"Would-be" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... even to be baptised after his election to his bishopric), had been pitchforked into the church from civil life; they lived in a time of pitiless factions and personal feuds; they had to conduct their disputations amidst the struggles of would-be emperors; court eunuchs and favourites swayed their counsels, and popular rioting clinched their decisions. There was less freedom of discussion then in the Christian world than there is at present (1916) in Belgium, and the ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... on both sides. It was an enormous, wide-spreading structure, as large as a fort. It exuded prosperity, opulence, extravagance, great wealth. I felt suddenly a filial impulse to visit the home of my would-be forefathers. ...
— The Log of The "Jolly Polly" • Richard Harding Davis
... machine, passes over a very delicate balance, and if it is found to be light or bad when it is weighed, the machine throws it out on the floor in front of the would-be registerer. ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 51, October 28, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... Paul Mounet interpret the part of Remy admirably at the Odeon Theatre. As to the Mariage de Victorine, it figures every year on the programme of the Conservatoire competitions. It is the typical piece for would-be ingenues. ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... observation of its effect rather than its matter. He saw that he was alone in his discovery. Neither Sudley nor his wife had perceived any connection between the store, the prospective post-office, and the desire of the illiterate would-be postmaster to have his erudite nephew restored ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... have sounded quite clever and advanced in the early 'nineties. To-day they have a dreadfully warmed-up flavour. That is the great delusion of you would-be advanced satirists; you imagine you can sit down comfortably for a couple of decades saying daring and startling things about the age you live in, which, whatever other defects it may have, is certainly not standing still. The ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... assembled a band of his personal friends for his own protection. On the 6th of April, one week after election, the Governor announced his decision upon the returns. On one side of the room were himself and his armed adherents; on the other side the would-be members in superior numbers, with their pistols and bowie-knives. Under this virtual duress the Governor issued certificates of election to all but about one-third of the claimants; and the returns in these cases he rejected, not because of alleged force or fraud, but on account of palpable ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... nominal adherents; while, in estimating the utility of an historic leader, we instinctively feel that these things are almost the last to be considered. For the greatest influence for good has come from men who have struggled in feeble minorities,—ever alienating would-be friends by an invincible honesty, or even by an invincible fanaticism. Not to the excellences or extravagances of a handful of persons who precisely agree with his views of Christianity may we look for the influence of Theodore Parker which to-day works among us. We might find it in greater power ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... drugs which can be easily obtained in isolation at any chemist's, though when compounded they form one of the most dangerous and difficult to detect of organic poisons. I do not desire to play into the hands of would-be criminals.) The compound on which the Deputy Prosector had thus accidentally lighted sent the raccoon to sleep in the most extraordinary manner. Indeed, the raccoon slept for thirty-six hours on end, all attempts to awake him, by pulling ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... expected, it was not long before two stealthy figures came tiptoeing in, and were taken red-handed in the very act of constructing an apple-pie bed. The vials of wrath which descended upon the would-be practical jokers were enough to damp the spirits of even such madcaps as Raymonde and Aveline. After all, monitresses are monitresses, and to affront them is rather like twisting a lion's tail. Miss Gibbs herself could not have been more ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... or FRAGRANT THISTLE (C. odoratus or C. pumilum of Gray) still further protects its beautiful, odorous purple or whitish flower-head, that often measures three inches across, with a formidable array of prickly small leaves just below it. In case a would-be pilferer breaks through these lines, however, there is a slight glutinous strip on the outside of the bracts that compose the cup wherein the nectar-filled florets are packed; and here, in sight of Mecca, he ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... I won't listen to them. Here you are happily married and all those poor would-be sight-seers sizzling out there in this glaring August sun. I'm ashamed of you!" But his arm was about George's shoulders, and he was wringing the dark, slender hand with a genuine good fellowship that was pleasant ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... when the revelation was made, and knew not what to say for himself. Watson shook his whole frame with convulsive laughter at poor Osborne's expense, and Benjamin joined him with a keen relish. Never was a fellow in more mortifying predicament than this would-be critic, since it was now so manifest that he had been influenced by blind prejudice in his criticisms upon Ralph's poetry. It was certain now that he had given it his most emphatic indorsement. While ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer
... though small and few The prizes are that any bard won, Your lot, O facile rhyming crew Of would-be laureates, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 31, 1892 • Various
... the waggon, almost buried among beds and other household gear, sat a woman with a baby in her arms. Four cows, in charge of a servant-maid, were lowing behind the waggon, and a dozen sheep stood bleating round them. Mistress Bluethgen did not take many seconds to settle with her would-be lodger, whose calling in life was shown by the ...
— The Young Carpenters of Freiberg - A Tale of the Thirty Years' War • Anonymous
... when her help was asked as to a composition, to receive as a reason for the request the extremely gratifying assurance that she was "good" at punctuation and spelling. It gave the would-be author a comfortable feeling that, after all, he was only asking advice on the crudest technical matters on which Hester's superiority could be admitted without a ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... were standing with their rifles cocked ready to make the first shot, a cry came from outside of the building, by one of the more peaceable soldiers, "Here comes another company, Capt. Peter Butler's, from Monmouth," when these would-be braves instantly retreated. ...
— Autobiography of Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak, or Black Hawk • Black Hawk
... the protection of populations, only too anxious to be left in peace. The warrior bands came and went, prosecuting their family feuds; but the great mass continued to till the soil, taking but little notice of their would-be rulers, so long as they did not interfere with the independence of their village communities.(2) The new occupiers of Europe evolved the systems of land tenure and soil culture which are still in force with hundreds of millions of men; they worked out their systems of compensation for ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... never bestow the love, the boundless love, which has surrounded me from infancy, like the firmament of heaven. I have been sought in marriage more than once, it might be for reputed wealth or for imagined charms; but when I compared my would-be lovers to Ernest, they faded into such utter insignificance, I could scarcely pardon their presumption. I do not think he has ever loved himself. I do not think he has ever seen one worthy of his love. I believe it would kill me, Gabriella, to know ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... foolish Rosalie that was! Did she protest, that foolish girl, that she was right in what had been her attitude to love? Did she with would-be bitterness recall those views laid down upon the women in the boarding house—that they were derelicts precisely through this love business, abandoned of men, relict of men, footsore and fallen ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... man does not know it, it is because the unfaithful Self, a would-be monarch, has usurped the consciousness; the demon-man is uppermost, not Christ-man; he is down in the crying heart, and the demon-man—that is the self that worships itself—is trampling on the heart and smothering it up in ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... how the flattering things on painted wings, foolish as gnat-swarms near the shrivelling blaze, Flock nearer, nearer! Forms, too, quainter, queerer, frog-dupes of folly, rabbit-thralls of craze, Butterfly triflers, gay-plumed would-be riflers of golden chalices, of poisoned flowers, Flitter and flutter in delirium utter, As drawn by ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 4, 1891 • Various
... first heard it:" (p. 223:) and in asserting "that this meaning is prim facie one wholly adverse to the present astronomical and geological views of the Universe." (p. 223.) But we take leave to remind this would-be philosopher that "the idea which entered into the minds of those to whom the account was first given," (p. 230,) is not the question with which we have to do when we are invited to a "frank recognition of the erroneous ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... of the observations and deductions to be found scattered through Cook's Journals, and an improvement on the would-be scientific and classical rubbish put into his ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... South to tell our people that the North is no place for them. A bigger lie never was uttered. But now it is a professor. He is licking the white man's hand to hold a little $35 job as a backwoods school teacher. He got his name in the papers (white) as 'good nigger.' Just because this 'would-be professor' has been making speeches, asking that our people remain here and be treated like dogs, they are starting a crusade north, and by Easter there will not be one left ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott
... on horseback, Watt arrived in London, a stranger in a strange land, unknowing and unknown. But the fates had been kind for, burdened with neither wealth nor rank, this poor would-be skilled mechanic was to have a fair chance by beginning at the bottom among his fellows, the sternest yet finest of all schools to call forth and strengthen inherent qualities, and impel a poor young man to put forth his utmost effort ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... he renewed his request, and finally selected a man in an overcoat, whose stomach was adorned with a gold chain. "I have been looking for work," he said, "for the last two months and cannot find any, and I have not a sou in my pocket." But the would-be gentleman replied: "You should have read the notice which is stuck up at the entrance to the village: 'Begging is prohibited within the boundaries of this parish.' Let me tell you that I am the mayor, and if you do not get out of here pretty quickly I shall ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... He eyed the would-be recruit with no very favourable expression on his face, as he prepared to take down the answers to the questions on ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... our New York hotels were filled with horsemen and would-be horsemen, some months ago, almost every State being represented as far west as California; also with manufacturers and manufacturers' agents, all eager to secure a "war contract," be it for horses, shrapnel, rifles, ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... and was struggling for speech. I could appreciate his emotion. If he had not actually been nurturing a viper in his bosom, he had come, from his point of view, very near it. Of all men, a schoolmaster necessarily looks with the heartiest dislike on the would-be kidnapper. ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... convalescent and irritable as well as disappointed. The other was shaken and sulky with little to say. There were great pauses in the talk. I thought how I congratulated Carrot, the cheerful and irresponsible, on his escape. Assuredly his would-be captors would have seemed to him dull dogs. Of course he would have thoroughly deserved ordinary boredom. But theirs was like a London fog. So it fell about that I had much time to give heed to the Black Watch as they chattered over ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... a fresh attempt on my father's life. A man of the name of Meunier fired a pistol at him the day the Chamber of Deputies was opened. Some movement in the crowd shook the would-be assassin's arm, but the bullet came into the carriage, smashing the front window, and my brothers and I were all cut with the broken glass. I remember a very characteristic remark by one of the Deputies on this occasion. After the King had departed, as the Members ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... through the ropes at the opposite corner, behind the officiously fluttering Ogden. This was merely part of his every day's work; he spent hours each week either instructing frankly confessed amateurs or discouraging too-confident, would-be professionals. It was only because of the strangely venomous harshness with which Hogarty had given him his orders while he was himself dressing that he vouchsafed Denny ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... this nation, are slow to learn the lessons taught by history; the passions which feed on prejudice and tyranny can neither be mollified nor checked by subjection, surrender, or compromise. Self-appointed representatives of the Negro, his enemies and his would-be friends, are pointing to many diverse paths, each claiming that the one they have marked for his feet is the proper one in which he should walk. There is but one direction in which the Negro should steadfastly look and but one path, in which he should firmly plant his feet—that ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... official. When inside, she looked about her curiously, fearfully. She was in a long room, down either side of which ran a counter, behind which were stationed young women, who bore themselves with a self-conscious, would-be queenly mien. The space between the counters, to which the public was admitted, was promenaded by frock-coated men, who piloted inexperienced customers to where they might satisfy their respective wants. One of ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... while she was in a very delicate condition, near the time of her confinement. As he descanted on the evidence, he would often turn to Tom Harvey—a large, bold-looking man—and with the most sarcastic look would call him by some name of contempt; 'this Butterwood Tom Harvey,' 'this would-be constable,' etc. By such expressions, his contempt for the man was communicated to the hearers. I own I felt it gaining on me, in spite of my better judgment; so that before he was done, the impression was strong on my mind that Butterwood Harvey was undeserving ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... if any member of that family had been where a cuttle-fish was eaten, the family would meet over the case, and a man or woman would be selected to go and lie down in a cold oven, and be covered over with leaves, as in the process of baking, and all this as a would-be or mock burnt-offering to avert the wrath of the god. While this was being done the family united in praying: "O bald-headed Fe'e! forgive what has been done—it was all the work of a stranger." Failing ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... upon a magic word. It was the position of "jackeroo," or utility parlor-man, on one or other of the stations to which he carried introductions, that his young countryman had set before him as his goal. True, a bank in a bush township was not a station in the bush itself. On the other hand, his would-be friend was not the first to warn Fergus against the futility of expecting more than a nominal salary as a babe and suckling in Colonial experience; and perhaps the prime elements of that experience might be gained as well in the purlieus of a sufficiently remote township ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... the ignorance you were just speaking of, I presume," laughed Miss Archer, as soon as the would-be ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... money to appear in a respectable suit of clothes, who will buy a dinner in some cheap eating-house for sixpence, and then pick their teeth on the door-steps of the Astor House, to make people think they have dined there. And that is not any worse than some would-be genteel people manage when the warm season comes on, every year. They close their front window blinds, and steal into and out of their houses like thieves, or dogs that have just had a flogging, so that their neighbors ...
— Wreaths of Friendship - A Gift for the Young • T. S. Arthur and F. C. Woodworth
... stripped to the skin, and it is sometimes the work of hours to remove the fair prize a hundred yards. If she breaks away, she instantly flies from her antagonist, and he has his labour to commence again. We may suppose that if the lady feels any wish to be united to her would-be spouse, she will not make too violent an opposition; but it sometimes happens that she secures her retreat into her father's house, and the lover loses all chance of ever obtaining her; whereas, ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... after all, we are not here to investigate the Thomery affair.... I wished to explain why I had examined the window and shutters Of Mademoiselle Dollon's room: I wanted to ascertain whether the procedure of the would-be murderer of Mademoiselle Dollon was similar to that of the robber in the ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... Then, at offices where females are engaged, rudeness is very common. Would-be purchasers of postage-stamps are frequently kept waiting while the clerks chatter to one another about matters entirely unconnected with the Department. And this habit is gaining ground in those offices ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 17, 1891 • Various
... right to interpret Scripture. It was in vain for the governments to forbid, as the Scotch statute expressed it, "any to dispute or hold opinions on the Bible"; [Sidenote: 1550] discordant clamor of would-be expounders arose, some learned, others ignorant, others fantastic, and ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... three inches round the burner. I desperately drew my arm across my eyes, as if to shut out even the darkness and tried to think of nothing. It was in vain. The confounded themes touched on by Hammond in the garden kept obtruding themselves on my brain. I battled against them. I erected ramparts of would-be blankness of intellect to keep them out. They still crowded upon me. While I was lying still as a corpse, hoping that by a perfect physical inaction I should hasten mental repose, an awful incident occurred. A Something dropped, as it seemed, from the ceiling, ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... good boy, a good would-be-climbing-a-coconut-tree youth, who wanted to show off before poor Atkins who told me just now that you were 'the whitest man in the South Seas.' ...
— Tessa - 1901 • Louis Becke
... some Half Seas over, some off the Horn, or wherever they Chews. Where are rogues wrecked? In the Dock. Where are brokers wrecked? On the Breakers. Where are children wrecked? Some in Babycome Bay, and some on the Coral Islands. Where are bad musicians wrecked? On the Sound. Where are would-be sharpers wrecked? ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 14, 1870 • Various
... accents, soft and low, in which we address the would-be criminal. And if he will not listen, then cry aloud as with the sound of a trumpet: Whosoever robs a temple, if he be a slave or foreigner shall be branded in the face and hands, and scourged, and cast naked beyond the border. And perhaps this may ...
— Laws • Plato
... wishing to have a good look at the man, sent to inform him of her illness. Would-be saints are much afraid of words with a double meaning. In no whit disconcerted, he replied that he had devoted his entire zeal to the poor in spirit, and that Madame Cormeil ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... have proceeded, and whether any serious altercation would have arisen, I know not; but at this moment a combination of circumstances occurred to interrupt the would-be contracting parties. First, Mrs. Bumpkin, who had been preparing the Sunday dinner, came across the yard with her apron full of cabbage-leaves and potato-peelings, followed by an immense number of chickens, while the ducks in the pond clapped their wings, and flew and ran ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... real reason for their specious amiability. It was not long before he detected a patronizing tone that stirred his gall and confirmed him in his bitter Republicanism, a phase of opinion through which many a would-be patrician passes by way of prelude to his introduction ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... decision in these matters gave her manner a kind of authority which no one liked to disobey, especially as she had stalwart neighbours within call to back her, if her assumed deafness in the first instance, and her voice and gesture in the second, were not enough to give the would-be guest his dismissal. Widow Smith chose her customers merely by their physical aspect; not one whit with regard to their apparent worldly circumstances. Those who had been staying at her house once, ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... bewailing the death of their brothers. A herald interrupts them in the midst of their lamentations to announce to them the decree of the senate, which is that Eteocles, on account of his attachment to his country, though a fratricide, shall be honored with fitting funeral rites, but that Polynices, the would-be overturner of his native city, shall be cast out unburied, ...
— Prometheus Bound and Seven Against Thebes • Aeschylus
... which, under the abortive attempts of the Saxon minister, M. de Beust,* gave a timid reminder to Germany of what her unity had been and might once again be. Each incident, however local or however remote, formed a feature of the whole; between 1854 and 1870, you cannot ignore the would-be secession of the Southern Confederates, which ended in making "all America" the counterpoise to our older world—neither dare you neglect the Indian meeting whence England issued, clad in moral as in political glory, and gave the noblest sign of the Christian ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... impracticable compromise between two opposite and irreconcilable systems—between two orders of ideas which are clearly expressed in the language of natural history by these two words: the human KINGDOM and the human FAMILY. It is one of those would-be via media propositions which, once seen through, satisfy no one, precisely because they are intended to please everybody; half-truths, perhaps, but also half-falsehoods; for what, in science, is a half-truth but ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... another estate just outside the grasp of the agent, has systematically "boycotted" for the last nine years the land which he gave up, feeding his own cattle upon it freely meanwhile, and keeping all would-be tenants at a distance! "He is now," said the agent, "quite a wealthy man in his way, jobbing cattle at all the ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... yo makin that roompus for, Davy?' began Reuben, with would-be severity. 'Ha done wi yo, or I'll have to tak a ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... over again that we had been Treasure Seekers, and we had been Would-be-Goods, and he thought it was time we ...
— New Treasure Seekers - or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune • E. (Edith) Nesbit
... in New Haven, Connecticut, laying out the factoids of this Big Brotherly affair. The letter writer then revealed his actual agenda by offering — at an amazing low price, just this once, we take VISA and MasterCard — a scrambler guaranteed to daunt the Trunk Trawler and presumably allowing the would-be Baader-Meinhof gangs of the world to ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... yourself. If you stay two weeks, or two days, in Angels you will doubtless hear all you care to about my troubles. When the town isn't talking about what it is going to do to me, it is gossiping about the dramatic arrest of my would-be assassin." ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... alone, permitted herself to look old. She brisked up with a kittenish purr when disturbed, and remarked that the Hengishire air was like champagne. "My spirits are positively wild and wayward," said the would-be Hebe with a desperate attempt ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... is spread throughout three plays (forming a complete trilogy), continues in the opening of the Choephori, with Orestes mourning over his father's tomb. If Clytemnestra has furnished would-be critics with a comparison with Lady Macbeth, for no other reason than that one murdered her husband, and the other persuaded her husband to murder somebody else, so Orestes may with more justice be called the Hamlet of the Greeks; but though ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... heard the man's contemptuous laugh and saw him pull the trigger. The hammer refused to move. It was so rusted that the weapon was quite useless. For a moment the desperado's eyes sought the pale face of his would-be slayer. A devilish smile lurked in their depths. Then he held out the pistol for the other to take, while his whole manner underwent ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... quoted in this respect: That gold is as necessary in war as gunpowder; and the best way to keep a quarrelsome would-be Napoleon out of war ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... yet strong as steel in her temperament, all thoughts, feelings and events seemed to sweep over her without affecting or disturbing her mind's calm equipoise. She lived her life with extreme simplicity, regularity, and directness, thus driving to despair all would-be scandal-mongers; and though many gifted and famous men fell madly in love with their great princess, and often, in the extremity of a passion which amounted to disloyalty, slew themselves for her sake, she remained unmoved ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... Until recently would-be food reformers have made the mistake of seeking to secure concentrated dietaries, especially for army rations. It was this tendency that caused Kipling to say, "compressed vegetables and meat biscuits may be nourishing, but what Tommy ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... because they love and esteem themselves, are despicable and unacceptable in the sight of God. Again, we are chosen of God for the reason that we despise ourselves as filth. Such God chooses, and has chosen from eternity. Because the would-be saints elect themselves, God will reject them, as indeed he has from eternity. Now, this is what Paul means ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... when a blood-curdling roar rent the air, and the lion made one grand leap for the bear. But as this happened bruin chanced to turn slightly, and with a movement wonderful in such a bulky animal the bear sprang to one side. The lion missed his would-be prey and slid forward, directly into the mass of tree limbs ...
— Out with Gun and Camera • Ralph Bonehill
... think that possibly they had eluded their would-be captors. But his hopes were dashed, for suddenly there came ...
— A Prisoner of Morro - In the Hands of the Enemy • Upton Sinclair
... so Satan bears the Reproach, and they have all the Guilt; this is, (1.) a grand Cheat upon the World, and (2.) a notorious Slander upon the Devil; and it would be a public Benefit to Mankind, to have such would-be-Devils as these turn'd inside out, that we might know when the Devil was really at work among us, and when not; what Mischiefs were of his doing, and which were not; and that these Fellows might not slip their Necks out of the Halter, by continually ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... called the organizer of party division in the days before the grant of responsible government. Yet when the opponents of the compact of 1854 quoted his precedent of party division against Hincks' principle of union, Baldwin disowned his would-be supporters: "However disinclined myself to {300} adventure upon such combinations, they are unquestionably, in my opinion, under certain circumstances, not only justifiable, but expedient, and even necessary. The government of the country ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... if rather vague, estimate of you was the correct one. You are a good bit of a scoundrel, and, if I guess rightly, a would-be blackmailer." ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... risk. It seems to me wise that there should be an international conference held to deal with this question of immigration, which has more than a merely National significance; such a conference could, among other things, enter at length into the method for securing a thorough inspection of would-be immigrants at the ports from which they desire to embark before ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... go-a back to make-a da more mon." He pulled out from his corded bundle of red quilts and coats and rugs some bottles of cheap wine. "I getta place for all you men." He was beginning, thus early in the voyage of these would-be citizens, to prepare to use them in the politics of his over-crowded ward in New York City. "Come-a! We drink-a to Americ. We drink-a to New York. New ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... the constant exposure of the past few years, had so developed his strength and courage that he now flew into a Berserker rage,[1] flung thirty men one after another into the sea, and so terrified his would-be master that he promised to bear him and the three maidens in safety to his father's court. [Footnote 1: See Guerber's Myths of Northern ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... which Carlos Santander had shown himself at the Acordada, only at an early hour, the would-be Emperor was seated in his apartment of the palace in which he was wont to give audience to ordinary visitors. He had got through the business affairs of the morning, dismissed his Ministers, and was alone, when one of the aides-de-camp ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... of them reachings-forward to the new Vitalist art, with the dreary pseudo-sacred oratorios and cantatas which were produced for no better reason than that Handel had formerly made splendid thunder in that way, and with the stale confectionery, mostly too would-be pious to be even cheerfully toothsome, of Spohr and Mendelssohn, Stainer and Parry, which spread indigestion at our musical festivals until I publicly told Parry the bludgeoning truth about his Job and woke him to conviction of sin. Compare Flaxman and Thorwaldsen and Gibson ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... accomplished by contemporary scholarship, amidst the clamour of opposition and incredulity. Its success contains at once a warning to those doubters who are always crying out that we have reached the limitations of knowledge, and an encouragement and stimulus to would-be ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... list, which he was in the habit of examining daily, and he commanded that all stations for the sale of corn be closed, except one only. Furthermore, even at this station no sales were to be negotiated unless the name of the would-be purchaser was first obtained. His brethren, with whose names Joseph furnished the overseer of the place, were to be seized and brought to him as soon as ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... reading and shot an indignant glance through the window at "Greenways." But "Greenways" only showed dimly through a mist that was rolling through the garden, so imagination had to call up the offending figure of the would-be authoress. And call her up it did,—kindly tender imagination! It flashed two glimpses of her before Hugh's eyes, one as she knelt on the path and dragged at a child's obstinate shoe biting her lips while the marauding ants ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... immigrants a certain limited standing, but, as they were not Mexican citizens, they were disqualified from holding land. Nevertheless Sutter used his good offices in showing desirable locations to the would-be settlers.[2] ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... very pretty speech, and graciously gave his lordship some other dances for which he asked, and then, leaving her with Lady Herenden, he excused himself and went away. Then Patty was besieged with would-be partners. Her dancing had called forth the admiration of everybody, and the young men crowded about, begging to see ...
— Patty's Friends • Carolyn Wells
... allowing the smoke to escape freely, put up the bars against the admission of any would-be intruder, even a squirrel. ...
— With Trapper Jim in the North Woods • Lawrence J. Leslie
... faculty, which has already given birth to so many pleasant fancies and happy studies, especially of young life? A glimpse is given in the following playful letter and postscript from herself and her sister to a would-be biographer. ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... see!—Pray, madam, said I, let me beg you to permit me to go. I am waited for in the town, to dinner. No, replied she, I can't spare you; and whomsoever you are to go to, will excuse you, when they are told 'tis I that command you not to go;—and you may excuse it too, young Lady Would-be, if you consider, that it is the unexpected coming of your late lady's daughter, and your master's sister, that commands ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... bravery. As soon as the first shot was fired he rose from his seat and stood between the Princess and the would-be assassins. ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 2, No. 10, March 10, 1898 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... travel," and to have "drunk in the spirit of beauty in some eight score and eighteen princes' courts where I have resided,"[1] unless one has read of the benefits of travel as expounded by the current Instructions for Travellers; nor the dialogues between Sir Politick-Would-be and Peregrine in Volpone, or the Fox. Shakespeare, too, in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, has taken bodily the arguments of the Elizabethan orations ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... He was thinking of 'Captain Kettle,' and said so. But the would-be rescuer protested that all this was no romancing. Oh! he was not a philanthropist, he should expect to be well paid for his services; but the Dreyfus family was rich, and M. Zola, too, was a man of means. So surely they would not begrudge the necessary funds to release ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... suggests, for the young lovers in the North whose families are loyal to different sovereigns? Ned was the son of a stalwart, if somewhat snobbish, adherent of His Majesty KING GEORGE THE FIFTH; Kate was the daughter of a would-be subject of the Divine DEVLIN, and things could never have gone well with them had it not been for the intervention of Ned's uncle, who had been so long out of Ireland that he had ceased to cherish any keen feelings in the dispute, and had been so used by his brother in the past ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 1, 1914 • Various
... that he was as before willing to carry out the arrangements which he had already specified, provided that Ida could be persuaded to consent to marry him. To this Mr. de la Molle had answered courteously enough, notwithstanding his grief and irritation at the course his would-be son-in-law had taken about the mortgages on the death of Mr. Quest, and the suspicion (it was nothing more) that he now had as to the original cause of their transfer to the lawyer. He said what he had said before, that he could not force his daughter into a marriage with him, but that if she ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... dress: Well have you done and like a gentleman. You saved our life: we owe you bitter thanks: Better have died and spilt our bones in the flood— Then men had said—but now—What hinders me To take such bloody vengeance on you both?— Yet since our father—Wasps in our good hive, You would-be quenchers of the light to be, Barbarians, grosser than your native bears— O would I had his sceptre for one hour! You that have dared to break our bound, and gulled Our servants, wronged and lied and thwarted us— ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... name get ready to answer her?" concluded the famous article in which he appealed to these would-be exiles repatriated by force; "because, if you want to, all you have to do is to get into touch with the nearest corps of Irish Volunteers." They would give them instructions, he added pointedly, how to act, and what they ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... are no less than 30,000 bachelors in Montana, and every single one of them is in need of and anxious to get a wife, writes a correspondent of the New York Times. These entertaining young fellows and would-be benedicts have no time to go courting themselves, and so, much of that thing is done by proxy. They are entirely too busy amassing fortunes, either at sheep herding, cattle growing, or mining, in which at least fifty per cent of them are bound to become millionaires sooner or ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, March 1887 - Volume 1, Number 2 • Various
... was sole owner,—and he had bought a thousand acres mining concession from the Government for ten dollars an acre, which is the law when a potential mining district in unsurveyed territory is more than twenty miles by a wagon road from a railway. All he had to do with would-be prospectors was to chuck them out. He had got in ten stamps for his mill over the road I had built from Caraquet, and—since Macartney arrived—was milling stuff whose net result made me stare, after the miserable, two-dollar ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... I'm glad to see you," said the agent. "Have you got your wheel-barrow, Mike?" Almost all the would-be planters of the field had come under cover of darkness and contrived if possible to avoid ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... with a hand like a foot, fared no better, and when Albert rallied her once about young Mears she answered: "Oh, Jim's all right. He isn't handsome, but then, he is strong," which delicate sarcasm may be considered a sufficient reflex of her feelings toward others of the would-be attentive young farmers. ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... she remarked, "and I suppose even your dislike of him doesn't go so far as to suggest that he is likely to play the would-be murderer in broad daylight." ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... himself—to see that she married the right man; but even that was directed to her material gain in this world's goods, and not to any sentimental consideration for her happiness. He flattered himself that by timely suggestion he had "stumped" at least half a dozen would-be candidates for Mildred's hand. He pooh-poohed love as a necessity for marital felicity, and would enforce his argument by quoting from ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... corners," and attack bits of waste or neglected ground from which everybody else shrank. And amongst our neighbours in the village, those with whom, day after day, time after time, she would plead "the Lord's controversy," were those with whom every one else had failed. Some old village would-be sceptic, half shame-faced, half conceited, who had not prayed for half a lifetime, or been inside a church except at funerals; careworn mothers fossilized in the long neglect, of religious duties; sinners whom every one else thought hopeless, and who most-of all ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... Browning pistol at the detective. He even hesitated an instant to take aim, but before his finger had pressed the trigger, Curtis had sprung at him. There was no time for a blow, but a well placed kick spun the would-be murderer off his feet, and the crash of the shot came an infinitesimal part of a second too late. As it was, the bullet struck a lamp higher up the street, and a line taken subsequently showed that it must have missed Steingall ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... that promises to favor them. They control a large proportion of the newspapers and magazines, and are thus able to distort facts, protect themselves from attack, and even stir up a factitious distrust of would-be reformers. As every little contractor naturally favors the "ring" that awards contracts to him, so the great corporations publicly or secretly support it. The liquor trade and the vice caterers-the keepers ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... locks under his hat brim, and bushy gray side-whiskers under two red ears that lay flat against his head. He was anything but ministerial, either in deportment or language. What he didn't know about corporation law wouldn't have been of the slightest value to anybody—not even to a would-be attorney passing an examination. Both men were short in their speech and incisively polite, with a quick step-in and step-out air about them which showed how thoroughly they had been trained in the school of Street courtesy—the wasting of a minute of each other's ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... side, and a towering cliff on the other. The tide was going down, leaving the brown rocks uncovered. Among them were small crystal pools, reflecting the blue of the sky as in a mirror. Sea spleenwort and masses of samphire grew on the cliffs to his right. No danger here to the would-be samphire gatherer; it could be plucked from the safety of solid earth, with as great ease as picking ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... is a small religious sect in India called the Nicholasain, who have handed down the memory of this "god rather than man," who had to dismount from his horse occasionally, to thrash his would-be worshippers, and put a stop to their ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... a home and providing a competency for old age upon the lands in western Washington is somewhat different and more difficult than doing the same upon the prairie lands of the east. As they come to the hands of the would-be tiller of the soil, they present a forbidding and disagreeable aspect. The loggers have left them with considerable standing timber, with the tops of the giants of the forests lying where they fell, scattered over the land and covering ...
— A Review of the Resources and Industries of the State of Washington, 1909 • Ithamar Howell
... leader of majority party or leader of majority coalition is usually appointed prime minister by president; deputy prime ministers appointed by president election results: Sellapan Rama (S. R.) NATHAN appointed president in August 2005 after Presidential Elections Committee disqualified three other would-be candidates ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... an important educational function when they drive into the heads of these would-be superiors the fact that this nation is becoming actually a republic in which the workingmen shall decide for themselves questions affecting themselves, and in which they shall no longer be guided by the whims or financial interests ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... him quickly, and crouching in the hall, they peered out into the darkness to see if they could detect the whereabouts of the would-be assassin. ...
— Army Boys on German Soil • Homer Randall
... His blood was roused, and turning on the would-be assassin, who was about to flee in terror, he ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis
... The would-be assassin was sentenced to heavy irons, and placed in the refractory ward. The gang was eventually broken up, the ringleaders being transferred to Penang, and the remainder kept in Singapore under close observation. The Parsee convict, who checkmated the conspirators, ...
— Prisoners Their Own Warders - A Record of the Convict Prison at Singapore in the Straits - Settlements Established 1825 • J. F. A. McNair |
