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Guile   /gaɪl/   Listen
Guile

noun
1.
Shrewdness as demonstrated by being skilled in deception.  Synonyms: craft, craftiness, cunning, foxiness, slyness, wiliness.
2.
The quality of being crafty.  Synonyms: craftiness, deceitfulness.
3.
The use of tricks to deceive someone (usually to extract money from them).  Synonyms: chicane, chicanery, shenanigan, trickery, wile.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Guile" Quotes from Famous Books



... barren. He sought in this employment only an absorbing and uniform occupation, he only asked from it what Manfred demanded in vain from the powers of magic: "forgetfulness!" Forgetfulness—granted neither by the gayety of amusement, nor the lethargy of torpor! On the contrary, with venomous guile, they always compensate in the renewed intensity of woe, for the time they may have succeeded in benumbing it. In the daily labor which "charms the storms of the soul," (DER SEELE STURM BESCHWORT,) he sought ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt

... slightest motion.-What possibility was there that I should work the captivity of your husband and your own? The open affront which the Count of Paris put upon the Emperor, was one which he was likely to avenge, either by secret guile or by open force. Me it no way touched, save as the humble vassal of thy charms; and it was by the wisdom and the art of the sage Agelastes, that I was able to extricate thee from the gulf in which thou hadst else certainly perished. Nay, weep not, lady, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... add lustre to the family name. Alas for us! it was a favor that has cost us dear. I was their only child. When my sweet, pretty mother lay dying she left to me, her sixteen-year-old child, my dreamy, unworldly father as a legacy. "Take care of him: he knows no guile, and your uncles will wrong him if they can," she said. And they did, or one of them. Ere the bitter agony of my mother's death had enabled him to return to his duties, it was discovered that one of her brothers had forged his name and ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.

... the windows, and spoke to each other furtively on the stairs. Aided and abetted by Christophe, they even managed to get permission sometimes to meet in the Luxembourg Gardens. Christophe was delighted with the success of his guile, and went to see them there the first time they were together: they were shy and embarrassed, and hardly knew what to make of their new happiness. He broke down their reserve in a moment, and invented games for them, and races, and ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland

... "I would have rubbed him up the wrong way. He is devoted to his daughter, and he might look on my harmless but unavoidable guile with a prejudiced eye. In any event, I should be compelled to go slow in analyzing Mrs. Devar's motives, and this pertinacious Marigny seems to have been fairly intimate with him in Paris. Yes, on the whole, ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy

... discovery. To a frank, straightforward character, the very natural alternative would have suggested itself of explaining, and, as far possible, justifying the step just taken; but to a mind so full of guile, so wedded to wily schemes as the count's, a simple, upright course would never have occurred. The fear of exposure threw him into a state of nervous irritability which allowed no rest, and he was compelled to pay the price of deception by plunging deeper into her labyrinths, ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... foreshadow the great tragedy of after years when declaring that he felt he had no moral right to shirk, or even to count the chances of his own life in what might follow. In conclusion he said to Congress, "having thus chosen our own course without guile, and with pure purpose, let us renew our trust in God, and go forward without fear, and with ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... one let lovers cry, Alas! Since passion's leaguer shall break through in vain To that cold centre of bright adamas.— Storm through her being, rapturous spears of pain! Ye shall not wound that queen of gracious guile, The soul that with immortal trance keeps troth: For Helen is in Egypt all the while, Learning great magic from the Wife of Thoth. Throned white and high on red-rose porphyry, And coifed with golden wings, she lifts her eyes O'er Nile's green lavers where most sacredly The Pattern of ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor

... God, which taketh away the sin of the world."[83] And this act of appropriation, as well as of bearing testimony, he afterwards repeated. Nathaniel was a believing expectant of the Messiah. Of him Jesus made honourable mention when he said, "Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile;" and he, immediately on perceiving proofs of his Divine character, professed his acceptance of him. "Nathaniel answered and saith unto him, Rabbi, thou art the Son of God; thou art the King of Israel."[84] And Thomas and Peter, as instances of those who have received ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham

... months past and longer space I have abode your dev'lish drifts, While you have sought both man and place, And set your snares, with all your shifts, The faultless foot to wrap in wile With any guilt, by any guile: And now you see that will not be, How can you thus for shame agree To keep him bound you ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... to wake them up. In this life they are not only fools, and insist on being treated as fools, but would have God consent to treat them as if he too had no wisdom! The laird was one in whom was no guile, but he was far from perfect: any man is far from perfect whose sense of well-being could be altered by any change of circumstance. A man unable to do without this thing or that, is not yet in sight of his perfection, therefore not out ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald

... have taught, is not real power; she has been crafty and lucky; she has kept herself free from the entanglements and strifes of the Continent, and has enriched herself by filching the property of the combatants. If once she were compelled to hold by force what she won by guile, her pretensions would collapse, and she would fall back into her natural position as a small agricultural island, inhabited by a people whose proudest boast would then be that they are ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh

... to be married—my Rosina Adair!—is the daughter of a humble yeoman, and has thus neither birth nor fortune to boast of. But what in a wife are birth or fortune to me? Nothing, verily nothing, when their place is supplied—as in the case of my betrothed—by a heart that knows no guile; by a temper cheerful and complying; and by personal charms that would add lustre to a crown. Birth, Naresby, I do not value; and fortune ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton

... "Ha! already standest there? Already standest there, O Boniface! By many a year the writing play'd me false. So early dost thou surfeit with the wealth, For which thou fearedst not in guile to take The lovely lady, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... have imagined her such a really nice girl!" Tai-y smiled. "I've all along thought her full of guile!" And seizing the occasion, she told Pao-y with full particulars how she had, in the game of forfeits, made an improper quotation, and what advice Pao-ch'ai had given her on the subject; how she had even sent her some birds' nests, and what they had said in the ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... for evil, or railing for railing: but contrariwise blessing; knowing that ye are thereunto called, that ye should inherit a blessing. For he that will love life and see good days, let him refrain his tongue from evil, and his lips that they speak no guile: Let him eschew evil, and do good; let him seek peace, and ensue it. For the eyes of the Lord are over the righteous, and His ears are open unto their prayers: but the face of the Lord is against ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... common boon is it—we speak in the rich sentence of a German writer—to enjoy 'a look into a pure loving eye; a word without falseness, from a bride without guile; and close beside you in the still watches of the night, a soft-breathing breast, in which there is nothing but paradise, a sermon, and a ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various

... none save herself attributed to her the normal status of privileges of an elder sister. Her wrath was not visited on me, but on those who exalted me so unduly; even while she resented my position she was not, as I have shown, above using it for her own ends; this adaptability was not due to guile; she forgot one mood when another came, and compromised her pretensions in the effort to compass her desires. Princess Heinrich seized on the inconsistency, and pointed it out to her daughter with ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope

... every foreign influence, should again appear on the world's stage, and assert among the great powers that station to which by nature, position, and destiny it was entitled." Ordinary minds cannot grasp the guile and daring which seem to have foreseen and prearranged all the conditions necessary to plans which for double-dealing transcended the conceptions of men even in that age of ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... did not stop to think that there might be guile lurking in the traveling man, but being full of joy at drawing the quilt, and ice cream because the traveling man bought it, she rushed into the crowd towards the deacon, holding her number, and shouted so they could hear it ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck

... he watched the voluptuous form of the Jewess mingle with the crowd of guests on the hotel terrace. "That poor woman, a worn-out theater beauty, is without guile. What ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage

... appearance. His face was ever radiant with health, shining with satisfaction. People liked him, and did not discount it by saying that he had nothing in him. Gaston liked him most because he was so wholly himself, without guile, beautifully honest. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... acknowledged that to Henry he owed his restoration of Milan,[175] was now left to the uncovenanted mercies of Louis. But neither the credit nor discredit is due mainly to (p. 077) Henry. He had learnt much, but his powers were not yet developed enough to make him a match for the craft and guile of his rivals. The consciousness of the fact made him rely more and more upon Wolsey, who could easily beat both Maximilian and Ferdinand at their own game. He was not more deceitful than they, ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard

... goodly task we are called unto, A task to dream on o' nights, —Work for Judah and Judah's God, Setting our lands to rights; Everything fair and all things square And straight as a plummet string. —Is it mortal guile, if once in a while ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan

... melting little lady with the vermilion mouth and the cooing eyes who manicures in a Rialto hotel barber shop. She is the one whose touch is like the cool caress of a snowflake, whose face is as void of guile as the face of ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht

... generous, as refined, and as noble a man as one would desire to know; yet when he visited civilization for the first time—in his sixty-first year—he was reviled because he had a smile for all, he was swindled because he knew no guile, he was robbed because he trusted everyone, and he was arrested because he manifested brotherly love toward his fellow-creatures. Our vaunted civilization! It was the regret of his declining years that circumstances prevented him from leaving the enlightened Christians of the cities, ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming

... the face of our isle, By English oppression and falsehood and guile; Yet when to invade it a foreign fleet steered, To guard it for England the North volunteered. From the citizen-soldiers the foe fled aghast— Still they stood to their guns when the danger had passed, For the voice of America came o'er the wave, Crying: Woe to the tyrant, and ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis

... was embodied for Augustine in the historical tradition of the Evangelists and in the community where that tradition was preserved. He comes by degrees to the conviction that "the law of this tradition, which consists in believing what it has not proved, is moderate and without guile." He arrives at the idea, "Who could be so blind as to say that the Church of the Apostles deserves to have no faith placed in it, when it is so loyal and is supported by the conformity of so many brethren; when these have handed down their ...
— Christianity As A Mystical Fact - And The Mysteries of Antiquity • Rudolf Steiner

... to have been a warning to the high Vienna heads and him. But they persisted not the less to please Robinson or themselves; considering his Prussian Majesty to be, in fact, a mere rotatory Clothes-horse for drying the Imperial linen on; and to have no intellect at all, because he was without guile, and had no vulpinism at all. In which they were very much mistaken indeed. History is proud to report that the guileless Prussian Majesty, steadily attending to his own affairs in a wise manner, though hoodwinked and led about by Black-Artists ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... "I must first see how much silver there is in the purse I have on my belt," and he asked Gilli to take the scales while he searched the purse. [Sidenote: Of the dumb slave woman] Gilli then said, "On my side there shall be no guile in this matter; for, as to the ways of this woman, there is a great drawback which I wish, Hoskuld, that you know before we strike this bargain." Hoskuld asked what it was. Gilli replied, "The woman is dumb. I have tried in many ways to ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous

... Holy House, my head will I never wash Till I filch his Pearl away. Fair dealing I tried, then guile, And now I resort to force. He said we must live or die; Let him die, then—let me live! Be bold—but not too rash! I have found me a peeping-place; breast, bury your breathing 65 while I explore for myself! Now, breathe! He deceived me not, ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... late spring sun was warm. He felt no heat. A mere charge of treason he was almost prepared now to endure. If Mistress Fortune helped him, he might refute it, but to be branded before Hellas as the destroyer of his bosom friend, and that by guile the like whereof Tantalus, Sisyphus, and Ixion conjoined had never wrought—what wonder his knees smote together? Why had he not foreseen that Agis would fall into Lycon's hands? Why had he trusted that lying tale from Artemisium? And worst ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis

... of all that he possesses; by ravaging the country with fire and sword! Nay, I believe not your story. If ye are not Spaniards, ye are white-skinned, even as they are; your hearts are evil and full of guile, like theirs; and if we were foolish enough to listen to your lying words you would treat us even as they treated Atahuallpa and his people. But there are only two of you, and you are in our power; ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

... demur, and in a few minutes I was ushered into the presence of the newly made widow, who sat quite alone, in a large chamber in the rear. As I crossed the threshold she looked up, and I encountered a good, plain face, without the shadow of guile in it. ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green

... correct, or whether the Cardinal Duc de Rohan was the only distinguished person deluded by the artifices of the Countess de la Motte, it is certain that Joseph Balsamo, commonly called Alexandre, Count de Cagliostro, was capable of any knavery, however infamous. Guile was his element; audacity was his breastplate; delusion was his profession; immorality was his creed; debauchery was his consolation; his own genius—the genius of cunning—was the god of his idolatry. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various

... deceit and guile. Her languor and illness the preceding evening was all assumed to heighten the blooming contrast of the present moment. Her morning ramble and meeting with Clinton were all premeditated, her seeming artlessness the darkest and ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz

... live with love, And faith, that through the love of love doth find My Lord's dear presence in the stars above, The clods below, the flesh without, the mind Within, the bread, the tear, the smile. Opinion, damned Intriguer, gray with guile, Let ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier

... to take offense. He said, and Paul could not but hear, that Paul some day would be grateful for what he was doing, and that it was necessary in the forest to meet craft with craft, guile with guile. ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler

... sound, my Beauty," and left her, feeling sure no man could steal her and no guard could lead her away by guile or force, nor would she betray her presence there by ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon

... snubbing-posts, body quick-moving; brain quick-thinking; alert as a dog when on duty, calm as a sleepy cat beside a stove when his time was his own. Sixty only in years, this man; forty in strength and in skill, twenty in suppleness, and a one-year-old toddling infant in all that made for guile. "Uncle Ike" some of the younger men once called him, wondering behind their hands whether he was not too old and believing all the time that he was. "Uncle Ike" they still called him, but it was a title ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith

... were much larger and more powerful than those of Octavius. Little impression was made on them by the light Italian vessels, and had Antony been a soldier still, or Cleopatra possessed as much courage as guile, the victory might well have been theirs. But battle was no place for the pleasure-loving queen. Filled with terror, she took advantage of the first wind that came, and sailed hastily away, followed ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... hast drunk to me in turn we will talk of weighty matters. For indeed I bear hopes in my hands too heavy for the daughters of men to bear; and thou art a chieftain's son, and mayst well help me to bear them; so let us talk simply and without guile, as folk ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris

... one more than the other, was our sister Nina, for she was the youngest. She was the most fascinating and lovely, though we confessed that if she had a fault, her disposition was too yielding and confiding—guileless herself, she could not credit that guile existed in others. Hers was one of those characters which, from its very innocence, would be held more sacred in the eyes of an upright, honourable man, though it exposes its possessor to be made the dupe of the designing ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston

... And withal Dick's methods of approach were radically wrong, for he blundered upon new acquaintance with a beaming smile, which is ordinarily a sure repellent to the cautious, taciturn men of the woods. Perhaps their keenness penetrated to the fact that he was absolutely without guile, and that his kindness was an essential part of himself. I should be curious to know whether Billy Knapp of the Black Hills would surrender his gun to Dick ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White

... of another visitor did disturb me. Though I knew Pete Willets as a quiet, gentle shoemaker in whom seemed no guile, I wanted to be alone to think and read ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp

... sure, there are points of similarity between the Haitian example and the others. Deception, disinformation, and guile are more crucial in this regime. However, the target or focus is the will and perception of the intended target. Perhaps the Sun Tzu category comes closest to this one except that while Sun Tzu is selective in applying force, it is clear ...
— Shock and Awe - Achieving Rapid Dominance • Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade

... ruled an island which (in the '80s) was rich with shell—pearl-shell; and she fought pearl thievers and marauding beachcombers, fought them with weapons and with woman's guile. No man knew whence she had come nor why. That there would eventually be a lover Ruth knew; and she waited his appearance upon the scene, waited with an impatience which was both personal and literary. If the creator drew a hero anything like himself, she would ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath

... I might spread some net or woven wile; But since of singing she doth take such pleasure, Without or other art or other guile I seek to win her with a tuneful measure; Therefore in singing spend I all my leisure, To make by singing this sweet bird ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds

... to tell. Truth for truth's sake! He had no strong moral feeling against a lie; but he had never had the slightest use for a lie, and a prevarication on his tongue would have been as strange to him as castanets in his palms. Guile takes alertness, adroitness; and the slim pennyworth of these that he could command he used up, no doubt, on Fontenette. I noticed that after an hour with the Creole he always looked tortured and exhausted. With us he was artless to the tips ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable

... little eyes blinked and his shaggy red eyebrows came together in a frown. Here was too speedy an acquiescence. There must be guile behind it, or he knew naught of the ways ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini

... Captain Nunez could not resist such a provoking mixture of innocence and guile; he was first taken with her, and ended by falling in love. He was a man with a wide face, lean, grave, and bilious looking, having a moustache and imperial, and languid, dull looking eyes, very conscientious ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds

... queen, placing both hands upon her husband's bosom, kissed his eyes and lips, and sweetly smiling on his face—for great is the guile of women—whispered, "Eat it thyself, dear one, or at least share it with me; for what is life and what is youth without the presence of those we love?" But the Raja, whose heart was melted by these unusual words, put her away tenderly, and, having explained that the fruit would serve ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton

... her sharply, as though there might be irony in this; but her face was without guile. She glanced ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott

... 3 From guile his heart and lips are free, His humble joy, his holy fear, With deep repentance well agree, And join ...
— The Psalms of David - Imitated in the Language of The New Testament - And Applied to The Christian State and Worship • Isaac Watts

... for a moment from these specimens of mortal excellence to Him who was "holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners;" and who has left us "an example, that we should follow his steps: who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth ... who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox

... on board their vessel, and carry him to the mouth of the river of Egypt, and there sell him for a slave to the King. For the Sidonians, who were greedy of everything, loved nothing better than to catch free men and women, who might be purchased, by mere force or guile, and then be sold again for gold and silver and cattle. Many kings' sons had thus been captured by them, and had seen the day of slavery in Babylon, or Tyre, or Egyptian Thebes, and had died sadly, far from ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang

... after another they raised their voices, and uttered some expression appropriate to the occasion: "To the West, the dwelling of Osiris, to the West, thou who wast the best of men, and who always hated guile." And the hired weepers answered in chorus: "O chief,* as thou goest to the West, the gods themselves lament." The funeral cortege started in the morning from the house of mourning, and proceeded at a slow pace to the Nile, amid the clamours ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... came down for a while, And her lips they were moving in prayer, And her face it wore just such a smile As, perhaps, it was oft wont to wear, Ere the heart of the girl knew a guile, Ere the soul of the girl knew the wile, That had led her to ...
— Poems: Patriotic, Religious, Miscellaneous • Abram J. Ryan, (Father Ryan)

... church, but did not destroy their principles. Facing the obloquy attached to their cause, and braving the trials imposed by the civil and ecclesiastical powers, they must wait patiently God's time of deliverance. That their lives were free from guile, none claim. That their cause was righteous, none will deny; and while the elements of a Baptist church were thus gathering strength on this side of the Atlantic, a leader was prepared for them, by God's providence, ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume I, No. 2, February, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... the tempest let loose from prison, and the still water boiling up from its depths, and lifting his head calm above the waves, looked forth across the deep. He sees all ocean strewn with Aeneas' fleet, the Trojans overwhelmed by the waves and the ruining heaven. Juno's guile and wrath lay clear to her brother's eye; east wind and west he calls before him, and thereon ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil

... years or more, he had not once failed to read "The Carol" on Christmas Eve. He knew the book by heart. Is it any wonder, then, that he was a gentle, sweet-natured man in whom not the faintest symptom of guile existed? And, on the other hand, is it any wonder that he remained a bookkeeper in a bank while other men of his acquaintance went into business and became rich and arrogant? Of course, it is necessary to look at the question from both directions, and ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon

... slow glance into the shadow where her companion sat. They were talking low, of indifferent things which plainly were not the things that occupied their thoughts. She knew that he loved her—a frank, blustering fellow without guile enough to conceal his feelings, and no desire to do so. For two weeks past he had sought her society eagerly and persistently. She was confidently waiting for him to declare himself and she meant to accept him. The rather insignificant and ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin

... saw his face to-day; he looks a chief Who fears nor human rage, nor human guile; Upon his cheeks the twilight of a grief, But in that grief the starlight ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett

... that knew no guile had been saved from suffering, the thought of the intimacy that she had encouraged, and the wishes she had entertained for Phoebe, filled her with such dismay, that it required the sight of the innocent, serene face, and the sound of the happy, unembarrassed ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... savage flight. She herself would have turned and fled, but for the singularity of such precipitance. She was afraid before this shyness of the unlicked Celt, of the wild creature trapped and caught unaware, by the guile she judged dishonourable. ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair

... was this: "It transpired in the very nick of time, that a suspicion of usury attached to these Israelites without guile, in a transaction with Hurst and Robinson, as to one or more of the bills for which the house of Ballantyne had become responsible. This suspicion, upon investigation, assumed a shape sufficiently tangible to justify Ballantyne's trustees in carrying the point before the Court ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... which is his especial bent. Across his shoulder lies a quiver, filled With arrows dipped in honey, thrice distilled From all the roses brides have ever worn Since that first wedding out of Eden born. Beneath a cherub face and dimpled smile This youthful hunter hides a heart of guile; His arrows aimed at random fly in quest Of lodging-place within some blameless breast. But those he wounds die happily, and so Blame not young Cupid with his dart and bow: Thus has he warred and won since time began, Transporting into Heaven both ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson

... the rotter couldn't keep it to himself. Went and told the Old Man. The Old Man sent for me. He was as decent as anything at first. That was just his guile. He made me describe exactly where I had seen the paper, and so on. That was rather risky, of course, but I put it as vaguely as I could. When I had finished, he suddenly whipped round, and said, "Bradshaw, why are you telling me all these lies?" That's the sort of thing that makes you feel ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse

... of being divided between them. Anne longed for the power of representing to them all what they were about, and of pointing out some of the evils they were exposing themselves to. She did not attribute guile to any. It was the highest satisfaction to her to believe Captain Wentworth not in the least aware of the pain he was occasioning. There was no triumph, no pitiful triumph in his manner. He had, probably, never heard, and never thought of any claims of Charles Hayter. He was only wrong in ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... in attempting to persuade you to come to us also?" he said. Neil shook his head silently. Then, realizing that Paul was quite capable, in his present fit of stubbornness, of promising to enter Robinson if only to spite his room-mate, Neil used guile. ...
— Behind the Line • Ralph Henry Barbour

... whose mighty earthquake-tread all Europa shook with dread, Chief whose infancy was cradled in that old Tyrrhenic isle, Joins the shades of trampling legions, bringing from remotest regions Gallic fire and Roman valor, Cimbric daring, Moorish guile, Guests from every age to share a Portion of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various

... lady to see money expended on what seems a dingy old binding, or yellow paper scored with crabbed characters. Thus ladies wage a skirmishing war against booksellers' catalogues, and history speaks of husbands who have had to practise the guile of smugglers when they conveyed a new purchase across their own frontier. Thus many married men are reduced to collecting Elzevirs, which go readily into the pocket, for you cannot smuggle a folio volume easily. This inveterate dislike of books often produces a very deplorable result ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang

... scarlet sweater and cap, sniffed them from afar and straightway deserted her sand pile to take her stand at the fence. She peered through the restraining bars, standing on tiptoe. Blanche Devine, glancing up from her board and rolling pin, saw the eager golden head. And Snooky, with guile in her heart, raised one fat, dimpled hand above the fence and waved it friendlily. Blanche Devine waved back. Thus encouraged, Snooky's two hands wigwagged frantically above the pickets. Blanche Devine ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber

... you heard him deliver that oration at Harvard College, that you were astonished that any foreigner could have such complete command of the language. He is integrity itself, with a great mind free from all guile, and is filled with the enthusiasm and vivacity of youth. During the revolutionary movement in Germany in 1848 he helped a political friend escape from the Schandau prison, and on account of that was himself condemned to death. However, he managed to evade pursuit and took refuge ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone

... prescription, which, if you will carefully follow, will prove an unfailing elixir of life. "For he that will love life, and see good days, let him refrain his tongue from evil, and his lips that they speak no guile: let him eschew evil, and do good; let him seek peace, and ensue it." 1 Pet. 3:10,11. If the reader will follow these directions strictly, making them practical in every-day life, we can upon the authority God has given insure him ...
— Food for the Lambs; or, Helps for Young Christians • Charles Ebert Orr

... not well done, O chief, Must thou take shame or grief? Because one man is not as thou or ten, Must thou take shame for men? Because the supreme sunrise is not yet, Is the young dew not wet? Wilt thou not yet abide a little while, Soul without fear or guile, Mazzini,—O our prophet, O our priest, A little while at least? A little hour of doubt and of control, Sustain thy sacred soul; Withhold thine heart, our father, but an hour; Is it not here, the ...
— Two Nations • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... She hold the gorgeous East in fee; And was the safeguard of the West: the worth Of Venice did not fall below her birth, Venice, the eldest Child of Liberty. She was a Maiden City, bright and free; No guile seduced, no force could violate; And when She took unto herself a Mate She must espouse the everlasting Sea. And what if she had seen those glories fade, Those titles vanish, and that strength decay, Yet shall some tribute ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth

... exquisite, choice, rare. Danger, peril, jeopardy, hazard, risk. Darken, obscure, bedim, obfuscate. Dead, lifeless, inanimate, deceased, defunct, extinct. Decay, decompose, putrefy, rot, spoil. Deceit, deception, double-dealing, duplicity, chicanery, guile, treachery. Deceptive, deceitful, misleading, fallacious, fraudulent. Decorate, adorn, ornament, embellish, deck, bedeck, garnish, bedizen, beautify. Decorous, demure, sedate, sober, staid, prim, proper. Deface, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... one name more than another. When he discovered further that her Christian name was Avice the phenomenon became stupendously bewildering. They two were in the last of the party to descend. On reaching bottom he separated her with promptness and guile from two solemn young men, copies of each other, and they were presently alone. In the distance they could see the others following ghostly lamps. From far off mysterious recesses came the muffled musical clink of the sledges on the drills. An employee who had come down with them ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson

... her with words of guile: "Mother mine, why wouldst thou scare me so, as though I were a redeless child, with little craft in his heart, a trembling babe that dreads his mother's chidings? Nay, but I will essay the wiliest craft to feed thee and me for ever. We twain are not to endure to abide here, ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang

... Psalms,[96] lives of saints, maxims, moral poems, and symbolic ones, where the supposed habits of animals are used to illustrate the duties of Christians. One of this latter sort has for its subject the whale "full of guile," another the panther[97]; a third (incomplete) the partridge; a fourth, by a different hand, and evincing a very different sort of poetical taste, the phenix. This poem is the only one in the whole range of Anglo-Saxon ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand

... The convulsive hold which Mary to this day maintains over human imagination—as you can see at Lourdes—was due much less to her power of saving soul or body than to her sympathy with people who suffered under law,—divine or human,—justly or unjustly, by accident or design, by decree of God or by guile of Devil. She cared not a straw for conventional morality, and she had no notion of letting her friends be punished, to the tenth or any other generation, for the sins of their ancestors or the ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams

... turns away, Full of the dear extatic power, and sick With sighing languishment. Ah then, ye fair! Be greatly cautious of your sliding hearts: Dare not th'infectious sigh; the pleading look, Down-cast, and low, in meek submission drest, But full of guile. Let not the fervent tongue, Prompt to deceive, with adulation smooth, Gain on your purpos'd will. Nor in the bower, Where woodbines flaunt, and roses shed a couch, While evening draws her crimson curtains round, Trust your soft ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber

... scorn. Nay, let me work by poison, as is my wont. Well, and if they die, what then? What city will receive me? what friend shall give me protection? I know not. I will tarry awhile, and if some help appear, I will work my end with guile; but if not, I will take my sword and slay them that I hate, though I die. For by Hecate, whom I reverence most of all the Gods, no man shall vex my heart and prosper. Therefore, Medea, fear not; use all thy counsel and craft. Shall ...
— Stories from the Greek Tragedians • Alfred Church

... geese Once did the Roman; nigh a million—JUNOS, Roll back the tide of Revolution. Who knows? Not PRIAM-SALISBURY. Does he look askance At the new Amazonian Queen's advance? Does he hide apprehension with a smile? The Amazons are used to Grecian guile; ACHILLES-GLADSTONE sorely they mistrust. Which side will give them more than fain it must? To-day the Trojans show the friendlier front PENTHESILEA, whom the Greeks would shunt, Proffers her aid to Tory Troy, to keep High Ilium against ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 5, 1891 • Various

... unworthy silence. Indeed, at the mention of Hsi Min's name he wraps his garment about his head and rolls upon the floor—from which the worst may be inferred. They of Min's house, however, are less capable of guile, and for an adequate consideration, while not denying that Shen Heng has paid them to maintain a stealthy silence, they freely admit that the facts are as they ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah

... important though remote posts of Detroit and Michilimackinac. For a length of time they were baffled by the activity and vigilance of the respective governors of these forts, who had had too much fatal experience in the fate of their companions not to be perpetually on the alert against their guile; but when they had at length, in some degree, succeeded in lulling the suspicions of the English, they determined on a scheme, suggested by a leading chief, a man of more than ordinary character, which promised fair to rid them altogether of a race they so cordially detested. ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson

... Yamani manufacture and fared forth crying, "Glory be to Allah! Praised be Allah! There is no god but the God! Allah is Most Great! There is no Majesty and there is no Might save in Allah, the Glorious, the Great!" Nor did she leave off her lauds and her groaning in prayer whilst her heart was full of guile and wiles, till she came to the house of Ni'amah bin al-Rabi'a at the hour of noon prayer, and knocked at the door. The doorkeeper opened and said to her, "What dost thou want?" Quoth she, "I am a poor pious woman, whom the time of noon prayer hath ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton

... take you, dames, to task, And say it frankly without guile, Then you are Gypsies in a mask, And I the ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... near the banks of the little streams and nestled in the shades of the majestic groves. Here they suffered the hardships and endured the privations that only the frontiersman might know. Here beneath humble roofs, their children were born and reared, and here from hearts that knew no guile ascended the incense of thanksgiving and praise. The early settlers, the pioneers, the men who laid the foundations of what our eyes now behold, builded wisely and well. Their descendants to-day are in large measure the beneficiaries of all that they so wisely planned, so patiently endured. These ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson

... are often in want. How many a genius has perished inarticulate because unable to stand the strain of social conditions where animal standards prevail and "survival of the fittest" means, not survival of the "fittest in time-binding capacity," but survival of the strongest in ruthlessness and guile—in ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski

... condition, order, and rank they may be, in virtue of holy obedience and under pain of excommunication, on the publication of these presents, in accordance with the edict, or mandate of the said King Philip, to release wholly free, without deceit and guile, whatsoever Indian slaves and servants they may have, or hold; nor ever for the future in any manner to take or keep captives, or servants."—[Translated from the original by REV. T. C. ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga

... who were placed so as to intercept the fugitives, these fell with great vigour on the tribesmen and gave them a much needed lesson. It was now no longer an effete Sikh administration that breakers of the law had to deal with, but the strong right arm and warlike guile of the British officer, backed up by men who ...
— The Story of the Guides • G. J. Younghusband

... evidently a foreign element. It sat ill upon her smooth face, as if it might slide off at any moment. Fay's violet eyes were her greatest charm. She looked at you with a deprecating, timid, limpid gaze, in which no guile existed, any more than steadfastness, any more than unselfishness, any more ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley

... an Irish Bayard, too chivalrous to conspire successfully and too frankly courageous to match a government of guile. Tone was far more dangerous. He realized that foreign invasion was necessary to successful rebellion, and he allowed no scruple or obstacle in his path. He washed his hands of law and politics entirely. To divert Napoleon to Ireland was his object and the total separation of Ireland ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox

... soft, but lurking in each smile Methinks I spy a double meaning there. 'Twere well to bring Dame Caution to the front And hold this fellow, as he runs, in leash; For he, while fat with wisdom, may of guile Be deeply feeding, and from stomach weak May spew deep discord when we least expect. I have it! well 'tis known that Wisdom's bird, While winging daily flight, hath hovered o'er Our foes politic, and hath often shunned To make her nest in Democratic boughs. ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)

... the London Morning Post, the anonymous author gives a list of fifty names of "persons who either are the actual governing powers in Soviet Russia now or were responsible for the establishment of the present regime there." There is both guile and cowardice in the latter part of this charge. It is easy to argue, with a certain plausibility, that every person who helped in the revolution of March, 1917, must be held "responsible for the establishment of the present regime." I have heard many Russians make the charge that Kerensky, ...
— The Jew and American Ideals • John Spargo

... or 2. and kept them in hold 2. days, till 4. sagamors ingaged themselves within one month to deliver y^e prisoner. And about a weeke after this agreemente, an Indean came presumtuously and with guile, in y^e day time, and murtherously assalted an English woman in her house at Stamford, and by 3. wounds, supposed mortall, left her for dead, after he had robbed y^e house. By which passages y^e English were provoked, & called to a due consideration of their owne ...
— Bradford's History of 'Plimoth Plantation' • William Bradford

... do her no more than justice when I say she is one of the best creatures I ever knew. She hath a sweetness of temper, a generosity of spirit, an openness of heart—in a word, she hath a true Christian disposition. I may call her an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no guile." ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding

... more easily escape detection by the world at large than if it were displayed in the heart of a city? An unwarranted confidence in the sanctity of its apostles—a proneness to regard them as incapable of guile—and an impatience of the least suspicion to their rectitude as men or Christians, have ever been prevailing faults in the Church. Nor is this to be wondered at: for subject as Christianity is to the assaults of unprincipled foes, we are naturally disposed to regard everything like ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville

... two malefactors who were, he felt absolutely certain, using his roof for their lustful assignation, had the night before them. They would avail themselves of it with that sybarite deliberateness which had characterized their epicurean guile ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck

... "that I have been compelled to resort to subterfuge to make prisoners of you, but, you see, we are all invalids here, and not strong enough to take your ship by force; and therefore, since it is imperative that we should have her, I have been compelled to use guile. However, I will keep my word with you in the matter of something to quench your parched throats; and if you choose to be sensible, and make no foolish attempts at escape, you shall have no reason ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood

... what matters which he be? Which is the worst, Harry, and what is the difference? The Fausts of this day want no Mephistopheles to teach them guile or to ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope

... woman said: "I shall not bid them open the gate, for I know from your armor who you are, and that you are Sir Engeneron the Seneschal. And I know that you are one of our bitterest enemies; for you have already slain several of the knights of this castle, and now you seek by guile to enter ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle

... O Pharaoh, but without doubt, although he could work no guile, the Prince is not as are other men. His mind is both wide ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard

... been present, it had struck her as a little forced and unnecessary that the Pug should have volunteered to seek out Danglar with explanations after the money had been secured. But she understood now the craft and guile that lay behind his apparently innocent plan. The Adventurer needed both time and an alibi, and also he required an excuse for making Pinkie Bonn the custodian of the stolen money, and of getting Pinkie ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard

... decided yesterday," replied the Countess; and it was revealed to me that the plump lady was not without feminine guile. ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... minister, that I might help to guide them," she answered, with a laugh. "There are many worse pilots than I am, and often in girlhood's days have I sailed with my father on yonder sea, sometimes, as now, tossed with waves, at other times calm and blue, like a young maiden's eye, void of guile and treachery." ...
— The Heir of Kilfinnan - A Tale of the Shore and Ocean • W.H.G. Kingston

... to contemplate than the picture of two young lovers brought happily together after years of trial and disappointment, themselves representing what there is good and pure in the human heart. It is then we seem to see the heart liberate itself from guile, and truth and right rejoice in their triumph over wrong. There was just such a picture presented by Mattie Chapman, the true-hearted American girl, and the active, earnest, persevering, and modest, American ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams

... his travels in the fearful way that he did. But, again, we beg pardon, and entreat the earth of Virginia to lie light upon the remains of John Woolman; for he was an Israelite, indeed, in whom there was no guile. ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... blest was America's soil, 'Till betrayed by the guile of the Puritan demon, Which lurks under virtue, and springs from its coil To fasten its fangs in the life-blood of freemen. Then boldly appeal to each heart that can feel, And crush the foul viper 'neath Liberty's heel! And the Cross of ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various

... in Mrs. Tiffany. That name always jarred on their ears. Northrup, ex-congressman, flowery Western orator, all Christian love on the surface, all guile beneath—he had taken to himself that success which Judge Tiffany might have had but for his hesitations of conscience. Theirs was a secret resentment. Judge Tiffany's pride would never have let him show the world one glimmer of what ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin

... his most sportive moods, making them like the honest and whole-hearted play of childhood, than which human life has nothing that proceeds more in earnest. For who has not found it a property of childhood to be serious in its fun, innocent in its mischief, and ingenuous in its guile? Moreover it is easy to remark that, in Shakespeare's greatest dunces and simpletons and potentates of nonsense, there is something that prevents contempt. A fellow-feeling springs up between us and them; it is through our sympathetic, not our ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... counter-plots: how much blood: how many lives affected! The feud of Hawk Carse and Dr. Ku Sui—and Eliot Leithgow, who was the chief cause of it—here again had come to a head. Here again were all the varied forces of brains and guile, science and skill, marshaled in the great, vital game on whose outcome depended the restoration of Eliot Leithgow and the lives of the coordinated brains and, indeed, though more distantly, the fate of all the tribes of men on all the planets. For if Ku Sui won free ...
— The Passing of Ku Sui • Anthony Gilmore

... great force, and said, in a stern voice, "There's a bloody debt due by that family, and they will pay it one day—The banes of a loyal and a gallant Grahame hae lang rattled in their coffin for vengeance on thae Dukes of Guile and Lords for Lorn. There ne'er was treason in Scotland but a Cawmil was at the bottom o't; and now that the wrang side's uppermost, wha but the Cawmils for keeping down the right? But this warld winna last lang, and it will be time to sharp the maiden* for shearing ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... reason. Even if men had no need of one another for the supply of their animal wants, they would still desire to converse for the satisfaction of their intellectual curiosity and their social affections. And even if we had all remained as void of guile, and as full of light and love, as our first parents were at their creation, we should still have needed the erection of States. In a State there are not only criminal but civil courts, where it is not wicked men alone who come to be litigants. ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.

... being the first to make the outline of the nearest shore of this land of the free. There was the eye of youth, lit up with the light of innocence, which when riper years should have left their impress, might have given place to more of guile; while hand in hand, along her peaceful decks, roamed old age and infancy, alike joyous in the air of cheerfulness which ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale



Words linked to "Guile" :   jugglery, deceit, perspicacity, shenanigan, deception, fraud, dissimulation, dupery, perspicaciousness, humbug, disingenuousness, put-on, dissembling, hoax, fraudulence, astuteness, shrewdness, wile, cunning



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