"Overreach" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a commanding air bade Elisa follow on. She, rather tartly than otherwise, not out of malice, but of old habit, began to speak thus, "Many folk, knowing much, imagine that others know nothing, and so ofttimes, what while they think to overreach others, find, after the event, that they themselves have been outwitted of them; wherefore I hold his folly great who setteth himself without occasion to test the strength of another's wit. But, for that maybe all are not of my opinion, it pleaseth me, whilst following on the ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... are behind the large marks made by the hind feet, because the rabbit overreaches each time; the hind feet track ahead of the front feet; the faster he goes, the farther ahead those hind feet get; and what would happen if he multiplied his speed by ten I really cannot imagine. This overreach of the hind feet takes place ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... King's daughter shall not overreach us;' and, loading his gun, he shot so cleverly, that he shot away the horse's skull from under the runner's head, without its hurting him. Then the runner awoke, jumped up, and saw that his pitcher was empty and the ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... doubt what his eyes see with regard to this matter. Secondly, a man must not lean on his senses touching matters that come not within the discerning of sense. Now in regard to this bread, the Papists do overreach themselves. Did they but tell us that the change made was mystical and of faith,—not within the discernment of sense—we might then find it harder work to deal withal, and we must seek unto the Word of God only, and not unto our sense in any wise. But they go farther: they ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... have rotted the flesh. As soon as the grievance was shown to James, he expressed his abhorrence of the practice, and even declared that no person connected with the villanous fraud should escape punishment. The brother of his favourite, Buckingham, was known to be one, and with Sir Giles Overreach (as Massinger conceals the name of Mompesson), was compelled to fly the country. The style of James, in his speech, is indeed different from kings' speeches in parliament: he speaks as indignantly as any individual who was personally ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... but we differ from each other in this, that if you were in my place you would take the horse without giving an equivalent. Now I am a man of mercy, and if you will ask a fair price you shall have it. But mark me! Do not overreach yourself and kill the goose that is about to lay the ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... sold even the royal arms and ammunition, which had been entrusted to them, whence much passed into the hands of the Moros. The alcaldes were said to influence the commanders of the cruisers, and the latter to overreach the alcaldes; but both usually made common cause. La Perouse also relates (ii., p. 357), that the alcaldes bought a very large number of persons who had been made slaves by the pirates (in the Philippines); so that the latter were not usually brought to Batavia where ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... composure I presented in the course of half a minute. 'Let us take it for granted,' says Sir Patrick, 'that this man unknown has really tried to deceive Miss Silvester, as you and I suppose. I can tell you one thing: it's as likely as not that, in trying to overreach her, he may (without in the least suspecting it) have ended in ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... boundless power over his countrymen. He possessed, also, a rare perception of human character, together with an iron memory which never lost a face, a place, or an event, once seen or known. He read the minds even the faces of men, like printed books. No man could overreach him, excepting only those to whom he gave his heart. He might be mistaken where he had confided, never where he had been distrustful or indifferent. He was deceived by Renneberg, by his brother-in-law Van den Berg, by the Duke ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... fact that the periods of time, though apparently, were not really coincident at the beginning point, the Treasury report including a considerable sum now which had previously been reported from the Interior, sufficiently large to greatly overreach the sum derived from the three months now reported upon by the Interior and not by the Treasury. The Indian tribes upon our frontiers have during the past year manifested a spirit of insubordination, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... draught of air. Indeed he looked like a Jew, though a good Christian enough, and laughed about it, because he said that this appearance of his served him well in his trade, since Jews were always feared, and it was held to be impossible to overreach them. ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard
... and teachers are not generally very rich. At last he went into business, starting in a small way, and worked his way up by degrees. But there was one thing he determined in the beginning: that he would be strictly honorable in all his dealings, and never overreach any one for the sake of making money. If there was a chance for him, Dick, there is a chance ...
— Ragged Dick - Or, Street Life in New York with the Boot-Blacks • Horatio Alger
... respects, God will easily allow you to dress and to adorn yourself, and to live with comfort, even to enjoy honor and considerable pleasure, so long as you keep within proper bounds; you should, however, not go beyond the limits of temperance and moderation. In other words, do not overreach propriety and self-restraint, regardless of real pleasure, in the endeavor to show off in excessive and unprofitable squandering. Such conduct results in confusion and trouble—chastisement sent of God; in taxes, extortion, robbing and stealing, until ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... pursues from point to point in the surrounding landscape finds statement in lines 34-60. Of these lines Sharp (Life of Browning, p. 159) says, "There is a gulf which not the profoundest search can fathom, which not the strongest-winged love can overreach: the gulf of individuality. It is those who have loved most deeply who recognize most acutely this always pathetic and often terrifying isolation of the soul. None save the weak can believe in the absolute union of ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... of cruelty are disappearing, and the butchery of men has greatly diminished. But most people apply to industrial pursuits a notion of antagonism derived from ages of warfare, and seek in all manner of ways to cheat or overreach one another. And as in more barbarous times the hero was he who had slain his tens of thousands, so now the man who has made wealth by overreaching his neighbours is not uncommonly spoken of in terms which imply approval. Though gentlemen, moreover, no longer assail one another with knives ...
— The Destiny of Man - Viewed in the Light of His Origin • John Fiske
... occupants. Their caution would only be the more increased on hearing of any commotion. Wait not, therefore, I implore you, for the dawning of the day: it could never dawn to you. Rivers I know too well; he would overreach you by some subtlety or other; and how easy, even while we speak, to shoot you down through these uneven logs. Trust not, trust not, I entreat you; there is a sure way of escape, and you still have time, if at once you ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... know him to be an incarnation of cunning, I should think he had lost his senses," replied Mr. Wyllys; "but happily for honest men, rogues generally overreach themselves; after they have spread their nets, made the mesh as intricate as possible, they almost invariably fall into their own snare. Such will, undoubtedly, be the result ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... lazily. "Intrepid little mother!" Then she added, in a different tone, "Don't you think there is any danger of our being too obliging? I'm not the only girl in town whose mother wishes her to oblige Dr. Ballard. May we not overreach ourselves?" ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... latter case, positive, personal pain, was the gist of the matter: in the former, the heart might be pierced, and the mind be overwhelmed, without the necessity of any such incurable affliction as children's deaths amount to. God's mercy may well have allowed the evil one to overreach himself; and when the restoration came, how double was the joy of Job over ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... seldom come before they have spent a large reckoning, and lost more then three of their five sences; thinking themselves no less rich then they are wise; and ly then very subtlely upon the catch to overreach another in a good and advantagious bargain; by which means they themselves are somtimes catcht by the nose with a mouldly old sort of unknown commodity, that they may walk home with, by weeping cross; and next morning there they stand and look as if they had suckt their Dam through a hurdle, ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... to public school with Frances. Not since our short attendance at the pioneer school in Sonoma had Georgia and I been schoolmates, and never before had we three sisters started out together with books in hand; nor did our expectations overreach the sum of happiness which the day had ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... The Indian could not believe the air-gun had killed the bird, because he did not hear the report. We have reversed the Indian mode of reasoning, and always believe it is the noise that kills the bird. Oh, Smith! think of the bellowings of Sir Giles Overreach—and Barbarossa—and Zanga—and the diabolical howlings of Belvidera, and Isabella, and the Mourning Bride. Can people have no passion that don't disturb the whole neighbourhood with their noise? Can a woman not find out she ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... mark of a martial spirit, when they hear a son miscall, or see him domineer over a poor peasant, or a lackey, that dares not reply, nor turn again; and a great sign of wit, when they see him cheat and overreach his playfellow by some malicious treachery and deceit. Yet these are the true seeds and roots of cruelty, tyranny, and treason; they bud and put out there, and afterwards shoot up vigorously, and grow to prodigious ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... were so hollow that he seemed to be always sucking them in; and the sun had burnt him, not a wholesome red or brown, but dirty yellow. He had bright dark eyes, which he kept half closed; only peeping out of the corners, and even then with a glance that seemed to say, 'Now you won't overreach me; you want to, but you won't.' His arms rested carelessly on his knees as he leant forward; in the palm of his left hand, as English rustics have their slice of cheese, he had a cake of tobacco; in his ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... draw him into some of his schemes. He did not know that both the barrel factory and the gas enterprise had recently become veritable white elephants on Tandy's hands. He did not know that Tandy—in his eagerness to overreach Hallam—had "stretched himself out like a string," as Hallam picturesquely put it—by investing more money in these two companies, and several others, than he could just then spare. Especially, he did not ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... own use. Under the skillful and attentive hands of my hostler he soon shook off his shaggy coat of ugly brown, and put on one of velvety black. After a few days of trial I discovered not only that he was an easy goer, but had the speed of the wind. When at his fastest pace he is liable to overreach; it was thus that his left fore hoof had been shattered. To prevent a recurrence of the accident, I keep his hoof protected by leathers. I believe he is the fastest horse in the ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... compare Convennole to a whetstone, which is blunt itself, but which sharpens others. His old master, however was sharp enough to overreach him in the matter of borrowing and lending. When the poet had collected a considerable library, Convennole paid him a visit, and, pretending to be engaged in something that required him to consult Cicero, borrowed a copy of ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... of the moment for throwing himself into a part passionately;—the fact being exactly the reverse in his regard, according to the earliest and most accurate of his biographers. Erratic, fitful though the genius of Edmund Kean unquestionably was—rendering him peerless as Othello, incomparable as Overreach—we are told in Mr. Procter's life of him, that "he studied long and anxiously," frequently until many hours after midnight.{*} No matter what his occupations previously might have been, or how profound his exhaustion through rehearsing in the ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... (Sec. 17.) "To the third category belong a great number of animals in high position or of individuals who are remarkable neither for their mind nor for their energy, but who, by their position, have wealth, connections, influence, power. We must exploit them in every possible manner, overreach them, deceive them, and, getting hold of their dirty secrets, make them our slaves." (Sec. 18.) ... "The fourth class is composed of sundry ambitious persons in the service of the State and of liberals of various shades of opinion. With them we can conspire after their own program, ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... primitive scenes and events of his solitary existence. He was, in many things, as simple as a child: as credulous, as unsophisticated. Yet the utmost cunning of the wily savage—all the strategy of Indian warfare—was not sufficient to deceive or overreach him! Though one might have expected that his life of ceaseless watchfulness would make him skeptical and suspicious, his confidence was given heartily, without reservation, and often most imprudently. If ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... faith. "Do not tell me, my dear friends," he said, at the conclusion of his address—"do not tell me that you believe, if your daily life is unworthy a believer. I will not trust you. What is your belief, if your heart is busy in contrivances to overreach your neighbour? What is it, if your mind is filled with envy, malice, hatred, and revenge? What if you are given over to disgraceful lusts—to drunkenness and debauchery? What if you are ashamed to speak the truth, and are willing to become a liar? I tell you, and I have warrant ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... stepmother to Tom Allworth. Sir Giles Overreach thought she would marry his nephew Wellborn, ...
— 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.
... gleefully replies, "By theft! What a thief stole, you steal from the thief! Could anything be easier? Only, Alberich is on his guard, you will have to proceed craftily if you would overreach the robber... in order to return their treasure to the Rhine-daughters, who earnestly ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... and so far at any rate they agreed with me. Nay, they had eyes, mouths, legs, if not arms, and feet, so there was much in which we were both of a mind, but surely they must be mistaken in arming themselves so very heavily. Any creature on getting what the turtle aimed at would overreach itself and be landed not in safety but annihilation. It should have no communion with the outside world at all, for death could creep in wherever the creature could creep out; and it must creep out somewhere ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... namely, the treachery and craft with which they attempt to overreach one another in war, may be illustrated by a short saga told by Ssanang Setzen, and probably relating to this period of Temudjin's career. It is curious how circumstantial many of these traditions are. "At that time," he says, "Buke Chilger of the Taidshuts ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... there is no pleasant living with those whose language we do not understand, and, as St. Augustine teaches, a man would more readily live with his dog than with a foreigner, less pleasant certainly is our converse with those who make use of frauds artificially covered, overreach their hearers by deceits, address them insidiously, observe the right moment, and catch at words to their purpose, by which truth is hidden under a covering; and so on the other hand nothing is sweeter than the society of those, who both love and ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... otherwise than for its material ends. A dollar never meant anything to him except its equivalent in the filling of a need. Generosity and the impulse of giving were in his blood, yet it had gone hard several times with people who had tried to overreach him even to a trifling extent. But now he submitted without a word to losing ten dollars through cashing Arthur Carroll's worthless check. He himself was rather bewildered at his tame submission. One thing was certain, although it seemed paradoxical; if he had not had suspicions as to ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... whose lives are passed entirely in active exercise, under no roof but that of heaven. Dark-browed women in the very meridian of beauty bring up the rear, dragging or carrying a race of swarthy progeny, all alike distinguished for the sparkling eyes and raven hair, which, with a cunning nothing can overreach, and a nature nothing can tame, seem to be the peculiar inheritance of the Gipsy. Their costume is striking, not to say grotesque. Some of the girls, and all the matrons, bind their brows with various coloured handkerchiefs, which form a very picturesque and not unbecoming head-gear; whilst ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... writing in the light of later knowledge, and even, setting that aside, I am very far from agreeing with his psychological deduction. Just as a shy man will so overreach himself in his efforts to dissemble his shyness as to assume an air of positive arrogance, so might a pure lady who had succumbed as Miss Armytage pretended, upon finding herself forced to such self-accusation, bear herself with a boldness which was no more than a mask upon the shame and ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... for the conveyance of his person through the streets of his metropolis. They are very poorly furnished and nasty, far below similar conveyances in any continental city with which we are acquainted. Greater fault still is to be found with the drivers, a large proportion of whom are so prone to overreach, that it is hardly possible to settle for their fares without a squabble. Our experience leads us to say, that at an average a stranger pays 30 per cent. above the proper sum, besides having his temper in almost every instance ruffled to some ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various
... between being at ease and being pinched during twelve months. If the bill had passed, if the gentry and yeomanry of the kingdom had found that it was possible for them to obtain a welcome remission of taxation by imposing on a Shylock or an Overreach, by a retrospective law, a fine not heavier than his misconduct might, in a moral view, seem to have deserved, it is impossible to believe that they would not soon have recurred to so simple and agreeable a resource. In every age it is easy to find rich men who have done bad things ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Ephraim Canaanised) has deceitful balances in his hand, and loves to overreach. Ephraim indeed saith, I am become rich, I have gained weealth; but all his profits will not suffice for (expiation of) the guilt ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... at once—want of honesty. The Greek was not to be depended on; if it suited him, he would lie, betray, overreach, change sides, and think it no sin. He was the sharpest of men. Sharp practice, in our modern sense of the word, was the very element in which he floated. Any scholar knows it. In the grand times of Marathon and Salamis, down to the disastrous ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... sometimes overreach themselves. How she suggested it to me, I cannot pretend to have discovered. But I did certainly suspect that she had led Philip, while they were together downstairs, into saying to her what he had already said to Miss Jillgall. I was ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... speculations as to what might be going on in London just then, were round him again, like armed giants, in another moment, and the riches or hypocrisy of his host were no more to him than those of Overreach or Tartuffe. ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu |
