"Cunning" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I will not hear! I hate you. I see through your cunning wiles. You wish to chain me to a living death. Cease staring at me! Ah, your eyes torment me,— They pierce like daggers through my very soul! Ah, yes, the dagger! Die! ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... had any important effect in hastening final results. I have thought it not amiss, however, to call attention to the fact that a century ago the people of this country were not seeking to gain governmental benefit by clandestine approach and cunning pretense, but were apt to plainly present their wants and grievances, and to openly demand such consideration and care from the General Government as was their due under the mandate of popular rule, and that in making their demands ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... considering and reflecting on these matters, there comes an Arab chieftain, Ariamnes[67] by name, a cunning and faithless man, and of all the misfortunes that were by chance combined to ruin the Romans the chief and crowning mischief. Some of them who had served with Pompeius knew him as one who had received ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... had become wide-spread in England. Reginald Scot a little later declared that every parish was full of men and women who claimed to work miracles.[29] Most of them were women, and their performances read like those of the gipsy fortune-tellers today. "Cunning women" they called themselves. They were many of them semi-medical or pseudo-medical practitioners[30] who used herbs and extracts, and, when those failed, charms and enchantments, to heal the sick. If they were fairly fortunate, they became known as "good witches." Particularly in connection with ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... know wickedness, lest when wickedness seeks a man out in his riper years he shall be fooled and conquered by the beauteous garb in which the Devil has the cunning to ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... speaks in these Terms, "—Quanquam illa Regio, &c. When thy noble Expeditions, O Caesar, have proceeded so far, as to clear and conquer that Country, which the Rhine runs through, with his cunning Maeanders or Windings, [Meatibus callidis, for so it must be read, and not Scaldis, as in some Copies,] and embraces in his Arms a Region, which I can scarce call Land; 'tis so soak'd with Water, that not only the Marshy part of it gives way, but even that which seems more firm, shakes when ...
— Franco-Gallia • Francis Hotoman
... that assembled under one roof these nun-like creatures, wasted and worn with their rigid lives, and the heavy, brutish men, who shambled round the room like plough-horses. Wicked eyes some of them had, mere slits through which a cunning and selfish spirit looked out. Some faces there were of power, but in them the disagreeable traits were even more strongly marked: the ignorant, narrow foreheads were better, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... the matchless tales of All-Father Odin, who crosses the Rainbow Bridge to walk among men in Midgard and sacrifices his right eye to drink from the Well of Wisdom; of Thor, whose mighty hammer defends Asgard; of Loki, whose mischievous cunning leads him to treachery against the gods; of giants, dragons, dwarfs and Valkyries; and of the terrible last ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum
... the Irishman felt a genuine impulse of anger. His whole face assumed a cunning, savage expression which would have very much astonished those that only knew the good and loyal Jenkins; but he took good care not to push further an explanation which he feared perhaps as much as he ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... cunning palates hither come, They shall find guests' entreaty, and good room; And though all relish not, sure there ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... with her apron still to her eyes, was gliding to the door, but her mother looked, with a coarse sort of cunning in her eye, steadily at the poor young lady, in some sort her victim, and added ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... the bench of magistrates, nay, even the county member returned to Parliament without a dis-sentient voice! His fancy runs riot, and there is no limit to the bright future which the skilful hand of the cunning knight of the hammer unfolds ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... Nor did the cunning harmony end here. In form as well as tint he cheated observation. His outline, as he lay at rest, formed the most perfect ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... ordare, By often brushing and much diligence; Full goodly bound in pleasaunt coverture, Of damas, satten, or else of velvet pure: I keepe them sure, fearing least they should be lost, For in them is the cunning ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... These cunning plans were, however, nearly being crossed by a very simple incident. Annoyed at finding that her feelings could be consulted only by sacrificing those of another woman, Miss Dacre, quite confident that, as Lady Aphrodite was innocent in the present instance, she must be immaculate, ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... embroideries. The daily struggle for bare existence, the ever-shadowing menace of unemployment, of illness, leaving them helpless amid the grinding forces crushing them down on every side. The ceaseless need for courage, for cunning. For in the kingdom of the poor the tyrant and the oppressor still sit in the high places, the ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... irresistible charm, of her audacity, her cunning, her genius for diplomacy and statecraft, far exceeding Elizabeth's—when we read of all this and think of the blood of the Guises in her veins, and the precepts of Catharine de Medici in her heart, we realize what her usurpation ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... with vehemence. "It may hang somewhere, in after years, in goodly company, and keep the artist's memory warm. Think of being known to mankind after some such fashion as this! of hanging here through the slow centuries in the gaze of an altered world; living on and on in the cunning of an eye and hand that are part of the dust of ages, a delight and a law to remote generations; making beauty a force and ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... in his house but the word "mafinge," and not until he went to school did he correct the word "bewhind," for in the nursery he learned the line "wagging their tails bewhind them." Baby talk is very cunning, and often the adult members of the family pick it up and keep it up for years, and only when they are exposed in public, as one mother was on a suburban platform by her four-year-old lad shouting, "Mamma, too-too tain tumin, too-too tain tumin," do they sense their responsibility and realize ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... shop among others a red-faced woman with a cunning look in her eyes. She sidled out of the place and was waiting for Elizabeth ...
— Little Saint Elizabeth and Other Stories • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... soon this silly little fly, Hearing his wily, flattering words, came slowly flitting by. With buzzing wings she hung aloft, then near and nearer drew, Thinking only of her brilliant eyes, her green and purple hue,— Thinking only of her crested head—poor foolish thing! At last, Up jumped the cunning spider, and fiercely held her fast! He dragged her up his winding stair, into his dismal den, Within his little parlor,—but she ...
— The Little Mother Goose • Anonymous
... were pressed with that strange blend of industry, stupidity, mendacity and cunning which characterize the Prussian and all his acts. Under our noses a German solidarity was attempted here, and in part achieved. Organizations having Prussian ends in view were numerous, large, popular and unsuspected. ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... and place, and one that dresseth indecently. A person, however distressed, should never solicit a miser for alms, or one that speaketh ill of others, or one that is unacquainted with the shastras, or a dweller in the woods, or one that is cunning, or one that doth not regard persons worthy of regard, or one that is cruel, or one that habitually quarrels with others, or one that is ungrateful. A person should never wait upon these six worst of men, viz., one that is a foe, one that always ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... popularity, who think to please the abolitionists by their zeal for emancipation, and the slaveholders by the flattering hope of ridding them of the free colored people at the public expense; lastly, some cunning slaveholders, who see that the plan may be carried far enough to produce the effect of raising the market price of their slaves. But, of all its other difficulties, the most objectionable is that it obviously includes the engrafting a colonial establishment upon the ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... the cowardice of the majority, and in the willing acquiescence and co-operation of Danton and the other members of the party of violence. The commissioners seized on a room in the Hotel by the side of the regular council-room, and their first measures were marked with a cunning and unscrupulousness which largely contributed to the success of their more active comrades in the streets. Even Petion himself was not wicked enough or resolute enough for them. The authority which Mandat had wrung from him on the previous morning ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... cunning little dears are nodding their heads and teetering their tails! Yes, that proves that they must be sandpipers, even if we did have doubts of those eggs. Ah! Dot knew what she was about all along. The size of her eggs might fool ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... me there to kill me, he said. The cunning old fox told me that I would find Helen in the Mortel hut, and offered to take me to her by a short cut over Corvatsch. And I believed him! I was mad, I suppose. We did the Marmore ascent by the light of the stars. Do you realize what that means? ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... gave little hint of remorse; and the gloating delight with which he added something about the devil having assisted him to make it a safe blow as well as a deadly one, was proof not only of his having used all his cunning in planning this crime, but of his pleasure in ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men, will be enabled to subvert the power of the people, and to usurp for themselves the reins of government; destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... surprise one's friend with an unexpected favour, "which, ten to one," says he, "fails to oblige your acquaintance, who had some reasons against such a mode of obligation, which you might have known but for that superfluous cunning which you think an elegance. Oh! never be seduced by such silly pretences," continued he; "if a wench wants a good gown, do not give her a fine smelling-bottle, because that is more delicate: as I once knew a lady lend ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... had been aroused by English gold, had searched the forest far and near for the regicides. Their knowledge of the forest and cunning in following a trail had two or three times brought them face to face with Cromwell's stern old battle-trained warriors. Then they had learned to their cost that they had roused a pair of lions in their lairs; but the regicides finally disappeared. ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... of respect for age. The former vice may be ascribed to the business 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 policy of ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... must pause, to point out to you the short-sightedness of human contrivance. This ingenious young man, Mr. David Faux, thought he had achieved a triumph of cunning when he had associated himself in his brother's rudimentary mind with the flavour of yellow lozenges. But he had yet to learn that it is a dreadful thing to make an idiot fond of you, when you yourself are not of an affectionate disposition: ...
— Brother Jacob • George Eliot
... rest amaz'd stood still, Expecting which should take or kill. This HUDIBRAS observ'd; and fretting Conquest should be so long a getting, He drew up all his force into 820 One body, and that into one blow. But TALGOL wisely avoided it By cunning sleight; for had it hit, The upper part of him the blow Had slit as sure as ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... existence. I have remarked that at first it is of a yellowish color; in the prime of life it is blackest, and when he has numbered many years, but still is in the full enjoyment of his power, it assumes a yellowish-gray, pepper-and-salt sort of color. These old fellows are cunning and dangerous, and most to be dreaded. The females are utterly destitute of a mane, being covered with a short, thick, glossy coat of tawny hair. The manes and coats of lions frequenting open-lying districts utterly destitute of trees, such as the borders ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... a note of animosity, if not of hatred. Mildred did not like meeting this woman, something told her that it would be wiser not, but she wanted to see Ralph, and an expression of vindictiveness came into her cunning eyes. 'If she dares to try to oppose me, she'll soon find out her mistake. I'll very soon settle her, a common woman like that. Moreover she has been his mistress, I have not, she will quail before me, I shall have no difficulty in ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... trudged along the canal bank; bridge after bridge I tried, but it was no use, for each one in the centre for about ten or twelve feet was destroyed—and, stretched between the gap, I found a length of wire netting covered over with straw—a cunning trap set for the first one across. Not a bridge was passable—they were ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... "Wise?—cunning, you would say," replied Richard; "elegant in a lady's chamber, if you will. Oh, ay, Conrade of Montserrat—who knows not the popinjay? Politic and versatile, he will change you his purposes as often as the trimmings of his doublet, and you shall ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... to sober her—or perhaps her passion had run its course. She turned to him, and her lips parted with a smile, a cunning and—if my opinion be asked—loathsome smile; and she caressed the lapel of his coat with her hand. And the duke, who was smoking, smoked on, so that the smoke blew in her face, and she coughed and choked: whereat the duke also ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope
... before. Still, something had alarmed it. Faintly there came to this wilderness outlaw that most thrilling of all things to the denizens of the forest—the scent of man. He came down the ridge with the slow indifference of a full-fed animal, and with only a half of his old cunning; trotted across the softening snow of an opening and stopped where the man-scent was so strong that he lifted his head straight up to the sky and sent out to his comrades in forest and plain the warning signal that he had ...
— The Gold Hunters - A Story of Life and Adventure in the Hudson Bay Wilds • James Oliver Curwood
... feature,—you would have said, "How very distinguished it is to be so plain!" Knowing the great world from the core to the cuticle, and on that knowledge basing authority and position, Colonel Morley was not calculating, not cunning, not suspicious,—his sagacity the more quick because its movements were straightforward; intimate with the greatest, but sought, not seeking; not a flatterer nor a parasite, but when his advice was asked (even if advice ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of nature, but certainly not with greater simplicity and earnestness. In the Saracen Friends there is just Ariosto's balance of passion and levity; and in the story which I have entitled Seeing and Believing, his exhibition of triumphant cunning. During the lives of Pulci and Boiardo, the fierce passions and severe ethics of Dante had been gradually giving way to a gentler and laxer state of opinion before the progress of luxury; and though Boiardo's enamoured Paladin retains a kind of virtue not ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... possessed of a sufficient share of low cunning to enable him, finally, to hit upon a plan by which he hoped this catastrophe might be averted. There upon he proceeded to unfold to the astonished partner of his joys and sorrows, that he was glad Miss Graystone had left the house, for he considered her a dangerous person to enter any family ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... vapors from damp humus, moisture from lush leaves and I know not what other pure though common elements into the precious glow that began to haze the west soon after noon. The old belief that the alchemist at his utmost cunning could recreate rose blooms from their own ashes had sure foundation. I have seen the sun do it every June in countless gardens where, out of this same humus and soft rains, his potency works the transmutation as if in a night. So on July days this father of transmuters ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... himself thus inveigled by the cunning of Abbot Bilson, Lord Marnell was beside himself with passion. He burst into a torrent of the most fearful language. Abbot Bilson stood calmly by, as if quite accustomed ...
— Mistress Margery • Emily Sarah Holt
... accompanied their departure. But when the Japanese saw that he was going out of this port and that their design was known, they had recourse to arms, trying to do by force what they had not been able to do by cunning. But our men defended themselves so well, inflicting some loss on those of that kingdom, that they returned to these islands, which was a very fortunate outcome. Those who were left there, not being able to embark with their commander, have all returned ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson
... religioun Amonges us, would infect* all a town, *deceive Though it as great were as was Nineveh, Rome, Alisandre,* Troy, or other three. *Alexandria His sleightes* and his infinite falseness *cunning tricks There coulde no man writen, as I guess, Though that he mighte live a thousand year; In all this world of falseness n'is* his peer. *there is not For in his termes he will him so wind, And speak his wordes in so sly a kind, When he commune shall with any wight, That ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... knowledge; and having been assured, in answer to their first question, that we were not French, they immediately added, "Then you must be English." They did not appear, however, to be without some degree of cunning, for as long as we paused in replying to their query, they were silent; but no sooner had we answered in the negative than they launched forth into the most violent invectives against the French; convincing us that the animosity of the mother-country towards its ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... going down to Dunraven, to the Children's Home," and then she began on the story of Phronsie's company of children, and how they lived, and who they were, with many little side stories of this small creature, who was "too cunning for anything," and that funny little boy, till the old gentleman sat helplessly listening in abject silence. And the latch was lifted, and young Mr. Loughead put his head in the doorway, looking as if he had finished ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... antique would have proven inestimable. As for the emerald itself, in its original state, before cutting, it must have been worth the ransom of an emperor; much had certainly been sacrificed to fashion it in its present form. The cunning of a jewel-cutter whose art was lost before Tyre and Nineveh upreared their heads must have been taxed by the task. Its innumerable facets reproduced with wonderful fidelity a human eyeball, unwinking, sleepless. In the enigmatic ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... this is the most intensely human. Not a fish, or reptile, bird, or beast; not a thing crawling, swimming, flying, or walking, but the human creature, humbugs himself. 'Man was made to mourn,' I would change into, Man was made to be humbugged. It is better to be greatly gullible, than a 'cunning dog,' for gulled we will be. It is better to be caught at once, than to have our gills torn by wriggling off the hook the twenty times, to be caught at last. It is better to walk straight into the net than to fatigue ourselves by coming to it in a roundabout way. A Nova-Scotian ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... "Ha-ha! the cunning northern birds knew this was coming," said Marian. "Depend upon't, they keep just in front o't all the way from the North Star. Your husband, my dear, is, I make no doubt, having scorching weather all this time. Lord, if he could only see his pretty wife now! Not that this weather ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... "it is the very sense and cunning of this fellow which has so long maintained his reign—a mere Highland robber would have been put down in as many weeks as he has flourished years. His gang, without him, is no more to be dreaded as a permanent annoyance—it will no longer ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... appearance of stupid apathy they veil a great depth of cunning. They are grave and gentle and rather sad in their appearance, when not under the influence of pulque; but when they return to their villages in the evening, and have taken a drop of comfort, their white teeth light up their bronze countenances like lamps, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... do his best. But all people don't think same as we do, and whenever we hear of a castle being attacked and defended, there were always people outside trying to make traitors of those who were in, and temptation's a nasty, cunning, 'sinuating sort of a thing. But you're castellan, and you ought to do as ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... Pontiac, Nott,' sez he. 'You bet!' sez I. 'What'll you take for her and the lot she stands on?' sez he, short and sharp. Some fellers, Rosey," said Nott, with a cunning smile, "would hev blurted out a big figger and been cotched. That ain't my style. I just looked at him. 'I'll wait fur your figgers until next steamer day,' sez he, and off he goes like a ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... cunning she's getting!" laughed Raymond. But he did not laugh long. Estelle handed him his coffee and lit a match for his cigar; while Arthur, guessing what was coming, resigned himself helplessly ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... story of the house was occupied by a bar and oyster saloon; the pungent testaceous odors, mounting from those lower regions, gave the offended nostrils no respite or rest; in a few minutes, a robust appetite, albeit watered by cunning bitters, would wither, like a flower in the fume of sulphur. Half-a-dozen before dinner, have always satiated my own desire for these mollusks; before many days were over, I utterly abominated the name of the species; familiarity only made the nuisance more intolerable, ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... not willingly have allowed another to attend him and watch over him; but he didn't believe that he should see any Christmas Eve garden. He thought the whole thing a snare which Robber Mother had, with great cunning, laid for Abbot Hans, that he might fall into her ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... which they knew must contain treasure of some sort, and it was because of this state of mind, most likely, that Cardatas lost his temper and got himself shot, and so opened the fight. Cardatas was a cunning fellow, and, if he had not been upset by the sight of those bags, Garta believed that he would have regularly besieged Captain Horn's party, and must have overcome them in the end. He was anxious to have the captain believe that, when he had said there were only two men on board, ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... to what this unusual movement could mean; but when we got into the boat they, all of them, set to work and howled in wild despair; thinking, probably, that they would never see us again. Some of them swam after us, while two cunning ones, "Pan" and "Kvik," conceived the brilliant idea of galloping round the pool to the opposite side to meet us. A few days afterwards I was dismayed to find the pool dried up; a hole had been worn through the ice at the bottom, and all the fresh water had drained out into the sea. So ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... plainly and frankly, I think William, my lord, hath a keen desire to welcome in person a chief so illustrious as Harold, and I guess that he keeps the hostages to make thee come to claim them." The knight, as he spoke, smiled gaily; but the cunning of the Norman gleamed in the quick glance of his ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... cause of the slave, and of playing into the hands of the Whigs. All the editor had ever said about that pro-slavery ex-President was cast into its teeth by Democratic, Liberty Party and Garrisonian papers, which, one and all, held that Van Buren was a cunning old fox, as pro-slavery as in those days when, as President of the U.S. Senate, he gave his casting vote for the bill which authorized every Southern post-master to open all the mail which came to his office, search for and ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... they were," answered Paul—"my rat Socrates and Mrs. Socrates and a whole lot of little Soc rats. I meant to tell you, Derrick; he brought them out this morning, his wife and a family of such cunning little fellows." ...
— Derrick Sterling - A Story of the Mines • Kirk Munroe
... the guise of tapestried chronicles, ancient as those of Bayeux, describing deeds of gallant chivalry—so my fancy pictured—and love, and knight-errantry, painted over with oriental arabesques in crimson gilding, the cunning handiwork of the potent sun-god. Her coming in effected ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... of his uncle, for instance, or Monsieur des Barres. He did not believe that the Paris authorities knew anything of it, yet; but he did believe that Simon knew what he was doing; that Real, the well-known head of the police in the western arrondissement, trained under Fouche in suspicion, cunning and mercilessness, would make unscrupulous use of any means of knowing the present state of Royalist opinion in Anjou. He would be all the more severe, probably, because the mildness of the Prefect of the Loir had more than once irritated him. So Angelot thought he ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... Isaac, a wanderer like the first fugitive, with his brother's curse upon him. Until this hour all Jacob's views and feelings seem earthly and grovelling. Until now, there has been no indication of that trust and piety which afterwards marked his life. He had seemed worldly, cunning, ready to snatch any personal advantage. From this period he seems to awaken to a higher—a spiritual life. He seems to have comprehended the deeper meaning of promise and prophecy. We cannot tell what remorseful and despairing thoughts filled his soul as he left his home—how strange and ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous
... the blade buried in the wall. This Woolfolk successfully blocked. In the supreme effort to bring the struggle to a decisive end neither dealt the other minor injuries. There were no blows—nothing but the straining pull of arms, the sudden weight of bodies, the cunning twisting of legs. They fought swiftly, whirling and staggering from place ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... opinions were the same in regard to this man; therefore, he smiled at the rascal's knavery. Chico Velasques was followed in his chieftainship by Blanco, who did his utmost to walk in the footsteps of his illustrious predecessor; but, he was not so cunning, and was less successful in his encounters with the Americans and Mexicans, and therefore had not that influence with his tribe which the former possessed. Still, he performed his quantum of mischief, and yet lives to play his part in ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... They said that Perry Blair had just been lucky, that was all; lucky in being selected as the one least calculated to damage Fanchette after a whole year in which the latter had steadfastly refused to fight. Lucky in having that fox, Devereau, for a manager, cunning enough to decoy Fanchette ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... old savage really have hurt him had he not found out who he was? The little girl was a wonder: evidently she had muffled his last name on purpose—not knowing it herself—and it was a quick and cunning ruse. He owed her something for that—why did she try to protect him? Wonderful eyes, too, the little thing had—deep and dark—and how the flame did dart from them when she got angry! He smiled, remembering—he ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... it was Snarley Bob who had made him so. Now Snarley was a cunning breeder of sheep. For three-and-forty years he had applied his intuitions and his patience to the task of producing rams and ewes such as the world had never seen. His system of "observation and experiment" was peculiarly his own; it is written down in no ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... looked tired. The realization that all his cunning, all his work, had been for nothing, tormented him. He had set his trap and baited it, and it had worked perfectly—save that the teeth of the trap had closed over thin air. At the denouement of the sheriff's story there should have been the barking ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... the officer, "we know that there is a gang of men who infest the coast. For a long time we have tried to lay hands on them in vain. They are very cunning, and, although we have suspicions, we as yet have not been able to bring any positive evidence against them, and we believe that he is ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... haven't that style of face; they are thin, sharp, and cunning in feature as in nature. Hoffman has large, well-moulded features, and a mild, manly expression, which ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... shorthorned Hereford hidden in the innermost recesses of that tick and sand-fly infested ti-tree that knew not the cunning of a stockman's hand." ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... on the part of the Sabines, and this was by far the most formidable: for nothing was done under the influence of anger or covetousness, nor did they give indications of hostilities before they had actually begun them. Cunning also was combined with prudence. Spurius Tarpeius was in command of the Roman citadel: his maiden daughter, who at the time had gone by chance outside the walls to fetch water for sacrifice, was bribed by Tatius, to admit ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... he was superior. The men recognized it, not sullenly nor defiantly, but with the unquestioning attitude of the New Jerseyman when he is really below the scale in birth and education. Still their faces all expressed malicious cunning and cruel curiosity, which they hesitated to put into words. They knew that Elliot was to marry Gordon's niece; they were overawed by both men, but they were afraid ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... steel or shot 'gainst that charmed life secure, Till cunning France, in last resource, tossed up the golden lure; And the carrion buzzards round him stooped, faithless, to the cast, And the wild hawk of the desert is caught ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... were very wary, cunning animals, keen of scent and sharp of eye. Invariably, when one first sighted them, they would be one or two miles away, going like the wind, their tails and manes flying behind them; and be it noted that when walking or standing these manes as well as ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... virtues gave vigor to her genius, and dignity to her mind; she was sometimes inconsiderate, and violent; but never mean or cunning. ...
— Mary - A Fiction • Mary Wollstonecraft
... whatever she pleased. She persuaded him to confer honors and rewards in a very liberal manner upon those whom she favored, and to degrade, and sometimes even to destroy, those who displeased her. She would occasionally resort to very cunning artifices to accomplish her ends. For example, she conceived at one time a violent hatred against the husband of her mother. His name was Silanus. He was not the father of Messalina, but a second husband of ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... the process by which this result is achieved be justified. For evolution works through a universal struggle for existence, in which the life and well-being of some can be secured only through the suffering and final extinction of others; and even in its higher stages, cunning and unscrupulous strength frequently overcomes humane wisdom fettered by weakness. "Nature, red in tooth and claw, with ravin shrieks against the creed" of the Theist. If God is working through ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote
... the giants come, fathered of bestial humans and mothered of monsters. And many and diverse were the creatures which had some human semblance; and intelligence, mechanical and cunning; so that certain of these lesser Brutes had machinery and underground ways, having need to secure to themselves warmth and air, even as healthy humans; only that they were incredibly inured to hardship, as they might ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... After breakfast I'm going to show you my chickens and my calf. Did you know, I've a whole calf all to myself?—a black-and-whitey one. There are some cunning pigs, too. Maybe you'd like to see them. And then I 'spect you'll want to go out to the hay-field, ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... Cunning, as the Italian peasant is by nature, Masin made a sign to his master that the man, if he were really below, could hear all ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... of the Nation. We fight for what that word means of hope and confidence and freedom and advancement to the groaning and bewildered world. We say, let all else perish,—wealth, commerce, agriculture, cunning manufacture, humanizing art. We expend all to save the Nation. That priceless possession we shall hold intact to the end, for ourselves, our ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... hesitated. "Say you will give them each a bunch of plantains if they will ferry you over," again whispered the cunning Arab. ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... is struck in this chorus of praise. This fierce invective stands upon an altar at Rome:[31] "Here for all time has been set down in writing the shameful record of the freedwoman Acte, of poisoned mind, and treacherous, cunning, and hard-hearted. Oh! for a nail, and a hempen rope to choke her, and flaming pitch to burn up ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... northward of the line, from which islands came in a great number of canoas, having in some of them four, in some six, and in some also fourteen men, bringing with them cocos and other fruits. Their canoas were hollow within and cut with great art and cunning, being very smooth within and without, and bearing a gloss as if it were a horn daintily burnished, having a prow and a stern of one sort, yielding inward circle-wise, being of a great height, and full of certain white shells for a bravery; and on each side of them ...
— Sir Francis Drake's Famous Voyage Round the World • Francis Pretty
... one half of the apartment. He then proceeded to the alcove, and drew forth from it his violin. The strings were thrummed to make sure of their accord, the heel was set in the hollow of the shoulder, and the bow executed a rapid prelude. The old man smiled as if satisfied with the cunning of his hand, and well he might, for these simple touches revealed ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... in teaching men to die, should after teach them to live. Dicearcus made one of that title, but of another and lesse profitable end. Some man will say to mee, the effect exceeds the thought so farre, that there is no fence so sure, or cunning so certaine, but a man shall either lose or forget if he come once to that point; let them say what they list: to premeditate on it, giveth no doubt a great advantage: and it is nothing, at the least, to goe so farre without dismay or alteration, or ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... ingenious and cunning, and fond of roving adventure. In running away from home, he embarked on board a ship, as such characters generally do at the present day, and went to sea. After meeting with various adventures, he established himself ...
— Darius the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... clear-sighted, and able investigator of the Baconian remains. It was buried in the lowest depths of the lowest deeps of the deep Elizabethan Art; that Art which no plummet, till now, has ever sounded. It was locked with its utmost reach of traditionary cunning. It was buried in the inmost recesses of the esoteric Elizabethan learning. It was tied with a knot that had passed the scrutiny and baffled the sword of an old, suspicious, dying, military government—a knot that none could cut—a knot ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... to rescue its people from the degrading Dollar-craze. But now, well!—those who make fortunes there leave it as soon as they can, shaking its dust off their feet and striving to forget that they ever experienced its incalculable greed, vice, cunning, and general rascality. There are plenty of decent folk in America, of course, just as there are decent folk everywhere, but they are in the minority. Even in the Southern States the 'old stock' of men is decaying and dying-out, and the taint of commercial vulgarity is creeping ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... too well all the folds and refolds of his Porthos, not to find a secret if there were one there; like those regular, minute old bachelors, who know how to find, with their eyes shut, each book on the shelves of their library and each piece of linen in their wardrobe. So if he had found nothing, our cunning D'Artagnan, in rolling and unrolling his Porthos, it was because, in truth, there was nothing ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... label said it was bound for Barnes—stood aghast, and their questions died on their lips. Policemen put up their hands against it,—it ran over them. It even learned the trick of avoiding the nimble business man by a cunning little skid just as he thought he had caught it. You will hardly believe me, but that 'bus ran seven times round Trafalgar Square, until the lions' tails twisted for giddiness, and Nelson reeled where he stood. I don't know where ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... play, To watch her make her toilet. She would stand, And turn her head first this, and then that way, Trying effect of ribbon, bow or band. Then she would pick up something else, and curve Her lovely neck, with cunning, bird-like grace, And watch the mirror while she put it on, With such a sweetly grave and thoughtful face; And then to view it all would sway and swerve Her lithe young body, ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... blocks too subtle for you. In short, the entire ship is a riddle. Why, you green ones wouldn't know if she were unseaworthy; but still, with thumbs stuck back into your arm-holes, pace the rotten planks, singing, like a fool, words put into your green mouth by the cunning owner, the man who, heavily insuring it, sends his ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... enemies, besides man. The Killer Whale is one of the fiercest, swiftest terrors of the sea. It is tiny, compared with the Greenland Whale, but much quicker and more cunning. Several Killers band together and spring to the attack at the same time, Like wild cats, they dash at the poor helpless Whale, and tear its sides with ...
— Within the Deep - Cassell's "Eyes And No Eyes" Series, Book VIII. • R. Cadwallader Smith
... red leather, and really he looked so handsome in it, that we thought he ought to like to wear it when he went out for a walk; but he didn't one bit. He used to rub his head on the sidewalk, and fuss and squirm, and, when he didn't get rid of his bonnet in that way, the cunning fellow used to hide it when ...
— The Nursery, Number 164 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... were last at the "kids," when their unfortunate partners were high upon the spars; chummies, who affected awkwardness at the needle, and conscientious scruples about dabbling in the suds; so that chummy the simple was made to do all the work of the firm, while chummy the cunning played the sleeping partner in his ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... the midst of her sins; and London, that light-minded, reprobate city, was a heap of graves. Now he, Hilarius, having seen much evil and the justice of the Almighty, would get him in peace to Wymondham, there to learn to be a cunning limner; and having so learnt would joyfully hie him back to Prior Stephen and ...
— The Gathering of Brother Hilarius • Michael Fairless
... pearls is wreathed around his hair, which is arranged in symmetrical rolls. He has drooping eyelids, a straight nose, and a heavy and cunning expression of countenance. At the corners of the dais, extended above his head, are placed four golden doves, and, at the foot of the throne, two enamelled lions are squatted. The doves begin to coo, the lions to roar. The Emperor rolls his eyes; Antony steps ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... kylix borne by beautiful Ganymede, and it was godlike to look upon as a thing fashioned by the hands of the god. But the clay was not tempered sufficiently and warped in the drying. Then Zeus Pater fashioned another shape with more cunning, and this was tempered well and warped not. And he bent down to breathe between its lips the living soul. But as he stooped, Hephaistos, jealous of the divine gift about to be conferred upon the mortal race, sent from his forges smoke and vapour, which ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... antiquities of a barbarous people, with legendary fables of the most wild and monstrous character. Yet these puerile conceptions afford an inexhaustible mine for the labors of the antiquarian, who endeavours to unravel the allegorical web which a cunning priesthood had devised as symbolical of those mysteries of creation that it was beyond their power to comprehend. But Sarmiento happily confines himself to the mere statement of traditional fables, ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... with its like, and some loss is involved in the issue. It is not the general idea that is implicated in opposition and combat, and that is exposed to danger. It remains in the background, untouched and uninjured. This may be called the cunning of reason—that it sets the passions to work for itself, while that which develops its existence through such impulsion pays the penalty and suffers loss. For it is phenomenal being that is so treated, and, of this, a portion is of no value, another is positive and real. The ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... quickened intelligence which, for a while, accompanies ruined women: the unnatural sharpening of the duplicity, the firmer grasp on man as the animal, the study of the proprieties of life, and apparent impatience with all misbehavior. Her timid voice assisted her cunning as if with a natural gentleness, and invited onward the man who expected in her ample charms a bolder spirit. She betook herself to the church for penance, perhaps, but remained there for a character. My wife, if I have suffered, it ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... from the dead man's throat, and showed the others how the cord had been slipped round the neck in a running-knot and fastened tightly with a cunning twist. ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... found were equally notorious; the Earl's project was as plain as if he had pronounced it viva voce; and before we parted for the night, which did not occur until the sun was blazing through the curtains of our banqueting room, I had made up my mind, once for all, that neither character nor cunning can be concealed in this world; that the craftiest impostor is but a clumsier kind of clown; and that the most dexterous disguise is but a waste ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... you; I shall go to Paris without him: he is drawn on the jury for the 2 September till...no one knows. It is a tiresome task. Aurore is very cunning with her arms, she offers them to you to kiss; her hands are marvels and they are incredibly clever ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... Marriage of Wit and Wisdom! that, my lads; I'll none but that; the theme is very good, And may maintain a liberal argument: To marry wit to wisdom, asks some cunning; Many have wit, that may come short of wisdom. We'll see how Master poet plays his part, And whether wit or wisdom grace his art.— Go, make him drink, and all his fellows too.— ...
— Sir Thomas More • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... method and spoke of espial and discovery. This young man might be rich. If so, marriage should be thought of. Against the shell of her ear broke the waves of worldly cunning. The arrows of craft shot by her. She saw the thin lips moving, ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... greatest service to us. They go around in every direction and bring the reindeer together. They seem to know that there is some unseen danger. When the wolves come into the herd, the dogs attack them fiercely and act with great cunning, taking care not to be bitten by them and waiting for the opportunity ...
— The Land of the Long Night • Paul du Chaillu
... lo! upon his breviary, which was on a low stool near his feet, ruffling all his feathers with a single pull, and smoothing them as suddenly, and cocking his bill this way and that with a vast display of cunning purely ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... cunning little sweet thing, I do like you," said Midget, touching King's hair in a ...
— Marjorie's New Friend • Carolyn Wells
... building he came to, he asked Aladdin if he did not think it fine; and the youth was ready to answer when any one presented itself, crying out: "Here is a finer house, uncle, than any we have seen yet." By this artifice, the cunning magician led Aladdin some way into the country; and as he meant to carry him farther, pretending to be tired, he took an opportunity to sit down in one of the gardens on the brink of a fountain of ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... whether he was a Roman Catholic; and he had not concealed the dislike which he felt for that Celtic Parliament which had repealed the Act of Settlement and passed the Act of Attainder. [78] The discontent, fomented by the arts of intriguers, among whom the cunning and unprincipled Henry Luttrell seems to have been the most active, soon broke forth into open rebellion. A great meeting was held. Many officers of the army, some peers, some lawyers of high note and some prelates of the Roman ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... now, as there were in our Lord's time; men who go about with the name of God on their lips, and the Bible in their hands, in sheep's clothing outwardly; but inwardly ravening wolves. In sheep's clothing, truly, smooth and sanctimonious, meek, and sleek. But wolves at heart; wolves in cunning and slyness, as you will find, if you have to deal with them; wolves in fierceness and cruelty, as you will find if you have to differ from them; wolves in greediness and covetousness, and care of their own interest and their own pockets. And wolves, too, in hardness of heart; in the hard, ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... touching enterprise and the business man; this theory that success is created not by intelligence, but by a certain half-witted and yet magical instinct. For Bernard Shaw, apparently, the forests of factories and the mountains of money are not the creations of human wisdom or even of human cunning; they are rather manifestations of the sacred maxim which declares that God has chosen the foolish things of the earth to confound the wise. It is simplicity and even innocence that has made Manchester. ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... took shape—nay, took life; the intricate, elaborate design ceased to be a design, and became a procession, a saturnalia; became a sinister comedy, which, when first visualized, shocked Soames immoderately. The horrors presented by these devices of evil cunning, crowding the walls, appalled the narrow mind of the beholder, revolted him in an even greater degree than they must have revolted a man of broader and cleaner mind. He became conscious of a quality of evil which pervaded the room; the entire place seemed to lie beneath a spell, beneath the ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... as to life, what is it after all? When you've got all you require, and you know that you will never want, that is all. I have friends, good friends, like you, Dr. Seward." This was said with a leer of inexpressible cunning. "I know that I shall never lack the means ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... "martin-box"!— Made like a sure-enough house—with roof, and doors And windows in it, and veranda-floors And balusters all 'round it—yes, and at Each end a chimney—painted red at that And penciled white, to look like little bricks; And, to cap all the builder's cunning tricks, Two tiny little lightning-rods were run Straight up their sides, and twinkled in the sun. Who built it? Nay, no answer but a smile.— It may be you can guess who, afterwhile. Home in his stall, "Old Sorrel" munched his hay And oats and corn, ...
— A Child-World • James Whitcomb Riley
... manipulations, roused him from his slumber. The most portentous of his wonders, however, are those which he wrought after his own death by means of his relics and otherwise; they have been sworn to by many persons. Nor did his hand lose its old cunning, in these posthumous manifestations, with the finny tribe. A certain woman, Maria Scuotto, was enabled to resuscitate a number of dead eels by means of an image of the deceased saint which ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... of peace and quietness I admitted hurriedly that I couldn't: persuaded that now he would leave off. But the only result was to make his moist face shine with the pride of cunning. He removed his hand for a moment to scare a black mass of flies off the sugar-basin and caught hold of ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... its burden day after day. Something of the same idle notion comes to me to-day, when from the street-window I look on the slow stream of human life creeping past, night and morning, to the great mills. Masses of men, with dull, besotted faces bent to the ground, sharpened here and there by pain or cunning; skin and muscle and flesh begrimed with smoke and ashes; stooping all night over boiling caldrons of metal, laired by day in dens of drunkenness and infamy; breathing from infancy to death an air saturated with fog and grease and soot, vileness ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... consequence, stopped half-way, as if undecided whether to lie flat or remain erect, producing the effect that would have been presented had he been decorated with a pair of horns. His baldness might have given an air of benevolence to his face, but for the shaggy eyebrows that over-shadowed his cunning-looking grey eyes. His cheekbones were high, and the cadaverous skin was so tightly drawn across them, as to give it a very parchment-like appearance. Around his thin compressed lips there was a continual nervous twitching, that added greatly to the ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... by the author of the "Bobbsey Twins" Books are eagerly welcomed by the little folks from about five to ten years of age. Their eyes fairly dance with delight at the lively doings of inquisitive little Bunny Brown and his cunning, ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue in the Sunny South • Laura Lee Hope
... off to find a censor. Censors, though I did not know it then, are very shy birds and conceal their nests with the cunning of reed warblers. Hardly any one has ever seen a censor. But M. found one, and we submitted to his scrutiny letters which we had succeeded in writing. After that I insisted on getting something to eat. I had breakfasted at an unholy hour. I had crossed the sea. I had endured great mental strain. ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... yonder like a great dawn. Man's spirit, tutored by lost illusion after lost illusion, advances to an ever deeper reality. The race, too, like the individual and the nation, is subject to the Law of Tragedy. Once more, in the way of a thousand years, it knows that it is not in time, nor in any cunning manipulation or extension of the things of time, that Man the Timeless can find the word which sums his destiny, and spurning at the phantoms of space, save as they grant access to the Spaceless, casts itself back upon God, and in art, thought, and action pierces ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... rats?" The maid laughed and showed all her big white teeth. "I can't see any rats. There are none here, Pani," and she looked at her mistress with a half stupid, half cunning leer on her face. "Pani must have been dreaming, there's not a living thing in the cellar except Pani and Marianna. Sh! sh! hark!" She bent her head and listened for a moment; then she shook it and laughed again. "Rats would patter, but there's ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... put it! Of course I like him well enough as a leader; he is clever, and sort of cunning, and I enjoy his funny ways; but what in the world should I do with a great yellow-haired laddie who could put me in his pocket, and yet is so meek that I should never find the heart to henpeck him? You are welcome to him; and since you ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott
... the Roman Church, the second from a Father of the Anglican, and the third from a Father of Modern English poetry. The Puritan divines would furnish me with many more such. St. Bernard says, Sapiens nummularius est Deus: nummum fictum non recipiet; 'A cunning money-changer is God: he will take in no base coin.' Latimer says, 'You shall perceive that God, by this example, shaketh us by the noses and taketh us by the ears.' Familiar enough, both of them, one would say! But I should think Mr. Biglow had ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... that life meant to her, how could you destroy her without a qualm? The crime you committed was that you refused to see God in that woman's soul, when he had revealed himself to you. You looked for wile, for cunning, for self-seeking,—and they were not there. Love had obliterated them. When you saw how meekly she obeyed you, and agreed to go away, why did you not have pity? If you had listened to your conscience, you would have ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... shall you hear Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters, Of deaths put on by cunning, and forc'd cause, And, in this upshot, purposes mistook Fall'n on the ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... inspection would have shaken the foundation of so simple a belief for Mr. Alfred Bolt's eyes were not of the honest kind worn by men who go down to the sea in ships. They were close set, narrow lidded, cunning, piggy little eyes that caused unrest to ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... was natural, but not based on subtle knowledge of Paul's character. He possessed marvelous cunning and much personal courage. No one but Alice saw him in the boat, and he thinks she is at the bottom of the lake. His coming to Northfield was in disguise, known only to Pierre Lanier. In the same manner Paul ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... one stock in which he could safely plunge. Casting aside all apprehension, so far as Swearengen Jones was concerned, he prepared for what was to be his one and only venture on the Stock Exchange before the 23d of the following September. With all the cunning and craftiness of a general he laid his plans for the attack. Gardner's face was the picture of despair when Brewster asked him to buy heavily in ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... Spence, for it is indeed true. I made every effort in my power to prevent what I knew was threatening. Until he began to practise deceit, trickery of every kind. What more could I do? If he was determined to deceive me, he would do so; what was gained by my obliging him to exert more cunning? Then I turned sick at heart, and ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... she just nervous from events—or was I causing her any personal trouble? The moment I felt that perhaps I was, a feeling of assurance and triumph came over me—! Then I used every bit of the cunning I possess—I tried to say subtle things—I made her talk about the ridiculous book, and the utterly unimportant furniture—I made her express her opinion about styles, and got out of her that a simple ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... lie in mamma's room. And then I sweep the door-steps off, and do not leave a crumb, And wipe the dishes, too, and oh, it is the bestest fun! And then, when mamma starts to bake, she says that maybe I Can make all by my very self a cunning little pie. When I am big enough for school I think I'll like to go, But truly I would rather stay at home, you know, And help my mamma do the work, and bake a little pie, For mamma says all little girls, if they would only ...
— A Jolly Jingle-Book • Various
... low and smooth; he seemed to have decided to accept the "charity" offered him by Lawler. But there was mockery in his voice, and his eyes were alight with cunning. In the atmosphere about him was complacency which suggested that Warden knew exactly what he was doing; that he had knowledge unsuspected by Lawler, and that he had no doubt that, ultimately, Lawler would ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer |
