she said. And then, "It seems incredible." And lastly, ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... sir, for their chief is a man of remarkable pluck, cunning, and skill, and he handles them in a ...
— Buffalo Bill's Spy Trailer - The Stranger in Camp • Colonel Prentiss Ingraham
... Confession, rebuked Eck, in the presence of the Elector of Saxony, for having misrepresented the Lutheran doctrine to him? The moderation of the Augustana, said these Romanists, was nothing but the cunning of serpents, deception and misrepresentation, especially on the part of the wily Melanchthon, for the true Luther was portrayed in the 404 theses of Eck. Cochlaeus wrote that the Lutherans were slyly hiding their ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... sent the interpreter and farmers of the Department to perform the funeral rites for Chusco, the Ottawa jossakeed, who died yesterday at the house erected for him on Round Island. He was about 70 years of age; a small man, of light frame and walked a little bent. He had an expression of cunning and knowingness, which induced his people, when young, to think he resembled the muskrat, just rising from the water, after a dive. This trait was implied by his name. For many years he had acted as ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... wore when not in the presence of his employers deserved such a name, and appeared the miscreant he truly was,—a strange admixture of cowardly superstition, (for few meddle with superstition without getting more or less entangled in its meshes,) of low cunning, and of the most abject and gross sensuality and vice. The invention and wit of Pippo, at all times ready and ingenious, gained increased powers, but the torrent of animal spirits that were let loose ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... it, thereupon reply'd, he would have her satisfied, and he would do the like no more; upon which he made his Words good; for he went aside, and shot himself dead. This was a Son of the politick King of the Machapunga, I spoke of before, and has the most Cunning of any Indian I ever ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... with the task. The only one I ever saw made use of, was sent by the King of Acheen to Sir Stamford Raffles, and was, in my time, the property of my friend, Mr. Robert Bogle. Strange stories are told of the power, sagacity, and cunning of this monarch of the woods. Among other feats, the natives say, it is not uncommon for one elephant to lie down, and let another stand upon his back, in order that he may reach higher up a cocoa-nut tree, and have a better ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... curls the color of frost-touched oak-leaves i' th' sunlight, and eyes like the amber drink when men hold it aloft ere quaffing, and his whole countenance bright and eager, and narrow like that o' a fox, but without a fox's cunning. Then he seemed fashioned to run, and ride, and war, as doth become all men, whether of ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... Much of this cunning volubility sprung upon Mrs. Cox in pumping fashion failed to extort from her anything but good-humoured smiles and laughs. If I have not taken the trouble to describe this beloved Mrs. Cox to you before this, it is because I fear you will say the picture is Unreal, no such ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... because it is physically impossible for him to escape, not because he is in the least unaware of his power or inept in using it. Apparently he has no illusions concerning man and no respect for him as a superior being. He has been beaten by superior cunning, but never conquered, and he gives no parole to refrain from renewing the ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... counsel into effect. Hence they lack prudence which is directed to the good only; and yet in them, according to the Philosopher (Ethic. vi, 12) there is "cleverness," [*deinotike] i.e. natural diligence which may be directed to both good and evil; or "cunning," [*panourgia] which is directed only to evil, and which we have stated above, to be "false prudence" or "prudence of ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... same back yard where he had his own private little menagerie Toby was looking down upon the most remarkable collection of wild animals any boy could imagine would drop down from the clouds of a stormy night—two big elephants, and a cunning baby one in the bargain; three dromedaries, with their double humps all in place; an ostrich; a striped zebra, and last but far from least, a cowering tawny form with a shaggy mane in which Toby could recognize the king of the ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... bull-necked, ferocious negro general, Manuel knew he could expect nothing but brutality, envy and hate; but such a design as this boy's intervention seemed too subtle for the giant Creole's brain. Manuel accounted himself master of the negro when it came to treachery and cunning. Moreover, he knew Leborge to be a sullen and suspicious character, little likely to talk or ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... question after a pause, with his head bent forward, his countenance screwed into the most hideous expression of cunning ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... Edgitha was maried to Charles king of France, surnamed Simplex. And Ethilda by helpe of hir brother Adelstan was bestowed vpon Hugh sonne to Robert earle of Paris, for hir singular beautie most highlie esteemed: sith nature in hir had shewed as it were hir whole cunning, in perfecting hir with all gifts and properties of a comelie personage. Edgiua and Elgiua were sent by their brother Adelstan into Germanie, vnto the emperor Henrie, who bestowed one of them vpon his sonne Otho, that was after ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (6 of 8) - The Sixt Booke of the Historie of England • Raphael Holinshed
... himself a little) rolling beneath their beetling arches and resembling two burning globes; but, despite all these signs of violent passions, a calm, profoundly resigned mien; a voice of thrilling softness, . . . the true voice of the orator, now pure and cunning, now insinuating, but thunderous when required, lending itself to sarcasm and then waxing incisive. Monsieur Albert Savarus (alias Balzac) is of medium height, neither fat nor slim; to conclude, he ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... result, Spanish galleons laden with treasure from the conquered countries ploughed the seas, and untold wealth poured into private and royal coffers. Spanish ambition and greed for gold knew no bounds. Cunning and cruelty were employed by the Spaniards to secure their ends. No trials, no hardships were too great for them to endure. No perils daunted them. Western South America, ruled by viceroys for nearly three centuries, brought ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... the mob, seeing that there was every probability of the stranger's escaping at a mere match of speed, brought a little cunning to bear upon matter, and took a circuit round, and ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... donkey steed! that standest slyly by, With thy ill-combed mane and patchy neck—thy brown and cunning eye, I will not mount the Monne's height, or tread the gentle mead Upon thy back again: oh slow and ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... Subiects them to natures law. 40 Whose hie virtue number teaches In which euery thing dooth mooue, From the lowest depth that reaches To the height of heauen aboue: Harmony that wisely found, When the cunning hand doth strike Whereas euery amorous sound, Sweetly marryes with his like. The tender cattell scarcely take From their damm's the feelds to proue, 50 But ech seeketh out a make, Nothing liues that doth not loue: Not soe much as but the plant As nature ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... we had spent so much time over him already that we did not like to give in, and resolved we would throw him anyhow. None of us could stay inside the fence, so fierce were the rushes of the bull, and he was too cunning to let himself be caught by ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... lounging on a stone bench by one of the arches, looking listlessly into the sombre garden-patch we have described. The first of these, Father Anselmo, was a corpulent fellow, with an easy swing of gait, heavy animal features, and an eye of shrewd and stealthy cunning: the whole air of the man expressed the cautious, careful voluptuary. The other, Father Johannes, was thin, wiry, and elastic, with hands like birds' claws, and an eye that reminded one of the crafty cunning of a serpent. His smile was a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... alone can fit women truly to exert their most sacred prerogatives. Those who have enjoyed the best means of knowing the truth say, that the Harems of the East are the hot-beds of every wicked quality whose seeds slumber in the heart of woman. Surrounded by rivals; incessantly watched by those cunning and merciless monsters, the eunuchs; knowing nothing of science, art, literature, or industry— they must be devoured by animal passion, by love of intrigue and deception, by jealousy, envy, and hatred. The true remedy for the melancholy stagnation or the frightful effervescence ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... alone Jocko came skipping along, and jumped on his back, and peeped at him, and patted his cheeks, and was so cunning and good Neddy couldn't whip him; but he shut him up in a closet to ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... vases—close the bond true metals make; Easily the smith may weld them, harder far it is to break. Evil hearts are earthen vessels—at a touch they crack a-twain, And what craftsman's ready cunning can unite ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... proprietor—stood outside, scanning, with cunning eyes, the passers-by. If any one paused to examine his stock, he was immediately assailed by voluble recommendations of this or that article, and urgently entreated to "just ...
— Sam's Chance - And How He Improved It • Horatio Alger
... them, as they sit yonder, to guess the denouement of the history. The appropriate label for their box would be the title of one of Paul de Kock's last novels; la Femme, le Mari, el l'Amant. Magnian is a cunning dog, and has very ingenious ideas. Fearing, doubtless, that the husband might be too clear-sighted, he threatened him with an ophthalmia, and made him wear blue spectacles. Clever, wasn't it? and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... hospital ward. Sometimes he felt a desire to question the blue-and-white nurse, but it seemed too much trouble to move his lips. Then in a flash came the solution of the puzzle, and he chuckled to himself over his cunning. Of course it was a dream. The nurse was a dream-nurse, who wanted to make him believe that she was real. But she was not clever enough. The best way to pay her out for her deception was to take no notice of her whatsoever. So comforted, he ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... him a look of hate). Would that you might have the chance, my lord, so it were in fair fighting. Methinks Roger's sword-arm will not have lost its cunning in the wars. ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... poor creature, a dismal human failure. His forehead is half an inch high and a bony ridge-telling of unfortunate prenatal influence—runs high along the top of his head. His small eyes are close together. His exaggerated chin protrudes; only a cunning look directed now and then toward the watchful warden tells that any thinking goes on in that miserable being. His best place, perhaps, is there. He is protected against himself, and society has no other way of ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... forces engaged and the constraining rules according to which this organisation worked, were of the nature of personal relations, and the impersonal factors in the case were taken for granted. Politics and war were a field for personal valor, force and cunning, in practical effect a field for personal force and fraud. Industry was a field in which the routine of life, and its outcome, turned on "the skill, dexterity and judgment of the individual workman," in ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... Alexander McKee plenty of time to furnish the redskins with arms and ammunition. The star of the Little Turtle was in the ascendant. He was now thirty-eight years of age, and while not a hereditary chieftain of the Miamis, his prowess and cunning had given him fame. The Indians never made a mistake in choosing a military leader. He watched the Americans from the very time of their leaving Fort Washington and purposed to destroy them at the ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... this matter a long time concealed within his own breast, in hopes that Mr Allworthy might hear it from some other person; but Mrs Wilkins, whether she resented the captain's behaviour, or whether his cunning was beyond her, and she feared the discovery might displease him, never afterwards opened her lips ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... and eager eyes to plant the banner of the Church upon the shores of the West and win the fiery crown of martyrdom. Other figures follow them—gold-seekers, fur-traders, empire-builders, admirals and generals of France and England, strugglers for dominion, soldiers of fortune, makers of cunning plots, and dreamers of great enterprises—and round them all flows the confused tide of war and love, of intrigue and daring, of religious devotion and imperial plot. The massive walls of the old city have been broken, the rude palaces have vanished ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... mair afore you're done wi' him," the atheist said maliciously. "I ken the ways o' thae ministers preaching for kirks. Oh, they're cunning. You was a' pleased that Mr. Dishart spoke about looms and webs, but, lathies, it was a trick. Ilka ane o' thae young ministers has a sermon about looms for weaving congregations, and a second about beating swords into ploughshares for country places, ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... life. The powerful escorts drew merchants and artificers from all parts to repair, as if in caravans, to this great military market. In a little while the camp abounded with tradesmen and artists of all kinds to administer to the luxury and ostentation of the youthful chivalry. Here might be seen cunning artificers in steel and accomplished armorers achieving those rare and sumptuous helmets and cuirasses, richly gilt, inlaid, and embossed, in which the Spanish cavaliers delighted. Saddlers and harness-makers ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... words. But it is not sufficient to say that Shakespeare's power of thought, of feeling, and of expression required three times the number of words to express itself; we must also say that Shakespeare's power of expression shows infinitely greater skill, subtlety, and cunning than is to be found in the works of Milton. Shakespeare had also a marvellous power of making new phrases, most of which have become part and parcel of our language. Such phrases as every inch a king; ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... wrought with cunning hand Round its waist an endless band, An ingenious affair Such as tanks delight to wear; And, inside, a little motor Started every time you smote or Even when you topped your shot; And, once started, it would not Stop, for if it came within Half a furlong of the pin, Then it was ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 12, 1920 • Various
... now that if we had let Cornwood and Boomsby escape from the steamer last night it would have saved us a world of trouble," added Captain Blastblow, with a cunning ...
— Up the River - or, Yachting on the Mississippi • Oliver Optic
... the position in which they are develops a kind of cunning rather than acuteness or cleverness?-Yes; it fosters a sort of low cunning. The system having been continued, one might almost say, for centuries has fostered that element ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... had the franchise," said Charles calmly. "Now mark you, the programme of the Opposition was very cunning. They only proposed to reintroduce cigar and cigarette smoking. Edward Oburn, the young leader, being a film actor, naturally smoked nothing but exquisite Havanas. In this he had the support of the wealthier employers, but the enormous ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 10th, 1920 • Various
... motor-cyclist who told us of a billet that an officer was probably going to leave. We went there. Our host was an old soldier, so, after his wife had hung up what clothes we dared take off to dry by a red-hot stove, he gave us some supper of stewed game and red wine, then made us cunning beds with straw, pillows, and blankets. Too tired to thank him ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... But Hans was cunning. "I will see what makes brother Claus so well-off in the world all of a sudden," said he; so he smeared the inside ...
— Pepper & Salt - or, Seasoning for Young Folk • Howard Pyle
... vigilance. You may see by this, that when a woman has formed a project, there is no husband or lover that can prevent her from putting it in execution. Men had better not put their wives under such restraint, as it only serves to teach them cunning." Having spoken thus to them, she put their rings on the same string with the rest, and sitting down by the monster, as before, laid his head again upon her lap, end made a sign to the princes ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 1 • Anon.
... But she, Whose only dower was her chastity, Having striven in vain, was now about to cry, And crave the help of shepherds that were nigh. Herewith he stay'd his fury, and began To give her leave to rise: away she ran; After went Mercury, who used such cunning, As she, to hear his tale, let off her running (Maids are not won by brutish force and might, But speeches full of pleasures and delight); 420 And, knowing Hermes courted her, was glad That she such loveliness and beauty had As could provoke his liking; yet was mute, And neither would ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... qualities of those British "New Armies" which had been mocked and caricatured in German comic papers. They learned that these "amateur soldiers" had the qualities of the finest troops in the world—not only extreme valor, but skill and cunning, not only a great power of endurance under the heaviest fire, but a spirit of attack which was terrible in its effect. They were fierce bayonet fighters. Once having gained a bit of earth or a ruined village, nothing ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... downed Pierre but his own cunning. He broke his fall with an outstretched left hand, while the bullets of Diaz pumped into the void space which his body had ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... my own country, far, far away, I have heard much about your power and glory, but much more about your wisdom. Men have told me that there is no riddle so cunning that you can not ...
— Fifty Famous People • James Baldwin
... industrious. Their sagacity, penetration, and subtilty, are so extraordinary as to make good their own saying, "That the Dutch have only one eye, while they have two;" but they are deceitful beyond measure, taking a pride in imposing on those who deal with them, and even boast of that cunning of which they ought to be ashamed. In husbandry and navigation they surpass all the other nations of India. Most of the sugar-mills around Batavia belong to them, and the distillery of arrack is entirely in their ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... followed, between Spain and the Philippines, and also complains of the number of Chinese who infest Manila. Luis Perez Dasmarinas urges on Felipe II (June 28, 1597) the evils resulting from the presence in the islands of so many heathen Chinese, with their vices, cunning, and danger to the state. "Except for self-interest, we are mutually contrary and hateful." He recommends a number of severe measures limiting their activity, and placing obstacles in the way of their employment; and adds various ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume IX, 1593-1597 • E. H. Blair
... Transvaal Republic, born at Rastenburg; became member of the Executive Council in 1872; in 1882 was chosen President, and has been three times elected to the same office since; a man of sturdy, stubborn principles, a champion of the rights of the Boers, and a cunning diplomatist; ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... eats another when he has succeeded in capturing it, either in open fight or by cunning and treachery; the climbing plant strangles the tree, the desert-sand chokes the meadows, stars fall from heaven, and earthquakes swallow up cities. You believe in the gods—and so do I after my own fashion—and if they have so ordered ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... experience with the young woman had not been successful enough to lead me to believe that I could conquer where Harley had been vanquished. Physical force I had found to be unavailing. She was too cunning to stumble into any of the pitfalls that with all my imagination I could conjure up to embarrass her; but something had to be done, and I now resolved upon a course of moral suasion, and wholly for Harley's ...
— A Rebellious Heroine • John Kendrick Bangs
... Reginald Scot a little later declared that every parish was full of men and women who claimed to work miracles.[29] Most of them were women, and their performances read like those of the gipsy fortune-tellers today. "Cunning women" they called themselves. They were many of them semi-medical or pseudo-medical practitioners[30] who used herbs and extracts, and, when those failed, charms and enchantments, to heal the sick. If they were fairly fortunate, they became known ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... more than the physical needs of the multitude that appealed to Jesus. "Man's Unhappiness, as I construe," says Teufelsdroeckh in "Sartor Resartus", "comes of his Greatness, it is because there is an Infinite in him, which with all his cunning he cannot quite bury under the Finite. Will the whole Finance Ministers and Upholsterers and Confectioners of modern Europe undertake, in joint-stock company, to make one Shoeblack happy?" We read in a passage, which it ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... be invested in a bribe for some argus-eyed shipmate, who shall play the part of a spy upon the master-at-arms and corporals while the gaming is in progress. In nine cases out of ten these arrangements are so cunning and comprehensive, that the gamblers, eluding all vigilance, conclude their game unmolested. But now and then, seduced into unwariness, or perhaps, from parsimony, being unwilling to employ the services of a spy, they are suddenly lighted upon by the constables, remorselessly ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... styles in allegorical subjects. The paintings, selected by the taste of Dalton, to overpower the darkness of the rooms by intensity of color, were incorporated with the walls. There were but few mirrors. At the end of each suite, one, of fabulous size, without frame, made to appear, by a cunning arrangement of dark draperies, like a transparent portion of the wall itself, extended ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... gained—this first love of a man who has known no other and will know no other while he lives!—to bring about his ruin? This other, at whose head you threw me—beware of him. He is light-hearted and gay, perhaps. You call him a clown; he is cunning and brave; and unless you judge him at his true value, your fabric of schemes will fall ere it reaches its culmination. Could even you trick him with words? No. You were compelled to use force. Is he not handsome, Madame?" with a feverish gaiety. "Is there a gentleman at your ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... every member being absurdly out of proportion, while the only features upon the modelling of which any pains had been taken were those of the face, the expression of which hideously suggested the extremes of mingled cunning and ferocity. An altar of the same black marble, about three feet high and ten feet long, stood at the feet of the figure, and this was already piled with wood in preparation for the ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... even, had been overlooked; for he was a master at his craft, the greatest master in the wild, perhaps. The wolf? My dear sirs, the wolf was an innocent suckling cub beside Gulo, look you, and his brain and his cunning were not the brain and the cunning of a beast at all, but of ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... stealthy tread, but the quick senses of the warrior took the alarm, he opened his eyes, saw two armed men advancing upon him, and sprang from his couch. His sword hung beside him, and he attempted to draw it, but the cunning hand of Rosamond had fastened it securely in the scabbard. The only weapon remaining was a small foot-stool. This he used with vigor, but it could not long protect him from the spears of his assailants, and he quickly ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... saving them from filth and ordure, By often brusshing and much diligence, Full goodly bounde in pleasant coverture, Of Damas, Sattin, or els of Velvet pure: I keepe them sure, fearing least they should be lost, For in them is the cunning wherein I me boast. ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... cornered he uses his wings. I simply put my wits against his, follow him about till he has to drop his load to breathe, when a sudden start sends him off, and I secure it. If I cover up anything, he knows at once it is some forbidden treasure, and devotes all his energy and cunning, which are great, to uncovering and possessing himself of it. He opens any box by delivering sharp blows under the edge of the cover, and hides my postage stamps in books and magazines. He hops around the floor in a heavy way, as often sideways ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... First, I chose the dearest little Irish girl. Her name is Norah, and she's just as pretty as she can be, only her face was dreadfully dirty, and her clothes all rags. Then her little sister Kathleen cried to come; so I took her too. Then I chose a cunning little German tot named Gretchen. She has yellow hair, braided in tight little tails down her back, and is a good deal cleaner than the rest, but not very clean, you know; and she hadn't any shoes at all. Then Mrs. Wallis brought up ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... Tryggveson on this grand Wendland expedition of his. Fleets and forces were with best diligence got ready; and, withal, a certain Jarl Sigwald of Jomsburg, chieftain of the Jomsvikings, a powerful, plausible, and cunning man, was appointed to find means of joining himself to Tryggveson's grand voyage; of getting into Tryggveson's confidence, and keeping Svein Forkbeard, Eric, and the Swedish king aware of ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... decrepitude, while their intellectual attainments would only serve as a light to guide them to deeper depths of vice and ruin. A civilization without religion would be a civilization of 'the struggle for existence, and the survival of the fittest,' in which cunning and strength would become the substitutes for principle, ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... born on the 10th of March 1845. In natural disposition he bore little resemblance to his soft-hearted, liberal minded father, and still less to his refined, philosophic, sentimental, chivalrous, yet cunning grand-uncle Alexander I., who coveted the title of "the first gentleman of Europe.'' With high culture, exquisite refinement and studied elegance he had no sympathy and never affected to have any. Indeed, he rather gloried in the idea of being of the same rough texture as the great ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... warring son was he, 700 Great of Ligurians, while the Fates his guile would yet allow: But he, since fleeing out of fight, would nought avail him now, Nor knew he how in any wise to turn the Queen away, With rede of guile and cunning words began to ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... nature are extraordinary. Most of us will remember reading Caesar's description of the elks in the Hercynian forest, which slept leaning up against the trees because they had no joints in their legs. The inhabitants, cunning fellows, sought out the favoured trees and sawed them nearly through; so that when the unfortunate elks settled themselves to sleep, the booby-traps came into operation. Having no joints in their legs, the poor beasts were unable to rise, and so ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... world, condition strange, Where naught abiding is but only Change, 285 Where the deep-bolted stars themselves still shift and range! Shall we to more continuance make pretence? Renown builds tombs; a life-estate is Wit; And, bit by bit, The cunning years steal all from us but woe: 290 Leaves are we, whose decays no harvest sow. But, when we vanish hence, Shall they lie forceless in the dark below, Save to make green their little length of sods, Or deepen pansies ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... ready, Brodie," said King. He watched the great hulking figure as it went out; two hundred and fifty pounds of brawn there, every ounce of it packed with power and the cunning of brutish battle. If he ever fought Swen Brodie, just man to man, with only the weapons nature gave them, what would ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... in the place of the God-life. They are slowly mastering their disordered passions. The base instigations of their lower nature are being thwarted. Greedy appetites which reign in others are in them compelled to serve. Tendencies to cunning and falsehood, the fruits of which are only too apparent in the world at large, they watch and harass and pinch. Animosities, and jealousies, and envies—those enemies of all kinds of peace—are repressed, if ...
— Our Master • Bramwell Booth
... always know what they are doing," said the sham Belgian, with a cunning leer. "What would you have? A family, the father of which is a brigadier-general at the front; the eldest son also a captain at the front; and the young boy on the point of joining the Army. They were just the very people likely to talk, to say nothing ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... me how you got in without disturbing those locks. I grant you, Bobby, you had sufficient motive for both murders, but I don't believe you have two personalities, one decent and lovable, the other cruel and cunning to the point of magic. I don't believe if a man had two such personalities the actions of one would be totally closed to ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... cheap food being apparently the one thing which could move them simultaneously. They were huddled into ill-fitting, cast-off clothing, the ragged finery which one sees only in East London. Their pale faces were dominated by that most unlovely of human expressions, the cunning and shrewdness of the bargain-hunter who starves if he cannot make a successful trade, and yet the final impression was not of ragged, tawdry clothing nor of pinched and sallow faces, but of myriads of hands, empty, pathetic, nerveless and workworn, showing white in the uncertain ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... There were a few customers at this early hour, men out of employment and an inoffensive-looking lot, though of course they eyed us sharply. Albano himself proved to be a greasy, low-browed fellow who had a sort of cunning look. I could well imagine such a fellow spreading terror in the hearts of simple folk by merely pressing both temples with his thumbs and drawing his long bony fore-finger under his throat—the so-called Black Hand sign that has ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... turmoil of plans, tasks, schemes, land-grants, politics, charters, inducements, liens and loans, Government and army and State and national interests, grafts and deals and bosses—all that mass of selfish and unselfish motives, all that wealth of cunning and noble aims, all that congested assemblage of humanity which went to make up the building of the ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... it was Snarley Bob who had made him so. Now Snarley was a cunning breeder of sheep. For three-and-forty years he had applied his intuitions and his patience to the task of producing rams and ewes such as the world had never seen. His system of "observation and experiment" was peculiarly his ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... let me join My toils, my hazard, and my fame, with thine. The Trojan, not in stratagem unskill'd, Sends his light horse before to scour the field: Himself, thro' steep ascents and thorny brakes, A larger compass to the city takes. This news my scouts confirm, and I prepare To foil his cunning, and his force to dare; With chosen foot his passage to forelay, And place an ambush in the winding way. Thou, with thy Volscians, face the Tuscan horse; The brave Messapus shall thy troops inforce With those of Tibur, and the Latian band, Subjected all ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... O the cunning wiles that creep In thy little heart asleep! When thy little heart doth wake, Then the dreadful light ...
— Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience • William Blake
... that the cunning in Baboo's small brown finger was worth all the precision and drill in the Sikh ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... for Murfreesboro, at that time in possession of the Union forces. When hailed by the pickets, a mile from the town, I told them I wished to see the officer in command. They directed me where to find him, and allowed me to advance. They knew far less of Southern cunning than I did, or they would not have allowed me to ride into the town without a guard. When I found the officer, I stated that some Federal cavalry had taken my horse in McMinnville a few days ago, and I wished to recover him. He told me he could give me no authority to secure my ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson
... almost understands or judges of business better than the King, if he would not be guilty of his father's fault to be doubtfull of himself and easily be removed from his own opinion. That my Lord Lauderdale is never from the King's care nor council, and that he is a most cunning fellow. Upon the whole, that he finds things go very bad every where; and even in the Council nobody ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... the laughter and the dancing. It is midnight! It is the Noche Buena, and the bell summons the faithful to the midnight mass. The effect is electric. The last twirl of the waltz is suspended, half executed. The dancers stop as suddenly as if they were puppets moved and stilled by the cunning of some wire-pulling hand. A general rush is made for the church: in a moment the ball-room is empty. The church is filled as instantaneously, and the wildly gay dancers of a moment ago are now kneeling, hushed and down-bent, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... a right to choose an occupation which will only call into play his lower and inferior qualities, as cunning, deceit, letting all his nobler qualities shrivel and die? Has he a right to select a vocation that will develop only the beast within him instead of the man? which will call out the bulldog qualities only, the qualities which overreach and grasp, the qualities which get and never give, which develop ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... barbarous cruelty was practiced as well as every trick of cunning. But the three remained steadfast, and even laughed in the faces of their captors. But not a jot of vital information did they give, though they boasted in exaggerated terms of the strength of the commands to which they were attached, and told of countless armies ...
— The Khaki Boys Over the Top - Doing and Daring for Uncle Sam • Gordon Bates
... have done—what I would have done. Pardi! since Deroulede is so important a personage, since we must all put on kid gloves when we lay hands upon him, then let us fight him with other weapons. Are we aristocrats that we should hesitate to play the part of jackal to this cunning fox? Citizen-Deputy Merlin, are you the son of some ci-devant duke or prince that you dared not forge a document which would bring a traitor to his doom? Nay; let me tell you, friends, that the Republic has no use for curs, and calls him a traitor who allows one of her ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... change. His temper resented it. But his cunning robbed him of the retort that leapt to his lips. And all the while the girl's cold, pretty eyes provoked those passions in him which the dead mother had dreaded. Keeko could have no understanding of the unbridled licence ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... manner and did many other mad things; and there were some that were wholly bad, just as there are rogue elephants and as there are black sheep in the human flock, but they were not really bad as a rule, and certainly not too intelligent. Even little men with their cunning little brains could get the better of them. The result of such teaching could only be that the Devil would be regarded as not the unmitigated monster they had been told that he was, nor without human weaknesses and virtues. When we say now that he is not "as black as he is painted" we ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... musingly. But now, as the iron of the hoe clinked against the gravel flints, he came back, so to say, to himself and back to the supreme question at issue. He looked up, his eyes and the soundless ironic laughter resident in them, meeting McCabe's twinkling, cunning yet faithful and merry little eyes, ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... and lived there with his mistress until recalled to Copenhagen, when he took her with him. The most singular feature in this whole intrigue is that the royal voluptuary was from the outset under the absolute sway, not of the fair Dyveke, but of her mother, Sigbrit, a low, cunning, intriguing woman of Dutch origin, who followed the couple to the royal palace at Opslo, and afterwards accompanied them to Stockholm, the complete ruler of her daughter's royal slave. On the accession of Christiern to the throne, he resolved, at the instance of this woman, to add the Swedish ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... have it," thought Coleman, with a smile. "Cunning boy; he thought nobody would think of looking in his vest pocket. Well, let us see ...
— Struggling Upward - or Luke Larkin's Luck • Horatio Alger
... vain she tried every artifice of female blandishment and cunning to discover what was really in the heart and mind of Bigot. She had sounded his soul to try if he entertained a suspicion of herself, but its depth was beyond her power to reach its bottomless darkness, and to the last she could ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... become entirely obsolete, and others previously weak become strong and play a new or more leading part in the organisation of a species. And so with instincts, where animals experience new dangers they become more cautious and cunning, and transmit these acquired faculties to their posterity. But not satisfied with such legitimate speculations, the French philosopher conceived that by repeated acts of volition animals might acquire new organs and attributes, and that in plants, which could not exert ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... face, her brow, her eye, The dimple on her cheek: and such sweet skill Hath from the cunning workman's pencil flown, These lips look fresh and lively as her own. False colours last after the true be dead. Of all the roses grafted on her cheeks, Of all the graces dancing in her eyes, Of all the music set upon her tongue, Of all that was ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... which Phyllis would not give, thus putting a stop to all those in which she would have participated. It was no wonder that Ada, sometimes helping Esther to deceive, sometimes deceived by her, should have learnt the same kind of cunning, and ceased to think it a matter of course to be true and just ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... many a shorthorned Hereford hidden in the innermost recesses of that tick and sand-fly infested ti-tree that knew not the cunning ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... mother, listen well and do what I tell you. When he has killed himself, and has come into that place where you are, see that he does not escape the punishment he merits. Watch well for his coming, for he is full of cunning and deceit, and will endeavor to hide himself from your eyes. When you have recognized him—an old man, brown as an Indian, with a white beard—point him out to the angels, and say: 'This is Nuflo, the bad man that lied to Rima.' Let them take him and singe his wings with fire, so ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... understood. For her he had meant that letter— yes, she was sure of it! To her, as though for another, he had spoken those words—she remembered every one of them. He had not dared to speak directly. And he had made her write them down. Foolish boy that he was, he had been cunning. Did she forgive him? She could not help forgiving; but ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... exercise functions at which a statesman here would tremble, without any theoretical study, and without any of that sort of experience which, in mixed societies of business and converse, form men gradually and insensibly to great affairs. Low cunning, intrigue, and stratagem are soon acquired; but manly, durable policy, which never sacrifices the general interest to a partial or momentary advantage, is not so cheaply formed in ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... suddenly he grinned his slow half-drunken grin, which was not without a certain cunning and tipsy slyness. "H'm!... I had a presentiment that you would end in something like this. Would you believe it? You were making straight for it. Well, to be sure you have your own two thousand. That's a dowry for you. And I'll ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... that grieve, Now at last I am overtaken. I will say I believe. I ran with the pennons of morning astream over me. On the precipice, scorning its warning, I ran to be free. Still I love high winds and the great running and the steep verge, But strength past my strength overtakes my cunning, and stars emerge High over me, eternal, deathless, deep over deep, And my head sways heavy as I run breathless, my eyelids ...
— Perpetual Light • William Rose Benet
... 'Baff,' And gave me this staff, Telling me neither to smile nor to laugh. Buff says 'Baff,' to all his men, And I say 'Baff' to you again. And he neither laughs nor smiles, In spite of all your cunning wiles, But carries his face with a very good grace, And passes his staff to ...
— My Book of Indoor Games • Clarence Squareman
... efficacious as it is scarce, and here, as in Europe in the Middle Ages, the hair of the dog that bit you is used to heal the bite and to prevent hydrophobia. An infusion from the bones of a tiger is believed to confer courage, strength, and agility, and the flesh of a snake is boiled and eaten to make one cunning and wise. Chips from coffins which have been let down into the grave are boiled and are said to possess great virtue for catarrh. Flies, fleas, and bedbugs prepared in different ways are given for various diseases. Medicines are given in all forms, and not infrequently pills are as large as ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... no person should hold the office of governor, either prospectively, or perspectively, more than five years, consecutively. This placed Mr. Mark Woolston on the shelf at the next election. Two legislative bodies were formed, the old council was annihilated, and everything was done that cunning could devise, to cause power and influence to pass into new hands. This was the one great object of the whole procedure, and, of course, it ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... Bergamo. The one is a sharp and roguish servant, busy-body, and rascal; the other is dull and foolish, and always masked and dressed in motley—a gibe at the poverty of the Bergamasks among whom, moreover, the extremes of stupidity and cunning are most usually found, according to the popular ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... invisible enemies that beset him. In his conflict with the malign powers around him, he might well have regarded certain animals as being in some respects stronger combatants against those powers than himself; and where they were not physically stronger, some of them, like the snake, had a cunning and a subtlety that seemed far to surpass his own. In course of time certain bodies of men came to regard themselves as being in special alliance with some one animal, and as being descended from that animal as their common ancestor. The existence side by ...
— Celtic Religion - in Pre-Christian Times • Edward Anwyl
... met the eyes either of his mother or his brother; to avoid his gaze theirs had become surprisingly alert, with the cunning of foes who fear to cross each other. He was always wondering: "What can she have said to Jean? Did she confess or deny it? What does my brother believe? What does he think of her—what does he think of me?" He could not guess, and it drove him to ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... a father's love, and it is happiness to me to have thee here; but old as I am, and with so little cunning to read a maiden's heart, I can read clear enough to know thou art not happy. Whisper, dearest. Is it a sweetheart who sighs for thy favours far off, and will not beard this old lion in his den? My gentle Angela would make no ill choice. Fear not to trust me, my heart. I will ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... fashion's ranks preferred, And men of honour, if you take their word. But they can plunder, pillage, and devour, More than poor robbers, at the midnight hour; Lay deeper schemes to manage lucky hits, Than artful swindlers, living by their wits. Like cunning fowlers, spread th' alluring snare, And glory when they pluck a pigeon bare. These are our gamesters, who have basely made The cards and dice their study ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... histories and affairs, and, where facts failed, calling in the aid of fancy; and when there was nothing more to be discovered or invented, to lighten their money-chests by all the tyranny that power dare venture on, or the effrontery that cunning could devise and execute. Their curiosity regarding Tchitchikof was soon baffled, by discovering, like Socrates, that all they knew was, that nothing could be known. In vain did mine host essay to pump him: with a show of the most ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 460 - Volume 18, New Series, October 23, 1852 • Various
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