"Swindler" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... scoundrel. Potts complained. Brandon had his son up on the spot; and after listening to his explanations gave him the alternative either to apologise to Potts or to leave the house forever. Louis indignantly denounced Potts to his father as a swindler. Brandon ordered him to his room, and gave him a ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... is still more easily vanquished by a Parisian woman. Consequently Comte Adam, pressed by questions, did not even attempt the innocent roguery of selling the suspected secret. It is always wise with a woman to get some good out of a mystery; she will like you the better for it, as a swindler respects an honest man the more when he finds he cannot swindle him. Brave in heart but not in speech, Comte Adam merely stipulated that he should not be compelled to answer until he had ...
— Paz - (La Fausse Maitresse) • Honore de Balzac
... that people who live outside the law keep to their own plane. The swindler very rarely commits acts of violence. The burglar who practises card-sharping as a side-line, ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... room in her house by getting rid of the grain stored in it, asks her husband when they shall clean out the house. He answers: "When Long May comes." The wife asks the passers-by if they are Long May; and at last a swindler says he is, and receives as a gift all the grain. The swindler was a potter, and the woman told him that he ought to give her a load of pots. He did so, and the wife knocked a hole in the bottom of each, and strung them on a rope stretched across the room. ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... AN EXTENSIVE SWINDLER.—A man named William Cairnes, alias Thomas Sissons, with a host of other aliases, was placed before the magistrates at the Borough Court, Manchester, charged with one of the most singular attempts ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... writes apropos of his fellow-prisoners. "The handsome black-haired man, who is now looking over my shoulder, is the celebrated thief, Pelacio, the most expert housebreaker and dexterous swindler in Spain—in a word, the modern Guzman D'alfarache. The brawny man who sits by the brasero of charcoal is Salvador, the highwayman of Ronda, who has committed a hundred murders. A fashionably dressed ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... swindler Peter procured a mule, and arranged to have the animal in the caravansary at daybreak. It was his intention to start for Kialang in search of Eileen with the first ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... people are to be met. I shall make friends; with money at command, one may hope to succeed in that. Hotels, boarding-houses, and so on, offer the opportunities. It sounds oddly like the project of a swindler, doesn't it? There's the curse I can't escape from! Though my desires are as pure as those of any man living, I am compelled to express myself as if I were about to do something base and underhand. Simply because I have never had a social place. I am an individual merely; I belong to no ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... of the monk was that of an arrogant and erotic swindler. His intelligence was, however, extremely perceptive, and he was not wanting in finesse of the mujik order, combined with a sense of foresight that was utterly amazing. These, with his suave manner, his affectation of deepest ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... advances them also with dignity. If the meanest, the most pitiable, the most heart-sickening object in the world, is the man of letters, sunk into the habitual beggar, practising the tricks, incurring the rebuke, glorying in the shame, of the mingled mendicant and swindler;—what, on the other hand, so touches, so subdues us, as the first, and only petition, of one whose intellect dignifies our whole kind; and who prefers it with a certain haughtiness in his very modesty; because, in asking a favour to himself, ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the conversation of girls who stood near: 'What, John Snipes? Why, he don't pay! Look out for him every time. He'll keep you on trial, as he calls it, for weeks, and then he'll let you go, and get some other fool!' And thus Jane Smith gained her warning against the swindler. But the Union held him in the toils of the law until he paid the worth of each of those ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... lively, his passions strong, and his principles weak. His life was spent in sinning and repenting; in inculcating what was right, and doing what was wrong. In speculation, he was a man of piety and honor; in practice, he was much of the rake and a little of the swindler. He was, however, so good-natured that it was not easy to be seriously angry with him, and that even rigid moralists felt more inclined to pity than to blame him, when he diced himself into a sponging house, or drank himself into a fever. Addison regarded Steele with kindness not unmingled ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... as his word. In a species of French, that I'd venture to say would be perfectly intelligible in Mullingar, he contrived to explain to the maire that I was neither a runaway nor a swindler, but a very old friend of his, and consequently sans reproche. The official was now as profuse of his civilities as he had before been of his suspicions, and most hospitably pressed us to stay for breakfast. This, for many reasons, I was obliged to decline—not ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... I'll give you another chance. Do you know what we are prepared to prove? Well, I will tell you. We can prove that you are not only a swindler but a forger, and our success will consign you to a prison cell. You deserve it, no doubt, but you shall ...
— The Young Acrobat of the Great North American Circus • Horatio Alger Jr.
... no luck in this world, then it's better not to live. There I spent out fifteen cents to stop up one hole, and it runs out another. How I ate out my gall bargaining with him he should let it down to fifteen cents! He wanted yet a quarter, the swindler. Gottuniu! my bitter heart on him for every penny he ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... The wolfcub and the snake, The robber, swindler, hater, Are in your homes—awake! Nor let the cunning foeman Despoil your liberty; Yield weapon up to no man, While ye can strike and see, Awake, each gallant yeoman, If still ye would ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... the surprised Lovel how Sir Arthur's foolish speculations, and especially his belief in a certain German swindler, named Dousterswivel, had caused him to engage in some very costly mining ventures, which were now almost certain to result in ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... operation and circumstance in Nature and providence. It is in direct opposition also to all the unsophisticated feelings of human Nature. No thinking person will venture to affirm, that the beauty of the courtezan, the strength of the robber, or the intelligence and sagacity of the swindler, are more to be honoured than the generous qualities of a Wilberforce or a Howard. And therefore it is, that from a calm and dispassionate consideration of these facts, and independently altogether of revelation, ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... intellectual tastes, would lapse into vice as soon as the traditional sanction was removed. But what is to prevent the withdrawal of the traditional sanction from producing its natural effect upon the morality of the mass of mankind? The commercial swindler or the political sharper, when the divine authority of conscience is gone, will feel that he has only the opinion of society to reckon with, and he knows how to reckon with the opinion of society. ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... scarecrow. That is the theory. And the practice is, that we send a child to prison for a month for stealing a handful of walnuts, for fear that other children should come to steal more of our walnuts. And we do not punish a swindler for ruining a thousand families, because we think swindling is ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... honour," breathes she, apostrophizing the ceiling. "But I cannot let you, Maurice, be so deceived by a mere swindler such as she is. Do you for a moment imagine—ah yes!" throwing up her hands and plainly admiring Maurice with great fervour—"you probably do; you have a soul, Maurice, a great soul, inherited from me! But I shall not permit that little ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... but he had a warm regard for the girl who had saved his life, and, after all, his ideas were not quite so liberal as he fancied they had become in the Western forest. It was a trifle disconcerting to discover that she was the daughter of a swindler. ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... use: if he should turn out a pauper, or even a swindler, I am afraid Elaine will marry him. I saw it in her eye last night; and so, I should think, did he. He certainly can't complain of not receiving encouragement. I only wonder that he has not yet proposed. I believe the man to be capable of any act of audacity, in spite ...
— Fashionable Philosophy - and Other Sketches • Laurence Oliphant
... amount of stock deposited in their "strong box" as security before any important business is undertaken. Every principal who dabbles in rickety stock without a certain reserve as a security is set down by most men as little better than a swindler. ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... aught that should make you tremble before every honest man." I own I had begun to have my doubts of him, and to fear that he had absolutely disgraced himself. Even in such case I,—I individually,—did not wish to be severe on him; but I should be annoyed to find that I had opened my heart to a swindler or a practised knave. ...
— A Ride Across Palestine • Anthony Trollope
... you call sure about him? He's as big a swindler, I guess, as you shall find from here ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... touched, but he feared that Concho's companions might, knowing Concho's simplicity, instantly suspect him of trading upon it. He rode on in a deep study. Was he reviewing his past life? A vagabond by birth and education, a swindler by profession, an outcast by reputation, without absolutely turning his back upon respectability, he had trembled on the perilous edge of criminality ever since his boyhood. He did not scruple to cheat these Mexicans,—they were a degraded race,—and for a moment he felt ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... the best specimen of the high-class "gentleman swindler." He was adept at sleight of hand tricks, and no bolder or more ruthless crook ever lived. He was received in the best society, and was a member of some of the most exclusive clubs. On many of his depredatory expeditions he had not hesitated to use the knife and the mutton-bone. No difficulty ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... sea-urchin, his lips are blubbery, his tongue is too big for his mouth, and his face is like one that you see in a nightmare. The ugly head is stuck on a body which resembles a sack of rancid engine grease. This beauty is a fairly representative specimen of our bold sportsmen. He is a deft swindler, and I have gazed with blank innocence while he rooked some courageous simpleton at tossing. The fat, rancid man can do almost as he chooses with a handful of coins, and the marvellous celerity with which sovereigns or halfpence glide between his podgy fingers is quite fascinating. On the ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... use of the sayin' about curin' with the hair of the dog that bit you. Figgered a swindler wouldn't never suspect nobody of swindlin' him with one of his own tricks. This here Mr. Baxter, or Mr. Bowman, or whatever his name is, used to make a livin' sellin' gold bricks. When I found that there fact out I jest calc'lated he was ripe to do a ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... false witness will say to the judges: "The chief of the State took an oath in the face of God and of man, and that oath he has violated;" the sequestrator will say: "The chief of the State has arrested, and detained against all law, the representatives of the sovereign people;" the swindler will say: "The chief of the State got his election, got power, got the Tuileries, all by swindling;" the forger will say: "The chief of the State forged votes;" the footpad will say: "The chief of the State stole their purses from the Princes ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... of his success and of his guilt, the meanest and most worthless of the human race—the mocker and robber of the poor, the persecutor and kidnapper of Paul O'Clery and his brethren, the merciless swindler and defrauder of the laborer's wages, and, finally, the hypocritical sensualist and drunkard. We boast of our progress, and advertise, as proof of it, the number of railroads in operation, their extent, and the rapidity of the motion over their iron surface; but the ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... country. Is it not better that he and his family should come to want, than that hundreds of thousands should be ruined, soul and body, for time and eternity? If he has a right to derive his subsistence from the ruin of others, then others, as the thief, the swindler, and the robber, have a right to obtain their subsistence from ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... skulking among rocks, a week later. Then there was that unhappy young fellow, Mackinnon, who shot his sweetheart at Leicester; he made, straight as the crow flies, for his home in the Isle of Skye, and there drowned himself in familiar waters. Lindner, the Tyrolese, again, who stabbed the American swindler at Monte Carlo, was tracked after a few days to his native place, St. Valentin, in the Zillerthal. It is always so. Mountaineers in distress fly to their mountains. It is a part of their nostalgia. I know it from within, ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... thrifty, industrious emigrant, prepared to work hard and live poorly, till the hoped-for competence was attained; but there was also the shiftless adventurer, whose chief object was to live without work, and the unscrupulous swindler, who was ready, if opportunity offered, to appropriate the hard ...
— The Young Adventurer - or Tom's Trip Across the Plains • Horatio Alger
... otherwise—he judged whether they were being adequately punished or not. Yet he could not talk to Cowperwood as he now saw or as he would to the average second-story burglar, store-looter, pickpocket, and plain cheap thief and swindler. And yet he scarcely ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... piece of idiocy. Baron de Nucingen, you know, the old certified swindler, is neighing after a woman he saw in the Bois de Vincennes, and she has got to be found, or he will die of love.—They had a consultation of doctors yesterday, by what his man tells me.—I have already eased him of a thousand francs under pretence ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... 'Where are you going with the horses?' he asked, and seized me by the chest. 'Where am I going?' I repeated. 'Thunder and lightning! I am riding down to the horse-pond. Do you think that I—?'—'To the horse-pond!' cried the castellan. 'I'll teach you, you swindler, to swim along the highroad back to Kohlhaasenbrueck!' And with a spiteful, vicious jerk he and the steward, who had caught me by the leg, hurled me down from the horse so that I measured my full length in the mud. 'Murder! Help!' I cried; 'breast straps ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... university was conferring on Tomlinson the degree of Doctor of Letters, all over the City in business circles they were conferring on him far other titles. "Idiot," "Scoundrel," "Swindler," were the least of them. Every stock and share with which his name was known to be connected was coming down with a run, wiping out the accumulated profits of the Wizard at the rate of a thousand ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... interest of the meeting was principally centred this evening, was to all appearances a mean enough type of the East End sartorial Jew. His physiognomy was not that of a fool, but indicated rather that low order of intelligence, cunning and intriguing, which goes to make a good swindler. The low forehead, wide awake, shifty little eyes, the nose of his forefathers, and insolent lock of black hair plastered low on his brow—all these characteristics may frequently be met with in the dock of the "Old Bailey" when some case of ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... been a victim, not a swindler,' sounded from him in a feeble voice. 'You see, he says that Geldershaw has robbed him of all his ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... wait on them. Dost thou not see—shortsighted being that thou art, and unlucky mortal that I am!—that if they perceive thee to be a coarse clown or a dull blockhead, they will suspect me to be some impostor or swindler? Nay, nay, Sancho friend, keep clear, oh, keep clear of these stumbling-blocks; for he who falls into the way of being a chatterbox and droll, drops into a wretched buffoon the first time he trips; bridle thy tongue, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... have more arches in them for pride than London Bridge for use. We, if we met such a ruffed and ruffled worthy as used to swagger by dozens up and down Paul's Walk, not knowing how to get a dinner, much less to pay his tailor, should look on him as firstly a fool, and secondly a swindler: while if we met an old Puritan, we should consider him a man gracefully and picturesquely drest, but withal in the most perfect sobriety of good taste; and when we discovered (as we probably should), over and above, ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... ankle-deep with congratulatory telegrams, I found him a prey to the blackest depression. Even the knowledge that he had succeeded where the police of three countries had failed, and that he had out-manoeuvred at every point the most accomplished swindler in Europe, were insufficient to rouse him ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... hundred dollars salary. 'Twas against the old man's will, and he shut his door, and his purse, and his heart. He turned Witchet away; told his daughter that she might lie in the bed she had made for herself; told Witchet that he was a rotten young swindler, and that, as he had married his daughter for her money, he'd be d——d if he wouldn't be up with him, and deuce of a cent should they get from him. They live I don't know where, nor how. Some of her old friends send ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... the arguments between the editor and sub-editor, which they do not publish. This casualness is our English vice. It is at once casual and secret. Our public life is conducted privately. Hence it follows that if an English swindler wished to impress us, the last thing he would think of doing would be to put on a uniform. He would put on a polite slouching air and a careless, expensive suit of clothes; he would stroll up to the Mayor, be so awfully sorry to disturb him, find he had forgotten ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... what you're driving at better than I do,' I said. And then I said: 'What's it all about? What's your game?' And he said, as if I'd been a common swindler ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... reproach myself because the speculation threatened to fail—I reproach myself for losing my courage. I ran away like a swindler and a thief, because I could not face my best friend and tell him I had ruined him and ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... expressed herself freely on the subject of the poet during his absence, and not in terms which would have commended themselves to the poet's fastidious literary sense. Indeed, she did not hesitate to call him a sponger and a low swindler, who had run away to avoid paying the piper. Her fool of a husband might be quite sure he would never set eyes on the scoundrel again. However, Mrs. Crowl was wrong. Here was Denzil back again. And yet Mr. Crowl felt no sense of victory. He had no desire to ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... barriers unknown, a New Zealander, when meeting a stranger, does not feel called upon to act as though in dread of finding in the latter a sponge, toady, or swindler. Nor has the colonist to consider how the making of chance acquaintances may affect his own social standing. In his own small world his social standing is a settled thing, and cannot be injured otherwise than by his own folly or misconduct. Moreover, most of the Islanders are, or have ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... not perhaps quite know himself. Those who studied this curious Imperial animal did not believe him capable of such pure and simple ferocity. They saw in him an indescribable mongrel, applying the talents of a swindler to the dreams of an Empire, who, even when crowned, would be a thief, who would say of a parricide, What roguery! Incapable of gaining a footing on any height, even of infamy, always remaining half-way uphill, a little above petty rascals, a little below ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... most men such a reverse would have been utter ruin of soul and body. An ordinary man, finding all the hopes of his future, all the expectations, which had been a part of his very life, taken suddenly from him, would have abandoned himself to a career of vice; he would have become a blackleg, a swindler, a drunkard, a beggar at the doors of the kinsman who had cast him off. But it was not so with Reginald Eversleigh. From the moment in which he found himself cast adrift by the benefactor who had been ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... interest on the cost of construction. I am bound to set forth those facts in my report. They pay me to tell them what the facts are. Of course, I shall tell them truly. Otherwise I should not be an honest man. I should be a swindler, taking their money as pay for deceiving them and inducing them ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... swindler!" roared the owner of the suburban property to the real-estate man. "When you sold me this house, didn't you say that in three months I wouldn't part with ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... sting; Nor is he, as some sages swear, A spirit, neither here nor there, In nothing—yet in everything. He is—what we are! for sometimes The Devil is a gentleman; At others a bard bartering rhymes For sack; a statesman spinning crimes; A swindler, ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... was steeped in gloom and bitterness. Before me was the most humiliating ordeal with which Fate had ever saddled me. I had to confess failure a second time, and under such circumstances that Rogers would be justified in believing me either a swindler or a dupe unworthy of respect ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... of a finer kind. Lynx-eyed perspicacity, inexhaustible contrivance, prompt ingenuity,—a man very dangerous to play with at games of skill. And it is cunning regulated always by a noble sense of honor, too; instinctively abhorrent of attorneyism and the swindler element: a cunning, sharp as the vulpine, yet always strictly human, which is rather beautiful to see. This is one of Friedrich's marked endowments. Intellect sun-clear, wholly practical (need not be specially deep), and entirely loyal to the fact before ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... care, and by scraping together all I possess, I can make up eight hundred livres. But may I be damned in the next world, or punished as a swindler in this, and one's as bad as the other to me, if I can raise ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... travel with him would be simple misery. He is going to Petersburg in a day or two to sell his pictures, and at his wife's request will call on you to ask your advice. With a view to this his wife came to ask me for a letter of introduction to you. Be my benefactor, tell N. that I am a drunkard, a swindler, a nihilist, a rowdy character, and that it is out of the question to travel with me, and that a journey in my company will do nothing but upset him. Tell him he will be wasting his time. Of course it would be very nice to have my book illustrated, but when I learned that N. was hoping ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... and next to not incurring a debt, the greatest degradation would have been voluntarily to pay one." And yet was there great pretension to honor, but a man of honor of those days would in our time be considered a ruffian certainly, and probably a blackleg or a swindler. "It was a favorite boast of his (the first Lord Norbury) that he began life with fifty pounds, and a pair of hair-trigger pistols." "They served his purpose well.... The luck of the hair-triggers triumphed, and Toler not only became Chief Justice, but the founder of two peerages, and the ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... He had been worsted in the encounter with this arch-swindler. He would sail for San Francisco on the Columbus. Perhaps he would make his fortune there, while Joe, whom he had so swindled, might, within three days, be reduced ...
— Joe's Luck - Always Wide Awake • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... put an end to the affair by making himself known, by revealing to Mr. Seehaase that he was no swindler of uncertain competence, by birth no gipsy in a green wagon, but the son of Consul Kroeger, of the Kroeger family? No, he had no desire for that. And did not these men of the civic order really have a little right on their side? To a certain extent he was quite in agreement with them ... He shrugged ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... a humbug, if not a swindler, was enough, Wade thought, to account for any failure. But he did not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... did not quarrel however. They both attacked Mr. Bolton behind his back as a swindler, and circulated the story that he had made a fortune ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 7. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... cheated by an English swindler." The clothier raised his thin voice: "Kate, here's ...
— My Neighbors - Stories of the Welsh People • Caradoc Evans
... newspaper the other day how two fakers were found out and arrested. But they had secured a large sum in damages, so I presume they figured that it paid them. I knew Dan Merley was an unprincipled man, but I did not believe he was an accident swindler. But you can stop ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Snowbound - Or, The Proof on the Film • Laura Lee Hope
... Mr. Mason came back with the news that Jacob Pacomb had been arrested for the crooked swindler that ...
— Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach - Or Strange Adventures Among The Orange Groves • Annie Roe Carr
... way, what have you to say about the affair? You knew her rather intimately. No hedging, doctor. There she sits in the cell and combs her hair. Can you imagine who is responsible? You know a woman doesn't lose her mind from a mere love affair. And this music swindler down stairs—it is impossible to get him to show his true colours. Yes, ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... Judas face, with scanty, hircine beard, and an expression changing often from spiteful to cunning, could belong only to a Yankee paymaster or commissary, detected in his frauds before he had made up a pile high enough to defy justice; for swindler is not quite safe till he is nearly a "milliner." (So, was my comrade wont to pronounce millionaire.) Such cases occur daily, and the unity of shabbiness here is always diversified by some trim criminals in dark blue. Putting apparel aside, these accessions ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... go back, and tell your man, first, that Rawdon is dead, and that in life he was a notorious criminal; second, that Miss Du Plessis' land has been devastated by the fire in which he perished; and, third, that if he, or you, or any other contemptible swindler, moves a finger in this direction, either above board or below, I'll have you up for foul conspiracy, and make the department only too happy to send you about your business to save its reputation ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... read him a whole heap of letters; indeed, as you know, I have been doing that all along, when he could not get Nuttie. There were some from Mr. Bulfinch. Do you know that bailiff of his must be next door to a swindler?' ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Brand said, rather unwillingly. "I don't take him to be a common and vulgar swindler. And I can very well believe that he does not care very much for money or luxury or that kind of thing, so far as he himself is concerned. Still, you would think that the ordinary instinct of a father would prevent his doing an injury to the future ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... probably thinking of the dead Uhlan and of poor Bazard; perhaps of the wretched exposure of Buckhurst—the man she had trusted and who had proved to be a swindler, and a ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... the robber from his cavern, and the midnight murderer from his den; summon the seducer from his couch, and beckon the adulterer from his embrace; cite the swindler to appear; assemble from every quarter all the various miscreants whose vices deprave, and whose villainies distress, mankind; and when they are thus thronged round in a circle, assure them—not that there is a God that judgeth ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... about to invent, an enterprise, in which the promoter imagines he will gain enormous wealth. Sometimes it is a trick in which the cupidity of the victims and their readiness to swallow promises of large and immediate profits play as important a part as the ability of the swindler. Sometimes it is a gigantic hoax, in which the deviser himself becomes keenly interested and for the carrying out of which he spends as much talent and energy as would suffice, if employed honestly, to acquire considerable ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... Nimblecut, the hairdresser, has been endeavouring to raise his charge for shaving one half-penny per chin, to be enabled to speculate more largely. Shavings, journeyman carpenter, calculates upon clearing considerably more by 'Sister to Swindler' than a year's interest from the savings-bank. There are thousands of similarly circumstanced speculators: they make a daily, if not more frequent promenade to the betting-office; and on the days when the races come off, they may be observed ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 447 - Volume 18, New Series, July 24, 1852 • Various
... The Government sell their titles to anybody who cares to buy. Ah! I fear that few men who really deserve honour ever get it in these days. No man can become great unless he has the influence of money to back him. The biggest swindler who ever walked up Threadneedle Street can buy a peerage, always providing he is married and has no son. As old Leslie buys his calicoes, ribbons and women's frills, so he'll buy his title. He hasn't a son, so perhaps he'll ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... out to be a French nobleman of princely fortune, and then representing himself to deponent as an unmarried man, but being in truth, as deponent has since discovered, then a married man and a common plebeian, swindler and common chevalier d' industrie; by divers arts, devices, false pretences and allurements, gained this plaintiff's affections and confidence, and did, by false, wicked and fraudulent devices, debauch this plaintiff ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... me that he knew nothing about it! Now, after this, what confidence can we have in anything that this man will say or profess! I confess I am sadly mortified at my own credulousness. John I always considered as no better than a swindler, but James I put some trust and confidence in. You judged more accurately, for you always said that 'he was a damned cunning fellow!' Well, there is every appearance of your being right; but his cunning (as it never does) will not profit him. Within these three ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... out of his usual calm propriety, 'do you not comprehend if that woman had gone out of your store with the calico, that she not only would never enter it again, but she would publish your name over town as a swindler and a cheat, and you never would hear the end of it. Pease had charged her double prices, and the goods would not stand a single washing. And you know whether or not you are ready to pay off the mortgage Deacon Esterbrook ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... have a fling at Lige Baxter, now that he's down. You couldn't say enough in his praise, once. I'll not stand by and hear it hinted that Lige Baxter is a swindler. You all know perfectly well that Lige is as honest as the day, if he IS so unfortunate as to have an unprincipled brother. You, Mrs. Pye, know it better than any one, yet you come here and run him down the minute he's in trouble. If there's another word said here against Lige Baxter I'll leave ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... peculiar, and in the circumstances important, if highly-to-be-deprecated habit of carrying pocket-pistols. He is not a Byronic hero with a terrible but misty past. He is not like Valmont of the Liaisons Dangereuses,[136] a professional and passionless lady-killer. He is not a swindler nor (though he sometimes comes near to this also) a conspirator like Count Fosco of The Woman in White. One might make a long list of such negatives if it were worth while. He is only an utterly selfish, arrogant, envious, and generally bad-blooded[137] ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... professional criminal of many misdeeds is proud of his uprightness in other spheres of behavior, including veracity. But even here one would have to classify carefully, for it is obvious that the typical swindler would find lying his best cloak of disguise. On the other hand, a bold safe-blower may look down with scorn upon a form of criminality ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... everything that's happened. They caught all of the men except that wretch, Pedro. The sheriff's taken them to Perilla for trial. He says they'll surely be convicted. Better yet, one of them has turned State's evidence and implicated a swindler named Draper, who was at the bottom ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... than a musical matter. Are you not aware that I could hand you over to the sheriff, on two special indictments? In the first place, for an action of assault and batterification, in cuffing me, an elder of our kirk, with a sticked killing-coat, in my own shop; and, in the second place, as a swindler, imposing on his Majesty's loyal subjects, taking the coin of the realm on false pretences, and palming off goat's flesh upon Christians, as if they ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... almost every one mentioned in history, sacred or profane. The collection of Mr. Samuel Ireland was like this, and an English student possessed autographs of most of the great reformers, carefully written by an ingenious swindler in contemporary books. The lovers of relics are apt to be thus deluded, and perhaps we should not regret this, as long as they are happy. But they should be very careful indeed when they are asked to buy Alvarado's spear, though probably ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... good sense applied to accounts and affairs. So do you multiply your presence, or spread yourself throughout your estate. But because of the dual constitution of things, in labor as in life there can be no cheating. The thief steals from himself. The swindler swindles himself. For the real price of labor is knowledge and virtue, whereof wealth and credit are signs. These signs, like paper money, may be counterfeited or stolen, but that which they represent, namely, knowledge and virtue, cannot be counterfeited or stolen. These ends of ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Fanutza sat listlessly on her chair and looked through the window. A few minutes later, the two men called one another thief and swindler and a hundred other names. Yet each time the bargain was concluded on a certain article they shook hands and repeated that they were ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... arch schemer and swindler Frank Smithson, who got himself out of the country so successfully with his ill-gotten gains from the Star Mining Company, has dropped the last syllable from his too notorious name, and is now figuring in South America under the name of Smith. His ...
— A Flock of Girls and Boys • Nora Perry
... grip, still looking straight into her eyes. There was a light in his own that shone like a blue flame. "Thanks!" he said again, as he released it. "You're very good, Miss Mortimer. But you mustn't be seen with me, you know. You've got to remember that I'm a swindler." ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... sum of twelve dollars; who had resorted to gross lies and mean deception to carry her point. Upon my honor and conscience, I would rather have lost the twelve dollars I had advanced than had the old woman turn out to be a swindler. She might be fussy, she might be disagreeable, she might be a dozen things that are uncomfortable and unpleasant, if she had only meant to be true and honest, and I could ...
— Desk and Debit - or, The Catastrophes of a Clerk • Oliver Optic
... book-agents, and beggars'—I saw the signs up; looked as if they thought I was a thief. I am not used to being treated like a swindler." ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... necessarily follow. The clever people of the under-world do nothing by halves nor without careful inquiry beforehand; that is what makes the difference between the common pickpocket and the brilliant swindler." He turned to Ailsa. "Is that all, Miss Lorne, or am I right in supposing that there is even ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... When these continued to fail, he tried to assist the axiom by borrowing money; but he found that his uncle had definitely done with him. He would have assisted the axiom by stealing money, but he had neither the nerve nor the knowledge to be a swindler; he was not even sufficiently expert to cheat ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... Jerry. That ain't my idea of a free country. I can work as well as another, but I ain't going to be told that I'm a swindler because I'm making the most of ...
— Harry Heathcote of Gangoil • Anthony Trollope
... of Wellington, and, what was extraordinary, attained some consequence even in the estimation of his lady. All shook their heads at the recollection of the unlucky Tyrrel, and found out much in his manner and address which convinced them that he was but an adventurer and swindler. A few, however, less partial to the Committee of Management, (for whenever there is an administration, there will soon arise an opposition,) whispered among themselves, that, to give the fellow his due, the man, be he what he would, had ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... great swindlers show how the lust for gain plus the wiles of the swindler overcome the caution and suspicion of the "hard-headed," The Ponzi case is the latest contribution to ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... judged from their appearances; but they are not to be trusted, for I doubt not but you would form erroneous conclusions from such premises. The company that assembles here is generally composed of a great variety of characters—the Idler, the Swindler, the Dandy, the Exquisite, the full-pursed young Peer, the needy Sharper, the gaudy Pauper, and the aspiring School-boy, anxious to be thought a dealer and a judge of the article before him—looking at a horse with an air ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... City, and let us start once more from your point of view. I am a Rogue; and, in that capacity (as I have already pointed out), the most useful man you possibly could have met with. Now observe! There are many varieties of Rogue; let me tell you my variety, to begin with. I am a Swindler." ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... Sulla—little more than a body of mercenaries absolutely devoted to their leader and indifferent to political affairs. Sulla himself was a hardened, cool, and clearheaded man, in whose eyes the sovereign Roman burgesses were a rabble, the hero of Aquae Sextiae a bankrupt swindler, formal legality a phrase, Rome itself a city without a garrison and with its walls half in ruins, which could be far more ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... of three hundred a-year as a bounty, for which I could make no return, was I own humiliating to my pride. It made the question continually recur—'Whether it did not give me the air of an impostor? A kind of swindler of sentiment? A pretender to superior virtue, for the purpose of gratifying vice?' It seemed at a blow to rob me of all independence; and leave me a manacled slave to the opinions, not only of Mr. Evelyn, but, by a kind of consignment, of his relation the Baronet; and ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... colour, save this one dread hue, society has a sanctuary and earth a refuge. The forger may find a circle in which the signing of another man's name, under the pressure of circumstances, is held to be a misfortune rather than an offence. The swindler has the gentlemanly brotherhood and sisterhood of Macaire for his family, and need never be lonely. The thief may dance away his jovial nights among kindred spirits, and be carried to his grave by sorrowing fellow-artists. The ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon |
