"Artifice" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... divine the diplomatic reticence, the gestures of artifice, the veiled words, the looks of doubtful meaning which some evening may induce your wife to attempt the capture of ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... do the Mutilla, the Chrysis, the Leucopsis, the Anthrax and so many others differ, in their way of living, from the Scolia? It seems to me, in none. See for yourselves. By an artifice that varies according to the mother's talent, their grubs, either in the germ-stage or newly-born, are brought into touch with the victim that is to feed them: an unwounded victim, for most of them are without a sting; a live ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... above the ordinary height. Possibly from the dignity of her person, assisted by the dignity of her movements, a stranger would have been disposed to call her at a distance a woman of commanding presence; but never, after he had approached near enough to behold her face. Every thought of artifice, of practised effect, or of haughty pretension, fled before the childlike innocence, the sweet feminine timidity, and the more than cherub loveliness of that countenance, which yet in its lineaments was noble, whilst ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... manuscript breaks off, does not appear in the Book of Leinster; and the later version introduces several literary artifices that do not appear in the earlier one. That portion of the Glenn Masain version immediately following after Deirdre's lament is given as an instance of one of these, the common artifice of increase of horror at a catastrophe by the introduction of irrelevant matter, the tragedy of Deirdre's death being immediately followed by a cheerful account of the relationships of the chief heroes of the Heroic Period; a still better example of this practice in the old Irish literature ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... known that artifice is the resource of cunning, whether it acts on the principle of concealing truth or boldly asserting falsehood. Here the reverend strategist did both: he knew how a little truth could deceive. You must remember that at this point of the case, when the Rev. Faker was called, there was nothing ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... measurable.[Footnote: it must not be forgotten that all the superior gods passed through an infancy (as Jove, &c.) or even an adolescence, (as Bacchus,) or even a maturity, (as the majority of Olympus during the insurrection of the Titans,) surrounded by perils that required not strength only, but artifice, and even abject self-concealment to evade.] Looking backwards or looking forwards, the gods beheld enemies that attacked their existence, or modes of decay, (known and unknown,) which gnawed at their roots. All this I take the trouble to insist upon: not as though it ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... oblique upon his contracted forehead. The wig was always pushed crooked whenever he was in a brown or rather, a black study. Barbara, who did not, like Susan, bear with her father's testy humour from affection and gentleness of disposition, but who always humoured him from artifice, tried all her skill to fathom his thoughts, and when she found that it would not do, she went to tell her maid so, and to complain that her father was so cross there ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... own,' on whose sympathy she could reckon, even down to the minutest circumstances of this journey. And so there is no attempt at fine or sensational writing, as we now call it, no attempt at that modern artifice which they call word-painting. But there is the most absolute sincerity, the most perfect fidelity to her own experience, the most single-minded endeavour to set down precisely the things they saw and heard and felt, just as they saw and felt and heard ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... distance for their chief enemy the puma? Or does curiosity overcome their timidity? That they are curious is certain; for if a person lies on the ground, and plays strange antics, such as throwing up his feet in the air, they will almost always approach by degrees to reconnoitre him. It was an artifice that was repeatedly practised by our sportsmen with success, and it had moreover the advantage of allowing several shots to be fired, which were all taken as parts of the performance. On the mountains of Tierra del Fuego, I have more than once seen ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... There was no artifice left untried by the despot of Tunis. To the African princes, Moors as well as Arabs and Berbers, did Kheyr-ed-Din send embassies. For these he chose cunning men well versed in the means of exciting ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... a sophism, a logical artifice, a deceitful or false appearance; while specious means having the appearance of truth, plausible. Hence we see that the very essence of a fallacy is its speciousness. We may very properly say that a fallacy is more or less specious, but we can not properly say that ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... mimetic faculty, certain physical gifts are also needed by the opera-singer, according to the requirements of the line of roles to which he is inevitably assigned by the nature and type of his particular voice. It is true that stage artifice has now reached great perfection; but it has its ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... meaning of his nickname. Pope's irritable vanity was vexed at the liberal praises bestowed on such a rival, and he revenged himself by an artifice more ingenious than scrupulous. He sent an anonymous article to Steele for the Guardian. It is a professed continuation of the previous papers on pastorals, and is ostensibly intended to remove the appearance of partiality ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... necks. With this admission I was content to leave the matter, in no way accusing them of actual duplicity, yet so withdrawing that any of unprejudiced standing could not fail to carry away the impression that I had been the victim of an unworthy artifice, and had been lured into their society by the pretext that they were other than ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... only on the outer edge, which day and night is lashed by the breakers of an ocean never at rest. Well did Francois Pyrard de Laval, in the year 1605 exclaim, 'C'est une merveille de voir chacun de ces atollons, environne d'un grand banc de pierre tout autour, n'y ayant point d'artifice humain.'"[62] ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... abundance of his heart and the richness of his mind, and out of a lively sense of community with the myriads of German-speaking men and women seeks entrance into the world of letters, he faces in painful amazement the dilemma: People or literature? Human being or artist? Personality or artifice? ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... repine at her fate; she might have been ambitious and worldly, vain and presuming, have possessed cunning and resolve, and have used every artifice to secure her triumph. Some of the stories extant of her would seem to prove this, and some to exculpate her from blame, inasmuch as she believed herself to have fulfilled a sacred duty in conforming to her master's will. When ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... that," she admitted, with a laugh. "What a diverting piece of artifice this Wintergarten is, to be sure. Fancy arranging the electric lights to shine through a dome of purple glass, and look like stars. They do look like stars, don't they? Slightly overdressed, showy stars, indeed; stars ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... pleasant sight to see these old enemies converted into new and loving friends, and to behold their first meeting after being cheated into mutual liking by the merry artifice of the good-humoured prince. But a sad reverse in the fortunes of Hero must now be thought of. The morrow, which was to have been her wedding-day, brought sorrow on the heart of Hero and her good ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Egyptian children were put under their care to learn the Greek tongue; and on this occasion, and by this means, the Egyptians began to have a correspondence with the Greeks, and, from that era, the Egyptian history, which till then had been intermixed with pompous fables, by the artifice of the priests, begins, according to Herodotus, to speak with ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... if her feminine instinct makes the task a compulsory one, it also makes it easy. She is full of artifice, she foresees and forestalls everything. It is she who gives the examining magistrate a false description of Arsene Lupin (the reader will remember the difference of opinion on this subject between the cousins). ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... the same thing as force, to interfere on one side or the other, and from that moment all the means of appreciation will be complicated and entangled, instead of becoming clear. It ought to be the part of the State to prevent, and, above all, to repress artifice and fraud; that is, to secure liberty, and not to violate it. I have enlarged a little upon exchange, although loan is my principal object: my excuse is, that I conceive that there is in a loan an actual exchange, an actual service rendered by ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... habits of the country, which leave so little time for parental instruction, and, perhaps, in some degree to the acts of political agents, who, with their own advantages in view, among the other expedients of their cunning, have resorted to the artifice of separating children from their natural advisers by calling meetings of the young to decide on the fortunes and ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... antedates the Upanishads. The haunting beauty of Mr. de la Mare's delicate art springs from an ear of superlative tenderness and sophistication. The daintiest alternation of iambus and trochee is joined to the serpent's cunning in swiftly tripping dactyls. Probably this artifice is greatly unconscious, the meed of the trained musician; but let no singer think to upraise his voice before the Lord ere he master the axioms of prosody. Imagist ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... very sorry, she hadn't meant to, she would never do it again. He did not for a moment suspect that it referred to the scene at Lady Halifax's, and was more than half real. It was not easy to know that even genuine feeling, with Elfrida, required a cloak of artifice. He put it down as a pretty pose, and found it as objectionable as the one he had painted. He was more curious, perhaps, but less disturbed than either of the Cardiffs as the days went by and Elfrida made no sign. He felt, however, that his curiosity ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... France with me, and that of our subsequent misfortunes immediately after, and was, as usual, exaggerated by the British Ambassador and his emissaries. In a word, without remittances, or even intelligence from Congress, and under all these disagreeable circumstances, I had to oppose the artifice, the influence, and the power of Great Britain; yet I have the pleasing reflection that before the first of December following, I procured thirty thousand stand of arms, thirty thousand suits of clothes, more than two hundred and fifty pieces ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... his ignorance of the genius of our language, which does not admit of such an expression as "full score," but would require the insertion of the particle "a," which cannot be, on account of the metre. And this is another great artifice of the Poet: by leaving the quantity of beating indeterminate, he gives every reader the liberty to administer it, in exact proportion to the sum of indignation which he may have conceived against his Hero; that by thus amply satisfying their resentment, they may ...
— Parodies of Ballad Criticism (1711-1787) • William Wagstaffe
... aroma : aromo. arouse : veki. arrange : arangxi. arrest : aresti. arrive : alveni. arrogant : aroganta arrow : sago. art : arto. artery : arterio. artful : ruza. artichoke : artisxoko. article : artikolo, komercajxo. artificial : artefarita, arta. artifice : artifiko. artisan : metiisto. artist : artisto. ascertain : konstati. ash : cindro, (tree) frakseno. ask : demandi. "-for," peti. asparagus : asparago. aspect : aspekto, vidigxo, fazo. aspen : tremolo. ass : azeno. assemble ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... was effected by Nicogenes by the following artifice: the barbarous nations, and among them the Persians especially, are extremely jealous, severe, and suspicious about their wives, whom they keep so strictly that no one ever sees them abroad; they spend their lives shut up within doors, and, when ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... established rates of pay varied between a hundred dirhems a year and four thousand, and persons entitled to the lowest rate often received an amount not much short of the highest. The evil was not only that the treasury was robbed by unfair claims and unfounded pretences, but that artifice and false seeming were encouraged, while at the same time the army was brought into such a condition that no dependence could be placed upon it. If the number who actually served corresponded to that upon the rolls, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... is the type of the Anglo-Saxon hero; but we think that Winthrop was fully his match in delicacy and intrepidity, in manly courage, and in sweet, instinctive tenderness. As to style, the American far exceeds the Englishman. A certain conventional artifice and dainty affectation clouded the clear and beautiful nature of Sidney, when he wrote. The elaborate embroidery of thought, the stiff and cumbrous Elizabethan dress of language, with all its ruffles and laces, make the "Arcadia" an imperfect exponent of Sidney's nature. His intense ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... two days the partners had haunted the court-room where their lawyer, together with the counsel for the Scandinavians, had argued and pleaded, trying every possible professional and unprofessional artifice in search of relief from the arbitrary rulings of the court, while hourly they had become more strongly suspicious of some sinister plot—some hidden, powerful understanding back of the Judge and the entire mechanism of justice. They had fought with the fury of ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... uneasiness for themselves under an affected concern for me, my good Nanny," she said hurriedly; "and your own affection makes you an easy dupe to the artifice." ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... reached a narrow passage, which showed almost the appearance of having been cut by human strength and artifice in the solid rock. There was a wall of granite on each side, high and precipitous, especially on our right, and so smooth that a few evergreens could hardly find foothold enough to grow there. This is the ...
— The Great Stone Face - And Other Tales Of The White Mountains • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... smiled and evaded, assuring Gard that of all the men she had met that season he alone came up to her ideal, and employed every artifice a woman uses between the ages of nine and ninety, when she does not want to give an answer that answers. The very character of her replies, however, convinced Gard that there was more than a passing interest in her preference. There was something ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... a mystic sleep, in which all its natural powers are silenced, until that which had been temporary becomes its permanent condition. You see that the soul is thus led, without effort, without study, without artifice. ...
— A Short Method Of Prayer And Spiritual Torrents • Jeanne Marie Bouvires de la Mot Guyon
... little above the ordinary height. Possibly from the dignity of her person, assisted by the dignity of her movements, a stranger would have been disposed to call her at a distance a woman of commanding presence; but never after he had approached near enough to behold her face. Every thought of artifice—of practised effect—or of haughty pretension, fled before the childlike innocence—the sweet feminine timidity—and the more than cherub loveliness of that countenance, which yet in its lineaments was noble, whilst its expression ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... 'Why no, Sir. Everybody knows you are paid for affecting warmth for your client; and it is, therefore, properly no dissimulation: the moment you come from the bar you resume your usual behaviour. Sir, a man will no more carry the artifice of the bar into the common intercourse of society, than a man who is paid for tumbling upon his hands will continue to tumble upon his hands when he should walk ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... would understand everything the moment he spoke, but in the exasperation which Croustillac felt, he only saw in this statement a new artifice or a new provocation, and he redoubled his efforts to escape. Though much less strong than the duke, the chevalier was not without energy; he began to struggle violently, when Angela, terrified, ran and took up a flask, and, putting on her handkerchief a drop of the liquid, rubbed ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... Trojans repulsed from the trenches, Hector in a swoon, and Neptune at the head of the Greeks: he is highly incensed at the artifice of Juno, who appeases him by her submissions; she is then sent to Iris and Apollo. Juno, repairing to the assembly of the gods, attempts, with extraordinary address, to incense them against Jupiter; in particular she touches Mars with a violent resentment; ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... undertake to say if he were himself persuaded of the truth of what he relates; certainly such inquiries as I have thought it worth while to set about have not in every instance tended to confirmation of the statements made. Yet his style, for the most part devoid alike of artifice and art, almost baldly simple and direct, seems hardly compatible with the disingenuousness of a merely literary intention; one would call it the manner of one more concerned for the fruits of research than for the flowers of expression. In transcribing his notes and fortifying their claim ...
— Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories • Ambrose Bierce
... is merely a poetic symbol, a beautiful artifice employed by the poets to perpetuate a legend by associating it with the imperishable hieroglyphs of the galaxy. It is not credible that men imagined that group of stars only outlined in such shape by the ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... ghastliest and most pitiful thing of all was an artifice which its maker had introduced for the purpose of conveying some suggestion of the supernatural to that mangled, malformed, less than human representation. Into the place of the wound made by the spear of Longinus, he had introduced a strip of crystal which caught the light at certain angles—more ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... circus or theatre a large army represented by a hundred supernumeraries, who file in close columns before the audience, going out at one side of the stage and coming in at the other, following close at each other's heels indefinitely? By a similar artifice the engineer would change his meagre little runnel into an inexhaustible fountain. The water drawn up from the watercourse by each stroke of the pump would fully compensate for what was used in its passage through the palace by the inhabitants. Lastly, as it might sometimes ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... The artifice used was suggested to Professor Lenard by an experiment of Hertz. The great physicist had, in fact, shortly before his premature death, taken up this important question of the cathode rays, and his genius left ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare
... buildings and a fine park, which he filled with beasts of prey for the pleasure of the ducal family. He also laid out some most beautiful gardens, and since all this country was very dry and arid, he constructed aqueducts with great artifice and ingenuity, and brought water into the place in such abundance that these lands, which had hitherto been sterile and barren, bore fruit in great quantities. And so entirely did he improve ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... example, but expanding with such force and rapidity as to place him in advance of his companion, on an eminence to which no later craftsman was able to climb.... He moderated the fire of Giorgione, whose strength lay in fanciful movement and a mysterious artifice in disposing shadows, contrasted darkly with warm lights, blended, strengthened, blurred, so as to produce the semblance of exuberant life." Certain works remain to link the two painters; even now critics are divided ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... entrance, returned, and listened eagerly. Convinced that a sound of breathing came from midway between the two holes he had examined, he moved towards the spot directly above the nest, tapped it sharply with his beak, and again returned to listen near the entrance. But all his artifice was quite in vain; the voles would not bolt; they were not even inquisitive; so presently, baffled in his hopes of plunder, he moved clumsily away, stooped for an instant, and lifted himself on slow, sable pinions ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... looked surprised at the young man's declaration, which was uttered with a fervour that seemed to leave no doubt of its sincerity; but the latter, fearing some artifice, replied, "If what you say is true, and you really love my daughter as much as you pretend, this is not the way to win her; for though she can have no pretension to wed with one of your seeming degree, nor is it for her happiness that she should, ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... head with the flat of his hand, crooned to him, using every artifice that he knew to quiet the nerves of ...
— The Circus Boys Across The Continent • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... difficulty believed that he meant to deceive anybody. But it is in the nature of the man; he cannot go straightforward; some object, no matter how trivial, presents itself to his busy and distempered mind, and he immediately begins to think by what artifice and what underhand work he can bring it about; and thus he exposes himself to the charges of dishonourable conduct without any adequate consideration or cause. He reminds me of the man in 'Jonathan Wild' who was a rogue by force of habit, who could not keep his hand out ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... greater than his kind, and illustrious by unnatural expedients, must debase others to attain his end. By different means than these there is no nobility, and he who is unwilling to admit an inferiority which exists only in idea can never be humbled by an artifice so shallow. On the subject of mere birth, as it is ordinarily estimated, whether it come from pride, or philosophy, or the habit of commanding as a soldier those who might be deemed my superiors as men, I have ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... residence of an invisible power, by presenting no distinct object of fear or worship, impressed the mind with a still deeper sense of religious horror; [63] and the priests, rude and illiterate as they were, had been taught by experience the use of every artifice that could preserve and fortify impressions so well ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... whose mind is innocent. With this belief impressed upon her heart, do you think, my dear friend, that she who can reflect and reason would take the means to disgust where she wishes to please? or that she would incur contempt, when she knows how to secure esteem?—Do you think that she will employ artifice to entangle some heedless heart, when she knows that every heart which can be so won is not worth the winning?—She will not look upon our sex either as dupes or tyrants; she will be aware of the important difference between evanescent passion, and that affection founded upon mutual ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... silver buttons, well burnished. Therefore, perceiving such an advantage as a skilled player may enjoy, I let him win a little to whet his appetite, but presently used his buttons as a mirror, wherein I readily detected the strength of the cards he held. Before attempting this artifice, I had solemnly turned my chair ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... from him with scorn and disbelief. "My father," exclaimed she, "is too innocent and blameless to be convicted of crime; this is some base, some cruel artifice!" Don Ambrosio repeated his asseverations, and with them also his dishonourable proposals; but his eagerness overshot its mark: her indignation and her incredulity were alike awakened by his base suggestions; and he retired ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... Smollett, accordingly, became distinguished for its high Toryism. The history was published in sixpenny weekly numbers, of which 20,000 copies were sold immediately. This extraordinary popularity was created by the artifice of the publisher. He is stated to have addressed a packet of the specimens of the publication to every parish-clerk in England, carriage-free, with half-a-crown enclosed as a compliment, to have them distributed through the pews of the church: this being generally done, many ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... views of the Nancy school have been questioned by several observers. As Myers justly pointed out, although suggestion is the artifice used to excite the phenomena, it does not create the condition on which they depend. The peculiar state which enables the phenomena to be evoked is the essential thing, not the signal which ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... almost as if it were the sudden effect of the inspiration that is believed to visit a genius now and again. He may have toiled at it unceasingly for months, joying in the labor and finding keen pleasure in every workmanlike artifice he had used to attain his end; and yet he refrains from confessing his many struggles with his rebellious material, wisely preferring to let what he has done speak for itself, simply and without commentary. But the artists know that the pathway to achievement is ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... Jane, and cunning as insolent! To elude my just determination by such an artifice! To counterfeit a strange hand in the direction of thy letter, that I might thereby be ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... line of wagons. If he had only remained in this position he might have succeeded in keeping Noorhachu at bay until he could have been joined by the two remaining Chinese corps; but the impetuosity of his troops, or it may have been the artifice of the Manchu leader, drew him from his intrenchments. At first the Chinese seemed to have the best of the battle, but in a short time victory turned to the side of the Manchus, and Malin fled with the relics of his force back to ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... of the four years Akbar was a young man of eighteen. He resolved to throw off the authority of his guardian. He carried out his designs with the artifice of an Asiatic. He pretended that his mother was sick. He left the camp where Bairam Khan commanded, in order to pay her a visit. He proclaimed that he had assumed the authority of Padishah; that no orders were ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... Pertinax, that thy so great love hath loosed thy tongue at last, Love hath touched thy lips with eloquence beyond all artifice since now, methinks, it is thy very soul doth speak me. And who shall resist such wooing? Surely not I that do—love thee beyond telling. So take me, my lord, thy right hand in mine, the talisman in thy left—so! Now, my Pertinax, speak ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... best, representing young love springing up fiercely, exuberantly, against a lovely background congenial to the human mood. He has not known, however, how to keep up that difficult equilibrium between artifice and simplicity which the idyl demands. His later books tend to be turgid, oppressive, cloying with sentimentalism and amorous obsessions in their graver moments, and in their lighter moments to fall flat from a lack of the true ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... brought to my notice that at a meeting you addressed recently in your constituency you referred to me, and in the course of your remarks you said that I had employed in the House of Commons the "blustering artifice of the rhetorical hireling." May I ask you for your authority for this statement? I can only hope that your reply will avoid any ambiguity, and for your further enlightenment I may inform you that I ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 1, 1914 • Various
... The artifice we tried before, Her stolen treasure to restore, Is practised now on us. But no, I cannot think ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... fleece A blossom, and lay bare her poverty. Poor middle-agd summer! Vain this show! Whole fields of golden-rod cannot offset One meadow with a single violet; And well the singing thrush and lily know, Spite of all artifice which her regret Can deck in splendid ...
— A Calendar of Sonnets • Helen Hunt Jackson
... is the absence of these particulars, combined with the tradition of the father's artifice (omitted perhaps by Dante out of personal favour), and with that of the husband's ferocity of character (the belief in which Boccaccio did not succeed in displacing), that has left the prevailing impression on the minds of posterity, which is this:—that Francesca was beguiled ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... his intercourse with mankind, Pope had great delight in artifice, and endeavoured to attain all his purposes by indirect and unsuspected methods. "He hardly drank tea without a stratagem." ["Nor take her tea without a stratagem." Young's Universal Passion, Sat. vi.] He practised his arts on such small occasions that Lady Bolingbroke ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... ago missed this duplicate key of her desk, and supposed she had dropped it from her watch-ring while out walking; she recollected, further, that Carlos had with great zeal assisted her in the search for it all through the shrubbery walks. The proofs of this boy's artifice and long-premeditated treachery, accumulating upon Lady Davenant, shocked her so much that she could not think of anything else. "Is it possible? is it in human nature?" she exclaimed. "Such falsehood, such art, such ingratitude!" As she fixed her eyes upon the ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... follow his natural inclination, which was to stab the potato baron frequently and fatally with a businesslike dirk which was never absent from his person except when he slept, Pablo had recourse to another artifice of his peculiar calling—to wit, the ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... better, and at the end of a week was entirely well; but still I enjoyed the society of Ellen so much, that whenever the skipper called upon me, I feigned myself too weak to go to my duty, and pleaded that Langley might stay ashore to take care of me. Captain Smith, though not deceived by this artifice, granted us liberty from day to day; and Bill and I were the two happiest fellows in the world. But there is an end to every thing. One day while sitting in the back verandah with Ellen, her father and mother, in rushed the skipper, in ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... They continued to move down the river alone. The first attempt upon them was a customary Indian stratagem. A person, affecting to be a white man, hailed them, and requested them to lie by, that he might come on board. Finding that the boat's crew were not to be allured to the shore by this artifice, the Indians put off from the shore in three canoes, and attacked the boat. Never was a contest of this sort maintained with more desperate bravery. The Indians attempted to board the boat, and the inmates made use of all arms ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... I suspect—mind you, I am merely guessing—but I repeat that I suspect the honesty of Monsieur Jean de Courtois in this matter. There was no earthly reason why he should not have married Lady Hermione some weeks ago, but it is clear that he has used every artifice to delay the ceremony until to-night—and, it may be found when we learn the facts, was prepared to put it off once more till to-morrow or next day. Why? In my opinion, the reason is not far to seek. The Earl of Valletort and Count ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... countenance, that, though she had hair, as has been already described, becoming her, and sufficiently ornamental in itself, yet she occasionally called in the aid of wigs. Brantome's words are: "l'artifice ...
— Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, Complete • Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre
... the same artifice was resorted to at Michilimackinac, and with the most complete success. There was no guardian angel there to warn them of danger, and all fell beneath the rifle, the tomahawk, the war-club, and the knife, one or two of the traders—a Mr. Henry among ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... space. Thereupon she returns to the hive, and waits yet one week more; and then, with her sisters born the same day as herself, she will for the first time set forth to visit the flowers. A special emotion now will lay hold of her; one that French apiarists term the "soleil d'artifice," but which might more rightly perhaps be called the "sun of disquiet." For it is evident that the bees are afraid, that these daughters of the crowd, of secluded darkness, shrink from the vault of blue, from the infinite loneliness of the light; and their joy is halting, and woven of terror. They ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... getting nothing to eat, and he said to his wife at night, "It is owing to my poverty and stupidity that I am treated with such disrespect here; so I will pretend by means of an artifice to possess a knowledge of magic, so that I may become an object of respect to this Sthuladatta; so, when you get an opportunity, tell him that I possess magical knowledge." He said this to her, and after turning the matter over in his mind, while people were ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Collected by Joseph Jacobs
... to extricate it, we must appeal to the revelations of science, to the exercise of deliberate thought. But this employment of analysis against analysis does not in any way constitute a circle, for it tends only to destroy prejudices which have become unconscious: it is a simple artifice destined to break off habits and to scatter illusions by changing the points of view. Once set free, once again become capable of direct and simple view, what we accept as fact is what bears no trace of synthetic elaboration. ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy
... of propitiation and atonement which fear and folly have dictated, or artifice and interest tolerated in the different parts of the world, however they may sometimes reproach or degrade humanity, at least shew the general consent of all ages and nations in their opinion of ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... this poem written at least two hundred and fifty years ago; but it is pretty in spite of its artifice. Some of the conceits are so quaint that they must be explained. By the term "oaten beard," the poet means an ear of oats; and you know that the grain of this plant is furnished with very long hair, so that many poets have spoken of the bearded oats. You may remember in this connection ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... bent his head to look at the pretty speckled moth reposing so still on its green leaf. Did he see through the artifice? Did he suspect that the young lady had been admiring her own pretty face, and not the moth? Not he. Lionel's whole heart had long ago been given to that vain butterfly, Sibylla West, who was gay and fluttering, and really of little more use in life than the ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... Logicians carry the surveyor's chain over the track of which these are the true explorers. I value a man mainly for his primary relations with truth, as I understand truth,—not for any secondary artifice in handling his ideas. Some of the sharpest men in argument are notoriously unsound in judgment. I should not trust the counsel of a smart debater, any more than that of a good chess-player. Either may of course advise wisely, but not necessarily ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... you to see that she does. Use any messenger, any artifice, but get her away from this hall for ten minutes, even if it is only into Mrs. Deo's room. When she returns I shall be on my knees before this keyhole to watch her and observe. To see what, I do not mean to tell you, but it will be something which will definitely settle ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... disregarded his pardon and his reiterated commands.[868] "The colony would be as peaceful as could be wished," wrote William Sherwood in August, 1678, "except for the malice of some discontented persons of the late Governor's party, who endeavour by all ye cunning contrivances that by their artifice can be brought about, to bring a Contempt of Colonel Jeffreys, our present good Governor.... Those persons who are the troublers of the peace ... are ... Lady Berkeley, Colonel Philip Ludwell, Colonel Thomas ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... nearly pure Navajo Indian blood, as one could tell by the queer crinkled character of his beard and moustache, which were like those of a chinaman. He was simple and direct like an Indian, too, lacking the Mexican talent for lying and artifice. In his own town he was a petty czar, like Alfego, but on a much smaller scale. By reason of being Hermano Mayor of the local penitente chapter, and of having most of the people in his own neighbourhood in debt to him, he had considerable ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... no less than two months for William's return, and indeed I began to be very uneasy about William, sometimes thinking he had abandoned me, and that he might have used the same artifice to have engaged the other men to comply with him, and so they were gone away together; and it was but three days before his return that I was just upon the point of resolving to go away to Madagascar, and ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... quite as bad as any thing I see here, only in a different style, and certainly more adapted to England and English taste. I must confess, that in these enchanting gardens of the Villa Pamfili, a little less "ingenuity and artifice" would be better. I hate mere tricks and gimcrackery, of which there are a few instances, such as their hydraulic music, jets-d'eau—water-works that play occasionally to the astonishment of children and the profit of the gardeners—but how different, after all, are these Italia gardens ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... never, they are stiff without dignity, and cringing without manners. They offer you an affront, and call it "plain truth;" they wound your feelings, and tell you it is manly "to speak their minds;" at the same time, while they have neglected all the graces and charities of artifice, they have adopted all its falsehood and deceit. While they profess to abhor servility, they adulate the peerage—while they tell you they care not a rush for the minister, they move heaven and ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... operations with mute delight; and, after a space, Captain Templar challenged him to a bumper, which was taken and swallowed without much squeamishness. The doctor found that he had still a difficult task to play; he knew that his artifice was discovered, and that the best way to repair the error was to boldly throw off the transparent disguise. The presence of the two stranger captains was still a restraint upon him. At length he cast his eyes upon Captain Reud, and putting into ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... first few publications revealed an intellectual rather than an emotional passion. Those volumes were full of the artifice of the period, but Symons's technical skill and frequent analysis often saved the poems from complete decadence. His later books are less imitative; the influence of Verlaine and Baudelaire is not so apparent; the sophistication is less cynical, the sensuousness more restrained. His various ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... do not come to mass. If others ask them why, they answer that the father [119] is angry at them. In them is verified the picture given by the Holy Spirit in chapter xxix, verse[s] 4[-9] of Ecclesiasticus. "Many" (he says) "have thought by artifice to satisfy the thing due, and have given trouble to those who have aided them. So long as they receive, they kiss the hands of him who gives, and humble themselves with promises. But when it comes ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... could be long enough to give me a fair test of that," he smiled, and then he added in a serious voice, "It is in the cities that men and women grow tired. It is under artifice that the soul wearies. That life I knew, and left with the bitterness of exile—but that was long ago. When I go into it now, it shall be only for the joy of coming back here ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... a constant admiration, and with a great and lenient love for their author—is not anxious to know what he did with his guineas, or whether the milkman was ever paid. "He had raised money and squandered it, by every artifice of acquisition and folly of expense. BUT LET NOT HIS FRAILTIES BE REMEMBERED: HE WAS A VERY GREAT MAN." This is Johnson's wise summing up; and with it we may here take leave of ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... powerless to hold him back! powerless to keep him beside her, when that mad fit of passion seized him to go on one of those wild quests, wherefrom she always feared he could not return alive: and this, although she might use every noble artifice, every tender wile of which a loving ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... to excel in maritime enterprise, but it was otherwise during the Plantagenet period. Henry the Second possessed a most formidable fleet, numbering some five hundred vessels of war. During the reign of his successor a novel artifice in naval warfare was resorted to by the English which merits notice. The English admiral caused a number of barrels of unslaked lime to be placed in his ships. Having brought his fleet to windward of the enemy—the French—he ordered water ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... and irrevocable decay. The theologic school has generally no other method of explaining this decomposition of the old system than by causes merely accidental or personal, out of all reasonable proportion with the magnitude of the results; or else, when hard driven, it has recourse to its ordinary artifice, and attempts to explain all by an appeal to the will of Providence, to whom is ascribed the intention of raising a time of trial for the social order, of which the commencement, the duration, and the character, are all left ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... been with her again: she seemed a little calmer; I commended her spirit; she disavowed it; was peevish with me, angry with herself; said she had acted in a manner unworthy her character; accused herself of caprice, artifice, and cruelty; said she ought to have seen him, if not alone, yet with me only: that it was natural he should be surprized at a reception so inconsistent with true friendship, and therefore that he should wish an explanation; that her Rivers ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... and even bluntly. Mr. Herndon is naturally a very direct writer, and he has been industrious in gathering material. Whether an incident happened before or behind the scenes, is all the same to him. He gives it without artifice or apology. He describes the life of his friend Lincoln just as ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright
... past the hour of the next day's noon before the preacher recovered from the effects of potations so unusual to him. It was then that Dalton questioned him, and discovered the artifice and cruelty of the treacherous Burrell, in abandoning the poor preacher to starvation: a consequence that must have occurred, had not the Skipper providentially stood in need of some articles of bedding, that were kept in this chamber, as matters ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... information which enabled them to deal their blows or parry those of the enemy, trying to come up with the Prussian cavalry which fled before us. But this trench warfare, this warfare in which one stays for days and days in the same position, in which ground is gained yard by yard, in which artifice tries to outdo artifice, in which each side clings to the ground it has won, digs into it, buries itself in it, and dies in it sooner than give it up! What warfare for cavalry! We have devoted ourselves ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... unusually clever; but she was also finely inexperienced, malleable, open to influence as yet. Let Henrietta then see to it, and that without delay or hesitation, bringing to bear every ingenious social art, and—if necessary—artifice, in which long practice had ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... sanitary, military, and legal. This treatise was primarily written for a friend who owned and cultivated farms in Campania. It consists of a series of terse and pointed directions following one on another, with no attempt at style or literary artifice, but full of a hard sagacity, and with occasional flashes of dry humour, which suggest that Cato would have found a not wholly uncongenial spirit in President Lincoln. A brief extract from one of the earlier chapters is not without interest, both as showing the practical Latin style, and as giving ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail |
