"Dupe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... maintains the KAISER'S Merely the dupe of bad advisers, And, simply to avoid a fuss, Reluctantly ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 2, 1914 • Various
... easy," replied the young lady, "than to impose upon a person, who, being himself unconscious of guile, suspects no deceit. You have been a dupe, dear brother, not to the finesse of Fathom, but to the sincerity of your own heart. For my own part, I assume no honour to my own penetration in having comprehended the villany of that impostor, which was discovered, in more than one instance, ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... Lora that their little Leon had not gone to the Rio de la Plata, as they supposed, but was now one of the greatest geniuses of the French school of painting; a fact the family did not believe. The eldest son, Don Juan de Lora assured his cousin Gazonal that he was certainly the dupe of some Parisian wag. ...
— Unconscious Comedians • Honore de Balzac
... was not the first, nor would he be the last, to find that the role of cat's-paw is apt to prove more exacting than was anticipated. To his chagrin, he saw himself changed suddenly from a trusted agent into a dupe, and his utter collapse on hearing of the murder fitted in exactly with the theory taking shape in the detective's mind—that there were two implacable forces at war in New York that night, that Lady Hermione's marriage to Count Vassilan ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... "letting sleeping dogs lie" is that they lie in more senses than one. But in Mr. Jerome's Passing of the Third Floor Back the redeemer is not a divine detective, pitiless in his resolve to know and pardon. Rather he is a sort of divine dupe, who does not pardon at all, because he does not see anything that is going on. It may, or may not, be true to say, "Tout comprendre est tout pardonner." But it is much more evidently true to say, "Rien comprendre est rien ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... a noise. They extended their walk, and, while they proceeded, Mrs. Penniman took upon herself other things besides, and ended by having assumed a considerable burden; Morris being ready enough, as may be imagined, to put everything off upon her. But he was not for a single instant the dupe of her blundering alacrity; he knew that of what she promised she was competent to perform but an insignificant fraction, and the more she professed her willingness to serve him, the ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
... Gardeur de Repentigny, the sister of the beauteous Amelie, the niece of the noble Lady de Tilly, was a piece of fortune to have satisfied, until recently, both her heart and her ambition. But now Angelique was the dupe of dreams and fancies. The Royal Intendant was at her feet. France and its courtly splendors and court intrigues opened vistas of grandeur to her aspiring and unscrupulous ambition. She could not forego them, and would not! She knew that, all the time her heart was melting beneath the passionate ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... have benefited permanently, and who was made to be ruined, to cheat small tradesmen, to be the victim of astuter sharpers: to be niggardly and reckless, and as destitute of honesty as the people who cheated him, and a dupe, chiefly because he was too mean to be a successful knave. He had told more lies in his time, and undergone more baseness of stratagem in order to stave off a small debt, or to swindle a poor creditor, than would have ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... comedies of Ben Jonson (1610). The other two are Vol'pone (2 syl.), (1605), and The Silent Woman (1609). The object of The Alchemist is to ridicule the belief in the philosopher's stone and the elixir of life. The alchemist is "Subtle," a mere quack; and "sir Epicure Mammon" is the chief dupe, who supplies money, etc., for the "transmutation of metal." "Abel Drugger" a tobacconist, and "Dapper" a lawyer's clerk, are two other dupes. "Captain Face," alias "Jeremy," the house-servant of "Lovewit," and "Dol Common" are his allies. The whole thing is ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... him,' she returned. 'Worse than his wife, because I was once dupe enough, and false enough to myself, almost to love him. You have seen me, sir, only on common-place occasions, when I dare say you have thought me a common-place woman, a little more self-willed than the generality. You don't know what I mean by hating, if you know me no better than ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... can, An abridgment of all that was pleasant in man; As an actor, confessed without rival to shine; As a wit, if not first, in the very first line. Yet with talents like these, and an excellent heart, The man had his failings, a dupe to his art: Like an ill-judging beauty his colours he spread, And beplastered with rouge his own natural red; On the stage he was natural, simple, affecting— 'Twas only that when he was off he was ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... of eternal truths: I will speak to you the language of this world. You have been trained among sinners who gloried in their sin: in your whole life you never saved one farthing; and now, when your pockets are full, you think you can begin, poor dupe, in your own strength. You are a roysterer, a jovial companion; you mean no harm—you are nobody's enemy but your own. No doubt you tell this girl of mine, and no doubt you tell yourself, that you can change. Christopher, speaking under correction, I defy you! ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in quest of right and wrong, Tamper with conscience from a private aim; Nor was in any public hope the dupe Of selfish passions; nor did ever yield Wilfully to mean cares or ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon
... dignity. If he had been a dupe, he was one no longer, as could be plainly read on his calm, pale face. The old listlessness, the unsteadiness had vanished. He wore a manner of extreme quietude; but his eyes were like balls ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... a man of the world before the many older women she cannot choose but see would gladly be in her place. That it is her youth and not herself that holds the attraction is unknown to her, and a clever man may often dupe ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... were laying England at the feet of foreign alliances and Continental {291} despots. Walpole worked in cordial alliance with the French Government, the principal member of which was now Cardinal Fleury. It became the object of the Craftsman to hold Walpole up to contempt and derision, as the dupe of a French cardinal and the sycophant of a French Court. The example of the Craftsman was speedily followed by pamphleteers, caricaturists, satirists, and even ballad-mongers without end. London and the provinces were flooded with such literature. Walpole was described as "Sir Blue String," ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... preference, from facts which the unwary lay before them by way of warnings. If he is a spendthrift, it is so noble to be free and generous; if he is a gambler, he is of such a fine unsuspecting disposition, he is only the dupe of the designing. In short, whatever you say to put them on their guard, only makes them expose themselves the more; and, therefore, I made no further attempt to open the eyes of Miss Sibylla Smith. All passed off very well at dinner. Every one was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... Distrustful as I was of Desborough, I could not have been deceived by this device, even had I not thus fortunately become acquainted with the whole of the design: but now that I knew my man, and could see my way, I at once resolved to appear the dupe they purposed to make me. Specie too, for the payment of the garrison! This was no contemptible prize with which to commence my career. Besides the boat was well manned, and although without cannon, still in point of military equipment ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... dupe: one kind, the commonest, goes on believing in its deceiver, no matter what happens; the other, far rarer, has the sense to know it has been deceived if you make the deception as clear as day to it. Mrs. Evelegh was, fortunately, of the ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... Calais, where he died on the 15th of September, either from apoplexy or by a private execution. Richard Earl of Arundel, the tool of his priestly brother, was beheaded six days later. The Earl of Warwick, who had been merely the blind dupe of the others, was banished to the Isle of Man. The remaining two—the ambitious Derby, and the conceited Nottingham—contrived in the cleverest manner, not only to escape punishment, but to obtain substantial rewards for their loyalty! ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... characterfeared his satire, and had some confidence in the general soundness of his opinions. He therefore looked at him as if desiring his leave before indulging his credulity. Dousterswivel saw he was in danger of losing his dupe, unless he could make some favourable impression on ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... preach up Virtue, and stile themselves Philosophers, perpetually clashing with one another about the Precedence of their several Founders, the Merits of their different Sects, and if it is possible, about Trifles of less Importance; yet all agreeing in a different Way, to dupe and amuse the poor People by the fantastick Singularity of their Habits, the unintelligible Jargon of their Schools, and their Pretentions to a severe and mortified Life. This motly Herd of Jugglers Lucian in a great Measure help'd to chase out of the World, by exposing them ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... traveller, but Ponce de Leon went from one island to another, tasting the water of every stream that he met with, without the satisfaction of seeing his white hair again becoming black or his wrinkles disappearing. After spending six months in this fruitless search, he was tired of playing the dupe, so giving up the business he returned to Porto Rico on the 5th of October, leaving Perez de Ortubia and the pilot Antonio de Alaminos to continue the search. Pere Charlevoix says, "He was the object of great ridicule when he returned in much suffering, and looking ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... is taken from Scripture, where Peter denies Our Lord. I confess, this circumstance gave me great pleasure. It showed that the King is not the dupe of those around him, and that he hates treachery ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... an alleged contract, not to say anything of the impudence of regularly pleading it? If such an attempt be wicked and unlawful (and I am sure no one ever doubted it), I have only to confess his charge, and to admit myself his dupe, to make him pass, on his own showing, for the most consummate villain that ever lived. The only difference between us is, not whether he is not a rogue—for he not only admits but pleads the facts that demonstrate him to be so; but only whether I was such a ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... could not credit that guile existed in others. Hers was one of those characters which, from its very innocence, would be held more sacred in the eyes of an upright, honourable man, though it exposes its possessor to be made the dupe of the designing villain. One might have supposed that our remote and quiet home would have been free from the accursed presence of such a one. Never was a family more united or more happy. Our father was in the enjoyment of vigorous health, and proud of his family, and the success ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... retained much of that personal beauty for which he praises her in his letters written in the early days of matrimony; and her mental qualities seemed equally to justify his eulogies: a rare circumstance, as none are more prone to dupe themselves in affairs of the heart than men of lively imaginations. She was, in fact, a more suitable wife for a poet than poet's wives are apt to be; and for once a son of song had married a reality and not a ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... belief in time dawning upon the judgment of Britain that the canal would be finished and would succeed, her statesmen turned their energies to checkmating and minimizing the influence of De Lesseps and his dupe Ismail. The screws were consequently put on the Sultan of Turkey—whose vassal Ismail was—resulting in that Merry Monarch of the Nile being deposed and sent into exile, and the national cash-box at Cairo was at the same ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... can produce,' which the 'goodness of God' inflicted upon that 'smaller party,' 'who' according to Cromwell, 'designed the surprise of the castle' of Chester, forms an appropriate close to this portion of our narrative. An 'exceeding poor' dupe, Francis Pickering, tells the story, and the duper was a Colonel Worthing. After enticing Pickering into the plot by assurances of a general rising against the Protector, on the night of the 8th of March, Worthing announced that his part in the design 'was principally to ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... one of them till you have convinced me that it is good for him to learn things three-fourths of which are unintelligible to him, and until you can convince me that in those fables he can understand he will never reverse the order and imitate the villain instead of taking warning from his dupe. ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... uncle Frank turned up. He came to Richmond with proof that cleared him of the charge of treason in the minds of his old comrades. Three men on their deathbeds had signed affidavits, showing that they were guilty of the very thing of which he was accused, he being an innocent dupe in the transaction. I don't know just how it all came about, but he was exonerated completely. With this to back him up, he came to the Hall to plead for my grandfather's forgiveness. He came many times, and finally it seems that grandfather believed his story. ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... aside from cures thus rendered impossible for want of el'gible invalids, thar's still this yere hypnotic bluff you puts up. What Wolfville hankers for is tests, tests about the legit'macy of which thar's no openin' for dispoote. Wharfore I yereby makes offer of myse'f to become your onmurmurin' dupe. I'll gamble you a stack of bloos you don't make me drink no water, thinkin' it's nosepaint, same as you pretends to do with them ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... was this present affair going? Pretty far already: clandestine meetings and that sort of thing. Still, he couldn't help being a man, could he? And Tommy Hollins, poor dupe! ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... conceivable, and that, unlike the dog, she should see nothing godlike in a masterful human boy, is hardly a matter for regret; but the most subtle of dramatists should better understand the most subtle of animals, and forbear to rank her as man's enemy because she will not be man's dupe. Rather let us turn back and learn our lesson from Montaigne, serenely playing with his cat as friend to friend, for thus, and thus only, shall we enjoy the sweets of her companionship. If we want an animal to prance on its hind legs, ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... lie? A brazen lie!—for the tales of shipwreck sufficiently prove the pitilessness of winds,—and however much a verse-weaver may pretend to be in the confidence of Nature, he is after all but the dupe of his own frenetic dreams. One couplet hath most discordantly annoyed ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... in making any acquisition of price, from such a suspected source as the cabinet of the antiquary. But if you have unfortunately been made a dupe of—what remedy? That depends, if you have been led to purchase any thing under a false impression of its antiquity; and can prove this. The law itself would step in, in such a case, to repossess you of your ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... "Dupe, cozen, jockey the trustful young creature. Do. There 's a great-hearted gentleman. You need n't fear my undeceiving her. I know my place; I know who holds the purse-strings; I know which side my bread is buttered on. Motley's ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... kind, which may be harmless in England, are very serious matters here. Ignorantly, I admit, but none the less certainly, you have aided in the escape of a malefactor of the worst kind; and but for the proofs that have been afforded us that you were a mere dupe, the consequences would have been most serious to you, and even the fact of your being a foreigner would not have sufficed to save you from the hands of justice. You are now free to depart; but let this be a lesson ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... credulity, credulousness &c. adj.; cullibility|, gullibility; gross credulity, infatuation; self delusion, self deception; superstition; one's blind side; bigotry &c. (obstinacy) 606; hyperorthodoxy &c. 984[obs3]; misjudgment &c. 481. credulous person &c (dupe) 547. V. be credulous &c. adj.; jurare in verba magistri[Lat]; follow implicitly; swallow, gulp down; take on trust; take for granted, take for gospel; run away with a notion, run away with an idea; jump to a conclusion, rush to a conclusion; think the moon is made of green cheese; take ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... scheme, that a mere paper reform had become a defense for continued idleness, and that I was making it a raison d'etre for going on indefinitely with study and travel. It is easy to become the dupe of a deferred purpose, of the promise the future can never keep, and I had fallen into the meanest type of self-deception in making myself believe that all this was in preparation for great things to come. Nothing less than the moral reaction following the experience at a bullfight had been able ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... my mind at rest as to her having fallen a victim to his fascinations. Her arrival at Mohair being delayed, the Celebrity had come nearly a month too soon, and in the interval that tendency of which he was the dupe still led him by the nose; he must needs make violent love to the most attractive girl on the ground,—Miss Trevor. Now that one still more attractive had arrived I was curious to see how he would steer ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... said of Lodowick Muggleton, a seventeenth-century Dowie who would fain have been a prophet of a new dispensation. He put out an exposition of the Witch of Endor that was entirely rationalistic.[29] Witches, he maintained, had no spirits but their own wicked imaginations. Saul was simply the dupe of a woman pretender. ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... a response; but his letter to Henry III and Henry's answer prove that neither the one nor the other was the dupe ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... describes, so that fame is felt to have a value quite distinct from that which the expectation of fame may have in the present moment. Should this expectation be foolish and destined to prove false, it would have no value, and be indeed the more ludicrous and repulsive the more pleasure its dupe took in it, and the longer his illusion lasted. The heart is resolutely set on its object and despises its own phenomena, not reflecting that its emotions have first revealed that object's worth and alone can maintain it. For if a man cares nothing ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... youth! An absurd period, excusable only on the score of its brevity. A parlous condition! A traitorous guide, froward, inspired of all manner of levity, pursuant of hopeless phantasms, dupe of roseate and pernicious myths (love-at-first-sight, and the like), butt of the High Gods' stinging laughter, deserving of nothing kinder than mockery from the aged and the wise—which is doubtless why we old and sage folk thank Heaven daily, uplifting cracked voices and withered ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... of the lounge, but he had slipped his hand from the relaxing hold of hers, and pressed it over his eyes. She could not seek to possess herself of it again. Winston was not the only dupe of the nefarious fraud, the betrayal of which had overtaken the guilty pair thus late in their career of duplicity. Yet, however severely she had suffered in heart from their falsehood and her brother's intolerance, ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... insidious sophistry!" cried Ulrich, sinking despairingly on a chair. "Your words were as full of duplicity as your heart is; and I, poor, short-sighted dupe, believed your words! And not you alone, but Elza, too, has cheated me—she whom I loved as a sister, and whom I should have loved even better, if you had not stepped in between us, if I had not seen you. Elza has betrayed ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... rasped the man, "that you are a fool! You have listened to Lapierre and you have easily become his dupe. There is no Indian in his employ who would not kill me. They have had their orders. Have you stopped to reflect that the brave Lapierre did not himself remain to stem this attack? To protect ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... not end with the beginning of the reign of Protestantism. Woman has always been the greatest dupe, because the sentiments act blindly, and they alone have been educated in her. Her veneration, not guided by an enlightened intellect, leads her as readily to the worship of saints, pictures, holy days, and inspired men and books, as of the living God ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... he was soon most jauntily of their persuasion. He could not know that here and there people were saying to one another, aside, the words he had feared to hear in reproach—that the swain whom he and his lady-love had conspired to dupe was his brother, who had done everything for him—had, as a mere child, encountered and vanquished poverty, had clothed and educated this man and his sisters, had served his every interest with a perfect self-abnegation all his life; that it was his brother who had won his election, ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... am indeed surprised, and still more concerned, to see my lord and uncle the dupe of an artful contrivance; and, if he will permit me, I shall endeavour to unriddle it, to the confusion of all that ...
— The Old English Baron • Clara Reeve
... be tempted to risk your soul for a vile body, the prey of worms and ready to turn to dust. That, if anything, will restore you to yourself." For my part, I was so weary of this double life that I closed with his offer. I longed to know once for all, which—priest or gallant—was the dupe of a delusion, and I was resolved to sacrifice one of my two lives for the good of the other—yea, if it were necessary, to sacrifice both, for such an existence as I was leading could not last.... Father Serapion procured a mattock, a crowbar, and a lantern, and ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... father's wrath (a plain, blunt man of narrow ideas, who read Macaulay) which prevented him from 'going over.' When he only got a pass degree his friends were astonished; but he shrugged his shoulders and delicately insinuated that he was not the dupe of examiners. He made one feel that a first class was ever so slightly vulgar. He described one of the vivas with tolerant humour; some fellow in an outrageous collar was asking him questions in logic; it was infinitely tedious, ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... had been induced, by the hope of 'his country's good,' to grant a commission, which, it should be noted, Caesar describes as 'under the Great Seal.' The King, Yelverton was not ashamed to suggest, had been the dupe of Ralegh, who invented the Mine to regain his liberty. He could not, it was argued, have meant to mine, since he carried no miners or instruments. He had a French commission to assail Spaniards. In ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... to search out the ground of his base and unchristian treatment. One thing is very certain, he is no gambler. It may not be a want of disposition, but rather a sufficient amount of sense, to make him a proficient in the business. He may be an ignorant dupe—a mere tool of the designing, the "cats paw" of some respectable blackleg, who thinks to cover his own crimes, by exciting public opinion against me, through an apparently respectable instrumentality. But I did not wish to bandy words with him, being ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... reminded me exceedingly of ——, and her mother. What a heroine she would be for Sand! She has the same fearless softness with Juliet, and a sportive naivete, a mixture of bird and kitten, unknown to the dupe of Lioni. ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... a moment when Tantalus rebels, crosses his arms, and defies hell, throwing up his part of the eternal dupe. That is what I shall come to if anything should thwart my plan; if, after stooping to the dust of provincial life, prowling like a starving tiger round these tradesmen, these electors, to secure their votes; if, after wrangling in these squalid cases, and giving them my time—the ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... ye "contemplative ones!" Even Zarathustra was once the dupe of your godlike exterior; he did not divine the serpent's coil with which it ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... smile. You will be amused when you see that I have more than once deceived without the slightest qualm of conscience, both knaves and fools. As to the deceit perpetrated upon women, let it pass, for, when love is in the way, men and women as a general rule dupe each other. But on the score of fools it is a very different matter. I always feel the greatest bliss when I recollect those I have caught in my snares, for they generally are insolent, and so self-conceited that they ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... succeed or fail, Sporus at Court, or Japhet in a jail, A hireling scribbler, or a hireling peer, Knight of the post corrupt, or of the shire; If on a pillory, or near a throne, He gain his prince's ear, or lose his own. Yet soft by nature, more a dupe than wit, Sappho can tell you how this man was bit; This dreaded satirist Dennis will confess Foe to his pride, but friend to his distress: So humble, he has knocked at Tibbald's door, Has drunk with Cibber, nay has rhymed for Moore. Full ten years ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... his eye, to indicate he was not a dupe of this falsehood; and he went off, after offering to fetch her milk, if she did not care to go out: she was a good and courageous woman, and might count upon him on ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... of it. Wholly enwrapped in the beauty and grace of his female companion, he is totally oblivious to all passing around. She is exerting all her arts to entice 'greeny' into her net, and before long will be counting the amount of his cash— while he, her dupe, will be, too late, reflecting upon the depravity of pretty waiter girls. By this time the saloon is crowded with men and women, of all degrees of social standing. Here is the man about-town, the hanger-round of ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... was ever fearful of being himself the dupe. He distrusted the sweet innocence of Viola. He could not venture the hazard of seriously proposing marriage to an Italian actress; but the modest dignity of the girl, and something good and generous ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... indomitable patience—in quick sagacity. But there were other qualities necessary to the position of the Spartan, and those scarce so praiseworthy—viz., craft and simulation. He was one of a scanty, if a valiant, race. No single citizen could be spared the state: it was often better to dupe than to fight an enemy. Accordingly, the boy was trained to cunning as to courage. He was driven by hunger, or the orders of the leader over him, to obtain his food, in house or in field, by stealth;—if undiscovered, he was applauded; if detected, punished. Two main-springs of action were ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... championship of slavery really earns him any European respect is under that kind of delusion which it is always for the interest of the plotter to cultivate in the tool. It was common, a few years ago, to represent the Abolitionist as the dupe or agent of the aristocracies of Europe. It certainly might be supposed that persons who made this foolish charge were competent at least to see that the present enemy of the unity of the American people is the pro-slavery fanatic, and that it is on his knavery or ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... Kennedy, looking up quietly from the counter. "Seal that safe again, McLear. In it are the Schloss jewels and the products of half a dozen other robberies which the dupe Muller—or Stein, as you please—pulled off, some as a blind to conceal the real criminal. You may have shown him how to leave no finger prints, but you yourself have left what is just as good- -your own forehead ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... other, flat as he was, could not stand this, and, on examining the pot, he found marks which, on further investigation, turned out to be indications of coin having been in it. The thief stuck to his story, so the dupe complained, and, as the presumption is considered to be strongly against him, they are going to try what excommunication will do. It is remarkable that they asked this man if he would swear upon the Host that he had not found any money, and this he refused to do, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... that she didn't want to get her dear Skip into any trouble, but she did want his help. Skip found her a good boarding-place the first time he met her, and now she had to dupe him into securing her furnished rooms and board in a castle. She may have rather encouraged him to imagine that once she was free from Jim she would listen once more to Skip. But there is no evidence on that point and ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... love-verses, writ without any real passion, are the most nauseous of all conceits; and I have often thought that no man can be a proper critic of love-composition, except he himself, in one or more instances, have been a warm votary of this passion. As I have been all along a miserable dupe to love, and have been led into a thousand weaknesses and follies by it, for that reason I put the more confidence in my critical skill, in distinguishing foppery and conceit from real passion and nature. Whether the following song ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... secure a hapless prisoner. Soon his prison-house becomes a stomach for his absorption. Its duty of digestion done, the leaf in all seeming guilessness once more expands itself for the enticement of a dupe. To see how much the sun-dew must depend upon its meal of insects we have only to pull it up from the ground. A touch suffices—it has just root enough to drink by; the soil in which it makes, and perhaps has been obliged to make, ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... it not humiliating to the nineteenth century, that it should be destined to transmit to future ages the example of such puerilities seriously and gravely practised? To be the dupe of another, is bad enough; but to employ all the forms and ceremonies of representation in order to cheat oneself—to doubly cheat oneself, and that too in a mere numerical account—truly this is calculated to lower a little the ...
— What Is Free Trade? - An Adaptation of Frederic Bastiat's "Sophismes Econimiques" - Designed for the American Reader • Frederic Bastiat
... the princess thus, and the greatest potentates thieves of the first water. "Pray, my lord," said I, "how can you call those illustrious people greater thieves than robbers on the highway?" "You are but a dupe," said he; "is not the villain who goes over the world with his sword in his hand and his plunderers behind him, burning and slaying, wresting kingdoms from their right owners, and looking forward to be adored as a conqueror, worse than the rogue who takes a purse upon ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... same woman. A moment before she manifested a sort of endearing humility, but now she was ironically boastful, looking at Lissac with the air of one triumphing over a dupe. He bit his lips slightly, rubbing his hands together, while examining her sidelong, without affectation. Marianne's ironical smile told him all that ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... whereabouts," said Mr. Forbes, "has called on me to-day, and the facts he has laid before me demand your earnest consideration. He is assured that the treasure-hunting expedition you have joined is a compound of piracy and rascality, in which Mr. Fenshawe is a dupe, having been misled by a man who has incurred the gravest suspicion of felony. The Italian Government is taking steps to procure this person's arrest, and, whether or not the charges brought against him be substantiated, it is an assured thing that the movements ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... conversation, the falsehood of my representations and the wickedness of my motive I am almost ashamed to proceed with my narrative. Had the minister been other than an arrant humbug, I hope I should never have suffered myself to make him the dupe of a scheme so sacrilegious in itself, and prosecuted with so sinful ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... And whilst he clasped her in his arms, anxiety strained at his heart, anguish convulsed his soul. Did she really love him, this woman with her whimsical ways, her independent attitude, this elusive woman who never gave herself entirely? Was he the dupe of a comedy? Did she consent to these meetings three times a week through pity, through sympathy only, or through habit, or, worse still, for some mercenary reason? And this when he himself would have given up everything so ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... She took this unpopular line both by temperament and by reaction from her sister's "extreme" views, the sight of the dreadful people that they brought about her. In reality, Olive was distinguished and discriminating, and Adeline was the dupe of confusions in which the worse was apt to be mistaken for the better. She talked to Ransom about the inferiority of republics, the distressing persons she had met abroad in the legations of the United ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... the unhappy victims to the ridiculous opinion, a reformed libertine makes the best husband—that, did not experience daily evince the contrary, one would believe it impossible for a girl who has a tolerable degree of common understanding, to be made the dupe of so erroneous a position, which has not the least shadow of reason for its foundation, and which a small share of observation will prove to be false in fact. A man who has been conversant with the worst sort of women, is very apt to contract a bad opinion of, and a contempt for, ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... are waiting for him at Toulon or Brest, and I have just concluded a devilish treaty with him. Bah! I have nothing to reproach myself with. Of two evils choose the least; it remains to be seen whether Gerfaut is the dupe of a coquette or whether his love is threatened with some catastrophe; at all events, I am his friend, and I ought to clear up this mystery and put him ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... with a great horror on her mind; that day, of which he wrote, was come. She was alone; she had been false, she had been cruel; remorse rolled in upon her; and then with a more piercing note, vanity bounded on the stage of consciousness. She a dupe! she helpless! she to have betrayed herself in seeking to betray her husband! she to have lived these years upon flattery, grossly swallowing the bolus, like a clown with sharpers! she—Seraphina! Her ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... object before she dies. She is not the only perverted nature delineated. There is the Baron Hulot, whose odious licentiousness brings him to a veritable cretinism. There is Crevel, a grotesque, contemptible dupe; there are the Marneffes, sinks of corruption; and, with these, other minor characters—the vindictive Brazilian who wreaks his wrath on Madame Marneffe and on Crevel by his mysterious death-causing gift. The ideally virtuous Adeline Hulot also the novelist belittles, making ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... transactions, and certainly would be the last person I should wish to interfere in such a matter. Let us go and post this letter, and then I want to go to Tattersalls. Will you dine with me at the club at six? and afterwards we will keep our appointment with Dancy and Lord Dupe; we may make something of the latter, if ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... one and the other that, having long abidden with her, neither of them knoweth her. But that you may the better apprehend that which each of these hath deserved, I will,—so but you vouchsafe me, of special favour to punish the deceiver and pardon the dupe,—e'en cause her come hither into your and their presence.' The Soldan, disposed in the matter altogether to comply with Sicurano's wishes, answered that he would well and bade him produce the lady; whereat Bernabo marvelled exceedingly, for that he ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... Mr Ratman. What brought him here at this moment, to extinguish, perhaps, the little gleam of courage that flickered in the breast of his wretched dupe? ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... father, standing before him, his tall frame swaying backwards and forwards with excitement; "no, do not curse her, she, like your other poor dupe, is an honest woman; on yourself be the damnation, you living fraud, you outcast from all honour, who have brought shame and reproach upon our honest name, on you be it; may every curse attend you, and may remorse torture ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... to think—to plan for the future, unless—There was another to reckon with—the woman he had met in the park, whose automobile he had attempted to follow. She, too, was on the boat! He had been her dupe once. Was he now ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... as Marcus Tullius Cicero could be for his life, and, for aught I am convinced of to the contrary at present, with as much reason: it was indeed his strength—and his weakness too.—His strength—for he was by nature eloquent; and his weakness—for he was hourly a dupe to it; and, provided an occasion in life would but permit him to shew his talents, or say either a wise thing, a witty, or a shrewd one—(bating the case of a systematic misfortune)—he had all he wanted.—A blessing which tied up my father's tongue, and a misfortune which let it loose ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... to thank you, my dear sir, for reminding me of that affair," replied Derville. "My philanthropy will not carry me beyond twenty-five louis; I have, I fear, already been the dupe ...
— Colonel Chabert • Honore de Balzac
... numbers of innocent victims were sacrificed in times of public mania on the subject. The question is, whether many did not attempt unlawful arts in full belief of their efficacy; and whether some, a compound of the self-dupe and the impostor, did not make use of their reputed power to indulge in the grossest license ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... the major portion of them is derived from the ignorant and lower classes. Every man in America reads his newspaper, and hardly any thing else; and while he considers that he is assisting to govern the nation, he is in fact, the dupe of those who pull the strings in secret, and by flattering his vanity, and exciting his worst feelings, make him a poor tool in their hands. People are too apt to imagine that the newspapers echo their own feelings; ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... these words: she looked earnestly upon him while he was uttering the latter part, and saw all the tokens of a serious perplexity in his countenance, as well as in the accents with which he delivered them; but not being willing to be the dupe of his diversion, thought it best to answer as to a piece of railery, and told him, laughing, she imagined this was some new invention of the frolics of the season, but that she was a downright English-woman, understood nothing beyond plain speaking, and could no ways ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... earliest members of Davenant's company, and her son, known as Jubilee Dicky from his superlative performance in Farquhar's The Constant Couple (1699), was a leading comedian in the reigns of Anne and the first George. Amongst Mrs. Norris' many roles such parts as Lady Dupe, the old lady in Dryden's Sir Martin Mar-All (1667), Goody Rash in Crowne's The Country Wit (1675), Nuarcha, an amorous old maid, in Maidwell's The Loving Enemies (1680), Mother Dunwell, the bawd in Betterton's ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... twaddle all these paradises are! God is a nonsensical monster. I would not say that in the Moniteur, egad! but I may whisper it among friends. Inter pocula. To sacrifice the world to paradise is to let slip the prey for the shadow. Be the dupe of the infinite! I'm not such a fool. I am a nought. I call myself Monsieur le Comte Nought, senator. Did I exist before my birth? No. Shall I exist after death? No. What am I? A little dust collected in an organism. What am I to do on this earth? The ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... machinery, and her husband, finally, as the last stake in her game, the last asset on which she could draw to rebuild her fallen fortunes. At the thought Garnett was filled with a deep disgust for what the scene signified, and for his own share in it. He had been her tool and dupe like the others; if he imagined that he was serving Hermione, it was for her mother's ends that he had worked. What right had he to sentimentalise a marriage founded on such base connivances, and how could he have imagined that in so doing he was ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... the sum awarded in excess of the legitimate claims, returned the balance in the form of a fund to be applied to the education of Chinese students in American universities. "I would rather be, I think," said Mr. Hay, "the dupe of China than the chum of the Kaiser." By pursuing a liberal policy, he strengthened the hold of the United States upon the affections of the Chinese people and, in the long run, as he remarked himself, safeguarded "our great ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... the Left. M. Milliere proposed, as did also M. Delescluze, a motion of impeachment against the Government of the National Defence. He concluded by saying that whoever failed to join him in pressing the motion was a "dupe or an accomplice." ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... was "very far from young when he knew him, but of surprising vivacity and volubility, and with a head admirably mechanic, but an universal projector, and with at least one of the qualities that attend that vocation, either a dupe or a cheat; I think," he continues, "the former, though, as most of his projects ended in air, the sufferers believed the latter. As he was much an enthusiast, perhaps like most enthusiasts he was ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... work for them, then? You won't tell me it's for love —Have you got any character by it?—if you haven't profit, what have you? I would not let them make me a dupe, or may be something worse, if I was you," said Cornelius, looking him ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... to my quiet habits, I could do nothing but comply." His book on France relates the event and concludes with: "We all got invitations to dine at the palace in a day or two." But Cooper "never had any faith in the republican king," and thought "General Lafayette had been the dupe of his own good faith and kind feelings." Queen Marie Amelie, who was the daughter of Ferdinand I of the two Sicilies, asked Cooper which he most preferred of all the lands he had visited. His quick and strictly ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... hands went groping to her throat. It had been no chance affair then—no accidental meeting that the Arab chief had turned to his own account, but an organised outrage that had been carefully planned from the beginning. From the very outset she had been a dupe. She ground her teeth with rage. Her suave, subservient guide had been leading her the whole time, not in the direction that had been mapped out in Biskra, but towards the man who had bought him to betray his trust. Mustafa ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... word shall pass my lips no more. Thy maidens, grieved themselves at my concern, Oft gave me promise of thy quick return; What ardently I wished I long believed, And, disappointed still, was still deceived,— By expectation every day beguiled, Dupe of to-morrow even from a child. Thus many a sad to-morrow came and went, Till, all my stock of infant sorrow spent, I learned at last submission to my lot; But, though I less deplored ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... prepared to discover in his conjurations the signs of a genuine diabolic agency. His observations, however, led him to a different result; and he could detect in his rival nothing but a vile compound of impostor and dupe. The sorcerer believed in the efficacy of his own magic, and was continually singing and beating his drum to cure the disease from which he was suffering. Towards the close of the winter, Le Jeune fell sick, and, in his pain ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... whole social machine, it can seize a few factories and yards, if it wants to, but it really possesses nothing. To hold in one's hand a few pebbles of a deserted road is not to be master of transportation."[48] "The working class would be the dupe of a fatal illusion and a sort of unhealthy obsession if it mistook what can be only the tactics of despair for a ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... latter has an estate of eight hundred a year. Sir Martin Mar-all is far more conceited and foolish than Lelio; Trufaldin becomes Mr. Moody, a swashbuckler; a compound of Leander and Andres, Sir John Swallow, a Kentish knight; whilst of the filthy characters of Lord Dartmouth, Lady Dupe, Mrs. Christian, and Mrs. Preparation, no counterparts are found in Moliere's play. But the scene in which Warner plays the lute, whilst his master pretends to do so, and which is at last discovered by Sir Martin continuing to play after the servant has finished, is very clever. ...
— The Blunderer • Moliere
... disguise longer than she wished, and was willing that John should discover her identity. At first it had been rare sport to dupe him; but the latter part of her conversation had given her no pleasure. She was angry, jealous, and hurt ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... volatile enough to enjoy the romantic features of this transformation scene, even going so far as to write out the order herself with the same effort at disguise she had used in registering their assumed names at the desk, was not entirely his dupe, and having hidden ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... have not understanding. The power also of office, whether the duties be discharged well or ill, will ensure a never-failing supply of flattery and praise: and of these—a man (becoming at once double-dealer and dupe) may, without impeachment of his modesty, receive as much as his weakness inclines him to; under the shew that the homage is not offered up to himself, but to that portion of the public dignity which is lodged in his person. But, whatever may ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... a despot and a slave; A dupe and a deceiver; a decay; 550 A traveller from the cradle to the grave Through the dim night ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... and they are happy and beautiful in the joy of living only, and give glory to the supreme artist of all things; for man is a noble hymn to God. All think that happiness is innocent, and that pleasure is permitted to man. Paphnutius, if they are right, what a dupe you have been!" ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... Presidential Office had now, at last, brought him to their "aristocratic" altitude, and to a hearty recognition by them of his "social equality;" or to follow, either in or out of Congress, the great political conflict, between their unsuspecting Presidential dupe and the Congress, which led to the impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson, for high crimes and misdemeanors in office, his narrow escape from conviction and deposition, and to much consequent excitement and turmoil among the ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... me—in spite of it all to have him so close, and without moving or taking any trouble, to see him so much better than he can see me! But this is a legitimate trickery of science, so innocent that we can laugh at our dupe when we practise it; nor do we afterwards despise our superior cunning and feel ashamed, as when we slaughter wild birds with far-reaching shot, ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... doubt? Interrupted in their first intercourse by Maulear, they expected on another occasion to be more fortunate. No, cried he, that shall not be, they will find me between themselves and happiness. I wish them to at least learn, that I am not their dupe. I will cover her snowy brow with a blush, and avenge myself by disclosing to her my knowledge of her secret. But how could he surprise them? Would they dare to cross the terrace again? Perhaps, though, they ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... had received a considerable sum on that day, as the stranger knew; and so, producing a pistol by way of receipt, he compelled the delivery of it. His Grace now discovered that he had been the dupe of a thief; and though he had greatly bruited his first adventure, he prudently kept his own counsel in regard to ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... plain a mingled yell Of rage and triumph,—a demoniac whoop: The Padre heard it like a passing knell, And would have loosened his unchristian loop; But the tough raw-hide held the captive well, And held, alas! too well the captor-dupe; For with one bound the savage fled amain, Dragging horse, Friar, down the ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... continue friends let there be no more mistakes, of which it is impossible that I should be the dupe." ...
— Study of a Woman • Honore de Balzac
... he saw through Hanan's designs, he was still the dupe of Hanan, who was a clever man and a learned man; his importance loomed up very large, and Joseph could not be without a hero, true or false; so it could not be otherwise than that Hanan and Kaiaphas and the Sadducees, whom Joseph met ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... not to be the dupe of these things. There are a few great names, distinguished by common consent, whose claims it is necessary to respect. These men form the front of every honorary institution; if there are to be knights ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... welcome in London that their devotion merited. They were prepared to be treated like sons by the King, as friends by the princes, as leaders by the emigrants, who were only waiting to return till France was reconquered for them. The deception was cruel. The emigrant world, so easy to dupe on account of its misfortunes, and immeasurable vanity, had fallen a victim to so many false Chouans—spies in disguise and barefaced swindlers, who each brought plans for the restoration, and after obtaining ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... knew that the woman who submitted to his caresses was a spirit of wrath. Fool in his own conceit, he was yet watchful. If she makes a single false move at Stettin, she seals her own fate, he darkly pledged his familiar demon. And so, stealthily eying each other, the fugitive and his fascinating dupe neared the sandy dunes of the ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... towards me. This, however, did not prevent her from reproaching her daughter in private with telling me everything, and loving me too much, observing to her she was a fool and would at length be made a dupe. ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... as is but too frequent, fell to his old habit, and became as fond of gaming as ever. The poor lady saw this with the utmost concern, and dreaded the confounding this legacy, as all the baron's former fortune had been consumed by his being the dupe of gamesters. In deep affliction at the consideration of what might in future times become the Chevalier's fortune, she therefore entreated the baron to lay out part of the sum in somewhat which might be a provision for his ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... into which he had drifted, hesitated to answer. He meant to tell her the whole story and urge her to cooperate with him in learning the gambler's purpose. The woman impressed him as honest at heart, in spite of her life and environment; she was not one whom a swindler could easily dupe into becoming a tool. ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... council manifested their present subserviency to Northumberland by proclaiming queen Jane in the metropolis, and by issuing in her name a summons to Mary to lay aside her pretensions to the crown, this leader was too well practised in the arts of courts, to be the dupe of their hollow professions of attachment to a cause unsupported, as he soon perceived, by the favor of ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... man consents to play the part which du Tillet had allotted to Roguin, he develops the talents of a comedian; he has the eye of a lynx and the penetration of a seer; he magnetizes his dupe. The notary had seen Birotteau some time before Birotteau had caught sight of him; when the perfumer did see him, Roguin held out ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... night the good citizens who watch around this den see the ancient nobility entering stealthily and concealing arms beneath their clothes. Can knights of the poignard be any thing but the enrolled assassins of the people? What is La Fayette doing,—is he a dupe or an accomplice? Why does he leave free the avenues of the palace, which is only opened for vengeance or flight? Why do we leave the Revolution incomplete, and also leave in the hands of our crowned enemy, still in the midst of us, the ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... same thing, I was too innocent to imagine she was amusing herself at my expense. How long I should have gone on I know not, but her exquisite delight at my simplicity was too great to be kept in, she told her own secret amidst the laughter of all, her dupe being one of the most amused. Sybil and Serena took equal liberties, all more from the love of fun than real delinquency, so that during our reign lessons were at a premium. Schillie undertook writing and summing, and as she was always mending ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... glanced upward with a devout gesture of thanksgiving. I looked at him with a sort of jealous hunger gnawing at my heart. Here was another self deluded fool—a fond wretch feasting on the unsubstantial food of a pleasant dream—a poor dupe who believed in the ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... perfectly sure of what I have seen, sure that there was not in my reasoning any defect, any error in my declarations, any lacuna in the inflexible sequence of my observations, I should believe myself to be the dupe of a simple hallucination, the sport of a singular ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... he had thus acquired, would speedily be released from the burthen with which it was at present incumbered; but his expectations proved as vain as they were mercenary, and his lady was not more the dupe of his protestations than he was himself of his own purposes. Ten years he had been married to her, yet her health was good, and her faculties were unimpaired; eagerly he had watched for her dissolution, yet his eagerness had injured no health but his own! So short-sighted ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... honourable intentions, of which I made no question; lamented the avaricious disposition of his father, who had destined him for the arms of another, and vowed eternal fidelity with such an appearance of candour and devotion—that I became a dupe to his deceit. Cursed be the day on which I gave away my innocence and peace! Cursed be my beauty that first attracted the attention of the seducer! Cursed be my education, that, by refining my sentiments, made my heart the more susceptible! ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... waiting with a blanket to toss me. Now, either you are my cousin, or you are a . . . You must make me a solemn promise, and I will make you one in return. If you are one of these wandering charmers and I quit this room the dupe of your pretty acting, you must swear to be my mistress, and to allow none other near you until I have had my rights; otherwise, for my part, I swear that you shall be chastised, even as my spotted dog Flora was chastised this morning. If, on the other ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... your wife and little children entirely depending on you! You have allowed that scoundrel, whose baseness you knew, to dupe you to your own destruction!' said ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... I said, "it has to be mentioned, and unless you are in the humor to permit yourself to be made the dupe and tool of as wicked a little adventuress as ever lived, you must listen to what I have to tell you. I came here yesterday to consult Violet as to what I should do with respect to a plot in which I have found the baroness to be engaged. You have often heard the count and myself speak ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... his letter he walked home, congratulating himself that he had made it plain to her that he was not a man she could dupe. Her letter was written plainly, and the more he thought of her letter the clearer did it seem that it was inspired by Poole. But what could Poole's reason be for wishing him to leave Ireland, to go abroad? It was certain that if Poole were in love with Nora he would do all in his ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... contradicted Walter's statements, and the conclusions which remaining affection, and his own unwillingness to own himself a dupe, laboured to draw, he now inquired how his estates came to be confiscated, and his person cast out of the protection ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... returned home in an omnibus, for she was eager to see Wenceslas, whose dupe she had been for three weeks, and to whom she was carrying a basket filled with fruit by the hands of Crevel himself, whose attentions were ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... child's agony of disappointment when it finds that it has been laughed at instead of being admired. Amyas would have spoken, but he was afraid: however, the evil brought its own cure. The pageant went on, as its actor thought, most successfully for three days or so; but at last the dupe, unable to contain herself longer, appealed to Amyas,—"Ayacanora quite English girl now; is she not?"—heard a titter behind her, looked round, saw a dozen honest faces in broad grin, comprehended all in a moment, darted down ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... through his clenched teeth. "What a dupe I 've been. But," he added, with kindling interest, "where is ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... attack us. These, I acknowledge, are excuses, not justifications. When the French marched into Holland and found it in a condition so unable to resist them, my fame as a Minister irrecoverably sank; for, not to appear a traitor, I was obliged to confess myself a dupe. But what praise is sufficient for the wisdom and virtue you showed in so firmly rejecting the offers which, I have been informed, were made to you, both by England and France, when first you appeared in arms at the head of your country, to give you the sovereignty of the Seven Provinces by the ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... and have since proved themselves past masters in a difficult art in which few men succeed. The number of human beings who manage to live on their friends is small, whereas the veriest mongrel cur contrives to enjoy food and lodging at some dupe’s expense. ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... and caused his unfortunate wife to suffer a tenfold degree of persecution and misery. When to this we add his sudden passion for Ellen Neil, we may easily conceive what she must have endured. Nell, at all events, felt satisfied that she had shaped the strong passions of her savage dupe in the way best calculated to gratify that undying spirit of vengeance which she had so long nurtured against the family of Lamh Laudher. The Dead Boxer, too, was determined to prosecute his amour with Ellen Neil, not more to ...
— The Dead Boxer - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... expressed the whole duty of the workingman as the prosperous Victorians conceived it. He was to work hard always at any job he could find for any wages he could get, and if he didn't he was a "drunken shirker" and the dupe of "paid agitators." A comforting but misleading doctrine. And here were these people a decade on in the twentieth century, with Time, Death, and Judgment close upon them, still eagerly applauding, eager to excuse their minds with this one-sided, ungracious, old-fashioned nonsense, ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... In this dilemma the farmer consulted Curran. "Have patience, my friend," said the counsel; "speak to the landlord civilly, and tell him you are convinced you must have left your money with some other person. Take a friend with you, and lodge with him another hundred, and then come to me." The dupe doubted the advice; but, moved by the authority or rhetoric of the learned counsel, he at length followed it. "And now, sir," said he to Cumin, "I don't see as I am to be better off for this, if I get my second ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... but which nobody could understand. It is true that some people persuaded themselves, and tried to persuade others, that the whole affair was a clever trick, of which the simple farrier had been the dupe. They said that a certain Madame Arnoul, who passed for a witch, and who, having known Madame de Maintenon when she was Madame Scarron, still kept up a secret intimacy with her, had caused the three visions to appear to the farrier, in order ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... as false, and which in some cases were extorted from them by threats and even torture. But he betrayed very little emotion, even maintaining what must have been an assumed cheerfulness. Only one reproach is recorded: that he had been made a dupe of, that he had been deceived by every one, even the bankeros and cocheros. His old Jesuit instructors remained with him in the capilla, or death-cell, [13] and largely through the influence of an image of ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... appearances had taken the place of reality; a creation of his own had displaced the creation of the essential Life, by whose power alone he himself falsely created; and in this world he was the dupe of his own home-born phantoms. Out of this conspiracy of marsh and mirage, what vile things might not issue! Over such a chaos the devil has power all but creative. He cannot in truth create, but he can with the degenerate created work moral horrors ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... great things there, and was considered rather a distinguished person in Florentine society. I need not stop to describe him. His son is like him. He and I became friends, and met almost daily. It was not till a year afterwards that I knew how pitiful a dupe of this man's treachery I had been from the very first. We were still in Italy when I made my first discovery; it was one that let in the light upon his character, but did not seriously involve my wife. We fought, and ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... expressions in the Report as coming directly from the lips of his principal, and could not help thinking how cleverly he had forced his phrases, as jugglers do the particular card they wish their dupe to take—struck him ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... conference upon some money matters then in progress, which were scarcely disposed of when the lordly dupe (in pursuance of his friend's instructions) requested with some embarrassment ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... sober livery. There were no arms upon the panel; the window was open, but the interior was obscure; the driver yawned behind his palm; and the young man was already beginning to suppose himself the dupe of his own fancy, when a hand, no larger than a child's and smoothly gloved in white, appeared in a corner of the window and privily beckoned him to approach. He did so, and looked in. The carriage was occupied by a single small and very dainty figure, swathed head and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... upon them, they fell to indulging in those stale jokes that young ladies will perpetrate when they don't know what else to do. As they declared, with much laughter, and many smart ways of saying it, that Chautauqua was a myth of Eurie's brain, or that she had been the dupe of the fine young theological student who had chanced her way and that the search for paradise would come to naught, perhaps it was not all joking; for, as the hours passed and they journeyed on, hearing nothing about the place of which for the last few ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... strike; it was her voluble account of the state of affairs that prompted this soft-hearted squadron commander to take Mart by the hand and bid him tell his troubles. Mart broke down. He'd been a fool and a dupe, he knew and realized it, but Elmendorf had so preached about his higher destiny and the absolute certainty of triumph and victory if they but made one grand concerted effort, that he had staked all on the result, and lost it. He knew it was all up with the strikers when once the general ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... insupportable. He knew not where to seek him; he had no more clue to his resorts or his friends—if, indeed, he had any in London—than he had after their memorable first meeting in San Francisco. He might, indeed, be the dupe of an impostor, who, at the eleventh hour, had turned craven and fled. He might be, in the captain's indifference, a mere instrument set aside at his pleasure. Yet he could take advantage of Miss Eversleigh's letter and ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... she conjectured some new deceit was in agitation to raise money, and she feared Mr Marriot was the next dupe to be played upon. Mrs Harrel, therefore, with a look of the utmost disappointment, left her, saying she would send for her brother, and once more try if he had yet any remaining ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... the painter Marcel to Mademoiselle Mimi, whom he had met three or four days after her second divorce from the poet Rodolphe. Although he was obliged to veil the raillery with which he besprinkled her horoscope, Mademoiselle Mimi was not the dupe of Marcel's fine words, and understood perfectly well that with little respect for her new title, he was chaffing ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... provision for letting off steam," he thought, with some envy. "I would I had Burr in front of my fists this moment. I suppose he is nothing but the dupe of Jefferson, but he is a terrible menace, all ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... Nature's supplest moulds, to fawn, and cringe, and worm his way to favour by the wily speciousness of his manners. Oh God!" pursued Wacousta, after a momentary pause, and striking his palm against his forehead, "that I ever should have been the dupe ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... Devonshire and Fox have worked hard to make up matters in the closet, but to no purpose. People's self-love is very apt to make them think themselves more necessary than they are: and I shrewdly suspect, that his Royal Highness has been the dupe of that sentiment, and was taken at his word when he least suspected it; like my predecessor, Lord Harrington, who when he went into the closet to resign the seals, had them not about him: so sure he thought himself of being pressed to ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield |
