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Rascality

noun
(pl. rascalities)
1.
The trait of indulging in disreputable pranks.  Synonyms: prankishness, roguishness.
2.
The quality of being a slippery rascal.  Synonyms: shiftiness, slipperiness, trickiness.
3.
Reckless or malicious behavior that causes discomfort or annoyance in others.  Synonyms: devilment, devilry, deviltry, mischief, mischief-making, mischievousness, roguery, roguishness, shenanigan.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Rascality" Quotes from Famous Books



... minutes. I talked so long with the Prioress that it was late before I reached the Prefecture. He had been to Paris. He explained all that tissue of rascality to the Emperor, so that no blame might fall on the wrong shoulders. Luckily His Majesty disliked Ratoneau; the man smoked and swore ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price

... interest, the firm endeavoured to continue the business with a working capital chiefly derived from the funds deposited by private persons at 8 per cent, per annum. All might have gone well but for the rascality of the native agriculturists, who brought about the failure of the house in 1875 by taking loans and delivering no produce. The news amazed everybody. Trade was, for the moment, completely paralyzed. The great firm, which for years had been the mainspring of all Philippine mercantile ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... the Baker, "a sweet tooth!" Even Uncle says, "Good folks! See what comes of stupid jokes!" But the honest farmer: "Guy! What concern is that to I?" Through the place in short there went One wide murmur of content: "God be praised! the town is free From this great rascality!" ...
— Max and Maurice - a juvenile history in seven tricks • William [Wilhelm] Busch

... was in a terrible passion, and her raving curses were fearful to hear. Rodney pitied her, though she cursed him. He was indignant at his companion's rascality, and offered to go with her and try to find him. It was two o'clock in the morning. He looked round for his hat, collar, and handkerchief; but they were gone. The thief had taken them with him. Taking Bill's old hat, he went out with the woman, and looked into the oyster-cellars and ...
— The Runaway - The Adventures of Rodney Roverton • Unknown

... ownership and of a more equitable distribution of profits, and at the same time a better service to the commonwealth. We believe that the administration should be for the benefit of the many; and that greed and rascality, practiced on a large scale, should be punished as relentlessly as if practiced on ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... to take advantage of such weakness in our fellow men," said David, whose heart began to suffer qualms as he contemplated this rascality and his ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss

... "I wonder what rascality it was that made these two friends?" murmured Muller, putting Theo's letter with the three he had already read. But before he slipped it in his pocket he glanced at the postmark. The letters of the three women ...
— The Lamp That Went Out • Augusta Groner

... who, living in a world of affectation, suspects "hypocrisy" in every creature he sees—the very plague of this lower evangelical piety is that it is not hypocrisy; that Andrew and Laurie do both expect to get the grace of God by singing psalms on Sunday, whatever rascality they practice during the week. In the modern popular drama of "School,"[108] the only religious figure is a dirty and malicious usher who appears first reading Hervey's "Meditations," and throws away the book as soon as he is out of sight of the company. But when ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... hats"; and on the right stalked in the gaunt figure of James Henry Monahan. Triumph, animosity and fear marked his night-bird face. Even yet it was hoped the great opponent of his "government," whom by rascality alone he could convict, would strike his colours, and sue for mercy. Even yet it was feared that a rescue would be attempted. How possible the former was, the reader may judge. The latter was rendered impossible ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny

... family, in which the reader probably discerns his true motive, now bent his mind on slipping back to Homburg and looking after his money. Not that he liked the job. To get hold of it, he knew he must condense rascality; he must play the penitent, the lover, and the scoundrel over again, all in ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade

... you thought, while its mild yet radiant beams were turned upon you. One thing was quite certain: that blue eye had seen a great deal. More, it had enjoyed the seeing. And its owner had a way of wiping it as he ended some tale of rascality, successful or exposed, with his habitual cliche—"I wep a tear. I did reelly," which made you realize that the only tears it had in fact ever wept were in truth tears of suppressed laughter over ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant

... on the stage at the last year's Lenaean festival. If you were living among men such as the man-haters in his Chorus, you would be only too glad to meet with Eurybates and Phrynondas, and you would sorrowfully long to revisit the rascality of this part of the world. You, Socrates, are discontented, and why? Because all men are teachers of virtue, each one according to his ability; and you say Where are the teachers? You might as well ask, Who teaches Greek? For of that too there will not be any teachers found. ...
— Protagoras • Plato

... all about it. Your father wasn't a man of business, and couldn't see things from a business point of view. Now, what I just want to say to you is this: there's all the difference in the world between commercial failure and rascality. If you go down to Liverpool, and ask men of credit for their opinion about Charles Edward Dengate, you'll have a lesson that would profit you. I can see you're one of the young chaps who think a precious deal of themselves; I'm often coming ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing

... have patted his shoulder and told him he was a "jewel." So much of Mr. Belcher's wealth had been won by sharp and more than doubtful practices, that that wealth itself stood before the world as a premium on rascality, and thus became, far and wide, a demoralizing influence upon the feverishly ambitious and the young. Besides, Mr. Talbot quieted what little conscience he had in the matter by the consideration that his commissions were drawn, ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland

... to his wife, who is in the other room): There! I have given it him in earnest now; I don't think he will forget that thrashing! What do you say?—And I say that you are an injudicious mother! You make excuses for him, and countenance any sort of rascality on his part—Not rascality? What do you call it, then? Slipping out of the house at night, going out in a fishing boat, staying away till well on in the day, and giving me such a horrible fright when I have so much to worry me! And then the young scamp ...
— Pillars of Society • Henrik Ibsen

... according to the word of General Saterges, it was rascality which the General could pardon. He had gained many a victory in desperate strife,—now one other, the last and most complete: the kingdom's fairest star to shine among his honors! The proclamation of Stephen Cordier's pardon would instantly make broad the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various

... they were cut off from life. It would appear that Jack Ketch the headsman got them when they were rubbed and shining for the feast. We'll not squint upon his writ. It is enough that they were apprehended for some rascality. When he came thumping on his dreadful summons, here they were already set, fopped from shoes to head in the newest whim. Spoon in hand and bib across their knees—lest they fleck their careful fronts—they ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks

... us for two or three especial patterns which he happened to recollect. When I stopped, he jumped up from his chair and walked up and down in front of me, ejaculating, 'By Jove! this is infernal—I never heard of such a contemptible bit of rascality in my life. I have told my father ever since I came home that these men had bad faces, and I have looked carefully for traces of cheating in their accounts. But they were too cowardly to try it ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson

... Churchmen who sought to end these disgraceful scenes suffered both in person and property. A word of remonstrance sufficed to turn into new channels the tide of hatred and greed; for, as happened in the Gordon riots of 1780, rascality speedily rushed in ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... exists in most parts of the world, and at one time all the varieties of the species were Plaguily abundant in Egypt. They were introduced there to punish the people for their rascality, and appeared in such numbers among the Egyptian blacklegs that they stopped the game of PHARAOH. There is nothing poetic in the aspect of the frog. It is simply a tenaqueous bag of wind, yet it has occasionally given an impulse to the divine afflatus. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 8, May 21, 1870 • Various

... "De Infelicitate Principum," an attempt is made by Cosmo de' Medici to uphold some of them as "worthy of all praise and commendation for their learning and estimable qualities," the passage follows, as the reply of Niccoli (already quoted), of the hypocrisy and rascality of all men, consequently, of the hypocrisy and rascality of kings, ministers and their agents and servants. Nay, more: Cosmo de' Medici is made to express his astonishment at the spirit of detraction in Niccoli, but is not surprised as he lashes private individuals, ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross

... question; grandly and tolerantly). Do you suppose, my marble statue, that after all I've said at the Club about the rascality of this Honours business, I could ever have appeared there as a New Year Baronet? The thing's unthinkable. Why, I should have had to ...
— The Title - A Comedy in Three Acts • Arnold Bennett

... touch of torpedo the whole being of a youth who had hitherto lived on pure sensations and among those ideas which are nearest to sensations. There were no longer heroic Romans in Rousseau's universe. "The vilest tastes, the meanest bits of rascality, succeeded to my simple amusements, without even leaving the least idea behind. I must, in spite of the worthiest education, have had a strong tendency to degenerate." The truth was that he had never had any education in its veritable sense, as the process, on its negative side, ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley

... out at Bunker's Hill; if Blucher had not "come up" at Waterloo,—the lesson is, that things do not come up unless they are planted. When you go behind the historical scenery, you find there is a rope and pulley to effect every transformation which has astonished you. It was the rascality of a minister and a contractor five years before that lost the battle; and the cause of the defeat was worthless ammunition. I should like to know how many wars have been caused by fits of indigestion, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... in the brothels, this church remained intact amid infamous surroundings, when all near it in the streets from the Chateau Rouge to the Cremerie Alexandre, only two paces off, the modern rabble of rascality combine their misdeeds, mingling with prostitutes their brewage of crime, ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans

... than fight, and the Rajputs—of course you know—are a warrior caste. I've a notion"—the Resident leaned back and searched the shadows for an eavesdropper—"I've a notion," he continued, lowering his voice, "that the Rana has got himself in rather deep in some rascality or other, and wants to get out before he's put out. There's bazaar gossip.... Hmm! Do you speak ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance

... work, and the characters brought upon the stage still more interesting. I think Hotspur as much of a hero as Hector, and young Henry more of a man than Achilles; and then there is the fat knight, the quintessence of fun, wit, and rascality. Falstaff is a creation beyond ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... and that if I had to begin again I should do differently. I should go more slowly but more surely, and I should not expose the state and my own person to the dangers which may attend the derangement of a general system." "There was neither avarice nor rascality in what he did," says St. Simon; "he was a gentle, kind, respectful man, whom excess of credit and of fortune had not spoilt, and whose bearing, equipage, table, and furniture could not offend anybody. He bore with singular patience and evenness ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... the jungle nor you any more," Mrs. Goring returned, and Barry shivered at the intensity of her voice. "As for hounding you, I warned you. I came here to prevent this, your latest piece of rascality, and I'll do it. You might as ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle

... with that affectation of propriety which belongs to his time-serving tribe, pleaded the "regard to appearances"— "so soon after the ever-to-be-deplored event,"—and other such specious excuses, which were but covers to his own rascality, and used but to postpone the "wedding-day." The truth was, the moment Furlong had no longer the terrors of O'Grady's pistol before his eyes, he had resolved never to take so bad a match as that with ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover

... in corporations. But what could he do? It was his business to give the People what the People wanted. And just now they wanted to be shocked and outraged by revelations of business perfidy. Another six months, perhaps, when the public was tired of contemplating rascality, the editor would find something sweet, full of country charm and suburban peace, to feed them.... On the title-page there were the old names and some new ones, but the same grist,—a "homely" story of "real life" among the ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)

... stranger, this is only another disappointment; it is a Cingalese Appo—a man—no, not a man—a something male in petticoats; a petty thief, a treacherous, cowardly villain, who would perpetrate the greatest rascality had he only the pluck to dare it. In fact, in this petticoated wretch you see a type of the nation ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker

... every boy as could by possibility be screwed out of him. On this point they were both agreed, and behaved in unison accordingly. The only difference between them was, that Mrs Squeers waged war against the enemy openly and fearlessly, and that Squeers covered his rascality, even at home, with a spice of his habitual deceit; as if he really had a notion of someday or other being able to take himself in, and persuade his own mind that he was a ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... branch is not so thick as the other by any means, but it is a sturdy bough for all that. Stevenson and Kipling have proved its immense popularity, with the whole brood of detective stories and the tales of successful rascality we call "picaresque" Our most popular weekly shows the broad appeal ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... the reader. The story of the pretended Gil Martin, preposterous as it is, is told by the unlucky maniac exactly in the manner in which a man deluded, but with occasional suspicions of his delusion, would tell it. The gradual change from intended and successful rascality and crime into the incurring or the supposed incurring of the most hideous guilt without any actual consciousness of guilty action may seem an almost hopeless thing to treat probably. Yet it is so treated here. And the final ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury

... demeanor, reviewed his cautious phrases, and had even provided a desperate denunciation, which, when he considered the privileged rascality of his royal auditor, he felt assured would at once conclude the interview and ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder

... found the receipt on the table, a promising piece of rascality was suggested to him. He would keep the money himself, ...
— Chester Rand - or The New Path to Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr

... execution, unaccountably, fell short. Why? He ought to have cut Almayer's throat and burnt the place to ashes—then cleared out. Got out of his way; of him, Lingard! Yet he didn't. Was it impudence, contempt—or what? He felt hurt at the implied disrespect of his power, and the incomplete rascality of the proceeding disturbed him exceedingly. There was something short, something wanting, something that would have given him a free hand in the work of retribution. The obvious, the right thing to do, was to shoot Willems. Yet how could he? ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad

... spare me, but for the sake of a little money would have condemned me to death. You are a coward, or you would meet your fate boldly. A man who risks so much should not cry out for mercy when his rascality fails. I will not ...
— The Hero of Ticonderoga - or Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys • John de Morgan

... I was the latest comer, all the broiling and frying had ceased, but a party sat round the fire, evidently set in for a spell at "yarning." At first the conversation ran in ordinary channels, such as short reminiscences of old world rascality, perils in the Bush. Till at length a topic arose which seemed to have a paramount interest for all. This was the prowess of a certain Two-handed ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various

... at the hotel awaiting an answer to the note they had dispatched to Anthony Harding, Esq. The parts they were to act had been carefully rehearsed on board the Halfmoon many times. Each was occupied with his own thoughts, and as they had nothing in common outside the present rascality that had brought them together, and as that subject was one not well to discuss more than necessary, there seemed no call ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... high in office, it was hinted), the sheriff's followers, bailiffs, tipstaves, and others, were all in their pay; besides a host of myrmidons,—base, sordid knaves, who scrupled not at false-swearing, cozenage, or any sort of rascality, even forgery of legal ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth

... appropriate commentary, three tremendous cataclysms, in which the whole continent was submerged in commercial ruin, besides a dozen lesser epochs of trying vicissitude. The history of our trade has been that of an incessant round of inflations and collapses; and the amount of rascality and fraud perpetrated in connection with the banks, in order to defeat the restrictions upon them, has no parallel but in the sponging-houses. A Belgian philosopher, from the study of statistics, has deduced a certain order in disorder,—or a law of periodicity in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various

... Lord Baltimore's boundary stones," Phoebus exclaimed. "Now see the rascality o' them kidnappers! Yon house, I know, is Twiford's, because it's a'most on the state-line, but, I'm ashamed to say, it's a leetle in Maryland. And that lane, coming down to the wharf, is my way to Joe Johnson's ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend

... involuntary victims. The feeble, characterless man quietly submits to his chains; the bold, generous, strong man breaks his fetters, and helps others to do the same. A very ingenious defence of all kinds of rascality, isn't it?" ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... columns came out with red scare heads and gory recital full of reference to "something rotten in the State of Denmark" and "damnable rascality," there was only one emasculated innocuous column given to the local event, but seven columns were steeped with the bloody details of sheep massacres and stock raids and Range Wars in other states in "the ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut

... more guilty still than the wretches whom they ignominiously urged on to vice? Let us see what the same writer says of these corrupters. "If it is difficult," says he, "to explain the excesses of the savage, it is also difficult to understand the extent of the greed, the hypocrisy and the rascality of those who supply them with these drinks. The facility for making immense profits which is afforded them by the ignorance and the passions of these people, and the certainty of impunity, are things which they cannot resist; the attraction of ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath

... weighty, for he has given time and study to collecting the multitude of small facts which constitute the large fact. His opinion that political honesty is increasing with us has brought comfort to many good citizens who had grown despondent over the accounts of recurrent rascality in the newspapers and magazines. This is a typical case for the citation of authorities; for the facts are enormous in number, very widely scattered, and often contradictory. Only a man who has taken the pains to keep himself constantly informed, ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner

... his neighbour, and his neighbour's against him;' and he pushes the aphorism to its fullest logical conclusion, i.e., not merely to 'Believe every man to be a knave until you find he is honest,' but 'Believe that when a man is honest it is merely the more successfully to carry out some rascality.' ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny

... replied her grandfather; "but such little-minded rascality is not just the vice one would expect to find in ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell

... look on the creatures as mere drones, only injuring the hive by what they cost: but there are others, backward in toil and forward in greed, and these are the captains in villainy: for not seldom can they show that rascality has its advantages. Such as they must be removed, cut out from among us, root and branch. [26] And I would not have you fill their places from our fellow-citizens alone, but, just as you choose your horses from the best ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon

... in all its fresh and unadorned rascality, was the famous "option law," or "two-penny act," of 1758: an act firmly opposed, on its first appearance in the legislature, by a noble minority of honorable men; an act clearly indicating among a portion of the people of Virginia a survival ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler

... everything is all mixed up in a motley confusion, just as praying and eating and rascality and ecstasy are mixed up in life. Well, good night. Oh, why is it that I cannot at least be with you in my dreams—be really with you and dream in you. For when I merely dream of you, I am always alone. You wonder why ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... services. As he often does teaming for people in those back districts his story is plausible; and he swears he knew nothing against the man. But he is a bad drinking fellow, and just the one to become an accomplice in any rascality. I fear they will all escape us, and yet I am profoundly grateful ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe

... lad and his passport. All this I saw done, and did not dare to move or speak for fear of being "done" by the rascals. Having stripped the cabin of all that appeared to be in their line, they left and went up the stairs onto the deck, feeling, I suppose, cocksure that they had had their rascality to themselves. The morn dawned, and the first to give the alarm that they had been robbed were those two London "prigs," who swore vengeance upon the whole of us. One of them declared that he had been a rogue all his life—a sentiment to which I said "aye," "aye" in my own mind,—but ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End

... wits by suggestion—that he, too, does things in association that he would never think of doing singly. The fact may be accepted, but the reasoning raises a doubt. The numskull runs amuck in a crowd, not because he has been inoculated with new rascality by the mysterious crowd influence, but because his habitual rascality now has its only chance to function safely. In other words, the numskull is vicious, but a poltroon. He refrains from all attempts at lynching a cappella, not because it ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken

... rascality have added to your plausibility. I almost believe you—but not quite. You seem to be extremely vulnerable to feminine blandishments. There's Sally, the milkmaid. Remember that I saw you kiss her with rather more than brotherly ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson

... this happened so long ago, I still feel the pain of mere shame when I have to tell you that it was more than a danger: that such rascality often happened; indeed more than once the whole combination seemed dropping to pieces because of it: but at the time of which I am telling, things looked so threatening, and to the workmen at least the necessity of their dealing with ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris

... southern Mexico these mysterious personages go by the name padrinos, godfathers, and are looked upon with a mixture of fear and respect. They are believed by the Indians to be able to cause sickness and domestic calamities, and are pronounced by intelligent whites to present "a combination of rascality, duplicity ...
— Nagualism - A Study in Native American Folk-lore and History • Daniel G. Brinton

... with. "That boy" had possessed himself of the fearful secret of their evil practices, had probed the mystery of their iniquity, and was ready to come down upon them like an avenging spirit, to expose their rascality, and to publish to the world the story ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic

... England, and to suffer judgment to go by default. The Duke of Argyle, he says, would not lose sight of him till he had seen him on horseback, and had ordered his own best horse to be brought round to the door. There was no remedy for what was called by Lord Lovat's friends, the "rascality" of the judges:—and again this unworthy Highlander was driven from his own country to seek safety in the land wherein his offences had received their pardon. The inflexibility of the justiciary lords, or their known integrity, form a fine incident ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson

... herself, which was a singularly beautiful French model, but only to that of the crew and officers; it being the policy of the day to isolate the blackguards of both services, confining them to particular crafts and corps, making, as it were, a kind of index expurgatorius, where all the rascality was ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various

... Abokr, also of the Habr Gerhajis, a personage whom, from, his smattering of learning and his prodigious rascality, we call the Mulla "End of Time." [10] He is a man about forty, very old-looking for his age, with small, deep-set cunning eyes, placed close together, a hook nose, a thin beard, a bulging brow, scattered teeth, [11] and a short scant figure, ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton

... upholsterer, then a peddler of quackeries in the shape of four-penny boxes of hangman's grease, to cure pains in the loins,[33114] afterwards chief of the claque in the galleries of the Constituent Assembly and driven out for rascality, restored under the Legislative Assembly, and, under the protection of a groom of the Court, favored with a spot near the Assembly door, to set up a patriotic coffee-shop, then awarded six hundred francs as a recompense, provided with national quarters, appointed inspector of the tribunes, a regulator ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... Bradner had known just the extent of the rascality of his agent, he might not have sent Roy to investigate. But, at the worst, he only imagined that perhaps the man might be careless in collecting the rents, which would account for the small income from ...
— The Boy from the Ranch - Or Roy Bradner's City Experiences • Frank V. Webster

... these men: see if he will give permission." Captain Bird replied, "that any orders he received from the Resident would certainly be carried, into effect; but if his Majesty's own acknowledgment of the deceitfulness of these men, and their intriguing rascality were not sufficient to induce him to remove them—if the King set so little value on his promise—a promise now known to the whole city, and which he must in self-defence now speak openly of, he foresaw the speedy ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman

... Church, and for that matter against himself too, for he then and there confessed before everybody that he was no true priest. And as he preached,— what think you?—a young man fired a pistol shot at him for his rascality, as everyone supposed, and when the gendarmes would have taken the assassin, this same Abbe stopped them, and refused to punish HIS OWN SON! What do you think of that for a marvel? And something still more marvellous followed, for that very son who ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli

... write for me, and will explain to him, as well as I can, the depth, and the blackness, and the cruelty,—the unfathomable, heathen cruelty, together with the falsehoods, the premeditated lies, and the general rascality on all subjects,—of my son Augustus. I will explain to him that, of all men I know, he is the least trustworthy. I will explain to him that, if led in a matter of such importance by Augustus Scarborough, he will be surely led astray. And I think that between us,—between Merton ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope

... thoroughly the theory 'that every man is as good as another, and a little better.' And he himself always is the better man. The people won't stand that. The 'holier than thou' will defeat a man quicker in this country than will any rascality he ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford

... the Thebans had set a price upon his head. {75} Refuse then, to hear or to tolerate any mention of what had already been done, either by the Spartans or by the Phocians, before he made his report; and do not let him denounce the rascality of the Phocians. It was not for their virtue that you once saved the Spartans, nor the Euboeans, that accursed people! nor many others; but because the interests of the city demanded their preservation, as they demanded that of the Phocians ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes

... in Madrid," exclaimed the Centaur violently, accompanying his affirmation with a string of tongue-blistering vocables. "In Madrid there is nothing but rascality. What do they send us soldiers for? To squeeze more contributions out of us and a couple of conscriptions afterward. By all that's holy! if there isn't a rising there ought to be. So you"—he ended, looking banteringly at the young man—"so you ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos

... affairs in the Equitable. The greed, juggling, and grafting practised by its officers and controllers have been fully exposed through the press. I hope none of those who have followed the terrific arraignment of rottenness and rascality made through the Frick report are so foolish as to imagine that the evils described are confined to the Equitable. In my own opinion the Equitable is much less reprehensible than the New York Life, and when that institution ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... that was such an insuperable objection," Mrs. Parton replied, "In point of family she was just as good as he, perhaps a little better. The colonel and I met a lady at Cape May who knew them well. This girl was left an orphan early, and through the rascality of her guardian found herself penniless at seventeen. She had inherited the artistic gift of her family, only in her it took the dramatic turn, and necessity and her surroundings all combined to lead her in that direction. Then just as she was making a success she gave it up to marry—" ...
— Mr. Pat's Little Girl - A Story of the Arden Foresters • Mary F. Leonard

... rascality! It is monstrous!" squeaked the lieutenant. "It is against the rules of war! What shall ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace

... Hague has ordered a new trial in the case of the Editor of the Telegraaf, who was sentenced for referring to "a group of rascals in the centre of Europe." The rascality of the persons in question is now deemed to be proved beyond the shadow of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 27, 1917 • Various

... in this theatre of political rascality was that Publius Clodius, of whose services, as already mentioned,(2) the regents availed themselves against Cato and Cicero. Left to himself, this influential, talented, energetic and— in his trade—really ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... partly designed by Inigo Jones, who built the west side, called the Arch Row; the east side was bounded by the garden wall of Lincoln's Inn; on the north was Holborn Row; the south side was Portugal Row. The history of Lincoln's Inn Fields is a curious combination of rascality and of aristocracy. The rascals infested the fields, which were filled with wrestlers, rogues and cheats, pick-pockets, cripples and footpads; the aristocrats occupied the stately houses on the west ...
— The Strand District - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant

... IS dull; but don't attack his morality; he humbly submits that, in his poem, no man shall mistake virtue for vice, no man shall allow a single sentiment of pity or admiration to enter his bosom for any character of the piece: it being, from beginning to end, a scene of unmixed rascality performed by persons who never deviate into good feeling. And although he doth not pretend to equal the great modern authors, whom he hath mentioned, in wit or descriptive power; yet, in the point of moral, he meekly believes that he has been their superior; feeling ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray

... will not do that. That would be theft, a piece of rascality of which a great man ...
— The Resources of Quinola • Honore de Balzac

... do I worry myself when I live in a country where villainy and rascality have long been getting not less but far more handsome rewards than modesty and virtue? Look at Regulus, for example, who, from being a pauper and without a shilling, has now become such a rich man by sheer ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger

... likely he would have attempted anything so bold as that in broad daylight if he had not been drinking too freely, and the very evil "spirit" which had prompted him to his rascality unfitted him for its immediate consequences. These latter, in the shape of Dab Kinzer and the lower "joint" of a stout fishing-rod, had been bounding along up the road from the landing at a tremendous rate for nearly ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various

... "Thank you; I am in no humor to listen to your confessions. You may be quite easy; I give you credit for all imaginable rascality. Remember what I said: if I miss any thing, the police will be after you the same day. Now, once more, go. If I see your face about here again, it will ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence

... to the vicinity thereof in the uniform and with the pleasing manners of German warriors. The organisation for doing good to Belgium against Belgium's will was an incomparable piece of chicane and pure rascality. Strange—Belgians were long ago convinced that the visitation was inevitably coming, and had fallen into the habit of discussing it placidly over ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett

... stubble chin in his coon-skins. "Don't try to oil me; the herb-doctor tried that. My experience, carried now through a course—worse than salivation—a course of five and thirty boys, proves to me that boyhood is a natural state of rascality." ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville

... in this Doctrine. But God Almighty is continually pouring down cataracts of testimony upon me to convince me of this fact. 'Lord I believe, help thou,' not 'mine unbelief,' but me to overcome the rascality of mankind." His partner Miller, on the other hand, is inclined to be more philosophical and suggests to Whitney that "we take the affairs of this world patiently and that the little dust which we may stir up about cotton may after all not make much difference ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson

... immorality, turpitude, knavishness, villainy, peccancy, baseness, profligacy, venality, licentiousness, obliquity, pravity, degeneracy, viciousness, wantonness, criminality, libertinism, malevolence, incorrigibility, rascality, malignity, noxiousness, infamy, mischief. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... Charles's intentions was any such thing; but he did think that a night passed there, with no other company than his own reflections, would do him a world of good, and was, at all events, no very great modicum of punishment for the rascality with which ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest

... the two new-comers, however different they might seem in build of body and in habit of apparel, resembled each other more closely than they resembled any of the earlier occupants of the Inn room. There are castes in rascality as in all other trades, classes, professions, and mysteries, honorable or dishonorable, and this latest pair of knaves belonged patently to the more amiable caste of ruffianism—a higher or a lower caste, as you may be pleased to look at it. ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... better than that and a great deal better. If we find him we are going to send him where he won't inveigle any more innocent people into rascality, and you're ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... slaughter those who were not able to defend themselves. Go; get yourself better instructed in the meaning of the Koran." He was a thorough Corsair, with the rough code of honour, as well as the unprincipled rascality of the sea-rover. ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole

... the enemy at its mercy; but pusillanimity, to say that it was also in the game, not having dared to meddle in the first act of danger, takes as its part the second, of blood and massacre. The murders in victories are commonly performed by the rascality and hangers-on of an army, and that which causes so many unheard of cruelties in domestic wars is, that this canaille makes war in imbruing itself up to the elbows in blood, and ripping up a body that lies prostrate at its feet, having no sense of ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... strange part, and you won't understand it until you see her. She came because she had just heard—some one had told her—about Fletcher's old rascality." ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow

... dog has shown me that there is more rascality in Frankfort than I ever imagined," exclaimed Aunt Steiner; "or, upon second thought, I believe they are foreigners. I am sure that no Frankforter would do ...
— Pixy's Holiday Journey • George Lang

... cavalry, began going out of his way to collide with the Forty-Third Virginia, the more so since he had secured the services of a deserter from Mosby, a man named Binns who had been expelled from the Rangers for some piece of rascality and was thirsting for revenge. Cole hoped to capitalize on Binns' defection as Mosby had upon the desertion of Sergeant Ames, and he made several raids into Mosby's Confederacy, taking a number of prisoners before the ...
— Rebel Raider • H. Beam Piper

... was not at 218, Brunswick Square, on the night in question. Of that you may be certain. But it's a queer business altogether. Rascality I can understand. I am beginning to comprehend the plot of which I am the victim. But I don't mind admitting that up to the present I fail to comprehend why those girls evolved the grotesque scheme for getting assistance at your hands. The whole ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White

... little bundle of verse there is neither a poem which bears that name nor a poem by which that name would be bearable. The publisher of the booklet was like "one Ragozine, a most notorious pirate"; and the method no less than the motive of his rascality in the present instance is palpable and simple enough. Fired by the immediate and instantly proverbial popularity of Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis, he hired, we may suppose, some ready hack of unclean hand to supply ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... of lighting, and there are so many hiding-places, above and below, all dark, which lend themselves to innumerable knaveries, that the church would become a secret den for harbouring bandits, false coiners, for debauching nuns, and doing all sorts of rascality; and when it was shut up at night, twenty-five men would be needed to search the building for rogues hidden there, and it would be difficult enough to find them. There is, besides, another inconvenience: the interior circle of buildings added to Bramante's plan ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds

... having blackened and soiled the country by theft, should receive the punishment of dogs, and as it was beneath an Apache to strike them, cords were given to them, with orders that they should chastise each other for their rascality. The blackguards were obliged to submit, and the dread of being scalped was too strong upon them to allow them to refuse. At first they did not seem to hurt each other much; but one or two of them, smarting under the lash, returned the blows in good earnest, and then they all got angry, and beat ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat

... will against roguery and cheating, rail as they may at the rapacity and rascality one meets with, I declare and protest, after a good deal of experience, that the world is a very poor world to him who is not the mark of some roguery! When you are too poor to be cheated, you are too insignificant to be cherished; ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever

... be amazed that all these people should remain working people, and that they do not all of them take to an easier method of getting gain,—by trading, peddling, acting as middlemen, begging, vice, rascality, and even robbery. Why, we, the participants in that never-ceasing orgy which goes on in town, can become so accustomed to our life, that it seems to us perfectly natural to dwell alone in five huge apartments, heated by a quantity of beech logs sufficient to cook ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi

... of Paris come to a sense of their real value, a cashier will be hardly obtainable for money. Still, certain it is that there are people who are fit for nothing but to be cashiers, just as the bent of a certain order of mind inevitably makes for rascality. But, oh marvel of our civilization! Society rewards virtue with an income of a hundred louis in old age, a dwelling on a second floor, bread sufficient, occasional new bandana handkerchiefs, an elderly wife ...
— Melmoth Reconciled • Honore de Balzac

... in the hills. He had tried his hand at every kind of rascality. Cattle had disappeared, horses rustled and Ramon was suspected of knowing more about them than he should. Yet it was Kie Wicks behind him, threatening and driving him on, that made Ramon the character ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm

... villany[obs3]; baseness &c. adj.; abjection, debasement, turpitude, moral turpitude, laxity, trimming, shuffling. perfidy; perfidiousness &c. adj.; treachery, double dealing; unfairness &c. adj.; knavery, roguery, rascality, foul play; jobbing, jobbery; graft, bribery; venality, nepotism; corruption, job, shuffle, fishy transaction; barratry, sharp practice, heads I win tails you lose; mouth honor &c. (flattery) 933. V. be dishonest &c. adj.; play false; break one's word, break one's faith, break one's promise; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... audible. When thwarted he was liable to these accesses to rage, and, speaking figuratively, they spoilt his character. Could he have kept his head, he would have been a perfect and triumphant villain, but as it was, the carefully planned and audacious rascality of years was always apt to be swept away by the sudden gale of his furious passion. It was in such an outburst of rage that he had assaulted John in the inn yard at Wakkerstroom, and thereby put him on his guard against him, and now it mastered ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard

... schemed for great rewards, but for the love of it. Lust for wealth and for revenge, the thrill of the dangerous and underhanded game they played, contempt for those whose moral fabric was too strongly woven to break under the strain of Ragtown, a certain vague satisfaction in their newly discovered rascality—all these spurred them on to make the most of their opportunities. One step in the direction they had taken leads so easily to another, that now they had reached a point in their moral lapse where they would stop at nothing—not even the taking of ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins

... nobleness of his loving, heroic nature, "If you believe in no future life, I would not give a mushroom for your God. Do, then, as you like. For if no God, so no devil, no hell: as with a fallen tree, all is over when you die. Then plunge into lechery, rascality, robbery, and murder." What bible of Moloch had he been studying to form, for the time, so horrid a theory of the happiest life, and to put so degrading an estimate upon human nature? Is man's will a starved wolf only held back by the ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... company's affairs as in leaving instructions to his children for their action until they should hear from him again. Afterwards this curious scrupulosity became a matter of comment among those privy to it; some held it another proof of the ingrained rascality of the man, a trick to suggest lenient construction of his general conduct in the management of the company's finances, others saw in it an interesting example of the involuntary operation of business instincts which ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells

... times, the sound of arms, but all tending to far other ends than the welfare of a reigning family, or to satisfy the revengeful whim of a royal mistress, or the bigotry of a monarch. Public opinion has its say now in all things. Even the rascality of which the conservative complains is individual rascality for private aims, tempered by public opinion, and no longer the sublimely organized rascality of all power and government. Do these things prove nothing? Do they not show that WORK—good, hard, steady, unflinching ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... continually fretted by the carelessness or the rascality of the servants in whom he was obliged to trust. He writes in his diary: "Nancy is too uneducated for a housekeeper—indeed, quite a beast." "My precious servants were occupied from seven o'clock till ten trying to kindle a fire." "The cook's off ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris

... part great rogues, they win applause and respectability by virtuously denouncing petty, vulgar political corruption which they themselves often instigate, and thus they divert attention from their own extensive rascality. ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers

... Orders for sandals in the yashiki of a nobleman were no small item. Rokuzo was easily satisfied. Though of a scant thirty years in age he had not the vice of women, the exactions of whom were the prime source of rascality in the sphere of chu[u]gen, as well as in the glittering train of the palace. At the turn of the road ahead Rokuzo could eye the massive walls of the moat, which hid the fortress and seraglio built ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville

... has caused me to alter my opinion of you. You have a small smattering of learning and you can put on a very wise look when occasion requires. But that is all there is to it, except that behind it all you are a thorough-paced scoundrel and only lack a certain courage to do some daring bit of rascality." ...
— The Rover Boys in the Jungle • Arthur M. Winfield

... find out how far their rascality has gone," one of the men, the elder of the two, asserted. "Perhaps you don't know it," he added, untying the fastenings of the first bag, "but you young people have done the community a great service. People all over are complaining of stolen property, ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope

... know to the President who I was and where I came from, he regarded me with a look at once so stern and so benign, that I felt like one of my school-boys overtaken in some small rascality and was almost of a mind to march straight to a corner of the room and stand with my face to the wall. If he had seized me by the coat collar and trounced me well, I should somehow have felt that he had the right. From the conversations ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen

... the client, with sudden vehemence. "Put every engine of the law in force, every trick that ingenuity can devise and rascality execute; fair means and foul; the open oppression of the law, aided by all the craft of its most ingenious practitioners. I would have him die a harassing and lingering death. Ruin him, seize and sell his ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... Socration, twins in rascality of Piso, scurf and famisht of the earth, you before my Veraniolus and Fabullus has that prepuce-lacking Priapus placed? Shall you betimes each day in luxurious opulence banquet? And must my cronies quest for dinner invitations, [lounging] where ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus

... reported that the rioters have already recommenced their work of destruction. To-day there must be no child's play. Some of the troops under your command should be sent immediately to attack and stop those who have commenced their infernal rascality in Yorkville ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley

... smothrd to death in darknesse. But on the very rushes, where the comedy is to daunce, yea and under the state of Cambises himselfe must our fethered Estridge be planted valiantly, because impudently, beating downe the mewes and hisses of opposed rascality" ("Works," ed. Grosart, ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand

... yet I liked this claim of brotherhood. Not all the warnings which I heard against their rascality could hinder me from feeling kindly towards my fellow-Christians in the East. English travellers, from a habit perhaps of depreciating sectarians in their own country, are apt to look down upon the Oriental Christians as being ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake

... devoted to his friends, a level-headed protector of the working classes, a patron of the arts in his own clearminded, unlettered way. But whatever point of view one gets at him, he spares one dullness. Will you explain to me, my dear, why picturesque rascality is so much more ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine

... me. I no longer endeavored to overtake the carriage, but I pushed my way as fast as possible beyond the nearest barrier. Once outside the wall of Paris, I was in the Banlieu, that zone of rascality whose inhabitants are all suspected by the police and live under the ban. Of course on such a gala-day of lawlessness this hive was all astir. At a village I passed through I tried to hire a conveyance to Argenteuil. I also tried to get some railway information, but nobody could tell me anything ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various

... in health, and as little annoyed by this rascality as it becomes me to be. The only tiling that has vexed me, is the manner in which my counsel is represented in talking about my being ashamed of the work as a wicked performance! "Wicked! My poor 'old uncle' has nothing wicked about him. It was the work of a right-honest ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle

... much anyway. A god that can create something out of nothing ought not to have complained of the loss of an apple. I can hardly have the patience to speak upon such a subject. Now, that absurdity gave birth to another—that, while we could be rightfully charged with the rascality of somebody else, we could also be credited with the virtues of somebody else; and the atonement is the absurdity which offsets the other absurdity of the fall of man. Let us leave them both out; ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll

... strength, wisdom, experience, genius, time, nay a good part of their very thoughts—sold for months and years, not only to the necessities, the conveniences, but, the caprices of the important few. We talked of the insignificant creatures, nay notwithstanding their general stupidity and rascality, did some of the poor devils the honour to commend them. But light be the turf upon his breast who taught "Reverence thyself!" We looked down on the unpolished wretches, their impertinent wives and clouterly brats, as the lordly bull does on the little dirty ant-hill, whose ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... soon in any event; but it was brought to an abrupt termination by a cablegram from my New York lawyers, asking me to return to America at once. Some rascality it was, on the part of the agent of my estate, which had alarmed them; the cablegram was bare of detail. At any rate, I could not afford to disregard it, and arranged passage on a liner sailing from ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout

... detective told me—I jus' remember it now—that they're still huntin' aroun' for the child o' the dead woman! Jette, for God's sake, don't you have 'em suspect you o' layin' hands on that there newborn child jus' to get the proofs o' your brother's rascality outa ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann

... had discovered that a Jew at Portsmouth had sold him a seal as gold, for fifteen shillings, which proved to be copper, and that he was going back to Portsmouth to give the Jew a couple of black eyes for his rascality, and that when he had done that he was to return to his messmates, who had promised to drink success to the expedition at the Cock and Bottle, St Martin's Lane, ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat

... younger Cyrus, in his satrapy, that under his sway it was common to see along all the most frequented roads numbers of persons who had had their hands or feet cut off, or their eyes put out, as a punishment for thieving and rascality. And other writers relate that similar mutilations were inflicted on rebels, and even on prisoners of war. It would seem, indeed, that mutilation and scourging were the ordinary forms of secondary punishment used by the Persians, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson

... whom we have just been examining! They hang about the purlieus of the metropolis: Brook Green, Epsom, Greenwich, Ascot, Goodwood, are their haunts. They visit London professionally once a year, and that is at the time of Bartholomew fair. How one may speculate upon the different degrees of rascality, as exhibited in each face of the thimblerigging trio, and form little histories for these worthies, charming Newgate romances, such as have been of late the fashion! Is any man so blind that he cannot see the exact face that is writhing under the thhnblerigged ...
— George Cruikshank • William Makepeace Thackeray

... such incarnations of historic crime. Flamineo especially, the ardent pimp, the enthusiastic pandar, who prostitutes his sister and assassinates his brother with such earnest and single-hearted devotion to his own straightforward self-interest, has in him a sublime fervor of rascality which recalls rather the man of Brumaire and of Waterloo than the man of December and of Sedan. He has something too of Napoleon's ruffianly good-humor—the frankness of a thieves' kitchen or an imperial court, when the last thin fig-leaf of pretence has been plucked off and crumpled ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... he is going to the left, when it is his positive intention, well-considered beforehand, to go to the right. No, France and England, Bresson and Bulwer, playing their game of chess of the Spanish marriages on the green cloth of political rascality,—never said anything comparable to the devices of these lying chevaliers ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle

... interested Eddie Deever far more than all else—Elias Droom himself and such of his experiences as he cared to relate. The rid man told stories about the dark sides of New York life, tales of murder, thievery, rascality high and low, and he told them with blood-curdling directness. The Walker wife-murder; the inside facts of the De Pugh divorce scandal; the Harvey family's skeleton—all food for the dime-novel producer. Eddie revelled in these recitals ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon

... artists, mountebanks who vegetate on the outskirts of art; "buckeye painters," who turn out a dozen 20x30 canvases a day for the export trade to Africa and Australia; unscrupulous fabricators of Corots and Daubignys, picture drummers who make such rascality profitable, illustrators of advertising pamphlets, and so-called frescoe painters, who ornament ceilings with sentimental clouds, with two or three cupids thrown in according to the price they extort from ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 3, May 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various

... especially as I only had the alternative of hunting or being hunted. But here in Freeland no one hunted for his neighbour's goods; here every rogue must confess himself to be worse than all the rest, and indeed a rascal without necessity, out of pure delight in rascality. If one only had the spur of danger which in the outer world clothed this hunting with so much poetry! But here there was not a trace of it! The Freelanders would not even have pursued us if we had bolted with our embezzled booty; we might have run ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka

... rascality, it can not appear very creditable to the citizens of Steuben County, that Capt. Helm and Thomas McBirney should both hold high and important offices at the time, and after they had been tried and convicted of the crime of kidnapping. Both of these gentlemen, guilty of a State's prison offence, ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward

... through their schemes readily enough, and even marveled that such numbers of them could find sufficient prey to keep them going. Their rascality and general dubiousness was so transparent that he could not understand how any one could ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London

... etarnal Old Scratch! Carried off by Roaring Ralph Stackpole, while I, like a brute, war sound a-sleeping! And h'yar's the knavery of the thing; sir! the unpronounceable rascality, sir!—I loaned the brute one of my own critturs, just to be rid of him, and have him out of harm's way; for I had a forewarning, the brute, that his mouth war a-watering after the Dew beasts in the pinfold, and after ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird

... my heart bleeds for her; yet she seems so wilfully blind to the strongest proofs of the fellow's abominable rascality that at times I feel as if I could hardly put up with it at all. The very pain of seeing her suffer so makes me out of all patience ...
— Elsie's Girlhood • Martha Finley

... making would be permanent, and that she would live and die the owner of the plantation. She alone, in all Bridgetown and vicinity, had no doubts whatever in regard to her husband's sailing from Barbadoes in his own ship, and with a redundancy of rascality below its decks. The respectability and good reputation of Major Bonnet did not blind her eyes. She had heard him talk about the humdrum life on shore and the reckless glories of the brave buccaneers, but she had never replied to these remarks, fearing that she might feel obliged ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton

... proposed to Veronica on the very day that Carlos had come again into the neighbourhood with the runners after him. I saw very well that there was no more connection between the Casa Riego and the rascality of Rio Medio than there was between Ralph himself and old drunken Rangsley on Hythe beach. There ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer

... liking for each other, and at same time Tom commenced to "pair off" with Nellie and Sam was often seen in the company of Grace. Then came the time when the Rovers did a great service for Mrs. Stanhope, saving her from the rascality of Josiah Crabtree, a teacher at Putnam Hall who was trying to get possession of the money Mrs. Stanhope held in trust for Dora. Crabtree was exposed and then he lost no time ...
— The Rover Boys in Alaska - or Lost in the Fields of Ice • Arthur M. Winfield

... infernal Power appeared to be content, and Anthony was temporarily relieved of his trouble. In other words, the intermittent fever of a sort of harmless rascality was afflicting this old creature. He never entertained the notion of running clear away with the money entrusted ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... married, and raised a large family, and brained them all with an ax one night, and got wealthy by all manner of cheating and rascality; and now he is the infernalest wickedest scoundrel in his native village, and is universally respected, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... ignorance of their language than I am really guilty of, enables me to size them up pretty thoroughly by their conversation, and thus to adopt a line of policy to counteract the baneful current of their thoughts. Their display of cunning and rascality is ridiculous in the extreme; fancying themselves deep and unfathomable as the shades of Lucifer himself, they are, in reality, almost as transparent and simple as children; their cunning is the cunning of the school-boy. Well aware ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... disguised sufficiently from recognition to enable him to make his thrust more sure; but there was one exception self-revealed. "I had the general idea," he wrote while engaged on the sixth number, "of the Society business before the Sadleir affair, but I shaped Mr. Merdle himself out of that precious rascality. Society, the Circumlocution Office, and Mr. Gowan, are of course three parts of one idea and design. Mr. Merdle's complaint, which you will find in the end to be fraud and forgery, came into my mind as the last drop in the silver cream-jug on Hampstead-heath. I shall beg, when ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... believe, to save his country as to make his fortune, but destined to return, only that he also might bend his neck beneath the monster guillotine. Marat, the foulest birth of the revolution, whose licentious heat generated venom and rascality, as a dunghill out of its own filth produces adders' eggs—Marat was no more. Carnot, whose genius for war enabled the French nation, amidst all its poverty and intestine contests, even in the pangs and throes of that labour ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope

... one as almost insane to assume that in a Christian country Atheism should be professed as a cloak or as an excuse for misconduct. They who talk in this strain greatly undervalue the accommodating power of religion. Is there a single form of rascality known to man for which religion has not been able to provide a sanction? If there is I have failed to come across it. The use of religion made by tyranny in all ages and in all countries is proof of how accommodating it is to man's passions and interests. The picture of the dying murderer meeting ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen

... humble, conscientious, pious man in it, that man is the present Archbishop of Canterbury: yet last night I read in a certain powerful journal, that the great characteristics of that good man are cowardice, trickery, and simple rascality! Honest Mr. Bumpkin, kind-hearted Miss Goodbody, do you fancy that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various



Words linked to "Rascality" :   misbehaviour, badness, blaze, hooliganism, dishonesty, prankishness, hell, misbehavior, malicious mischief, naughtiness, monkey business, misdeed, vandalism



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