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More "Outwit" Quotes from Famous Books



... may be sent again, entrapped, or slain, and failing that, I know not what they will do. But we will outwit them; thou shalt take him this very night to his poor thralls who dwell in the swamp. They will rejoice to see him, and will live or die for him, ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... but the panics of souls frightened by the fear of death, and cursed with the thrice-cursed gift of imagination. They have not the instinct for death; they lack the will to die when the time to die is at hand. They trick themselves into believing they will outwit the game and win to a future, leaving the other animals to the darkness of the grave or the annihilating heats of the crematory. But he, this man in the hour of his white logic, knows that they trick and outwit themselves. ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London

... church and prostrate himself before a false god; he summons his tribe and dances a sun dance or a wind dance or a rain dance. When he would hunt and catch a bear, he does not pray to his god for strength to outwit and outmatch the bear, he rehearses his hunt in a ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison

... goods down from the interior. The people about here are imbued with the very spirit of commerce. They understand too how to make a sharp bargain. We have to be wide awake, or, naked savages as they are, they will contrive to outwit us." ...
— The African Trader - The Adventures of Harry Bayford • W. H. G. Kingston

... Very well. Tell me which was the safest course for men in their position? To make their attempt on the Diamond while it was under the control of Mr. Franklin Blake, who had shown already that he could suspect and outwit them? Or to wait till the Diamond was at the disposal of a young girl, who would innocently delight in wearing the magnificent jewel at every possible opportunity? Perhaps you want a proof that my theory is correct? Take the conduct of the Indians themselves as the proof. They appeared at ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins

... and if we gain the cliff-top in that time we shall have an hour's start, or more, for they will take all that to search the under-cliff. And Maskew, too, will keep them in check a little, while they try to bring the life back to so good a man. But if we fall, why, we shall fall together, and outwit their cunning. So shut thy eyes, and keep them tight until I bid thee open them.' With that he caught me up again, and I shut my eyes firm, rebuking myself for my faint-heartedness, and not telling him how much my foot hurt me. In a minute I knew ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner

... at Boulogne, within thirty miles of England. "Let us," said Napoleon, "be masters of the Channel for six hours and we shall be the masters of the world." But he knew that the only way to reach London was to outwit Nelson. ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood

... ever picking up and hoarding such trifles, had heard Uncle Copas two days before drop a remark that the Greeks knew everything worth knowing. Plainly, then, the parsley held some wonderful secret after all. She must contrive to outwit old Battershall, and get to the garden ahead of him, which would not be easy, ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... irreligious Republic, as events afterwards proved, the power of the whole clergy was bound to be destroyed. The truth is then, that, far from abetting the Illuminati, the Jesuits were their most formidable opponents, the only body of men sufficiently learned, astute, and well organized to outwit the schemes of Weishaupt. In suppressing the Jesuits it is possible that the Old Regime removed the only barrier capable of resisting the ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster

... runs and falls, Blessing all lands with its charity; The sea tosses and foams to find Its way up to the cloud and wind; The shadow sits close to the flying ball; The date fails not on the palm-tree tall; And thou,—go burn thy wormy pages,— Shalt outsee seers, and outwit sages. Oft didst thou thread the woods in vain To find what bird had piped the strain:— Seek not, and the little eremite Flies gayly forth and sings ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... don't want to part with she. For there be nothing else for he round here now. Every stone on t' beach reminds he of his terrible misfortune." He had said this often enough before, but one day it struck him— "When you wants to outwit a beaver, youse got to bank on dem t'ings that are real part of his make-up, and which he can no more help than a bear can help licking molasses. Fishing isn't as good as it used to be round here, and swiles[1]—well, ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

... borrowed money at the East on bond and mortgage, who probably make as near an approach to a debtor class as any other body or persons in the community, and whom Congressional demagogues probably hoped to serve by enabling them to outwit their creditors, even these are not simply or mainly debtors. Any man who is carrying on his business with borrowed money, on which he pays eight or ten per cent., must be every week putting other people in debt to him ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin

... day when the weather is not too foul, and looks well that there be no ill-doings in his ship; and if he have a berth for thy lad, it will be a better school for him than where two-thirds of the household are raging against one another, and the third ever striving to corrupt and outwit the rest. I am weary of it all! Would that I could once get into blue water again, and leave it ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge

... all gone and Tamara was dressing for dinner, she felt decidedly less depressed. She had succeeded better than she had hoped. She had contrived to outwit the Prince, when he had plainly shown his intention was to continue talking to her, she had turned from one to another, and finally sat down by a handsome Chevalier Garde. In companies she had a chance, but when they were alone!—however, that was simple, because she ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn

... not earn an honest dollar to give his mother, if he could? None whatever, and he would succeed in spite of them. He would get that grocery bill off his hands the first thing, and when he was square with the world, he would go to work in earnest and outwit all his foes, no matter how numerous or how smart they might be. He would tell Don all about it and be governed by ...
— The Boy Trapper • Harry Castlemon

... or rob her aunt of it, I suppose. If she's such another as Frank, she is able to outwit the devil. I hope it may be good. If it isn't, he sha'n't be his own man ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown

... he said; "I will think till I find a means of escape. I reckon that we have still a month before us. It shall go hard if our English brains cannot devise some method whereby we may outwit ...
— In the Days of Drake • J. S. Fletcher

... study and plan how he could outwit them without danger to himself. 'A whole skin is better than a full stomach, but both a whole skin and a full stomach are better still,' said he to himself; as he thought and schemed. For a while he was content to catch ...
— Mother West Wind 'Why' Stories • Thornton W. Burgess

... day to day, and to his jaundiced eye the man who was at first simply his rival became his mortal enemy and the object of his implacable hate, so that at length merely to get the better of him, to outwit him, would, after so long-continued and obstinate a struggle and so many defeats, have seemed to him too mild a vengeance, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... menace sprang up—the Klu Klux Klan. While its energy was usually directed against ex-slaves, a white man was sometimes a victim. One such occasion was recalled by Clay. The group planned to visit a man who for some reason became suspicious and prepared to outwit them if they came. He heated a huge pot of water and when a part of his door was crashed in he reached through the opening and poured gourds of boiling water upon his assailants. They retreated, [HW: and] while they were away, he made his ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration

... hornet's nest. In his enfeebled condition, he could hardly hope to cope with his pursuers in the matter of speed and so as he went on across the stream at the base of the hill, he tried to plan something that would outwit them. The nearest outlying houses of the town were but a few hundred yards distant, but instead of taking the road down the hill, he turned sharply to his left after crossing the road and entered the Moslem ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs

... a double ditch about your nose," replied Thady, "before you begin to say anything disrespectful aginst my father.—Don't think to ballyrag over me. I'll bring the boy, for I have the best right to him. Didn't I do (* outwit) the masther on ...
— The Poor Scholar - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton

... see thee bring to nought, The plans of wily men; When simple hearts outwit the wise, O thou art ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner

... thwart Blent was the question disturbing Ruth Fielding's mind. Of course, nobody but Jerry had as strong a desire as she to outwit the old real estate man. The other girls and boys—even Mrs. Tingley—would not feel as Ruth did about it. ...
— Ruth Fielding on Cliff Island - The Old Hunter's Treasure Box • Alice Emerson

... clever caricatures—for he had talent with his pencil—and his brilliant conversation, rather than to apply himself to routine work. His comrades used to lock him into a room to make him work, and even then he would outwit them by dashing off a witty parody or a bit of impromptu verse. Among his literary jeux d'esprit was an examination paper on 'Pickwick,' prepared as a Christmas joke in exact imitation of a genuine "exam." The prizes, two first editions of Pickwick, were won by W. W. Skeat, now ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... the women are clever; the most insignificant citizen's wife can outwit an old diplomat. What science they display under the most trying and peculiar circumstances! What profound combination in their plans of vengeance! What prudence in their malice! What patience in their ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin

... very stupid things, the Jivros. Like an insect, their patterns are fixed and repetitive. They are almost incapable of original thought. Once you know them, you can always outwit them. With you will go my brother, Genner. He may be successful where ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell

... Shouvaloff in England at the time of the secret conference agreement, with the Grand Duke Nicholas at Adrianople when the protocol of an armistice was signed, and would soon be in Berlin behind the scenes of the Congress, where it was expected that he would outwit the statesmen of all Europe, and play with Bismarck and Disraeli as a strong man plays with ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various

... A squaw if lost would camp sensibly on a bed of leaves, and find her way back to the village in the morning. The wilderness was full of dangers, but when you are elder brother to the bear and the wildcat you learn their habits, and avoid or outwit them. ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... Ruth. "Let's see if we can outwit them. We've got a chance for liberty, my dear. ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson

... taken to the mountains. He'll steer clear of ranches and cowboys for a while. Our chance lies in his giving up covering his trail after he gets well into the ranges. We will get his trail and hang on till we can outwit him. If he was alone, we'd never get him, barring accident. But he will be a lot hampered by Miss Rhoda and I trust to her to hamper him a whole lot after ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow

... stones to put in place on the top of the wondrous gateway. The giant was sure of his prize, and chuckled to himself as he went out with his horse to drag the remaining stones; for he did not know that the AEsir had guessed at last who he was, and that Loki was plotting to outwit him. Hardly had he gone to work when out of the wood came running a pretty little mare, who neighed to Svadilfoeri as if inviting the tired horse to leave his work and come to the green ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various

... had husbands. All the men were in the army; hadn't even been home on leave since the Germans first took the place. The girls had been shut up for four years with young men who incessantly coveted them, and whom they must constantly outwit. The situation had been intolerable—and prolonged. The Americans found themselves in the position of Adam in ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather

... were all political appointees, derelicts who had been unable to hold a job in the commercial world, and had sought an easy berth, like Peter himself. They took bribes, and were prepared to bribe Peter to outwit Mr. Doobman; Mr. Doobman, on the other hand, was prepared to reward Peter with many favors, if Peter would consent to bring him secret information. In such a situation it was possible for a man with his wits about him to accumulate quite a ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair

... landlord, as they went down the stairs. It was characteristic of Richard Barrington that he had formed no plan when he entered the room. He believed that actions must always be controlled by the circumstances of the moment, that it was generally essential to see one's enemy before deciding how to outwit him, a false theory perhaps, but, given a strong personality, ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner

... teach you a way to outwit Mrs. Johnson; it is a new-fashioned way of being witty, and they call it a bite. You must ask a bantering question, or tell some damned lie in a serious manner, then she will answer, or speak as if you were in earnest, and then cry you, 'Madam, there's a bite.' I would not have you undervalue ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken

... number of them were scattered at different points through the wood. There must have been twenty of them in the neighborhood, for, when summoned by signal, they appeared to come from all points of the compass. But none now was in sight, and who of them all was able to outwit the Shawanoe ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis

... undertake. Here my Lady did begin to talk of what she had heard concerning Creed, of his being suspected to be a fanatique and a false fellow. I told her I thought he was as shrewd and cunning a man as any in England, and one that I would feare first should outwit me in any thing. To which she readily concurred. Thence to Mr. Povy's by agreement, and there with Mr. Sherwin, Auditor Beale, and Creed and I hard at it very late about Mr. Povy's accounts, but such accounts ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... her gallant and protracted struggles, the years overtake her. She begins to be talked of with a pitying contempt as "OLD SO-AND-SO"; art ceases to outwit Nature, and she herself can no longer deceive men. For some time she clings to the fringe of the society she once adorned; but sinking gradually from the Corinthian to the Continental, from the Continental to the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 1, 1890 • Various

... pit of hell. Yet that some one of them has betrayed me, is evident from the charges brought against me by this stranger to whom Lucy is so devotedly attached, and which charges Thomas Corbet could not clear up. If one of these base but dexterous villains, or if the whole gang were to outwit me, positively I could almost blow my very brains out, for allowing myself, after all, to become their dupe and plaything. I will think of it, however. And again, there is the likeness; there does seem to be a difficulty ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... it keeps Bunny Cottontail moving to outwit his many enemies. He has no briar patches in that rugged country, though the jumper thickets might serve as such, so he lives beneath the rocks, usually planning a front and back door to his burrow. ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills

... the campaign, to realise by what means this result was secured. In all war, and in every campaign, so far as the two opposing commanders are concerned, it is the play of mind upon mind which is the ruling factor. To put himself in the place of the man whom he must outwit, if he is to give his soldiers the best chance of victory, is for each commander the essential preliminary. To take such steps as will tend to confirm that man in any false impressions he is known or reasonably suspected to have received, and to conceal as far as possible ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice

... "I suppose it couldn't be construed into attempting to outwit her, could it? It seems rather funny at first sight to get her to sell a picture for twenty pounds for which others have offered ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner

... would have it out with his wife. Being a business man and always alert to outwit the other man, he wanted neither intrigue nor mystery in his home, but a serene happiness founded upon perfect confidence. He found it impossible to remain appalled or angry at his wife's readiness of resource in guarding a family secret that must have shocked the youth in her almost ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... could be but one answer to that question. She must contrive in some way to outwit her enemies—she must escape—must fly to some place where they would never ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele

... but yet she at least could obtain for him a sight of Pelagia; she had promised as much. But then—the condition which she had appended to her help! To see his sister, and yet to leave her as she was!—Horrible contradiction! But could he not employ Miriam for his own ends?—outwit her?—deceive her?—for it came to that. The temptation was intense: but it lasted only a moment. Could he defile so pure a cause by falsehood? And hurrying past the Jewess's door, hardly daring to look at ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley

... don't. But I think he's had a worse time, if that's any comfort, than Pony has. He has suffered the fate of all liars. Sooner or later their lies outwit them and overmaster them, for whenever people believe a liar he is forced to act as if he had spoken the truth. That's worse than having a tower fall on you, or ...
— The Flight of Pony Baker - A Boy's Town Story • W. D. Howells

... Huerta brought them, too, to unemployment; an Irishman there, for whom the President of Costa Rica had promised a swift death against a blank wall. Cunning in the art of gun-running, they were knowing in all the tides of the Caribbean Sea, and in every dodge to outwit the United States patrol. Nor must I forget one priceless fellow, a lion-tamer, who, strange to say, feared exceedingly the wild denizens of the scrub that sniffed around his patrol ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey

... warriors to back him. They shall pay for their victory, with a life for every hair it holds. I say, young gentleman, may Providence bless your undertaking, which is altogether for good; and, remember, that to outwit the knaves it is lawful to practise things that may not be naturally the ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper

... ultimatum. Not that he had any hope of carrying the strike through without some sort of a collision with the boss, but he well knew that an encounter after the strike had gathered momentum would be easier than one before. Bannon might be able to outwit an individual, even Grady himself, but he would find it hard to make headway against an angry mob. And now Grady was pacing stiffly about the Belt Line yards, while the minute hand of his watch crept ...
— Calumet "K" • Samuel Merwin and Henry Kitchell Webster

... close at his heels. He had been ever on the move, both for reasons of safety and as a matter of taste. His point of view was the abnormal one of the professional law-breaker: the world was his legitimate prey; the business of his life was to do as he pleased and keep his liberty; to outwit sheriffs and make a clean get-away. To be known among his kind as "game" and "slick," was the only distinction he craved. His chiefest ambition had been to live up to his title of "Bad Man." In this he had ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart

... terrified her beyond all control, and she would lie awake and shiver for hours because of it. It became a symbol of life to her—the Forest was there and the Oven and the Witch—and so clever and subtle was the Witch that the only way to outwit her was by pride. Then there was also her maternal tenderness; it was through that that Markovitch won her. She had not of course loved him—she had never pretended to herself that she had—but she had seen that he wanted caring for, and then, having taken the decisive step, her pride ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole

... and handed down from generation to generation. Hence during the Middle Ages the student of the law became the most important member of the community, and all the energy of the community that was not required to outwit the constant menace of brutal force and religious persecution was devoted to the cultivation of the law and of the literature ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various

... very apt young lady," said he; "you have outwitted your director. That may be my fault as much as yours; so I advise you to provide yourself with another director, whom you will be unable, or unwilling, to outwit." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various

... world yet to learn. And it must be remembered that she believed herself entirely in the right. This was a world where strength and cunning were the qualities that counted, and every one was trying to outwit his neighbor; and all who acted otherwise were either weak-witted fools or else pretenders who saw in their hypocrisy the keenest game of all. Living under the influence of Old Jimmie, and later of Barney, and ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott

... and cautiously for now he knew that in the strange country danger lurked—danger of a kind unknown to him and of a subtle quality. If the creatures whose footprints he had seen and with whose scent the border of the marsh was redolent could outwit the wary birds that had always eluded him, what surprise might not they hold ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller

... something, O my cautious philosopher! Nobody but Thistles is about just then, and I think we can outwit Thistles. I'll bring the half-sovereign to school with me to-morrow, and you can take it to Parker's, in case it's wanted. I'm afraid you'll find ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil

... thus the trips went merrily enough at times and besides I learned to know in Bill Nye a man blessed with as noble and heroic a heart as ever beat. But the making of trains, which were all in conspiracy to outwit me, schedule or no schedule, and the rush and tyrannical pressure of inviolable engagements, some hundred to a season and from Boston to San Francisco, were a distress to my soul. I am glad that's over with. ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley

... go to Austria," said Gruner, smiling; "the cause of the fatherland demands it. Dangers will not deter me, and if the Austrian police are on the lookout for me—well, I have been myself a police-officer, and may outwit them. In the first place, however, I shall go to Leipsig, to have the second volume of Arndt's excellent work, 'The Spirit of the Times,' secretly printed, and cause a printing-office to be established on the Saxon frontier for the purpose of issuing the war bulletins which I am to receive ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach

... winds ere long he's driven Sideways from the course he had intended, And he feigns as though he would surrender, While he gently striveth to outwit them, To his goal, e'en when ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... work) with a stock of superficial intelligence as well as of information, and putting them up to whatever knacks, tricks, and dodges will enable them to show to advantage on the examination day. In his desire to outwit the teacher, the examiner will turn and double like a hare who is pursued by a greyhound. But the teacher will turn and double with equal agility, and will never allow himself to be outdistanced ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes

... greatest value in war. Surprise was the foundation of almost all the great strategical combinations of the past, as it will be of those to come. The first thought and the last of the great general is to outwit his adversary and to strike where he is least expected. To what Federal soldier did it occur on the {30} morning of Chancellorsville (May 2-8, 1863) that Lee, confronted by 90,000 Northerners, would detach Stonewall Jackson with more than half his own force ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous

... head in the air, as though he were striving against something. "Yes, yes! It needs good eyes to look into the future, and mine won't serve me any longer. But now you must go and take the boy with you. And you mustn't neglect your affairs, you can't outwit death, however clever you may be." He laid his withered hand on Young Lasse's head and turned his face to ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... gives the shabbiest things he can find. In all this the native displays the same craft and cunning which he is apt to practise in his dealings with the whites. He fears the power which the spirit has over him, yet he tries whether he cannot outwit the ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... persuaded to go along and explain the various movements of these clever animals to the boys. This he could well do, as he had hunted them for many years and knew much about them, although he always declared that there were some of them that could outwit ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young

... very small.... Instinct is undoubtedly often modified by intelligence, and intelligence is as often guided or prompted by instinct, but one need not hesitate long as to which side of the line any given act of man or beast belongs. When the fox resorts to various tricks to outwit and delay the hound (if he ever consciously does so), he exercises a kind of intelligence—the lower form of which we call cunning—and he is prompted to this by an instinct of self-preservation. When the birds set up a hue ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks

... strategy has sprung out of this hunting and trapping competition. The constant study of the rival bands is to forestall and outwit each other; to supplant each other in the good will and custom of the Indian tribes; to cross each other's plans; to mislead each other as to routes; in a word, next to his own advantage, the study of the Indian trader is the ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving

... be altered. Her fair limbs Are for the cult of tenderness created, Not for the savage claws of desperation. She cannot go a-begging, with such hair. Her mouth is proud as it is sweet. O, fate Is trying to outwit me—but I scorn it— If thou couldst see her, ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various

... letter, demanding that the place be turned over to him. The father, however, is enabled by the chance arrival of a champan with some religious, Spaniards, and natives, who are fleeing from Ilocos, to outwit his enemies for the time being. The quiet of Bolinao lasts only so long as the above-mentioned champan remains there. After its departure Malong tries to secure the murder of the religious through Durrey and Sumulay. The former is dissuaded from the attempt, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various

... inform visitors that the anchor was up and down. Albeit my spirits were low, 'twas no small entertainment to watch the doctor and his rivals at their adieus. Courtenay had at his command an hundred subterfuges to outwit his fellows, and so manoeuvred that he was the last of them over the side. As for me, luckily, I was not worth a thought. But as the doctor leaned over her hand, I vowed in my heart that if Dorothy was to be gained only in such a way I would not stoop to it. And in my heart I doubted ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... case, all might yet be well; but, on the other hand, if Arabi should have left, possibly Naoum had done the same. The predicament in which he found himself was one of great danger. He did not mind facing death, but he felt that he would like to outwit Arden. ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld

... minds. They were for fleeing from that accursed place, but the old men said: "Where can we go? We have no other place but this. Let us wait here for death." So they spent hours in dancing and ceremonies to appease the angry gods. They have no favoring gods, only evil spirits which they must outwit or bribe with dances. The Peach Dance which we had gone to see was for the purpose of celebrating good crops of melons, corn, and other products and to implore the mercy of harmful powers during the ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith

... precious stone called Dead Man's Diamond. The jewel was often stolen, but it had a knack of coming back again to the lap of Hlo-hlo. Thangobrind knew this, but he was no common jeweller and hoped to outwit Hlo-hlo, perceiving not the trend of ambition and lust ...
— The Book of Wonder • Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany

... and eleven Frenchmen, the whole being commanded by the French-Canadian, Captain Dagniaux de Quindre, and the great Indian Chief, Black-fish who had adopted Boone as a son. In the effort to gain his end de Quindre resorted to a dishonorable stratagem, by which he hoped to outwit the settlers and capture the fort with but slight loss. "They formed a scheme to deceive us," says Boone, "declaring it was their orders, from Governor Hamilton, to take us captives, and not to destroy us; but if nine of us would come out and treat with them, they would ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson

... old palace, with the spies of the Government keeping watch on my doings, except when they chance to be outwitted? Nevertheless, I have kept my promise. Thou knowest me better than to think that I need to break promises in order to outwit ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy

... my boy. You need a good rest anyway. Red Bill—if it is his gang that has taken them—cannot get to Blue Creek for two days anyway. If you start at dawn to-morrow you can outwit them." ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham

... fools!" the lady said,— "The way is, just to shave his head. Run! bid the barber come anon." "Thanks, mother!" thought her clever son; "You help the knaves that would have bit me, But all creation sha'n't outwit me!" Thus to himself, while to and fro His fingers perseveres to go, And from his lips no accent flows But—"Here she goes, and there she goes!" The barber came—"Lord help him! what A queerish customer I've got; But we must do our best to save him,— So hold him, gemmen, while I shave him!" ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various

... wish she was only here to outwit you!" laughed his cousin, nestling her head against his arm as they ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans

... proclamation. He saw that they had gained the upper hand by a clever ruse, and that only strategy on his part could outwit them. It was out of the question for him to submit to them now that the controversy had assumed the ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon

... ninety-five thousand dollars, and so no one of these men was poor; but yet they came, day after day, to play their parts in this sordid arena, "seeking in sorrow for each other's joy": inventing a thousand petty tricks to outwit and deceive each other; rejoicing in a thousand petty triumphs; and spending their lives, like the waves upon the shore, a very symbol of human futility. Now and then a sudden impulse would seize them, ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair

... their new master had guessed their intention, and that he would, of course, take every precaution to prevent its being carried out. After the first depression of spirits, consequent on this discovery, the three friends became more than ever determined to outwit their enemy, and resolved to act, in the meantime, with perfect submission and prompt obedience—as they had hitherto done. Of course, each reserved in his own mind the right of rebellion if Griffin should require them to do any criminal act, ...
— Lost in the Forest - Wandering Will's Adventures in South America • R.M. Ballantyne

... generally very difficult to outwit an imbecile, and the governor enmeshed Carter, made him out refractory and crucified him. The poor soul did not hallo at first, for he remembered they had not cut his throat the last time, as he thought they were going to do (he had seen a pig first made fast—then stuck). But when ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade

... wrong. I'll prove it in a very few days. But in that time I can prepare for them and outwit them. Will ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey

... swells my pride, to have been able to outwit such a vigilant charmer! I am taller by half a yard in my imagination than I was. I look down upon every body now. Last night I was still more extravagant. I took off my hat, as I walked, to see if the ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... have succeeded in finishing you, your master the young rajah will easily become my prey. He expects to rule this country, does he, and reform abuses and destroy our ancient religion! Clever as he thinks himself, he will find that he is mistaken, and that there are those who can outwit him. It has been prophesied that when the Feringhees rule the land the ancient institutions of the country will be destroyed and caste abolished. What will then become of us Brahmins? We must put off that evil day, if it is ever to arrive, as ...
— The Young Rajah • W.H.G. Kingston

... pardon, sir, for thus trespassing upon your valuable time, and I certainly should not have done so but for the certainty that our interests in a certain matter which I have in hand are practically identical, in so far that we both should wish to outwit a clever rogue.' ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy

... friends and associates. To them the animals were only beasts whose valuable pelts could be traded at the Post for necessaries of life or whose flesh was good to eat. Success in life depended upon man's ability to outwit and slay birds or animals, and the lads held for them none of the human sympathy that would have added so much ...
— Troop One of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace

... be liberally rewarded," ordered the naval official. "Tell him to give us the information at once. That fellow has been playing with us all day, and we've been powerless to outwit the Universal Detector, or whatever device it is he uses. The man must be a wizard to have solved a problem that has baffled the keenest ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton

... law, which no man can ever outwit, and with regard to the railroad even we may say it is as broad as it is long. To make a railroad round the world available to all mankind is equivalent to grading the whole surface of the planet. Men have an indistinct notion that if they keep up this activity of joint stocks and spades ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau

... recall to England, contemporaneous writers and brother officers mercilessly criticised Loudoun "whom a child might outwit, or terrify with ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head

... continually, for Seraminta, partly from obstinacy, and partly because the child was so handsome, wished to keep her, and teach her to perform with the poodle in the streets. But all the while she had an inward feeling that Perrin would outwit her, and get his own way. And this turned ...
— A Pair of Clogs • Amy Walton

... recover his balance and self-respect. It would have been so like a Lancashire chap to have seen and dealt shrewdly with a business schemer who tried to outwit him that he was gradually convinced that he had thought all that had been suggested, and had comported himself with triumphant though silent astuteness. He even began to ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... I haven't," replied Frank, readily enough. "On the other hand, I ought to feel better satisfied than ever, because we've managed to outwit every cause for trouble that has cropped up this far. We'll get through this coming night without accident, because we're ready for anything. Then, when another day dawns, we'll haul in at Magangua, to hunt Jose ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy

... recognising Him. If His trusted subordinates in being given a free hand played Him false, they naturally played each other false, and played false to themselves first of all. Where one was afraid of another and strove to outwit him there was treachery against the ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King

... and mortified as he was, Simon Kenton was not the man to waste the minutes in idle lamentation. Since the first part of the former attempt to outwit him had succeeded, he felt there was no reason why the second part should triumph. He therefore started down the stream as rapidly as he could force his way in ...
— The Phantom of the River • Edward S. Ellis

... the clever scheme to outwit the road agents, if held up, he started once more upon his flying trip. He carried his revolver ready for instant use and flew along the trail with every nerve strung to meet any danger which might confront him. He had ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... human parents has ever led so free and happy a life as he. In those days, there was peace between the animals and the Boy Man. Sometimes they challenged him to friendly contests, whereupon He-who-was-first-Created taught his little brother how to outwit them by clever tricks and devices. This he was often able to do; but not always; for sometimes the animals by their greater strength ...
— Wigwam Evenings - Sioux Folk Tales Retold • Charles Alexander Eastman and Elaine Goodale Eastman

... disapproval, and Sanford, by his good-natured chaffing and ridicule had so far prevented this calamity, but both feared that Aunt Abby might yet outwit them and have ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells

... that was herself. Perhaps Miss Bell had discovered her hiding- place, or, worse still, perhaps Kate Rider had seen her at the factory and was writing for Tommy. Lovey Mary crushed the letter in her hand; she would not give it to Miss Hazy. She would outwit Kate again. ...
— Lovey Mary • Alice Hegan Rice

... think we'll give up quite as easily as all that. We can at least try to outwit our enemies. If it does nothing else for us, the effort can ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various

... king angrily orders the execution of the insolent messenger. But the Frenchmen's truculent attitude forbids the guards' approach, and thus gives the ambassadors a chance to inform Marsile that Ganelon has promised to help them to outwit Charlemagne by depriving him of his most efficient general. Hearing this, Marsile's anger is disarmed; and he not only agrees to their plan to surprise Roland while crossing the Pyrenees, but sends Ganelon back ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber

... by his own wicked deeds. No matter who he is. An informer, perhaps. At any rate, he is not the man to outwit the Molly Swash, and her old, stupid, foolish master and owner, Stephen Spike. Luff, Mr. Mulford, luff. Now's the time to make the most of your leg—Luff her up and shake her. She is setting to windward fast, the ebb is sucking along that ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper

... street-length, he himself lapsed into semi-consciousness, and when he wakened, Dove was gone. He chuckled anew at the thought that somehow or other they had managed to outwit him. ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson

... that unfamiliar place, he stayed in the bath-room, with window wide open, for half an hour before he was found. He became so expert in flying out of the door that it was a difficult matter to pass through without his company; we had to train ourselves in sleight-of-hand to outwit him. There were two ways of getting the better of him; mere suddenness was of no use,—he was much quicker than we were. One way was to go to the room on the other side of the passage, where he was ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller

... my feelings of annoyance, and one of them, a gentleman filling a high situation in the east, laughed heartily, saying, in a thoroughly American tone, 'The English ladies must be cute customers if they can outwit Yankee pickpockets.'" ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various

... she sat down to wait. It was twenty minutes to eight, but her heart beat high with hope. If she could outwit Ray Rose it would be great fun, and she would "pay back" the mischievous girl in her ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells

... article of his visible clothing had been paid for, and the ten-cent piece in a pocket of his trousers was his total cash balance. But his heart was as light as the day. Had he not youth? Had he not health? Had he not looks to bewitch the women, brains to outwit the men? Feuerstein sniffed the delightful air and gazed round, like a king in the midst of cringing subjects. "I feel that this is one of my lucky days," said he to himself. An aristocrat, a patrician, a Hochwohlgeboren, ...
— The Fortune Hunter • David Graham Phillips

... powers make him at home in many fields. Some of the animals outsee man, outsmell him, outhear him, outrun him, outswim him, because their lives depend more upon these special powers than his does; but he can outwit them all because he has the resourcefulness of reason, and is at home in many different fields. The condor "houses herself with the sky" that she may have a high point of observation for the exercise of that marvelous power of vision. An object in the landscape beneath that would escape ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs

... require a great deal of penetration on the part of the fourth lieutenant to comprehend the trick of his rival. He was indignant and angry, and all the more so because he had been outwitted, even while he was attempting to outwit his unscrupulous competitor. ...
— Outward Bound - Or, Young America Afloat • Oliver Optic

... it would be feasible. Unless—what about a rope? I saw a great coil of rope in one of the dungeons downstairs this morning." A new alertness leaped into his bright eyes. "I say, let's go and reconnoitre, shall we? It would be great to outwit ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes

... Miss Vernon at all events; she will not show up at Christmas. I know she hates the Duke of Hatherton so I told her he is coming, and I don't know as yet whether he is. It takes a woman to outwit a woman." ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny

... birds have been broken up once or twice during the season, they become almost desperate, and will make great efforts to outwit their enemies. A pair of brown thrashers built their nest in a pasture-field under a low, scrubby apple-tree which the cattle had browsed down till it spread a thick, wide mass of thorny twigs only a few inches above the ground. Some blackberry briers had also ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs

... withdrawn a little way above the point where the river Jordan flows into the Dead Sea. The district, usually so deserted, was alive with all sorts of people, among them Rabbis and men learned in the law, who represented themselves as penitents, but desired to outwit the prophet with cunning. The preacher stood on a stone; he held a corner of his camel's hair garment, pressed against his hairy breast with one hand, and the other he stretched heavenwards and said: "Rabbis, are ye here too? Are ye at last afraid of the wrath ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger

... about them, Geordie, and though they are better than the others, I am not satisfied with these optical delusions, as I call them. Now, I put it to you, boys, is it natural for lads from fifteen to eighteen to command ships, defeat pirates, outwit smugglers, and so cover themselves with glory, that Admiral Farragut invites them to dinner, saying, 'Noble boy, you are an honour to your country!' Or, if the hero is in the army, he has hair-breadth ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott

... avoid a regular chase, for he dreaded that in such case the superior knowledge of the country possessed by the Indian would enable him to outwit him at every turn. Night was close at hand, and, if he could dodge the red-skin until darkness, the lad was ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)

... advantage, could he but obtain the co-operation of the Surgeon and one or two of his brother officers. This he soon effected, so great a favourite as he was could not be refused, besides, was it not a glorious thing to outwit those ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest

... me from many a day's exploring. I was light on my feet and uncommonly sound in wind, being by far the best long-distance runner in Kirkcaple. If I could only keep my lead till I reached a certain corner I knew of, I could outwit my enemy; for it was possible from that place to make a detour behind a waterfall and get into a secret path of ours among the bushes. I flew up the steep screes, not daring to look round; but at the top, where the rocks begin, I had a glimpse of my ...
— Prester John • John Buchan

... was the severe censorship of their letters. Mrs. van Warmelo's high spirit rebelled against the continued surveillance of her correspondence and she determined to outwit the censor. ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt

... a high-spirited and resourceful girl. She knew her life and the baby's as well were in danger and she determined to outwit the burglars. She had a swarthy complexion like Kali, the dacoits' divinity. Often had her mother bemoaned its darkness! Now it should serve her. But was she black enough? To make assurance doubly sure, she caught up a bottle of ink, which she knew where to find, and hastily smeared her ...
— Bengal Dacoits and Tigers • Maharanee Sunity Devee

... beggary by inducing them to become sharers in his delusive schemes. But the mechanic says, "Well, the more fools they to let themselves be robbed. But I don't call that kind of thing robbery, I merely call it outwitting; and everybody in this free country has a right to outwit others if he can. What a turn- out he has!" One was once heard to add, "I never saw a more genteel-looking man in all my life except one, and that was a gentleman's walley, who was much like him. It is true he is rather undersized, but then madam, ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... settled Miss Vernon at all events; she will not show up at Christmas. I know she hates the Duke of Hatherton so I told her he is coming, and I don't know as yet whether he is. It takes a woman to outwit a woman." ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny

... was standing near, thereupon interposed with a smile. "During the few years that have gone by since I've come here, I've carefully noticed that sister-in-law Secunda, cannot, with all her acumen, outwit our ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... things, the Jivros. Like an insect, their patterns are fixed and repetitive. They are almost incapable of original thought. Once you know them, you can always outwit them. With you will go my brother, Genner. He may be successful ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell

... bribery, John. This is a premium we are offering to get men to vote on this measure at all. That is going to be the great difficulty. Even if we get enough of them to sign the petition to hold the election, they may outwit us by remaining away from the polls. When men have employed every other argument to get their way with women, they cease to argue, back their ears, plant their fore feet, and balk. We shall cause it to be known ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris

... darkness, and hoped that I might outwit them by a bluff that I, also, had firearms. Unless I could outmanoeuvre them before daylight and join forces with Riggs I knew we had small chance against them in daylight, if, indeed, they had not already eliminated the captain from ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore

... I had tried my strength with him more than once already, and felt myself his equal in guile. Although he owed me a grudge and would certainly be upon his guard, I thought myself strong enough to face and outwit him. ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths

... calumny; the Spaniards were in great jeopardy, and they instinctively wished to destroy any feeling of welcome which the natives might have for the new-comers for fear it might operate against themselves at the supreme moment of danger. Indeed, each party—native and Spanish—was seeking to outwit the other; hence, when the Zamboanguenos were promised a supply of arms for the ostensible purpose of resisting invasion, they pretended to co-operate heartily with the Spaniards' defensive measures, with the secret design of dispossessing the Spaniards ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... of money. That obstacle confronted him at every turn and yet in spite of it, in spite of the doubts and fears which reason and caution together thrust into his mind, his determination to win, to outwit Sprudell, to make good his boast, grew stronger with every ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart

... Edgar Poe found the means to outwit her, and to transmit his effusions, without difficulty, to her fair charges, who with tresses primly parted and braided and meek eyes bent in evident absorption upon their books, were the very pictures of docile obedience, ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard

... task which he is unable to perform, you are rid of him for the future. But you must set about it very circumspectly, for he is not easy to outwit. The peasant of whom I told you wanted to get rid of his familiar, and ordered him to fill a barrel of water with a sieve. But the creature fetched and spilled water, and did not rest till the barrel was filled with the drops which hung ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby

... was ascending the rope. He was not so apprehensive when he came down again. The result of this repulse was much more decisive than Fred had supposed. The warriors seemed to suspect that they were throwing away time in attempting to outwit one who held such an immense advantage over them, and who was too wide-awake to permit them to steal a march ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne

... of a "Deer, Pig, and Plandok (Mouse-Deer)," see Roth, 1 : 346. In this tale, as well as in another from British North Borneo (Evans, 471-473, "The Plandok and the Gergasi"), it is the clever plandok who alone is able to outwit the giant. In the latter story there are seven animals,—carabao, ox, dog, stag, horse, mouse-deer, and barking-deer. The carabao and horse in turn try in vain to guard fish from the gergasi (a mythical giant ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler

... all that is possible to stop the payment of these cheques; but a clever villain might succeed in realising them one by one in different parts of the world, and thus outwit us." ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman

... strait By dogs of nose so delicate, Approach'd a gallows, where, A lesson to like passengers, Or clothed in feathers or in furs, Some badgers, owls, and foxes, pendent were. Their comrade, in his pressing need, Arranged himself among the dead. I seem to see old Hannibal Outwit some Roman general, And sit securely in his tent, The legions on some other scent. But certain dogs, kept back To tell the errors of the pack, Arriving where the traitor hung, A fault in fullest chorus sung. Though by their bark the welkin rung, ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine

... much accustomed to the intermeddling of the devil in all his affairs to be astonished at this new trace of his cloven claw, yet determined to outwit him, for he was sure there could be no comparison between his daughter and Marionetta in the mind of anyone who had a proper perception of the fact that seriousness and solemnity are the characteristics of wisdom. Therefore he set off to meet her in London, that he might lose ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various

... bolt from the blue' is of the greatest value in war. Surprise was the foundation of almost all the great strategical combinations of the past, as it will be of those to come. The first thought and the last of the great general is to outwit his adversary and to strike where he is least expected. To what Federal soldier did it occur on the {30} morning of Chancellorsville (May 2-8, 1863) that Lee, confronted by 90,000 Northerners, would detach Stonewall Jackson with more than ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous

... Proteus he must to Court on the morrow, instead of showing indignation or obstinate resolve to outwit tyranny, he generalizes in Shakespeare's way, exactly as Romeo and Orsino ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris

... so sure. She pretends perhaps. But we'll have a try. I think I can outwit her. She's ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald

... whom were said to be implicated in the late rebellion; he was the head of a community which was known to be split up into several sections, owing to acute religious disputes; and yet he contrived, at seventy-one years of age, to outwit the 60,000 Uitlanders at Johannesburg, and to present his rotten republic as a model of all that was excellent and high-minded to the world at large. At the same time he compelled his burghers to forget their own differences, as they hurled defiance ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson

... the baron will act what the franklin speaks. What! think you I see not the signs of the storm? Are Warwick and Montagu more safe with Edward than they were with Henry? Look to thyself! Charolois will outwit King Louis, and ere the year be out, the young Margaret of England will be lady of your ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... her hand between both his and pressed it sympathetically. "Poor lady. You have indeed suffered. Now listen to me, and I will tell you what I propose doing to outwit these infernal ruffians and restore to you your husband's ship. The heartless scoundrels, pirates, and murderers! They shall themselves work for your good. Joe, and you, Velo, come closer. These men, Mrs. Tracey, will ...
— Edward Barry - South Sea Pearler • Louis Becke

... a few stones to put in place on the top of the wondrous gateway. The giant was sure of his prize, and chuckled to himself as he went out with his horse to drag the remaining stones; for he did not know that the AEsir had guessed at last who he was, and that Loki was plotting to outwit him. Hardly had he gone to work when out of the wood came running a pretty little mare, who neighed to Svadilfoeri as if inviting the tired horse to leave his work and come to the green ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various

... trusty champion," said Edwy, "this is the first campaign thou hast ever returned from unsuccessful. Tell us, how did Dunstan outwit you?" ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... bald-headed man, denotes that sharpers are to make a deal adverse to your interests, but by keeping wide awake, you will outwit them. ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller

... reloading. Soon a rifle-barrel protruded from behind the tree. With his heart beating like a trip-hammer, and the skin tightening on his face, Joe screened his body as best he might. The tree was small, but it served as a partial protection. Rapidly he revolved in his mind plans to outwit the enemy. The Indian was behind a large oak with a low limb over which he could fire without exposing ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey

... her depression of the moment before. She had succeeded; she had helped the lawyer outwit his enemies; she must now return home to await Steele Weir's arrival, or if he failed in that then ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd

... here mention, lest the reader should not have perceived it, had a most inordinate opinion of his own abilities and acuteness. Like certain Yankees, he "conceited" it was necessary to rise before the sun to outwit him, and even then your chance was a poor one. He had been in hot water all his life, never out of difficulties and scrapes, once, as has been shown, kept from suicide by a mere accident, and was now reduced to the alternative of beggary or of marrying for a living. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various

... kicking! However, there's one thing in this Helmsley business that I'm glad of"—and his eyes twinkled—"I believe the Sorrels have lost their game! Positively, I think Miss Lucy has broken her line, and that the fish has gone without her hook in its mouth! Old as he is, David is not too old to outwit a woman! I gave him a hint, just the slightest hint in the world,—and I think he's taken it. Anyhow, he's gone,—booked for Southampton. And from Southampton a man can 'ship himself all aboard of a ship,' like Lord Bateman in the ballad, and go anywhere. Anywhere, yes!—but in this case ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli

... patient thought, the cool head, and, above all, the moral courage. In the second place, there are few schools where strategy may be learned, and, in any case, a long and laborious course of study is the only means of acquiring the capacity to handle armies and outwit an equal adversary. The light of common-sense alone is insufficient; nor will a few months' reading give more than ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... his best to cheer Elsie, telling her that everything was sure to come out all right, as the Indian could be trusted to outwit the desperadoes ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish

... power of serving me. Well! but that was not my design. If I cannot arraign my own conduct, why should I, like a woman or a child, sit down and lament the disappointment of chance? But can I acquit myself of all neglect? Did I not misbehave in putting it into the power of others to outwit me? But that is impossible to be avoided. In this a prig is more unhappy than any other: a cautious man may, in a crowd, preserve his own pockets by keeping his hands in them; but while the prig employs his hands in another's ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding

... Pillichody, applied to Chowles to find some one to personate a clergyman in a mock marriage, which your lordship wished to have performed, and promised a handsome reward for the service. Chowles mentioned the subject to me, and we speedily contrived a plan to outwit your lordship, and turn the affair to ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth

... pride, to have been able to outwit such a vigilant charmer! I am taller by half a yard in my imagination than I was. I look down upon every body now. Last night I was still more extravagant. I took off my hat, as I walked, to see if the lace were not scorched, supposing it had brushed down a star; and, before I put it on again, in ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... upon the exposure of the most powerful body of men in the world, I knew quite well what I was "up against," and deliberately decided that in the conduct of my fight I would use such strategy as I believed proper to outwit so strong and so unscrupulous an adversary. One can hang a dog as well with a cord as with a hawser, and in proving my assertions I am quite willing that the insurance companies should believe each play is my best card. I decline, ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... to Austria," said Gruner, smiling; "the cause of the fatherland demands it. Dangers will not deter me, and if the Austrian police are on the lookout for me—well, I have been myself a police-officer, and may outwit them. In the first place, however, I shall go to Leipsig, to have the second volume of Arndt's excellent work, 'The Spirit of the Times,' secretly printed, and cause a printing-office to be established on the ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach

... waste in abusing our enemy; the question was how to outwit him. I unfolded my plan to the signorina, not at all disguising from her the difficulties, and even dangers, attendant upon it. Whatever may have been her mind before and after, she was at this moment ...
— A Man of Mark • Anthony Hope

... Gama having received a hint that the natives were great rogues, resolved to outwit them by leading them to suppose the Portuguese to be so ignorant that they might easily be cheated, and thus greatly to desire their return to the country. He therefore directed the factor to receive any goods offered, and to pay whatever price ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith

... them. Take my word for it, sir, they'd not cheat the 'Hellenes' as they do the French and the English; and as the only true way to reform a nation is to make vice unprofitable, I'd unite them to a race that could outrogue and outwit them on every hand. What is it, I ask you, makes of the sluggish, indolent, careless Irishman, the prudent, hard-working, prosperous fellow you see him in the States? Simply the fact, that the craft by which he outwitted ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever

... of action." He does not pray. He acts. If he wishes for sun or wind or rain, "he summons his tribe, and dances a sun dance or a wind dance or a rain dance." If he wants bear's flesh to eat, he does not pray to his god for strength to outwit or to master the bear, but he rehearses his hunt in a bear dance. If he notices that two things occur one after the other, his untrained intellect at once jumps to the conclusion that one is the ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring

... that, at fixed periods, men should succeed each other by the instrumentality of death. We shall never outwit Nature; ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou

... "Whenever I pass she talks to Jimmy Reed on this side; but the moment she thinks I'm not looking, sir, she talks to Nelson on the other! Kilday," he went on, shaking his finger impressively, "that little girl is as slick as—a blame Yankee! But she'll not outwit me. I'm going right up ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice

... kindly of Mr. Lincoln. They were among the most eminent men of the time, I a boy of twenty-one; but to me war seemed a certainty. Recalling the episode, I have often realized how the intuitions of youth outwit the wisdom and baffle ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson

... She knew she never could learn all that long lesson in school hours, neither would she fail of having it for anything. What could she do? For some time she sat by the dying embers, with her dark face buried in her hands, revolving in her mind the best scheme by which to outwit ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes

... physician's invitation to cross his threshold, he had resolved to turn this silence to his own profit: he, whose inward boast was his stainless honor, had resolved to act a silent lie. Was it not fair to outwit the rogues with their own weapon? He had faded from human memory—let it be so. Was he to be cut off from this sudden joy of friendship with one of his blood and race, he whose soul was perishing with drought, though, ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... perilous ride? What man or pair of men could pierce that cordon of Indians lurking all around them and reach the beleaguered command? What need to speculate on the fate of the earlier couriers anyway? Only Indians could hope to outwit Indians in such a case. It was madness to expect white men to get through. It was madness for Blakely to attempt it. Yet Blakely was gone beyond recall, perhaps beyond redemption. From him, and from the detachment that was sent by Bridger to follow his trail, not a word had come of any ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King

... finds not me, she will find him, and endanger his ease. I must be there first. She must follow the paths, however they wind, because she is mounted on a heavy horse. I shall go through the brakes by ways that I know. I shall easily outwit ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett

... shabbiest things he can find. In all this the native displays the same craft and cunning which he is apt to practise in his dealings with the whites. He fears the power which the spirit has over him, yet he tries whether he cannot outwit the spirit ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... have an hour's start, or more, for they will take all that to search the under-cliff. And Maskew, too, will keep them in check a little, while they try to bring the life back to so good a man. But if we fall, why, we shall fall together, and outwit their cunning. So shut thy eyes, and keep them tight until I bid thee open them.' With that he caught me up again, and I shut my eyes firm, rebuking myself for my faint-heartedness, and not telling him how much my foot ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner

... we go? We have no other place but this. Let us wait here for death." So they spent hours in dancing and ceremonies to appease the angry gods. They have no favoring gods, only evil spirits which they must outwit or bribe with dances. The Peach Dance which we had gone to see was for the purpose of celebrating good crops of melons, corn, and other products and to implore the mercy of harmful powers during the ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith

... into sword-hilts, into scabbards, even into whole suits of armor, darkened, by precaution, to appear made entirely of iron. The brocades, laces, and jewelry of Antwerp merchants were converted into coats of mail for their destroyers. The goldsmiths, however, thus obtained an opportunity to outwit their plunderers, and mingled in the golden armor which they were forced to furnish much more alloy than their employers knew. A portion of the captured booty ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... seen our tent while out on one of their expeditions," he responded, softly. "I think they are going to attempt to take us by surprise, but by the aid of the Prophet we will outwit them." ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... now set themselves to work to outwit Mr Jolly, and rob him of Mademoiselle Nelina. At last they hit upon a device, which did not, indeed, say much for the ingenuity of the party, but which, like many other bold plans, ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne

... and Spain in the south, while Napoleon himself commanded the great army of invasion at Boulogne, within thirty miles of England. "Let us," said Napoleon, "be masters of the Channel for six hours and we shall be the masters of the world." But he knew that the only way to reach London was to outwit Nelson. ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood

... much. Jimmie and I led the way in a general shout of laughter, and then, as a happy family party, we adjourned to the single salon, where we grouped ourselves together, and, strive as they might, the officers could not outwit my sister nor ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell

... misfortune to him by the others, who administered consolation in a style worthy of the best of Job's friends. They reasoned, "Now, if you get well, you will only be hung. You had better try to die yourself, and thus you will outwit them." Wood, however, did not relish the counsel, and getting contrary, he recovered, "just for spite," as he often declared. He yet lives to laugh over the advice that his despairing associates ...
— Daring and Suffering: - A History of the Great Railroad Adventure • William Pittenger

... all fools!" the lady said,— "The way is just to shave his head. Run! bid the barber come anon." "Thanks, mother!" thought her clever son; "You help the knaves that would have bit me, But all creation sha'n't outwit me!" Thus to himself while to and fro His finger perseveres to go, And from his lips no accent flows But,—"Here she goes, and there she goes!" The barber came—"Lord help him! what A queerish customer I've got; But we must do our best to save him,— ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... license to indulge themselves. As for the attendants in the hospital, they were all political appointees, derelicts who had been unable to hold a job in the commercial world, and had sought an easy berth, like Peter himself. They took bribes, and were prepared to bribe Peter to outwit Mr. Doobman; Mr. Doobman, on the other hand, was prepared to reward Peter with many favors, if Peter would consent to bring him secret information. In such a situation it was possible for a man with his wits about him to accumulate ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair

... and his cousin up to town; and the result of their coming far outran our fondest anticipations. The Morris, like that magic beanstalk, seemed to outwit the laws of nature: we saw it in the heart of London rise up from its long sleep before our very eyes. In connection with this affair, the mention of that well-beloved fable is appropriate and irresistible. The first ...
— The Morris Book • Cecil J. Sharp

... protected and it took clever work to outwit them. Their machine gun nests were always cleverly concealed. Many of them were concealed in trees, and it was a common sight to see our infantrymen advance unseen by the machine gunners, and then with their rifles, shoot them out of the trees. I had seen ...
— In the Flash Ranging Service - Observations of an American Soldier During His Service - With the A.E.F. in France • Edward Alva Trueblood

... other hand, if Arabi should have left, possibly Naoum had done the same. The predicament in which he found himself was one of great danger. He did not mind facing death, but he felt that he would like to outwit Arden. ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld

... of his God to another people." God is the support of his persecuted ones. "His power in holding up some, his wrath in leaving of others; his making of shrubs to stand, and his suffering of cedars to fall; his infatuating of the counsels of men, and his making of the devil to outwit himself; his giving of his presence to his people, and his leaving of his foes in the dark; his discovering the uprightness of the hearts of his sanctified ones, and laying open the hypocrisy of others, is a working of spiritual wonders ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... not twenty-one years of age, smart enough to outwit the very shrewdest and wisest slave-holders of Virginia was very gratifying. The young men composing this arrival were ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... self-confidence Piang scorned to report Sicto to the authorities. He was clothed in a new dignity that put him far above considering such an unworthy opponent as Sicto and he silently cherished the hope that other opportunities to outwit the ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart

... and fear of losing all, I could not concentrate my mind upon the thinking out of any stratagem to outwit Alec if he came upon us, and I dared not interrupt Alb's task by imploring him to rack his brains. The thing for him to do, I told myself, was to keep ahead of "Wilhelmina" at any price, especially while we were in open water. Once we could gain the region of canals and narrow cross channels, ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson

... that we turn west and ride to Le Mans, then take a wide detour and enter Tours from the south side. It will take us a day longer, but that is of little consequence, and I think that we shall in that way entirely outwit them. The only precaution we shall have to take is to cross the main road on our right at some point remote from any town ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty

... there beside him, adhering to him, amalgamated with him, a creature from whom he might, perhaps, be unable to liberate himself, towards whom he might have to adopt some such stratagem as one uses to outwit a master or a malady. And yet, during this last moment in which he had felt that another, a fresh personality was thus conjoined with his own, life had seemed, somehow, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... the chain, and the log, then left them wholly exposed to view with the trap still unsprung, and passing on he treated over a dozen traps in the same fashion. Very soon I noticed that he stopped and turned aside as soon as he detected suspicious signs on the trail, and a new plan to outwit him at once suggested itself. I set the traps in the form of an H; that is, with a row of traps on each side of the trail, and one on the trail for the cross-bar of the H. Before long, I had an opportunity to count another failure. Lobo came trotting along the trail, and was fairly between the parallel ...
— Lobo, Rag and Vixen - Being The Personal Histories Of Lobo, Redruff, Raggylug & Vixen • Ernest Seton-Thompson

... and thorough knowers do not know that they are scientific, and can seldom give a reason for the faith that is in them. They believe themselves to be ignorant, uncultured men, nor can even the professors whom they sometimes outwit in their own professorial domain perceive that they have been outwitted by men of superior scientific attainments to their own. The following passage from Dr. Carpenter's "Mesmerism, Spiritualism," &c., may serve as ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler

... as your will is, Excellency," answered Selamlik Pasha, in a shaking voice; and he had time to wonder even then how an Englishman could so outwit an Oriental. It was no matter how Mustapha Bey, his son, was lured; he had been seized in the harem, and all truth can be forsworn in Egypt, and the game was with this ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... verbal kinships you must be prepared for slight variations in the form of the same key-syllable. Consider these words: wise, wiseacre, wisdom, wizard, witch, wit, unwitting, to wit, outwit, twit, witticism, witness, evidence, providence, invidious, advice, vision, visit, vista, visage, visualize, envisage, invisible, vis-a-vis, visor, revise, supervise, improvise, proviso, provision, view, review, survey, vie, envy, clairvoyance. Perhaps the last six should ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... was ordained as a scourge upon the pride of human wisdom, That the wisest of us all should thus outwit ourselves, and eternally forego our purposes in the ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne

... "If you can outwit our friends the Zephyrs you have reached a height of diplomacy indeed! I would not engage to do it myself. Take my word for it, ingenuity is always dangerous—silence is ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... to have thought the Burgoyne plan unwise, for he knew something about war, though frequently too indolent to put his knowledge into practice. This beautiful month of June he had his army down in New Jersey, watching for a chance to outwit Washington and seize Philadelphia. ...
— Rodney, the Ranger - With Daniel Morgan on Trail and Battlefield • John V. Lane

... whizzing globe happened to have turned its most civilized face away from the sun, thus producing night in Selwood Terrace, South Kensington. In No. 91 Selwood Terrace two lights, on the ground-floor and on the first-floor, were silently proving that man's ingenuity can outwit nature's. No. 91 was one of about ten thousand similar houses between South Kensington Station and North End Road. With its grimy stucco front, its cellar kitchen, its hundred stairs and steps, its perfect inconvenience, and its conscience heavy with the doing to death of sundry general ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett

... is undoubtedly often modified by intelligence, and intelligence is as often guided or prompted by instinct, but one need not hesitate long as to which side of the line any given act of man or beast belongs. When the fox resorts to various tricks to outwit and delay the hound (if he ever consciously does so), he exercises a kind of intelligence—the lower form of which we call cunning—and he is prompted to this by an instinct of self-preservation. When the birds set up a hue and cry about a hawk, or an owl, or boldly attack him, they ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks

... and coaxed and threatened, but the Hermit was firm. He told of his interest in the fox since the time he had found him, a furry cub, playing before the home den, and of how again and again he had watched him outwit his own dog. The hunter was at length won over and departed with his hounds, even going so far as to promise to hunt outside of Silver Spot's ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer

... who knows now," she went on, with increasing excitement; "I have been humiliated to the lowest degree, and I shall glory in telling you how a woman has managed to outwit keen business men, sharp detectives, and clever police. In the first place, those crescents were presented to me at the time of my marriage. They are, as you have doubtless observed, wonderful jewels—as nearly flawless as it is possible ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... to MY woman! Do MEN lie? Would a MAN use his five and thirty years' experience to outwit a girl of seventeen? Man to my woman indeed! That ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells

... footsteps will be marked with blood down to old age—the blood of the poor natives—unless a special interposition of Divine Providence prevent such a calamity. The emigrants will be eager in the acquisition of wealth, ease and power; and, having superior skill and discernment in trade, they will outwit and defraud the natives as often as occasion permits. This knavish treatment once detected,—as it surely will be, for even an uncivilized people may soon learn that they have been cheated,—will provoke retaliation, and stir up the worst passions of the human breast. Bloody conflicts will ensue, ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison

... fairy, and was sure she could outwit the man, even if he were so strong, and had every sort of iron everywhere in order to keep her as it were in a prison. So, pretending she loved him dearly, she said: "I will not be your wife, but, if you can find out my name, I shall gladly become ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis

... was again seated on the driving-phaeton which he had brought that day, Lord Mountclere looked gleeful, and shrewd enough in his own opinion to outwit Mephistopheles. As soon as they were ascending a hill, and he could find time to free his hand, he pulled off his glove, and drawing from his pocket a programme of the Melchester concert referred to, contemplated therein the name of one of the intended performers. The name was that of Mr. C. Julian. ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy

... cautiously for now he knew that in the strange country danger lurked—danger of a kind unknown to him and of a subtle quality. If the creatures whose footprints he had seen and with whose scent the border of the marsh was redolent could outwit the wary birds that had always eluded him, what surprise might not they hold in store ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller

... may be he has the ambition to be considered a Talleyrand or Metternich of diplomacy. But if any, he has some very, very faint similarity with Alberoni. He easily outwits here men around him; most are politicians as he; but he never can outwit the statesmen of Europe. Besides, diplomacy, above all that of great powers, is conceived largely and carried on a grand scale; the present diplomacy has outgrown what is commonly called (but fallaciously) ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski

... not confine myself to any one line of goods, but handled any thing capable of being turned into money quickly. In some instances I had to resort to extreme subterfuge to outwit the authorities. On one occasion I purchased a consignment of silk Union Jacks for wearing in the lapel of the coat. I knew full well that if I placed these on sale in my shop the stern hand of authority would swoop down swiftly ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney

... his own eyes. According to such stories they are all landed at Ostend and are being hurried across the country through Malines. Another story is that they have been shipped through to Liege in closed freight cars to outwit German spies, and that they are now in the thick of it. According to still another of these confidential fellows, they have been shipped through Brussels itself in the night and we were unaware when they passed under our very windows. You can choose any story you ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson

... Professor Henderson to have his plans upset in this fashion. Nor did he care to give a detailed description of his ship to officers of the war department. He had many valuable inventions that were not patented. So he determined to outwit the ...
— Under the Ocean to the South Pole - The Strange Cruise of the Submarine Wonder • Roy Rockwood

... this particular sonnet to Nicoletta. What would Nicoletta have said? Pooh, what nonsense it was, what arrant nonsense in a man who could carry a sword, if he chose, and kill his enemies, or, better still, with his head outwit them—that he should turn to pens and ink and to fogging a poor girl! So Selvaggia, not so Ugolino. He got up and whispered to the scowling Ridolfo; Ridolfo nodded, and the pair of ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... easy to outwit him! Sharp is the outlook of those pin-head eyes; Still, he is mortal and a shot may hit him, One cannot always miss him if ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... young lady," said he; "you have outwitted your director. That may be my fault as much as yours; so I advise you to provide yourself with another director, whom you will be unable, or unwilling, to outwit." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various

... had discovered her hiding- place, or, worse still, perhaps Kate Rider had seen her at the factory and was writing for Tommy. Lovey Mary crushed the letter in her hand; she would not give it to Miss Hazy. She would outwit Kate again. ...
— Lovey Mary • Alice Hegan Rice

... that, before he pass into your hands, I may by your leave and in your presence say a few words to your wife so privately that I may be heard by her alone." Thinking at once to gratify his cupidity and to outwit Zima, the knight answered that he was content that it should be even as Zima wished. Then, leaving him in the hall of the palace, he went to his lady's chamber, and told her the easy terms on which he might acquire the palfrey, bidding her give Zima his audience, but on no account to vouchsafe ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio

... a matter of taste. His point of view was the abnormal one of the professional law-breaker: the world was his legitimate prey; the business of his life was to do as he pleased and keep his liberty; to outwit sheriffs and make a clean get-away. To be known among his kind as "game" and "slick," was the only distinction he craved. His chiefest ambition had been to live up to his title of "Bad Man." In this he had found ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart

... clever; the most insignificant citizen's wife can outwit an old diplomat. What science they display under the most trying and peculiar circumstances! What profound combination in their plans of vengeance! What prudence in their malice! What patience in their cruelty! It is dreadful! I will visit ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin

... required to set these traps so that they would do their work. The beaver is highly intelligent, and quick to detect the signs of man's presence. Nothing can tempt him to venture where he sees that his worst enemy has been before him. The fox is the synonym of cunning, and will often outwit the shrewdest trapper. He will walk around the trap and stealthily secure the bait without harm to himself. One of those animals has been known to reach forward and spring the implement, jerking back his paw quickly enough to escape the sharp teeth. A fox, too, when ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis

... to England, contemporaneous writers and brother officers mercilessly criticised Loudoun "whom a child might outwit, or terrify ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head

... Him. If His trusted subordinates in being given a free hand played Him false, they naturally played each other false, and played false to themselves first of all. Where one was afraid of another and strove to outwit him there was ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King

... find what the golden snare stood for. There he would discover the mystery and the tragedy of it, if it meant anything at all. He appreciated the extreme hazard of following Bram to his long hidden retreat. The man he might outwit in pursuit and overcome in fair fight, if it came to a fight, but against the pack he was fighting ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood

... its charity; The sea tosses and foams to find Its way up to the cloud and wind; The shadow sits close to the flying ball; The date fails not on the palm-tree tall; And thou,—go burn thy wormy pages,— Shalt outsee seers, and outwit sages. Oft didst thou thread the woods in vain To find what bird had piped the strain:— Seek not, and the little eremite Flies gayly forth ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... feelings, princess, I hope to be able to procure you access to him. We must act as generals do in the field, and try to outwit the enemy—we must deprive the emperor of the possibility of avoiding an audience. After his return from Charlottenburg and when once in his rooms, all will be in vain; he will admit no one, and close his ears against all supplications of mine. Hence you must meet ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach

... but trust Cap'n Bonnet to outwit him," said Joe Hawkridge, who stood at the brig's rail ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine

... devilish clearness and deliberation, "you should really know me better by this time than to think you could outwit me so easily. Is my reputation after all so small? And, while I think of it, pray let me have the pleasure of returning to you your five pound note and your letters. Your mice were perfect messengers, ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby

... kings," declared that he would never accept the "iron collar" offered him by revolution "of an Imperial crown unblessed by God." Bismarck started with the immeasurable advantage that his side was the strongest. Cavour had to solve the problem of how a state of five millions could outwit an empire of thirty-seven millions. All along, the German population of Prussia was far more numerous than that of Austria, and she had allies that cost her nothing. Napoleon, as Cavour pointed out, fought ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco

... machines to their souls, like telephones and wireless telegraph, or to their bodies, like radium and railroads, and who know when and when not and how and how not to use them who are so used to using machines quietly and powerfully, that they do not let the machines outwit ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee

... it and turned it loose to graze. Then he sat down in the shade of a tree, while the others still held guard over the narrow pass. He had made up his mind that he would not offer them money. He would watch his chance to outwit them, he would match his intelligence against their cunning, his patience against their brute force. It would be worth a week's captivity to turn the tables on these two rogues and get back to civilization in time to set at work the police machinery ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly

... against what, if not against the Revolution? And how could the ministers and ambassadors of the Revolution have been ignorant of its existence? Why had they concealed from the nation their knowledge, if they had known it? There was, then, a double diplomacy, each striving to outwit the other. The Austrian Alliance was, then, no dream of faction; there was either incompetence or treason in official diplomacy, perhaps both. A projected congress was spoken of—could it have any other object than that of imposing modifications on the constitution of France?—And ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine

... thought of Peter's narrow face. "Weak but obstinate," he muttered to himself. "Shrewd, suspicious eyes, but a receding chin. What chance would the boy have against a man? A man with strength to oppose him, and brains to outwit him. None, save for the one undoubted fact—the boy holds his mother's heart in the hollow of ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture

... I marry out of gratitude? Why should I marry one man, when I love another? What does it matter his being dead? I love him too well to be wife to any living man. They persuade me, they coax me, they pull me, they push me. I see they will make me. But I will outwit them. See—see!" and she held up a little phial in the moonlight. "This shall cut the knot for me; this shall keep me true to my Christie, and save me from breaking promises I ought never ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade

... ulterior motive; that it was in the hope of escaping with the machine himself by night that he refused to admit that Usanga was entirely capable of handling it alone and therefore in no further need of help or instruction, and so in the mind of the black there formed a determination to outwit the white man. The lure of the twenty-four seductive wives proved in itself a sufficient incentive and there, too, was added his desire for the white girl whom he had long since ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... just struck me, sir," confessed the young motor boat skipper, "that, if Dalton has the slightest suspicion of what we've done to outwit him, he's just the man who will be desperate enough to put his whole set of papers in at the nearest cable office for ...
— The Motor Boat Club and The Wireless - The Dot, Dash and Dare Cruise • H. Irving Hancock

... are so strong and so wise that it is a real pleasure to any poor weak woman to outwit you." And Lady Amelie shot him a glance from her beautiful eyes that made the colonel again half ...
— The Coquette's Victim • Charlotte M. Braeme

... in promise, virilely to replace a mother: is not the Church the mother of orphans? The pupil was responsive to so much care. The worthy priest died in 1812, a bishop, with the satisfaction of having left in this world a child whose heart and mind were so well moulded that he could outwit a man of forty. Who would have expected to have found a heart of bronze, a brain of steel, beneath external traits as seductive as ever the old painters, those naive artists, had given to the serpent in the terrestrial paradise? Nor was that all. In addition, the good-natured prelate had ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac

... something in the very nature of the work of a lawyer which appears to make him cynical and to want to wear a know-it-all look. Most lawyers are little more than sharper crooks than the crooks they have to deal with. They're always trying to get in on some case or other where they have to outwit the law, save some one from getting what he justly deserves, and then they are supposed to be honest and high-minded! Think of it! To judge by some of the specimens I get up here," and then some lawyer ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser

... have borrowed money at the East on bond and mortgage, who probably make as near an approach to a debtor class as any other body or persons in the community, and whom Congressional demagogues probably hoped to serve by enabling them to outwit their creditors, even these are not simply or mainly debtors. Any man who is carrying on his business with borrowed money, on which he pays eight or ten per cent., must be every week putting other people in debt to him or he would speedily be ruined. The means of paying ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin

... merriest rivalry was that which developed between Ed Higgins, the Beau Brummel of Tinkletown, and 'Rast Little, whose father owned the biggest farm in Bramble County. If she was amused by the frantic efforts of each suitor to outwit the other she was too tactful to display her emotion. Perhaps she was more highly entertained by the manner in which Tinkletown femininity paired ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon

... stronghold and effectively occupy the surrounding country, we should stay there and after a protest or two the French would have to acquiesce. As it happened, he bungled the business, and, worst of all, had to be extricated by the people he meant to outwit. They led him politely but very firmly across the frontier, and now it's our part to express our regret and promise to ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss

... it has not been an ambush sent to outwit and overpower our men!" he said. "What would those raw lads from New Jersey do if suddenly confronted by a crew of yelling Indians? I trust I am no coward myself, but the sound of that awful war whoop thrills me still with a kind of horror; it has been the forerunner of many a tragedy to the ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green

... and Bart made no scruple about expressing their wonder as to how it was that the Beaver had managed to escape; but the interpreter and his fellows hazarded no conjecture whatever. They took it for granted that their clever chief would be sure to outwit the Apaches, and so it ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn

... I'm sure," returned the broker; "but I can imagine that we seemed three pretty determined giants for one small girl to outwit." ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham

... be but one answer to that question. She must contrive in some way to outwit her enemies—she must escape—must fly to some place where they would never be able to ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele

... pardoned; and when they quarrelled it was not to be expected the son would relinquish the traits so paternally bestowed. Now the parent is obstinate and the son 'cute; but the son has an eccentricity that prompts him to outwit. Not unfrequently the father lets the son—just for peace sake—have his own way; but this letting him have his own way has inclined his heart rather to the ungrateful than otherwise. His demands are at times somewhat funny, and when made known surprise a world. And ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton

... precautions with less fortunate results. When he said that he was "looking out for that" it meant, in his case, that he had so thoroughly organized his men—and he was not the only brigadier who had, he was a type—in view of every emergency in "cleaning up" that the Germans did not outwit them. The half which reached the German trench had the situation fully in hand and details for the dugouts assigned before they went on. And they did go on. ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer

... mountains, often alone and at night, trusting to his skill in springing from rock to rock in his rubber-soled shoes to save him from their pursuit. There was a brain quality in his bravery which is rare among our officers. Full of veld craft and resource, it was as difficult to outwit as it was to outfight him. But there was another curious side to his complex nature. The French have said of one of their heroes, 'Il avait cette graine de folie dans sa bravoure que les Francais aiment,' and the words might have been written of Powell. An impish ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle

... a letter to the Rev. Dr. Tisdall, of Dec. 16, 1703, Swift said: "I'll teach you a way to outwit Mrs. Johnson: it is a new-fashioned way of being witty, and they call it a bite. You must ask a bantering question, or tell some damned lie in a serious manner, and then she will answer or speak as if you were in earnest; and then ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift

... risk something, O my cautious philosopher! Nobody but Thistles is about just then, and I think we can outwit Thistles. I'll bring the half-sovereign to school with me to-morrow, and you can take it to Parker's, in case it's wanted. I'm afraid you'll find ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil

... think over these things, was beginning to believe that, after all, her obduracy was not likely to be of much service to her. Would it not be wiser to treat with the enemy—perhaps to outwit him by a show of forgiveness? Here they were approaching the end of the voyage—at least, Christina seemed to intimate as much; and if they were not exactly within call of friends, they would surely be within rowing distance of some inhabited ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black

... to the clever band of rascals who followed the show for evil purposes, and who, with perfect integrity, kept the proprietor advised of every step taken and of every disguise affected. Blake was not the first nor the last confident officer of the law to more than meet his match in the effort to outwit an old-time road circus. He was butting his head against a stone wall. Consummate rascality on one hand, unwavering loyalty on the other: he had but little chance against the combination. The lowliest peanut-vender ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon

... frequently close at his heels. He had been ever on the move, both for reasons of safety and as a matter of taste. His point of view was the abnormal one of the professional law-breaker: the world was his legitimate prey; the business of his life was to do as he pleased and keep his liberty; to outwit sheriffs and make a clean get-away. To be known among his kind as "game" and "slick," was the only distinction he craved. His chiefest ambition had been to live up to his title of "Bad Man." In this he had ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart

... in the afternoon when they started, Dick riding behind the old hunter. He felt that he could tell Slim Jim about their mission, and he mentioned how the Baxters were watching them and trying to outwit them. ...
— The Rover Boys out West • Arthur M. Winfield

... then!" cried Ruth. "Let's see if we can outwit them. We've got a chance for liberty, my dear. ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson

... force has left the bodily structure, we need expect no more marked changes there, and has gone to brain. So this feeblest of all the animals physically speaking he would be no match for a hundred different kinds of animals that are about us is able to outwit them all, that is, to outknow, he has become the ruler of the earth. And not only has this evolutionary force gone to brain, it has gone to heart; and man has become a being whose primest characteristic is love. The one ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage

... must outwit that maid. When the child is gone, Marie's power ceases. No one will ever believe her. A few thousand francs extra will ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage

... tired!' And thus the trips went merrily enough at times and besides I learned to know in Bill Nye a man blessed with as noble and heroic a heart as ever beat. But the making of trains, which were all in conspiracy to outwit me, schedule or no schedule, and the rush and tyrannical pressure of inviolable engagements, some hundred to a season and from Boston to San Francisco, were a distress to my soul. I am glad that's over with. Imagine yourself on a crowded day-long excursion; imagine that you had to ride all the ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley

... are clever; the most insignificant citizen's wife can outwit an old diplomat. What science they display under the most trying and peculiar circumstances! What profound combination in their plans of vengeance! What prudence in their malice! What patience in their cruelty! It is dreadful! I will visit you when you ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin

... adamant; but he, too, through all his embarrassment, showed no sign of yielding; and when at last he left her nothing had been decided—the whole formation of the Government was hanging in the wind. A frenzy of excitement now seized upon Victoria. Sir Robert, she believed in her fury, had tried to outwit her, to take her friends from her, to impose his will upon her own; but that was not all: she had suddenly perceived, while the poor man was moving so uneasily before her, the one thing that she was desperately longing for—a loop-hole of escape. She seized a pen and dashed ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey

... his pale lashes a dozen times in rapid succession, 'the boy who thinks he can outwit his dear master is an egotist, and egotism, Peterson, is the thing which keeps us from profiting by the experiences ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson

... imagination, the power of patient thought, the cool head, and, above all, the moral courage. In the second place, there are few schools where strategy may be learned, and, in any case, a long and laborious course of study is the only means of acquiring the capacity to handle armies and outwit an equal adversary. The light of common-sense alone is insufficient; nor will a few months' reading give more ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... that I had to do entirely with him. I had tried my strength with him more than once already, and felt myself his equal in guile. Although he owed me a grudge and would certainly be upon his guard, I thought myself strong enough to face and outwit him. ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths

... laws; but within two years the stream of free-State immigration had become so powerful,in spite of murder, outrage, and open civil war, that it was very evident that Kansas was to be a free-State. Its expiring territorial legislature endeavored to outwit its constituents by applying for admission as a slave State, under the Lecompton constitution; but the Douglas Democrats could not support the attempt, and it was defeated. Kansas, however, remained a territory ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various

... day he met Ku-mi'-a-poets, the tarantula. Now this knowing personage had heard of the fame of Ta-vwots', and determined to outwit him. He was possessed of a club with such properties that, although it was a deadly weapon when used against others, it could not be made to hurt himself, though wielded ...
— Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians • John Wesley Powell

... laughter, and Steve was greatly puzzled at this new phase of civilization. Mrs. Colton finally explained that for a few Sundays past Raymond had been carrying off everything there was to eat in the house, and having "spreads" in the barn with his chums. This time they determined to outwit him. ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins

... he murmured, "but there is no use wasting shot or thrust upon him, he won't survive that blow. As for you, sir," looking at the paralyzed ensign, lying bound upon the floor, "you thought you could outwit the old buccaneer, eh? You shall see. I dealt with men when you were a babe in arms, and a babe in arms you are ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... changing winds ere long he's driven Sideways from the course he had intended, And he feigns as though he would surrender, While he gently striveth to outwit them, ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe

... these traps so that they would do their work. The beaver is highly intelligent, and quick to detect the signs of man's presence. Nothing can tempt him to venture where he sees that his worst enemy has been before him. The fox is the synonym of cunning, and will often outwit the shrewdest trapper. He will walk around the trap and stealthily secure the bait without harm to himself. One of those animals has been known to reach forward and spring the implement, jerking back his paw quickly enough to escape the sharp teeth. A fox, ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis

... enough to outwit him anywhere and he would always be master; that is another point scored. Then he might make some moves through her that would ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... on the more open aspen slopes across the valley. After deliberating a moment, Wade decided that he must risk being caught trailing Belllounds. But he would go slowly, trusting to eye and ear, to outwit this strangely acting foreman ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey

... is off with Pawnee Brown, too. Rasco and Brown have been looking over the trails leading to Oklahoma. They are bound to outwit the United States cavalry, for the boomers have more right to that land than the cattle kings, and right is ...
— The Boy Land Boomer - Dick Arbuckle's Adventures in Oklahoma • Ralph Bonehill

... could hear no sound but the I drumming of the blood against the walls of my head. I got back into bed and pulled the bedclothes about my chilled body. It seemed that life would not fight fair, and being only a little boy and not wise like the grown-up people, I could find no way in which to outwit it. ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton

... scouting adventures, had learned to outwit these bloodhounds, and used his skill in eluding escape, during another expedition of the same kind. He was sent with Captain Metcalf's company far up the Combahee River to cut the telegraphic wires and intercept ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... and neither sufficiently recognising Him. If His trusted subordinates in being given a free hand played Him false, they naturally played each other false, and played false to themselves first of all. Where one was afraid of another and strove to outwit him there was treachery against ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King

... hunter to place himself directly in the way of the Apache whom he knew to be the most treacherous kind of an enemy. His purpose was to indulge in a little strategy and to seek to outwit the redskin, as he had done on many an occasion before. It required but a second for him to slide his rifle over upon his back, the stock being hastily wrapped with a leathern sheath, which he always ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne

... parents has ever led so free and happy a life as he. In those days, there was peace between the animals and the Boy Man. Sometimes they challenged him to friendly contests, whereupon He-who-was-first-Created taught his little brother how to outwit them by clever tricks and devices. This he was often able to do; but not always; for sometimes the animals by their greater ...
— Wigwam Evenings - Sioux Folk Tales Retold • Charles Alexander Eastman and Elaine Goodale Eastman

... Rip boards the space ship Scorpius there is a thrill a minute. He and his nine daring Planeteers must cope with the merciless hazing of the spacemen commanding the ship, and they must outwit the desperate Connies, who threaten to plunge all of space into war. There are a thousand dangers to be faced in high vacuum—and all of this while carrying out an assignment that will take every ...
— Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet • Blake Savage

... man was a German spy seeking gun sites, and secretly vowed to "stalk" him. From that moment, had the stranger known it, he was as good as dead. For a boy scout with badges on his sleeve for "stalking" and "path-finding," not to boast of others for "gardening" and "cooking," can outwit any spy. Even had, General Baden-Powell remained in Mafeking and not invented the boy scout, Jimmie Sniffen would have been one. Because, by birth he was a boy, and by inheritance, a scout. In Westchester County the Sniffens are one of the county families. If it isn't a Sarles, ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis

... or even a crime to be alive for a certain span of time,—whereas if you simply shook off such unnecessary attentions and went your own way, taking freely of the constant output of life and energy supplied to you by Nature, you would outwit all these croakers of feebleness and decay and renew your vital forces to the end. But to do this you must have a constant aim in life and a ruling passion.' As I told you, I laughed at him and at what I called his 'folly,' but now—well, now—it's a case of 'let those laugh ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli

... is attended with great difficulty, as the bird possesses wonderful cunning, and often contrives to outwit the most skillful hunter. With laughable dignity it measures the ground between itself and its pursuer, and takes very good care not to exhaust itself by too rapid flight. If the hunter moves slowly, the bird at once adopts an equally easy pace, but if the ...
— Harper's Young People, May 11, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... good scholar in college, not so much by hard study as by skilful veneering, and had taken great pains to stand well with the Faculty, at least one of whom, Byles Gridley, A. M., had watched him with no little interest as a man with a promising future, provided he were not so astute as to outwit and overreach himself in his excess of contrivance. His classmates could not help liking him; as to loving him, none of them would have thought of that. He was so shrewd, so keen, so full of practical sense, and so good-humored ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... upper hand, gain the ascendancy, gain the whip hand, gain the start of; distance; surpass &c (superiority) 33. defeat, conquer, vanquish, discomfit; euchre; overcome, overthrow, overpower, overmaster, overmatch, overset^, override, overreach; outwit, outdo, outflank, outmaneuver, outgeneral, outvote; take the wind out of one's adversary's sails; beat, beat hollow; rout, lick, drub, floor, worst; put down, put to flight, put to the rout, put hors de combat [Fr.], put out of court. silence, quell, nonsuit^, checkmate, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... women!" exclaimed Bonaparte, smiling. "They are born sophists, and I believe they would be able to outwit the devil himself! Well, I will comply with your request; take the letter and read ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach

... the exposure of the most powerful body of men in the world, I knew quite well what I was "up against," and deliberately decided that in the conduct of my fight I would use such strategy as I believed proper to outwit so strong and so unscrupulous an adversary. One can hang a dog as well with a cord as with a hawser, and in proving my assertions I am quite willing that the insurance companies should believe each play is my best card. I decline, ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... design. If I cannot arraign my own conduct, why should I, like a woman or a child, sit down and lament the disappointment of chance? But can I acquit myself of all neglect? Did I not misbehave in putting it into the power of others to outwit me? But that is impossible to be avoided. In this a prig is more unhappy than any other: a cautious man may, in a crowd, preserve his own pockets by keeping his hands in them; but while the prig employs his hands in another's pocket, how shall he be able to defend his own? Indeed, in ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding

... but Sullivan and Bartlett were nevertheless strong men and thoroughly prepared. Sullivan was a good lawyer and a fluent and ready speaker, with great power of illustration. Bartlett was a shrewd, hard-headed man, very keen and incisive, and one whom it was impossible to outwit or deceive. He indulged, in his argument, in some severe reflections upon Mr. Webster's conduct toward Wheelock, which so much incensed Mr. Webster that he referred to Mr. Bartlett's argument in a most contemptuous way, and strenuously ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge

... up and strode purposefully into the bathroom. He smiled crookedly at his own reflection in the mirror. It was damnably difficult for a President to outwit his ...
— Hail to the Chief • Gordon Randall Garrett

... from obstinacy, and partly because the child was so handsome, wished to keep her, and teach her to perform with the poodle in the streets. But all the while she had an inward feeling that Perrin would outwit her, and get his own way. And this turned out ...
— A Pair of Clogs • Amy Walton

... officer, "but I can't spare another. You three, with the dog, will be enough. Rawbon's as good a man as you can get, captain. Set a thief to catch a thief, and a Yankee to outwit a Yankee. You'd better start at once, unless you need rest ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood

... grew fainter and finally disappeared around a bend, Marta emitted a peculiar, squeaky little laugh. It sounded to her as if her own ghost—the ghost of her former self—were laughing in satire. There was a devilish, mischievous joy in battling to outwit Bouchard more than in her deceit of Westerling. Satire, yes—needle-pointed, acid-tipped! Melodrama done in burlesque, too. In the name of the noble art of war, a bit of fooling about ghosts in a tunnel might influence the fate of armies that were the last word ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer

... stock, who are the only people in Europe with craft and subtlety to rule them. Take my word for it, sir, they'd not cheat the 'Hellenes' as they do the French and the English; and as the only true way to reform a nation is to make vice unprofitable, I'd unite them to a race that could outrogue and outwit them on every hand. What is it, I ask you, makes of the sluggish, indolent, careless Irishman, the prudent, hard-working, prosperous fellow you see him in the States? Simply the fact, that the craft by ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever

... It was characteristic of Richard Barrington that he had formed no plan when he entered the room. He believed that actions must always be controlled by the circumstances of the moment, that it was generally essential to see one's enemy before deciding how to outwit him, a false theory perhaps, but, given a strong personality, one ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner

... confuse and outwit the swindler occurred to our hero. He was intent on locating the brief item he remembered having seen in the newspaper. He wanted to act on his plan before the stranger returned. Frank's eye ran over column after column, ...
— The Boys of Bellwood School • Frank V. Webster

... his letters dealt with the ordinary affairs of men. People wrote to inquire about their matrimonial affairs, their quarrels, their business difficulties, whether they must conform to this or that enactment of the State, how they might outwit the persecutors and skulk behind the law. Muggleton replies with surprising shrewdness and good sense, and now and then exhibits a familiarity with the quips and quirks of the law that he can only have acquired by the necessity ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp

... saying, he motioned courteously towards the cabin stairs. The Spaniard looked in the seaman's face, and read in its decided expression, and in the slight smile of intelligence that played upon it, that he must not hope either to resist or outwit his polite but peremptory entertainer. So, making a virtue of necessity, he descended ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various

... chief of the night; Woodpecker, with his ceaseless tattoo on the trees, is chief of the trees; Duck is chief of the water; but Eagle is chief of the day. It is always Eagle who is chief of the birds, even though Wren may outwit him in a tale told by the fire glimmering in the tepee, when the story tellers of the tribe tell of the happenings in the days "way beyond." It is Eagle who inspires admiration, and becomes the most ...
— Myths and Legends of the Great Plains • Unknown

... by the mouth of his angel Sleep. Thrice has Allah spoken in dreams, telling him who is merciful, that through your daughter and her nobleness alone can countless lives be saved; therefore, sooner than she should escape him, he would lose even the half of all his empire. Outwit us, defeat us now, capture us, cause us to be tortured and destroyed, and other messengers would come to do his bidding— indeed, they are already on the way. Moreover, it is useless to shed more blood, seeing it is written in the Books that this lady, Rose of the World, must return ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard

... poking and pulling at each other in a manner which foretold the beginning of war. Clemence and Vie were gazing sentimentally through the branches. Plain Hannah, stretched flat along the ground, was barricading the movements of a tiny beetle, and chuckling over its persistent efforts to outwit her schemes. Dan sat with arms clasped around his knees, a picture of patience on a monument. The sight of his twisted lips, his tilted, disconsolate chin fired Darsie to action. It was her doing that he was here at all; ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... believe," said his father; "but we shall not be wiser unless we can outwit him. He will not do what ...
— Our Nig • Harriet E. Wilson

... twenty-one years of age, smart enough to outwit the very shrewdest and wisest slave-holders of Virginia was very gratifying. The young men composing this arrival ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... aid to any one who might follow, the half-breed quietly turned back and, after picking it up, informed her that he would kill her if she tried any more such tricks. Realizing the folly of any further attempts to outwit the half-breed, Helen rode silently on. Not once did McFann strike across a ridge. Imprisoning slopes seemed to be shutting them in without surcease, and Helen looked in vain for ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman

... of the house of Oakley. To-day, they agreed that the quicker the pair took up their abode beneath its hospitable roof, the sooner they, Mr. Davlin and his accomplice, would breathe freely. If they could get the two in the same house with themselves, they might yet outwit Mr. Percy—with the aid of their friend and ally, the sham doctor, if in no other way. Meantime, they would not make the robbery known; or rather, they would inform the servants and all others whom it seemed desirable to enlighten, ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch

... into my mind. I would crawl into camp and free Dick. Not only would I outwit the lumber thieves, but also make Dick think well of me. What would Jim Williams say of a trick like that? The thought of the Texan banished what little hesitation I felt. Glancing round the bright circle, I made ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey

... I did undertake. Here my Lady did begin to talk of what she had heard concerning Creed, of his being suspected to be a fanatique and a false fellow. I told her I thought he was as shrewd and cunning a man as any in England, and one that I would feare first should outwit me in any thing. To which she readily concurred. Thence to Mr. Povy's by agreement, and there with Mr. Sherwin, Auditor Beale, and Creed and I hard at it very late about Mr. Povy's accounts, but such accounts I never did see, or ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... Socratic father in argument. And outwit my sister Louisa in diplomacy—vide our poor, dear Dickie Calmady's broken engagement, and the ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... now coming here through the corridor with his generals; they hope to surprise you in your lover's arms, that they may have an excuse for deposing you from the regency and substituting your husband. Struggle against struggle! We will outwit them, and cure your husband of his jealousy! From this hour he shall be compelled to acknowledge that he was mistaken, and that it is for him to implore your pardon. Anna Leopoldowna, I love no one ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach

... still very weak, and for a moment it seemed as if her trembling limbs would not support her, but the determination to outwit her haughty sister had taken possession of her, and she was bound to accomplish ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... outwit me after all?" he cried out, rising suddenly in bed, and clasping his hands behind his head to give him a few more gasps of breath. "I knew he was cunning, but I thought I was his match. It must have been Byles Gridley,—nobody else. And so the old man beat me after all, and saved you from ruin! ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various

... he sadly mismanaged his own private affairs, that the King's expenditure was not managed soberly and wisely. Nor was it Bacon's fault, as far as advice went, that James was always trying either to evade or to outwit a Parliament which he could not, like the Tudors, overawe. Bacon's uniform counsel had been—Look on a Parliament as a certain necessity, but not only as a necessity, as also a unique and most precious means for uniting the Crown with the nation, and proving to the world outside how Englishmen love ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church

... gripped his brother's hand and the boys at once set about their preparations to outwit their treacherous enemy. In the midst of their bustle an interruption as utterly unexpected as it was for a ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... said his chum, heartily. "But we must be prepared to take some risks. We can't fight that crowd in the open, they are too many for us. We'll have to outwit them and put the Indians on their guard without letting the convicts suspect that we have had a finger in the pie. It would be an easy trick to turn if it were not for that renegade Indian with them. I guess there isn't anything much that escapes ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... patriarch was the master, the tyrant ruler of the group, who, doubtless, often was brutal enough. But the women, leading an independent life to some extent, and with their mental ingenuity developed by the conditions of their life, would learn, I believe, to outwit their master by passive united resistance. They would come to utilise their sex charms as an accessory of success. Thus the unceasing sexual preoccupation of the male, with the emotional dependence it entailed on the females, ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... showing itself above such a portly corporation and huge limbs, gave him an unnatural appearance ludicrous in the extreme. He told me he had stowed away the remainder of his property where it would puzzle the privateersmen to find it, and chuckled over the ingenuity by which he expected to outwit the rascals. ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper

... way to outwit Mrs. Johnson; it is a new fashioned way of being witty, and they call it a Bite. You must ask a bantering question, or tell some lie in a serious manner, then she will answer, or speak as if you were in earnest, and then cry you, "Madam, there's a Bite." ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... Wellesly replied, dismounting. He unsaddled his horse, hobbled it and turned it loose to graze. Then he sat down in the shade of a tree, while the others still held guard over the narrow pass. He had made up his mind that he would not offer them money. He would watch his chance to outwit them, he would match his intelligence against their cunning, his patience against their brute force. It would be worth a week's captivity to turn the tables on these two rogues and get back to civilization in time to set ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly

... did not see that he was trying to outwit him, and agreed. So the crab caught hold of his neck with his claws as securely as with a pair of blacksmith's pincers, and called out, ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Collected by Joseph Jacobs

... felt that if he had, he would be completely disabused of it by discovering that Porter did not follow him. He was an uncommonly shrewd man and had formed a pretty good opinion of detectives and of his ability to outwit them. ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton

... suddenly that to defeat the wicked machinations of the ambitious Cupples was the biggest thing in life. After that it was a battle royal between them, Cupples using every bit of brain and sinew he possessed to outwit his opponent and Clint watching him as a cat watches a mouse and constantly out-guessing him and "getting the jump" time after time. Cupples had a bleeding lip and a smear of brown earth down one cheek and was a forbidding looking antagonist, and for hours after practice was over Clint had ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour

... a task which he is unable to perform, you are rid of him for the future. But you must set about it very circumspectly, for he is not easy to outwit. The peasant of whom I told you wanted to get rid of his familiar, and ordered him to fill a barrel of water with a sieve. But the creature fetched and spilled water, and did not rest till the barrel was filled with the drops which hung ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby

... however, he would have it out with his wife. Being a business man and always alert to outwit the other man, he wanted neither intrigue nor mystery in his home, but a serene happiness founded upon perfect confidence. He found it impossible to remain appalled or angry at his wife's readiness of resource in ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... to think over these things, was beginning to believe that, after all, her obduracy was not likely to be of much service to her. Would it not be wiser to treat with the enemy—perhaps to outwit him by a show of forgiveness? Here they were approaching the end of the voyage—at least, Christina seemed to intimate as much; and if they were not exactly within call of friends, they would surely be within rowing distance of some inhabited island, even Gometra, ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black

... I mean - extraordinarily clever; but we can be clever too, and I dare say we can contrive to outwit her." ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page

... the earthquakes cannot be stopped, the entire world will be threatened by destruction, and the Brungarian forces will conquer the earth. How Tom utilizes all his scientific knowledge to produce swift-action results and outwit the Brungarians makes one of the most exciting Tom Swift adventures ...
— Tom Swift and The Visitor from Planet X • Victor Appleton

... my possessions—let it go! 15 Ay, I once heard the nephew of the Pope Had sent his architect to view the ground, Meaning to build a villa on my vines The next time I compounded with his uncle: I little thought he should outwit me so! 20 Henceforth no witness—not the lamp—shall see That which the vassal threatened to divulge Whose throat is choked with dust for his reward. The deed he saw could not have rated higher Than ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... he meant either to bring over to his schemes or to outwit. Two of them, Arlington and Clifford, were Catholics in heart like the king; and in January 1669 they were summoned with the Duke of York and two Catholic nobles, Lords Bellasys and Arundell, to a conference in which Charles, after pledging them to secrecy, declared himself a ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green

... for he felt it a pleasure and a triumph to outwit the wily Coubitant. Then, while the body of the dog was supported, he carefully pressed his feet on the soft path, so as to leave a distinct impression, and convince any who should examine the trail that it was not the dog who had been wounded. ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb

... find her—that was his task. He rallied sharply from his despondency. He would pit himself against the police. A desperate man, guided by love, could do much—might even outwit the tremendous forces of Scotland Yard. He would not be worthy of Sisily if he lost heart because the odds were against him. Fortune's wheel might have a lucky turn in ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees

... to speak, there remained on deck only a "master" who could not navigate the ship, a "mate" unable to figure out the day's run, a "carpenter" who did not know how to handle an adze, and some make-believe apprentices "bound" only to outwit the gang. And if in spite of all these precautions an able seaman were pressed, the real master immediately came forward and swore he ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson

... have owed his birth to the commerce of a fiend with an unconscious nun. A priest, convinced of the woman's purity of intention, baptized her child as soon as born, thus defeating the plots of Satan, who had hoped the son of a fiend would be able to outwit the plans of the Son of Man for human redemption. In early infancy, already, this Merlin showed his miraculous powers, for he testified in his mother's behalf when she was accused ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber

... and then tightened his cloth and climbed the banyan tree with his battle axe and the other mirror. He was not at all happy as he waited for the Rakhas, thinking of all the people who had been killed as they passed along the road below the tree: however he was determined to outwit the Rakhas if he could. All night long he watched in vain but just at dawn the Rakhas appeared. At the sight of him Jhalka shook so much with fright that the branches of the tree swayed. The Rakhas smelt that there was a human being about and looking up into the tree saw the branches ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas

... fray, he felt quite certain of being able to stave off the final rush long enough to give Abdur Kad'r a breathing spell, he had sufficient confidence in that wily old Arab's resources to believe that he would outwit his pursuers, provided they lost a good deal of ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy

... a bald-headed man, denotes that sharpers are to make a deal adverse to your interests, but by keeping wide awake, you will outwit them. ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller

... not easy to outwit him! Sharp is the outlook of those pin-head eyes; Still, he is mortal and a shot may hit him, One cannot always miss ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... But when memory is at work in my old brain, on times long past, it is apt to overlook the matters of the day. You say right, my children; it is time to be moving, and now comes the real nicety of our case. It is easy to outwit a furnace, for it is nothing but a raging element; and it is not always difficult to throw a grizzly bear from his scent, for the creatur' is both enlightened and blinded by his instinct; but to shut the eyes of a waking Teton is a matter of greater judgment, inasmuch ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper

... up quite as easily as all that. We can at least try to outwit our enemies. If it does nothing else for us, the effort can serve to ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various

... as she could. She dared not mount a tree, for the red wolf would outwit her. She must go on. The bark, or yelp, had been a signal; but now there came to her ears the long howl. She had heard it often in the great forests at home. It was the call of the pack that there was to be ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath

... Fitzooth! But I have a quarrel both with him and you. Know that I have heard the story of your escapade with that mean son of mine, who must come prowling like a thief in the night about the walls of Gamewell. I know the Scarlet Knight's secret, and yours—who did think it brave to deceive and outwit an old man." ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick

... Pawnees encamped, and doubtless a number of them were scattered at different points through the wood. There must have been twenty of them in the neighborhood, for, when summoned by signal, they appeared to come from all points of the compass. But none now was in sight, and who of them all was able to outwit the Shawanoe ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis

... you! if the Hurons master your scalp, rely on the promise of one who has two stout warriors to back him. They shall pay for their victory, with a life for every hair it holds. I say, young gentleman, may Providence bless your undertaking, which is altogether for good; and, remember, that to outwit the knaves it is lawful to practise things that may not be naturally the ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper

... into Asia with a pair of knee-breeches that are worth fourteen English pounds (about sixty-eight dollars) and offer no further explanation, I should, in all probability, be accused of a high order of prevarication. Nevertheless, such is the fact; for among other subterfuges to outwit possible brigands, and kindred citizens, I have made cloth-covered buttons out of Turkish liras (eighteen shillings English), and sewed them on in place of ordinary buttons. Pantaloon buttons at $54 a dozen are a luxury that my ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... rowed in silence, each one planning how to outwit the other and each one knowing that the other was planning likewise. According to Tartar ethics the bargain was a bargain. When the boat had been pulled out of danger Mehmet hastened to fulfil his ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... winter of 1916 I persuaded Captain Sam Johnson, otherwise famous as Horse-mackerel Sam, of Seabright, New Jersey, to go to Long Key with me and see if the two of us as a team could not outwit those illusive and strange ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey

... therefore he can get work done which the mere student (it may be) has taught him ought to be done; but which the mere student, much less the mere trader or economist, could not get done; simply because his fellow-men would probably not listen to him, and certainly outwit him. Of course, in proportion to the depth, width, soundness, of his conception of human nature, will be the greatness and wholesomeness of his power. He may appeal to the meanest, or to the loftiest motives. He may be a fox or an eagle; ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley

... within thy heart. And he spake unto Antilochos and uttered winged words: "Antilochos, now will I of myself put away mine anger against thee, since no wise formerly wert thou flighty or light-minded, howbeit now thy reason was overcome of youthfulness. Another time be loth to outwit better men. Not easily should another of the Achaians have persuaded me, but thou hast suffered and toiled greatly, and thy brave father and brother, for my sake: therefore will I hearken to thy prayer, and will even give unto thee the mare, though ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)

... getting his arms and starting out toward it on his pony. But this was too much trouble, and he stood watching the tragedy of the plain, hoping for the plucky animal that was doing its best to outrun and outwit the wolves, for they were close enough now for him to see that there were four of the gray devils of ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor

... thought it was possible that Archer, clever as he was, might be disappointed in his supplies, he determined to take secret measures for himself. His Aunt Barbara's interdiction had shut him out of the confectioner's shop; but he flattered himself that he could outwit his aunt; he therefore begged the gipsy to procure him twelve buns by Thursday morning, and bring them secretly to one of the windows of ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth

... we find Thucydides, in the beginning of his history, considers the Greeks as a set of pirates or privateers, plundering each other by sea. This being probably the first institution of commerce before the Ars Cauponaria was invented, and merchants, instead of robbing, began to cheat and outwit each other, and by degrees changed the Metabletic, the only kind of traffic allowed by Aristotle in ...
— Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon • Henry Fielding

... young lieutenants. Perjurers have their say. "I wouldn't believe 'em under oath." Gangsters get a jolt. The findings of the Court of Inquiry. Hal and Noll outwit ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Lieutenants - or, Serving Old Glory as Line Officers • H. Irving Hancock

... same deadly will, under the pretence of pure love. Our idealism is the clue to our fixed will. Love, beauty, benevolence, progress, these are the words we use. But the principle we evoke is a principle of barren, sanctified compulsion of all life. We want to put all life under compulsion. "How to outwit the nerves," for example.—And therefore, to save the children as far as possible, elementary education should ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence

... he said, "I will blow her ladyship's conduct in the business! She shall not outwit a poor whimsical girl like Clara, without hearing it on more sides ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... were too highly amused with my recital to sympathise at all with my feelings of annoyance, and one of them, a gentleman filling a high situation in the East, laughed heartily, saying, in a thoroughly American tone, "The English ladies must be 'cute customers, if they can outwit Yankee pickpockets." ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird

... lives by his own wicked deeds. No matter who he is. An informer, perhaps. At any rate, he is not the man to outwit the Molly Swash, and her old, stupid, foolish master and owner, Stephen Spike. Luff, Mr. Mulford, luff. Now's the time to make the most of your leg—Luff her up and shake her. She is setting to windward fast, the ebb is sucking along ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper

... knighted!" he exclaimed, slapping his knee, as Dorothy told how the clever straw man had helped outwit the Gnome King when that wicked little rascal had tried to keep them prisoners in his ...
— The Royal Book of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... a partition may at first blind the eyes of the confederacy, or however each of them may hope to outwit the other in the progress or in the end, the embarrassments that will arise are insurmountable. But even were the object attainable, it would not be of such general advantage to the parties as the neutrality of France, which costs them nothing, and to obtain which they would formerly ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... Eustace, the Irish Chancellor; Lord Broghill (created Lord Orrery); and Sir Charles Coote, created Earl of Montrath. The first was a worn-out old man. The second was a dexterous manager, who knew how to captivate friends and how to outwit enemies; the third was "proud, dull, and very avaricious." Both Orrery and Montrath had their own ends to serve, and were bitter enemies; and when Montrath died, as Hyde expresses it, "they who took the most dispassioned survey of all ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik

... but I warned Fred to carefully avoid betraying that we suspected him. The captain had had worse enemies to outwit, and had kept a pirate in good humour for a much longer voyage by affability and rum. We had no means of clouding Mr. Rowe's particularly sharp wits with grog, but we resolved to be amiable and wary, and when we did get to London to look out for the first opportunity ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing

... "you are wrong! I swear I will outwit him—and in a striking way! But I must make haste about it, for he has an enormous start on me—given him by Monsieur Robert Darzac, who is this evening going to increase it still more. Think of it!—every ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux

... with knaves," said Bernulf. "Though they seem sharp, there is a place where they be dull, and an honest man can often find it, and so outwit them." ...
— A Boy's Ride • Gulielma Zollinger

... them, Geordie, and though they are better than the others, I am not satisfied with these optical delusions, as I call them. Now, I put it to you, boys, is it natural for lads from fifteen to eighteen to command ships, defeat pirates, outwit smugglers, and so cover themselves with glory, that Admiral Farragut invites them to dinner, saying, 'Noble boy, you are an honour to your country!' Or, if the hero is in the army, he has hair-breadth ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott

... submarines; of good nerve, quick wit, and the power to withstand long nervous strain. Such men in a submarine are going to throw great scares into people of less capacity on surface ships. Put such men somewhere else than in a submarine and they will outwit men not so well equipped for the ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly









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