"Trickster" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the statesman and trickster, forsooth, Should have for a crisis no other recourse, Beneath the fair day-spring of light and of truth, Than the old brutum fulmen ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... need not expect from me, being, as her villainous countenance proved, one of the criminal class. The newspaper fell upon the floor, after apparently going through the figure, and there was a vacuum where it had been. I was not much shaken, however, although my theory of a human trickster dressed like a woman ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... though notably eccentric, could be depended upon for outright dealing in general; still Phyllis had a pretty substantial belief that in politics success lay largely on the side of the trickster. For many years the Colonel had been in the Legislature. No man had been able to beat him for the nomination. She had often heard him tell how he laid out his antagonists by taking excellent and popular short turns on them, and it was plain to her mind now that he was weaving ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... scheme, reads like an adventure from the "Arabian Nights." The personification of the Queen by a little dressmaker who happened to resemble her, the forgery of the Royal signature, the final attainment of the diamonds, all seemed so easy to this consummate trickster that it is small wonder she became intoxicated with success and blind to consequences. No sooner was the necklace in her possession than, of course, as fast as possible it was turned, not into money, but into money's worth. Houses and ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... So help me God, I'll bring you to book for it if I have to make a lifetime job of it! It's all right for your political backers; they are thieves and bushwhackers, and they make no secret of it. But there is one thing worse than a trickster, and ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... has, in my opinion, no legal right whatever, yet she will make a hard fight, and with that trickster Hobson to help her with his chicanery, it is liable to take some ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... there is nothing complicated; one thing follows another in a perfectly natural way; yet there are many questions in the reader's mind as to how the little rascal will turn out, and whether he will accomplish his mission. Much more cleverness is shown by the sleight-of-hand trickster, who, unassisted and in the open, with no accessories, dupes his staring assembly, than by him who, on the stage, with the aid of mirrors, lights, machines, and a crowd of assistants, manages to ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... and woman, too, has been put to death for saying less;—and the exile of my son to remember—yes; all that! He was Republican—I a Legitimist; I of the old, he of the new. Republics are good in theory; France might have given it a longer trial but for this trickster politician, who is called Emperor—by the grace ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... all the fine arts of manual operation, yet excel everybody in slight of hand and the delusive feats of activity."[16] Whatever may be said of Collins and his achievement, one fact remains constant. He was a brilliant and persistent trickster whose cunning in the techniques of polemic often silenced an opponent with every substantive right to ...
— A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing (1729) • Anthony Collins
... himself to win and wed this girl in cold and supreme indifference to her personality. And that pledge, how I cursed it during those days at Lavedan! How I cursed Chatellerault, cunning, subtle trickster that he was! How I cursed myself for my lack of chivalry and honour in having been lured so easily into so damnable a business! For when the memory of that wager rose before me it brought despair in its train. Had ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... exaction of superfluous accuracy, but, on the contrary, from too conscientious a wish to escape the mistakes which language not rigorous is apt to occasion. So far from seeking to "pettifogulize"—i.e., to find evasions for any purpose in a trickster's minute tortuosities of construction—exactly in the opposite direction, from mere excess of sincerity, most unwillingly I found, in almost every body's words, an unintentional opening left for double interpretations. Undesigned equivocation prevails every where; ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... that crucified sophist and live according to his laws. Therefore they despise all things and hold everything in common, having received such ideas from others, without any sufficient basis for their faith. If, then, any impostor or trickster who knows how to manage things came among them, he soon grew rich, imposing on these ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... crime and consequent misery which devastate the world. The clerk who spends more than he earns, is fast qualifying himself for a gambler and a thief; the trader or mechanic who overruns his income, is very certain to become in time a trickster and a cheat. Wherever you see a man spending faster than he earns, there look out for villainy to be developed, though it be the farthest thing possible from ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... also, that the Gossipy One stood well with the reigning powers, otherwise Benvenuto would not have thought to condemn his work and allude to the man as a dough-face, trickster, lickspittle, slanderer, vulture, vagrom, villain, vilifier and gnat's hind-foot. Cellini threatened to kill the man several times: he denounced him in public and used to call after him on the street, referring to him cheerfully ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... Gagniere, admitted among the ruck, was also of a pretty sunny tone. Then there was nothing else, nothing but Fagerolles' picture—an actress in front of her looking-glass painting her face. He had not mentioned it at first; but he now spoke of it with indignant laughter. What a trickster that Fagerolles was! Now that he had missed his prize he was no longer afraid to exhibit—he threw the School overboard; but you should have seen how skilfully he managed it, what compromises he effected, painting in a style which aped the audacity of ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... that here a higher life Is liv'd than that of seeking all the while For wealth, and pow'r, amid ignoble strife, Degrading unto husband, son or wife. The scholar's light, and blest religion's smile Ennobles, soothes and lends a joy to life— A pow'r, which counteracts the trickster's wile And blunts the edge ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... on to the stone-couch by leaps and bounds. But while intent upon removing the stuff from Pao-y's face, she simultaneously ejaculated: "Master Tertius, are you still such a trickster! I'll tell you what, you'll never turn to any good account! Yet dame Chao should ever correct and ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... purposes is it your place to judge me? Listen, I tell you. I have known for a year and a half that Wayne Shandon murdered his brother and robbed the dead body. I have seen, although all men know this fact as well as I do, that he has been trickster enough to cover his bloody tracks; that it would be hard to convict him in court. I have seen that it lay within my power, that it has become my duty, to punish him in another way. Not a thing have I done that is not just, that the law courts will not sanction. ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... had a friend, who pretended to quickwittedness and understanding; so he came up to him privily and said to him, 'Let me do, so I may put the change on this trickster, for I know him to be a liar and thou art near upon having to pay the money; but I will turn suspicion from thee and say to him, "The deposit is with me and thou erredst in imagining that it was with other than myself," ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... cases the figure is that of a mere trickster, a mischievous being, the hero of countless stories, who acts from caprice or malice, though his actions may result in advantage to men. Such are many of the animal forms of the North American Indians: the coyote of the Thompson River Indians,[1056] the raven of North British Columbia,[1057] ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... no virtues—where should I have got them from, forsooth, in a life like mine? I mean I have no women's virtues; but I have one that is sometimes—not always—a man's. 'Tis that I am not a coward and a trickster, and keep my word when 'tis given. You fear that I shall lead my lord a bitter life of it. 'Twill not be so. He shall live smoothly, and not suffer from me. What he has paid for he shall honestly have. I will ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... dissimulation; a heterogeneous mass of contradictory qualities; with nothing great but his crimes; and even those contrasted by the littleness of his motives, which at once denoted both his baseness and his meanness, and marked him for a traitor and a trickster. Nay, in his style and writing there was the same mixture of vicious contrarieties;— the most grovelling ideas were conveyed in the most inflated language, giving mock consequence to low cavils, and uttering quibbles in heroics; so that his compositions disgusted ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... use suggestion to bring about conviction and action without a basis of right and truth and in a bad cause, is to assume the terrible responsibility that must fall on the champion of error. Jesus scorned not to use suggestion so that he might move men to their benefit, but every vicious trickster has adopted the same means to reach base ends. Therefore honest men will examine well into their motives and into the truth of their cause, before seeking ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... was a man more Catholic than Father Hecker, simply, calmly, joyfully, entirely Catholic. What better proof of this than the rage into which his lectures and writings threw the outright enemies of the Church? Grave ministers lost their balance and foamed at him as a trickster and a hypocrite, all the worse because double-dyed with pretence ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... him confidence in you; he will conceive an opinion of your veracity, of which opinion you may afterward make very honest and fair advantages. But if, in negotiations, you are looked upon as a liar and a trickster, no confidence will be placed in you, nothing will be communicated to you, and you will be in the situation of a man who has been burned in the cheek; and who, from that mark, cannot afterward get an honest livelihood if he would, but must continue ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... began to understand what had happened, and to hate the trickster who had put on the feathers of an ostrich, in order to attack and kill the poor creature that lay there ...
— Pinocchio in Africa • Cherubini
... There is his style high-fantastical, which at its best touches a kind of fairylike inspiration, unique and charming—the style, for example, of Jimbo. Then, on a lower plane, there is the frankly bogie creepiness of John Silence. Between the two he has created a position for himself, half trickster, half wizard, that none else in modern literature could fill. His new book, Incredible Adventures (MACMILLAN), is a combination of both methods. Four of the five adventures are of the mystically gruesome kind, ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 2, 1914 • Various
... sorely troubled her. Hope as she might for the future, she could not shut her eyes to the past. She knew that her father had lived for years as a cheat and a trickster—now by one species of falsehood and trickery, now by another—rarely incautious, but always unscrupulous. How had this village seigneur of Normandy fallen into the Captain's toils; and what was the nature of the net that ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... and as having conspired against a state which had given him an honourable refuge, and brought disorder and bloodshed upon it. Between such contradictory statements, it is difficult to determine how much we should impute to the philosopher and how much to the trickster. In this uncertainty, the Pythagoreans reap the fruit of one of their favourite maxims, "Not unto all should all be made known." Perhaps at the bottom of these political movements lay the hope of establishing a central point of union for the numerous Greek colonies of Italy, which, though ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... The trickster inspector I loathe, sir! Or the canvasser's pencils that thieve; Voting early and often is nobler Than ballots ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 1, Saturday, April 2, 1870 • Various
... the clinging hands she put out to him. Her keen mind was on the alert instantly. What was at the bottom of it all? Perhaps the man was not dead. Perhaps this was just a little trick of Druro's to slip the toils he felt closing round his liberty—her toils! Being a trickster herself, she easily suspected trickery in others. Rapidly she turned the thing over in her mind. She had no intention of involving herself with a man who had got to pay the penalty for committing a crime—but nothing simpler for her than to repudiate him if anything so unpleasant ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... say to him all that comes into my head. But it came into my head to-day, as I stood gazing up at the equestrian statue at Charing Cross, that it would better become the English people to have John Hampden there than that miserable old trickster, ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... said Braxton—no longer the suave and polished trickster, but pale as chalk and trembling like a leaf. "This is assault and battery, and you'll answer to ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... her watch, for she said, "it might look pretty hard on the outside, but the inside works were all right." And so thought its jolly patrons. Seated at tables, well supplied with piles of gold and silver, where numerous disciples of that ancient trickster Pharaoh, being dubious perhaps of the propriety of adopting the literal orthography of his name, and ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... J. Edward O'Sullivan Addicks, votary of rotten finance, perpetual candidate for the United States Senate, wholesale debaucher of American citizenship and all-round corrupter of men—J. Edward O'Sullivan Addicks, a corporation political trickster, who has done more to hold up American laws, American elective franchises, and American corporations to the scorn of the civilized world than any other man of ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... trickster and genius of the quill," said he to William, "how is it about writing down the story? What does your ...
— Cast Away in the Cold - An Old Man's Story of a Young Man's Adventures, as Related by Captain John Hardy, Mariner • Isaac I. Hayes
... way that you can look at the question," retorted Farley promptly. "What we did for you, Darrin, is no more than we'd stand ready to do for any man in the brigade who was being ground down and out by a mean trickster." ...
— Dave Darrin's First Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... of a Trachinian sire, Henceforth will take good care, from far away To look on Troy and Atreus' children twain. Yea, where the trickster lords it o'er the just, And goodness languishes and rascals rule, —Such courses I will nevermore endure. But rock-bound Scyros henceforth shall suffice To yield me full contentment in my home. Now, to my vessel! And thou, Poeas' child, Farewell, right heartily ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... old man contrived to force Gould and his accomplices into paying for the stock fraudulently unloaded upon him. The best terms that he could get was an unsatisfactory settlement which still left him to bear a loss of about two millions. The veteran trickster had never before been overreached; all his life, except on one occasion, [Footnote: In 1837 when he had advanced funds to a contractor carrying the mails between Washington and Richmond, and had taken ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... this way of talking prettier than the game itself. But I said, Though I have won the game, I hope I am no trickster. No, said my master, God forbid but court-cards should sometimes win with honour! But you see, for all that, your game is as much owing to the knave as the king; and you, my fair-one, lost no advantage, when it was put into ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... Gamard bore to the luckless abbe were fated to remain eternally unknown to him,—not that they were difficult to fathom, but simply because he lacked the good faith and candor by which great souls and scoundrels look within and judge themselves. A man of genius or a trickster says to himself, "I did wrong." Self-interest and native talent are the only infallible and lucid guides. Now the Abbe Birotteau, whose goodness amounted to stupidity, whose knowledge was only, as it were, plastered on him by ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... [Footnote: A politician is a person versed in the science of government, from the Greek words polis, a city, polites, a citizen. Though a very honorable title, it has been debased in familiar usage until it has come to mean in turn a partisan, a dabbler in public affairs, and even an artful trickster.] ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... give an hour from any service I may follow to teach the Earl of Leicester that he is less a swordsman than a trickster." ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... his wits' end. Well might he be! Apart from the injury done to his family and belongings, his house was thronged night and day by inquisitive visitors from all sections of the country. He was denounced on the one hand as a trickster, and on the other as a man who must be guilty of some terrible secret sin, else he would not thus be vexed. Sermons were preached with him as the text. Factions were formed, angrily affirming and denying the supernatural character of the disturbances. News of the affair traveled even to ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... Betwixt the legs and mock the daily round. Yet thou canst more than mock: sometimes my tears At midnight break through bounden lids — a sign Thou hast a heart: and oft thy little leaven Of dream-taught wisdom works me bettered years. In one night witch, saint, trickster, fool divine, I think thou'rt Jester at the Court ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... make him give it back to you." Gunther stammers, "The ring! I gave him no ring—er—do you know him?" The rejoinder is obvious. "Then where are you hiding the ring that you had from me?" Gunther's confusion enlightens her; and she calls Siegfried trickster and thief to his face. In vain he declares that he got the ring from no woman, but from a dragon whom he slew; for he is manifestly puzzled; and she, seizing her opportunity, accuses him before the clan of having played ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... Jacob!" Not the God of Israel. Wonderful God! Blessed assurance, that "the God of Jacob is our refuge,"—the God who saves the man without character, irrespective of character,—makes of him,—Israel. Jacob, the supplanter, the trickster, the weak character, the warped character, the sinner, God takes, and through trials, tests, develops him and makes of him Israel,—a prince of God. That is God's plan with ...
— God's Plan with Men • T. T. (Thomas Theodore) Martin
... fits these pugilists into the texture of his autobiography, so he does men who appear not once but a dozen times. Take Jasper Petulengro out of the books and he does not amount to much. In them he is a figure of most masculine beauty, a king, a trickster, and thief, but simple, good with his fists, loving life, manly sport and fair play. He and Borrow meet and shake hands as "brothers" when they are little boys. They meet again, by chance, as big boys, and Jasper says: "Your blood beat when mine ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... soi-disant[Fr], humbug; adventurer; Cagliostro, Fernam Mendez Pinto; ass in lion's skin &c (bungler) 701; actor &c (stage player) 599. quack, charlatan, mountebank, saltimbanco[obs3], saltimbanque[obs3], empiric, quacksalver, medicaster[obs3], Rosicrucian, gypsy; man of straw. conjuror, juggler, trickster, prestidigitator, jockey; crimp, decoy, decoy duck; rogue, knave, cheat; swindler &c (thief) 792; jobber. Phr. "saint abroad and ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... the letters to Cecil Holsworthy. He read them through, half incredulously at first; he was too honest-natured himself to believe in the possibility of such double-dealing—that one could have innocent eyes and golden hair and yet be a trickster. He read them twice; then he compared them word for word with the simple affection and childlike tone of his own last letter received from the same lady. Her versatility of style would have done honour to a practised literary craftsman. ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... the evidence of science and their senses. The English Gladstonians who babble about brotherly love and conciliation should move about Dublin in disguise. Disguise would in their case be necessary to get at the truth, for Paddy is a shrewd trickster, and delights in humbugging this species of visitor, whom he calls "the slobbering Saxon." Then if they would return and still vote for Home Rule they are no less than traitors to their country and enemies to their ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... (short-tailed weasel) and Pewetseli (long-tailed weasel). These heroes are responsible for many of the natural features of the region so references to this myth are rather frequent. The Coyote, in the form of a rather malevolent and stupid trickster, and the Wolf, a generally patriarchal and protective figure, appear in several myths, as do cannibalistic giants and a giant ...
— Washo Religion • James F. Downs
... in the tricksters' fane, Who dupe yourself and trickster-chief, In blazing cafes spend the gain, But draw the blind, lest at his thief Some fresh-made beggar gives a glance And interrupts with steel the dance! But let him toilsomely tramp by, As I myself afar Follow no gilded car ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... personality, to herself. He even went farther in cynicism than she had ever gone, behaving like a convert to a religion which had the charm of novelty. He praised her for her capacities as a liar, a hypocrite, a subtle trickster, a thrower of dust in the eyes of her world. One of his favorite names for her was "dust-thrower." Sometimes he abused her. She believed that at moments he detested her. But he clung to her and he did not mean to give her up. And she ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... called, began preparations for the expedition that was to make both Egypt and himself rich beyond computation. Then followed a conversation with Haji Wali, whom age—he was 77—"had only made a little fatter and a little greedier," and the specious old trickster promised to accompany the expedition. As usual Burton began with a preliminary canter, visiting Moilah, Aynunah Bay, Makna and Jebel Hassani, where he sketched, made plans, and collected metalliferous specimens. ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... both a trickster and a humorist and sets the will of the species beyond the discernment of the individual. The picador has to blindfold his horse in order to get him into the bull-ring, and likewise Dan Cupid exploits the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... the Thames or Serpentine, making the plunge with a declaratory scream, the better to extract practical compassion from the pockets of a morbidly humane society; we can believe this, Sir PETER, and feel no more for the trickster than if our heart were made of the best contract saddle-leather; but we confess a cut-throat staggers us; we fear, with all our caution, we should be converted to a belief in misery by a gash near the windpipe. Sir PETER, however, with his enlarged mind, professes ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... Mass, one of their number having inserted a sponge soaked in blood into the head of the celebrated statue of the Redeemer, blood began to trickle over the face of the image. Suddenly during the service a cry was raised by the trickster and his associates, "Behold Our Saviour's image sweats blood." Several of the common people wondering at it, fell down with their beads in their hands, and prayed to the image, while Leigh who was guilty of the deception kept crying out all the time, "How can He choose but ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... the Master," he returned quietly. "Do you take me for a fool, Mackellar? Understand it once and for all, I treat this beast in my own way; fear nor favour shall not move me; and before I am hoodwinked, it will require a trickster less transparent than yourself. I ask service, loyal service; not that you should make and mar behind my back, and steal my own money ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... traced their descent in a direct line from one of the unbending old Scotch Covenanters of 1638, and it had always been a source of vague bewilderment to Eliza that a race sprang from so staunchly Puritan a stock should have been juggled by that inimitable trickster, Fate, into allying itself with a family in whose veins ran the hot ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... eminence in it is always a test of ability and acquirement. While in every other profession quackery and pretension may gain for men wealth and honor, forensic renown can be won only by rare natural powers aided by profound learning and varied experience in trying causes. The trickster and the charlatan, who in medicine and even in the pulpit find it easy to dupe their fellow-men, find at the bar that all attempts to make shallowness pass for depth, impudence for wit, and fatal for wisdom, are instantly baffled. Not only ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... princes in America." Rumor, which enlarges and misrepresents everything, had, indeed, absurdly exaggerated the affair at Madame d'Argeles's house. It was reported in the Rue d'Ulm that Pascal had spent every night at the gaming table for more than five years; and that, being an incomparable trickster, he ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... have suffered by the absence of any witness to our negotiation, I may as well profit by the absence of any witness to our interview. You are a cheat and a trickster, Mr. Goodge, and I have the honour to wish you good afternoon!" "Go forth, young man!" cried the infuriated Jonah whose fat round face became beet-root colour with rage, and who involuntarily extended his hand to the poker—for the purpose of defence and ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... attacked than ignored. Later, he asserted that Hugo, after accepting the dedication of the Lost Illusions to himself, had induced Edouard Thierry to write an abusive article against him. "He is a great writer," said the novelist in telling this, "but he is a mean trickster." ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... had He to be glad of The clash of the war-glaive— Traitor and trickster And spurner of treaties— He nor had Anlaf, With armies so broken, A reason for bragging That they had the better In perils of battle On places of slaughter— The struggle of standards, The rush of the javelins, The crash of the charges, The wielding ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... inexplicable as abnormal. To the professional Radical they are so many proofs of innate inferiority: for they are full of pretentiousness and affectation; they teem with examples of all manner of vices, from false English to an immoral delight in dukes; they prove their maker a trickster and a charlatan in every page. To them, however, whose first care is for rare work, the series of novels that began with Vivian Grey and ended with Endymion is one of the pleasant facts in modern letters. ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... telescope finder. "Disconnect that projector! It's Miko down there! This Haljan is a trickster! Where is he? Braile—Braile, you accursed fool! Are Haljan and the girl up ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... skilful navigator, for I want no further recommendation. The way in which he, an old experienced hand, one who would be able to see at a glance how thoroughly I should be at his mercy if he were a trickster whose aim was to make as much money out of the transaction as he could, proved that he was as honest as the day and ready to lay himself open to every examination, that alone without his display of honest indignation when he suspected me of being about to engage ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... the production of the apparition that had so terrified him gave Constans back his confidence; his books had not deceived him, and he was ready now for any fresh marvels that might be on the cards. But the attitude of the priest puzzled him. Was he really the charlatan, the trickster that he seemed? Was it not equally simple to regard him as the self-deluded votary? He ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... swarm in every account of Richard Sheridan—many of them, perhaps, quite apocryphal, others exaggerated, or attributed to this noted trickster, but all tending to show how completely he was master of this high art. His ways of eluding creditors used to delight me, I remember, when an Oxford boy, and they are only paralleled by Oxford stories. ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... are for a trickster who cheated you into loving him. Listen, now, and I, who have never lied, even to win you, will show him to you as ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... sailors were perhaps more road-weary than the gangsmen, and provided none of them succeeded in slipping away in the darkness, or made a successful resistance, in half-an-hour's time or less the whole party would be safe under lock and key, cursing luck for a scurvy trickster in delivering ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... such as 'gamester', 'youngster', 'oldster', 'drugster' (South), 'huckster', 'hackster', (swordsman, Milton, prose), 'teamster', 'throwster', 'rhymester', 'punster' (Spectator), 'tapster', 'whipster' (Shakespeare), 'trickster'. Either, like 'teamster', and 'punster', the words first came into being, when the true significance of this form was altogether lost{174}; or like 'tapster', which was female in Chaucer ("the gay tapstere"), ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... the Follies and Vanities of the fair Sex, retire to the Tea Table and the Theatre; if your Business be to compose a Sermon, or you are engag'd in Theological Studies, resort to Child's Coffee-House in St. Paul's Church-Yard; if you are desirous to depaint the Cheat and the Trickster, I recommend ye to the Royal-Exchange and the Court End of the Town; and if you would write a Poem in imitation of Rochester, you need only go to the Hundreds of Drury, and you'll be sufficiently ...
— A Vindication of the Press • Daniel Defoe
... in that blissful realm above, Where the poor and the rich meet in meekness and love: Where the works of each heart are unveiled to the light, And Humbug and Cant yield to Truth and to Right— Where the trickster lays off his mask of deceit, And the cloak of the hypocrite drops to his feet, And Honor is given, where Honor is due— We may see that some from the Fifth Avenue, Most nobly will speak in that great reckoning day, While their earthly ...
— Nothing to Say - A Slight Slap at Mobocratic Snobbery, Which Has 'Nothing - to Do' with 'Nothing to Wear' • QK Philander Doesticks
... Harry, you know better than that. Can you imagine the great doctor the dupe of a mere trickster? The professor was a man of great science and was blessed with an almighty sound head. But ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... steps, muttering harsh language at some unknown trickster. As he climbed back into his machine and made ready to start, two men seemed to rise before him, ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... muttered. "I shall have to wait four or five dreary hours before my lady comes home from her morning calls—her pretty visits of ceremony or friendliness. Good Heaven! what an actress this woman is. What an arch trickster—what an all-accomplished deceiver. But she shall play her pretty comedy no longer under my uncle's roof. I have diplomatized long enough. She has refused to accept an indirect warning. To-night I ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... stories of some of the frauds perpetrated upon ardent and presumably judicious collectors read like the tales told so often of the triumph of the confidence trickster, and one marvels how a person of ordinary power of observation, to say nothing of experience, could fall a victim to a fraud requiring little perception to detect. The explanation doubtless lies in the direction indicated—the ...
— The Detection of Forgery • Douglas Blackburn
... collection of orally transmitted Hindu folk tales, which every teacher would gain by knowing. In the Hindu animal legends the Jackal seems to play the role assigned in Germanic lore to Reynard the Fox, and to "Bre'r Rabbit" in the stories of our Southern negroes: he is the clever and humorous trickster who comes out of every encounter with a whole skin, and turns the laugh on every ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant
... one devised by nature for the trickster. His success does not depend altogether on human gullibility; part of his argument rests on the conditions which surround the industry of mining, one which never can be free of extreme risk. All men ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... service of an incompetent like Pope? Why was a slow-minded closet-student like Halleck permitted to fritter away in the long-drawn-out operations against Corinth the advantage of position and of force that had been secured by the army of the West? Why was a political trickster like Butler, with no army experience, or a well-meaning politician like Banks with still less capacity for the management of troops, permitted to retain responsibilities in the field, making blunders that involved waste of life and of resources and the ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
... and more wearily, as if it tired him to carry so heavy a heart. Life was unkind, nature cruel, fate a trickster. One was caught, as a rat in a trap, "in the fell clutch of circumstance." What was the use of anything? ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... other person," he resumed, after a pause, "it is not the first time he has acted like a trickster. He has crossed me before, and I will choose an opportunity to tell him my mind. I won't mince matters with him either, and will not spare him one insulting syllable that he deserves. He wears a sword, and so do I; if he pleases, he may draw it; he shall have the opportunity; ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... recognition was sharpened by a sudden sense of dismay, almost of alarm, because of the overwhelming knowledge that now all his scheming had collapsed, while the representatives of Scotland Yard would regard him as nothing more than a poor sort of trickster. ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... of justice "Old Bogle" and Mr. Hawkins became acquainted, much to the advantage of the latter, as he happened to meet Bogle in the witness-box, a place where the counsel unravelled the trickster's most subtle of designs. The advocate liked "Old Bogle," as he called him, because, said he, Bogle, having white hair, was so like a Malacca cane with a silver knob, white at the top and ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... has during the last speech subdued the most violent emotion). What do I hear, archbishop? Can it be? Oh, tell me, by what signs and marks of proof This bold-faced trickster doth uphold himself As Ivan's son, whom we ...
— Demetrius - A Play • Frederich Schiller
... simplicity and unwearied variety of nature's chiaroscuro—if it means the perception that blackness and sublimity are not synonymous, and that space and light may possibly be coadjutors—then no man, who ever advocated or dreamed of such a principle, is anything more than a novice, blunderer and trickster in chiaroscuro. And my firm belief is, that though color is inveighed against by all artists, as the great Circe of art—the great transformer of mind into sensuality—no fondness for it, no study of it, is half so great a peril and ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... which every teacher would gain by knowing. In the Hindu animal legends the Jackal seems to play the role assigned in Germanic lore to Reynard the Fox, and to "Bre'r Rabbit" in the negro stories of Southern America; he is the clever and humorous trickster who usually comes out of an encounter with a whole skin, and turns the laugh on his enemy, however mighty he ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... religious man,' says I, 'or a fanatic in moral bigotry, but I can't stand still and see a man who has built up his business by his own efforts and brains and risk be robbed by an unscrupulous trickster who is a menace ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... of the Bible does not remember the pathetic picture of Esau falling on Jacob's neck and weeping, in a paroxysm of brotherly love and forgiveness? But the rabbis daub it over with their pious puerilities. They solemnly inform us that Esau was a trickster, as though Jacob's qualities were catching? and that he tried to bite his brother's neck, but God turned it into marble, and he only broke his teeth. Esau wept for the pain in his grinders. But why did Jacob weep? This looks like a poser, yet later rabbis surmounted the difficulty. Jacob's ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... Langur Dass hard after him afraid, now that he had done the trick. And hot on the trail of Langur Dass ran Ahmad Din, with his knife drawn not meaning to let that prize be lost to him at less than the cost of the trickster's life. ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... I have sold myself to a lie and a disgrace! I have stooped to truckle, to intrigue! I have bound myself to a sordid trickster! Father! never mention his name to me again! I have leagued myself with the impure and the bloodthirsty, and I have my reward! No more politics for Hypatia from henceforth, my father; no more orations and lectures; no more pearls of Divine wisdom cast before swine. I have sinned in ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... trickster," said L'Estrange to the Austrian prince. "The revenge of a farce on the ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton |
