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Artful   /ˈɑrtfəl/   Listen
Artful

adjective
1.
Not straightforward or candid; giving a false appearance of frankness.  Synonym: disingenuous.  "A disingenuous excuse"
2.
Marked by skill in achieving a desired end especially with cunning or craft.  "An artful choice of metaphors"



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"Artful" Quotes from Famous Books



... pointed this artful compliment by a bow of the deepest respect, and threw open the door for my ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins

... to have been the natural language of Burns. The Master Tootie whose skill he records, lived in Mauchline, and dealt in cows: he was an artful and contriving person, great in bargaining and intimate with all the professional tricks by which old cows are made to look young, and six-pint hawkies pass for ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... see the extreme artfulness of the plot, but in all wrongdoing there is sooner or later a slip up. Be the plot ever so artful, or however safe the wrongdoing may appear, ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell

... he saw the Artful Dodger ahead of us on the dock. He went over and looked up and down and under an old upturned rowboat, then peered over the dock and swore a harmless oath that if we could catch him we would run ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard

... she, as the door closed upon Mrs. Dinks, "it is a scheming, artful woman. Her son has no money, and I doubt if he ever will have any. Boniface will be implacable. I know him. He is capable of seeing his daughter suffer. Fanny has made a frightful mistake. Poor Fanny! she was not so clever as she thought herself. There is only one hope—that ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis

... provocation. Max was artful enough to know that no girl who ever fills a kettle lets it run over unless she is much preoccupied. He chose to think she was preoccupied with him. So he laughed, and she looked quickly round and blushed, and turned her ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden

... the colonel that if he left it in his hands he would endeavour to find the money, to which the colonel replied that he was just the man the Portuguese wanted. The manner in which this cunning major went to work might have succeeded with men less artful than he found us to be, but every one in the cellar had part in it, so it was to the interest of all to keep the affair secret, and not only that, but every man's share in the prize happened to amount to more than the sum which the ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence

... successfully to the dominant faction as to obtain for his master the protection of Caesar, and for himself the procuratorship of Judea. Raised to this commanding eminence, he named Phasael, his eldest son, governor of Jerusalem, and confided to the younger, the artful and unscrupulous Herod, the ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell

... fine speaker, impudent, shameless, a braggart, and adept at stringing lies, an old stager at quibbles, a complete table of the laws, a thorough rattle, a fox to slip through any hole; supple as a leathern strap, slippery as an eel, an artful fellow, a blusterer, a villain; a knave with a hundred faces, cunning, intolerable, a gluttonous dog. With such epithets do I seek to be greeted; on these terms, they can treat me as they choose, and, if they wish, ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al

... The second is artful, cunning, and designing; shielding the rich man from the possibility of being entrapped, and affecting at the same time, to have a tender and scrupulous regard, for the interests of the whole community. It declares, 'that nothing in this act contained, shall extend to works of ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens

... the tribes dwelling on the plains we meet with certain cunning and malicious intents which are in strange contrast with their primitive ingenuity and sincerity. But although in comparison to their brethren of the mountains they might and do pass for artful, they themselves are continually cheated and deceived by their more skilful neighbours who barter inferior qualities of tobacco, iron, calico and other trash, worth nothing, for real treasures in rattan, cane, rubber, poisons, fruit and fishing ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti

... arrived at an age when she could reject no longer. She ceased to be an object to matrimonial adventurers, but to these succeeded a swarm of female legacy-hunters. Among the most distinguished was her companion, Mrs. Ingoldsby, whose character she soon discovered to be artful and selfish in the extreme. This lady's flattery, therefore, lost all its power to charm, but yet it became necessary to Almeria; and even when she knew that she was duped, she could not part with Mrs. Ingoldsby, because it was not in her power to supply ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth

... consideration of lawyers and other skilled persons, with the result that it appeared that, if the Courts took a strict view of the agreement, ruin stared me in the face, so far as my literary affairs were concerned. To begin with, either by accident or design, this artful document was so worded that, prima facie, the contracting publisher had a right to place his cheap edition on the market whenever it might please him to do so, subject only to the payment of a third of the profit, to be assessed by himself, which ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... mix'd the trembling stream, or where it boils Around the stone, or from the hollow'd bank Reverted plays in undulating flow, There throw, nice-judging, the delusive fly; And as you lead it round in artful curve, With eye attentive mark the springing games Straight as above the surface of the flood They wanton rise, or urged by hunger leap, Then fix, with gentle twitch, the barbed hook: Some lightly tossing to the grassy bank, And to the shelving shore slow-dragging ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory

... been compared to Cicero—I do not know for what reason. Their excellences are as different, and indeed as opposite, as they well can be. Burke had not the polished elegance, the glossy neatness, the artful regularity, the exquisite modulation of Cicero: he had a thousand times more richness and originality of mind, more ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... only object (till your arrival added another motive), to watch Sir Walter and Mrs Clay. He omitted no opportunity of being with them, threw himself in their way, called at all hours; but I need not be particular on this subject. You can imagine what an artful man would do; and with this guide, perhaps, may recollect what you have seen ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... special care," said Deerslayer, solemnly; "for he looks carefully to all who fall short of their proper share of reason. The red-skins honor and respect them who are so gifted, knowing that the Evil Spirit delights more to dwell in an artful body, than in one that has no cunning ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper

... which were disgracing their national name; it is pre-eminently true,—proven by thousands of witnesses, and testified to by numberless tongues,—that the masses, the rank and file, the almost entire body of rioters, were the worst classes of Irish emigrants, infuriated by artful appeals, and maddened by the atrocious ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson

... end to this first martyrdom of helpless waiting. Towards seven, one of the prisoners, whose good conduct had procured him promotion to cleaning the passages and doing other work of the kind, brought him another loaf of bread and a pot of coffee. From this young man, a white-faced, artful-looking youth, with closely-cropped hair and wearing the coarse, brown prison dress, Axel heard that the ghastly screams in the night came from a prisoner who had delirium tremens; he had been put in the cellar to get over the attack; he could scream as loud as he liked ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp

... studies, and of all the efforts he made to enter the communion of Christ. He acknowledged that he was convinced, but he could not bend to the practice of the Christian life. Then, very skilfully, as one artful in differentiating souls, perceiving that vanity was not yet dead in Augustin, Simplicianus offered him as an example the very translator of those Platonic books which he had just been reading so enthusiastically—that famous Victorinus Afer, that orator ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand

... was the true cause of this lady's mysterious seclusion? Was she a person of the strictest and the most inconvenient integrity? or a person who could not be depended on to preserve a secret? or a person who was as artful as Mr. Bygrave himself, and who was kept in reserve to forward the object of some new deception which was yet to come? In the first two cases, Mrs. Lecount could trust in her own powers of dissimulation, and in the results which they might achieve. In ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins

... have instantaneously killed him if his looks were lightning. The boy had recognized his aggressor, and after his first galvanic shock, struggled like a little hero to free himself, and at last succeeded by an artful spring. ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming

... hour. I infer, then, that Camacha's words are to be taken, not in an allegorical, but in a literal, sense; but this will help us out no better, since we have many times seen what they say, and we are still dogs, as you see. And so Carnacha was a cheat, Canizares an artful hag, and Montiela a fool and a rogue—be it said without offence, if by chance she was the mother of us both, or yours, for I won't have her for mine. Furthermore, I say that the true meaning is a game of nine-pins, in which those that stand up are quickly knocked down, ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... from Alexander M'Kean, Esq. She is about 20 years of age, and 5 feet 6 or 7 inches high; has a mark on one of her shoulders, about the size of a quarter dollar, occasioned, she says, by the yaws; of a coal black complexion, very artful, and most probably passes about the country with false papers and under another name; if that is not the case, it must be presumed she is harboured about Green pond, where she has a mother ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge

... pretends, it might be a fair question why the young man was not cured by it. But it is a much graver question why a man who has shrewdness and learning enough to go so far after his facts, should think it right to treat them with such astonishing negligence or such artful unfairness. ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... have seldom been properly appreciated or respected by the white man. In peace he has too often been the dupe of artful traffic; in war he has been regarded as a ferocious animal whose life or death was a question of mere precaution and convenience. Man is cruelly wasteful of life when his own safety is endangered and he is sheltered by impunity, and little mercy is to be expected from him when ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes

... themselves. They are infinitely more numerous than the arriving stranger can suppose; they nestle with a charm all their own in the complications of most back-views. Some of them are exquisite, many are large, and even the scrappiest have an artful understanding, in the interest of colour, with the waterways that edge their foundations. On the small canals, in the hunt for amusement, they are the prettiest surprises of all. The tangle of plants and flowers crowds over the battered ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James

... A colony bishop is to be a more innocent creature than ever a bishop was, since diocesan bishops were introduced to lord it over God's heritage. ... Can the A-b-p, and his tools, think to impose on the colonists by these artful representations.... The people of New England are greatly alarmed; the arrival of a bishop would raise them as much as any one thing.... Our General Court is now sitting. I have hinted to some ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams

... for their outward garb. How often does one find a volume described as a charming one 'for the table'! It is for the table that certain publications are destined. Enter a drawing-room, and you will find a few books scattered here and there 'with artful care.' I do not say they are intended never to be opened, but their primary function is to look nice—to 'set off' the table-cloth, and, generally, to give a bright appearance to the room. And their adaptability for this purpose is so widely recognised that you can ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams

... cannot relate, as the artful bird, followed by her ardent suitor, soon flew away beyond my sight. It may not be rash to conclude, however, that she held out no longer than ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs

... to be a plotter, an arranger of unpleasant surprises for parents. She never meant him to run away. She meant him, probably, to spend his days communing with the past in a lofty room with distempered walls and busts round them. That he should be forced to act, to decide, to be artful, to wrangle with maids, to make ends meet, to squeeze his long frame and explosive disposition into a Creeper Cottage where only an ill-fitting door separated him from the noise and fumes of the kitchen, was surely a cruel trick of Fate, and not less ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim

... alone if put together would have made a terrific total. The result was perfection, and even now, after all she had gone through, it shewed scarcely disarrangement, lustrous and beautiful, dressed with artful simplicity in the Greek style and outlining the perfect ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole

... about it, though she didn't like to say anything. Of course, when a lady's name is concerned, it is particular. Bur Lupex has become dreadful jealous during the last week, and we all knew that something was coming. She is an artful woman, but I don't think she meant anything bad,—only to drive her husband to desperation. He came here yesterday in one of his tantrums, and wanted to see Cradell; but he got frightened, and took his hat and went off. Now, that wasn't ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope

... of New York. The latter was elected as the successor to General Schuyler, and now, for the first time, appeared prominent among statesmen. He had been appointed attorney-general of New York by Governor Clinton, and, in respect to talent and influence, was a rising man. Artful and fascinating, he had secured the votes of a sufficient number of federalists in the state legislature to gain his election, and he went into Congress a decided opponent of the administration; not on principle, for that never influenced him, but on account of personal hostility ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing

... said to myself, I would be artful as snakes, though so woefully sick and invalid: I ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel

... old officer," he said profoundly, "that all these Johnnies are artful old niggers who've run away from their wives ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace

... from the peril. Else the mud of it would cling to Joan all her life. She would be spoilt. Harry Luttrell, too! If he married her, if he did not. But Martin could not think of a way out. The whole plan was an artful, devilish piece of hard-headed cunning. Martin fell to wondering where was Jenny Prask's weak joint. She certainly looked, with her quiet strength, as if she had not one ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason

... to the next house, but was met at his own door by the father of the wounded boy, who was coming with him in his arms to demand satisfaction. This brought the whole truth out, and the artful little fellow was found to have concealed a part of the real case. Instead of saying 'he was only getting a pear,' he should have said that he was throwing large stones at the topmost pear on the tree, and that every stone went over the wall, he ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas

... establish their reputation, for the arts and deception they intended to practise in England. The fame of Egypt in astrology, magic, and soothsaying, was universal; and they could not have devised a more artful expedient, than the profession of this knowledge, to procure for them a welcome reception by the ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland

... on moving to a place whence they could see the cricket better, and Eustace had to yield to her. But from that moment he took no more interest in her artless remarks and her artful open-worked stockings. In the combat between self and her she went to the wall. He stood up before the mirror looking ...
— The Folly Of Eustace - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens

... middle o' the night, sir, to be sure, and there we was as quiet as could be; but we didn't hear nothin' till just afore sunrise, when there was a cherk, cherk, and a bit of flutterin' just as we was makin' up our minds as he was too artful for us. Billy, he gives me a nudge and shoves up the gun and ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn

... frenzied as his rage, overwhelmed him, and the "taint of madness which ran in his line," flooded his brain. But when the atheist became a Christian; when, in his own words, he felt "the Spirit of God was not the chimera of heated brains, nor a device of artful men to frighten and cajole the credulous, but an existence to be felt and understood as the whisperings of one's own heart;" his prayer of, "Lord! I believe, help thou my unbelief," was answered in calm ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur

... to a man to marry any particular woman. It seems to me that making suitable matches is not such an easy matter that society can afford to leave the chief part of it to the stupider sex, giving women merely the right of veto. To be sure, even now women who are artful enough manage to evade the prohibition laid on their lips and make their preference known. I am proud to say that I have a royal husband, who would never have looked my way if I had not set out to make him do ...
— A Love Story Reversed - 1898 • Edward Bellamy

... are next introduced to Giacomo, another of Cenci's hopeful progeny, who, like the rest, has a dreadful tale to unfold of his father's cruelty towards him. Orsino, the favored lover of Beatrice, enters at the moment of his irritation; and by the most artful pleading ultimately incites him to the murder of his father, in which he is to be joined by the rest of the family. The plot, after one unlucky attempt, succeeds; and at the moment of its accomplishment, ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney

... She lisped, and there was a suggestion in her accent of East Prussia or Western Russia. Her face was permanently reddened by alcohol. The skin was coarse, almost scaly, and her whole person sagged abominably. She wore no corsets, but her green frock was of an artful shade to match her brassy hair. Her hat was new and ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke

... Bonaparte began to get bald, and this so troubled him that he sought to overcome the change it made in his appearance by growing a long strand of hair upon his occiput and bringing it forward a goodly distance in such artful wise that it right ingeniously served the purposes of that Hyperion curl which had been the pride of his youth, but which had fallen early before ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field

... to address me as an abbreviation), "I'll trot you up to him at once—and I say, A 1 idea! tell him you mean to be your own counsel, and do all the speechifying yourself. Native prince, in brand-new wig and gown, defending himself single-handed from wiles of artful adventuress—why, you'll knock the jury as ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey

... it! I dreaded that artful girl would make mischief between us,—would alienate the only heart I had left to care for me. Oh, how I wish she had been forty fathoms under the sea before you ever saw her!—before ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson

... inferiority on his part. It is not as if he ever aimed at the methods of the precisians and failed, as if it was his desire to be a 'correct' writer, a careful observer of proportion and construction, a producer of artful felicities in metre, rhythm, rhyme, phrase. We may yield to no one in the delight of tracing the exact correspondence of strophe and antistrophe in a Greek chorus, the subtle vowel-music of a Latin hymn or a passage of Rossetti's. But ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury

... planned attempt to "read something" to Snarley was sure to fail. He would suspect that we were "interested in him" in the way he always resented, or that we wanted to improve his mind, which was also a thing he could not bear. Still, we might practice a little artful deception. We might meet him together by accident in the quarry, as we had done before; and Mrs. Abel, after due preliminaries and a little leading-on about nightingales, might produce the volume from ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks

... chaperon, and catches our hearts fresh before they are jaded with the crowded beauties of May. A really modest flower would wait for the other flowers to come first. A subtle affectation is surely a different thing from modesty. The violet is simply artful, the young widow among flowers, and to hold up such a flower as an example is not doing one's duty by the young. For true modesty commend me to the agave, which flowers once only in half a hundred years, as one may see for oneself at the Royal ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells

... the month of July, and the negotiations were tediously protracted. It was impossible to attribute the embarrassment which was constantly occurring to anything but the artful policy of Austria: Other affairs occupied Bonaparte. The news from Paris engrossed all his attention. He saw with extreme displeasure the manner in which the influential orators of the councils, and pamphlets written in the same spirit ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... giving way, and the native scolding Polly Kedge breaking out in a storm of words. 'Wasn't the young man doing just as his uncle meant him, and my poor dear girl fancying him as I never saw her do any one before, till you came home with your sly, artful ways—you that owed us the very ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... than under a High-Church ministry. But the Dissenters, considering that the Whigs were too much in a minority to prevent the passing of the Bill, however willing to do so, would only see in their professed champion an artful supporter ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto

... discuss these who otherwise would hold their tongues. One small knot had no better occupation than to worm out of me my name; and the more they tried, the more obstinately fixed I grew to baffle them. They assailed me with artful questions and insidious offers of correspondence in the future; but I was perpetually on my guard, and parried their assaults with inward laughter. I am sure Dubuque would have given me ten dollars for the secret. He owed me far more, had he understood life, for thus preserving him a lively ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... (which were carried by the lictors), and, above all, the splendid procession of the triumphatores. [270] Legibus is here a pleonasm, and might have been omitted. We must here repeat that Caesar makes an artful application of the circumstance that, in all the late criminal laws, the interdictio aquae et ignis was fixed as the severest punishment, as if thereby a person had been simply permitted to withdraw from the republic. The interdictio was a much more severe ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)

... in health, and withal so fond of good dinners (which were prepared for him by his French cook Marmitonio), that it was supposed he could not live long. Now the idea of anything happening to the King struck the artful Prime Minister and the designing old lady-in-waiting with terror. For, thought Glumboso and the Countess, "when Prince Giglio marries his cousin and comes to the throne, what a pretty position we shall be in, whom ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray

... glad, an' I was to believe her spite of her crying! I wish I'd made Job Swift go arter her. I'll make him go arter that sermon anyhow. I won't go near her agin 'bout this bisness, that's certain;" and the remorse-stricken, but artful deacon hastened to his brother deacon's house to tell him that it was "all settled with Mis' Kinney 'bout the sermon, an' she was quite willin';" and, "O," he added, as if it were quite a second thought, "ye'd better go up an' git the sermon, Job, in the mornin,' ye're so much nearer, an' ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson

... present. By a series of adroitly managed surprises, which he practiced, I was prepared to expect him at any moment. His plan was, never to approach the spot where his hands were at work, in an open, manly and direct manner. No thief was ever more artful in his devices than this man Covey. He would creep and crawl, in ditches and gullies; hide behind stumps and bushes, and practice so much of the cunning of the serpent, that Bill Smith and I—between ourselves—never called him by any ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass

... Christmas. For now thirty years that estimable woman has opened her annual Christmas campaign on me as early as the month of October. With affectionate strategy I am lured into book stores, and variety stores, and china stores—last year she tolled me into a drug store—to discover by artful references to this thing and that, what I fancy. Now, as a matter of fact, having her, I fancy nothing else (I take it that the newest married man could get off nothing prettier than that), but I have become so used to the campaign, ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley

... revivified and reinforced, coming back glowingly to a mature beauty. Glimpses of the Susan of old began to reappear. She wanted her looking-glass, and, sitting up in the bunk with the baby against her side, arranged her hair in the becoming knot and twisted the locks on her temples into artful tendrils. She would sew soon, and kept Bella busy digging into the trunks and bringing out what was left of her best things. They held weighty conferences over these, the foot of the bunk littered with wrinkled skirts and jackets ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner

... daring) Bien hablado (a courteous speaker) Callado (taciturn) Cansado (tiresome) Comedido (thoughtful, considerate) Corrido[191] (acute, artful) Divertido (amusing) Entendido (experienced, conversant) Experimentado (experienced, ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano

... boast of in a rough-and-tumble fight, owing to the weakness before mentioned. General Ames put him among the gunners, and we were quickly made aware of the loss we had sustained by receiving a frequent artful ball which seemed to light with unerring instinct on any nose that was the least bit exposed. I have known one of Pepper's snowballs, fired point-blank, to turn a corner and hit a boy who considered ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various

... these limits, as Schopenhauer does in almost every sentence, he would then forfeit his position at the head of the Philistines, and everybody would flee from him as precipitately as they are now following in his wake. He who would regard this artful if not sagacious moderation and this mediocre valour as an Aristotelian virtue, would certainly be wrong; for the valour in question is not the golden mean between two faults, but between a virtue and a fault—and in this mean, between ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche

... Constitution have so confirmed their power, both as priests and rulers, that it would be difficult for governor, judge, or member of parliament, to retain their offices after having incurred their displeasure. They have shown their artful policy in the choice of a guardian for the young King. It has fallen on the tributary King of the island of Balabola, distinguished by his giant height of seven feet, and by his enormous corpulence, which almost prevents his moving, but ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue

... Madame Napoleon, Talleyrand, and Portalis, who also wanted some douceurs for their extraordinary expenses, united together last spring to remove him from France. Napoleon was cajoled to nominate him a grand almoner of the Kingdom of Italy, and the Cardinal set out for Milan. He was, however, artful enough to convince his Sovereign of the propriety of having his grand almoner by his side; and he is, therefore, obliged to this intrigue of his enemies that he now disposes of the benefices in the Kingdom of Italy, as well as those of ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... says, "is the finest thing in perfect love"—never present themselves at all. She is compelled to be to the end of her erotic life, what she must always be at the beginning, a complex and duplex personality, naturally artful. Therewith she is better prepared than man to play her part in ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... utterly displeased with him. To threaten as he threatens; yet to pretend, that it is not to intimidate me; and to beg of you not to tell me, when he must know you would, and no doubt intended that you should, is so meanly artful!—The man must think he has a frightened fool to deal with.—I, to join hands with such a man of violence! my own brother the man whom he threatens!—And what has Mr. Solmes done to him?—Is he to be blamed, if he thinks a person would make a wife worth having, to endeavour to obtain her?—Oh ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... the sovereign guardian. She employed, at one time in defending him against his enemies, at another in endangering him by her plots, her hatreds and her assaults, the last thirteen years of her life. She was a true type of the strong-willed, artful, and perverse woman in barbarous times; she started low down in the scale and rose very high without a corresponding elevation of soul; she was audacious and perfidious, as perfect in deception as in effrontery, proceeding to atrocities either from cool calculation or ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... leave her without feeling that she is an exceedingly gracious person. She will even convey to them, in her inimitable way, the impression that she thinks they are "just right." She will use "blarney" as a science in an artful way. The flattering remarks she will make regarding others will be passed along by those to whom she makes them, and she will be responsible for an epidemic of egoism all over town. It is a ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague

... any imaginative man is enough, in such circumstances, to destroy his confidence in his powers of perception. In Othello's case, after a long and most artful preparation, there now comes, to reinforce its effect, the suggestions that he is not an Italian, not even a European; that he is totally ignorant of the thoughts and the customary morality of Venetian women;[98] ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley

... Robert Gareth-Lawless—'Feather' we call her," he was answered. "Was there ever anything more artful than that startling little smoky dress? If it was flame colour one wouldn't see ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... have laid snares for me here?" whispered Mirabeau, thoughtfully. "They are capable of every thing, these artful Bourbons. Who knows whether they have not invited me here to take me prisoner, and to cast me, whom they hold to be their most dangerous enemy, into one of their oubliettes, their subterranean dungeons? My friend," ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach

... him a look that put this suggestion out of countenance by setting him to thrilling again. He felt that her look was artful, was deliberate, but he could not help responding to it. He began to be a little afraid of her, a little nervous about her; but he managed to say indifferently, "And why haven't YOU fallen in ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips

... told him it was. "Is it true," demanded he, "that you are willing to sell it for fifty sherifs?" I answered I was. "Well," continued he, in a scoffing way "give him the bastinado; he will quickly confess notwithstanding his merchant's disguise, that he is only an artful thief; let him be beaten till he owns his guilt." The pain of the torture made me tell a lie; I confessed, though it was not true that I had stolen the necklace; and the judge ordered my hand to be cut off according to the ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... who shrieked out on platforms that old maids were the highest type. Adeline guessed Olive had perfect control of her now, unless indeed she used the expeditions to Cambridge as a cover for meeting gentlemen. She was an artful little minx, and cared as much for the rights of women as she did for the Panama Canal; the only right of a woman she wanted was to climb up on top of something, where the men could look at her. She would stay ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James

... People of your age have, commonly, an unguarded frankness about them; which makes them the easy prey and bubbles of the artful and the experienced; they look upon every knave or fool, who tells them that he is their friend, to be really so; and pay that profession of simulated friendship, with an indiscreet and unbounded confidence, always to their loss, often to their ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... pockets, while for three days on end his prie-dieu at the royal chapel had been unoccupied. His walk was brisker, and he gave a youthful flourish to his cane as a defiance to those who had seen in his reformation the first symptoms of age. Madame had known her man well when she threw out that artful insinuation. ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle

... turned out to be an artful profligate. Having sold his ground and gotten his money, he placed it in her keeping, and she, to enjoy it with the more security, ran away to the city; leaving him to prosecute his journey to Kentucky moneyless and alone. Some time after, Mr. Althorpe ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown

... his wife an artful tale, He would the children send To be brought up in faire London, With ...
— R. Caldecott's First Collection of Pictures and Songs • Various

... "Yea, hath God said ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?" Are you not mistaken? And when he had injected the doubt into the mind of Eve, had gained an advantage, he seized it and boldly denied the word of God, "Ye shall not die." He is an artful critic and successfully ...
— The Testimony of the Bible Concerning the Assumptions of Destructive Criticism • S. E. Wishard

... This artful speech made an impression on the rebellious Thomas, who glanced at Polly's happy face, remembered his promise, and, with a groan, resolved to do ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott

... known that the grasshopper kind is not yet hatched, I should have hardly believed but that it had been a locusta whispering in the bushes. The country people laugh when you tell them that it is the note of a bird. It is a most artful creature, skulking in the thickest part of a bush, and will sing at a yard distance, provided it be concealed. I was obliged to get a person to go on the other side of the hedge where it haunted, and then it would run, creeping like a mouse, before us ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White

... had made. My own natural disposition to watch nests and establish heaven knows what friendly intimacy with the birds—perhaps I dreamt their mother might let me help to feed the young ones—gave place to a feverish artful hunting, a clutch, and then, detestable process, the blowing of the egg. Of course we were very humane; we never took the nest, but just frightened off the sitting bird and grabbed a warm egg or so. And the poor perforated, rather damaged little egg-shells accumulated ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells

... time," said he, "I have seen many attempts to change an inconvenient topic. Some have been artful; others artless; others utterly clumsy. But this, I think, is the clumsiest of them all. Mistress Winthrop, 'tis ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini

... severely censured by Horace, were more likely to affect the multitude; such, who come with expectation to laugh at the last act of a play, and are better entertained with two or three unseasonable jests than with the artful solution ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve

... down her cheek. I patted myself on the back for an artful fellow. But I had underrated her wit. To my chagrin she did not fall into ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke

... were mistaken, both in Ramses and Hiram. The artful Tyrian gave himself out before them as very proud of his relations with Ramses, and the prince with no less success played the role ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus

... people are not always groundless: And when they become general, it is not to be presum'd that they are; for the people in general seldom complain, without some good reason. The inhabitants of this continent are not to be dup'd "by an artful use of the words liberty and slavery, in an application to their passions," as Philanthrop would have us think they are; like the miserable Italians, who are cheated with the names " Excommunication, Bulls, Crusades," &c. They can distinguish between "realities and sounds"; and by a proper ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams

... years of age, about 5 feet high, very black complexion, good teeth, not corpulent, but well formed, and of erect position of body & a fast walker, WHO absented himself (supposed to have been inveigled away by some artful villains for their own use and benefit) upon the Evening of the 17th inst. from his Master, WINTHROP SARGENT, late Governor of the Missisippi Territory. He had learned the trade of a Barber, and is in every respect a ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 4: Quaint and Curious Advertisements • Henry M. Brooks

... for the various colouring matters which are naturally present in meat and fish, in fruit, legumes and green vegetables are of a delicate and changeable nature and easily affected or destroyed by cooking. Many years ago some artful, if stupid, cook found that green vegetables like peas or spinach, when cooked in a copper pan, by preference a dirty one, showed a far more brilliant colour than the same vegetables cooked in earthenware ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... title is actually utilized to help divert attention from the Trunk; thus, as I say, nothing suggests the presence of the Trunk, by any hint, yet everything studiedly leads up to it, step by step. Let us examine into this, and observe the exquisitely artful artlessness of the plan. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... but it was hard work, her eyes were so misty with tears. Her little face was all puckered up with her silent crying as she trudged wearily up the stairs. It was a long time before she got to sleep that night. She cried first, then she meditated. Young Lucretia was too small and innocent to be artful, but she had a keen imagination, and was fertile of resources in emergencies. In the midst of her grief and disappointment she devolved a plan for keeping up the family honor, hers and her aunts', before the ...
— Young Lucretia and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins

... own artful mind she had decided that a smart girl could easily "twist that fellow around her finger." This girl who had usurped her name and identity had already succeeded in doing just that! The girl from Hoskin & Marl's halted, the wrathful ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper

... noticed that on the present occasion this piece of furniture was located elsewhere. It stood below the Sovereign's portrait. A delicate compliment to the formidable lawyer-champion of Catholicism, sworn enemy to the House of Savoy. People commented favourably on this little detail. How artful of him! they said. ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... which is averred to be authentic, and to have happened very lately, may serve to shew, that the stories of this kind, with which the public are, from time to time, every now and then alarmed, are nothing more than artful impostures, it is presumed, it will be useful as well as entertaining to our readers to give it ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor

... choice; Yet, timely provident, she hastes away To snatch the blessings of a plenteous day; When fruitful Summer loads the teeming plain, She crops the harvest, and she stores the grain. How long shall sloth usurp thy useless hours, Unnerve thy vigour, and enchain thy powers? While artful shades thy downy couch enclose, And soft solicitation courts repose, Amidst the drowsy charms of dull delight, Year chases year with unremitted flight, Till Want now following, fraudulent and slow, Shall spring to seize thee, like ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... outrageous. Sir, said he, Your Notions in this Affair are very just: Good Sir, oblige me with a Bit of your Misletoe. Then turning about, he expatiated on the Eloquence of the Grecian, and in a Word, soften'd in the most artful Manner all the contending Parties. He said but little indeed to the Cathayian; because he was more cool, and sedate than any of the others. To conclude, he address'd them all in general Terms, to this or the like Effect: My dear Friends, You have been contesting all ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire

... this particular word in edgewise, and after a little speech from Mr. Wyse, in which he said that he would not dream of allowing them to go yet, and immediately afterwards shook hands warmly with them both, hoping that the reservoir would be a very small one, the two were forced to leave the artful Susan in ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson

... most of these things must be done. Every one must take his part. If we should be able, by dexterity, or power, or intrigue, to disappoint the expectations of our constituents, what will it avail us? We shall never be strong or artful enough to parry, or to put by, the irresistible demands of our situation. That situation calls upon us, and upon our constituents too, with a voice which will be heard. I am sure no man is more zealously attached than I am to the privileges ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... his recital every day, each day adding new proofs, more energetic declarations and more sacred oaths, which he thought of, which he prepared in his hours of solitude, for his mind was entirely occupied with the story of the string. The more he denied it, the more artful his arguments, ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... adding to the intrinsic evils of the system the odious feature of animosity to individuals. In the ranks of the foe are thousands of plain men who do not understand the principles for which we are struggling. They are deceived by artful demagogues into a posture of hostility to those whom, knowing, they would love. It is against such men that you may perhaps be arrayed, and the laws of war do not forbid you to pity them even in the act of destroying them. It is the more important that we should exhibit a proper temper in this ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy

... Accordingly, in an artful and well-concocted way, which we may readily conceive, but it were weary to detail, John Dillaway managed to forge a will of Jane Mackenzie aforesaid; and inducing some dressed-up "ladies" of his acquaintance to ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... through the leaves Fell soft and silvery, As threads that sly Arachne weaves With artful modesty; It fell and wove a mystic veil About her face; my cheek grew ...
— The Loom of Life • Cotton Noe

... chief, 'my worthy arch and patron.'—King Lear; or from the Teutonic 'arg,' a rogue. It usually denotes roguish, knavish, sly, artful.—Ed. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... of the town. They all, indeed, speak of each other as rogues and impostors; among whom were Booker, George Wharton, and Gadbury, who gained a livelihood by practising on the credulity of even men of learning so late as 1650 to the 18th century. In Ashmole's life an account of these artful impostors may be read. Most of them had taken the air in the pillory, and others had conjured themselves up to ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian

... "Artful Madge" was the very flippant name by which Madge Burtwell's brother Ned had persisted in calling her from the time when, at the age of sixteen, she gained reluctant permission to become a student at the ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller

... Graystone has gone away, and is not coming back any more, for mamma says so! She called her an artful piece, and said she was trying to captivate you with her pretty face. What is captivate, uncle? Is it anything so very dreadful? I know it ain't to be cross and push me away, as mamma does, for Miss Graystone never did that, ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock

... skin, but that if there remained the slightest vestige of it in the vessels, this became a permanent germ of the disorder, so that the dancing fits might again and again be excited ad infinitum by music. This belief, which resembled the delusion of those insane persons who, being by artful management freed from the imagined causes of their sufferings, are but for a short time released from their false notions, was attended with the most injurious effects: for in consequence of it those affected necessarily became by degrees convinced of the incurable nature of their disorder. They ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker

... he's at your daughter's feet,' cried Aunt Becky, with scarlet cheeks, and flashing eyes; 'and she—artful gipsy, has brought him there by positively ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... propagated his master's doctrines with greater zeal than Verus does the merits of this dish," said the Emperor, who had recovered his good humor as soon as he perceived that no artful preparation for his arrival was to be suspected in this matter. "What follies that spoilt child of fortune can commit! Does he still insist on ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... attack of madness, and added that an oracle had foretold to him that his malady would only be cured when he had deposited the necklace and veil of Harmonia in the temple of Apollo at Delphi. Arsinoe, deceived by his artful representations, unhesitatingly restored to him his bridal gifts, whereupon Alcmaeon set out on his homeward journey, well satisfied with the ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens

... With artful passes Dextry settled it in the pan bottom and washed away the gravel, leaving a yellow, glittering pile which raised a yell from the ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach

... alone with her sleeping child, and had time to collect her thoughts, she was divided between a sense of relief in her daughter's unexpected rescue from the martyrdom of an abhorrent marriage, and terror as to what the archenemy and artful plotter ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth

... were sure to be neglected; whoever opposed his will received marks of anger or contempt;[***] and while he showed a resolution to govern every thing, his capacity appeared not in any respect proportioned to his ambition. Warwick, more subtle and artful, covered more exorbitant views under fairer appearances, and having associated himself with Southampton, who had been readmitted into the council, he formed a strong party who were determined to free themselves from the slavery imposed on them ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume

... Hercules; and though my son By Semele were Bacchus, joy of man; Nor Ceres golden-hair'd, nor high-enthroned 390 Latona in the skies, no—nor thyself As now I love thee, and my soul perceive O'erwhelm'd with sweetness of intense desire. Then thus majestic Juno her reply Framed artful. Oh unreasonable haste! 395 What speaks the Thunderer? If on Ida's heights. Where all is open and to view exposed Thou wilt that we embrace, what must betide, Should any of the everlasting Gods Observe ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer

... happy thought of getting Cousin Helen to the "Celebration," was Clover's. She it was who had proposed it to Papa, and made all the arrangements. And, artful puss! she had set Bridget to sweep the hall, on purpose that Katy might not hear the noise ...
— What Katy Did • Susan Coolidge

... are not fit to work; besides you have not got the right twist of the hand yet, my lad. Pour for me, George." Robinson stirred and began to dissolve the three remainders, and every now and then with an artful turn of the hand he sent a portion of the muddy liquid out of the vessel. At the end of this washing there remained scarce more than a good handful of clay at the bottom. More water was poured on this. "Now," said Robinson, "we shall ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade

... pretend to be artful flatterers to cajole me!" nurse Li added; "do you imagine that I'm not aware of the dismissal, the other day, of Hsi Hseh, on account of a cup of tea? and as it's clear enough that I've incurred blame, I'll come by and by and ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... men, these holds forego, Nor trust such cunning elves: These artful emblems tend to show Their clients, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various

... noble poem of Palamon and Arcite, which is of the epic kind, and perhaps not much inferior to the Ilias or the AEneis: the story is more pleasing than either of them, the manners as perfect, the diction as poetical, the learning as deep and various, and the disposition full as artful; only it includes a greater length of time, as taking up seven years at least, but Aristotle has left undecided the duration of the action; which yet is easily reduc'd into the compass of a year, by a narration of what preceded ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... sincere commiseration. Like many other phenomena, good and bad, this gigantic flam, it will be remembered, took its rise in the east. Its genesis was reported in Constantinople nearly a week ago: then at intervals we learnt that these mysterious airmen, one of whom with artful artlessness had adopted the plain, respectable, and specious name of Smith, had manifested themselves at Karachi, Penang, and Port Darwin successively. The curtain then dropped, and the world waited with suspense for the opening of the next act, though there were some who suspected that the performers ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang

... pause. Then the artful Teed moved to the door and turned the knob. Litton could not speak; but he threw a look that was like a grappling-iron and ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes

... must be an artful designing man: I am extremely irritated at his conduct. The passion he pretends for you has neither sincerity nor honour; the manner and the opportunities he has chosen to declare ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney

... am as artful, qvite, as he, and much more young and active; I've a sweet vistle of my own the birds find most attractive. My nets may be unauthorised, and my decoys not his'n; Vot odds, ven those decoys vill draw, those nets ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, November 12, 1892 • Various

... suddenly seized with a strong desire to shake the girl and call her an "artful little hussy," but crushed this unaccountable impulse, and hemmed a pocket-handkerchief with reckless rapidity, while she stole covert glances at ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott

... you may think it is artful in me to propose this broad education under the pretense of requiring that one learn to read, but it is not so. I do believe in a very broad education for girls; but if I had to choose between a broad education which had crammed a girl with knowledge, yet left her without a love for good reading, ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}

... small a space. He longed to throw open the window; he could not sit still in this odour-laden hothouse, where the very flowers were burdensome by excess. When Olga reappeared, she was gorgeous in flowing tea-gown; her tawny hair hung low in artful profusion; her neck and arms were bare, her feet ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing

... shook back the curly, glistening hair that she did not yet wear high on her head, for Madam Wetherill hated to have her leave the cloisters of girlhood. And her frock was white muslin, lengthened down a little and the piece covered with an artful ruffle. There was a silver buckle at her belt, and on each shoulder a ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... with its bare polished floor, its lovely painted piano, and played a little—gay, charming little things, clever and artful. Except when visitors came, the piano was never touched, but now and then Clayton had visualized Audrey there, singing in her husky sweet ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... the enemy we have to do with. While drunk with the certainty of victory, they disdained to be civil; and in proportion as disappointment makes them sober, and their apprehensions of an European war alarm them, they will become cringing and artful; honest they cannot be. But our answer to them, in either condition they may be in, is short and full—"As free and independent States we are willing to make peace with you to-morrow, but we neither can hear nor reply ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... and they were in great anger, for it was disheartening to be always deceived and trifled with by such scoundrels. Repairing, therefore, to a hut, in which they knew the chief passed the greater part of his time, they discovered him sitting on the ground in company with the artful Ducoo and the Nouffie messenger, and engaged in a very high dispute with both of them. Their unexpected and abrupt intrusion, in a moment cut short their wrangling, and they spoke with much emphasis of the ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish

... have peace. And we can be in Christ only in a faith which accepts His every word in His own divine meaning, and shrinks with honor from the thought that, in the prostituted name of peace and love, we shall put upon one level the pure and heavenly sense of His Word and the artful corruption of that sense by the tradition of Rome or the vanity of carnal reason." (Spaeth, 2, 162 f.) With respect to the Missouri Synod Krauth wrote, April 7, 1876: "I have been saddened beyond expression by the bitterness displayed towards ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente

... sent to Roche Craie headed by a zealous Jesuit. Jean was murdered in his bed but Elizabeth escaped with her little son Henri to the chapel. She shut the great iron door and managed to place the heavy bar so that the soldiers could not open it, but the artful Jesuit came up into this field and made the soldiers tear down the steeple and then he lowered himself into the chapel with a rope. It was raining in torrents and as the steeple was removed the floor was deluged. Elizabeth hid her little son behind the altar ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed

... I have deliberately employed alliteration, believing that the music of a line is intensified thereby,' says Mr. Kelly in the preface to his poems, and there is certainly no reason why Mr. Kelly should not employ this 'artful aid.' Alliteration is one of the many secrets of English poetry, and as long as it is kept a secret it is admirable. Mr. Kelly, it must be admitted, uses it with becoming modesty and reserve and never suffers it to trammel the white feet of his bright ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... of their new, or the liberty of their ancient, country. In the right wing of Bajazet the cuirassiers of Europe charged with faithful hearts and irresistible arms; but these men of iron were soon broken by an artful flight and headlong pursuit; and the janizaries, alone, without cavalry or missile weapons, were encompassed by the circle of the Mongol hunters. Their valor was at length oppressed by heat, thirst, and the weight of numbers; and the unfortunate Sultan, afflicted with the gout in his hands ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... behind, a walking eagle has an appearance of perpetually knocking 'em in the Old Kent Road. On Charley's next birthday I shall present him, I think, with a proper pearly suit, with kicksies cut saucy over the trotters, and an artful fakement down the side, if ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... easily influenced by the demagogue? Will they not be more easily caught and enraptured by superficial declamation, because more incapable of profound reflection? Will not their weakness render them subservient to the strong and their ignorance to the artful? ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... person for my rival than her who is my relation and my friend: for while I am myself free from guilt, I will never believe that love can beget injury, or confidence create ingratitude. Col. Town. If I do not prove to you— Aman. You never shall have an opportunity. From the artful manner in which you first showed yourself to me, I might have been led, as far as virtue permitted, to have thought you less criminal than unhappy; but this last unmanly artifice merits at once my resentment and contempt. [Exit.] Col. Town. ...
— Scarborough and the Critic • Sheridan

... in Venetian! And here I have condemned myself—and her too, poor thing—to sit through at least three hours of mortal dulness!' Yet the widow was by no means unattractive. Dressed in black, she had contrived by an artful arrangement of lace and jewellery to give an air of lightness to her costume. She had a pretty little pale face, a minois chiffonne, with slightly turned-up nose, large laughing brown eyes, a dazzling set of teeth, and a tempestuously frizzled mop of powdered ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... whose unpleasant mass of unhealthy flesh is real—the lady giant hovers between reality and fiction. On the one side art, on the other artless entertainment; but, after all, it is difficult to say that this wall is very solid, since sometimes the artless department is abominably artful, and sometimes, as in the famous story of the mimic with a live pig in a poke, the real ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"

... not only better armed than the True Whale" (Greenland or Right Whale) "in possessing a formidable weapon at either extremity of its body, but also more frequently displays a disposition to employ these weapons offensively and in manner at once so artful, bold, and mischievous, as to lead to its being regarded as the most dangerous to attack of all the known species of the whale tribe." —FREDERICK DEBELL BENNETT'S WHALING VOYAGE ROUND THE ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... but it undoubtedly made me jump, and that brought a malicious twinkle into the little eyes that looked as though they had been studying me at their leisure. They were perhaps less violently bloodshot than before, the massive features calm and strong as they had been in slumber or its artful counterfeit. ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung

... How could you? That's perfectly dreadful news!" the artful Elizabeth cried, while her mother raised her eyes resignedly upward and clasped her hands so tightly that they trembled. The Laird thought his wife sought comfort from above; had he known that she had just delivered a sincere vote of thanks, he would not have hugged her to ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne

... Undoubtedly it was she who supplied the necessary psychic conditions. There was that about her—a sort of atmosphere. That quaint archaic French of hers—King Arthur and the round table and Merlin; it seemed to recreate it all. An artful minx, that is the only explanation. But while she was looking at you, out of that ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome

... Whites hate us vehemently. That is unfortunately true of what would seem to be a large majority of them. Misled by artful demagogues—excited by charges of Northern rapacity, perfidy, outrage, and venom, to which no contradiction in their hearing is permitted—the Poor Whites of the South really believe that the North is waging against them an unprovoked ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... the Higher Powers have not conferred on men the gift of seeing themselves in the true light, John very possibly conceives himself to be youthful, witty, and fascinating, and talks from the point of view of this ideal. Thomas, again, believes him to be an artful rogue, we will say; therefore he is, so far as Thomas's attitude in the conversation is concerned, an artful rogue, though really simple and stupid. The same conditions apply to the three Thomases. It follows, that, until a man can be found who knows himself as his Maker knows him, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... a leaf, or the snapping of a dried twig beneath the light tread of the smallest animal, was apt to conjure images of the voracious and fire-eyed panther, or perhaps of a lurking biped, which, though more artful, was known to be scarcely less savage. It is true, that hundreds experienced the uneasiness of such sensations, who were never fated to undergo the realities of the fearful pictures. Still, facts were not wanting to supply sufficient motive for ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper

... other maladies, of no slight malignity, to which they are peculiarly liable. One of these, arising mainly from want of more worthy occupation, is that perpetual use of stratagem and contrivance—that little, artful diplomacy of private life, by which the simplest and most natural transactions are rendered complicated and difficult, and the common business of existence made to depend on the success of plots and counterplots. By the incessant ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady

... restore his recent conquests. At Tippoo's request, two English commissioners had been sent to his camp to treat for peace, and this unqualified restitution was enjoined by the commissioners as the preliminary of negociation with the artful nabob. Yet all the while Tippoo continued the siege of Mangalore, and while Fullarton was retracing his steps towards Tanjore and Trichino-poly, that fortress, after sustaining a siege of nine months, was captured; Colonel Campbell, who had bravely defended ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... 3 [Vain are those artful shapes of eyes and ears; The molten image neither sees nor hears: Their hands are helpless, nor their feet can move, They have no speech, nor thought, nor power, nor love; Yet sottish mortals make their long complaints To their deaf idols, and ...
— The Psalms of David - Imitated in the Language of The New Testament - And Applied to The Christian State and Worship • Isaac Watts

... there is deftly dight With meats and drinks of rare delight; There too the wine flows, sparkling, free; And all, my love, to pleasure thee. There sound enchanting symphonies; The clear high notes of flutes arise; A singing girl and artful boy Are chanting for thee strains of joy; He touches with his quill the wire, She tunes her note unto the lyre: The servants carry to and fro Dishes and cups of ruddy glow; But these delights, I will confess, Than pleasant converse charm me less; Nor is the feast so ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various

... never took us beyond the bounds of his picture. It was his doctrine that avoidance of detail was artful; that to carry the whole burden when imagination could be tricked into shouldering some of it was fool's drudgery. Millet, who was his antipode as a clumsy handler of his tools, declared himself fortunate in being able to suggest much ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore

... sincere in these professions? To a certain point he was; while he was only artful on others. He wished to appear just and magnanimous; while, in secret, it was his aim to work on the better feelings, as well as on the pride of Gardiner, and thus secure his services in getting his own schooner ready, as well as keep him in sight until a certain ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper

... Wopples, who was really a gentleman and well-educated, called on all the principal people of the town and so impressed them with the high class character of the entertainment that he never failed to secure their patronage. He also had a number of artful little schemes which he called 'wheezes', the most successful of these being a lecture on The Religious Teaching of Shakespeare', which he invariably delivered on a Sunday afternoon in the theatre of any town he happened to be in, and not infrequently when requested occupied the pulpit and preached ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume

... kind-faced woman informed us that we should shorten it much by going through the park, which, as we seemed respectable boys, she would allow us to do. We thanked her, entered, and went walking along a smooth road, through open sward, clumps of trees and an occasional piece of artful neglect in the shape of rough hillocks covered with wild shrubs, such as brier and broom. It was very delightful, and we walked along merrily. I can yet recall the individual shapes of certain hawthorn trees we passed, whose extreme age had found expression in a wild grotesqueness ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald

... the Egremonts contributed to this prodigious result? Their family had furnished none of those artful orators whose bewildering phrase had fascinated the public intelligence; none of those toilsome patricians whose assiduity in affairs had convinced their unprivileged fellow-subjects that government was a science, and administration an ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli

... By artful slander they soon made Dionysius believe that his brother-in-law was a traitor, and that his only wish was to take the power, and become tyrant of ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber

... are years in my life. I sinned, and more than once I escaped punishment by some trick or sly speech. I do not mean that I lied outright, though that also I did, sometimes; but I would twist my naughty speech, if forced to repeat it, in such an artful manner, or give such ludicrous explanation of my naughty act, that justice was overcome by laughter and threw me, as often as not, a handful of raisins instead of a knotted strap. If by such successes I was encouraged to cultivate my ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin

... On smoother, till Favonius re-inspire The frozen earth, and clothe in fresh attire The lily and rose, that neither sowed nor spun. What neat repast shall feast us, light and choice, Of Attic taste, with wine, whence we may rise To hear the lute well touched, or artful voice Warble immortal notes and Tuscan air? He who of those delights can judge, and spare To interpose ...
— Milton • John Bailey

... with all its artful scheming, Though it may seem most sublime, Wisdom horror-stricken spurneth from her, ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various

... would have been content with Samuel or Nathan; but no, this one's must, call in 'apt alliteration's artful aid,' ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade

... river gamblers was an individual, blind in one eye, known as "One-eyed Murphy." Murphy was an extremely artful manipulator of cards, and made a business of cheating. One day, shortly after the Natchez had backed out from New Orleans and got under way, Marion Knowles, a picturesque gentleman of the period, ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street

... love! Wildrake's in love! 'Tis that keeps him in town, Turns him from sportsman to town-gentleman. I never dreamed that he could be in love! In love with whom?—I'll find the vixen out! What right has she to set her cap at him? I warrant me, a forward, artful minx; I hate him worse than ever. I'll do all I can to spoil the match. He'll never marry— Sure he will never marry! He will have More sense than that! My back doth ope and shut— My temples throb and shoot—I am cold and hot! Were he to marry, there would be an end To neighbour Constance—neighbour ...
— The Love-Chase • James Sheridan Knowles



Words linked to "Artful" :   knavish, crafty, misrepresented, cute, precious, designing, twisted, cunning, elusive, slick, scheming, distorted, adroit, wily, pawky, tricksy, dodgy, insincere, perverted, artless, manipulative, sly, foxy, ingenuous, deep, guileful, tricky



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