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Duplicity   Listen
noun
duplicity  n.  (pl. duplicities)  
1.
Doubleness; a twofold state. (Archaic) "Do not affect duplicities nor triplicities, nor any certain number of parts in your division of things."
2.
Doubleness of heart or speech; insincerity; a sustained form of deception which consists in entertaining or pretending to entertain one set of feelings, and acting as if influenced by another; bad faith. "Far from the duplicity wickedly charged on him, he acted his part with alacrity and resolution."
3.
(Law)
(a)
The use of two or more distinct allegations or answers, where one is sufficient.
(b)
In indictments, the union of two incompatible offenses.
Synonyms: Double dealing; dissimulation; deceit; guile; deception; falsehood.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Duplicity" Quotes from Famous Books



... hand, he had acquired an assurance of the artiste's duplicity, which assurance had made it easier for him to disappoint her, while the prospect of a business repast with Sir John had helped her to bear the disappointment as a brave woman should. It was true that on the morrow, about lunch-time, Rose Euclid and Carlo Trent might have to live through ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett

... "good girl," in the broadest sense; there was no nest of social vices inside that fair, honest face; the diplomacy and duplicity of fashion were unknown to her guileless heart, she was solid worth in every way, even while she sat under the broad leaves of rare branches, toying with her silver spoon, and listening to the earnest voice beside her. The wavy, chestnut braids that bound her shapely head, were natures own great ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera

... at first, and even to defy them. On one occasion that the Count de Provence was imprudent enough to discuss some of his schemes with the door open while she was in the next room, she told him frankly that she had heard all that he said, and reproached him for his duplicity; and the dauphin coming in at the moment, she flew to him, throwing her arms round his neck, and telling him how she appreciated his honesty and candor, and how the more she compared him with the others, the more she saw his superiority. Indeed, she soon began to find that the Countess ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge

... and cardinals, with no God but pleasure and ambition, contended around the throne or the sick-bed of the futile King. Catherine de Medicis, with her stately form, her mean spirit, her bad heart, and her fathomless depths of duplicity, strove by every subtle art to hold the balance of power among them. The bold, pitiless, insatiable Guise, and his brother the Cardinal of Lorraine, the incarnation of falsehood, rested their ambition on the Catholic ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... she passed into new wonder and bewilderment at the duplicity of Savage and his sister, and the mystery of their motives and the still deeper mystery of their actions, and the inscrutable mystery of the boat that had landed on the beach of Gosnold House at three ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance

... modern notions, God bless her! If I should sound that note first I should certainly spoil the game. I can arrive at the papers only by putting her off her guard, and I can put her off her guard only by ingratiating diplomatic practices. Hypocrisy, duplicity are my only chance. I am sorry for it, but for Jeffrey Aspern's sake I would do worse still. First I must take tea with her; then tackle the main job." And I told over what had happened to John Cumnor when he wrote to her. No notice whatever had been taken of his first ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James

... all fixed on a subject of much more importance than the opinion which he entertained of her. She threw her arms about her friend the moment they were left alone, and asked, with anxiety, "What she thought of her behaviour?" Miss Woodley, who could not approve of the duplicity she had betrayed, still wished to reconcile her as much as possible to her own conduct, and replied, she "Highly commended the frankness with which she had, at last, acknowledged ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald

... interview ended, so far as this matter was concerned. Baptista was too stupefied to say more, and when she went away to her room she wept from very mortification at Mr. Heddegan's duplicity. Education, the one thing she abhorred; the shame of it to ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy

... too! Charles Townshend[1] is dead. All those parts and fire are extinguished; those volatile salts are evaporated; that first eloquence of the world is dumb! that duplicity is fixed, that cowardice terminated heroically. He joked on death as naturally as he used to do on the living, and not with the affectation of philosophers, who wind up their works with sayings which they hope to have remembered. With a ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole

... order of fact is not the same. In actual fact man began with God and ends with a clearer perception of Duty. Hence in all the earlier stages the morality is imperfect. The profaneness of Esau is a serious offence. The ungenerous temper, the unfairness and duplicity of Jacob are light in comparison. Truth is not an essential. Blood-shedding and impurity when in horrible excess are treated as most grievous sins; but restrained within limits are easily condoned. Women are placed below their true and natural place; polygamy if not distinctly ...
— The Relations Between Religion and Science - Eight Lectures Preached Before the University of Oxford in the Year 1884 • Frederick, Lord Bishop of Exeter

... What duplicity was that which the girl had paraded concerning her procrastination when Lanyard had surprised her on her knees ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph

... in this reign, except the prosecution of the Spanish match, which was so odious to the nation that Buckingham, to preserve his popularity, broke off the negotiations, and by a system of treachery and duplicity as hateful as were his original efforts to promote the match. War with Spain was the result of the insult offered to the infanta and the court. An alliance was now made with France, and Prince Charles married Henrietta Maria, daughter of Henry IV. The Commons then granted abundant supplies ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord

... so long as it was a song, and with head aside, Roma touched the keys and pretended to think. After a moment of sweet duplicity she struck up the air she had ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine

... Madame Cheron, with a smile of irony, 'and I shall no doubt consent to this, since I see how necessary tranquillity and retirement are to restore your spirits. I did not think you capable of so much duplicity, niece; when you pleaded this excuse for remaining here, I foolishly believed it to be a just one, nor expected to have found with you so agreeable a companion as this M. La Val—, I forget ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe

... twelve ounces to the standard of one half ounce. It is of some importance to take notice of this fact, when we reflect how much "Grecian faith" has been degraded by the Roman writers into a byword for duplicity in pecuniary dealings. The democracy of Athens—and indeed the cities of Greece generally, both oligarchies and democracies—stands far above the senate of Rome, and far above the modern kingdoms of France and England until comparatively ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various

... collected among the books in the library, he imparted to the whole the appearance of age which was indispensable. When he had finished he showed his work to old Montevarchi, but by an inherent love of duplicity did not tell him that the whole document was forged, merely pointing to the inserted clause as a masterpiece of imitation. First, however, he pretended that the copy had actually contained the inserted words, and the prince found it hard to believe ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford

... openly. Hamilton, however, while favoring it publicly, yet, lest the great Frenchman's coming should help on the republican cause, secretly did his utmost to prevent it. Even Washington, who was human after all, connived, it seems, at this piece of duplicity. ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... England united in a fierce detestation and defiance of the views and acts of Prussian Junkerism. And I see the German people stirred to the depths by a similar antipathy to English Junkerism, and anger at the apparent treachery and duplicity of the attack made on them by us in their extremest peril from France and Russia. I see both nations duped, but alas! not quite unwillingly duped, by their Junkers and Militarists into wreaking on one another the wrath they should have spent in destroying Junkerism and ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various

... vain, that I was a soldier, like himself, and the bearer of despatches to Paris. "Fool!" he said; "do you think they would send despatches by a man who can ride at best but ten leagues a day?" And the honest soldier was so wroth at my supposed duplicity, that he not only confiscated my horse, but my saddle, and the little portmanteau which contained the chief part of my worldly goods and treasure. I had nothing for it but to dismount, and take my way on foot back again to Strasburg. I arrived there in the evening, determining ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... error or mistake, as for the purpose of saving time and inculcating the importance of regularity and promptitude. Even the earnestness with which the missionaries differ from each other, so contrary to the duplicity supposed necessary by the rules of Chinese politeness, has not been without great benefit to the native members. Instead of there being any jealousy of the position occupied by the missionaries ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg

... early a departure, or else his bluntness, astonished her. She fell to praising Renee's goodness. He kept her to it with lively interrogations, in the manner of a, guileless boy urging for eulogies of his dear absent friend. Was it duplicity in him or artlessness? ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... "the Cow is full of a stupid duplicity: perhaps she even killed this Herd Leader by some trick, and blames it on the innocent Fur Flower. Does it look like a poison herb, Wise Bull? Is it like the scraggy Loco Plant of the South Ranges? Has it not the beautiful blossom of a good herb? Would ...
— The Outcasts • W. A. Fraser

... art of love is, however, by no means easy. That is not always realized by the women who complain of his lack of skill in playing it. Although a man has not to cultivate the same natural duplicity as a woman, it is necessary that he should possess a considerable power of divination. He is not well prepared for that, because the traditional masculine virtue is force rather than insight. The male's work in the world, we are told, is domination, and it is by such domination that ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... is always popular with his world and Dives knew Petitjean to be as honest as a pedler can ever hope to be in a world where small pence are only made large by some one being sacrificed on the altar of duplicity. Therefore it was that Petitjean's hearse-like cart was always a welcome visitor;—one could at least be as sure of a just return for one's money in trading with a pedler as from any other source in this thieving world. In the end, one always got something else ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd

... "the end justifies the means"; neither did it form a part of her creed that a lie by implication is less dishonourable than a lie direct. On the contrary, her nature was exceedingly frank, even defiant, and from pride, perhaps, rather than principle, she scorned no baseness so heartily as duplicity. Therefore she hesitated now and changed colour, looking guilty and confused, but taking refuge, ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville

... Browning did not yet, in these glowing years, readily lavish his art. A poem upon Napoleon, which had occupied him much during the winter of 1859 (cf. note, p. 167 below), was abandoned. "Blougram's" splendid and genial duplicity already attracted him, but the analysis of the meretricious figure of Napoleon became a congenial problem only to that later Browning of the 'Sixties and 'Seventies who was to explore the shady souls of a Guido, a Miranda, and a Sludge. On the other hand, deeply as he felt the sorrows ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford

... is often necessary for the armies on each side to leave behind some of the high and noble principles which may have governed them at home. Of course, war is bloody and cruel, and it almost always happens that the officers and soldiers are obliged to descend also to meanness and duplicity in order to succeed ...
— Stories of New Jersey • Frank Richard Stockton

... position at the hall, to engage a young girl's heart, and drag her down, in case she loved me, to the poor low sphere in which I moved. If her father had said to me, "You have abused the trust I placed in you, and acted with duplicity," I think it would have ruined me, forever, in my own esteem. And would he not have had the right ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various

... from their tables. This enthusiasm soon cooled; the majority of those who had made this sacrifice (I prostitute the word, but they thought it a sacrifice) persuaded themselves that Parliament would do all, and that individual efforts were no longer necessary. Thus ended the one attempt; and the duplicity with which Mr. Wilberforce has been amused, and the Slave-Merchants satisfied, has now effectually destroyed ...
— Poems • Robert Southey

... where "moonshine" whisky is illegally produced among the mountains; but she put this thought out of her heart, indignantly, almost as quickly as it came to her. Instinctively she felt quite certain that duplicity did not form any portion of his nature. They had not been traitor's arms which had so bravely (and so firmly) clasped her for the quick and risky dash across that terrifying ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey

... little about him then, but she knew too much for her happiness to-day, and she had with him now a little invidious, contemptuous manner, as if everything he should say or do could be a proof only of abominable duplicity and perversity. She had a theory that he had treated her shamefully; and he knew it—I do not mean the fact, but the theory: which led him to reflect that her resentments were as shallow as her opinions, inasmuch as if she really believed ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James

... which, wounded at the noble talents and superior prosperity of others, transforms them into the objects and food of its malice, if possible obscuring the splendour it is too base to emulate; disguised hatred, which diffuses in its perpetual mutterings the irritable venom of the heart; servile duplicity, which fulsomely praises to the face, and blackens behind the back; shameless levity, which sacrifices the peace and reputation of the absent, merely to give barbarous stings to a jocular conversation: all together forming an aggregate the most desolating on ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate

... his visitor to be beside himself at the duplicity of Christopher Columbus. He muttered and swore. He declared it was wrong to teach children that Christopher Columbus was a great man when, after all, he cheated at the critical moment. He had declared ...
— Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories • Sherwood Anderson

... dolls, and if you're a good girl, I'll bring you in some sweets." He put on his hat, and closing the front door with a bang, went off to the new rector to knock two years off the age which his daughter kept for purposes of matrimony. The rector, grieved at such duplicity in one so young, met him more than half way, and he came out from him smiling placidly, until his attention was attracted by a young man on the other side of the road, who was ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs

... suddenly exposing her duplicity, threw Cleopatra into a violent rage. She sprang from her bed and assaulted her secretary in a most furious manner. Octavius and the others who were here interposed, and compelled Cleopatra to lie down again, which she did, uttering all the ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott

... conversation in the Dean's oak breakfast-parlour they could look across the lawn and see Captain Costigan's window, at which poor Pen had been only too visible some three weeks since. The Doctor was most indignant against Mrs. Creed, the landlady, for her duplicity, in concealing Sir Derby Oaks's constant visits to her lodgers, and threatened to excommunicate her out of the Cathedral. But the wary Major thought that all things were for the best; and, having taken counsel with himself over ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... greater the other's successes now the more ignominious would be his downfall. The free baron had not hesitated to use any means to obliterate his one foeman from the scene; and he repeated to himself that he would meet force with cunning, and duplicity with stealth, spinning such a web as lay within his own capacity and resources. But in estimating the moves before him, perhaps in his new-found trust, he overlooked the strongest menace to his success—a hazard ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham

... the proclamation of September 22. Of course the men elected should be gentlemen of character, willing to swear support to the Constitution as of old, and known to be above reasonable suspicion of duplicity. ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln

... fortnight the establishment at Seville was broken up, and we retired to the country, where I was made happy by the possession of my Clara. I now considered myself as secure from any discovery, and although I had led a life of duplicity, meant by future good conduct to atone for the past. Whether Donna Celia was my mother or not, I felt towards her as if she was, and after some time from habit considered it an established fact. My Clara was as kind and endearing as I could desire, and for ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat

... enlightened Brinnaria. Promptly she sought a private audience with Causidiena. First she made sure that none of the maids would suffer for their duplicity and ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White

... part of the story where I accused Tarnowsy of duplicity in connection with the frescoes, she ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon

... incipient feverish cold had already reached its crisis and was passing away. But she had gained certain knowledge in the playing of her little part. All this self-protective instinct was new; for good or ill she had advanced one more step in not only the knowledge but the power of duplicity which is so necessary in the conventional life of ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker

... his duplicity and his double treachery. Thomas Seymour loved nothing but himself, nothing but his ambition. He was capable of risking his life for a woman; but for renown and greatness he would have gladly sacrificed ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach

... as they still call the place. Eugene is not about and Mrs. Latimer is spending the afternoon in an old-fashioned way with a nurse and two children. Marcia's fine moral sense is shocked at the duplicity of Mrs. Floyd, and she announces the fact to her husband at dinner, to which he replies with ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... early history of mankind, we are told, swearing was unknown. Men were honest, could trust each other and take each other's word. But when duplicity, fraud and deception rose out of the corrupt heart of man, when sincerity disappeared, then confidence disappeared also, no man's word was any longer good. Then it was that, in order to put an end to their differences, they called upon God by name to witness the truth ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton

... supported in England by the class who rose against King Charles. At the same time, it is difficult to feel much enthusiasm for the Stuarts. The first was a pedant. The second threw away his chances, over and over again, by his duplicity and want of faith. The third was utterly selfish and unprincipled. The fourth is a gloomy bigot. Charles was, and James is, a pensioner of France. How can men be ready to sacrifice everything for such ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty

... prostitution; the property brings in an exorbitant rate of interest on the capital invested, and all the forces of sound business are concerned in maintaining rents. So gross is the ignorance of the would-be moral legislators—or, some may think, so skilful their duplicity—that the methods by which they profess to fight against immorality are the surest methods for enabling immorality not merely to exist—which it would in any case—but to flourish. A vigorous campaign is initiated against immorality. On the surface it is successful. ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis

... a child in many ways, more especially in her unbounded belief in her own cunning. She actually imagined herself to be a match for this man, who had been trained in the ways of duplicity all his life. She saw nothing of his mind, and fatuously ignored the fact that from the moment she had entered the room he had begun the ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman

... of the Merediths, and had been Rowan's guardian, and had indeed known him intimately from childhood, was in ignorance of any reason for the present trouble; otherwise he would not have said that he should go to Rowan and ask the explanation. She knew him to be incapable of duplicity; in truth she rather despised him because he had never cultivated a taste for the delights ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen

... the forts, a privateering frigate was dispatched from France to Quebec with equally secret orders to attack and sink English vessels on the Bay. The 'Adventurers of England,' too, were involved in a game of international duplicity. While Mr Young, the fashionable man about town, wrote letters imploring Radisson to come back to England, Sir James Hayes bombarded the French court with demands that the Frenchman be punished. 'I am confirmed,' he wrote, 'in our worst fears. ...
— The "Adventurers of England" on Hudson Bay - A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North (Volume 18 of the Chronicles of Canada) • Agnes C. (Agnes Christina) Laut

... official investigation took place, since the doctor's certificate of pneumonia was sufficient for legal burial, and public sentiment sustained the action. In various conversations which the writer had concerning the entire transaction, she discovered great indignation concerning his duplicity and treachery, but none whatever for his original offence of selling out the votes ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams

... a character? Or is his duplicity an exemplification of the facility toward evil of this kind that is natural to an extremely impressionable nature which ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke

... deliberately altered the construction of the phrases, in order to make a "distinction" that Justin does not make, inserting the reference to the apostles in a different place to that which it holds in Justin. Is it credible that such duplicity passes to-day for argument? one can only hope that the large majority of Christians who quote Paley are ignorant, and are, therefore, unconscious of the untruthfulness of the apologist; the passage quoted is taken from the "Dialogue ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant

... father to the fugitive, had written to certain friends at Charleston, entreating them to use their influence with the runaway to the same end, and, at any rate, to cherish and protect him. Thus, I hope you will admit that the duplicity of Mervyn ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown

... Aspirants, and Wise—to whom their doctrines are gradually unfolded under seal of the strictest secrecy, to ensure which signs and passwords are employed after the manner of Freemasonry. A certain degree of duplicity appears to enter into their scheme, much resembling that enjoined to the Ismaili Dais when enlisting proselytes belonging to other religions: thus in talking to Mohammedans, the Druses profess to be followers ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster

... damaging evidence of Mary's guilt. Whether these letters were genuine or forged is never likely to be established with certainty,[32] but considering the character of Mary's opponents, their well-known genius for duplicity, the contradictory statements put forward by their witnesses and the indecent haste with which the whole enquiry was brought to a close, it is difficult to believe that the evidence of Mary's authorship was convincing. The ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey

... of shameless duplicity March was awakened to a rainy morning by the clinking of cavalry hoofs on the pavement of the long- irregular square before the hotel, and he hurried out to see the passing of the soldiers on their ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... Oriental duplicity had made no wrong reckoning. The old man fell back into the hall-way from the crashing china and tumbling Oriental, who plunged out into the hall-way muttering and begging pardon, cursing his soul in good Chinese ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... all care very much about you, and it is very wrong in you to express such a doubt,' said Gertrude, with a duplicity that was almost wicked; as if she did not fully understand that the kind of 'caring' of which Norman spoke was of a very different nature from the general 'caring' which she, on his behalf, shared with ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope

... a peace with Spain, while Philip and Farnese were busy in contriving the means of an invasion of England; and up to the time the Spanish Armada appeared in the British seas, she and her government were thoroughly cajoled by Spanish craft. Mr. Motley remorselessly exposes, not only the duplicity of Philip, but the credulity of Elizabeth; he demonstrates the superiority of Spain in all the arts which were then supposed to constitute statesmanship; and shows that it was to no sagacity and vigor on the part of the English government, but to the instinctive intelligence ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various

... pretty and becoming and snap their fingers at the dictates of fashion when fashion is horrid and silly. And we want good girls,—girls who are sweet, right straight out from the heart to the lips; innocent and pure and simple girls, with less knowledge of sin and duplicity and evil-doing at twenty than the pert little schoolgirl of ten has all too often. And we want careful girls and prudent girls, who think enough of the generous father who toils to maintain them in comfort, and of the gentle mother who denies ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... in figure, with regular features and wavy hair slightly tinged with gray. His sloping forehead, full at the eyebrows, indicated keen perceptive powers. He was suave in address, so suave, indeed, that his enemies often charged him with insincerity and even duplicity, but his gracious manner, exhibited to the plainest woman and most trifling man, won the hearts of the people as quickly as his political favours recruited the large and devoted following that remained steadfast ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... The sacred defense of the homeland—well and good. But if there was no offensive war there would be defensive war. Defensive war has the same infamous cause as the offensive war which provoked it; why do we not confess it? We persist, through blindness or duplicity, in cutting the question in two, as if it were too great. All fallacies are possible when one speculates on morsels of truth. But Earth only bears one single ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse

... strange and beautiful day to him, begun in anger, but the sun was not to go down upon his wrath; for his choleric intention had almost vanished on his homeward way, and the first words Smith had spoken had lifted the veil of young Fisbee's duplicity, had shown him with what fine intelligence and supreme delicacy and sympathy young Fisbee had worked for him, had understood him, and had made him. If the open assault on McCune had been pressed, and the damnatory evidence published in Harkless's own paper, ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington

... presents, and take the little girl on his lap, and pour out all his troubled heart in the caresses and tendernesses which would bring him no remorse. He humbled himself to her thoroughly, and with a strange sincerity in the harmless duplicity, and promised, if she would take him back into favour, that he would never offend again. Mrs. Bowen had sent word that she was not well enough to see him; she had another of her headaches; and he sent back a sympathetic and respectful message by Effie, who stood thoughtfully at her mother's ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells

... public with a pamphlet disproving entirely the agency of BURNS in this correspondence. To those who are acquainted with previous records in the private history of the world-renowned poet, it is painful to convict him, out of his own mouth, of duplicity in matters of the heart; of insincerity in the profession of simultaneous passion for various lovers; and of other acts which are alike indefensible and disreputable. We must needs marvel too that the 'CLARINDA' of the correspondence ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various

... of December, 1785, the distinguished warrior arrived at the British capital. In an age of less duplicity his coming might have excited some feeling of compassion. He had journeyed three thousand miles across the seas, to see what the great English king could do to restore the broken fortunes of his people. The beautiful valley of the Mohawk was theirs no longer. Their ancient ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce

... had performed at Salisbury. They were afraid that if, at that moment, they succeeded in getting rid of William, the situation of James would be more hopeless than ever. So fully were they persuaded of the duplicity of their accomplice, that they not only refused to proceed further in the execution of the plan which he had formed, but disclosed his ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... alternations of perpetual by-play. Three or four better plays might have been made out of the materials here hurled and huddled together into one. The Isabelle of Moliere is not more amusing or more delightful in her audacity of resource, in her combination of loyalty with duplicity, innocence with intrigue, than the daring and single-hearted young heroine of this play; but the "Ecole des Maris" is not encumbered with such a crowd of minor interests and characters, of subordinate ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... of the existence of this evidence of her duplicity, turned, and was instantly possessed with the idea that he had suspected all and was about to visit his just wrath upon her. Instantly the blood flamed in her cheeks and as ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser

... finds his tale received in dead silence, looks up wonderingly for an explanation, and finds that what was intended to amuse has only disgusted. Mr. Browning once told Mr. Gladstone a highly characteristic story of Disraelitish duplicity, and for all reply heard a voice choked with indignation:—"Do you call that amusing, ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell

... most repulsive:" and so, no doubt, she felt it. I was a precocious actress in her eyes; she sincerely looked on me as a compound of virulent passions, mean spirit, and dangerous duplicity. ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte

... enter into a discussion, my dear boy, let me explain how I came to know these facts connected with the presence of Pauline Potter in Valetta, and the duplicity of the man representing the head of ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne

... Her duplicity, her wickedness, did not shock him. He admired her tremendous and audacious enterprise; it appealed strongly to every cell in his brain. He felt that she ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett

... union with Bennillong, who twice denied his having committed offences which he knew would forfeit our favour. In this last instance Bennillong betrayed more duplicity than we had given him credit for. On asking him with some earnestness if Wat-te-wal had killed Yel-loway, he assured us with much confidence that it was not Wat-te-wal who had killed him, but We-re-mur-rah. Little did we suspect ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins

... to think his father-in-law-to-be might be guilty of even unconscious duplicity, and when Mr. Master paid him the six thousand and seventy-five dollars Mr. Gubb decided that only three thousand dollars of it should pass immediately into Mr. Medderbrook's hands. Mr. Gubb put two thousand dollars in the bank and ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler

... not to give their suzerain more help than they were strictly bound to. Even at the time when the alliance with France was most cordial, the door was never closed on possible negotiations with England. To call such a policy sheer duplicity would be to misunderstand the spirit of the period and the special position in which the Belgian princes, whether of Lotharingia or of Flanders, were placed. Their diplomacy was the necessary result of the central situation ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts

... surprise, and some admiration, at the young man who so boldly addressed him. Savage and cruel as he was, Simon was a man of the greatest bravery. He had none of the duplicity and treachery which characterized John of Gischala, but was straightforward and, in his way, honest. As only his picture has come down to us, as described by the pen of Josephus who, at the time of his writing his history, had become thoroughly a Roman, and who ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty

... experience with the attachments and jealousies of humans—big or little. Midgets do have love-longings and jealousies, and love-making is carried on with all the zeal of modern warfare. Also, it has some of the elements of modern international diplomacy in its double-talk and duplicity. I witnessed one of these incidents as an ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney

... binaries, may perhaps best be described while we turn our attention from Capella to the second star in Auriga beta (Menkalina), which not only belongs to the same class, but was the first to be discovered. Neither our telescopes, nor any telescope in existence, can directly reveal the duplicity of beta Aurigae to the eye—i. e., we can not see the two stars composing it, because they are so close that their light remains inextricably mingled after the highest practicable magnifying power has been applied in the effort to separate them. But the spectroscope shows that the star ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss

... contempt she felt for herself! Oh, she was well punished for her wilfulness! To think she should have presumed to hope she could help her to better ways, she, a little innocent, who never dreamed of such depths of duplicity as had been shown her that afternoon! Oh, to think of that loathsome Hicks person daring to touch her! To try to take her car away from her! and to smile at her in that ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill

... distributed on all the seats around her, two-thirds of them exuding the water with which the flowers had been sprinkled while she was waiting at the station. I got two or three of them as a retribution, I presume, for my having kept her from falling over the stove, and for my duplicity in saying that they would not be in the way in the slightest. If I live I shall hereafter be a more truthful man. I was kept busy just four hours balancing them so as to keep them from being jarred from the seat by the motion of the car. But one ray illuminated ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley

... those of the Corsican," she retorted impatiently. "I care not which. Yes! Sir, M. de St. Genis told me that with his own lips and when I had heard the whole miserable story of your duplicity and your treachery, I—a helpless, deceived and feeble woman—did then and there register a vow that I too would do you some grievous wrong one day—a wrong as great as you had done not only to the King of France but to me and to my father who trusted you as we would ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy

... step into the air off his own greatly improved gallows drop, brought the career of Deacon William Brodie to an end. But still, by the mind's eye, he may be seen, a man harassed below a mountain of duplicity, slinking from a magistrate's supper-room to a thieves' ken, and pickeering among the closes by the flicker of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... occupied this position without interruption during three administrations would be a failure at the very outstart if he resorted to devious conduct or political duplicity. He has but one master—the people at large. To reach this position he had to have courage, be truthful, exercise sound and practical business judgment, and at the same time have a vision looking to the betterment of the condition ...
— The Progressive Democracy of James M. Cox • Charles E. Morris

... again influential and energetic in the cause of the government. From this time on he became an active participant in the affairs of the Teton Sioux. He was noted for his eloquence, which was nearly always conciliatory, yet he could say very sharp things of the duplicity of the whites. He had much ease of manner and was a master of repartee. I recall his saying that if you have got to wear golden slippers to enter the white man's heaven no Indian will ever get there, as the whites have got the Black Hills and ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... strength, left the poison to work, and withdrew in displeasure to Monceaux, sure that, as in effect happened, he would not be long in following her, imploring her not to abandon him, and making an unconditional surrender of himself, his conscience, and his friends into her hands. Duplicity was so entirely the element of the court, that, even while thus yielding himself, it was as one checked, but continuing the game; he still continued his connection with the Huguenots, hoping to succeed in his aims by some future counter-intrigue; and his ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... mean estate, buffeted by a cruel and remorseless society, driven in youth to every shift for self-preservation, compelled to fight an unregenerate world with its own weapons. He had not been changed in the flash of a gun. Elevation to reputation and power did not diminish the duplicity of his character; on the contrary, it possibly intensified it. Certainly the fierce light which began to beat upon him brought it into greater prominence. Truth, honor, unselfishness are theoretically the virtues of all philosophy; practically they are the virtues of Christian men in Christian ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... from the new domains, yet this sort of treachery and ingratitude was unpardonable. Donnacona and all these captives but one little Indian maiden died in France, and his people did not readily forget the lesson of European duplicity. By July the expedition was back in the harbor of St. Malo, and Cartier was promptly at work preparing for the King ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro

... honest to be capable in a general way of duplicity, was on the point of giving it, but he caught Beatrice's imploring gaze. Her lips were ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... laugh, and she was there; but—oh, retribution!—with her, supporting her on his arm, was Professor Silex! Wild thoughts of leaping into the river and swimming—under water—to the opposite bank passed through the brain of this victim of his own duplicity; but he checked himself sternly,—he was proposing to himself to act the part of a coward, and before her, of all the world. No, he would face the music, were it the "Rogue's March" itself. And then a faint, a very faint hope sprang up ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various

... then directed his interrogations across the sea and much chagrined charged Mr. Tracy with duplicity. But it was the latter who felt the most non-plussed. He cursed Phillip Lawson from the bottom of his heart and hoped that he might live to crush him in ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour

... Governor-General and Council by act of Parliament, and their determination to withdraw the brigade from the Nabob's service,—the Resident at his court, appointed by the said Warren Hastings, having written, that he had experienced much duplicity and deceit in most of his transactions with his Excellency; and the said Nabob and his successors falling back in other payments in the same or greater proportion as he advanced in the payment of this debt, the consideration of lucre to the Company, the declared motive to this shameful transaction, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... said he, 'duplicity of any sort is exceedingly objectionable between married people, of any rank, not to say kings and queens; and the most objectionable form it can assume ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various

... strength of the brandy grog, "in the case of an unenlightened, or ignorant, or half—educated man, I might indeed suspect duplicity, or even hypocrisy, at the bottom of the abjuration of his fathers creed; but in a gentleman ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... him a residence of splendor upon the shores of lake Kouben. Chemyaka, thus constrained to set the body of his captive free, wished to enchain his soul by the most solemn oaths. With all his court he visited Vassali. The blinded prince, with characteristic duplicity, expressed heartfelt penitence in view of his past course, and took the most solemn oaths never to attempt to disturb the reign ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott

... bargained, and caused him to be sent home. But by the light of the sun, which next morning illumined the heavens, I perceived the horse was greased on all fours. I therefore, in gentle terms, upbraided my friend with duplicity, when he replied with some warmth, "I would cheat my own brother in a horse." Had this honourable friend stood a chance of selling me a horse once a week, his own interest would have prevented ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton

... make a public scandal of it. Again, Wiles was convinced that Dobbs was equally implicated with Gashwiler, and would be silent for his own sake. So that poor Dobbs, as is too often the fate of simple but weak natures, had full credit for duplicity by every ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte

... memorial (though diffuse) was favourably received, and a copy remitted to the King and Council at Madrid. Ibanez, in his 'Republica Jesuitica', qualifies the action of the Jesuits in this matter as a 'great crime'. Dean Funes only sees duplicity of language, but seems to excuse it in the circumstances in which the Jesuits were placed. Certainly, after efforts extending over almost two hundred years, it was hard on them to see seven of their most flourishing missions arbitrarily broken up, the Indians driven from their homes, ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham

... it seemed impossible that any human intelligence could have suspected deceit or duplicity in Rosey's clear gaze. But Mr. Nott's intelligence was superhuman. "I was sayin' that Mr. Ferrieres didn't happen in while ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte

... she had never seemed to seek his notice—had never appeared to thrust herself upon him in any way. He had instead sought her and been especially attracted to her by the very simplicity and naturalness of her deportment; and this rude awakening to the fact of her duplicity was therefore far more bitter than the loss of his money, although that ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... distinctly see which side would be victorious. Equivocal in his words and actions, he thought only of the safety of his person and his riches, and not of his country, his people, and his honor! Let him now receive the punishment due to his duplicity. I shall take possession of his states and appropriate his crown. The Elector of Hesse ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach

... of his mind by repeating the music of the preceding scene. From beginning to end the work is written in this way. But dissertations on such details have not been given the public; the themes of felony, cruelty, and duplicity, and of this and that, have not, as is the fashion of the day, been underlined, so that the critics are ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens

... promises made to Bulgaria in August would be cancelled if within a very short time she did not agree to co-operate with the Entente, they were stupefied to see that to the most evident proof of Bulgarian duplicity and disloyalty they replied by redoubling their solicitude and goodwill. Sir Edward Grey's speech, followed closely by the visits made without notice at Salonica by the representatives of the French and British Staffs, gives birth to the fear that certain Entente Powers may ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott

... been a philosophy, was the very acme of learned stupidity. The concepts "true" and "untrue" do not seem to me to have any sense in optics.—That, alone, which has to be guarded against is the falsity, the instinctive duplicity which would fain regard this antithesis as no antithesis at all: just as Wagner did,—and his mastery in this kind of falseness was of no mean order. To cast side-long glances at master-morality, at noble morality (—Icelandic saga is perhaps the greatest documentary evidence of these ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.

... must, with perfect simplicity, lay open our whole interior to our spiritual director, and be most solicitous to do this, with particular candor and courage, in things in which we are tempted to use any kind of duplicity or dissimulation. Lastly, we must propose to ourselves, in all our thoughts and actions, the most perfect accomplishment of the will of God, and study to square our whole lives by this great rule, watching in all we do with particular care against motives of vanity, pride, sensuality, ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... mother's death; and now, when he should have been arming the country against the Spanish invasion, he was engaged in writing an academic treatise against the Pope. Perhaps his conduct was due to a deeper fault in his character—his ingrained duplicity. As, after his accession to the English throne, he sought to thwart the anti-Papal policy of his own Government when Spain was threatening the Protestant power in Germany, so now he may have been dissembling his real sympathies ...
— Andrew Melville - Famous Scots Series • William Morison

... have said, 'think how he loves himself,' madam," Edith rejoined, with a scornful curl of her lips, "for nothing but the rankest selfishness could ever have led a person to commit an act of such duplicity and sacrilege as that which he and you adopted to secure your own ends. He does not desire to be pardoned. His only desire is that I should relent and yield to him—which I ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... duplicity of a kind; this cannot be denied; and if not designed to effect this object, this object in fact it answered. While Clement was talking smoothly to Bennet and Cassalis, secret overtures were advanced ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude

... Clementina's first drop of bitterness in her cup of success. She questioned her mother closely as to how he looked, and what he said. It did not please her that, instead of bemoaning his own loss, he should be feeling a contempt for her duplicity—that he should use her to cure his passion, when she meant to wound him still deeper. She felt at moments as if she could give up for Philip Lee the wealth and position she had so hardly won, only she ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... magnanimous than that of the Berrebber. His vices are of a more daring, and if the expression may be used, of a more generous cast. He accomplishes his designs rather by open violence than by treachery; he has less duplicity and concealment than the Berrebber, and to the people of his own nation or religion, he is much more hospitable and benevolent. Beyond this, it is impossible to say any thing in his favour. But it is in those periods of civil discord, which have been so frequent ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish

... stock at $100 per share, giving one acre of land with each share of said stock. This would have been a very successful enterprise had it not been for the cunning duplicity and greed of our superintendent, who proceeded diligently to "feather his own nest" at our expense. I accomplished my task of raising funds very successfully, and the next winter moved with my family to A——, taking with ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss

... her from the room, for she wanted to be alone with her thoughts. He had watched by her sickbed, carrying out the orders of the doctor while she had lain unconscious—Goritz, the master craftsman of duplicity—Goritz, the insensible! What did it mean? Had the man spoken the truth? Was he—? Love to such a man as Goritz! It ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs

... the base betrayal of the party to the Mexicans by one of their members named LEWIS, gives us a picture of Mexican duplicity most vivid and striking: but it is only the prelude to cruelties more barbarous and revolting than have recently stained the acts of any but the most savage and uncultivated natives. After being disarmed, under pretence that it was only a formality, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various

... answered, with a forced smile. "But I am more than ever struck by your eccentricity, Lizabetha Prokofievna. I admit that I told you of Lebedeff's duplicity, on purpose. I knew the effect it would have on you,—on you alone, for the prince will forgive him. He has probably forgiven him already, and is racking his brains to find some excuse for him—is not ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... forwarded letter she did reproach me pathetically with my duplicity, and accused me of being a fickle—by which I was so unspeakably cut up that I abstained from the condescension of ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey

... Mr. Soames commence his career of duplicity at the flat of Henry Leroux; and for some twelve months before the events which so dramatically interfered with the delightful scheme, he drew his double salary and performed his perfidious work with great efficiency ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer



Words linked to "Duplicity" :   misrepresentation, fraudulence, dissimulation, dissembling, deceit



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