"Mischief-making" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... if I were a man. I wonder how long the old general has been dead? No, Ermine, you need not shake your head at me. I don't mean even to let Miss Curtis tell me if she would. I know confidences from partisan relations are the most mischief-making things in ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... not a misunderstanding about a manuscript arisen between the young editor and the greatest scholar that had appeared in Europe since the revival of letters, Richard Bentley. The manuscript was in Bentley's keeping. Boyle wished it to be collated. A mischief-making bookseller informed him that Bentley had refused to lend it, which was false, and also that Bentley had spoken contemptuously of the letters attributed to Phalaris, and of the critics who were taken in by such counterfeits, which was perfectly true. Boyle, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... have been present at that interview between Clare and her parents. I should like to have seen Pinkerton provided by his innocent little daughter with the sensation of his life, and Leila Yorke, the author of Falsely Accused forced to realise her own abominable mischief-making; forced also to realise that her messages from the other side had been as lacking in accuracy as, unfortunately, messages from this side, too, so often are. I hoped the affair Hobart would be a lesson to both Pinkertons. ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... vigour every time she opened her lips. Even his wife, so quick as a rule of comprehension, had not grasped how this poem had changed their situation, and how it behoved them now not to abuse their mistress before a mischief-making young man. She was blinded, he knew, by her hatred of Miss Estcourt. Women were always the slaves, in defiance of their own interests, to some emotion or other; if it was not love, then it was hatred. Never could they wait for anything whatever. The passing passion must out and be ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... has not always the plea of self-interest for his meanness. Often enough his tale-bearing or his mischief-making can not only do his victims incalculable harm, but cannot do ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... about with all sorts of people, Kate," said he, as we took about our twentieth turn, each of which I had protested should be the last; "but the world is so officious and mischief-making, you must never believe a word it says. They know I am ruined, and they choose to decide that I must be making up to some wealthy young lady. As if I was a man to marry for money; as if I cared for anything on earth but one person, and that ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... travelled to his home, where he made his preparations for receiving the king, as if nothing were further from his thoughts than mischief-making and guile. ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... he first heard that the dance was to take place, intended inviting Helen to accompany him. He had taken her acceptance for granted, he having acted as her escort to so many dances and social affairs. So he neglected inviting her and then came Issy's mischief-making remarks and the trouble which followed. So, as inviting her was out of the question, he resolved not to attend, himself. But Miss Fosdick urged so prettily that he bought his ticket and promised to ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... an unmanly insult. You would wish to be proud of your daughters, and not to blush for them; then seek for them an interest and an occupation which shall raise them above the flirt, the manoeuvrer, the mischief-making tale-bearer. Keep your girls' minds narrow and fettered; they will still be a plague and a care, sometimes a disgrace to you. Cultivate them—give them scope and work; they will be your gayest companions in health, ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... grew intimate, very intimate, without knowing it, almost—indeed, I am not sure that we should ever have known it had it not been for the mischief-making ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... Island concurred, but ungraciously and ineffectually late. She nursed two grudges against Massachusetts, one about the undeniably harsh treatment meted out to her great founder, Roger Williams, the other about that most fruitful source of inter-provincial mischief-making, a disputed boundary. New York lent some guns, which proved very useful. The ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood
... seemed to renew her endeavors to keep the sisters apart; she still carried spiteful tales to and fro, amplifying them with an irresistible histronic tendency. It had become a matter of self-exoneration with her then. She could not stop now without seeming to admit she had been mischief-making in the past. If the sisters should come together, ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... Vemund, Skuta's cousin, and Askel, Skuta's father) there is more continuity in the chronicle of wrongs and revenges, and, if this story be taken by itself, more form and definite design. The two rivals are well marked out and opposed to one another, while the mischief-making Vemund is well contrasted with his uncle Askel, the just man and the peacemaker, who at the end is killed in one of his nephew's feuds, in the fight by the frozen river from which Vemund escapes, while his enemy is drowned and his best friend gets ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... done, has been done; what he has not, has not been,—that's the black and white of it. I, for one have been game and square, no matter how much mischief I might have done. If I wished to dodge the punishment, I would not start it. Mischief and punishment are bound to go together. We can enjoy mischief-making with some show of spirit because it is accompanied by certain consequences. Where does one expect to see the dastardly spirit which hungers for mischief-making without punishment, in vogue? The fellows who like to borrow money but not pay it back, are ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri
... seemed all right when she arrived," said Polynesia—"tired from her long journey of course but otherwise all right. But what DO you think? That mischief-making sparrow, Cheapside, insulted her as soon as she came into the garden. When I arrived on the scene she was in tears and was all for turning round and going straight back to Brazil to-night. I had the hardest work persuading her to wait till you came. She's in the study. ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... Parliament of Erfurt. According to the theory now advanced by the Cabinet of Vienna the ancient Federal Constitution of Germany was still in force. All that had happened since March, 1848, was so much wanton and futile mischief-making. The disturbance of order had at length come to an end, and with the exit of the rioters the legitimate powers re-entered into their rights. Accordingly, there could be no question of the establishment of new Leagues. The old relation ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... the Boffins!' protested Miss Lavinia. I don't care who objects to their being called the Boffins. I WILL call 'em the Boffins. The Boffins, the Boffins, the Boffins! And I say they are mischief-making Boffins, and I say the Boffins have set Bella against me, and I tell the Boffins to their faces:' which was not strictly the fact, but the young lady was excited: 'that they are detestable Boffins, disreputable Boffins, odious Boffins, beastly ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... thought to be a night when witches, devils, and other mischief-making beings, are all abroad on their baneful, midnight errands: particularly, those aerial people, the fairies, are said, on that night to ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... occasion there was a disturbance in Asgard. Loki, a bad spirit, living there in disguise, had been playing tricks on the goddesses, and setting the gods by the ears through his mischief-making pranks, while leading them into many dangerous scrapes, though as yet he had not been found out. His children, too, were just as bad as himself, his son Fenris (Pain), a hideous howling wolf, being the terror of Asgard, ...
— Harper's Young People, August 24, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... us with a useful example. One member of the mischief-making brotherhood wrote the words 'gone bung' under a notice on the Government Savings Bank, and he was brought before the Police Court charged with damaging the bank's property to the extent of 3d. The offender offered the Bench his views on the bank, but the magistrates bluntly ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris |
