"Wily" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... its pallor. The voices of the three children on the floor grated on the old man's mood as they were busied in defending a settler's fort, insecurely constructed of stones and sticks, and altogether roofless, garrisoned by a number of pebbles, while a poke full of wily Indian kernels of ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... cautiously, that the snap and blaze might not betray him, he struck a wax match, warranted to burn a minute-and-a-half, and raised the lid of the desk. His unseen but wily coadjutor had guided him cunningly. In fingering a heap of envelopes in order to find one large enough for his purpose, he brought to light one addressed to "Mr. Frederic Chilton, Box ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... variation and heredity, and even the possibility of improving breeds by selection, must have been appreciated by early men is illustrated by the old story of the way in which the wily Jacob made an attempt—however futile were the means he adopted—to cheat his ...
— The Coming of Evolution - The Story of a Great Revolution in Science • John W. (John Wesley) Judd
... brown corduroys and his tan waistcoat, certainly suggested the partridge as he hopped nimbly about in the distant foreground, cocking his ears from time to time with all the aloofness of that wily bird. He was, strange to relate, some little distance from Bazelhurst territory, an actual if not a confident trespasser upon Shaw's domain. His horse, however, was tethered to a sapling on the safe side of the log, comfortably browsing on Bazelhurst grass. Randolph Shaw, an unseen observer, ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... commerce of their services, and gratitude goes down on the debit side,—that's all. As to schemes, they are my divinity. What?" he exclaimed, at a gesture of Canalis, "don't you admire the faculty which enables a wily man to get the better of a man of genius? it takes the closest observation of his vices, and his weaknesses, and the wit to seize the happy moment. Ask diplomacy if its greatest triumphs are not those of craft over force? If I were your secretary, Monsieur le baron, you'd ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... arms; but only a part of these could be employed in offensive operations. The rest garrisoned forts and blockhouses and guarded the far reach of frontier from Nova Scotia to South Carolina, where a wily enemy, silent and secret as fate, choosing their own time and place of attack, and striking unawares at every unguarded spot, compelled thousands of men, scattered at countless points of defence, to keep unceasing watch against ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... you to choose the most eminent one there, for fear lest the multitude of his engagements might prevent him from giving to your case the attention which it requires. You want some one who will give his whole soul to the case—some shrewd, deep, wily, crafty man, who understands thoroughly all the ins and outs of law, and can ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... cause and secure for his purpose the powerful interest of Cardinal Wolsey, and to make a most favorable impression on Henry VIII.; and thus strengthened, he entered on the struggle against his less wily enemy with infinite advantage. War was declared on frivolous pretexts in 1521. The French sustained it for some time with great valor; but Francis being obstinately bent on the conquest of the Milanais, his reverses secured the ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... the townsmen hastened thither irritated against the bull, heated by the violence of the royal answer. The members of the assembly were influenced each by the other according to their arrival; the pungent and wily eloquence of Peter Flotte did the rest. The chancellor, as the first of the great crown officers and the king's chief justice, opened the states by a long harangue in which, speaking in the name of Philip, he ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... attorney for a travelling companion. Or, if her ladyship did ask herself those questions, she was content with the solution, which the tutor out of his knowledge of human nature had suggested; namely, that the girl, wily as she was beautiful, knew that a retreat in good order, flanked after the fashion of her betters by duenna and man of business, doubled her virtue; and by so much improved her value, and her chance of catching Mr. Dunborough ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... statesman in the whole of English history that any one expressed the least desire to see—Oliver Cromwell, with his fine, frank, rough, pimply face, and wily policy; and one enthusiast, John Bunyan, the immortal author of the Pilgrim's Progress. It seemed that if he came into the room, dreams would follow him, and that each person would nod under his golden cloud, "nigh-sphered ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... it happened, a stroke worthy of the wily Florentine himself; but neither he nor his latest pupil could possibly have estimated its true bearing ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... continued its march, picking up small bands of refugees. When they reached Gilberttown the next night, they numbered nearly fifteen hundred men. They hoped to find Ferguson at this place, but the wily partisan had sharp eyes and quick ears. He had been told by his Tory friends that the army of riflemen were ...
— Hero Stories from American History - For Elementary Schools • Albert F. Blaisdell
... If you ever did, and have succeeded in landing your game, then you know something about the situation which I am now noting. You see, when the odds are so much against you, you have to do as you can, and not as you would like to, with the wily fellow at the other end of your weak tackle. That is, if you accomplish what you ought to wish to accomplish, if you ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith
... the conspirators to comply, who otherwise, in all probability, would not have been implicated in the treason. Some of them admitted, that it was not so much their conviction of the justice of the cause that led them to engage in the business, as the wily eloquence of Catesby. He was descended from the celebrated minister of Richard III. Little, however, is known of him beyond the part which he acted in the Gunpowder Treason. It is evident that he was a man of considerable ...
— Guy Fawkes - or A Complete History Of The Gunpowder Treason, A.D. 1605 • Thomas Lathbury
... his ears, and he spoke to her softly and kindly, praised her for her devotion to her mother-in-law (you see that captured his fancy and admiration, as it has every one's since), and then she smiled and thanked him very ardently, and then the wily widow turned her pretty head aside and blushed. And Boaz, who had never heard the advice to "beware of the vidders," was taken in and done for in that one short interview. He hung around the fields, deserted the ...
— Fair to Look Upon • Mary Belle Freeley
... I, "but 'neath this attitude of mind is a wily cunning and desperate, bloodthirsty courage and determination worthy any pirate ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... again did he gallop away when being caught in the morning, though he was not a well-behaved beast, and always the first to give in in the sandhills, even though carrying the lightest load. His good looks, however, were so much in his favour that subsequently a wily Afghan paid me a big price for him (comparatively), and winked to some fellow-countrymen as if he had got the best of "Eengleeshman." If he was satisfied, I am ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... repress an angry start as he saw whither this line of reasoning must lead. The gross injustice of the idea made him flush hotly, but he was far too wise to expose his hand to the wily old insurrecto leader, who was watching them with an eager look ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... endeavoured to shatter the cause of the Sealanders, and made it possible for himself to strike at them by damming up the Tigris canal. He achieved a victory, but the wily Ilu-ma-ilu eluded him, and after a reign of sixty years was succeeded by his son, Kiannib. The Sealand Dynasty, of which little is known, lasted for over three and a half centuries, and certain of its later monarchs were able to extend their sway over part of Babylonia, but its power was strictly ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... "By various wily tricks of his trade, Detective Finn managed to get a deal of information out of the Pensioner without seeming to be either inquisitive or intrusive, or even without rubbing the coat of his poverty the wrong way. From this source I learned that five dollars per month ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... The wily Keziah alighted at the parsonage gate with the feeling that she had sown seed in fertile ground. She was quite aware of Captain Zeb's jealousy of the great Daniels. And the time might come when her parson needed ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... reasons for coming, and soon began to find that Ethelberta's opinions on the matter would not be known by the tones of her voice. But innocent Picotee was as wily as a religionist in sly elusions of the letter whilst infringing the spirit of a dictum; and by talking very softly and earnestly about the wondrous good she could do by remaining in the house as governess ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... away with a whoop and a bound springs the eager, exulting Tamdoka Long and loud on the hills is the shout of his swarthy admirers and backers, "But the race is not won till it's out," said DuLuth, to himself as he gathered, With a frown on his face, for the foot of the wily Tamdoka had tripped him. Far ahead ran the brave on the route, and turning he boasted exultant. Like spurs to the steed to DuLuth were the jeers and the taunts of the boaster; Indignant was he and red wroth at the trick of the runner dishonest; And away like a whirlwind he speeds— ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... an anxious mother's care, Day by day you roamed the jungle, Felt the sunshine, sniffed the air; Life, methinks, was passing fair; But of that no mortal tongue'll Tell. Perhaps you never thought If it bored you or enraptured Till the wily hunter caught You and all your friends and brought Home to England, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 10th, 1920 • Various
... rear a young wife who played the same part, though with less innocence; and like the Misanthrope, where the scene between Alceste and Celimene is "une des plus fortes qui existant au theatre," he was deeply entangled in the wily cruelties of scornful coquetry, and we know that at times he suffered in "the hell of lovers" the torments of his ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... ourselves to the might and truth of God, who has brought us into contact with it. Yes, directly our own wisdom begins to dwell upon the possibility of that which is revealed to us, we may be sure that temptation and Satan are at hand—the old wily serpent who deceived Eve; and we should instantly invoke the protection of the Almighty against death and hell itself. To this end may grace be vouchsafed ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland
... is a case in which I have so much pleasure in taking the evidence that I always postpone judgment," was the wily jurist's reply. ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... the sleepers for some time, he at length came upon the prostrate group of the Oneidas. Trusting to the vigilance of the garrison, the savages were all buried in slumber, and were outspread along the grassy floor, enwrapped in their blankets. The wily Mohawk went in like a serpent among them, and having recognized their sleeping chief by the eagle plume upon his head, he drew his scalp-knife, and with one mortal blow drove the weapon to the very heart of the dreamer. He then in an ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... managing the material interests of the society, Mother Saint Perpetua could have vied with the shrewdest and most wily lawyer. When women are possessed of what is called business talent, and when they apply thereto the sharpness of perception, the indefatigable perseverance, the prudent dissimulation, and, above all, the correctness and rapidity ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... is one of those expressions which have been most profusely abused by the wily and the despotic of every age. To the eyes of some it has been represented by the venal suffrages of a few of the satellites of power; to others, by the votes of a timid minority; and some have even discovered it in ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... lie? I did not know. And even were I to attempt to confound his statement by an appeal to Mount, the rifleman must corroborate him, because doubtless the wily Siwanois had not awakened Mount to do his shift at sentry until the maid had vanished, ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... do not overwhelm one, seeing that such a pattern and leader of men should have become the victim of that heartless Hollander coterie! One cannot but marvel at the same time at the alert skill and wily patience which must have been employed during the many years past to hold President Krueger with State Secretary Keitz and President Steyn in the Afrikaner Bond leash ready to let loose with unshaken convictions upon the supreme contest designed for them and their people by the machinations ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... feudal divisions of the country into the great centralized state which we call France. The Hundred Years' War had finally freed the western duchies and counties from English control. Just before the opening of the sixteenth century the wily and tactful Louis XI (1461-1483) had rounded out French territories: on the east he had occupied the powerful duchy of Burgundy; on the west and on the southeast he had possessed himself of most of the great ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... proposed to narrate the principal incidents of that poem—having thoroughly mastered the argument and fairly forgotten the words—in the current vernacular of Sandy Bar. And so for the rest of that night the Homeric demigods again walked the earth. Trojan bully and wily Greek wrestled in the winds, and the great pines in the canon seemed to bow to the wrath of the son of Peleus. Mr. Oakhurst listened with quiet satisfaction. Most especially was he interested in the fate of "Ash- heels," as the Innocent persisted ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... had been important in the Senate. In the deliberations prior to the departure of di Gioiosa the concessions which Rome had persistently asked had been so persistently and diplomatically declined that even the wily cardinal dared no longer press them; and it seemed at last that there was to be truce to the cautious and subtle word-weighing of months past, as di Gioiosa, suddenly realizing that he held the ultimatum of the Republic, ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... accompany me to a haunted house, or give them certain information with regard to Lady So-and-so, whom they have long wanted to know? Occasionally, I have been so taken in as to give permission to the writer to call on me, and almost always I have bitterly repented. The wily one—no matter how wily—cannot conceal the cloven hoof for long, and he has either tried to thrust himself into the bosom of my family, or has written to my neighbours declaring himself to be my dearest friend; and when, in desperation, I have shown him ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... frightful moments!—frightful! yet worthy to be recalled. How often did I weep in Bendel's bosom, after I recovered from the first inebriety of rapture! how severely did I condemn myself, that I, a shadowless being, should seal, with wily selfishness, the perdition of an angel, whose pure soul I had attached to me by lies and theft! Now I determined to unveil myself to her; now, with solemn oaths, I resolved to tear myself from her, and to fly; then again I broke ...
— Peter Schlemihl • Adelbert von Chamisso
... of the tale; and the discharge of energy from Rawdon's fist is the reward and consolation of the reader. The end of "Esmond" is a yet wider excursion from the author's customary fields; the scene at Castlewood is pure Dumas; the great and wily English borrower has here borrowed from the great, unblushing French thief; as usual, he has borrowed admirably well, and the breaking of the sword rounds off the best of all his books with a manly martial note. But perhaps nothing can more strongly illustrate the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the vessels of the mosquito fleet did not follow them in. Commander Lilly saw that the wily Spanish ruse was to draw them in under the guns of the heavy batteries, where Spanish artillery officers could plot out the exact range with their telemeters. So the return was made in line ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... been consummated. The original of the brief was in the hands of the Emperor, and various attempts were made to secure the original or to have it pronounced a forgery by the Pope; but the Emperor was too wily a diplomatist to be caught so easily, and the Pope refused either to order its production or to condemn it without evidence as a forgery.[10] This question of the brief was seized upon by Cardinal Campeggio as a good opportunity for delaying the trial. At last ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... way as though he were almost responsible for her plight himself. Perhaps he had done wrong to wait so long. Yet, even his quick eyesight had failed to discover the knockout drops or powder which the wily Shepard had slipped into that disastrous glass of beer. Maybe his interference would have saved her from this unconscious stupor, indeed, he felt morally certain that it would; but Bob knew in his heart that ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... said to his wife at dinner, "we are with good people; I should not have expected that the tall Cointet would be so generous." And he repeated his conversation with his wily partner. ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... fighter, and is as brave as a lion; but Scindia's force would be double that which he could gather, at such a short notice, and Nana does right not to risk everything on the chance of a single fight. He is a wily old fox, and has got safely through dangers which would have crushed an ordinary man. You will see that, before long, he will be back ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty
... hailed with loud, but by no means frantic, cheers. It needed the outcries of the Press against Russia as the instigator of the war, the misleading speeches of the Emperor and the Chancellor, and the wily publications of the Government, to kindle a patriotism rather slow to take fire. Towards the close of my stay, feeling displayed itself chiefly by jeers at the unfortunate Russians who were returning post-haste to their native country, and blackguardly behaviour towards the ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... Europeans in Madras, was granted to the Company, together with four adjoining villages, for a total annual rent of 1,500 pagodas (say Rs. 5,250). The Emperor's officers argued that the rent ought to have been larger, but the Company, conforming to the spirit of corruption that was in fashion, were wily enough to send by a Brahman and a Mohammedan conjointly a sum of Rs. 700 'to be distributed amongst the King's officers who keep the Records, in order to settle this matter.' The village of Vepery—variously called in olden documents Ipere, Ypere, Vipery, and Vapery—lay between Egmore ...
— The Story of Madras • Glyn Barlow
... the matter over the whole night, I have most reluctantly come to the determination to abandon the attempt to make the Gulf of Carpentaria. Situated as I now am, it would be most imprudent. In the first place my party is far too small to cope with such wily, determined natives as those we have just encountered. If they had been Europeans they could not better have arranged and carried out their plan of attack. They had evidently observed us passing in the morning, had examined our tracks to see which way we had gone, and knew ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... commandment, and in consequence forfeited the bliss of primeval paradise, he was seduced by his fair partner, who had already listened to the wily suggestions of the serpent; but Abraham, so far from being tempted by his wife, appears to have been the sole contriver of this disingenuous artifice, and employed all his influence to induce her to transgress. In following ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... tribute, without fee or fine; The golden brooch, too, from the queen's own cloak, And, above all, fair Finavair[39] for wife. But doubtful was Ferdiah of the queen, And half excited by the fiery cup, And half distrustful, knowing wily Mave, He asked for more assurance of her faith. Then she to him, in rhythmic rise of song, And he in ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... vain, he was believed to be jealous by nature. With these weaknesses, he was also instinctively an aristocrat. How long, asked the Tories, would he continue to consort with men of low social position? How soon would he rebel at being led by the nose by the wily Adams? Position and influence were ready for him as soon as he chose to go over to the king. The bait was always plain, and he might be counted on eventually to ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... and cheeks now assumed the hottest hue of crimson. She thought of her former passages with Scully, and of the days when—but never mind when: for she suffered her veil to fall, and buried her head in the folds of her handkerchief. Vain folds! The wily little Mr. Crampton could see all that passed ...
— The Bedford-Row Conspiracy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the change of command on the 1st March 705, instead of the 1st Jan. 706. The pitiful dissimulation and procrastinating artifice of Pompeius are after a remarkable manner mixed up, in these arrangements, with the wily formalism and the constitutional erudition of the republican party. Years before these weapons of state-law could be employed, they had them duly prepared, and put themselves in a condition on the one hand to compel Caesar to the resignation of his command from the day when the term secured ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... advance upon these animals, the Theban garrison fell, as the wily Persian commander anticipated, an unresisting prey ...
— Minnie's Pet Cat • Madeline Leslie
... Eve's curiosity to urge her on to sin, he also permitted the serpent, "more subtil than any beast of the field," to supplement its action. This wily creature is popularly supposed to have been animated on the occasion by the Devil himself; although, as we shall explain in another Romance entitled "The Bible Devil," the book of Genesis makes not even the remotest allusion to such a personage. If, however, ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... them sprung up in an instant, seizing an Arab's gun. He then performed a squatting posture, skulking down, and creeping upon the floor of my room, and waiting or watching in silence. He then made a sudden spring, as a tiger on its prey, with a wild shout. These wily antics evidently denoted a private kidnapping expedition. Many slaves are, however, captives of war, for the negro princes are as fond of war as the military nations of France and Prussia, and can play at soldiers as well as the King of ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... there John Johnston kept the bar, Related backward up the stream, To him who had the lucky dream; With the old Chief, who in "a fix" Was found before old '76. Colonial history has told The story in the days of old. The Indian dreamed, the General lost His uniform, but to his cost The wily chieftain quickly found The General's dream, bought solid ground, And Martin, James, and Darby Keally From the green land of the "Shillaly." Richard Fitzsimmons, too, was found, The Paganini of sweet sound In days gone by, with memories big, And well he danced ...
— Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants • William Pittman Lett
... priestess of her oracles. "Whatever in religion is holy and sublime, in virtue amiable or grave, whatsoever hath passion or admiration in all the changes of that which is called fortune from without, or the wily subtleties and refluxes of man's thought from within;"[66]—whatever is pitiful in the weakness, sublime in the strength, or terrible in the perversion of human intellect, these are the domain of Tragedy. Sibyl and Muse at once, she holds aloft the book of human fate, and ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... pretty church, but has decorated it with Burne-Jones's tall angels and copies of the mosaics from Ravenna. He has also built a comfortable rectory, which he has filled with rare bric-a-brac. They say that no one is a better match for the wily dealers in antiquities than the reverend gentleman, and the pert little cabmen don't dare to try any of their tricks ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... Wherever he rode his wily foes retreated, but they closed in constantly behind him, and one brave, more daring than his fellows, succeeded in setting fire to a box-car. A shout of triumph rose from the circling horsemen, but it was short-lived. ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... wish I could tell where the treasure is that wily auld Logan quarrelled over with the wizard Laird of Merchistoun. Logan would not implement the contract—half profits. But my wits ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... Scottishman agreed to run six courses more, each champion staking in the hand of the King two hundred pounds, to be forfeited, if, on entering the lists, any unequal advantage should be detected. This being agreed to, the wily Scot demanded that Sir Piers, in addition to the loss of his teeth, should consent to the extinction of one of his eyes, he himself having lost an eye in the fight of Otterburn. As Courtenay demurred to this equalisation of optical powers, Dalzell demanded the ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... ask for a little water to drink in a bowl; they will bring him the bowl, and he will plunge into it and vanish from their sight. They will put chains on him, but he will only clap his hands—they will fall off him. So this Trishka will go through villages and towns; and this Trishka will be a wily man; he will lead astray Christ's people ... and they will be able to do nothing to him.... He will be ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... thee bring to naught The plans of wily men; When simple hearts outwit the wise, Oh, thou ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... the front trenches was alert. Post commanders moved about supervising, and the attached New Zealanders imparted useful information in regard to trench warfare methods, such as how to outwit the wily Turk; the essential discipline; and precautions to ensure safety to the individual. Opportunity of gaining an acquaintance with No-Man's Land was afforded through the necessity of examining and repairing the protective wire entanglements, which were thrown out in front and consisted ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... been taken off her guard by this letter, which bristled with the most barbarous terms of legal science, gave up the letter. As soon as Lebrun got possession of the wily script he began to complain, to twist himself about, as if in pain, and to demand one little attention after another of his wife. Madame left the room for two minutes during which the advocate leaped ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... could have done this without the knowledge of Professor Moriarty, all would have been well. But he was too wily for that. He saw every step which I took to draw my toils round him. Again and again he strove to break away, but I as often headed him off. I tell you, my friend, that if a detailed account of that silent contest could be ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... this point onwards, Dionysus himself becomes more and more clearly discernible [78] as the hunter, a wily hunter, and man the prey he hunts for; "Our king is a hunter," cry the chorus, as they unite in Agave's triumph and give their sanction to her deed. And as the Bacchanals supplement the chorus, and must be added to it to make ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... At another time, as his son used to relate, he had a very long combat with a chief noted for the certainty of his aim,—the Indian behind a tree, the white man behind a fallen log. Four times the wily Calhoun drew the Indian's fire by elevating his hat upon his ramrod. The chief, at last, could not refrain from looking to see the effect of his shot; when one of his shoulders was slightly exposed. On the instant, the white man's rifle sent a ball through it; the chief fled into the forest, ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... our energies day by day without understanding what effect our spent lives will have in the general result of human effort. And some of us get heart-sick, no doubt, and weary; and discouragement whispers, "What's the use," and many another wily ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... It was said that he put the cigar to his ear, and listened intently for a moment, and by the cracking of the tobacco was enabled to judge of its quality. This was a good advertising dodge, but in practice it was all nonsense. None but that wily Cuban ever heard of such a mode of trying a cigar. In the Island of Cuba that which we call a cigar is called a tabaco (a tobacco) and when it is required to discriminate between the manufactured and unmanufactured article it is called tabaco torcido, ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... from Detroit, commanded, it is said, by that most redoubtable of savages, Pontiac. The law of the survival of the fittest had wrought on this heterogeneous crew through countless generations; and with the primitive Indian, the fittest was the hardiest, fiercest, most adroit, and most wily. Baptized and heathen alike they had just enjoyed a diversion greatly to their taste. A young Pennsylvanian named James Smith, a spirited and intelligent boy of eighteen, had been waylaid by three Indians on the western borders of the province and led captive to the fort. When the party came to the ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... alas! how very soon this silly little fly, Hearing his wily, flattering words, came slowly flitting by; With buzzing wings she hung aloft, then near and nearer drew, Thinking only of her brilliant eyes and green and purple hue, Thinking only of her crested head. Poor, foolish thing! at last Up jumped the cunning spider, ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... desirable elements. It soon became evident that no information could be gained from these people in regard to the traditions of the place. One man said that if I would wait four or five days (in which to be exploited by the wily Malay) he would undertake to bring me three old men of the place, whereupon the kapala, who was more obliging than the rest, went to fetch one of these, who pretended to have no knowledge in ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... clothes this very night, I renounce my claim to her." Rejoined Zurayk, "O Ali, thou art a dead man if thou play any of thy pranks on Kamar." "Why so?" asked Ali and the other answered, "Her father, Jew Azariah, is a skilful, wily, perfidious magician who hath the Jinn at his service. He owneth without the city a castle, whose walls are one brick of gold and one of silver and which is visible to the folk only whilst he is therein: when he goeth ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... good-night! Dreams of eyes so bright, Hold me now in soft embraces, But that wily word, Which thou thought'st unheard, Leaves in me of love ...
— A Happy Boy • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... itself either to the enthusiast smitten with his own reveries; to the fellifluous fanatic enslaved by his prejudices; to the vain glorious mortal puffed up with his own presumptuous ignorance; to the voluptuary devoted to his pleasures; or to the wily reasoner, who, disingenuous with himself, has a peculiar spontaneity to form illusions to his mind. Blessed, however, with a heart, gifted with a mind such as described, man will surely discover this rara avis: thus constituted, the attentive philosopher, the ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... "youngest." The fair southerner had seen two seasons in the nation's capital. Cupid, standing directly in front of her, had shot his darts ruthlessly and resistlessly into the passing hosts, and masculine Washington looked humbly to her for the balm that might soothe its pains. The wily god of love was fair enough to protect the girl whom he forced to be his unwilling, perhaps unconscious, ally. He held his impenetrable shield between her heart and the assaults of a whole army of suitors, high and low, great and small. It was not idle rumor that said she ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... sombrero, and critically inspected the ponies before him. One of them, a demoniacal looking buckskin, appeared more vixenish than the others, and very promptly the youth made this selection; but to get in touch of the wily little beast was another matter. Every time the rancher made a move forward the herd found it convenient likewise to move, and to the limit of the corral fence. Once clear around the yard the rider humored them; and Scotty, the spectator, felt sure ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... an Old Person of Philae, Whose conduct was scroobious and wily; He rushed up a Palm, When the weather was calm, And observed all the ruins ...
— Book of Nonsense • Edward Lear
... green-coated Boches among their camouflaged fortresses of spatterdocks and lily pads. The muskrat goes scouring the water, searching for booty near the river's bank or submerges like a submarine when discovered by a noisy convoy of Senegalese boys on the bank. A wily weasel, no doubt considered by those cliff-dwellers, the kingfishers, as one of the "Ladies from Hell," was being hustled out of their dugout at the point of the bayonet. No matter about the "kilts"; if he ever had them they were lost ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... ten thousand times than take help from you," said the girl, and her clear, horrified eyes seemed to burn into the woman's evil face. She turned and slid away, like the wily ...
— The Mystery of Mary • Grace Livingston Hill
... rightly, the way in which the Chinese Embassy dealt with one of your pet reformers some years ago did not win general approval. No, Mr. Forbes, we must try and circumvent the wily Chinese by other methods than torture and imprisonment. Of what avail will it be if this fellow, Wong Li Fu, is laid by the heels? Isn't it more than certain that he has plenty of determined helpers? Do you imagine that he killed Mrs. Lester? Not a bit of it. He will be able to produce the clearest ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... how very soon this silly little Fly, Hearing his wily, flattering words, came slowly flitting by: With buzzing wings she hung aloft, then near and nearer drew,— Thinking only of her brilliant eyes, and green and purple hue; Thinking only of her crested head—poor foolish thing! At last, Up jumped the cunning Spider, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... beheld obscurely before him. The Minister was a great friend of his family. A mountaineer of the Cevennes, brought up on chestnuts, his dazzled eyes blinked at the flower-bedecked tables of Paris. He was too shrewd and too wily not to retain his advantage over the old aristocracy, which welcomed him to its bosom: the advantage of harsh caprices and arrogant refusals. Ligny knew him, and expected no favours at his hands. ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... thought; they entertained it without aversion; the germs of ultimate discord and dissolution silently took root, and slowly grew up in the understandings of men. Not that the principle was adopted; it was rather tolerated than accepted. But this was the very thing intended by the wily conspirators. They expected nothing better; for they knew well that an accident or a bold precipitation of events would cause the popular mind to seize this principle and use it, as the only justification for revolutionary violence. ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... answered his master—"In the open field we must fight them, or thy master must rank but as a mansworn knight. Know, that when I feasted yonder wily savage in my halls at Christmas, and when the wine was flowing fastest around, Gwenwyn threw out some praises of the fastness and strength of my castle, in a manner which intimated it was these advantages alone that had secured me in former wars from defeat and captivity. I spoke ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... restitution of her daughter. Jupiter consented on one condition, namely, that Proserpine should not during her stay in the lower world have taken any food; otherwise, the Fates forbade her release. Accordingly, Mercury was sent, accompanied by Spring, to demand Proserpine of Pluto. The wily monarch consented; but, alas! the maiden had taken a pomegranate which Pluto offered her, and had sucked the sweet pulp from a few of the seeds. This was enough to prevent her complete release; but a compromise was made, by which she was to ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... with herself that day. At one moment it seemed to her that Providence must have placed this opportunity in her way that she might see her children, in her desperate longing; at another, a voice appeared to whisper that it was a wily, dangerous temptation flung across her path, one which it was her duty to resist and flee from. Then came another phase of the picture—how should she bear to see Mr. Carlyle the husband of another—to live in the same house with them, to witness his attentions, possibly his caresses? ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... providence in vain Has sever'd countries with the estranging main, If our vessels ne'ertheless With reckless plunge that sacred bar transgress. Daring all, their goal to win, Men tread forbidden ground, and rush on sin: Daring all, Prometheus play'd His wily game, and fire to man convey'd; Soon as fire was stolen away, Pale Fever's stranger host and wan Decay Swept o'er earth's polluted face, And slow Fate quicken'd Death's once halting pace. Daedalus the void air tried On wings, to humankind by Heaven denied; Acheron's bar ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... Johnson, and allowed Goldsmith to say, "Dear Doctor, if you were to write a story about little fishes, you would make them talk like whales," and the mud ball has stuck. The average man is much more willing to take the wily Boswell's word for it than to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... wings to his already abnormally developed caution in the matter of the application for the appointment of the "gyardeen" for his weak-minded sister-in-law, and had hinted that he might have to swear to her mental condition if he became the sponsor for such a move. Jeb was wily. He had tasted of his brother's wife's wrath on more occasions than one, and whatever his opinion may have been of the strength of her mind, he entertained no doubts as to the vigor of her temper when it was aroused. Jeb wanted to be appointed her ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... sent in a compliment to soothe the temper of Robert Guiscard, the Archduke of Apulia, who being aged and stone-deaf, and the girl under ten years old at the time, returned the valued present to the imperial donor, and, with the selfishness which was one of that wily Norman's characteristics, desired to have some one sent him who could contribute to his pleasure, instead of ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... are God's conduits, grave divines; and here Is Nature's secretary, the philosopher: And wily statesmen, which teach how to tie The sinews of a city's mystic body; Here gathering chroniclers; and by them stand Giddy fantastic ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... not believe. He plainly perceived that the wily Tartar wished to deprive Russia of all its armed men, that he might the more easily reduce it again to subjection. Rather than see his country ruined, the patriotic prince determined to disobey, and to offer himself as a victim by seeking alone the camp of Usbek, the great ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... Stanton soon learned that his labors of love were destined to be very promiscuous. He never could manage to carry her off alone in a light skiff upon the lake; he could never inveigle her into the narrow seat of his buggy, nor could his most wily strategy long separate her from their companions on a picnic that had offered to his ardent fancy a chance for a stroll into some favoring solitude by themselves. Had she been a princess of the blood, surrounded by a guard of watchful duennas, she could not have ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... The difference of two years would not have hindered their acceptance, even at the expense of some humiliation to our representative. But there were conditions which excited distrust when drawn up by so wily a diplomatist. One was that the alien who aspired to burghership had to produce a certificate of continuous registration for a certain time. But the law of registration had fallen into disuse in the Transvaal, and consequently ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Battery still maintained its position, playing effectively upon "Long Tom." It looked as if Sir George meant to reinforce his fighting line, and try a decisive counter-stroke, by throwing all the weight he could against the Boer left wing, which was either wavering or executing some wily movement that had the appearance of a retirement. But unluckily at this critical moment the 60th Rifles and Leicestershire men began to fall back from the position they had gained, which was immediately occupied by Boer riflemen, and the 60th, exposed to a storm of ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... low tone. I could hear part of what passed between them. The doctor seemed not to care whether I overheard him, while the other appeared equally anxious that their conversation should not reach me. From the replies of the doctor I could make out that the wily lawyer wished to have me removed from my present quarters, and taken to an hotel in the village. He urged the peculiar position in which the young lady (Mademoiselle Besancon) would be placed—alone in her house with a stranger—a young man, ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... precipitated themselves on the interpreter-in-chief, representing how impossible it was to camp out in the neighborhood of the dreaded animal. But Pepe Garcia, accustomed as he was by profession to try his strength with the ferocious bear and the wily boar, was not the man to be afraid of a tiger, even of a genuine tiger from Bengal. To prove to the porters how slight was the estimation he placed on the supposed enemy, and also to drill them in the case of similar rencounters, he pushed the whole troop pellmell into ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... that, he neither feared nor cared for anything in this world—and being a member of the Hellfire Club, he did not believe in the other. In fact he was the very man on whose peculiar temperament and character a corrupt and wily politician might expect to impress his own principles with success. Topertoe was consequently not only the very man to sell his country, but to sell, it at the highest price, and be afterwards the first to laugh, as he did, at ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... a too great knowledge, and was looked upon as dangerous. But where she failed Cuthbert might succeed, for he was absolutely unknown to Robin, and if the two were to meet face to face in the forest, it would be impossible that the wily old man (if old he were) should suspect ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Christianity does not require us to believe those chapters of Genesis to contain historic truth. It may be allegorical truth. It may be a parable, representing how every little child comes into an Eden of innocence, and is tempted by that wily serpent, the sophistical understanding, and is betrayed by desire, his Eve, and goes out of his garden of childhood, where all life proceeds spontaneously and by impulse, into a world of work and labor. If it be such an allegory as ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... as the bully of the neighbourhood, counted on an easy victory. But he was mistaken. After the first rush was over, he found it impossible to close with his foe, and saw in the doctor's face, now grown cool and business-like as usual, the wily smile of superior science ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... that," admitted Jerry; "us fellows who love to hunt wild game have to know a lot about their habits. It's the same if you go after the wily black bass—if you're green about his ways you can fish till you drop and ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... beguile him to the chateau of his friend at Ebernburg till his safe-conduct should expire, and then the liars could throw off the mask and dispose of him with credit in the eyes of Rome. The glib and wily Glapio led in the attempt. Von Sickingen and Bucer were entrapped by his bland hypocrisy, and lent themselves to the execution of the specious proposition. But when they came to Luther with it, he turned his back, saying, "If the emperor's confessor has anything to ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss
... passed over the plains with the force of a tempest. It was a peculiarity of Aggodagauda, that he had an only child, a daughter, who was very beautiful, whom it was the aim of this enemy to carry off, and he had to exert his skill to guard her from the inroad of his great and wily opponent. To protect her the better, he had built a log house, and it was only on the roof of this that he could permit his daughter to take the open air, and disport herself. Now her hair was so long, that when she untied it, the raven locks ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... always an abundant crop of such fools as he, who pretend to dabble in a science, in utter ignorance of the elements; while, like Jason of old, the wily boatman finds a sheep with a golden fleece,—although his brains are always too much on the alert to be what is technically termed—wool-gathering. Some people are desirous of seeing every thing; ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour |
