"Cunning" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... witches! The name reminds one of the cunning Yankees, a race that would outwit Lucifer himself, if left to set the conditions to their bargain. Here is the Patroon, wishing to let in a family of the knaves among the honest Dutchmen of his manor; and we have just settled a dispute between ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... to the counsel for the defence. So far as Mr. Braham knew, only two could read, one of whom was the foreman, Mr. Braham's friend, the showy contractor. Low foreheads and heavy faces they all had; some had a look of animal cunning, while the most were only stupid. The entire panel formed that boasted heritage commonly described as the "bulwark of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... adverse to common humanity the spirit of the action, there is always to be found some legal gentleman, true to the lower instincts of the profession, ready to lend himself to his client's motives. And in this instance, the cunning Keepum finds an excellent instrument of furthering his ends, in one Peter Crimpton, a somewhat faded and rather disreputable member of the learned profession. It is said of Crimpton, that he is clever at managing cases where oppression rather than justice is sought, and ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... Dobson, or the Cunning Woman, a Comedy; acted and damn'd at the duke's theatre, printed in quarto, 1684. This is a translation ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... hunted are both of them racing, if they are only side by side, it is as good as though neither of them moved. [17] And the creature I have always envied," he continued, "the centaur—if only he had the intelligence and forethought of a man, the adroit skill and the cunning hand, with the swiftness and strength of a horse, so as to overtake all that fled before him, and overthrow all that resisted—why, all these powers I shall collect and gather in my own person when ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... name, he will give you." The sign of the Cross calls for help and grace through the Blood of Christ shed upon the Cross. Would God deny such prayer? The sign of the Cross is a particularly powerful weapon against the malicious and cunning assaults of the devil. Of this St. Chrysostom says: "When in the fulness of faith you make the sign of the Cross upon your forehead no impure spirit will be able to tarry near you; for he beholds the sword that has given him the death blow." "Write the sign of the Cross upon ...
— The Excellence of the Rosary - Conferences for Devotions in Honor of the Blessed Virgin • M. J. Frings
... surely enough, was the bedstead, of iron, very curiously wrought, and upon it a soft couch which seemed to invite him to lie down and rest. But Theseus, peering about, saw the ax and the ropes with cunning pulleys lying hidden behind the curtains; and he saw, too, that the floor was covered ...
— Old Greek Stories • James Baldwin
... know how to go about it, sir. How could you? All this whispering and tiptoeing is no good. You can't hope to slink past a cunning, wide-awake, evil brute like he was. You never heard him talk. Enough to make your hair stand on end. No! No! He wasn't mad. He was no more mad than I am. He was just downright wicked. Wicked so as to frighten most people. ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... they have their consciousness, Your lips their grave reflective smile, Your hands their cunning for distress: Your hair has only beauteousness And hid flame ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... came to tell us, that as it was past the usual time of the Sultan's going to the mosque, he was afraid he would not come at all to-day; that he had left him with Count Orloff, with whom he was in a towering passion, many angry speeches having passed between the cunning diplomatist and the enraged sovereign. However, soon after, the order to fix bayonets and shoulder arms, both of which were very well executed, announced his approach, and in a few minutes afterwards the band struck up his favourite march. At the head of the ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... brave soldier, a skilful general and a man of letters. Cicero in the first chapter of the second book of the Academica Priora has passed a high eulogium on him. He was fond of wealth and luxury, but humane and of a mild temper. He was no match for the cunning of Pompeius, or the daring temper of Caesar; and he was not cruel enough to have acted with the decision which the troublesome times required that he just lived to see. The loss of his History of ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... soon to undergo will be the greatest of all. We have seen our bairns grow to manhood—we have seen the beauty of youth pass away—we have felt our backs become unable for the burthen, and our right hand forget its cunning.—Our eyes have become dim, and our heads grey—we are now tottering with short and feckless steps towards the grave; and some, that should have been here this day, are bed-rid, lying, as it were, at the gates of death, like ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... seems that the court summoned Hernan Pereira and Henri Marais to accompany them to a lonely spot at a distance, where they thought that their deliberations would not be overheard. In this, however, they were mistaken, having forgotten the fox-like cunning of the Hottentot, Hans. Hans had heard me sentenced, and probably enough feared that he who also had committed the crime of escaping from Dingaan, might be called on to share that sentence. Also he wished to know the secret counsel of these Boers, whose language, of course, he understood as ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... enchanted palace, where, with full freedom, you can decree her fate. Yet you astonish me by this mighty change in your appearance. That figure, that countenance, that costume, perfectly conceal your real being, and I defy the most cunning to see in you to-day the ...
— Psyche • Moliere
... clearing. He was of great size, but he was a cat—a huge cat, but a cat, nevertheless—and like a cat he acted. He dragged his body along the earth, and his eyes, now yellow, now green, in the moonlight, were swung suspiciously from side to side. He felt all that the wolf had felt, but he was even more cunning and his approach was slower. It was his habit to spring when close enough, but he saw nothing to spring at except a tree trunk, and so he still ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... huge cathedral with its spires and arches and rich fretwork of dark stone, seemed to him the model of what all cathedrals should be. The swift river that ran between overhanging buildings, and beneath old bridges that were carved with armorial bearings and decorated with the rare ironwork of cunning smiths, famous long ago, bore in its breast the legends of his own forest home, and was impersonated in many a verse he had learned to sing with his comrades. The shady nooks and corners, the turns in the crooked streets, the dark archways of old inns, the swinging ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... ruffian we have suffered to depart so easily. His assault upon myself I do not choose to treat harshly; but the man is a terror to the country round, committing many an act to which the law awards a very insufficient punishment, but with cunning sufficient to keep within that line, the passage beyond which would enable society to purge itself of such a stain upon it; how to deal with him, I say, embarrasses me greatly. I have committed him two or three times to prison already; ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... you, to disclose the cause of your distress, for few such desperate evils betide mankind as are wholly past cure. It grieves me much that you would hide your grief from me, for I am bound to you by ties that nothing can undo. Tell me, then, your grief, and leave me to try if wealth, art, cunning, force, or persuasion cannot relieve you. If not, it will be time enough after all has been ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... the Vandals, he was a cruel and cunning man, but he had great ability in many ways. He fought in battles even when a boy and was known far and wide for his bravery and skill ...
— Famous Men of The Middle Ages • John H. Haaren, LL.D. and A. B. Poland, Ph.D.
... she was very gentle and sweet for a week. She wore a plain gown and a simple hat and declared she would like to work at home. She rose early and took a seat at her table by five o'clock the first morning and tried to roll her violet stems, but her fingers had lost their cunning in the six months in ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... her with cunning eyes. "You didn't give it all away," he thought. "You've got a little hid somewhere. O Gawd! I want a drink ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... three or four young hares, springing about in the heath and young moss, ran boldly towards the three men; they were so cunning that even Altamont ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... and, with a few other desperadoes like himself, made a descent on Glen Lynden—not, by any means, the first that his fraternity had made. Not so bloodthirsty as the leopard, quite as mischievous as Junkie, and much more cunning than the baboons, Booby chanced to arrive at the gorge already mentioned just at the time when Junkie was approaching it. There was, if you will, somewhat of a coincidence here in regard to time, but there was ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... young. Her latest birth, This weakling man, my craft shall girth With cunning strength. Him I will take, And in stern arts my scholar make. This smoking reed, in which hold The empyrean spark, shall mould Rock and hard steel to use of man: He shall be as a god to plan And forge all things to his desire By alchemy ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... in a storm of diaphanous clinging garments. He stared at them from an adjacent room, where he pretended to be reading, and sighed. Alas, how was his cunning and foresight—even his—to overcome the drift of life itself? How was he to make himself appealing to youth? Braxmar had the years, the color, the bearing. Berenice seemed to-night, as she prepared to leave, to be fairly seething ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... ceilings, the sides of arches, the ribs of groinings—every foot of space, in short—with life and color; and how much more precious is one of those solemn pearly faces than a panel of alabaster or the most cunning mosaic of marbles! In the upper church alone there are twenty-two large frescoes of Cimabue and thirty of Giotto. Over these pours the light from fourteen large colored windows, unimpeded by side-aisles. When the sun beats upon these windows the church seems to be filled with a transparent ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... thorax. Nevertheless the wing can easily revolve about its base like unto a fan. Nor are there lacking tendon ligaments which restrain the feathers and prevent them from opening farther, in the same fashion that sheets hold in the sails of ships. No less admirable is nature's cunning in unfolding and folding the wings upwards, for she folds them not laterally, but by moving upwards edgewise the osseous parts wherein the roots of the feathers are inserted; for thus, without encountering the air's resistance ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... O Uplifter of our hearts!" rattled on Babalatchi, with fussy deference. "Only a very few paces and you shall behold Omar the brave, and a white man of great strength and cunning. ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... this question, the king of the mines had a very cunning purpose; for, you will recollect, if Proserpina tasted a morsel of food in his dominions, she would never afterwards be at ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... from the burning flames of the lusts of the flesh, his only thought has been for the salvation of mankind. Once upon a time there was a certain heretic, called Rokutsuponji, a reader of auguries, cunning in astrology and in the healing art. It happened, one day, that this heretic, being in company with Buddha, entered a forest, which was full of dead men's skulls. Buddha, taking up one of the skulls ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... even before them. From the South, Dutch trappers had come from New York, and these had gained the good will of the Indians, from whom they purchased their furs. The Dutch were very cunning, and while they did not always treat the Indians fairly, they nevertheless maintained their ...
— Three Young Pioneers - A Story of the Early Settlement of Our Country • John Theodore Mueller
... you wait any longer, good-by to our covey: you will certainly find an empty cage, and the birds flown. You smile? Yes, I know you are clever, and can accomplish anything; but they are cunning blades, and as slippery as eels. They know that they are ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... Because of his cunning, his fearlessness, and his long resistance to subjection both by the missionary and by the governments under whose dominion he has lived, but until recent times never recognized, the Apache, in name at least, ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... then, very few were acquainted." Again, in chap. xviii.: "Our pewterers in time past employed the use of pewter only upon dishes and pots, and a few other trifles for service; whereas now, they are grown into such exquisite cunning, that they can in manner imitate by infusion any form or fashion of cup, dish, salt, or bowl or goblet, which is made by goldsmith's craft, though they be never so curious, and very artificially forged. In some places beyond the sea, a garnish of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... upon the western border of Missouri. Even Northern and Eastern Abolitionists, better versed perhaps in the theory of the subject, would prove very incompetent if matched in practical hostility with slaveholding opinion and might—slaveholding vindictiveness, cunning, treachery, and recklessness of every consideration, human or divine, but the gaining of their one end, the retention of their hold ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... cast their eyes over the walls and ceiling without being able to see where the wonder would happen, for the childish and cunning Huns used to amuse their guests ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... willing to die for France, though they hated death, and in spite of the first great rush of the German legions, they had a fine intellectual contempt of that army, which seemed to me then unjustified, though they were right, as history now shows. Man against man, in courage and cunning they were better than the Germans, gun against gun they were better, in cavalry charge and in bayonet charge they were better, ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... enough that women should be able to obtain alcohol as they do by means of devices which may often prevent their habits from being discovered at all until irreparable mischief has been done. Here the cunning and the greed of commercialism have set to work to fool the public and poison it by a systematic practice which is injurious to all sections of the community, but especially to women, and which cannot be too widely reprobated and exposed. All honour is due to the British Medical ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... had mentioned by name, were youths of mould and strength, and they were well inured to toil, no less than to the particular privations and dangers of a border life. Like most men of their years and condition, they were practised too in the wiles of Indian cunning; and though the Province of Connecticut, compared to other settlements, had suffered but little in this species of murderous warfare, they both had martial feats and perilous experiences of their own to recount, during the light labors of the long ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... to a sudden virile determination. Mademoiselle must not cross the road. It was too dangerous. Mademoiselle would be hit. He played on her pity with an innocent, cunning cajolery. "Mademoiselle must not leave me. I do not want ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair
... his songs but only nature. Apart form his melody what strikes us most is his truth; he sang of what he saw, of what he felt and knew. He knew the Scottish peasant through and through. Grave and humorous, simple and cunning, honest and hypocritical, proud and independent—every phase of him is to be found in Burns's poems. He knew love too; and in every phase—happy and unhappy, worthy and unworthy—he sings of it. But it is of love in truth that he sings. Here we have no more the make-believe of the Elizabethan ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... Of the blackness of men's hearts. The very sons Of my body, I reckoned to ken through and through, As every mother thinks she knows her sons, Have been pitch night to me. We never learn. I thought I'd got by heart each turn and twist Of all Jim's stupid cunning: but even he's Outwitted me. Six sons, and not one left; All gone in bitterness—firstborn to reckling: Peter, twelve-year since, that black Christmas Eve: And ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... neighboring hole until nothing is visible but teeth and claws. So far the boss herder had reasoned well. His sheep were safe behind him and his back was against a rock; a hundred men could not dislodge him from his position if it ever came to a fight; but he had not reckoned upon the devilish cunning of horse-taming Jeff Creede. Many a time in driving outlaws to the river he had employed that same ruse—showing himself casually in the distance and working closer as they edged away until he had gained ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... fish requires the boy to reorganize his whole campaign, get a new position on the bank, a new line of approach, and patiently wait for the wind and sun before he can lower his line. This time, cunning and patience are rewarded. The hoop encircles the unsuspecting fish. The boy's eyes almost start from his head as he gives a tremendous jerk, and feels by the dead-weight that he has got him fast. Out he comes, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... were not cunning enough for the white folks, that time. The settlers formed themselves into two parties—one of seven and one of three men. The three men went down very cautiously to the Indian's landing-place, ...
— Oscar - The Boy Who Had His Own Way • Walter Aimwell
... sick and weary; her glass told her of a white, unhappy face, of eyes that were lighted from within and shone with strange thoughts. She was always listening now—listening for the new voice, that she might hear the word it uttered. Her physical illness she hid with some cunning and put a bright face upon life as far as she could do so before those of her home; but the task grew daily more difficult. Then, with a period of greatly increased discomfort, Joan grew alarmed and turned to the kind God of "Mister Jan," and made great, ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... immature male specimens are know to exist, and they are at present in the Life Banks. The others that were taken alive at the time have been destroyed ... often under nearly disastrous circumstances. They are enormously cunning, enormously savage creatures, Miss Amberdon! The additional fact that they can conceal themselves to the point of being virtually indetectable except by the use of instruments makes them one of the most dangerous animals known. Since the young female which you raised as a pet has remained ...
— Novice • James H. Schmitz
... sagacity, mother wit, wit, esprit, gumption, quick parts, grasp of intellect; acuteness &c adj.; acumen, subtlety, penetration, perspicacy^, perspicacity; discernment, due sense of, good judgment; discrimination &c 465; cunning &c 702; refinement &c (taste) 850. head, brains, headpiece, upper story, long head; eagle eye, eagle- glance; eye of a lynx, eye of a hawk. wisdom, sapience, sense; good sense, common sense, horse sense [U.S.], plain sense; rationality, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... as sparrows Brought their wives in their donkey barrows. The clean-legged donkeys, clever and cunning, Their ears cocked forward, their neat feet running, Their carts and harness flapping with flags, Were bright as heralds and proud as stags. And there in pride in the flapping banners Were the costers' selves in blue bandannas, ...
— Right Royal • John Masefield
... have really been here, lately," the Albanian answered, "they have been thoroughly cunning devils; for not an article in or about the hut has been disturbed. I had an eye to that myself, the moment we arrived; for I have thought it far from unlikely that the Hurons would be out, on the ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... deal of individual taste, and as the gardeners were always allowed to supply the Specialities with flowers for their weekly meetings and their special entertainments, Olive had her room quite gaily decorated. Smilax hung in graceful festoons from several vases and trailed in a cunning pattern round the little supper-table; cyclamen, in pots, further added to the decorations; and there were still some very beautiful white chrysanthemums left in the green-house, a careful selection of which had been made by Birchall that day for ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... "Oh, you cunning thing! So you think I don't know that your father has given you a great, great quantity of money, and that we may go away whenever we please, and do just as we like, and live in London, and—and—oh, delightful!" And she bounded and skipped before the ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... little dolls' chairs! Carved, you know, and with beautiful red cushions. I came by there this morning, and that's the reason I was late at school, I stopped so long to look at those cunning chairs." ...
— A Missionary Twig • Emma L. Burnett
... our rabbits, Danna," suggested Luretta. "My brother Paul brought me two little gray rabbits from the forest," she explained; and Melvina listened eagerly to the description of Trit and Trot, and of their cunning ways and bright eyes, and was told that they had already lost their fear of ...
— A Little Maid of Old Maine • Alice Turner Curtis
... and was equally caustic, and this to the astonishment of every one; for all supposed the young member was annihilated—as so many before had been by Randolph—and would not reply. His antagonist was completely taken aback, and evidently felt, with Sir Andrew Ague-cheek: "Had I known he was so cunning of fence, I had seen him damned ere I had fought him." But he was in for it, and must reply. His rejoinder was angry, and wanting in his usual biting sarcasm. McDuffie rose to reply, and, pausing, seemed ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... her features, the clear rich brown of her complexion, the glorious light of her large dark eyes, softened by the long thick lashes that overshadowed them, the full and rounded beauty of every limb, left it impossible even for human heart to do away what nature's cunning hand had done. ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... third doubts are set at rest, by affirming prudence to have no existence apart from virtue. Without a virtuous aim, there is no such thing as Prudence: there is nothing but cleverness degenerating into cunning; while virtue without virtuous prudence is nothing better than a mere instinct, liable to be ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... have the pleasure of a little drive first," said West, with a cunning smile. "I was sure you would enjoy seeing the country before you get down to work, and I was not averse myself to a drive ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... the scheme Bob had undertaken in concert with her. Brooding on her deadly purpose, she had come to regard it as a certain thing that before long her husband would be killed. The details were arranged; all her cunning had gone to the contrivance of a plot for disguising the facts of his murder. Savagely she had exulted in the prospect, not only of getting rid of him, but of being revenged for her old humiliation. A thousand times she imagined herself in Bob's lurking-place, raising ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... fireplace!" To be sure, it was nothing more than a gap in the wall. "And these darling windows. We can put a seat way across, all comfy." She promptly saw, in her mind, Susy curled upon it with a beautiful picture book and a handful of cookies. "Oh, let's see the rest. Look, a cunning kitchen. The children can play cooking. And this room—what can we use ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... innumerable golden stacks and hay-ricks which were, of all his possessions, those most valued by the Master of Monavoe. No one in the country was so clever in selecting time and weather for cutting and carting; no one so cunning in ascertaining the most opportune moments for selling, or so far-seeing with regard to prices. At this very moment Peter Rorke was gazing at an immense rick of "prime old hay" which he had had the prudence to keep back while all his neighbours ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... and sweet was my baby, Blue eyes, and hair of gold; But this is ugly and wrinkled, Cross, and cunning, and old. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... so cunning or so wise, or hath such understanding, save God alone, that he may describe the radiant light of heaven; how, by the might of God, the sun there shineth round about that splendid host, where angels have eternal joy, and saints chant hymns before the face of God. And ...
— Codex Junius 11 • Unknown
... money. Yea, this is she that has bought off many a man from a pilgrim's life after he had fairly begun it. She is a bold and an impudent slut also, for she will talk with any man. If there be one cunning to make money in any place, she will speak well of him from house to house . . . She has given it out in some places also that she is a goddess, and therefore some do actually worship her . . . She has her times and open places of ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... of the "Bobbsey Twins" Books are eagerly welcomed by the little folks from about five to ten years of age. Their eyes fairly dance with delight at the lively doings of inquisitive little Bunny Brown and his cunning, ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue Playing Circus • Laura Lee Hope
... of Sir Godrick, and that means that the Knight deems of him as no mere man-at-arms, but a wise man also. Moreover, I myself have seen the young man, and this I seem to see in him, that he has the lucky look in his eyes; and I am deemed cunning in the judging of men." All this and more did the Carline hear tell of, and she weighed it heedfully, and thought that a ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris
... learning. And let the conclusion of this little tale (i.e. the story of Ailill Aulom son of Mug Nuadat, the beginning of which was contained in the book which Finn returns) be written for me accurately by thee, O cunning Aed, thou man of the sparkling intellect. May it be long before we are without thee. My desire is that thou shouldst always be with us. And let macLonan's Songbook be given to me, that I may understand the sense of the poems that are in it. Et ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... the enthusiasm of the severest critics, he must be granted a most unusual poetic gift, solidity and whimsicality, and a hardly excelled erudition. His orchestration shows a hand lavish with color and cunning in novel effects. Several of his works have been performed with great applause in Germany, where Beck spent many years in study. He was born at Cleveland, in 1856, and is a graduate of the ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... cunning of her kind Lizzie dressed herself in her best; a soiled pink silk shirtwaist with elbow sleeves, a spotted and torn black skirt that showed a tattered orange silk petticoat beneath its ungainly length, a wide white hat with soiled and draggled willow ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... out—you've bored me to my limit of endurance." But the motions of a mind such as he knew Norman had were beyond and high above the client's mere cunning at dollar-trapping. He felt that it was the part of wisdom—also soothing to vanity—to assume that Norman meant only what his words conveyed. When Norman was alone he rang for an office boy ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... of cunning was seen to steal over the face of the madman, as he replied, "That is ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... Bermuda steamer (or did use in the old fifteen-hundred-ton kind) crossing the Gulf Stream. When once comparatively secure in one's chair, the combat with the lunch began. Mrs. Siddons would have been at home there, for there was nothing for it but to stab the potatoes, and all one's cunning of fence was needed to hold one's own with the chops. But how delicious they were! How the first mealed and the last melted in the mouth; and the tea, when once poured from the dizzy height at which the pot had to be held, and the wild whirl in which the cup had ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... lower than the divine, but lower than the human also. It is because the conception of oneself as a being apart from God, if carried out to its legitimate consequences, must ultimately land all who hold it in a condition of things where open ferocity or secret cunning, the tiger nature or the serpent nature, can be the only possible ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... fell into that common mistake, that a beggarly looking cottage, and filthy, ragged children, raised most compassion, and of course drew most charity. But as cunning as he was in other things, he was out in his reckoning here; for it is neatness, housewifery, and a decent appearance, which draws the kindness of the rich and charitable, while they turn away disgusted with filth and laziness: not out of pride, but because they see that it is next to impossible ...
— Stories for the Young - Or, Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. Vol. VI. • Hannah More
... thousand ships, including mine sweepers and auxiliaries of all sorts under Sir John Jellicoe's command, was forced to go to immense expense and pains in combating the submarine campaign. Many submarines were taken; but the Germans kept on building them. It was a war against an unseen and cunning foe, which required ceaseless vigilance and painstaking effort. The amount of material, as well as the amount of ships required in order to combat the submarines and also to keep the patrol intact from the British channel to Iceland, could it be enumerated, would stagger the imagination. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... that would not be necessary. Nor was it. For five years after my marriage I had been my own maid-servant—and those were happy days. My right hand had by no means forgotten her cunning. As for both the Gay Lady's pretty hands—they were very accomplished in household arts. And she had put on the ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... the thin mysterious voice of little Mary Alice Smith herself that so often queried and responded as above— every word accented with a sweet and eery intonation, and a very gaiety of solemn earnestness that baffled the cunning skill of all childish imitators. A slender wisp of a girl she was, not more than ten years in appearance, though her age had been given to us as fourteen. The spindle ankles that she so airily flourished from the sparse concealment of a worn and shadowy calico skirt seemed ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... received back into his office as Christ's Apostle? Did he ever forget how he had sinned? Did he ever forget how Christ had pardoned? Did he ever forget how Christ loved and would keep him? Ah, no! The rope that is broken is strongest where it is spliced, not because it was broken, but because a cunning hand has strengthened it. We may be the stronger for our sins, not because sin strengthens, for it weakens, but because God restores. It is possible that we may build a fairer structure on the ruins of our old selves. It ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... unfrequently with painters, musicians, chemists, and inventors at the present day; or sometimes a creature, with exceptional powers of memory or reflection, would make his appearance in this race or in that. We all profit by our accidents as well as by our more cunning contrivances, so that analogy would point in the direction of thinking that many of the most happy thoughts in the animal and vegetable kingdom were originated much as certain discoveries that have been made ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... mortal wound, Ghastly and gaping wide, upon his throat! The shadow passed—another took his place, Of the same royal race; The noble Yumuri, the only son Of the old monarch, heir to his high throne, Cut off by cunning in his youthful pride; There was the murderer's gash, and the red tide Still pouring from his side; And round his neck the mark of bloody hands, That strangled the brave sufferer while he strove Against their clashing brands. Not ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... fine, up-standing ancient of better physique than his sons and grandsons. In a community of hairless men he was further distinguished by a straggling grey beard. His wits were beginning to fail, but not yet his cunning. He was extremely anxious to learn the reason for the policeman's coming. For Stonor to tell him would have been to defeat his object; to lie would have been to lower himself in their eyes; so Stonor took refuge in an inscrutability as polite as the ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... of dust, the grimy, perspiring faces of some three score of men—all this has stamped itself upon my memory like the Lord's Prayer. And now, too, I have been spending hours at the thrashing and felt intensely happy. When the thrashing engine is at work it looks as though alive; it has a cunning, playful expression, while the men and oxen look like machines. In the district of Mirgorod few have thrashing machines of their own, but everyone can hire one. The engine goes about the whole province drawn by six oxen and offers itself to all who ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... choked her utterance, wrought with the remembrance of her beauty and her disorder in the coach, to set his crafty mind working in a new direction. He saw that she was for the time utterly hopeless; utterly heedless what became of herself. That would not last; but his cunning told him that with returning sensibility would come pique, resentment, the desire to be avenged. In such a case one man was sometimes as good as another. It was impossible to say what she might not do or be induced to do, if full advantage were taken of a moment so exceptional. Fifty thousand pounds! ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... when it comes. "Why," says I, warming up, "the greatest statesmen that you have are editors and self-made men. The fact is, men who have worked their own way in the world, haven't time to be rogues, and very seldom are even grasping. It is your lazy fellow, who lives by the cunning that he calls wits, who is not to be trusted. For my part, as two candidates have to be in the field to have a good run, I am glad that those Cincinnati folks had the sense to take a man right out of the bosom of the people to govern the people. Brought up so close to the public heart, he'll ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... and had lost much of his natural cunning. He knew me, and trusted me; so without speaking, he took his hunting knife from his belt, cut the ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... thou against Arjuna. This thy maternal uncle is possessed of wisdom and observant of Kshatriya duties. O son of Gandhari, let this one addicted to gambling proceed against Arjuna in battle. This one, skilled in dice, wedded to deception, addicted to gambling, versed in cunning and imposture, this gambler conversant with the ways of deceiving, will vanquish the Pandavas in battle! With Karna in thy company, thou hadst often joyfully boasted, from folly and emptiness of understanding, in the hearing of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... been not only a selection, but an election, not by ballot, but by consent some way expressed, and the privileged persons got their positions because they were the strongest, or the wisest, or the most cunning. But the descendants of these privileged persons hold the same positions when they are neither strong, nor wise, nor very cunning. This also is a mystery. The persistence of privilege is an unexplained thing in human affairs, and the consent of ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Darling, smiling, cunning Bess Grasped with tiny hands her dress, And a pretty courtesy making, while the kettle made a bow, "I'll your partner be," said she; "Forward, backward, one, two, three;" And pussy cried, "Bravo! my dears," in one ...
— Harper's Young People, January 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... tree, Solv'd th' Atlantic mystery, Pluck'd the dragon-guarded fruit; While around the charmed root, Wailing loud, the Hesperids Watch their warder's drooping lids. Low he lies with grisly wound, While the sorceress triple-crown'd In her scarlet robe doth shield him, Till her cunning spells have heal'd him. Ye, meanwhile, around the earth Bear the prize of manful worth. Yet a nobler meed than gold Waits for Albion's children bold; Great Eliza's virgin hand Welcomes you to Fairy-land, While your native Naiads bring Native wreaths as offering. ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... all means he can invent for his destruction; the friend of the singing-birds bears him a grudge as the destroyer of their eggs and young; and even the moralist is disposed to condemn him for his cunning and dissimulation. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... on his hind legs and looked around him. He had never seen a fox, but his mother had often told him tales about their cruelty. They were forever hunting little rabbits to eat, and they were as sly and cunning as ...
— Bumper, The White Rabbit • George Ethelbert Walsh
... at least. Yet it was true that the lap of the water, just beyond the tent door, still beat time with his lessening pulses when he realized that he was lying with his eyes open and that another sound had recently introduced itself with cunning softness between the splash and ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood
... sentence cheered his spirits. It was a support to his small, ignorant cunning. "He'll think someone else is biddin' agen him," he said. "Ef there was two of 'em biddin', I could ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... vigilant and cautious in permitting them to accept the society of young men. Parents who desire to save their daughters from a fate which is worse than death, should endeavor by every means in their power to keep them from falling into traps cunningly devised by some cunning lover. There are many good young men, but not all are safe friends to an innocent, ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... that the gang was a most dangerous and unscrupulous one, and that Rayne and his friends would hesitate at nothing so long as they carried out the plans which they laid with such innate cunning in order to effect great and astounding coups—the clever thefts and swindles that from time to time had ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... from the canyon, now swollen to nearly fifty men, were slowly approaching from the direction of the chimney, and making use of every tuft, and bush, and rock, affording Bart a fine view from the gallery of the clever and cunning means an Indian will adopt to get within shot ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... and Lord Davers, and Mr. H. have all rode out."—"Well, niece," strutting with his hands behind him, and his head held up—"Ha!—He has made a fine kettle on't—han't he?—that ever such a rake should be so caught! They tell me, she's plaguy cunning, and quite smart and handsome. But I wish his father were living. Yet what could he have done? Your brother was always unmanageable. I wish he'd been my son; by my faith, I do! What! I hope, niece, he ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... foes, save the few antagonists similarly clad. To-day my life is dependent on the fidelity and vigilance of ten thousand men, and every man I meet has me in his power. Given the malignant will and fiendish cunning necessary, and one single man can kill a thousand human beings and destroy a million dollars at a blow. To sum up, each advance in civilization makes men more dependent upon each other, and increases the advantage and necessity of having ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker
... to New York restaurants, and to quite expensive hotels, for at least once a year, on his birthday, Mr. Pilkings took him to lunch at the Waldorf. While he had apparently been devoting himself to arranging the tables his cunning old brain had determined to order tea and French pastry. Apparently the Tea Shoppe was neutral. There was no French pastry on the bill, but, instead, such curious edibles as cinnamon toast, cream cheese, walnut sandwiches, Martha ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... a lively satisfaction in his diplomatic cunning with a deprecatory cough, retires to the hearth. Lexy folds his arms and leans against the cellaret in a high-spirited attitude. Candida comes in with glasses, lemons, and a jug of hot water ...
— Candida • George Bernard Shaw
... a soothsayer thereon, and that he foretold the future and spake of things not yet come to pass, and many folk believed that things ofttimes happened according as this man had spoken. Now Olaf being minded to make assay of his cunning sent to him the finest and fairest of his men, in apparel as brave as might be, bidding him say that he was the King, for Olaf had become famous in all lands in that he was comelier and bolder and stronger than all other men. Since he had left Garda, howsoever, he had used no more of ...
— The Sagas of Olaf Tryggvason and of Harald The Tyrant (Harald Haardraade) • Snorri Sturluson
... used the sling. With it red-hot stones would be hurled over the palisades, among the rush-thatched huts of an assaulted village, a stratagem all the more difficult to cope with as Maori pas seldom contained wells or springs of water. The courage and cunning developed in the almost incessant tribal feuds were extraordinary. Competent observers thought the Maoris of two generations ago the most warlike and ferocious race on earth. Though not seldom guilty of wild cruelty to enemies, ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... in Africa, we should be saying what is frankly unreasonable. It is every bit as unreasonable to say the mere supineness of the English workmen has put them in the capitalist slave-yard. The capitalist has put them in the capitalist slaveyard; and very cunning smiths have hammered the chains. It is just this creative criminality in the authors of the system that we must not allow to be slurred over. The capitalist is in the dock to-day; and so far as I at least can prevent him, he shall not ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... which event we should have to cut our own fences and let the cattle drift south through an Indian country, with nothing to check them except Red River. A climax was approaching in the company's existence, and the delay of a day or week might mean inestimable loss. In cunning and craftiness our enemies were expert; they knew their control of the situation fully, and nothing but cowardice would prevent their striking the final, victorious blow. My old partner and I were a unit as to the only course to pursue,—one which meant a dishonorable compromise with our enemies, ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... And all with gold were gilded bright To add new splendour to the rite: Twenty-and-one those stakes in all, Each one-and-twenty cubits tall: And one-and-twenty ribbons there Hung on the pillars, bright and fair. Firm in the earth they stood at last, Where cunning craftsmen fixed them fast; And there unshaken each remained, Octagonal and smoothly planed. Then ribbons over all were hung, And flowers and scent around them flung. Thus decked they cast a glory forth Like the great saints who ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... had ten silent centuries, in a very strange way, found a voice. The Divina Commedia is of Dante's writing; yet in truth it belongs to ten Christian centuries, only the finishing of it is Dante's. So always. The craftsman there, the smith with that metal of his, with these tools, with these cunning methods,—how little of all he does is properly his work! All past inventive men work there with him;—as indeed with all of us, in all things. Dante is the spokesman of the Middle Ages; the Thought they lived by stands here in everlasting music. These sublime ideas ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... mother, otherwise he would have had something to say about it, not only to Neipperg himself, but certainly to his friends Prokesch, Baron Obenaus, and Count Dietrichstein, and very naturally his grandfather. It may be that the circumstances of his life made him cautious, and even cunning, in keeping to himself an affair that was generally approved by the most interested parties, but it is hardly likely that the spirit of natural feeling had been so far crushed out of him as to forbid his openly ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... direction of his gaze, she saw that it was fastened on a gentleman who sat at some little distance from them. The position he occupied rendered his countenance visible, and a glance sufficed to show her that the features were handsome, the expression sinister, malignant, and cunning. His entire appearance was foreign, and conveyed the idea of reckless dissipation. Evidently he came there, not for the music, but to scan the crowd, and his fierce eyes roamed over the audience with a daring impudence which disgusted her. Suddenly they rested on her own ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... discovered were afflicting to her hopes, his artless conduct gave her a degree of pleasure, that overcame every other emotion. But she was compelled, even thus early in life, to observe, that good sense and noble integrity are not always sufficient to cope with folly and narrow cunning; and her heart was pure enough to allow her, even at this trying moment, to look with more pride on the defeat of the former, than with mortification on the conquests ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... Father Redbreast, "long after the days of the first robin, old Mah-to the great White Bear dwelt alone in the far Northland. He was the king of all the bears and was very cunning and cruel. He was so selfish that he did not like anybody else even to come into ...
— The Magic Speech Flower - or Little Luke and His Animal Friends • Melvin Hix
... cunning, Perish all that fears the light; Whether losing, whether winning, Trust in God and do the right. Shun all forms of guilty passion, Fiends can look like angels bright; Heed no custom, school, or fashion— Trust in ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... to send in pursuit of us the 'Powhattan,' the 'Niagara,' the 'Iroquois,' the 'Keystone State,' and the 'San Jacinto.'" Any one of these vessels could have blown the 'Sumter' out of water with one broadside, but the cunning and skill of her commander enabled her ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... brought before the committee a number of his "health officers'' and "sanitary inspectors,'' whom he evidently thought best qualified to pass muster; but as one after another was examined and cross-examined, neither the cunning of Boole nor the skill of Mr. Graham could prevent the revelation of their utter unfitness. In the testimony of one of them the whole monstrous absurdity culminated. Judge Whiting examining him before the commission with ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... Craddock permission to carry it out, and to take any steps he liked in order to further the object which he had in view. Sir Edward was not very sanguine, for many attempts had been made upon Sharkey, and their results had shown that he was as cunning as he was ruthless. But this gaunt Puritan with the evil record was cunning aid ruthless also. The contest of wits between two such men as Sharkey and Craddock appealed to the Governor's acute sense of sport, and though he was inwardly convinced that the chances were against him, he backed his man ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... means of knowing the truth say, that the Harems of the East are the hot-beds of every wicked quality whose seeds slumber in the heart of woman. Surrounded by rivals; incessantly watched by those cunning and merciless monsters, the eunuchs; knowing nothing of science, art, literature, or industry— they must be devoured by animal passion, by love of intrigue and deception, by jealousy, envy, and ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... multiplication of effects we have come to a dinner of a dozen courses and wines of as many varieties; and that simple process of appropriating the virtue and the wisdom of the great man that was brought before the feast is now diversified into an analysis of all the men here under the cunning management of many speakers. No doubt, preserving as we do the identity of all these institutions, it is often considered a great art, or at least a great delight, to roast our friends and put in hot water those against whom ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... The man came to see you. If he had been alive you might have been in his toils by now. He was a very cunning person, and those who ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... very different character, had taken his place as chief of the confederacy of tribes. We have met with this savage before, in the adventurous career of Captain John Smith. He was a true Indian leader, shrewd, cunning, cruel in disposition, patient in suffering, skilled in deceit, and possessed of that ready eloquence which always had so strong an influence over the savage mind. Jealous of the progress of the whites, he nourished treacherous designs ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... pick out from the discourse of our interpreters, which we put together as well as we could, being able to understand but here and there a word of what they said, and afterwards making up the meaning of it among ourselves. The men of the country are very cunning and ingenious in handicraft works, but withal so very idle, that we often saw young, lusty, raw-boned fellows carried up and down the streets in little covered rooms by a couple of porters, who were hired for that service. Their dress is likewise very barbarous, for they ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... the ruling passion: There alone The wild are constant, and the cunning known; The fool consistent, and the false sincere; Priests, princes, women, no dissemblers here.' Pope, Moral Essays, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... tell me why you let that cunning man of the world, Colonel Vaughan, give you ten shillings? This has been on my mind for six or seven years, and I have never had an opportunity of getting it off before. You know if you won't have me for a lover, you may ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... the laws of this inner government on others who are of themselves ungoverned. Such liberty is the ground of true distinction; it implies the opposite of an equalitarianism which reserves its honors and rewards for those who attain a bastard kind of distinction by the cunning of leadership, without departing from common standards—the demagogues who rise by flattery. But it is, on the other hand, by no means dependent on the artificial distinctions of privilege, and is peculiarly adapted to an age whose appointed task must be to create a natural aristocracy ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... millions indeed come round, in the course of a generation or two, to the opinions of the wise; but by that time a new race of wise men have again shot ahead of their contemporaries: so it has always been, and so, in the nature of things, it always must be. But with cunning, the matter is quite different. Cunning is not dishonest wisdom, which would be a contradiction in terms; it is dishonest prudence, acuteness in practice, not in thought: and though there must always be some one the most ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... of course, be resisted by the prop on the lee side of the wall, but is often more effectually met, on the side which is attacked, by buttresses of peculiar forms, cunning buttresses, which do not attempt to sustain the weight, but parry it, and throw it off in directions ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... understand; and it is safer to say, on many occasions, that we are possessed by him, than that we possess him. And no wonder;—He scatters the seeds of things, the principles of character and action, with so cunning a hand, yet with so careless an air, and, master of our feelings, submits himself so little to our judgment, that every thing seems superior. We discern not his course, we see no connection of cause and effect, ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... the idea of it: it's cheering-like to a man who tries to do his best. But all people don't think same as we do, and whenever we hear of a castle being attacked and defended, there were always people outside trying to make traitors of those who were in, and temptation's a nasty, cunning, 'sinuating sort of a thing. But you're castellan, and you ought ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... of daylight his ways were such as any man of reserved and diffident ways, having no fixed employment, might follow in a smallish community. He sat upon his porch and read in books. He worked in his flower beds. With flowers he had a cunning touch, almost like a woman's. He loved them, and they responded to his love and bloomed and bore for him. He walked downtown to the business district, always alone, a shy and unimpressive figure, and ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... measure of the distance we have travelled away from Johnson that even plain people to-day, if they care for poetry at all, find much more in it than a piece of cunning craftsmanship. It is always that no doubt: but for us to-day it is also something far higher: a symbol of eternity. And more than a symbol, a sacrament: for it not only {207} suggests but reveals: it is the truth which it signifies; itself a part, as all those ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... an Actress fall down dead in a Tragedy. Not the least Indecency in her Posture. If you have observ'd what pretty Carcasses are carry'd off at the end of a Verse at the Theatre, it will give you a Notion how Dulcissa plumps into a Chair. Here's a little Country Girl that's very cunning, that makes her use of being young and unbred, and outdoes the Insnarers, who are almost twice her Age. The Air that she takes is to come into Company after a Walk, and is very successfully out of Breath upon occasion. Her Mother is in the Secret, and calls her Romp, and then looks round to see ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... would step from a matter as small as three market towns and the grazing of a few thousand head of sheep to a matter as big as the world. What is going to happen to the shipping of the world after this war? The Germans, with that combination of cunning and stupidity which baffles the rest of mankind, have set themselves to destroy the mercantile marine not merely of Britain and France but of Norway and Sweden, Holland, and all the neutral countries. ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... She was cunning, too. I added an imperious: "Allez," and with a strange docility she glided out without another word. All I had to do then was to get dressed and wait till ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... omit this edition of so celebrated a tale pictured by so celebrated an artist, yet Mr. Crane's work breathes mystery and Oriental cunning from every page, and should be given to our youngsters only after examination, as a highly-strung child might be frightened by it. The picture of the resourceful Morgiana filling the oil-jars, while a dreadful robber with saucer-like ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold
... those arts which made the Contessa so fascinating, he felt, with a mingling of self-ridicule which tickled him in spite of his seriousness, that nothing could keep him from interposing. He had been charmed in spite of himself, even while he saw through and laughed at the Contessa's cunning ways; but to see them in a girl who might, for all he knew, have his own blood in her veins was a very different matter. He felt it was in him to interpose roughly, imperiously—and if he did so, would Bice care? She would turn upon him with smiling defiance, or perhaps ask what ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... journeys to London, and he had never seen the inside of Beaumaroy's brown bag—that, like the Tower door, was always locked. He had handled it once, just before the pair set out for London one Wednesday. Beaumaroy, a careless man sometimes, in spite of the cunning which Dr. Irechester attributed to him, had left it on the parlor table while he helped Mr. Saffron on with his coat in the passage, and the Sergeant had swiftly and surreptitiously lifted it up. It was very light, obviously empty, or, at all events, holding only featherweight contents. ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... friend, are, as you should know, a cunning race. Moreover, those of them who dwell along it know the border far better than any white could ever hope to. By the admission of our own secret agents, it has hitherto been impossible to find how the arms, which the Chihuahua rebels ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... strings would vibrate. For a moment he excited religious emotion, then political fervour, then greed, love of glory and adventure, then national pride and hatred of Spain, then all these together by one cunning sentence. The forester out from the west felt his heart beating rapidly, his ears warming and tingling, and his right hand fidgeting with the handle of his sword. His companion could not keep still, and hot ejaculations sprang from his lips. He was a true Devon man of that roaring time, ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... if you can suggest any plan that will not fail. You are very cunning in your way, and your ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... roamed and roared at will. No one having passed twenty-four hours in the country could possibly doubt that his cup of joy was running over. Where his nephew had concealed his fortune was also a source of mystery to him. He certainly had displayed the diabolical cunning that is characteristic of the mentally deranged. Possibly he had concealed it in Mexico, but to combat the institutions of that land was like attempting ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... majestic, snow-crowned head high into the heavens, its serrated slopes softened by a purple haze, its soaring crest limned in blazing glory by the sun. The bay beneath them was like a huge silver shield, flat-rolled and glittering, inlaid with master cunning between wooded hills that swept away into mysterious distances, there to rise skyward in an ever-changing, ever-charming confusion. It reflected fairy-like islands, overgrown till they bowed to their mirrored likenesses. Now a smiling inlet opened up a perspective ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... decrepitude, while their intellectual attainments would only serve as a light to guide them to deeper depths of vice and ruin. A civilization without religion would be a civilization of 'the struggle for existence, and the survival of the fittest,' in which cunning and strength would become the substitutes for principle, virtue, conscience ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... skill, strength, and cunning, Nor do his hosts fill us with despair, For Michael[2] leads us, and Mary's[3] image With ...
— The Bakchesarian Fountain and Other Poems • Alexander Pushkin and other authors
... looked down on the hearth, and there were two cunning little Shoes side by side, and a little Spark of a Light close to them—just as if they were all made out of one of the glowing coals of the wood-fire. Such cunning Shoes as they were—Little Girl could hardly wait to pull off ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... surpassing shrewdness and cunning, attempt to take him with a trap. Rogue that he is, he always suspects some trick, and one must be more of a fox than he is himself to overreach him. At first sight it would appear easy enough. With apparent indifference he crosses ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... Every courier who arrived at Westminster, either from the Hague or from Versailles, brought earnest warnings. [467] But James was under a delusion which appears to have been artfully encouraged by Sunderland. The Prince of Orange, said the cunning minister, would never dare to engage in an expedition beyond sea, leaving Holland defenceless. The States, remembering what they had suffered and what they had been in danger of suffering during the great agony of 1672, would never incur ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... without moving a muscle or uttering a sound, nevertheless his eyes were fixed upon the judge with a kind of stony stare. It seemed to him that there was a kind of malignant cunning in the judge's words, that the man was conjuring up possibilities in support of the evidence which seemed to ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... you, and besides, it would be better that they should be under his orders than under yours. There, I have no more to say, except this—whether they succeed or not, your plans are both excellent; but you cannot expect to do anything by force. This is a case for scheme and cunning. Under the darkness it may be done. What I should like best would be for you to get that breech-block overboard. If you can do the other too, so much the better, but I shall be perfectly satisfied if you can do one, and get back safely into the river. There, ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... cunning itself, and Westall lay in wait for him in vain. Meanwhile, all the old hatred between the two men revived. Hurd drank this winter more than he had ever drunk yet. It was necessary to keep on good terms ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Peregrine, who not only considered it as a piece of unmannerly abuse leveled against his own conduct, but also a retrospective insult on the memory of his grandfather, who, as he had been informed, was in his lifetime more noted for his cunning ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... in the picture which Dibdin has extracted from Laneham. 'Captain Cox came marching on, clean trussed and gartered above the knee, all fresh in a velvet cap: an odd man, I promise you: by profession a mason, and that right skilful and very cunning in fence.... As for King Arthur and Huon of Bourdeaux, ... the Fryar and the Boy, Elynor Rumming, and the Nut-brown Maid, with many more than I can rehearse, I believe he has them ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... saying, 'That the water-pot which goes often to the well, gets broken at last,'" I observed. "Such may be the case with regard to old Samson; and you know nothing of the country, or of the cunning of the Redskins, and would be very sure to lose your ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston
... scenes, the habits, and, above all, the grace of action, which is commonly the best where there is the most need of it, surprise the audience, and cast a mist upon their understandings; not unlike the cunning of a juggler, who is always staring us in the face, and over-whelming us with gibberish, only that he may gain the opportunity of making the cleaner conveyance of his trick. But these false beauties of the stage are no more lasting ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... on, the curate and Cardenio had not been idle. For the curate was a cunning plotter, and had hit on a bright idea. He took from his pocket a pair of scissors, and cut off Cardenio's rugged beard and trimmed his hair very cleverly. And when he had thrown his riding-cloak ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... said, "that I am still sane—still alive? But I only live to find my child. I try and keep my reason in order to fight the devilish cunning of a brute on his own ground. Up to now all my inquiries have been in vain. At first I squandered money, tried judicial means, set an army of sleuth-hounds on the track. I tried bribery, corruption. ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... his first sleep, an event which the Sphynx himself, the diviner par excellence, could not have foreseen; but the devil was mixing himself up with Chicot's affairs, and he is more cunning than all ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... the beginning of that celebrated Wiles-Barker feud which has soiled the annals of that part of Kentucky. Its course was marked by murders, assassinations, wounds, burning of buildings, and every injury which cunning could devise ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... himself. Nor does beauty and strength of body, when dwelling in a base and cowardly man, appear comely, but the reverse of comely, making the possessor more conspicuous, and manifesting forth his cowardice. And all knowledge, when separated from justice and virtue, is seen to be cunning and not wisdom; wherefore make this your first and last and constant and all-absorbing aim, to exceed, if possible, not only us but all your ancestors in virtue; and know that to excel you in virtue ...
— Menexenus • Plato
... I will know," she said, her eyes filled with cunning, her voice a strange singsong oddly at variance with the coarse bigness of her body. "Oh, no, she will never escape from ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... draperies of the mind, and they hide the nakedness of truth. Your fireplace is ugly, your mere necessary shelves and seats but planks and crudity, all your surroundings so much office furniture, until the skilful hand and the draperies come in. Then a few cunning loopings and foldings, and behold softness and delicacy, crudity gone, and life well worth the living. So that you ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... that, young man? Would you, mother? Would you come up to the reporters' table, take up a pen and put your name down to such an excuse? You would say, "Let my right hand forget its cunning, and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I ...
— Moody's Anecdotes And Illustrations - Related in his Revival Work by the Great Evangilist • Dwight L. Moody
... the boy; but, since he's food for sharks, I'll call it square. Wreckers have been here before us—there's no doubt of that—and they've cleaned her out pretty thoroughly, too; but we'll take the schooner, and she's a good enough prize to suit me," he laughed, with a cunning glance at Montes. "Yes, good enough, and as lawful a one as was ever picked up on the high seas," he continued, in a rather more positive tone of voice. "All we have to do is to get her off, bend on a sail or two, and head her for Bonacca or Barbette. ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various
... not doubt; the bait had been dangled before his eyes with too much cunning, too much skill. In a casket, in a room in that house in the Corraterie, his life lay hidden; his life, and he could not come at it! His life? Was it a marvel that waking or sleeping he saw only that house, and that room, and that casket ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... the boxes accurately described their contents, the marks on them, and the time they were landed at Falmouth. The wharfinger, as might be expected, was completely put off his guard by the ingenuity and cunning of the thief, and delivered ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... as cunning a red-skin as I ever found, and it's jist my opine every one of 'em did think of that same thing, but they didn't try it for fear they might catch the varmint! They knew their ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... they related stories of wonderful recoveries made by men whose bodies had been beaten to a jelly. One, carried away by enthusiasm, declared that it did a man good to be shattered like glass, for the doctors, with satanic cunning seized the opportunity to knead the broken limbs like putty into a more desirable shape. But their words fell on deaf ears. The woman crouched over the prostrate man, stroking the bruised limbs with a stupid, mechanical movement as an ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... is common for a foe to hedge his adversary about so that fight he must. Thou art a woman and cunning, and lest thou join thyself to another and elude me ere the battle is on, I would better treat thee to a strategy. I shall wed thee ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... at the bottle, then at nurse's wily face, and his own face assumed an expression no less cunning, as much as to say, "You won't catch ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... of a generation, and lined with the stern ciphers of malign experiences. His dark, straight hair was long and unkempt; the finer lines of his cheeks and chin were blurred with the uncropped growth of a week-old beard; his eyes were bright and quick; his glance restless and comprehensive. A cunning reader of features would have found a home for high thoughts behind the fine forehead, the lines of infinite tenderness upon the mobile lips, the light of some noble conflagration in the wild eyes. He was dressed in faded finery of many colours, so ragged and patched and hostile ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... but she did not smile, and seemed to speak in good faith; and being somewhat thick in some matters, though a cunning fellow, he said— ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... within his province: and the consequence was that he increased the evils which he attempted to remedy. He was so much shocked by the distress inseparable from scarcity that he made statutes against forestalling and regrating, and so turned the scarcity into a famine. He was so much shocked by the cunning and hardheartedness of money-lenders that he made laws against usury; and the consequence was that the borrower, who, if he had been left unprotected, would have got money at ten per cent., could hardly, when protected, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay |
