"Pitfall" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stutter. Without the slightest difficulty he leaped that pitfall of the drunken, ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... versification was cabined, his whole power of dramatic movement was scrupulously confined; conventional rules of every conceivable denomination hurried out to restrain his genius, with the alacrity of Lilliputians pegging down a Gulliver; wherever he turned he was met by a hiatus or a pitfall, a blind-alley or a mot bas. But his triumph was not simply the conquest of these refractory creatures; it was something much more astonishing. It was the creation, in spite of them, nay, by their very aid, ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... black eyes! But he is now a "fish out of water," and is about as helpless, nature never having intended him to be seen outside of his burrow—at least, in this present form. There he dwells, setting his circular trap at the mouth of his pitfall, and waiting for the voluntary sacrifice of his insect neighbors to ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... as a moral pitfall is more potent in Hong Kong than in India or other Eastern lands possessing a sprinkling of Europeans. A newcomer's ears hear little but "chit." Every sentence uttered by friends, every proposal of obsequious native merchant, is freighted ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... had so ruthlessly set a pitfall for his neighbor had suddenly tumbled into one which retributive justice had dug deep ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... reason to suspect that our friend Harry, who was an habitual rider, and knew all the environs of Oldport pretty well, and was fonder of short cuts and going over grass than most American horsemen are, had not been altogether ignorant of the existence of the pitfall; it looked very much as if he had led Edwards, who was no particular friend of his, purposely into it: but if such was the case, he kept his own counsel. When the fallen man and mare had scrambled ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... soul would remain unshaken. I am what they made me. Belief in humanity, pity for the poor, hatred of injustice, all that Shelley gave may never have been very deep or earnest; but I did love, I did believe. Gautier destroyed these illusions. He taught me that our boasted progress is but a pitfall into which the race is falling, and I learned that the correction of form is the highest ideal, and I accepted the plain, simple conscience of the pagan world as the perfect solution of the problem that had vexed me so long; I cried, "ave" to it all: lust, cruelty, slavery, and I would ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... Marcy questions that held distant, hidden traps. But when she led him along the devious, unsuspicious path that conducted to the trap and then suddenly shot at him the question that should have plunged him into it, he very quietly and nimbly walked around the pitfall. Again and again she tried to involve him, but ever with the same result. He was abashed, ready to answer—and always elusive. At the end she had gained nothing from him, and for a minute stood looking silently at him in ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... my companion, seizing me with one hand by the collar, and hauling, or rather lifting me back, as if I had been a poodle dog. "Why, you were as near as possible into a pitfall." ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... counsel thee to beware? But thou wilt tumble into thine own pitfall. The trap is laid for ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... heart that"—But conscience and good sense interrupted this temporary thought, and made him see to what a horrible life of suspense he should condemn a human creature, and live a perpetual lie, and be always at the edge of some pitfall or other. ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... The second pitfall to avoid is any pulling or straining of the material during the operation of embroidering it. Success in avoiding this depends primarily upon the various threads being drawn at each stitch to the proper tension, so that it may just have the proper pull to keep it in its place and ...
— English Embroidered Bookbindings • Cyril James Humphries Davenport
... rattled on, Mr Ramsden's servant crouching in a corner, as far as possible from Mrs Forster, evidently about as well pleased with his company as one would be in a pitfall with a tiger. At last it stopped at the door of the Lunatic Asylum, and the post-boy dismounting from his reeking horses, pulled violently at a large bell, which answered with a most lugubrious tolling, and struck awe into the breast of ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... trip up, it seems, on one snare after another, and kindness ever conceals a pitfall. (To Marie) But tell me ...
— The Resources of Quinola • Honore de Balzac
... looks pretty enough on the two feet of white paper on which it is drawn; but when the pattern is manifolded, it is usually found that the designer has not taken into account the effect of the repetition. That is the pitfall into which the Kensington student usually falls; he cannot make practical application of his knowledge, and at Minton's factory all the designs drawn by Kensington students have to be redrawn by those who understand the practical working out of the processes of reproduction ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... act regulating freight rates unconstitutional on the ground that it attempted to prevent not only unjust discrimination but any discrimination at all. The legislature then passed the Act of 1873, which avoided the constitutional pitfall by providing that discriminatory rates should be considered as prima facie but not absolute evidence of unjust discrimination. The railroads were thus permitted to adduce evidence to show that the discrimination was ...
— The Agrarian Crusade - A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics • Solon J. Buck
... when a disputant is so eager to refute an opponent as to lay down, or imply, principles from which an easy inference destroys his own position. To appeal to a principle of greater sweep than the occasion requires may easily open the way to this pitfall: as if a man should urge that 'all men are liars,' as the premise of an argument designed to show that another's assertion is less ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... wet and slobbery, every hole was a pitfall to trap the unwary; boulders and sandbags which had fallen in waited to trip the careless foot. I met a party of soldiers, a corporal at ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... of engineers to contractors there is many a snare and pitfall for the unwary feet of the beginner. In superintending the construction of work the engineer may err on the side of unreasonable strictness or on that of improper leniency. If so disposed, he can involve any contractor in loss and do him great wrong, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 530, February 27, 1886 • Various
... field or the bird of the air, men govern the inferior tribes; they appeal to the common passions of fear and emulation when they tame the wild steed, to the common desire of greed and gain when they snare the fishes of the stream, or allure the wolves to the pitfall by the bleating of the lamb. In their turn, in the older ages of the world, it was by the passions which men had in common with the demon race that the fiends commanded or allured them. The dwarf whom you saw, being of that race which is characterized by the ambition of ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... character and history we might not altogether have expected) from a fault than which hardly any is more disagreeable in letters. This is the manifestation of what is called, in various more or less familiar terms, "giving oneself airs," "side," "patronising," etc. He may sometimes come near this pitfall of "intellectuals," but he never quite slips into it, being probably preserved by that sense of humour which he certainly possessed, though he seldom gave vent to it in verse and not very often in prose. ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... glow of the footlights; saw Liszt, audacious Liszt, led by Wagner, and tribute laid upon his genius by the Bayreuth man; saw Tschaikowsky struggling away from the temptations of the music drama only to succumb to the symphonic poem—a new and vicious version of that old pitfall, the symphony; saw Cesar Franck, the Belgian mystic, narrowly graze the truth in some of his chamber music, and then fall victim to the fascinations of the word; as if the word, spoken or sung, were other than a clog to the free wings ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... Phoebe's waist Which I would loosen; for I have the skill To handle lilies; and, by Venus' will, I'd handle thee, and comfort thee therein. For love's a sacrament I'd die to win, And not a toy nor yet a subterfuge; And not a pitfall for the ...
— A Lover's Litanies • Eric Mackay
... in this tunnel, and there was no space in which to attempt to kindle a light. Once the thought came into Gaston's head that if he were falling into a treacherous pitfall laid for him with diabolic ingenuity by his foes, nothing could well be better than to entrap him into such a place as this, where it would be almost impossible to go forward or back, and quite out of his power to strike a single blow ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... great mantle of beauty, and makes it possible to travel on snow-shoes or by dog-train through vast regions absolutely impassable in the summer months. Horses or other large animals, are absolutely worthless for travel in such regions. The snow is a great leveller. It fills up many a dangerous pitfall and puts such a cushion on the logs and rocks, that upsets or falls are only laughed at by the dog-travellers as they merrily dash along. The only drawbacks to a tumble down a steep declivity of some hundreds of ...
— On the Indian Trail - Stories of Missionary Work among Cree and Salteaux Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... man, hearing this, but never guessing the hidden pitfall, was pricked in spirit, and, melting into tears, answered in his simplicity, "O king, live for ever! Good and sound is the determination that thou hast determined; for though the kingdom of heaven be difficult to find, yet must a man seek it with all his might, for it is written, 'He that ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... in the path where a tiger has been tracked. For some reason this animal, having once passed through a jungle, will ever after follow as nearly as possible his own foot-prints, and can thus easily be led into a pitfall of the character we have described. Having once got into this well he cannot possibly get out, and here he is permitted to become so nearly starved as to deprive him of all powers of resistance, in which condition he is secured. ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... But if we had not these direct testimonies, no one of any critical faculty could mistake the presence of consciously perceived principles in the books themselves. A man does not suddenly, and by mere blind instinct, avoid such a pitfall as that of incongruous speech and manners, which has been noticed above. It is not mere happy-go-lucky blundering which makes him invariably decline another into which people still fall—the selection ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... to hamper them; and I do believe they were more than once taken in them; but my tackle was not good, for I had no wire, and I always found them broken and my bait devoured. At length I resolved to try a pitfall; so I dug several large pits in the earth, in places where I had observed the goats used to feed, and over those pits I placed hurdles of my own making too, with a great weight upon them; and several times I put ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... through the trackless bush, painfully slow going over the stones and the fallen trunks, with many a pitfall concealed under the smooth moss. After an hour of this he finally came upon them all five standing dejectedly about in a narrow opening, as if ashamed of their escapade and ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... assertions, the cautious ventures, the length of time demanded to ascertain the fact, the precise terms of the forfeit, the provisoes for getting out of paying it at last, led to a long and inextricable discussion. Kirkpatrick's vanity, however, one night led him into a terrible pitfall. He recklessly ventured money on the fact that The Mourning Bride was written by Shakespeare; headlong he fell, and ruefully he partook of the bowl of punch for which he had to pay. As a rule his nightly outlay seldom exceeded sevenpence. Four hours' good conversation for sevenpence ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... falling, caught him by the arm and sought to read his face what had happened. Something disastrous she was sure; something which he had feared and was partially prepared for, yet which in happening had crushed him. Was it a pitfall into which the poor little lady had fallen? If so—But he is speaking—mumbling low words to himself. Some of them she can hear. He is reproaching himself—repeating over and over that he should never have ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... 'Alfred the Great' as well as the other crittur? It is just another example of want of intelligence! You read the words, and never trouble about the connection. Who in their sane senses would ask you to compare a warrior king with old Miss Yonge? A little reflection would have saved you from the pitfall into which you have all fallen headlong. Five bad marks each! Now, then, for the next two. What have you got to ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... gentlemen then?" cried Barbara; "or where is the good of being a gentleman? Is it that he knows better how to lie to a woman? A knight used to be every woman's castle of refuge; a gentleman now, it seems, is a pitfall in the bush!" ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... u. Marquardt Roem. Alterth. III. i. p. 294 sq. Even De Wette has not escaped the pitfall, for he states that 'according to Strabo Cyprus was governed by propraetors,' and he therefore supposes that Strabo and Dion Cassius are at variance. De Wette's error stands uncorrected by ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... herded not with soulless swine, Nor let strange snares their path environ: Their only pitfall was a mine— Their pigs were ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... which guided me from the pitfall of wedded life! What an escape! I must inform Monsieur le Marquis. He will certainly relish this bit of scandal which all but happened at his own fireside. Certainly I shall inform him. It will be like caviar to the appetite. I shall dine before the effect ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... onward with outstretched arms, half in fear, half in fun, plying her round little legs with wonderful promptitude, as if to escape Time or Death, in the person of Grandsir Dolliver, and happily avoiding the ominous pitfall that lies in every person's path, till, hearing a groan from her pursuer, she looked over her shoulder, and saw that poor grandpapa had stumbled over one of the many hillocks. She then suddenly wrinkled up her little visage, and sent forth a full-breathed ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... was for our'n, 'n' at it we went for th' next two days. Don't believe we'd even 'a started, though, if we hadn't known two days at th' most 'd cure them o' still-huntin'. Gettin' out 'fore sun-up, with every log in th' brules frosted slippery 's ice 'n' every bunch o' brush a pitfall, climbin' 'n' slidin' jumpin' 'n' balancin,' any 'n' every kind o' leg motion 'cept plain honest walkin,' was several sizes too big a order for them. So th' second ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... adapted to their new requirements. But man, under similar circumstances, does not require longer nails or teeth, greater bodily strength or swiftness. He makes sharper spears, or a better bow, or he constructs a cunning pitfall, or combines in a hunting party to circumvent his new prey. The capacities which enable him to do this are what he requires to be strengthened, and these will, therefore, be gradually modified by "natural selection," while the form ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... sold it may have wished that it should not be known that it might have been an heirloom in their family. Infinite are the possibilities, those only decide in such cases who have a personal motive for doing so; "la rage de conclure" (as Flaubert saw) is the pitfall of those who are vain of ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... often a fox may be seen jogging along in the full daylight. The very keenness of the animal seems sometimes to work his undoing. He knows well that the dogs cannot catch him so he jollies along just in front of them over his accustomed route where he knows every possible pitfall of the way. And the hunter waiting to leeward shoots him. Had the fox had fewer brains and simply bolted in a panic as soon as the dogs got on his trail he might have lived to bolt again the next time. Once in a while you find a panicky fox that does this. When ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... it is "white"; and the conclusions are directly at variance with the ideals that have been supposed to guide England and America. Incidentally the work speaks of the Negro and negroid population of Africa as "estimated at about 120,000,000." This low estimate has proved a common pitfall for writers. If we remember that Africa is three and a half times as large as the United States, and that while there are no cities as large as New York and Chicago, there are many centers of very dense population; if we omit entirely from the consideration ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... came close to a clump of large trees, and then brought them to a pitfall which he had dug, about six feet wide and eight feet long, and ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... metropolitan clergymen into the rowdiest and dirtiest of disbanded officers. I never fathomed the mystery of his military costume, but conjectured that a lurking sense of fitness had induced him to exchange his clerical garments for this habit of a sinner; nor can I tell precisely into what pitfall, not more of vice than terrible calamity, he had precipitated himself,—being more than satisfied to know that the outcasts of society can sink no lower than this ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... no time to dally; on every side I see a pitfall. Let every man look to himself. If I must play in my last trump, let me ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... recognizing this as purely irrelevant humor, with possibly a trap or pitfall in it, moved away from the fireplace without a word, and retired to the adjoining kitchen to prepare ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... supposed the horse grazing near by, enjoying semi-freedom with his grass. Now it seemed far otherwise. Miss Sapphira had even had him telephone to Bob to bring her hither. With his own hands he had dug his pitfall. ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... that he may be in a position to account for his syncope by illness or the stifling atmosphere of the locality, he has none the less given rise to suspicion! He has lied incomparably, but he has counted without nature. Here is the pitfall! Again, a man off his guard, from an unwary disposition, may delight in mystifying another who suspects him, and may wantonly pretend to be the very criminal wanted by the authorities; in such a case, he ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... piece of rope from his saddle-bag and tied it about the priest's waist and his own. "If you have any holy pitfall in view for me, I shall have the pleasure of your company. And if I am led into labyrinths to die of starvation, you at least will have a meal: I ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... the emperor. Such a noble! Of such high talents! What is human greatness? I often said, this can't end happily. His might, his greatness, and this obscure power Are but a covered pitfall. The human being May not be trusted to self-government. The clear and written law, the deep-trod footmarks Of ancient custom, are all necessary To keep him in the road of faith and duty. The authority intrusted to this man Was unexampled and unnatural, It placed him on a ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... this morning with the express purpose of speaking with him; but now suddenly she felt afraid, and stood looking at him for a moment or two, hesitating, wondering if she dared tell him—one never knew these days into what terrible pitfall an ill-considered word ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... make a mere guess, may have been its earliest use, if utilitarian contrivances can generally claim historical precedence, as is by no means certain. As long as man hunted with very inferior weapons, he must have depended a good deal on drives, that either forced the game into a pitfall, or rounded them up so as to enable a concerted attack to be made by the human pack. No wonder that the bull-roarer is sometimes used to bring luck in a mystic way to hunters. More commonly, however, at the present day, the bull-roarer serves another type of mystic ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... One pitfall has to do with Federal Cost-sharing and the way it affects the freedom of choice of the States and localities on which the primary responsibility for eliminating pollution must rest. In building treatment plants to lessen the load of wastes discharged to streams, they ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... braving Spanish and the smooth-tongu'd French: These precious jewels that adorn thine ears, All from my mouth's rich cabinet are stolen. How oft hast thou been chain'd unto my tongue, Hang'd at my lips, and ravish'd with my words; So that a speech fair-feather'd could not fly, But thy ear's pitfall caught it instantly? ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... objects they were, with their heads elevated on their long necks. Influenced by the propensity of a hunter I dashed forward in pursuit. Suddenly, my horse swerved on one side, and I saw that he had narrowly escaped a pitfall. Almost directly afterwards, two of the giraffes sank into other pits, and on turning round I saw that the animals were pursued by a party of natives, who had them thus completely ...
— Adventures in Africa - By an African Trader • W.H.G. Kingston
... The pitfall[50] is little used. It consists of a hole large enough for a wild boar or deer, carefully covered so as to deceive the animal. The bottom bristles with sharp ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... understand the word, is a pitfall for Mysticism to avoid, not an error involved in its first principles. But we need not quarrel with those who have said that speculative Mysticism is the Christian form of Pantheism. For there is much truth in Amiel's dictum, that "Christianity, if it is to triumph over Pantheism, must absorb ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... head, like one imprisoned in a sand drift, not to be crossed in any direction, but closing in and weighing down. She was in a pitfall, overpowered like Gratian had been, subjugated, soon to be put to the yoke and compelled to draw steadily the harrow of transcendental politics. Her caprices, faults, fancies, duplicities, wiles, caresses, impudence, ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... somewhat acquainted with our surroundings that we might be able fully to realize every snare and pitfall, we were taught to begin to walk alone. What weak, tottering, childish steps they were. How often our eyes would wander to the face of our guide, as if to implore his help. But he, knowing it was for our good, would simply encourage us instead of rendering the longed for assistance, ...
— Silver Links • Various
... the ground would more than compensate for this, since the two horns of General von Buelow's army could not combine without crossing those marshes, now boggy enough, and growing boggier every second. The task was harder than General Foch anticipated, for the same rainy conditions that provided a pitfall for the Germans were also a manifest hindrance to the rapid execution of military maneuvers. But, in spite of all difficulties, by evening of that day, the flank broke and gave way, and two entire corps from General von Buelow's right were precipitated into the marshes. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... She was happy; her ideals were satisfied; it was probably happiness that had made her stout. Her massiveness was apparently no grief to her; she had fallen into the carelessness which is too often the pitfall of women who, being stout, ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... ambassador was right. Russian craft had dug many a pitfall for the English diplomatist, and Brumsey had fallen into every one of them. Acting on secret information—all ingeniously prepared to entrap him—Brumsey had discovered a secret demand made by Russia to enable one of the imperial family to make the tour of the Black Sea with ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... him: I will you never fro thence tidings bring; Go you before, and show me the way, And as to follow you I will not say nay: For, by God's body, and you be in once, By the mass, I will shit[150] the door at once, And then ye be take in a pitfall. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... cannot be applied to so consummate a draughtsman as the illustrator of Dante, Cervantes and Victor Hugo. But Dore's almost superhuman memory was no less of a pitfall than manual dexterity. The following story will partly explain his dislike of facsimile ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... ahead. 'Civil Service,' was my prepared answer to the next question, but again (morbidly, perhaps) I saw a pitfall. That letter from my chief awaiting me at Norderney? My name was known, and we were watched. It might be opened. Lord, how casual ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... smiling mysteriously. Under the sudden necessity of proving his statement, his thoughts centered upon the conclusion which had resulted from his suspicions—that Langford's visit to Dakota concerned Doubler. Equivocation would have taken him safely away from the pitfall into which his rash words had almost plunged him, but he felt that any evasion now would only bring scorn into the eyes which he wished to see alight with something else. Besides, here was an opportunity to speak a derogatory word about his enemy, and he could not resist—could ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer
... buffalo ground; but nothing could be seen save some old footprints of buffaloes, and a pitfall made for catching them. By this time the king was tired; and as he saw me searching for a log to sit upon, he made one of his pages kneel upon all fours and sat upon his back, acting the monkey in aping myself; for otherwise he would have sat on a mbugu, in his customary ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... own self-respect, that you had no hand in this disgraceful business,' replied Maulevrier; and then turning to Lord Hartfield, he said, 'Hartfield, will you tell my sister who and what this man is? Will you make her understand what kind of pitfall she has escaped? Upon my soul, I ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... Since the above was written Prof. Lloyd Morgan has published a closely similar notice of the passage in question. "This language," he says, "seems to savour of teleology (that pitfall of the evolutionist). The cart is put before the horse. The recognition-marks were, I believe, not produced to prevent intercrossing, but intercrossing has been prevented because of preferential mating between individuals possessing ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... masterful simplicity will be more impressive than in this colorful colonnade. It is a true addition to noteworthy American works of art and fully expresses the spirit of this courageous motherhood, tender but strong, adventurous but womanly, enduring but not humble. It has escaped every pitfall of mawkishness, stubbornly refused to descend to mere prettiness, and lived up to the noblest possibilities of its theme. The strong guiding hands, the firmly set feet, the clear, broad brow of the Mother and the uncompromisingly simple, sculpturally pure lines of ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... before they have the time to sign it. Every heart that has beat strong and cheerfully has left a hopeful impulse behind it in the world, and bettered the tradition of mankind. And even if death catch people, like an open pitfall, and in mid-career, laying out vast projects, and planning monstrous foundations, flushed with hope, and their mouths full of boastful language, they should be at once tripped up and silenced: is there not something brave and spirited in such a termination? ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in his voice surprised her, and she looked searchingly at him, wondering into what pitfall it was intended ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... a providential interference," rejoined Mrs. Bloundel. "From what a snare of the evil one—from what a pitfall have you been preserved!" ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... third. A party, headed by Savignon, went out to meet them. They found a few men, dragging and carrying weary loads. There had been an accident to M. Destournier. He had stumbled into an unseen pitfall and broken his leg. They had carried him on a litter for two days, then he had begged the others to leave him with an attendant, and hurry onward, coming back for ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... have known that she was only luring me on to some pitfall of mockery, but I did not, and must needs burst out in some clumsy disclaimer meant to shield my dear lad. And in the midst of it she ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... explanation. We ought not under pretence of humility to slight and despise the graces which God has given us. To do so would be to throw ourselves over the precipice of ingratitude in order to avoid perishing in the pitfall of vanity, "Nothing," said he, "can so humble us before the mercy of God, as the multitude of his benefits; nothing can so abase us before the throne of His justice, as the countless number of our misdeeds. We need ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... the eye, more than meets the ear; Delphic oracle; le dessous des cartes [Fr.], undercurrent. implication, logical implication; logical consequence; entailment. allusion, insinuation; innuendo &c 527; adumbration; something rotten in the state of Denmark [Hamlet]. snake in the grass &c (pitfall) 667; secret &c 533. darkness, invisibility, imperceptibility. V. be latent &c adj.; lurk, smolder, underlie, make no sign; escape observation, escape detection, escape recognition; lie hid &c 528. laugh in one's sleeve; keep back &c (conceal) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... anything to the contrary, but they were never adopted, and Mr. Heathcote noticed, too, that the others seemed to be enduring the life easily, while it was altogether too full for him. If there was any angle, he seemed somehow to knock against it; and if there was any pitfall, it was he who fell into it. But he gave no sign of returning to the East, and his misfortunes continued. From time to time they got copies of the Western papers containing full reports of Jimmy Grayson's canvass, and none of them, except the Monitor, ever spoke flatteringly ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... I can't act my part without bungling for a few hours at a stretch, and I a-listening every night in the parlour of the 'Spotted Dog' to old seamen swearing and singing their songs. And I'll find an opportunity to give—Moll a hint of my past folly, and so rescue her from a like pitfall. I'll abide by your advice, Kit,—which is the wisest I ever heard ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... great manifestations of love to man, nor scarcely for the nutriment of individual attachments, unless they could minister in some way to the terrible egotism which he mistook for an angel of God. Had Hollingsworth's education been more enlarged, he might not so inevitably have stumbled into this pitfall. But this identical pursuit had educated him. He knew absolutely nothing, except in a single direction, where he had thought so energetically, and felt to such a depth, that no doubt the entire reason and justice of the universe ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... accounted rank heresy here. There is light abroad which must one day reach to the ends of the earth, and truly it sometimes seemeth to me that if the priests, the abbots, and the monks set their faces steadfastly against this light, they will fall into some terrible pitfall, but they will never quench the ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... free will in its activity, Flacius, in the heat of the controversy, exclaimed: "Originale peccatum non est accidens. Original sin is not an accident, for the Scriptures call it flesh, the evil heart," etc. Thus he fell into the pitfall which the wily Strigel had adroitly laid for him. Though Flacius seemed to be loath to enter upon the matter any further, and protested against the use of philosophical definitions in theology, Strigel now was eager to entangle him still further, plying him with ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... two more tapirs in our pitfall; but being older than the first, they showed no inclination to become domesticated, so we were compelled to kill them, and to cut up and dry their flesh—which, though rather tough, was not otherwise unpalatable. Notwithstanding ...
— The Wanderers - Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco • W.H.G. Kingston
... candidates propose to themselves in writing is to convey no meaning at all. And here is a quite unsuspected pitfall into which they successively plunge headlong. For it is precisely in such cryptographies that mankind are prone to seek for and find a wonderful amount and variety of significance. Omne ignotum pro mirifico. ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... shine in politics, literature, art, commerce or private life—that these men should all marry with the intention of being happy, of governing a wife, either by love or by force, and should all tumble into the same pitfall and should become foolish, after having enjoyed a certain happiness for a certain time,—this is certainly a problem whose solution is to be found rather in the unknown depths of the human soul, than in the quasi physical truths, on the basis of which we have hitherto ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... chase. With a man on either side to guide him into the deepest holes and to shove him into bushy thickets, the skinned, soot-covered, oil-coated Boston man toiled and sweated. He had no time to think, the excitement was so intense. He scrambled out of each pitfall set for him, and plunged into the next with such uncomplaining bravery that Dannie very shortly grew ashamed, and crowding up beside him he took the heavy gun and tried to protect him all he could without falling under the eye of Jimmy, who was ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... he exclaimed ruefully, as he tried to get the snow from out of his collar and his coat-sleeves. "I—I didn't think of a pitfall ...
— The Rover Boys In The Mountains • Arthur M. Winfield
... this matter, you, in turn, can render us aid in our business of killing tigers. We want you to find out, for us, when a tiger was last seen near the village; where its lair is supposed to be; and whether, according to its situation, we should have the best chance of killing it by digging a pitfall, on the path by which it usually comes from the jungle; or by getting a kid and tying it up, to attract the tiger to a spot where we shall be stationed ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... blood and of his own initiative, he was compelled to speak to her. No language could describe the anguish and difficulty of these approaches. His way was beset by obstacles and perils, by traps and snares; and at every turn there waited for him the shameful pitfall of the aitch. He whose easy courtesy charmed away the shyness of Miss Flossie Walker, whose conversation (when he deigned to converse) was the wonder and delight of the ladies of his boarding-house, now blushed ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... "You can step across. It's only about three feet over. Wait till I've lit another match. Yes," he said as the light flashed up, "it's just as wide as it is across. I believe that originally the place was quite dark, and this hole was a pitfall for the enemies who attacked. There, ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... mind throughout. On the one hand, the book must suffer a loss of objectivity; but, on the other hand, there may be some compensating gain of intensity. The author trusts, at all events, that, though he has not written with indifference, he has escaped the pitfall of undue partiality. ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams
... time is short now in this world," said the poor woman, known by the name of Magdalena. "I will not tell thee how I listened to the voice of the serpent, and how I fell. My pride in my fatal beauty was my pitfall. All that the honied words of passion and persuasion could effect was used to lure me on to my destruction—and at last I fled with my seducer. I knew not then, I swear to thee, Karl—God knows how bitterly it costs the mother to reveal her shame to her own son; but bitter if it be, she ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... It has passed; I have thought enough about the unthinkable; I feel my quiet returning. Is it any merit of mine that I begin to be in health once more? Could I, by any effort of the will, have shunned this pitfall? ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... plenty who envied him his large custom, and many was the pitfall set for me, so that he never dared to let me out of his sight. One day a woman, who had not been in the shop before, came to ask for bread, like the rest. As usual, I was lying on the counter, and she threw down six coins before me, one of which was false. I detected it ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.
... tracks all belong to one and the same brute. So acute is their perception, so narrowly do they scrutinize every minute object in their path, so suspicious is their nature, that anything new in their path, such as a pitfall, a screen of cut grass, a mychan, that is, a stage from which you might be intending to get a shot, nay, even the print of a footstep—a man's, a horse's, an elephant's—is often quite enough to turn them from a projected expedition, or at any rate to lead them to seek some ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... not afford to expend his breath in useless curses. But his eyes scintillated with fiery gleams. He, the man who took no chances, who foresaw every pitfall and smiled at the devices of outraged law, to compromise his own ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... mouth, metaphorically speaking, we did not mention the oversight and contented ourselves with drinking out of the bottles in true democratic spirit. Did you ever imbibe Tiffany Water direct from its native heath, as it were? No? Then let me warn you from that lurking pitfall. It has the same taste, but the effect, di mi, the effect is ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey
... that after that I'd come straight home. Well, the day seemed young and I thought if I hurried I could go home the roundabout way by the pitfalls in such good time that Ivy wouldn't know the difference. Well, sir, I came to the first pitfall—and, lo and behold! something had been and taken the bait and got away with it without so much as putting a foot through the wattling. I'd woven it too strong. So I thought I'd just weaken it up a little—it wouldn't take five minutes. I tried it with ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... daylight breaking through that rent cave-mouth of the mountains and falling chill adown the haunted tunnel; Christian's further progress along the causeway, between the two black pools, where, at every yard or two, a gin, a pitfall, or a snare awaits the passer-by—loathsome white devilkins harbouring close under the bank to work the springes, Christian himself pausing and pricking with his sword's point at the nearest noose, and pale discomfortable mountains rising on the farther side; or yet again, the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... told about a girl who was not straightforward it might have been a different thing. Be thankful for your head-mistress's trust in you, and always act up to the principles you have been taught; it will save you from many a pitfall or from the trouble a weak young lady like ...
— A City Schoolgirl - And Her Friends • May Baldwin
... to yield to ordinary measures. It was a difficult problem, for the rocky river-bed held many a snare and pitfall. There was a certain ledge under the water, so artfully placed that every log striking under its projecting edges would wedge itself firmly there, attracting others by its ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... was so "slow" as to perform a fatal surgical operation upon himself, in emulation of a juggling trick achieved by his arch enemy at breakfast-time; not even he fell half so readily into the snare prepared for him as the old lady into this artful pitfall. The fact of Tackleton having walked out; and furthermore, of two or three people having been talking together at a distance, for two minutes, leaving her to her own resources; was quite enough to have put her on her dignity, and the bewailment of that mysterious convulsion in ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... which snapped at him angrily, evidently looking upon him as being the cause of its sufferings. Even if he had dared to move it would have been very doubtful whether the General could have clambered out of the cunningly contrived pitfall; but situated as he was, and surrounded by such dangerous enemies, the Zulu made a virtue of necessity, and stoically determined to wait for daylight before making any ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... woman in the gray cloak and poke bonnet may not come back to her recollection at the most critical time, and under the most awkward circumstances. In plain English, my dear girl, Mrs. Wragge is a pitfall under our feet at every step ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... Similarly, while there is no doubt a bright future for somebody in Celluloid, Fiberloid, and Other Factitious Goods, instinct tells me that there is none for—" he pulled up on the verge of saying, "James Braithwaite Crocker," and shuddered at the nearness of the pitfall. "—for—" he hesitated again—"for Algernon ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... she. "In my younger days I had no experience; I only thought of vengeance, and lately the weapons I forged myself have been turned against me. I dug a pitfall for my adversaries and have ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... or military usage. He has arisen to the moral concept of high responsibility for the future of his race in the estimation of all mankind. There is no story of moral degeneracy which has yet come from abroad concerning him. Pitfall, temptation and opportunity for vice and crime have all been shunned in light of preparation for the higher service. The Negro has proven his power of moral restraint while guided by leadership of his own color. As a social being he has sacrificed his life for the highest form of social existence, ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... you are not going to fall into a treacherous bog, if only you see a sprig of purple heather—a good, honest plant, which hates anything secret. Our ponies didn't need the heather signal, though; they shied away from bogs as if by instinct, they knew the moor so well. If we had stumbled into a pitfall, our only hope would have been to lie quite flat, and crawl along the surface with the same motion ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... spring guns and digging pitfalls for game. The people say that now the Government and the Siem of Nongstoin have prohibited both of these methods of destroying game, they no longer employ them. But I came across a pitfall for deer not long ago in the neighbourhood of a village in the Lynngam country. The people declared it to be a very old one; but this I very much doubt, and I fear that these objectionable methods of hunting are still used. The Lynngams fish to a small extent with nets, but their idea of fishing, ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... Africa for taking the giraffe and other animals:—Starvation was written in the faces of these inhabitants of the forest. In their miserable villages were a few small gardens, containing watermelons and a little corn. Occasionally they have the luck to capture some large animal in a pitfall, when for a season they live in plenty. But as they do not possess salt, the flesh soon spoils, when they are compelled once more to roam the forests in quest of fruits and roots, on which, along with locusts, they in a great measure subsist. In districts where game is abundant, they often construct ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... meritorious work of our painters dependent upon foreign influence. Portraits, genre pictures, landscapes, and marines tell the story of many individual men working out their salvation in more or less original fashion. I have spoken at some length about the pitfall of genre painting, but Thomas Hovenden's "Breaking Home Ties" redeems the entire school. Irrespective of the fact that it is a picture very popular with the large public by reason of its sentimental appeal, it is well painted, ...
— The Galleries of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... into another pitfall. She had challenged him, and he knew it. "Nothing what-ever," she answered, with an urbanity that defied the suggestion of malice. Yet, now that she remembered, she had sweetly challenged one of a royal house for the like lapse ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... and shot down to a violent fate with Pauline's wild voice in his ears and Pauline's pale face before his eyes. Yet, the peril over, he breathed freely again, and carefully holding on by the rail all along the path lest some other treacherous pitfall should lurk beneath the snow, reached the end ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... in earnest, he began to feel conscience-stricken. He was by no means a tender man, but his lately-discovered misfortune had unhinged him, and this strange, undeserved, disinterested family fealty on the part of Charlie touched his heart. And should he still try to lead him into the pitfall he had dug? He hesitated;—no, he would show him the place by broad daylight, and if he chose to overlook the "caving bank," it would be his ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... "to make the action more nervous." The book begins well with a description of Herod's court and Rome in Judea, but as a whole it is unsatisfactory. Once the plot develops Saltus seems to lose interest. He lazily quotes whole scenes from the Bible (George Moore very cleverly avoided this pitfall in "The Brook Kerith"). The early chapters suggest "Imperial Purple," which appeared a year later and upon which he may well have been at work at this time. There is a foreshadowing, too, of "The Lords of the Ghostland" in a very amusing and slightly cynical ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... Unjust as it may be, and hard, and truly narrow, there does exist in the human mind, or at least in the masculine half of it, a strong conviction that a man in love is a man in a scrape, in a hole, in a pitfall, in a pitiful condition, untrue for the moment to the brotherhood of man, and cast down among the inferior vessels. And instead of being sorry for him, those who are all right look down, and glory over him, with very ancient gibes. So these three men, instead ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... great deal too much potency to the grave," said Septimius, pausing involuntarily alone by the little hillock, whose contents he knew so well. "The grave seems to me a vile pitfall, put right in our pathway, and catching most of us,—all of us,—causing us to tumble in at the most inconvenient opportunities, so that all human life is a jest and a farce, just for the sake of this inopportune death; for I observe it never waits for us to accomplish anything: we ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... operation upon himself, in emulation of a juggling-trick achieved by his arch- enemy at breakfast-time; not even he fell half so readily into the snare prepared for him, as the old lady did into this artful pitfall. The fact of Tackleton having walked out; and furthermore, of two or three people having been talking together at a distance, for two minutes, leaving her to her own resources; was quite enough to have put her on her ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... Presently I dared to look, and was not surprised to find myself alone. The evergreen-clothed amphitheatre behind had many paths which would instantly hide climbers from view. The blue man and the woman with floating hair knew these heights well. I thought of the pitfall, and sat watching with back-tilted head, anxious to warn them if they stirred foliage near where that fatal trap was said to lurk. But the steep forest gave no sign or ...
— The Blue Man - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... my deeds, all, bad as they have been,— The way was dark, the awful pitfall bare;— In my weak hands, up through the fires of sin, I hold them ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... hear them talk Of fires, rocks, torrents, that obstruct their walk: Another, unlike these, but not more sane, Takes fires and torrents for the open plain: Let mother, sister, father, wife combined Cry 'There's a pitfall! there's a rock! pray mind!' They'll hear no more than drunken Fufius, he Who slept the part of queen Ilione, While Catienus, shouting in his ear, Roared like a ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... behind the walls, whereas the shafts of the garrison, rained on them from above, killed or wounded the slaves by scores, who, poor creatures, when they turned to fly, were driven onward by the spear-points of the savages, to be slain in heaps like game in a pitfall. Still, some of them lived, and running under the shelter of the wall, began to breach it with the rude battering rams, and to raise the scaling ladders till death found them, or they were worn out with excitement, ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard
... of his predecessors Raymond with all his guile fell into another pitfall. He lauded the Rose, the Daisy, the Garland of Vine Leaves worn by Eleanor, Marguerite, and Beatrice in three canzonets so perfect in form, so exquisite in diction that they rivalled the ditties of Thibault of Champagne, who ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... Another pitfall about using whole grains is that to be nutritious they must still be fresh enough to sprout vigorously. A seed is a package of food surrounding an embryo. The living embryo is waiting for the right conditions (temperature and moisture) to begin sprouting. ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... are for it, their legislation will favour its extension." Douglas had decided. Southern newspapers took up his statement and the tide of anger rose against the "little giant" that cost him the presidency. Lincoln had digged a pitfall for unwary feet, and the ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... public wants, and next to supply it. This is reasonable in appearance. It would seem to be good commercially, and, as a policy, I should consider it good for art, which must consult the popular taste or lose its vitality. But a pitfall lies between this theory of editorial selection and its successful practice. The editor must really know what the public wants. If he does not, he becomes a dogmatic critic of a very ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... all things from a miser's standpoint, could not understand that there might lurk in the Indian a tinge of sentiment. He was mistaken, and the mistake was a little pitfall placed ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... slowly, "I am like that foolish philosopher who, walking abroad to read the destinies of nations in the stars, fell down a pitfall dug by idle children and broke his bones and perished there. Never did I guess that with all these glories stretched before thee like mountain top on glittering mountain top, making a stairway for thy mortal feet to the very dome of heaven, thou wouldst still clutch ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... dogs is a surly fighter and prefers to take its chances at bay; consequently it is more often killed then by the spearman than in the runway. The wild hog is also often caught in pitfalls dug in the runways or in its feeding grounds. The pitfall, fi'-to, is from 3 to 4 feet across, about 4 feet deep, and is covered ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... first, and was led away by the man, its owner following at its heels. A short distance from the kraal they came to a well, from which a covering of earth had recently been removed. The well, for some purpose, had been concealed, as if it were a pitfall ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... amidst loose rocks and boulders, avoiding many a pitfall, many a black depth, until the dawn was at hand. Just then they heard a deep sound, like a cathedral bell, booming down ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... of the steps was reached in safety, the candle being held low down, so as to guard against any pitfall or fresh flight of stairs in ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn |
