"Unscrupulous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... resolved to make Law Comptroller General of the Finances of France. There was a material obstacle in his way. Law was a Protestant, and the regent, unscrupulous as he was himself, did not dare publicly to outrage the severe edicts which Louis XIV., in his bigot days, had fulminated against all heretics. Law soon let him know that there would be no difficulty on that head. He was ready at any moment to abjure his ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... fidelity and to its ultimate conclusion there is no necessity to fear any grave disturbances, but there is a dread—that dread which is the fear of the child that has had its hands burned by the flame, that a selfish coterie of players might obtain control of the organization, set up a policy of unscrupulous defiance and destructive opposition and retard for a moment the higher development ...
— Spalding's Official Baseball Guide - 1913 • John B. Foster
... little satisfaction in contemplating the conflict of parties during the first years of Pitt's long administration, and seeing the young Tory minister introducing one great measure of commercial reform after another, while his own Whig chief, Charles Fox, offers to every one of them a most factious and unscrupulous opposition. ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... And then there was so much to say in favour of this young man who had lost it all, and so little to say against him! And it almost seemed to him for whose sake the purchase was being made, that advantage,—an unscrupulous if not an unfair advantage,—was being taken of the purchaser. He could not say all this to his father; but he spoke of Ralph in such a way as to make his father understand what he thought. "He is such a pleasant fellow," said Ralph, ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... marry some one. Should I divide my fortune between you and Curtis, you would become the prey of some unscrupulous fortune hunter." ...
— Adrift in New York - Tom and Florence Braving the World • Horatio Alger
... and making fun of her husband, who had in the mean time pulled on some of my clothes. After this, the young comte explained to me that his father had died a short time before, leaving him his title and immense estates, which, however, should he die childless, would pass to an uncle, a man unscrupulous and of bad reputation. This uncle was among the most conspicuous of the revolutionists. Through his agency the Comte de Choissy and his young wife, with whom he had been but a twelvemonth united, were arrested, and shortly after sentenced to death. They escaped from prison and the ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... unpleasant to realize that they were objects of desire on the part of even a pair of unscrupulous scamps, granting that big Cale Martin had retired from the combination. The boys seemed to get more indignant the longer ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... concerned to adopt an apologetic tone towards Haydn. But Signora Polzelli was clearly an unscrupulous woman. She first got her admirer into her power, and then used her position to dun him for money. She had two sons, and the popular belief of the time that Haydn was the father of the younger is perpetuated in several of the biographies. Haydn had certainly a great regard for the boy, made ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... should be delivered to a woman." Why, we wonder? Because they might, if they read it, learn what privileges it accorded them, and perhaps claim them—a state of things to be prevented by any means, no matter how unscrupulous. ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... (in Italy, for instance) have been compelled to leave all their property behind them, and fly for their lives before an insolent and unreasoning mob. How he deluges the House with distorted facts and garbled statistics! How he warns noble lords against the wiles of Mazzini, the unscrupulous ambition of Victor Emmanuel, and the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... relate, he meant what he said. Many changes corrupt loyalty, and of evil times evil men are the natural fruit. In nearly all respects Asgill was as unscrupulous a man as the time in which he lived and the class from which he sprang could show. Following in the steps of a griping, miserly sire, he had risen to his present station by oppression and chicanery; by crushing the weak and cajoling the strong. And he was prepared ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... career as a man-killer in his three-year-old form. An unscrupulous owner had directed the jockey to carry an electric battery during an important race. Under the current The Big Train had run like a wild thing, and despite a staggering load placed on him by the handicapper, had ...
— Blister Jones • John Taintor Foote
... the land we love with rivers of blood and plunge us into an abyss of discontent, strife, crime and chaos. It has been shown that the Socialist Party is an organization controlled by bosses and politicians with the avowed object of gaining votes by the most unscrupulous methods. Notwithstanding their pretentions to honesty and sincerity, evidence has been cited time and again of the deceitfulness of their propaganda, and of their plottings to overthrow our constitutional ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... without good natural impulses, but his education and experience had been such as to develop only the sharp and selfish traits of his character. An orphan at the age of eleven years, he was placed in a shop under the charge of a grasping, unscrupulous man, where he learned the rules of business which he followed afterwards with so much success. The old-fashioned notions about the Golden Rule he was speedily well rid of; for when his indiscreet frankness to customers was observed, the rod taught him the folly of untimely ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... perspective from outside the turmoil, there is not much to choose, in point of sane and self-respecting manhood, between the sluggish and shamefaced abettor of a sordid national crime, and a ranting patriot who glories in serving as cat's-paw to a syndicate of unscrupulous politicians bent on dominion for dominion's sake. But the question here is not as to the relative merits or the relative manhood contents of the two contrasted types of patriot. Doubtless both and either have manhood enough and to spare; at least, ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... ministry that is expected to succeed. The rash and presumptuous man who has been called to take office, does not possess, and his character, so far as hitherto known, is not calculated to command, the confidence of the British nation. We could not look back upon the crude projects and unscrupulous practices by which the last Whig ministry disgraced their office and endangered their country, without a feeling of the deepest alarm—if we believed it possible that a repetition of them would now be tolerated. What is to be the character and course of our new rulers? Independently of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... he lives—as long as she lives—as he has held up pretty nearly everything where I was concerned. But he can't take it from me. He doesn't "want" it. Even he with his infernal talent couldn't do anything with it. Unscrupulous as he was, and I assure you he'd stick at nothing (he'd "take" his mother's last agony if he "wanted" it badly enough), indecent as he was, he'd ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... over her shoulder, as it were, at Hedwig. He had had it all in his wicked head, even then. For Karl was wicked. None would know it better than she, who was risking everything, life itself, for him. Wicked; ungrateful, and unscrupulous. She loathed him while ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... part of his stock in trade," the colonel said, angrily. "He is a born actor; and can deceive, for a time, even those who are perfectly aware of his unscrupulous character. ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty
... that history affords; and there can be little doubt as to its decisiveness. The measure of that decisiveness is to be found in the completeness of the reconciliation that has already, despite the feeble wails of unscrupulous place-hunters and unteachable bigots, cemented the Federal Union so powerfully that all likelihood of its disruption may be said to have disappeared forever. When we consider this wonderful harmony which so soon has followed the deadly struggle, we may well believe it to be ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... slaves, when the first task enjoined to them would be to discover, and refrain from purloining gold! Seven such unscrupulous knaves, or even one such, and I, thus defenseless and feeble! Such is not the work that wise masters confide to fierce slaves. But that is the least of the reasons which exclude them from my choice, and fix my choice of ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... their names are still associated, and that the land was inalienably theirs. Rent or tribute they paid, indeed, to their princes, and if they failed the chiefs came with armed followers and helped themselves, driving away cows, sheep, and horses sufficient to meet their demand, or more if they were unscrupulous, which was 'distress' with a vengeance. But the eviction of the people even for non-payment of rent, and putting other people in their place, were things never heard of among the Irish under their own rulers. The chief had his own mensal lands, as well ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... worst danger comes from the check given to the process by the present Ministry. But the national feelings of Ireland must not be ignored. Her far-back history, bad in itself, but represented worse by unscrupulous writers, makes it necessary to maintain an impartial power above the warring elements. In a pastoral country people have much time on their hands, and are apt to spend it in brooding over bygone wrongs. But over the past not Jove himself ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... has the element of good-nature which redeems Rastignac. But he bears a blame and a burden for which we Britons are responsible in part—the Byronic ideal of the guilty hero coming to cross and blacken the old French model of unscrupulous good humor. It is not a very pretty mixture or a very worthy ideal; but I am not so sure that it is not ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... may be good, and also a slave; though the woman may be said to be an inferior being, and the slave quite worthless. The second thing to aim at is propriety. There is a type of manly valour; but valour in a woman, or unscrupulous cleverness, is inappropriate. Thirdly, character must be true to life: for this is a distinct thing from goodness and propriety, as here described. The fourth point is consistency: for though the subject of the imitation, who suggested the type, be inconsistent, ...
— Poetics • Aristotle
... he went on. "There is an unscrupulous and furious opposition to the measure. The other side—those fellows from Slowburg and vicinity—are putting their hands into their britches-pockets. You must put your hands into yours. The thing will be worth millions to Fastburg. But it will ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... Lieutenant—there's no harm done—we never missed you." The effect of this sarcasm is said to have been admirable; and to have resulted in the complete reform of the offender, who, from being a trifling, purposeless, and unscrupulous young man, grew considerate equally of his duties and his word, and, by a career of industry, sobriety and modesty, made ample amends, in future days, for all ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... are not mistaken in their admiration. Nor was the mind of the country member disturbed by any suspicion that he had been managed and deceived, and that he had really played into the hands of that most unscrupulous corporation, the ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... national prejudices of the Spartan government, to enable him to elicit from the national ambition of that government sufficient sympathy with the object of it. The more he felt himself uncomprehended and mistrusted by his countrymen, the more personal became the character, and the more unscrupulous the course, of his ambition. Unhappily for Pausanias moreover, the circumstances which chafed his pride, also thwarted the satisfaction of his affections and his criminal ambition was stimulated by that less guilty passion which shared with it the mastery of a singularly turbulent ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... certain ambitious and unscrupulous youngster was feeling his way to a position where he might make himself recognized. It was the youthful violinist, Jean Baptiste Lulli, the illegitimate son of a Florentine gentleman, his dates being about 1633-1687. Lulli ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... of a declared lover, and he was too proud to let it be thought that he wanted to exchange his poverty for her wealth. But he was all the more anxious when he saw the evident attraction which Ratcliffe's strong will and unscrupulous energy exercised over her. He saw that Ratcliffe was steadily pushing his advances; that he flattered all Mrs. Lee's weaknesses by the confidence and deference with which he treated her; and that in a very short time, Madeleine must either marry him or find herself ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... the cause of his being murdered. They did not suppose that she literally ordered him to be put to death, but that she gave hints or intimations, as royal personages were accustomed to do in such cases in those days, on which some zealous and unscrupulous follower ventured to act, certain of pleasing her. As Gloucester had been a general favorite with the nation, these rumors and suspicions tended greatly to alienate the hearts of the people from the queen. Many began to hate ...
— Margaret of Anjou - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... one desire was to hide her face from the town's uncharitable sight just then, fearing, indeed, that Rumor's unscrupulous tongue would be as busy about her reputation as her ladyship had represented, attempted to assert herself by refusing to obey the command. It was in vain. Her ladyship dispensed with ambassadors, ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... was very willing to go to rest. He had plenty of cause for weariness; Myrtilus's unscrupulous body-servant had stolen off with the other slaves the night before, and did not return, with staggering gait, until the next morning, but, in order to keep his promise to his master, he had scarcely ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... and there along the rivers and become responsible for their decent rearing. Some, assuredly, of the future leaders of the native people are now in training at the mission schools. Some, unfortunately, are in quite as assiduous training by the unscrupulous Indian trader and his ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... misfortune. Of their prosperity, because they cleverly contrived to become possessors of all the coin; and of their misfortune, because their usurious demands became so detrimental to the public welfare, and were often exacted with such unscrupulous severity, that people not unfrequently became exasperated, and acts of violence were committed, which as often fell upon the innocent as upon the guilty. The greater number of the acts of banishment were those for which no other ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... unavoidable that misunderstanding should prevail in the outset, and that the ear of Europe should have been complacently open to the representations of the plausible South, urged as they were by the ablest and most unscrupulous of her advocates. But truth was destined certainly to make its way in the end. It was only doubtful whether the triumph of right would take place soon enough to bring the force of European opinion to bear on the contest and to deprive the South of that moral support which alone has enabled ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... first for particular information as to the several sums of money borrowed by his authority, the terms of the loans, and the application of the money. These questions being explicitly answered, another call was made by an unscrupulous member of the opposition, from Virginia, for more minute information upon financial matters. He made an elaborate speech in presenting the motion, in which, in effect, he charged the secretary of the treasury with being a defaulter to the ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... such faithless, unscrupulous and pitiless humbugs in their dealings with their own sex—which, whatever they may say, they despise at heart—that I am happy to be able to say, Mrs. Vane proved true as steel. She was a noble-minded, simple-minded creature; she was also a constant ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... implication against the individuals belonging to that movement. If I should charge that Mr. Henry Ford is engaged in this anti-Semitic propaganda for purely selfish and mercenary reasons, that he has become the spokesman and agent of great unscrupulous capitalist interests who seek to destroy their Jewish competitors and to profit thereby, he would find it difficult to establish the contrary by definite and concrete proof. As a matter of justice, ...
— The Jew and American Ideals • John Spargo
... the government under which he lives. While an education is highly desirable, yet a man may be unable to read but may attend political meetings, talk with his neighbors and form intelligent opinions. He may be honest and beyond bribery, and a more desirable voter than many wily and unscrupulous men who have a graduate's diploma. It is, however, the duty of the State to educate its citizens; and the Australian ballot, which has been largely adopted, is ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... knew that a subtle and unscrupulous agent had been left sworn to her destruction, and that another individual, almost equally dangerous, had registered a secret vow ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... of absence, the concierge politely suggested. But that was to save my feelings, no doubt, for I was sure the husband and wife meant to make a parcel of any valuables which could possibly be carried off by an unscrupulous American journalist. Also, they stipulated that payment must be made in advance. To this I agreed willingly. And then—I waited, waited. It was tedious, but after all, the tediousness didn't matter ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... year, to carry his corn in the harvest, to provide a cart on occasion, &c. Of course these burdens pressed very heavily at times, and the services of the villeins were vexatious and irritating under a hard and unscrupulous lord. But there were other serious inconveniences about the condition of the villein or native. Once a villein, always a villein. A man or woman born in villeinage could never shake it off. Nay, they might not even go away from the manor to which they were born, and they ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... satisfied, and soon he made a move that caused the worst kind of trouble. There was a learned but unscrupulous man named Josiah Crabtree who had once been a teacher at Putnam Hall, but who had been discharged and who had, later on, been sent to prison for his misdeeds. This Josiah Crabtree had once sought to marry ...
— The Rover Boys in the Air - From College Campus to the Clouds • Edward Stratemeyer
... funds or treaty rights of any kind. If these attempts to make the Indian a stalking-horse for masked or misstated objects be independently met, and with just sentiments of dissent, the agent of the government is liable to calumniation, and it becomes the policy of unscrupulous men to get their affairs placed in hands having less well-defined notions of moral right, or more ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... world had to be conquered first, and its conquest was not so easy as he thought. He was very soon made to understand that he was not wanted in that corner of it where old Lingard and his own weak will placed him, in the midst of unscrupulous intrigues and of a fierce trade competition. The Arabs had found out the river, had established a trading post in Sambir, and where they traded they would be masters and suffer no rival. Lingard returned unsuccessful from his first expedition, ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... opponent and had fallen. That girl had hurt her spine and the physicians had decreed that she would never walk again. Mary put her hands before her eyes as though to shut out the mental vision of Marjorie, lying white and moaning on the gymnasium floor, the victim of an unscrupulous adversary. What could she do? She could not warn Marjorie to be on her guard. She had now passed out of her former chum's friendship of her own free will. She could not go privately to Muriel or Susan or the other members of the team. No, ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... Valois, to meet her mother at Bayonne. In 1568 Elizabeth died; and a rumour came to Catherine touching the manner of her death which made it hard to listen to friendly overtures from her husband. Antonio Perez, at that time an unscrupulous instrument of his master's will, afterwards accused him of having poisoned his wife. "On parle fort sinistrement de sa mort, pour avoir ete advancee," says Brantome. After the massacre of the Protestants, the ambassador ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... reminiscent of a high-school principal under whom he had suffered, years ago, in Vicksburg, Mississippi. Rand began to suspect that Goode might be just another such self-righteous, opinionated, egotistical windbag. Such men could be dangerous, were usually quite unscrupulous, and were almost always unpleasant ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... is no easy task these days, but a variety of effective devices are employed to that end. In this instance, you happened upon a "rigged" situation, which had been designed to draw action from another man, an intelligent and unscrupulous individual who lately had indicated a disturbing interest in events connected with the semipublic fiasco of my "matter transmitter" some years ago. The chances of another person becoming aware of the ...
— Gone Fishing • James H. Schmitz
... contrary to law; nevertheless, they can not be dissolved." The reason for forbidding them was perfectly reasonable: one party might change his or her mind and there would be no positive proof that a marriage had taken place, so that a grave injury might be inflicted on an innocent partner by an unscrupulous one who desired to dissolve the union.[381] Yet the marriage by consent alone without any of the ceremonies or the blessing of the priest was perfectly valid, though not "according to law" (legitimum), and could not be ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... Saint-Denis they sell nothing but 'greased silk'; it is all that they can do. The most honest merchants tell you in the most candid way that 'you must get out of a bad bargain as best you can'—a motto for the most unscrupulous rascality. Blondet has given you an account of the Lyons affair, its causes and effects, and I proceed in my turn to illustrate my theory with an anecdote:—There was once a woolen weaver, an ambitious man, burdened with a large family of children by a wife ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... surer grounds to go on than you now have," was the answer. "Possession is nine parts of the law. I have no more doubt than you have as to the claims of this boy; but can you prove them without documents or evidence of any sort? Can you expect to overcome a powerful and unscrupulous opponent? You have perfect trust in Providence, Andrew—so have I, lawyer though I am; and be assured that in God's good time justice will be awarded to ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... all that maybe alleged to the contrary, ours was not a "War of the Roses," of brother against brother, struggling for supremacy; but partook more of the nature of the inhuman contest in the Netherlands, waged by the unscrupulous and crafty Duke of Alva at the instance Philip (the Good!), or rather like that in which the rich and fruitful Province of the Palatine was subjected to fire and rapine under the mailed hand of that monster ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... settlers, who have for the most part identified themselves wholly with their new home. This was revealed by the recent war. While there were some who, through a sentimental attraction for the home of their fathers, stimulated by the unscrupulous efforts of Germany's representatives, were actively pro-German in their sympathies or at least violently torn between their love for the old home and loyalty to the new land, there were many others, probably the majority, ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... victim under the plea that he has incurred the displeasure of the spirits, and that serious evil will come upon him if he does not comply with their request. The money obtained is generally spent in orgies during the night. These sorceresses and male magicians are usually unscrupulous and immoral, and are often implicated, not only in the intrigues of the noblest families, but also in murders and ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... vigorously." The Maharajah of Jaipur, one of the wisest of the older generation of Hindu rulers, agrees that "only a small fraction of the population has been contaminated by the seditious germ," but he adds significantly that "that fraction has, it seems, been carefully organized by able, rich, and unscrupulous men," and he does not hesitate to declare that "an organized and concerted campaign, offensive and defensive, against the common ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... promise, the editor of the London for the first publishers—Messrs. Baldwin, Cradock, & Joy—met with a very tragic death in 1821. The duel in which he fell arose from a quarrel between the men on the London and the clever but bitter and unscrupulous writers in Blackwood, started in 1817. Lockhart, who had cruelly maligned Leigh Hunt and his set (the "Cockney School," as the Scotch Tories chose to call them), was sharply attacked in the London. Fiery and vindictive ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... then commit the belt to your charge. It might soon be discovered on my person, whereas, on yours, it would stand every chance of being long concealed. I say this because, even in a desert, it would be dangerous to have it known by unscrupulous and unprincipled men that any one had ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... this moment a picturesque, gallant, ambitious, dashing, and rather unscrupulous character appeared inopportunely on the horizon. His name was John C. Fremont. He was the son of a French father and a Virginia mother. He was thirty-two years old, and was married to the daughter of Thomas H. Benton, United States Senator from Missouri and a man ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... our own and in other countries Claimants have been by no means rare. Wandering heirs to great possessions have not unfrequently concealed themselves for many years until their friends have forgotten them, and have suddenly and inopportunely reappeared to demand restitution of their rights; and unscrupulous rogues have very often advanced pretensions to titles and estates which did not appertain to them, in the hope that they would be able to deceive the rightful possessors and the legal tribunals. When such cases have occurred they have created more or less excitement in proportion to the ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... in the world and see what way it is that has brought your fellow-men to peace and quietness of heart, to security and honour of life. Is it the way of unbridled self-indulgence, of unscrupulous greed, of aimless indolence? Or is it the way of self-denial, of cheerful industry, of fair dealing, of faithful service? If true honour lies in the respect and grateful love of one's fellow-men, if true success lies in a contented heart and a peaceful conscience, ...
— Joy & Power • Henry van Dyke
... and the King of Assyria (alias Philidaspes) slips away in search of Mandane on his own account—two things inconvenient to Cyrus in some ways, but balancing themselves in others. For if it is unpleasant to have a very violent and rather unscrupulous Rival hunting the beloved on the one hand, that beloved's jealousy, if not cured, is at least not likely to be increased by the disappearance of its object. This last, however, hits Spithridates, who ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... of the reader. A second valuable source of information on the topic are the memoirs of those who have set down their observations and recorded experiences made in the courts to which they had access. Among this class, however, are to be found unscrupulous as well as conscientious authors, the former obviously cherishing some personal grievance or as obviously actuated by malice, while the latter are usually moved by an honest desire to tell the world things that are important for it to know, and at the same time, it is not ill-natured to suspect, ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... investigated and punished. On the next day, he writes another letter to ask that certain matters in the islands be set right. The trade upon which the people depend for support is being taken from them by unscrupulous Spaniards from Mexico and Peru. The archbishop has been urged to excommunicate those citizens of Manila who are engaged in this illegal traffic, but refuses to do so, not thinking this the right procedure in such a case; and his efforts to secure redress from the Audiencia are fruitless. He also ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson
... no standing in law. No legal claim of any kind could be made against him and he was perfectly aware of the fact. The proprietor of the establishment was a thoroughly unscrupulous individual with a shady record, and the games played there were open to a suspicion of crookedness. My friend had previously been told that. He had only to let the loss go unpaid and ignore the whole incident, without the slightest fear of consequences, ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... that was good about them that the respect which I felt for scores in general helped me to overcome my regret at not finding anything by my beloved masters. It is true I learnt later that poor Flachs had only come into the possession of these particular scores through unscrupulous dealers, who had traded on his weakness of intellect and palmed off this worthless music on him for large sums of money. At all events, they were scores, and that was quite enough for me. Flachs and I became most ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... boon to that place, and have made it almost as civilized as a third-class European city. But obstacles have been placed in the way of honest foreign companies carrying on their work successfully, the unscrupulous behaviour of the Governor and the attitude of the mob having proved serious drawbacks to ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... population of which is greater by one-third, and four times more than in Great Britain, the population of which is about the same as that of united Italy. This state of crime is not surprising when it is considered that the rulers themselves have never ceased to set the example of the most unscrupulous and merciless theft and robbery. The new civil code, besides, appears to have had no other object in view than to obliterate all idea of right, and to legitimatize all robberies, past, present and future, in the unfortunate kingdom of Italy. Article ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... of propaganda are now common property. They are available for the unscrupulous and the destructive as well as for the constructive and the moral. This gives us a new interest in its technique, namely, to inquire if anywhere there is an opportunity for regulative and protective ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... head from the speaker, his eyes dimmed—the scheming diplomat and unscrupulous politician lost in the heart of the ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... from my old violin accompanier, that of becoming a good timist; in every other respect I received nothing but injury from our joint performances, getting into incorrigible habits of bad fingering, and of making up my bass with unscrupulous simplifications of the harmony, quite content if I came in with my final chords well thumped in time and tune with the emphatic scrape of the violin that ended our lesson. The music my master gave me, too, was more in accordance with his previous ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... took possession in name of Queen Anne. It is hardly to the honor of England that it was both unprincipled enough to sanction and ratify the occupation and ungrateful enough to leave unrewarded the general to whose unscrupulous patriotism the acquisition was due. The Spaniards keenly felt the injustice done to them, and the inhabitants of the town of Gibraltar in great numbers abandoned their homes rather than recognize the authority of the invaders. In October, 1704, the rock was invested by sea and land; but the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 711, August 17, 1889 • Various
... furrowed the high forehead, and descended in broad curves from beneath the eyes till they lost themselves in the beard. Kuno von Rieseneck was evidently a man of strong feelings and passions, of energetic temperament, clever, unscrupulous, but liable to go astray after strange ideas, and possibly capable of something very like fanaticism. It was indeed not credible that he should have done the deeds which had wrecked his life, out of cold calculation, and yet it ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... in fine, such as he could write only at that moment of his evolution as a man, and such as the Events could publish only at that period of its development as a newspaper. The report was flashy and vulgar and unscrupulous, but it was not brutal, except by accident, and not unkind except through the necessities of the case. But it was helplessly and thoroughly personal, and it was no more philosophized than a monkish ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... who pricked his vanity, who incurred his displeasure, was safe from his vengeance. No person who wounded his self-esteem was too obscure to escape his vindictive malice, and no means that he could employ, providing it was legally safe, was too unscrupulous, too petty, to use to punish the offender. Hounding somebody was his recreation, his one extravagance. He exhumed the buried pasts of political candidates who had crossed him; he rattled family skeletons in revenge ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... than before. Did the little softy really believe that big folks meant everything they said? And looking into her broadly-smiling face and unscrupulous eyes, Darby Dene had his first lesson in the meaning of deceit. He there and then began to realize that there are people in the world to whom falsehood comes easy, who think little or nothing of a ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... are pressed more closely together, and as the struggle for pre-eminence becomes more feverish and fatal. Courage and skill in political and military combinations enabled William the Silent to overcome the most powerful and unscrupulous monarch of his age. The same hereditary audacity and fertility of genius placed the destiny of Europe in the hands of William's great-grandson, and enabled him to mould into an impregnable barrier the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... monotonous rides! And how terrible was the thought of the moral hurt we were suffering—voluntarily in a way, yet forced to it by a sense of honour and duty. For in this lay the grievousness of the war, that a powerful nation—influenced by a few unscrupulous leaders—was trying to annihilate a small nation that demanded the right of existence, and was therefore forced to defend that right. It was a happy time for us when we had the opportunity of turning our thoughts towards literature and ...
— On Commando • Dietlof Van Warmelo
... easy now for the slaughterer to get to his work, all too easy for him to transport the fruits of the slaughter. At the hands of the ignorant, the unscrupulous and the unsparing, our game has steadily disappeared until it is almost gone. We have handled it in a wholly greedy, unscrupulous and selfish fashion. This has been our policy as a nation. If there is to be success for ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... of some of our old and respected families have occasionally been sadly stained "by hideous exhibitions of cruelty and lust," in certain instances the result of an unscrupulous disregard of moral duty and of a vindictive fierceness in avenging injury. It has been oftentimes remarked that few tragedies which the brain of the novelist has depicted have surpassed in their unnatural and horrible details those enacted in real ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... ideals, unfulfilled and sometimes abandoned. The sight of these splendid failures is melancholy to a restless and rather morbid generation; and they maintain a strange silence about them—sometimes amounting to an unscrupulous silence. They keep them entirely out of their newspapers and almost entirely out of their history books. For example, they will often tell you (in their praises of the coming age) that we are moving on towards a United ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... a grievance took strong hold of Prescott, and it was inflamed at the new mention of the Secretary's name. If it were any other it might be more tolerable, but Mr. Sefton was a crafty and dangerous man, perhaps unscrupulous too. He remembered that light remark of the bystander coupling the name of the Secretary and Lucia Catherwood, and at the recollection the red flushed into ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... a frightful manner.37 There is every reason to suppose that such deceptions miracles in which secret speaking tubes, asbestos, and phosphorus were indispensable38 were most frequent in those ages, and were as effective as the actors were unscrupulous and the dupes unsuspicious. Here is revealed one of the foremost of the causes which made the belief of the Dark Age in the numerous appearances of ghosts and devils so common and so intense that it gave currency to the notion that the swarming spirits of ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... somewhat uneasy after the visit of Orton Campbell. Though he had no legal right to interfere with her, even as the representative of his father, she knew the unscrupulous character of the man, and that he would not have spent time and money in a visit to California unless he had a strong hope of carrying her back with him. Her chief fear was that he would carry out his father's threat and try to have her pronounced ...
— Ben's Nugget - A Boy's Search For Fortune • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... Sharp language against such malpractices was considered but proof of democratic vulgarity. Yet it would be hard to maintain that Martin Frobisher, Mansfield, Grenfell, and the rest of the sea-kings, with all their dash and daring and patriotism, were not as unscrupulous pirates as ever sailed blue water, or that they were not apt to commit their depredations upon friend and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... impetuous disposition, which loved tumult because his talents shone in it—rash and thoughtless enough to undertake things which cold prudence and a calmer temper would not have ventured upon—unscrupulous enough, where the gratification of his passions was concerned, to sport with the fate of thousands, and at the same time politic enough to hold in leading-strings such a people as the Bohemians then were. He had ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Poland seems to have been the chronic state of Russia. Whenever either party could get a chance to strike the other a blow, the blow was sure to be given; and they were alike unscrupulous whether it were a saber blow in the face or a dagger thrust in the back. In the year 1571, a Russian army pursued a discomfited band of Livonian insurgents across the frontier into Poland. The Poles eagerly joined the insurgents, and sent envoys to invite the Crimean Tartars ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... personage, whose presence was looked upon as a favour, and who undertook a commission as one who conferred a coveted boon. Among those who clustered closest round the popular favourite, no one did more to enhance his position than Aretino, the brilliant unscrupulous debauchee, wit, bully, blackmailer, but a man who, with all his faults, had evidently his own power of fascination, and, the friend of princes, must have been himself the prince of good company. ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... continuance in office. Consequently, there is a great temptation to use patronage in exchange for votes. The use of money directly in bribery is difficult of detection, but other favors and privileges of money value are no less effective in the purchase of the votes of those members who are so unscrupulous as to ...
— Our Government: Local, State, and National: Idaho Edition • J.A. James
... inward dishonor. His advertisements are all deceptive, his treatment of his workmen tyrannical, his cheap prices made possible by inferior articles. Sow that man's seed, and you will reap that man's harvest. Cheat, lie, be unscrupulous in your assertions, and custom will come to you. But if the price be too high, let him have his harvest, and you take yours —a clear conscience, a pure mind, rectitude within and without. Will you part with that for ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Dwight Moody
... of Rashleigh, who had threatened to challenge at law my right to Osbaldistone Hall, left me access to my inheritance without interference. It was at once admitted that the ridiculous charge of connivance at treason was got up by an unscrupulous attorney on an affidavit made with the sole purpose of favouring Rashleigh's views, and removing me ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... photoplaywrights to keep in touch with the market so as to avoid writing on trite themes. But that practise will not help the conscious plagiarist. Why should he invent a new twist when he can steal one? This would seem to be his short-sighted logic. Fortunately, there are not many unscrupulous writers who deliberately attempt to sell to editors stories which are simply adaptations of more or less well-known stories or plays. A great deal has been said about editors and their assistants being familiar with standard literature and current books, plays, and ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... that the citizens of Leipsic did not come to the rescue of the last daughter of the great Bach, but allowed her to live in abject poverty? And how is that, in Florence and Rome, some of the greatest patrons of art were princes who were extremely unscrupulous in their manner of getting rid of their enemies? Other instances might be added to those given by Prof. Ehrlich. African tourists say that the Dahomans, although passionately fond of singing and of instrumental music, are probably ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... matter?' Her sister waved it aside. 'An unscrupulous politician hasn't come here to bother about little things ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... great indignation to the company present—his wife adding more details to his narrative—how his wife had been cheated by two unscrupulous schoolboys. ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... could not conscientiously sign any ordinances for Mr. Cowperwood—that would be immoral, dishonest, a scandal to the city. Mr. Cowperwood was a notorious traitor to the public welfare. At the same time he could not very well refuse, for here was Mrs. Brandon, the charming and unscrupulous creature, playing into the hands of Cowperwood. If he could only meet her, beg of her, plead; but where was she? He had not seen her for months and months. Could he go to Hand and confess all? But Hand was a hard, cold, moral man also. Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord! He wondered ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... the empire—the members of the imperial Diet, politicians, lobbyists, bankers, speculators and their satellites. Along with the good, it is true, comes much of the bad. Berlin is unquestionably the present goal for needy and unscrupulous adventurers of the worst sort. Not a few pessimists, native and foreign, have made the fact a text for dismal prognostications of the city's future degeneracy. Yet this is taking a shortsighted and unjust view of things. The great ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... ordinary intelligence foolish enough to believe such a palpable lie, unless he be totally blinded by prejudice." The Mail discovered here again another reason for supporting its plea for the suppression of "a wholly unscrupulous and malevolent mischief-maker like the Korea Daily News." "The Japanese should think seriously whether this kind of thing is to be tamely suffered. In allowing such charges at the door of the Mikado's Special Envoy who is also Minister of the Imperial Household, ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie
... gladly have kept locked within my own breast. But I came here this evening with a purpose—to save, in spite of herself, if need be, the daughter of my dead friend from a life of suffering which would inevitably fall to the lot of any pure-hearted woman who linked her life with that of an unscrupulous scoundrel, in whom even common decency is dead, if, indeed, it ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... them only to cheat them—shopkeepers or manufacturers who take their work without justly paying for it, and who criticize it as bad in order to force the owner to accept less money than it is worth. Again a reference may be intended to the destruction of the home by some legal trick—some unscrupulous method of cheating the daughter out of the property bequeathed to her ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... something of Challenger, for he is one of those men whom nobody can ignore. He's as clever as they make 'em—a full-charged battery of force and vitality, but a quarrelsome, ill-conditioned faddist, and unscrupulous at that. He had gone the length of faking some photographs over ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... course, characteristically, he wanted it at once, by fair means or foul. I warned him not to do anything underhanded and he told me to mind my own affairs. I told him I'd show him up if he dabbled in any unscrupulous methods. But he went straight ahead after what he wanted. You know what the ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... life is not long enough to recollect how the thalers and piastres go." His companion thought this rather a brilliant illustration, especially as it squared with his own ideas of existence. But in reality, between the two men there was a marked distinction. A genial kindliness in the one, and a hard unscrupulous determination in the other, worked out ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... position that makes you so vulnerable. You can't defend it! And I am in attack. Of course I have not talked morality to you. You must admit in fairness that I have spared you that. Years ago you did a clever, unscrupulous thing; it turned out a great success. You owe to it your fortune and position. And now you have got to pay for it. Sooner or later we have all to pay for what we do. You have to pay now. Before I leave you to-night, you have got to promise me to suppress your report, and to speak in ...
— An Ideal Husband - A Play • Oscar Wilde
... quiet penetrating voice, and with an air of intense conviction: "Gentlemen, if my conjectures are correct, Bobinette is naught but a girl of low birth—of the lowest—a creature who will stick at nothing, who has been mixed up with a band of criminals, the most cunning, the most artful, the most unscrupulous, the most dangerous band of criminals in all this round world—a band I have, time and again, pursued, decimated, broken up, dispersed ... only to see them spring to an associated evil life again, a ceaseless rebirth of maleficent ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... most approved banking principles. Thus they never allowed interest on deposit, a thing now frequently done by certain bubble companies, which by doing an illegitimate trade had drawn many customers away; and even the shareholders were fewer than formerly, owing to the innovations of these unscrupulous persons, for the Musical Banks paid little or no dividend, but divided their profits by way of bonus on the original shares once in every thirty thousand years; and as it was now only two thousand ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... of perplexing conditions confronting the inventor, there must not be forgotten the commercial "shark," whose predatory instincts are ever keenly alert for tender victims. In the wake of every newly developed art of world-wide importance there is sure to follow a number of unscrupulous adventurers, who hasten to take advantage of general public ignorance of the true inwardness of affairs. Basing their operations on this lack of knowledge, and upon the tendency of human nature to ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... had filled, seemed to mark him out as a man on whom much would depend. He acted like himself, He saw that, if he supported the Exclusion, he made the King and the heir presumptive his enemies, and that, if he opposed it, he made himself an object of hatred to the unscrupulous and turbulent Shaftesbury. He neither supported nor opposed it. He quietly absented himself from the House. Nay, he took care, he tells us, never to discuss the question in any society whatever. Lawrence Hyde, afterwards Earl of Rochester, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... gain enormously if the last scene is left out; it was added to satisfy the craving for some kind of a settlement and is more in the nature of comedy perhaps than we imagine. Hippolytus is a somewhat chilly man of honour, the Nurse a brilliant study of unscrupulous intrigue. Racine's Phedre is as disagreeable as Euripides' is noble. Like Hamlet, the play is full ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... Hale might have confided in Maraquito, with whom he was in love. Being unscrupulous, she would probably use this information, and might threaten to denounce Basil, to the subsequent disgrace of Juliet, if Cuthbert refused to marry her. Taking these things into consideration, Mallow decided that ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume
... February, 1399, John of Gaunt died, and Henry became Duke of Lancaster. He landed at Ravenspur with Archbishop Arundel, July 4th, marching at once in open defiance of the Crown, though his own son was in the royal suite. Had Richard the Second been the weak and unscrupulous tyrant which modern writers represent him, that father and son would never have met again. On the 7th of July Henry reached Saint Albans, where, if not earlier, his uncle of York met him and went ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... ruined gambler of the Bourse, but had tricked you into thinking she was your wife. You had discovered the deception and discarded her. From a music-hall singer she had gone down—down, until she, once beautiful, courted, had become a mere—what she was, associate of one like Dandy Joe, cunning, unscrupulous. At your refusal to become the victim of their blackmailing scheme, she in her anger seized a weapon; during the struggle, it ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham |
