"Knavish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... about in the streets to court popularity; another consults his ease, and sticks to the confinement of a chimney-corner; many others are tugging hard at law for a trifle, and drive on an endless suit, only to enrich a deferring judge, or a knavish advocate; one is for new-modelling a settled government; another is for some notable heroical attempt; and a third by all means must travel a pilgrim to Rome, Jerusalem, or some shrine of a saint elsewhere, though he have no other business than the paying of a formal impertinent ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... the like punishment for dishonesty in their commercial dealings—it being thought that the pillory, by appealing to the sense of shame, was far more deterrent of such crimes than fine or imprisonment. In the reign of Edward the Confessor a knavish brewer of the city of Chester was taken round the town in the cart in which the refuse of the privies had been collected. Ale-tasters had to look after the ale and test it by spilling some on to a wooden seat, sitting on the wet place in their leathern ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... has been abused by the malice of that knavish attorney, Potts, who has always manifested the greatest hostility towards Alizon," said Nicholas; "but he will not prevail, for she has only to show herself to ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... out of sight than the young man began to walk off rapidly with the bundle. It was an old trick, that has been many times played upon unsuspecting boys, and will continue to be played as long as there are knavish adventurers who prefer dishonest methods of getting a living to ...
— The Telegraph Boy • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... with which he converted their schemes in behalf of Matthias, of Don John, of Anjou, into so many additional weapons for his own cause, can never be too often studied. It is instructive to observe the wiles of the Macchiavelian school employed by a master of the craft, to frustrate, not to advance, a knavish purpose. This character, in a great measure, marked his whole policy. He was profoundly skilled in the subtleties of Italian statesmanship, which he had learned as a youth at the Imperial court, and which he employed in his manhood ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... factor-lawyer who broke the silence, saying, with his predetermined smirk, that the parchment was ready for my signature. Thinking it well beneath me to measure words with this knavish pettifogger, I looked beyond him and spoke ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... knavish trick to gain possession of the fine fellow; but, after all, I lost him in the middle of the day, when I thought the boldest rogues would not have run the risk. The shouts and laughter of some officers who were riding down from the front first informed me of my loss. Up they rode, ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... persons take advantage of this extraordinary accident. From a country so near and so readily accessible they can get plants home, pot them up, and sell them, before the withering process sets in. May this revelation confound such knavish tricks! The moral is old—buy your orchids from one of the great dealers, if you do not care to "establish" ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... other. And that they were continually tampering with their copies of the books of the New Testament, is evident from the immense number of various readings, and from some whole phrases, and even verses, which for knavish purposes were foisted into the text, but have been detected, and exposed by Griesbach, and others. They also forged certain rhapsodies under the name of "Sybbiline Oracles," and then adduce them as prophetic proofs of the truth of ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... knavish quip touched the Duke closely—I saw him change colour and bite his lip. And now, our news are told, noble Crevecoeur, and what think ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... near the wind. disgrace oneself, dishonor oneself, demean oneself; derogate, stoop, grovel, sneak, lose caste; sell oneself, go over to the enemy; seal one's infamy. Adj. dishonest, dishonorable; unconscientious, unscrupulous; fraudulent &c. 545; knavish; disgraceful &c. (disreputable) 974; wicked &c. 945. false-hearted, disingenuous; unfair, one-sided; double, double- hearted, double-tongued, double-faced; timeserving[obs3], crooked, tortuous,insidious, Machiavelian, dark, slippery; fishy; perfidious, treacherous, perjured. infamous, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... of his plans came quickly to Philip's knavish ears, and he wrote in haste to his confederate, "the devil is loose; take care of yourself," an admonition which John was quite likely to obey. His hope of seizing the crown vanished. There remained to meet his placable brother with a show of ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... benitos, and only serve to make their infamy doubly apparent; and that a person in seedy raiment and tattered hat, possessed of courage, kindness, and virtue, is entitled to more respect from those to whom his virtues are manifested than any cruel profligate emperor, selfish aristocrat, or knavish millionaire in the world. ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... Eleanor of Aquitaine; but he paved the way for them by petty victories and petty acquisitions, and by making more and more certain his superiority over his rival. When, after Richard's death, he had to do with John Lackland, cowardly and insolent, knavish and addle-pated, choleric, debauched, and indolent, an intriguing subordinate on the throne on which he made pretence to be the most despotic of kings, Philip had over him, even more than over his brother Richard, immense advantages. He made such use of them that after six years' ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... appropriated by the government. In the latter instance, the natives were perfectly in the right. At that time, the law against the traffic in ardent spirits (every now and then suspended and revived) happened to be in force; and finding a large quantity on the premises of Victor, a low, knavish adventurer from Marseilles, ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... needed never to ask again why he had been willing to accept risks from which most men shrink from fear if not from conscience. He loved money, not as the spender loves it, openly and with luxurious instincts, but secretly and with a knavish dread of discovery which spoke ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... Sir Dolphus and Sir Launcelot went by themselves to the chamber of the former to make merry. And there, Sir Dolphus who counted the other's sympathy as beyond doubt, told more of his knavish plots. Until the listener sick with listening turned to him in the quiet and secrecy of the great chamber and said in ...
— In the Court of King Arthur • Samuel Lowe
... meantime, howsoever I hate them all deadly, yet I am fain to give them good words. O, they are pestilent fellows, they speak nothing but bodkins, and piss vinegar. Well, do what I can in outward kindness to them, yet they do nothing but bewray my house: as there was one that made a couple of knavish verses on my country chimney, now in the time of my sojourning here at London; and it was thus— Sir Raderic keeps no chimney cavalier, That takes tobacco above once a year. And another made a couple of verses on my daughter, that learns to play on the viol-de-gambo— Her viol-de-gambo is ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... persevering courage. We sometimes judge with tolerable correctness; at others are wholly mistaken, and not unfrequently run into such extremes, that having established a principle, that a particular people are knavish, or cowardly, or stupid, we are unwilling to admit any exceptions, but include the whole race in our sweeping censure. We are prejudiced at first sight against a Portuguese or Italian, and are careful of our communications with him, even though we meet him ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 331, September 13, 1828 • Various
... at what she keeps concealed. Prior has translated several of Fontaine's Tales from the French; and they have lost nothing in the translation, either of their wit or malice. I need not name them: but the one I like the most, is that of Cupid in search of Venus's doves. No one could insinuate a knavish plot, a tender point, a loose moral, with such unconscious archness, and careless raillery, as if he gained new self-possession and adroitness from the perplexity and confusion into which he throws scrupulous imaginations, and knew how to seize on all the ticklish parts ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... on dishes and tasted them, Shaft-mon, handbreadth, Shaw, thicket, Sheef, thrust, Sheer-Thursday, Thursday in Holy Week, Shend, harm, Shenship, disgrace, Shent, undone, blamed, Shour, attack, Shrew, rascal, Shrewd, knavish, Sib, akin to, Sideling, sideways, Siege, seat, Signified, likened, Siker, sure, Sikerness, assurance, Sith, since, Sithen, afterwards, since, Skift, changed, Slade, valley, Slake, glen, Soil (to go to), hunting term for taking the water, Sonds, ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... give him leave to rave and dose his bellyful with his private and intimately acquainted devils, who, if they were not the very worst of all infernal fiends, would never have deigned to serve such a knavish barking cur as this is. He hath not learnt the first precept of philosophy, which is, Know thyself; for whilst he braggeth and boasteth that he can discern the least mote in the eye of another, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... flagellants are called "penitentes" the flagellation is not done in penance, but as the result of a vow or promise made to the diety in return for the occurrence of some wished-for event, and the "penitentes" are frequently from the most knavish class. The fulfillment of the vow is a terrible ordeal, and begins back of the small chapel called "visita" that exists in every village. The "penitente" wears only a pair of loose thin white cotton trousers, and is beaten on the back by another native first with hands and then with a piece of ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVII, 1609-1616 • Various
... met by one Melanthius a goatherd, who covered them with insults. "In truth one churl is leading another, for the god ever bringeth like to like. Whither art thou taking this glutton, this evil pauper, a kill-joy of the feast? He hath learned many a knavish trick and is like to refuse to labour; creeping among the people he would rather ask alms to fill his insatiate maw." Leaping on Odysseus, he kicked at him, yet failed to stir him from the pathway. Swallowing the insult Odysseus walked ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... that my heart is as much inflamed at the sight or relation of any act of injustice (whatever may be the object, or wheresoever it may be perpetrated) as if I was the immediate sufferer. When I read the history of a merciless tyrant, or the dark and the subtle machination of a knavish designing priest, I could on the instant set off to stab the miscreants, though I was certain to ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... state of health at present to be deeply vexed at anything. Had I intended it for the public, I should have been more exact and full. Many temperaments and explanations there would have been, if ever I had had a notion that it should meet the public eye." He was justly indignant at the knavish publisher, whose conduct surpassed that of the Dublin pirates, or Edmund Curll. But he was at a loss to know how the publisher obtained a copy. He did not suppose that the Duke of Portland had given up his, and he remembered only "the rough and incorrect papers" constituting the first ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... of Mosca the knavish confederate of Vol'pone (2 syl.). He is an old man, with seeing and hearing faint, and understanding dulled to childishness, yet he wishes to live ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... evil could never be brave or virtuous, let the colour of the skin be what it might. He bade his young men look at the hands of the Big-knives. They were not empty, like those of hungry beggars. Neither were they filled with goods, like those of knavish traders. They were, like themselves, warriors, and they carried arms which they knew well how to use—they were ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... knavish, designing, or idle, extravagant debtor, who fails because either he has run out his estate in excesses, or on purpose to cheat and abuse ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... realised. The gross, squarely-built man with the bushy whiskers and the light strange eyes, found success attend his every enterprise from that hour in which he had spilt life upon the pavement of the Convent chapel. The tarantula-pounce never missed a prey. Every knavish venture brought in money or money's worth, every base plot was carried through triumphantly. Bough, alias Van Busch, was not ordinarily a superstitious man, but his run of luck made ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... setting in, and the situation of the embassy became more comfortless from day to day. Notes were written, and answers received from the monarch, but the royal interview was still postponed, partly by the artifice of the knavish governors, who kept a longing eye on the presents, and partly by the barbarian etiquette of showing the natives the scorn with which their king was entitled to treat all the nations of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... different thing,' said Prieme impatiently; 'then it was only one Swede, and it didn't much matter whether he lived or died. But, boy, if many thousand innocent people are about to perish through one man's knavish trick, ought we not to bring the traitor to justice, ay, though he be father, brother, or son? Look at that dear, good woman, your blind mother! Do you want the Swedes to get in and slaughter her? Are you going to let sixty thousand brave men and women perish, and all our toils and struggles be ...
— The Young Carpenters of Freiberg - A Tale of the Thirty Years' War • Anonymous
... wish from my childhood, No one ever appear'd so prudent and wise as my parents, Who in the darker days of childhood carefully watch'd me. Much indeed it has been my lot to endure from my playmates, When with their knavish pranks they used to embitter my temper. Often I little suspected the tricks they were playing upon me: But if they happen'd to ridicule Father, whenever on Sundays Out of church he came with his slow deliberate footsteps, If they laugh'd at the strings ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... the orderly and natural making of France, just as the sudden suppression of the National Executive in 1649 after the occupation of Edinburgh by Argyll and the surrender of Colchester to Fairfax had put England at the mercy of Cromwell's 'honest' troopers, and of knavish fanatics like Hugh Peters, violently interrupted the making of Britain. It took England a century to recover her equilibrium. Between Naseby Field in 1645 and Culloden Moor in 1746 England had, except during the reign of Charles II., no better assurance of continuous domestic ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... no, he is my friend; Thou, but a poor anatomy of bones, Cas'd in a knavish tawny withered skin. Wilt thou not stoop? art thou ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... in mind a year after I left London—six years ago. But I kept it to myself. I had to do my work under frightful disadvantages. Oliver, my professor, was a scientific bounder, a journalist by instinct, a thief of ideas—he was always prying! And you know the knavish system of the scientific world. I simply would not publish, and let him share my credit. I went on working; I got nearer and nearer making my formula into an experiment, a reality. I told no living soul, because I meant to flash my work ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... a little while and go away." And Al-Marwazi said to her, "Arise, thou, and hie thee home." So she arose and repaired to her house, whilst the man of Marw abode in his place till the night was half spent, when he said to himself, "How long? Yet how can I let this knavish dog die and lose the money? Better I open the tomb on him and bring him forth and take my due of him by dint of grievous beating and torment." Accordingly, he dug him up and pulled him forth of the grave; after which he betook himself to a garden hard by ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... your shape and making quite, Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite Called GRANDOLPH GOODFELLOW. Are you not he That did your best to spill Lord S-L-SB-RY? Gave the Old Tory party quite a turn, And office with snug perquisites did spurn? And now you'd make Strong Drink to bear no barm (Or proper profit.) You would do ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 1890.05.10 • Various
... in 1705. The Tory author was indignant that the House of Lords should have rejected the Bill against Occasional Conformity, which would have made it impossible for Dissenters to hold any office by conforming to the Test Act; he complained of the knavish pains of the Dissenters to divide Churchmen into High and Low; and he declared that the present prospect of the Church was "very melancholy," and that of the government "not much more comfortable." Long habit has rendered us callous to the melancholy state of the Church and the discomfort ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer
... that account, we have endeavoured, as much as possible, to bring them before the reader, and to make them speak for themselves. They are a half-civilised, unlettered people, proverbial for a species of knavish acuteness, which serves them in lieu of wisdom. To place in the mouth of such beings the high-flown sentiments of modern poetry would not answer our purpose, though several authors have not shrunk from such ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... the beggarly knavish Crew will be this year also printing Prophecies and Predictions in my name, to cheat the country as they used to do. This is therefore to give notice, that if there is anything of that kind done in my name besides this Almanack printed by the Company of Stationers, ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... certainly full; but, all allowance being made, it is difficult to find a valid excuse for this neglect on his part. William grew up to be a young man, and was finally apprenticed to a tailor at Pavia, but his knavish master set him to work as a vinedresser, suspecting that Cardan cared little what happened so long as the young man was kept out of his sight. William seems to have been a merry, good-tempered fellow; but his life was a short one, for ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... defeat, utter and pitiful. His tone was too confident, he was too sure of his ground to leave me a doubt as to what would befall if I made appeal to his knavish followers. My arms fell to my sides, and I looked at Gervasio. His face was haggard, and his eyes were very full of sorrow as they rested ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... it was a hoary-haired scoundrel of a bus; a very reprobate of a bus; an envious, evil-thinking, ill-conditioned, flagrantly thieving, knavish blackguard of a bus. Under no circumstances am I proud of the acquaintance. But then, in extenuation, be it said that it was never anything but an acquaintance of Shadow-Land, conjured up, perhaps, by a material repast that had ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... without, she saw his simple phiz; And cried "Go kill him! Stick him like a pig! You three can do it, if he is so big!" Unwilling, yet the knights went out to try, And light-of-love GAWAIN came riding by. "What ho!" he cried, "I'm in, if that fight's free; So here I come-ye knavish cowards three!" "For me," PELLEAS cried, "the fight she means," And charging, knocked them into smithereens. Now called she other knights, and cried out, "Once Again go bind and bring me here that dunce!" And when he heard, ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various
... conversation of thousands, and was thought worthy to appear in the most superb binding. He had numerous admirers in Holland and among the Huguenots of France. With the pleasure, however, he experienced some of the pains of eminence. Knavish booksellers put forth volumes of trash under his name, and envious scribblers maintained it to be impossible that the poor ignorant tinker should really be the author of the book which ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... in the habit of standing in the market-place for hire by those who required their services. See the Pseudolus, the Aulularia, and the Mercator of Plautus, and the Notes to Bohn's Translation. See also a remark on the knavish character of the sausage-makers in the Truculentus of ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... engaged in several other expeditions on shore, in which, though successful, several officers and a large number of men lost their lives. At length the Maoris discovered, what they might have known from the first, had they not been instigated by the knavish foes of England, who kept well in the background, that it was useless to contend against the power of Britain. Most of the rebel chiefs losing heart, tendered their submission, and promised in future to be faithful subjects ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... bet made between myself and the constable, who shares it with the King. Both have wagered that they know who is the lady of my heart; and I have wagered to the contrary. No one more than myself hates the English, who took my estates in Piccadilly. Is it not a knavish trick to put justice in motion against me? Ho! Ho! my lord constable, a chamberlain is worth two of you, and I will beat you yet. My dear Petit, I give you permission to search by night and by day, every nook and cranny of my house. But come in here ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... in its radical sense shrew-ed, malicious, like a shrew. Comp. M. N. D. ii. 1, "That shrewd and knavish sprite called Robin Goodfellow." Chaucer has the verb shrew to curse; ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... lands ceded by the treaty. Oh, those patents! those patents! What wrongs were perpetrated by those remorseless instruments; what evil councils prevailed when they were hatched; what corrupt, what base, what knavish hands formed them; what vile, what ignoble, what ponderous lies has history assumed to maintain, or to excuse them, and the ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... a bit of a Bogey, but then he may prove just a big Benefactor, And if he should work on the cheap, kill Corruption, and kick out the knavish Contractor, Without piling Pelion on Ossa (of rates) on my back, till my legs with the "tottle" limp, I shall "learn to love him" as Giant Beneficent, not ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 3, 1892 • Various
... them cruel woids," demanded Axtell. "Flunker," he went on meditatively, "it hath a right knavish sound. Beshrew me, if I fling it not back in the teeth of any caitiff knight that dare ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield
... distinguished from intrigue, inasmuch as they are momentary, and that their aim, whenever they are to have one, must not be remote. Beaumarchais has seized their full value, and the effects of his "Figaro" spring pre-eminently from this. Whereas such good-humored roguish and half-knavish pranks are practised with personal risk for noble ends, the situations which arise from them are aesthetically and morally considered of the greatest value for the theatre; as, for instance, the opera of "The Water-Carrier" ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... and zealous monarchs, who, under an idea of working for the welfare of their subjects, have made it a sacred duty to torment, persecute, and destroy those, who thought differently from themselves. A bigot, at the head of an empire, is one of the greatest scourges. A single fanatical or knavish priest, listened to by a credulous and powerful prince, suffices to put a ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... was all very well till she began to meddle with matters of State; but His Grace will have none of that. I can tell you no more. On the other hand if Chris thinks he must be a monk, well and good; I do not think so myself; but that is not my affair; but I hope he will not be a monk only because a knavish woman has put out her tongue at him, and repeated what a knavish priest has put into her mouth. But I suppose he had made up his mind before he ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... drawbridge was raised, and that he could not hope for stealthy entrance there, he crept silently to the rear of the great building and there, among the bushes, his men searched for the ladder that Norman of Torn had seen the knavish servant of My Lady Claudia unearth, that the outlaw might visit the Earl of ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... rank falsehood. Fear'st not thou death! Fie, there's a knavish itch In that salt blood, an utter foe to smarting. Had Jaffier's wife prov'd kind, he'd still been true. Faugh, how that stinks! thou die, thou kill my friend! Or thou! or thou! with that lean wither'd ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy • Thomas Otway
... secures you here; Your king, who scorns the haughty prelate's nod, Nor deems the voice of priests the voice of God. 600 Let me, (though lawyers may perhaps forbid Their monarch to behold what they wish hid, And for the purposes of knavish gain, Would have their trade a mystery remain) Let me, disdaining all such slavish awe, Dive to the very bottom of the law; Let me (the weak, dead letter left behind) Search out the principles, the spirit find, Till, from the parts, made master of the whole, I see the Constitution's very soul. ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... career than the deliberate impostor. The honest wizard always expects that his charms and incantations will produce their supposed effect; and when they fail, not only really, as they always do, but conspicuously and disastrously, as they often do, he is taken aback: he is not, like his knavish colleague, ready with a plausible excuse to account for the failure, and before he can find one he may be knocked on the head by his disappointed and ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... Gypsy race is perfectly illiterate," said the man in black; "they are possessed, it is true, of a knavish acuteness, and are particularly noted for giving subtle and evasive answers—and in your answers, I confess, you remind me of them; but that one of the race should acquire a learned language like the Armenian, and have a general knowledge of literature, is a thing che ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... that he is represented by Dryden as an Irishman, "when he knows that I never saw Ireland till I was three-and-twenty years old, and was there but for four months." He had understood Dryden's parable literally; so true it is, that a knavish speech sleeps in a ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... and the wretch promised to make you and your uncle beggars if the surprise succeeded. He did this, though he knew that it was you who took him up from the road and saved his life; for nothing good and noble dwells in his knavish soul. He yearned for me, and still more ardently for the Alexandrians' gold. Worse than the wolf that licked the hand of the man who bandaged its wounds, he would have shown his teeth to the preserver of his life. I have learned this, and if he dies here of starvation and thirst ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... said he, with the familiar air of a privileged servant, "did you see that knavish-looking Gabinius following Madame Fabia all the way back to ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... female friends. By Jove! if she were to come over here, I'd drive you out of the settlement with a shot-gun, 'deed if I wouldn't. Now you will probably change your mind about unselfishly surrendering Rita to Williams. I tell you, Dic, a fool conscience is more to be dreaded than a knavish heart." ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... Mr. JUSTIN HUNTLY MCCARTHY'S re-adjustment of history. It was all for our delight that Claude Duval, instead of perishing on the scaffold, should escape from prison, have his freedom confirmed by the KING'S pardon, confound everybody else's knavish tricks and marry the lady of his heart. Nor do I complain that the historic highwayman (as I am credibly informed—for I got the facts from another critic) was only twenty-nine when they hanged him, and that Mr. BOURCHIER is—well, let me say, past the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 5, 1916 • Various
... sir," he said. "That fool, Jan Lubber Fiend, will ever be at his tricks. 'Tis my young mistress that encourages him, more is the pity! For poor serving-men are held responsible for his knavish on-goings. Why, I had just set him cross-legged in the yard with a basket of pease to shell, seeing how he grows as much as a foot in the night—or near by. But so soon as my back is turned he will be forever answering the door and peeping out ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... Puck if he was not the knavish spirit that frightened the maidens of the villagery, that skimmed milk, and sometimes laboured in the green, and bootless made the housewife churn, and sometimes made the drink to bear no barm, and whether Puck did not mislead night ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... what is more, their Children, And seem'd like Fathers anxious for our Welfare. Whom see we now? their haughty Conquerors Possess'd of every Fort, and Lake, and Pass, Big with their Victories so often gain'd; On us they look with deep Contempt and Scorn, Are false, deceitful, knavish, insolent; Nay, think us conquered, and our Country theirs, Without a Purchase, or ev'n asking for it. With Pleasure I wou'd call their King my Friend, Yea, honour and obey him as my Father; I'd be content, would he keep his own Sea, And leave these distant Lakes and Streams ...
— Ponteach - The Savages of America • Robert Rogers
... with Sir W. Batten and the Auditors of the Exchequer at the Dolphin by Mr. Wayth's desire, and after dinner fell to business relating to Sir G. Carteret's account, and so home to the office, where Sir W. Batten begins, too fast, to shew his knavish tricks in giving what price he pleases for commodities. So abroad, intending to have spoke with my Lord Chancellor about the old business of his wood at Clarendon, but could not, and so home again, and late at my office, and then home ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... this loss to Seward. "The clamour against Sewardism lost us many votes," it declared the morning after the election. Two or three days later, as the reduced majority became more apparent, it explained that "A knavish clamour was raised on the eve of election by a Swiss press against Governor Seward's late speech at Rochester as revolutionary and disunionist. Our loss from this source is considerable." The returns, however, showed plainly that one-half of the Americans, following the precedent ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... things being equal, an honest man has this advantage over a knave, that he understands more of human nature: for he knows that one honest man exists, and concludes that there must be more; and he also knows, if he is not a mere simpleton, that there are some who are knavish. But the knave can seldom be brought to believe in the existence of an honest man. The honest man may be deceived in particular persons, but the knave is sure to be deceived whenever he comes across an honest man who is not ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... is perfectly illiterate," said the man in black; "they are possessed, it is true, of a knavish acuteness; and are particularly noted for giving subtle and evasive answers—and in your answers, I confess, you remind me of them; but that one of the race should acquire a learned language like the Armenian, and have a general knowledge of literature, is ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... means by which we poor feeble creatures try to keep from dying or aching. In a world so full of pain it would seem as if people could not be so foolish, or practitioners so knavish, as to sport with men's and women's and children's lives by their professional humbugs. Yet there are many grave M. D.'s who, if there is nobody to hear, and if they speak their minds, will tell you plainly that the whole practice of medicine ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... money in their purse, if they had for their enjoyment a Cecilia, a Marinetta, and even a more lovely beauty in perspective, they would soon entertain a very different opinion of life! I hold them to be a race of pessimists, recruited amongst beggarly philosophers and knavish, atrabilious theologians. If pleasure does exist, and if life is necessary to enjoy pleasure, then life is happiness. There are misfortunes, as I know by experience; but the very existence of such misfortunes proves ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... is what I don't know; unless he wished to take credit to himself for the good result which fortunately has arisen from his knavish conduct. ...
— Minna von Barnhelm • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
... this man well: he hath been since an ape-bearer; then a process-server, a bailiff; then he compassed a motion of the Prodigal Son, and married a tinker's wife within a mile where my land and living lies; and, having flown over many knavish professions, he settled only in rogue: some call ...
— The Winter's Tale - [Collins Edition] • William Shakespeare
... touch; whilst others, not less free upon the wire, were carefully packed up, and sent home safe. By seizing and boxing up in the Tower mere bystanders, wholly unconcerned in the sport, he made his 'little tin soldiers' fancy that he did not see their antics. The only hitch in his 'knavish piece of work' arose when, too assured, he placed upon the boards a real live judge, who refused to take the bench in the manager's sham Court of Justice. In every other respect the mystery play was a complete success; everybody was puzzled, players, spectators, and ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... contained bad news. My parents are dead, but I have an old uncle and aunt living. When I left Burton he was comfortably fixed, with a small farm of his own, and two thousand dollars in bank. Now I hear that he is in trouble. He has lost money, and a knavish neighbor has threatened to foreclose a mortgage on the farm and turn out the old people to die or go to ...
— Cast Upon the Breakers • Horatio Alger
... gunpowder had come into use, the feudal system was passing, royal authority had become paramount, and Spain was giving to the world its first lessons in what was early stigmatized as the "knavish calling ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... ought to go a little way towards 'confounding their knavish tricks,'" a man's deep voice ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... was adventured to found an empire in America. Great were our hopes, both of glory and of gold, in the kingdom of Powhatan. But it grieves me much to say that all hath resulted in infelicity, misfortune, and an unhappy end. Our ships were wrecked, or captured by the knavish Spaniards. Our brave sailors are perished. As I was blameworthy for thy risk, I send by the messenger your L50, which you shall not lose by my over-hopeful vision. For its usance I send a package of a new herb from the Chesapeake, called by the natives ...
— Shakespeare's Insomnia, And the Causes Thereof • Franklin H. Head
... and understands and speaks well; and no rigid Papist neither, but one that would not have a Protestant servant leave his religion, which he was going to do, thinking to recommend himself to his master by it; saying, that he had rather have an honest Protestant than a knavish Catholique. I was not called in to the Council and therefore home, first informing myself that my Lord Hinchingbroke hath been married this week to my Lord Burlington's daughter: so that that great business is over; and I am mighty glad of it, though I am not ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... little neglected. In truth, he was an odd fish; ignorant of common life, fond of rudely opposing receiv'd opinions, slovenly to extream dirtiness, enthusiastic in some points of religion, and a little knavish withal. ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... Bishop,—I have a strong suspicion that the inundation of the Nave at Rochester was a knavish conspiracy of the Tee-totallers to submerge the Cathedral during the absence of the Dean. The vergers have had Water-on-the-Brain, but Messrs. Bishop and Sons from London have assured Mr. Luard Selby that there is ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... falsehood. Fear'st thou not death? Fie, there's a knavish itch In that salt blood, an utter foe to smarting! Had Jaffier's wife proved kind, he'd still been ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Thomas Otway
... against us. If it were earlier in the campaign I'd say accept the issue, fight it out to a finish, and in the turn of events we should really have the best campaign material. But it is too late now to expose such a knavish trick of theirs on the Friday before election. Frankly, I believe discretion is the better part of valour in this case and without abating a jot of my faith in you, Travis, well, I'd pay first and expose the fraud afterward, after the election, ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... The magnet appears to have a curious effect on my patient's system! What a fuss she makes! How terrified she is! The Bee seemed utterly distraught at losing her bearings under the influence of my knavish tricks. Let us go to the nests and see what happens. We have not long to wait: my insect returns, but rid of its magnetic tackle. I recognize it by the traces of gum that still cling to the hair of the thorax. It goes back to its ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... London, he travelled over Europe, with no other capital than his knavish audacity, deep depravity, and his ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... her cunning and her son rejoiced and said, "May the Messiah never fail thee!" Then she took with her the Syrian Christians, and set out for the army of Baghdad. Now this accursed old woman was a witch of the witches, past mistress in sorcery and deception, knavish, crafty, debauched and perfidious, with foul breath, red eyelids, sallow cheeks, pale face, bleared eyes, mangy body, grizzled hair, humped back, withered complexion and running nostrils. She had studied the scriptures ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... barber's booth and go up to him saying, "What seekest thou, O thou?"; and the man would reply, "Take and dye me this thing." So the dyer would ask, "What colour wilt thou have it?" For, with all his knavish tricks his hand was in all manner of dyes; but he was never true to any one; wherefore poverty had gotten the better of him. Then he would take the stuff and say, "Give me my wage in advance and come to-morrow and take the stuff." So the stranger ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... "You know the word, then? By all means let us be frank. I found Prince James in the palace. He accepted my company. We had some conversation, my lord. I present to you the results. You have used my name to warrant a silly, knavish plot for murdering Prince James in France. You entered upon a silly, knavish plot to murder him on this mad visit to London, and while engaging me to aid your motions against the Jacobites you gave me no advice ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... thoroughly depraved, vain, cunning, and selfish, or still good-hearted and susceptible of better feelings; the simple and clownish, and the cunning slave who assists his young master in cheating his old father, and by all manner of knavish tricks procures him money for the gratification of his passions; (as this character plays a principal part, I shall shortly make some further observations on it;) the flatterer or accommodating parasite, who, for the sake of a good meal, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... and desperate line of politics, and he claims, from some pretended tie of guardianship or relationship, which he does not deign to explain but which he seems to have been able to pass current on a silly country Justice and his knavish clerk, a right to direct and to control my motions. The danger which awaited me in England, and which I might have escaped had I remained in Scotland, was doubtless occasioned by the authority of this man. But what my poor ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... which he possessed, that, in aspiring to emulate it, he was wasting, in a hopeless attempt, powers which might render him pre-eminent in a different career, was a lesson which he did not learn till late. As those knavish enthusiasts, the French prophets, courted inspiration by mimicking the writhings, swoonings, and gaspings which they considered as its symptoms, he attempted, by affected fits of poetical fury, to bring on a real paroxysm; ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... these knavish traders gave their customers, who could not conveniently pay their money down, was carried to an exorbitant charge; since, even in Elizabeth's reign, it was one of the popular grievances brought into Parliament—it is there called, "A ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... very trying. Once he gave up writing letters for a long time, to see whether Johnson would be induced to write first. Johnson became anxious, though he half-guessed the truth, and in reference to Boswell's confession gave his disciple a piece of his mind. "Remember that all tricks are either knavish or childish, and that it is as foolish to make experiments upon the constancy of a friend as upon the ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... and which lives so vividly in my memory. Sometimes I think that Mr. Gladstone has the same superstition. He has moments—especially if there be the stress of the sheer brutality of obstructive and knavish hostility—when he seems to retire into himself—to transfer himself on the wings of imagination to regions infinitely beyond the reach, as well as the ken, of the land in which the Lowthers, the ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... gear They spend the one half of the year; In gathering gear and knavish art They somehow ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... which she considered dangerous. The author thus symbolizes the eternal conflict between the past and the future. He has analyzed with consummate art the characters of his two heroes. Peter is a man full of contrasts; he is, like many Russians, "a brute and a child," by turns violent and gentle, knavish and simple, cruel and kind, practical and mystical, proud and modest. Possessed of a prodigious activity, he conceives tremendous projects which he immediately wants to put into execution, inspecting everything, ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... to be no more than a beggar's bag, bottle and staff, suitable to their present condition, but so little satisfying, that Newfangle receives a terrible drubbing for his trick. Judge Severity arrives on the scene conveniently to lecture him severely and witness his second knavish device, which is no other than to hand over to the Judge the two fugitives from justice, Cutpurse and Pickpurse, for the piece of land of which he spoke is the gallows. Hankin Hangman takes possession of his victims, and the Devil, entering ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... was a much-altered man; not that he had become a good clerk at his old office—such a change one may say was impossible; there were no good clerks at the Internal Navigation, and Charley had so long been among navvies the most knavish or navviest, that any such transformation would have met with no credence—but out of his office he had become a much- altered man. As Katie had said, it was as though some one had come to him from the dead. He could not ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... resources and prosperous business, should devise a plan for throwing discredit on his own notes with the view of having them bought up at a discount, ruinous to the holders and immensely profitable to his own knavish pocket. This comparison may faintly illustrate the wrongfulness of the policy, but not its consummate folly—for in the case of the Government, unlike the merchant, the stern necessity would recur of making good in the end, by the payment of hard coin, all the discount that might be gained by the ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... was on both the obverse and reverse of the coin. Beaumont and Fletcher, in the 'Scornful Lady,' show the difference between the penny and three-farthing piece, and inform us of a knavish trick then practised, to impose upon ignorant people the lesser as the greater coin. Lovelass, speaking of Morecraft, the usurer, says: 'He had a bastard, his own toward issue, whipt and thin cropt, for washing out the rose in three farthings ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... mine eyes some half an hour; When, lo, to interrupt my purpos'd rest, Toward that shade I might behold addrest The king and his companions: warily I stole into a neighbour thicket by, And overheard what you shall overhear; That, by and by, disguis'd they will be here. Their herald is a pretty knavish page, That well by heart hath conn'd his embassage: Action and accent did they teach him there; 'Thus must thou speak' and 'thus thy body bear,' And ever and anon they made a doubt Presence majestical would put ...
— Love's Labour's Lost • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... which announce the era when that refractory animal, the working or serving man, shall be a buried by-gone, a superseded fossil. Shortly prior to which glorious time, I doubt not that a price will be put upon their peltries as upon the knavish 'possums,' especially the boys. Yes, sir (ringing his rifle down on the deck), I rejoice to think that the day is at hand, when, prompted to it by law, I shall shoulder this gun ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... into the whole world. They tied up their horses and went together into the cave. Grimur, seeing strangers, at once challenged them to fight; but looking round anxiously for Nagelring, he missed it, whereupon he cursed the knavish Alpris, who had assuredly stolen it from him. However, he snatched from the hearth the blazing trunk of a tree and therewith attacked Theodoric. Meanwhile Hildebrand, taken at unawares, was caught hold of by Hildur, who clung so tightly round his neck that he could ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... in office is in confederacy with the whole clan of his district or dependence, which in modern terms of art is called, "To live, and let live;" and yet their gains are the smallest part of the public's loss. Give a guinea to a knavish land-waiter, and he shall connive at the merchant for cheating the Queen of an hundred. A brewer gives a bribe to have the privilege of selling drink to the Navy; but the fraud is ten times greater than the bribe, and the public ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... Schumann's enthusiastic effusion was a prophecy rather than a criticism. But although we may fail to distinguish in Chopin's composition the flirting of the grandee Don Juan with the peasant-girl Zerlina, the curses of the duped lover Masetto, and the jeers and laughter of the knavish attendant Leporello, which Schumann thought he recognised, we all obey most readily and reverently his injunction, "Hats off, gentlemen: a genius!" In these words lies, indeed, the merit of Schumann's review ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... still covered the site of Minturnae. With all this, however, they suffered more severely from the inclement season than their robust adversaries. Numbers daily sickened and died. They were much straitened, moreover, from want of provisions, through the knavish peculations of the commissaries who had charge of the magazines in Rome. Thus situated, the fiery spirits of the French soldiery, eager for prompt and decisive action, and impatient of delay, gradually ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... individuals who, in the true spirit of hardened imposture, braved all the fury of the elements in carrying out their principles—so true is it, that a rogue will often advance farther in the pursuit of a knavish object, than an honest man will in the attainment of a just one. To them may be added the poor fool of the town, Joe Lockhart, who, from his childhood, was known to be indifferent to all changes of weather, and who now, elated by the festive spirit ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... Confound such knavish tricks! Yet know I five or six Smokers who freely mix Still with their neighbors,— Jones, who, I'm glad to say, Asked leave of Mrs. J., Daily absorbs a clay After ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... wid a candle in yer fist, an' ye can pray till yer teeth dhrop out iv yer head." This irreverence is probably one of the accursed fruits of contact with the sacrilegious Saxon. "The people here are cowardly, knavish, and ignorant," said an Irishman twenty years resident in Westport. "They believe anything the priests tell them, and they will do anything the priests may order or even hint at. They would consider it an honour if the priests told them to ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... practitioner, and to the scientific student of mind and body and of the properties of the materia medica. Why, even here in Connecticut, it is impossible to get a law to protect the community from the imposition of knavish or ignorant quacks, and to require of a man some evidence of capacity and training and skill, before he is let loose to experiment upon suffering humanity. Our teachers must pass an examination—though ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Grecian origin, that the plot was not Roman, that the scene was not Roman, that the customs were not Roman; he would say, if he had patience to reason with his antagonist, that a fashionable rake, a grasping father, an indulgent uncle, a knavish servant, an impudent ruffian, and a timid clown, were the same at Rome, at Thebes, and at Athens, in London, Paris, or Madrid. He would ask, of what value were such broad and general features common to a species, when the fidelity ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... Mantinea. He's a knavish fellow; his backers are recalling their bets. But he hopes to win on a trick; beware, lest he trip ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... girl loves me, it is true, but no persuasion of mine could ever induce her to break her promise. She belongs to Griffith Hawke, and she will marry him. And even if it were possible to win her, honor and duty, which I have always held sacred, would keep me from such a knavish trick. If I proved unfaithful to my trust, could I ever hold up ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon
... ARE these your knavish tricks, replied the dame, With eyes upon her maid that darted flame; When I by chance observ'd about your toe, A thread one night, I then resolv'd to know Your scheme in full, and round my own I tied A clue, on which ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... A KNAVISH attorney asking a very worthy gentleman what was honesty, "What is that to you?" said he; "meddle with those things ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... discountenance bird-fowling, and to buy up draughts of fishes and bid them be thrown into the water again, and to forbid killing any but wild animals, much more noble is it, in dissensions and differences with human beings, to be a generous, just and true enemy, and to check and tame all bad and low and knavish propensities, that in all intercourse with friends a man may keep the peace and abstain from doing an injury. Scaurus was an enemy and accuser of Domitius, but when one of Domitius' slaves came to him to reveal some important matters which were unknown to Scaurus, he would not hear ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... French tragedy, red-heeled, patched, and be-periwigged, lies in the grave; and it is only the ghost of it that we see, which the fair Jewess has raised. There are classical comedies in verse, too, wherein the knavish valets, rakish heroes, stolid old guardians, and smart, free-spoken serving-women, discourse in Alexandrines, as loud as the Horaces or the Cid. An Englishman will seldom reconcile himself to the roulement of the verses, and the painful recurrence of the rhymes; for my ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... ill-humours, thy sarcasms, thy swearings, thy kicks, and buffets; often, when in the bestial sleep of drunkenness he has found thee stretched helpless on thy floor, with a kindly hand he has moved away the sharp fender, too near that knavish head, now bent on his ruin, or closed the open window, lest the keen air, that thy breath tainted, should visit thee with rheum and fever. Small has been his guerdon for uncomplaining sacrifice of the few hours spared to this weary ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... But while he was singing of all these, his heart was bent on other matters. And he took the hollow lyre and laid it in his sacred cradle, and sprang from the sweet-smelling hall to a watch-place, pondering sheer trickery in his heart—deeds such as knavish folk pursue in the dark night-time; for he longed to ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... life, as the manner in which it is developed from the modern fashion of composition. The lover remains in the country and the heroine in her chamber during the whole action, leaving their fate to be decided by a foolish father, a cunning mother, and two knavish servants. Machiavelli has executed his task with judgment and taste. He has accommodated the plot to a different state of society, and has very dexterously connected it with the history of his own times. The ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... pillar, round which stood a set of men, some rough, some knavish-looking, with the blue coats, badges, short swords, and bucklers carried by serving-men. They were waiting to be hired, as if in a statute fair, and two or three loud-voiced bargains were going on. In the middle aisle, gentlemen in all ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... traveller with hard eyes. "You called him a thrush, Nick, but I have a notion he is more of a knavish jackdaw. I have seen this gentleman before. You ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... like to look at the creature; if it is a true Iroquois I can tell him by his knavish look, and by his paint," said the scout; stepping past the charger of Heyward, and entering the path behind the mare of the singing master, whose foal had taken advantage of the halt to exact the maternal contribution. After shoving aside the bushes, and proceeding ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... through this magnificent land, must make up his mind to submit to much fatigue, some danger, and innumerable annoyances; such as filth, bad fare, the continual torment of vermin; lodgings, to which a stable with clean hay would be in comparison a paradise; knavish attempts at imposition of various kinds, etc. He must mount on a mule whose saddle is of rude and of abominable construction; whose bit is a sort of iron vice, which clasps the animal's nose and under-jaw, and every day wears away the flesh; and whose bridle is a piece of ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... was nonplussed at such an adventure, which was turning out so seriously, first of all, flew into a terrible rage, and nearly rushed off to the lawyer's office, and threatened to cut off his knavish ears for him, but when his access of fury was over, and thinking better of it, he shrugged ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... head—bearing three measures of matama and half a measure of rice, of which he begged, with paternal smiles, my acceptance. But under his smiling mask, bleared eyes, and wrinkled front was visible the soul of trickery, which was of the cunningest kind. Responding under the same mask adopted by this knavish elder, I said, "The chief of Kingaru has called me a rich sultan. If I am a rich sultan why comes not the chief with a rich present to me, that he might get a rich return?" Said he, with another leer of his wrinkled visage, "Kingaru is poor, ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... "you are deceived. You do not know the lawyer. He is the most cunning and knavish of men. I beseech you not to make Orso do a thing that would ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... them not. For this I overlook your prying—nay, more, I will in confidence explain the secret of this chamber; but, mark you! keep it, or I shall soil my rapier with thy knavish blood. This private entrance hath much served me (showing ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... at all understand the furious resentment they rouse in the bosoms of the majority. Mistaken they may be; but why yell them down as knavish blasphemers? Our reverence, after all, is given not to an Elizabethan named William Shakespeare, who was born at Stratford, and married, and migrated to London, and became a second-rate actor, and afterwards returned to Stratford, and made a will, and composed a few lines of doggerel ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... part it is in the brain that deceives them, although I may not deny, but that oftentimes the devil deludes them, takes his opportunity to suggest, and represent vain objects to melancholy men, and such as are ill affected. To these you may add the knavish impostures of jugglers, exorcists, mass-priests, and mountebanks, of whom Roger Bacon speaks, &c. de miraculis naturae et artis. cap. 1. [2705]they can counterfeit the voices of all birds and brute beasts almost, all tones and tunes of men, and speak within their throats, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... My Money" in the production of a play called "The Spanish Moor's Tragedy." More than half a century afterward a tragedy in which a Spanish Moor is the principal and indeed the only considerable agent was published, and attributed—of all poets in the world—to Christopher Marlowe, by a knavish and ignorant bookseller of the period. That "Lust's Dominion; or, the Lascivious Queen," was partly founded on a pamphlet published after Marlowe's death was not a consideration sufficient to offer any impediment ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... we reached the confines of the Kikuyu country, along which our further route to the Naivasha led. The evil reports of the knavish, hateful character of this people were repeated to us in a yet stronger form by the Kapte Masai, their immediate neighbours. But we had in the meantime received from another source a very different ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... all smoke and fire and tarnish, which bore the same ratio to his small body of merit that a comet's tail, measuring billions of miles, does to the little cometary mass. The rage against him was embittered by politics, and indeed sometimes by knavish tricks; the first not being always 'confounded,' nor the last 'frustrated.' So that Parker, on the whole, was a man whom it might be held a duty to hate, and therefore, of course, to knout as often as you ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... less information to impart, but on the other hand there were the thousands of knavish tricks to tell about. And father Lasse shook his head and comprehended nothing; but he ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... shuffle &c (lie) 544; live by one's wits, sail near the wind. disgrace oneself, dishonor oneself, demean oneself; derogate, stoop, grovel, sneak, lose caste; sell oneself, go over to the enemy; seal one's infamy. Adj. dishonest, dishonorable; unconscientious, unscrupulous; fraudulent &c 545; knavish; disgraceful &c (disreputable) 974; wicked &c 945. false-hearted, disingenuous; unfair, one-sided; double, double- hearted, double-tongued, double-faced; timeserving^, crooked, tortuous, insidious, Machiavelian, dark, slippery; fishy; perfidious, treacherous, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... it was given against him. At the critical moment of the Bologna interview this cardinal unfortunately died: he had left his sentiments, however, in the hands of his nephew, the Cardinal of Ravenna, who, knowing the value of his legacy, was disposed to make a market of it. It was a knavish piece of business. The English ambassadors offered 3000 ducats; Charles bid them out of the field with a promise of church benefices to the extent of 6000 ducats; he did not know precisely the terms of the judgment, or even on which side it inclined, but in either case the ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... Louisiana was widely different. In that State the corruption of the Republican managers was flagrant; it extended to the manipulation of election returns; and the Federal Government interfered freely, and with notable results. A knot of knavish adventurers were in control,—Henry C. Warmoth, William P. Kellogg, F. F. Casey, and United States Marshal S. B. Packard. Casey was the President's brother-in-law, and General Grant was almost as incapable of believing a relative of his to be a bad man as he was incapable ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... spiritus rector of that visionary Van Helmont, his simple, elementary water, his gas, ferments, and transmutations; nor shall I enlarge upon the salt, sulphur, and oil, the acidum vagum, the mercury of metals, and the volatilised vitriol of other modern chemists, a pack of ignorant, conceited, knavish rascals, that puzzle your weak heads with such jargon, just as a Germanised m——r throws dust in your eyes, by lugging in and ringing the changes on the balance of power, the Protestant religion, and your allies on the continent; acting like the ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... an usher to recover one penny of it—the legal condition of his doing so being his actual possession of the schoolhouse itself, of which Jack, by this last manoeuvre, had contrived to deprive him. But, as if to finish the matter, and to prove the knavish spirit in which this protestation was made, he instantly got a private friend and relative of his own, with whom the whole scheme had been arranged beforehand, to come forward and bring an action on the case, in which the latter claimed the whole fund ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... trick again, and trying who can keep silence longest? Remember that all tricks are either knavish or childish; and that it is as foolish to make experiments upon the constancy of a friend, as upon the ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... themselves, as well as to others! I give a literary curiosity of this kind. A member of the House of Commons, in the reign of Elizabeth, made a speech entirely composed of the most homely proverbs. The subject was a bill against double payments of book-debts. Knavish tradesmen were then in the habit of swelling out their book-debts with those who took credit, particularly to their younger customers. One of the members who began to speak "for very fear shook," and stood silent. The nervous orator was followed by a blunt and true representative ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... possibility of escape. Just as they turned into a sort of corridor, leading to the passages more immediately connected with the place of their destination, they encountered Humphry Lathom. The same half-stupid, half-knavish expression of face was now lighted up by a ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... as the letter hinted, that some years ago, and for two successive seasons, the Reservists' training happening to fall at a time when fish was plentiful and all hands making money, he, with one or two other men, had conspired with a knavish Chief Officer of Coastguard to put a fraudulent trick on the Government. It was the Chief Officer who actually played the trick, entering them up as having served a course which they had never attended, ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... bank. Night after night, accompanied by his stout young vicar, Don Giorgio Appolloni, the Cardinal worked there as hard as any hard-working curate: visiting the sick, comforting the afflicted, admonishing the knavish, persuading the drunken from their taverns, making peace between the combative. Not infrequently, when he came home, he would add a pair of stilettos to his already large collection of such relics. And his homecomings were apt to be late—oftener than not, ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... his stupid vanity, he had fancied that his own personal attractions had won her heart and her allegiance, and that she, and not himself, was the victim. He had tried to use her in the accomplishment of outside purposes; to make a tool of her in carrying forward his mercenary or knavish ends. Other men had striven to hide their unlovely affairs from her, but the new lover had exposed his, and claimed her assistance in carrying them forward. This was a degradation that she could not submit to. It did not natter her, or ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... softened also. National success was all that a patriotic poet could desire, and therefore in our national hymn have we gone on imploring the Lord to arise and scatter our enemies; to confound their politics, whether they be good or ill; and to expose their knavish tricks—such knavish tricks being taken for granted. And then, with a steady confidence, we used to declare how certain we were that we should achieve all that was desirable, not exactly by trusting ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... I maintain to be a flattery which takes the form of medicine; and tiring, in like manner, is a flattery which takes the form of gymnastic, and is knavish, false, ignoble, illiberal, working deceitfully by the help of lines, and colours, and enamels, and garments, and making men affect a spurious beauty to the neglect of the true beauty which ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... neutral merchantmen. As for the position into which Sweden has been lured by allowing her diplomatic agents to assist Germany's secret service, Mr. Punch would hardly go the length of saying that it justifies the revision of the National Anthem so as to read, "Confound their Scandi-knavish tricks." But he finds it hard to accept Sweden's professions of official rectitude, and so ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... certain monotony. The same incidents, romantic and humorous, are variously mingled to produce the imbroglio; the same typical characters—the braggart, the parasite, the pedant, the extravagant poet, the amorous old man, the designing woman, the knavish valet, the garrulous nurse—play their mirthful parts. If the types are studied from real life rather than adopted from Italian or Spanish models, they are exaggerated to absurdity. Corneille alone is distinguished ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... with my beloved?" He said, "Allah upon thee, O my lady, go back with me and look upon my mistress, and after I will with thee and look upon thy beloved." She answered, "It must needs be so, O accursed, for thou art a knavish devil; but I will not go with thee nor shalt thou come with me, save upon condition of a wager which is this. If the lover thou lovest and of whom thou boastest so bravely, prove handsomer than mine whom ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... trembled When he struck, With his broad head, 'Gainst the old column of the house-wall. Uller's splendid flatterer Swung the iron beam Straight 'gainst the head Of the knavish giant. ...
— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre
... attachment of Lucy to another. A consciousness of his utter meanness and degradation of spirit in consenting to marry any woman under such circumstances, filled him with shame even to glance at it. He feared, besides, that if her knavish father had heard it, he would at once have attributed his conduct to its proper motives—that is to say, an eagerness to get into the possession and enjoyment of the large fortune to which she was entitled. He himself, in his conversations with ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... their ends by subtly infusing a semi-sense of volitional power into the minds of their intended victims, so that at last they come to believe themselves to be self-acting, when in fact they are the merest shuttlecocks bandied about between the battledores of knavish devils on one side, and devilish knaves upon the other, and between the two the poor fallen wretches ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... slave of one passion which is the master of the rest: Is he not the very image of the State? He has had no education, or he would never have allowed the blind god of riches to lead the dance within him. And being uneducated he will have many slavish desires, some beggarly, some knavish, breeding in his soul. If he is the trustee of an orphan, and has the power to defraud, he will soon prove that he is not without the will, and that his passions are only restrained by fear and not by reason. Hence he leads a divided existence; in ...
— The Republic • Plato
... I replied, "whether he be Chinee or any other he, is always up to tricks. Was not England specially prepared by an all-wise Providence to frustrate these knavish tricks? Which of such particular tricks may you be referring to at the moment, ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... your opinion, father; if we could get together some thirty trusty fellows, and the means of carrying our provisions, we would march from one end of the country to the other, and compel those knavish Indians at the point of our swords to deliver up their prisoners," answered Roger; "we might then, perchance, fall in also with Captain Audley, if he is, as I trust, still in ...
— The Settlers - A Tale of Virginia • William H. G. Kingston |
