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Double-faced   Listen
adjective
Double-faced  adj.  
1.
Having two faces designed for use; as, a double-faced hammer.
2.
Deceitful; hypocritical; treacherous.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Double-faced" Quotes from Famous Books



... in which the government of the northwestern district had been thrown in consequence of the quarrel concerning the jurisdiction. The inhabitants were doubtful as to which colony really had a right to their allegiance, and many of the frontier officials were known to be double-faced, professing allegiance to both governments.[48] When the Pennsylvanians raised a corps of a hundred rangers there almost ensued a civil war among the whites, for the Virginians were fearful that the movement was really aimed against them.[49] Of course the ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt

... is constantly found in DESCARTES. Different philosophers have explicitly admitted that every act of cognition implies a relation subject-object. This is one of the corner-stones of the neo-criticism of RENOUVIER. He asserts that all representation is double-faced, and that what is known to us presents itself in the character of both representative and represented. He follows this up by describing separately the phenomena and laws of the representative and of the ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet

... about 1813 till the early part of the reign of Louis Philippe. He was a Cremiere-Dionis, but was always known by the latter name. A shrewd, double-faced individual, who was secretly a partner with Massin-Levrault the money-lender. He concerned himself with the inheritance left by Dr. Minoret, giving advice to the three legatees of the old physician. After the Revolution of 1830, he was elected mayor of Nemours, instead of ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe

... that cipher," said Jack Vance, "and being mixed up with that lot. He is a double-faced beast; it was just like him making that underhanded attack on ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery

... when he must recognize masters and laws, and it was not easy. At thirty, as he liked to boast, he had gained victories, appeased a popular storm, fused parties, and rallied a nation. Further, for years he had made sport of European dynasties, and in particular had found that of Austria both double-faced and time-serving. Having taken a leaf from her book, he had become her dupe, and it was hard to bear the consequences. The stormy side of the famous interview is therefore unimportant historically; ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... semicircular form; they are generally double-faced, or formed of two concentric divisions, one receding within the other. Early in the style they are plain and square-edged; late in the style they are often found enriched with the zig-zag and roll mouldings, or some other ornament. Sometimes the curvature of the arch does not immediately spring ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam

... climbing. The ant said the fox had asked him yesterday to watch, and if the weasel came that way, to warn him that there was a plot laid for his life, and not to be too venturesome. This was a piece of the same double-faced ways the fox has been notorious for these many years past. No one hates the weasel so much as the fox, but he said to himself: 'The weasel is so cunning, that even if he is caught, he is sure to find some way to get free, and then he will ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies

... of food; and they frankly confessed that starvation was their principal motive for coming over. I did all in my power to fix their new faith by presents of provisions, &c. &c.: and I think they are trustworthy; for there is a straightforwardness about the Dyak character far different from the double-faced dealings of the Malay. Their stipulations were, forgiveness for the past, and an assurance that none of the Dyaks from the sea (i. e. Sarebus and Sakarran) should be employed; for they were, they said, hateful to their eyes. These terms being readily conceded—the first from interest, the ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel

... in the breeze to which we have referred, and while the smooth ocean glowed in the mellow light that ushered in the day, the attention of those on board the Avenger (as we shall call the double-faced schooner when under red colors) was attracted to one of the more distant cliffs, on the summit of which human beings appeared ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne

... a piece of double-faced canton flannel underneath the tablecloth. Even coarse napery will present a much better appearance with a sub-cover than if spread directly upon the table. It will likewise lessen noise in changing courses ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg

... Man (or any other theme of that grandeur) as the subject of a didactic poem, which is more subtle, and which for that reason we have reserved to the last. In the ordinary specimens of didactic poetry, the theme and its sub-divisions wear (as we have already observed) a double-faced or Janus aspect; one derived from the direct experience of life, the other from the reflex experience of it. And the very reason why one face does affect you is because the other does not. ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... real victory of Actium. In the words of the Italian historian Ferrero, "it was a victory gained without fighting, and Antony was defeated in this supreme struggle, not by the valor of his adversary or by his own defective strategy or tactics, but by the hopeless inconsistency of his double-faced policy, which, while professing to be republican and Roman, was actually ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott

... quarters. Never less than fifteen persons sat down to Alexey Sergeitch's table.... He was such a hospitable man! Among all those dependants two were particularly conspicuous: a dwarf, nicknamed Janus, or the Double-faced, of Danish—or, as some maintained, Jewish—extraction, and the mad Prince L. Contrary to what was customary in those days, the dwarf did nothing to amuse the master or mistress, and was not a jester—quite the opposite; he was always silent, had an ill-tempered and sullen appearance, ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... ever have conceived the base idea of connecting herself with our family by a marriage with Paul! To think that when she was playing at horses with that dear child who is now in his grave—I never liked it at the time—she should have been hiding such a double-faced design! I wonder she was never afraid that something would happen to her. She is ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... "Tricked by this double-faced devil Louison-Delavigne, thrown out of my future rank, held for the five thousand pounds already advanced, and, with eleven thousand embargoed in that Paris pawnbroker shop of a Credit Lyonnais, I've but one course ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage

... 17. I consider this double-faced presentation, this combination of the subjective method with the objective, as the highest in art, because it is the most comprehensive. Not that Tolstoy is incapable of employing the objective method alone with the highest success; ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin

... distinguish the devotion of the doctor (who now appears in pink because he likes riding hobbies) and the affection of the teddy-bear (now expanded to human proportions) from the serpentine nature of the governess and the double-faced dealings of the nurse. Her father, who is a stranger to her, comes on dressed in banknotes and chained to a safe; her mother, also a stranger, wears a society bee which buzzes in the place where her bonnet would have been; and five samples of the fashionable world, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 7, 1914 • Various

... fellow-townsmen! I have the gratification of announcing to you thus formally what you have already learned indirectly. The pulpit from which our venerable pastor has fed us with sound doctrine for half a century is not to be invaded by a fanatical, sectarian, double-faced, Jesuitical interloper! We are not to have our young people demoralized and corrupted by the temptations to vice, notoriously connected with Sunday evening lectures! We are not to have a preacher obtruding himself upon us, who ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot

... all, Foma, since you live on this earth, it is your duty to think over everything that takes place about you. Why? That you may not suffer for your own senselessness, and may not harm others by your folly. Now, every act of man is double-faced, Foma. One is visible to all—this is the wrong side; the other is concealed—and that is the real one. It is that one that you must be able to find in order to understand the sense of the thing. Take for example the lodging-asylums, ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky

... a nasty little beast; She's seen at many a fete and feast. She's spiteful, sly and double-faced, Exceeding prim, exceeding chaste. And while a soft, sleek smile she ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various

... in the time of Honeyman's early prosperity. That he and his uncle should be very intimate together, was impossible, from the nature of the two men; Clive being frank, clear-sighted, and imperious; Charles, timid, vain, and double-faced, conscious that he was a humbug, and that most people found him out, so that he would quiver and turn away, and be more afraid of young Clive and his direct straightforward way, than of many older men. Then ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... brooded long over his treachery. And even if things had come all right in the end, she would never have been able to forgive his speaking to her of Schilsky in the way he had done. No, she was finished with Maurice Guest; he was too double-faced, too deceitful for her.—And she cried bitterly, with her face turned to ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson

... double-faced, is double-mouthed, And with contrary blast proclaims most deeds: On both his wings, one black, the other white, Bears greatest names in his wild aery flight. 667 MILTON: Samson ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various

... most detestable murderess and adulteress of ancient history, that she has learned to lie skilfully and artfully, that she equivocates, says incompatible things, and crosses her own tracks,—that she is double-faced, and has the art to lie even by silence, and that she has become wholly unscrupulous, and acquiesces in anything, no matter what, that tends to the desired end, and that end the destruction of ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... follows the line of the Rue de Rivoli, suffering her even, when they reached its farthest end, to direct him in silence up the steps to the terrace of the Feuillants. For, after all, the possibilities were double-faced, and her bold departure from custom might simply mean that what she had to say was so dreadful that it needed all the ...
— Madame de Treymes • Edith Wharton

... soul stands, in the grasp of a demon, who compels him to look, and to recognise in the murderer's features his own face. To the right of the throne, upon a tall-stemmed flat stand, such as offerings to the gods are placed upon in the temples, a monstrous shape appears, like a double-faced head freshly cut off, and set upright upon the stump of the neck. The two faces are the Witnesses: the face of the Woman (Mirume) sees all that goes on in the Shaba; the other face is the face of a bearded man, the face of Kaguhana, who smells ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn

... you know," Christopher answered, half apologizing for the double-faced role he had played. "I'm not usually a squealer—honest, I'm not. But the diamonds belonged to my father, and I saw ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett

... head of the Times—like that of Janus, the Roman deity—is double-faced. With one countenance it will smile continually on the friends of Old England, and with the other will frown incessantly ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... regular church-goers, to clasp his hand. They withdrew their allegiance after a time, which naturally in no way phased Carl's scientific interest in them. A paper hostile to Carl's attitude on the I.W.W. and his insistence on the clean-up of camps published an article portraying him as a double-faced individual who feigned an interest in the under-dog really to undo him, as he was at heart and pocket-book a capitalist, being the possessor of an independent income of $150,000 a year. Some I.W.W.'s took this up, and convinced a large meeting that he was really trying to ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker

... be covered with a mat of double-faced cotton flannel wide enough to fall six inches below the edge of the table, all around. This under mat greatly improves the appearance of the table-cloth, which can be laid much more smoothly over this soft foundation. Besides, the mat protects the ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton

... said Henry, wearily, then left the works and went home; but, as he went, he said to himself. "It is not my doing." And his double-faced heart glowed ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade

... would take it, Dawson looks him full in the face a good minute; then, taking it in his great grimy hand, and grasping it firmly, "Master," says Jack, "I see thou art an honest man, and none lives who hath ever sold me tar for pitch, be he never so double-faced, and so I wish you joy of your sweet wife. As for you, Mistress" (turning to Moll) "who have ever been kind to me beyond my deserts, I do wish you all the happiness in the world, and I count all my hardships well paid in bringing you safely to this anchorage. For sure I would sooner you ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett

... seated at the window looking out upon the river, her mind busy with the ultimatum which had just been presented to it. That it was an ultimatum, she could not doubt; Quinton Edge had been in deadly earnest in confronting her with her fate—a double-faced one, as she thought, with a little shiver. She could not avoid seeing it, no ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen

... said, over two hundred years ago, that in philosophy truth seemed double-faced, by which I fancy he meant that there was always more than one point of view of all great problems, often contradictory points of view, from which truth is revealed. In the following pages I am aware that two ideas, or principles, struggle in my mind for mastery. One is the idea of the super-mechanical ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs

... actually enclosed within double ramparts, and a portion of these dates from the time of the Visigoths. Their walls were composed of cubic blocks of stone, with alternate layers of brick, were double-faced, and filled in with rubble bedded in lime, forming a sort of concrete core. The towers were round outside with flat face to the town, and large round-headed windows which were closed with boards. These in later ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould

... Guard! Why, General Lawoestyne had not yet got command of it. Count on the Army? Why, General Neumayer was at Lyons, and not at Paris. Would he march to the assistance of the Assembly? What did we know about this? As for Lawoestyne, was he not double-faced? Were they sure of him? Call to arms the 8th Legion? Forestier was no longer Colonel. The 5th and 6th? But Gressier and Howyne were only lieutenant-colonels, would these legions follow them? Order the Commissary Yon? ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo

... for half a century in a powder magazine finds himself at last the author and the victim of a hideous disaster. So with our pleasant-minded Pepys and his peccadilloes. All of a sudden, as he still trips dexterously enough among the dangers of a double-faced career, thinking no great evil, humming to himself the trillo, Fate takes the further conduct of that matter from his hands, and brings him face to face with the consequences of his acts. For a man still, after so many years, the lover, although ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... at the end of 1791, was in debt to the amount of 53,000 francs; this is the hole stopped by the court. On the other side, Danton before the Revolution signs himself Danton even in authentic writing, which is an usurpation of nobility and at that time subject to the penalty of the galleys.—The double-faced infidelity in question must have been frequent, for their leaders were anything else but sensitive. On the 7th of August Madame Elizabeth tells M. de Montmorin that the insurrection would not take place; that Petion and Santerre were concerned in it, and that they ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... afternoon work and alone in the office, answered it. It was the Rev. Mr. Dayne, Secretary of the Department of Charities; he had learned that the reformatory bill was to be called up in the house next day. The double-faced politicians of the machine, said Mr. Dayne, with their pretended zeal for economy, were desperately afraid of the Post. Would Mr. Queed be kind enough to hit a final ringing blow for ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... Ned," replied the Dandy; still it 'ud be the milliah murdher to let the double-faced villin carry off such ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... occupied the Quirinal and part of the Capitoline hills. The name of this town most probably was Qui'rium, and from it the Roman people received the name Quirites. The two cities were united on terms of equality, and the double-faced Ja'nus stamped on the earliest Roman coins was probably a symbol of the double state. They were at first so disunited, that even the rights of intermarriage did not exist between them, and it was probably from Qui'rium that the Roman youths obtained the wives[3] by force, ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith

... duplicate, reduplicate; geminate; repeat &c 104; renew &c 660. Adj. double; doubled &c v.; bicipital^, bicephalous^, bidental^, bilabiate, bivalve, bivalvular^, bifold^, biform^, bilateral; bifarious^, bifacial^; twofold, two-sided; disomatous^; duplex; double-faced, double-headed; twin, duplicate, ingeminate^; second. Adv. twice, once more; over again &c (repeatedly) 104; as much again, twofold. secondly, in the ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... Placidia. But he was standing between the all-powerful Barbarians and the undermined Empire. He wanted to remain on good terms with both, and then, when the hour came, to go over to the stronger. This double-faced diplomacy caused his downfall. His rival Aetius accused him of high treason before Placidia. The Court of Ravenna declared him an enemy of the Empire, and an army was sent against him. Boniface did not hesitate; he went into open ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand

... resolved upon the extinction of the enemy. She walked out again, half an hour later, with the very teeth of her resolve drawn, but so painlessly that she had not been aware of the operation! She marched in a woman of a single purpose; she came out a double-faced diplomatist, with the seeds of sedition and conspiracy lurking, all unsuspected, in ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... beside the pure book!—even so are the just and the unjust mingled. Ah! he has been praying with the Lords' Commissioners; then drinking, and so forth, the instant their backs were turned! Yet, God hath made the double-faced villain of good proportions, so that a woman can look on him with love, though his heart—augh!—I wouldn't have his heart for his lands, no, nor for his fine person either. Barbara can't abide him; she always says he has a black look—and ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... dark, was on fire with shame; and I cursed the ignorant, presumptuous folly I had been guilty of in roaring out that abominable "Vicar of Bray" ballad, which had now become as hateful to me as my trousers or boots. The composer of that song, the writer of the words, and its subject, the double-faced Vicar himself, presented themselves to my mind as the three most damnable beings that had ever existed. "The devil take my luck!" I muttered, grinding my teeth with impotent anger; for it seemed such hard lines, just when I had succeeded in getting into favor, to go and spoil it all in ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson

... me, I am playing him off as I please; cooling or inflaming his violent passions as may best suit my purposes; permitting so much to be revealed of my life and actions, and intentions, as may give him such a confidence in his double-faced agent, as shall enable me to dance his employer upon my ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... gifts—Realization, Memory, and Anticipation—and thanked the gracious gods, but on another day, when Life pressed hard, they tried to fling them off and cried in bitter reproach: 'Why didst thou burden us with double-faced, tormenting creatures? Why wore they not a single face, ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington

... The beauty of a god adorns his form, The foulness of a fiend is in his heart; The viper's, or the scorpion's filthy nest Nurses a far less deadly, poisonous brood Than are the hellish lusts, the avarice,— The pride—the hate—the double-faced deceits— That make his breast their dwelling. If he be not beneath hell's wish to damn, Too lost for even fiends to meddle with, How must they laugh to hear him, in his pride, Baptize his vices, virtues; making use Of holy names to designate his crimes; Giving his lust the sacred name ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands

... on the wall. And he goes by the name of Thomas Leicester. That was what made Tom go into the inn, seeing his own name on the signboard. Nay, Dame, never give way like that. Lean on me,—so. He is a villain,—a false, jealous, double-faced villain." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various

... few cases are on record of families which resorted to the device of dividing themselves into two branches, each declaring for a different cause and each warring nominally with the other. Thus the sept as a whole preserved its possessions, in part at any rate, whichever Court triumphed. But such double-faced schemes were very rare. A much commoner outcome of the situation was the growth of powerful families which regulated their affairs by means of a council of leading members without reference to Kamakura, Kyoto, or Yoshino. At the same time, minor septs in the neighbourhood saw the advantage of subscribing ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... myself, I feel lonely. Anyhow, I love to have you around, David. If you went to study somewhere else I should miss you very much." On another occasion he said: "You are like a son to me, Davie. Be good, be genuinely pious; for my sake, if for nothing else. Above all, don't be double-faced; never say what you do not mean; do ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan

... the man—not that he was on the surface other than a rough woods rover, with a laugh like the roar of a bull alligator, and a heartiness that seemed genuine enough; but something about his eyes caused the explorer to believe him double-faced. ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne

... to her rightful sovereign. "The princess is but a puppet in the hands of that fury of a woman, who comes into my drawing-room and insults me to my face. What can come to a country that is given over to such a woman?" says the dowager: "As for that double-faced traitor, my Lord Marlborough, he has betrayed every man and every woman with whom he has had to deal, except his horrid wife, who makes him tremble. 'Tis all over with the country when it has got into the clutches of ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... instead of uniting himself with all creation in that love which "moves the world and the other stars"; the "loving worm," to quote his pregnant saying once more, were diviner than a loveless God. We saw how his theology is double-faced between the pantheistic yearning to find God everywhere and the individualist's resolute maintenance of the autonomy of man. God's Love, poured through the world, inextricably blended with all its power and beauty, thrilled with answering rapture by all its joy, and striving to clasp every human ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford

... man's own reason is his best OEdipus, and will, upon a reasonable truce, find a way to loose those bonds where- with the subtleties of error have enchained our more flexible and tender judgments. In philosophy, where truth seems double-faced, there is no man more para- doxical than myself: but in divinity I love to keep the road; and, though not in an implicit, yet an humble faith, follow the great wheel of the church, by which I move; not reserving any proper poles, or motion from the epicycle of my own brain. By this means ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne

... meant that you should," said King Richard; "it were foul play to hazard the good hound's life against that of such a double-faced traitor as this Conrade hath proved himself. But there lies our own glove; we appeal him to the combat in respect of the evidence we brought forth against him. A king, at least, is more than ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott

... higher circles, will be so good as to consider tantamount to knocked over. Small likewise—a name by which I refer to another party, a friend of mine that your ladyship is not acquainted with—got to be so close and double-faced that at times it wasn't easy to keep one's hands off his 'ead. However, what with the exertion of my humble abilities, and what with the help of a mutual friend by the name of Mr. Tony Weevle (who is of a high aristocratic turn and has your ladyship's portrait always hanging ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... day, which was Friday, I thought of a few more underhand things she could do. So when she run in to see me that afternoon, the excitement of the chase in her eye, she wanted I should go along on this picnic. I says yes, I will, being that excited myself and wanting to see really if I was a double-faced genius or wasn't I? Henrietta Price couldn't go on account of being still lame from her ride of a week ago, so I could go as chaperone, and anyway I knew the dear girls would all be glad to have me ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... execution, and its human cries "on eradication, with hazard of life to them that pull it up." "In philosophy," he observes, meaning to contrast [150] his free-thinking in that department with his orthodoxy in religion—in philosophy, "where truth seems double-faced, there is no man more paradoxical than myself:" which is true, we may think, in a further sense than he meant, and that it was the "paradoxical" that he actually preferred. Happy, at all events, he still remained—undisturbed and happy—in a hundred native prepossessions, some certainly ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater

... times, but in vain, to prevent or repress these savage explosions of passion and strife amongst the people; the sterling moderation of Chancellor de l'Hospital was scarcely more successful than the hypocritical and double-faced attentions paid by Catherine de' Medici to both the Catholic and the Protestant leaders; the great maladies and the great errors of nations require remedies more heroic than the adroitness of a woman, the wisdom of a functionary, or the hopes of a philosopher. ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... saved through masses said for them, at a money rate, by priests whose licentiousness disgraced the nation which endured it; a system in which, amidst all the trickery of the pardons, pilgrimages, indulgences,—double-faced as these inventions are, wearing one meaning in the apologies of theologians, and quite another to the multitude who live and suffer under their influence,—one plain fact at least is visible. The people substantially learnt that ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude

... a laughable singularity, that, of all the double-faced men employed by the Emperor, there was no one, in whom he had more confidence, than he had in M. de Mont**. He had formerly ill-treated, persecuted, and banished him: he knew, that he detested him, and was the most intimate, the most devoted ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon

... the present—a day of cowardice and vacillation, of strident wide-voiced wrong and faint hearted compromise; of double-faced dallying with Truth and Right. Who are to-day guiding the work of the Negro people? The "exceptions" of course. And yet so sure as this Talented Tenth is pointed out, the blind worshippers of the Average cry out in ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.

... she was gone, Major Pendennis told him in his double-faced Pall Mall polite manner, that young Arthur had no fortune at all, that the Major had asked him (Costigan) to go to the lawyers ("wherein he knew the scoundthrels have a bill of mine, and I can't ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... a mean, double-faced fellow, continued, as the saying goes, "to run with the hare ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery

... A double-faced idol, fashion and flirtation, engrossed the homage of the majority of females, while a few misguided ones, weary of the inanity of the mass of womanhood and desiring to effect a reform, mistook the sources of the evil, and, rushing to the opposite extreme, ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans

... social conditions of our times. Capitalist society evokes no beneficent phenomenon unaccompanied with a dark side: as Fourier long ago pointed out with great perspicacity, capitalist society is in all its progressive steps double-faced and ambiguous. ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel

... board, and we then set sail under a breeze from the S.E. After sailing about two miles we observed the third chief beckoning to us: we took him on board, and he informed us that the rope had been held by the order of the second chief, who was a double-faced man. A little farther on we were joined by the son of the chief, who came on board to see his father. On his return we sent a speech to the nation, explaining what we had done, and advising them to peace; ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark

... Janus must be double-faced; He promised long ago The maple syrup not to taste, Nor steal the roses from the waist Of one, a damsel fair ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard

... pay me for that, you double-faced, thread-bare lout!" screamed Gammer Gurton, as she rushed on Hodge ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach

... Jack quickly did this service for the other, who was profuse in his expressions of gratitude, though neither of the scouts believed in his sincerity, for Sim had a reputation for being slippery and double-faced. ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren

... no mean order. We can hardly conceive the effect upon inexperienced imagination of the crimson frown of Emma [199] (Yama), Judge of the dead,—or the vision of that weird Mirror which reflected, to every spirit the misdeeds of its life in the body,—or the monstrous fancy of that double-faced Head before the judgment seat, representing the visage of the woman Mirume, whose eyes behold all secret sin; and the vision of the man Kaguhana, who smells all odours of evil-doing.... Parental affection must have been deeply touched by the painted legend of the world ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn

... continue involved, for a long time to come, in a sort of ghastly twilight. It is a crime made up of audacity and darkness; here it shows itself impudently in broad daylight; there it skulks away into the mist. Hideous and double-faced effrontery, which conceals no one knows what monstrosities ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo

... was now chiefly remarkable for a curious clay formation, which time had chiseled into cliffs so mimicking a folding screen that they were known by the name. They were perfectly level on top and perpendicular on the sides, and as double-faced as the most matter-of-fact nicknamer could desire. Sunset came, found us still in the bay and left us there. Then the dusk crept up from the black water beneath, like an exhalation. ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell

... The sun is double-faced; one face, of fire, is directed toward the earth, and one of hail, toward heaven, to cool off the prodigious heat that streams from the other face, else the earth would catch afire. In winter the sun turns his fiery face upward, and thus the ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg

... therefore, were ready for mischief. The storming of the Tuileries on August tenth, 1792, had been the work of the Paris mob. Why could they not in turn, another mob, reactionary and to a degree even royalist, overthrow the tyranny of the Jacobins as they themselves had overthrown the double-faced administration of ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... soldiers unarmed or armed should pass at their discretion. Equally unsuccessful with Fribourg, the duchess, wondering "whence came the evil wind which had blown upon the two cities," heeded no one of the commands which had been issued by Berne, and, as double-faced though far less skilful than her brother, still continued to negotiate with the two cities, still permitted the Lombard troops to pass. The result was that the Bernois addressed themselves directly to the count of Gruyere, whom they had already forbidden to take sides with Burgundy, holding him ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven

... found you out, Harold. I never dreamt you could be so deceitful and double-faced. To talk of clinical lectures in town, and all the time at Harbridge, philandering with that forward, intriguing girl! Only with the greatest difficulty have I succeeded in learning the truth. Phillipa—who, it seems, has known your secret all along, and to whom, I find, you ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths

... by the sublime simplicity of barter. At one sweep were swept away all that monstrous credit system which had created an army of accountants and a Court of bankruptcy; all that chaos of single and double-faced entry—all that sleight-of-hand abracadabra of signatures—all those paper phantoms of capital. The Stock Exchange and other gambling-hells shrivelled up. There was a vast saving of clerical labour, and there were few loopholes for ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill

... other in Jericho, or in some equally remote quarter of the globe. I sympathized with them. I became bewildered in my endeavors to keep one eye on each. If human beings were constructed on the same principles as Janus, and had two faces, a fore-and-aft circus would be convenient; but as nowadays double-faced people only wear two eyes in their heads, the Barnumian conception muddles the intellect. I pray you, great and glorious showman, take pity on your artists and your audiences. Don't drive the former mad and the latter distracted. Remember ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various

... uncle; but you see, if elders set an example of being double-faced to their nephews, they must expect ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty

... upon the Optick List is old Janus, who stood in a double-sighted Capacity, like a Person placed betwixt two opposite Looking-Glasses, and so took a sort of retrospective Cast at one View. Copies of this double-faced Way are not yet out of Fashion with many Professions, and the ingenious Artists pretend to keep up this Species by double-headed Canes and Spoons [1]; but there is no Mark of this Faculty, except in the emblematical Way of a wise General having an Eye to both ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... is light-hearted, he is called a scoffer, if silent, a morose cur; if he practises honesty, he is but a good-for-nothing fool; if well dressed, he is proud, if not, he is a pig; if gentle of speech, he is double-faced and a rogue, whom none can fathom; if rough, he is an arrogant and froward devil. This is the world you make so much of, and pray you take my share of it and welcome," and at the word he shook himself free of them all, and away he sped boldly to the narrow ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne

... it!" screams out Mrs. S. "The villain—the sneaking, double-faced Jonas! he's married to somebody else he is, and that's why he leaves you, ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... to summon my double-faced servitors, while I wended my way to the study. There I found. Mr. Poopendyke, sound asleep in a great arm-chair, both his mouth and his nose open and my first novel ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon

... for prompting her," said Miss Carpenter. "She was always a double-faced cat; and you ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw

... most complete set ever offered at so low a price; it is printed in handsome colors, on heavy, coated lithograph, double-faced, cloth-lined material, especially ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 2, No. 11, March 17, 1898 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... obtaining the kingdoms of Murcia, Valentia, and Navarre. He himself avowed later to the Duke de Saint-Simon that, seeing Philip V. tottering, "he had allowed himself to indulge the hope of being put in his place;" hence his double-faced conduct and strange manoeuvres. He might not have been willing, doubtless, to pull down the King of Spain with his own hand, but he did not, of course, steadfastly desire a triumph which marred his own fortunes. ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies

... becomes necessary to resort to questionable means to attain an end. This is one of them. Within a week after my client had given bonds for the fulfillment of his contract, he made the discovery that he was dealing with a double-faced set of scoundrels. From that day until the present moment, secret-service men have shadowed every action of the plaintiffs. My client has anticipated their every move. When beeves broke in price from five to seven ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams

... He defended Sewell, and maintained that if it had not been for him he might not have come to Boston, and so might never have seen her; but she held out that she could not bear Mr. Sewell, and that she knew he was double-faced, and everything. Lemuel said well, he did not know that he should ever have anything more to do with him; but he liked to hear him preach, and he guessed he tried to do what was about right. Statira made him promise that if ever he met Mr. Sewell ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells

... deceitful, fond of crooked ways, artificial, given to hiding his wrath, double-faced, and cruel, exceedingly clever in concealing his thoughts, and never moved to tears either by joy or grief, but capable of weeping if the occasion required it. He was always a liar not merely on the spur of the moment; he drew up documents and swore the most solemn oaths to respect ...
— The Secret History of the Court of Justinian • Procopius

... I waste to skin and bone; The curse is come upon me, and I waste In penal torment powerless to atone. The curse is come on me, which makes no haste And doth not tarry, crushing both the proud Hard man and him the sinner double-faced. Look not upon me, for my soul is bowed Within me, as my body in this mire; My soul crawls dumb-struck, sore-bested and cowed. As Sodom and Gomorrah scourged by fire, 10 As Jericho before God's trumpet-peal, So we the elect ones perish in His ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti

... the notorious Lord Lovat are associated with some of the old houses in the north. Cawdor Castle, Nairnshire, and Netherwhitton, in Northumberland, claim the honour of hiding this double-faced traitor prior to his arrest. At the former is a small chamber near the roof, and in the latter is a hiding-place measuring eight feet by three and ten feet high. Nor must be forgotten the tradition of Mistress Beatrice Cope, behind the walls of whose bedroom Lovat (so goes the ...
— Secret Chambers and Hiding Places • Allan Fea



Words linked to "Double-faced" :   Janus-faced, reversible, two-faced, dishonest, duplicitous, dishonorable



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