"Artfulness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The artfulness with which he had contrived to make himself and his character a question of discussion achieved only a half-success, for she only gave one of her most meaningless smiles as she said, 'I do not know; I am not ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... cherries as if they had broken open a money-box. His parents, he acknowledged, had meant it for the very best, but they had kept him, nevertheless, so strictly that he had become shy and timid. Theirs, however, was not that unloving severity which blunts the spirit of a child, and leads to artfulness and deceit. Their strictness, well intended, and proceeding from a genuine moral earnestness of purpose, furthered in him a strictness and tenderness of conscience, which then and in after years made him deeply ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... Easy-going as he was, when he had taken a notion to buy and indulge a connoisseur-slave, collect gems or visit Rome, opposition, arguments, artfulness or stratagems were alike useless. I resigned ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... Winchester, the worst living foe of Earl Hubert of Kent. He was on the younger side of middle age, and was only not quite so bad a man as the father from whom he inherited his dark gleaming eyes, lithe quick motions, intense prejudices, and profound artfulness of character. ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... awkwardness, whereof the brightest example is Mr. trans-Atlantic Rice. And, verily, many other poetries there be, as of impudence (for which consult the experience of swindlers); of prose, (for which see Addison); of energy, of sleep, of battle and of peace: for it is an easy-seeming artfulness, the most fascinating manner of doing as of saying, complication simplified, and every thing effected to its bravest advantage. Poetry wants a champion in these days, who will save her from her ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... Boveney Weir is full of "rum uns." This I take to be a confession of faith in the existence of large trout, and at the same time a delicate compliment to their wariness. All Thames trout are wary, and it is probably their outrageous artfulness which adds to the rapture of circumventing them. Old Nottingham George would tell many a tale of cunning trout which had been angled for so often and pricked so many times that they were supposed to have ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... our friend," Isabel read out one Saturday evening, "not Mr. Stewart." (This puzzled the old ladies sorely till Isabel explained their lord's artfulness.) "My dearest, I fear the worst for him. I do not mean apostacy, thank God. But I fear that these wolves have torn him sadly, in their dens." Then followed the story of Mrs. Jakes, with all its horror, all the greater from the obscurity ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... Parliamentary Hand. They beslaver him with fulsome adoration. They cannot point out anything good in the provisions of the bill, nor in the central idea of the bill, but they must fill up somehow, and they praise his artfulness, how he dodged this, and dexterously managed that. They have nothing but admiration for his jugglery and House-of-Commons tricks. They bring him down to the level of a practised conjuror or a thimblerigger. But, with all his wonderful cleverness, he is not admired ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... Consider its artfulness! The Comte Armand had been a hard liver, a dissipated scoundrel, a reckless beast, but a mighty hunter of the stag. It was said that on one of these occasions he had been warned by the apparition of St. Hubert; but he had laughed,—for, observe, HE always jeered at the priests ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... Guppy consults him in the choice of that day's banquet, turning an appealing look towards him as the waitress repeats the catalogue of viands and saying "What do YOU take, Chick?" Chick, out of the profundity of his artfulness, preferring "veal and ham and French beans—and don't you forget the stuffing, Polly" (with an unearthly cock of his venerable eye), Mr. Guppy and Mr. Jobling give the like order. Three pint pots of half-and-half are superadded. Quickly the waitress returns bearing what ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... Helen, Antony a Cleopatra, and Varro a Saronia, whilst I, for my own part, see in her only a deep, designing woman, part tiger, part serpent. The tiger hath a lovely sleek body with a furious heart; the serpent for its creeping artfulness is a byword for deceit. Do not get within her fatal circle, or she will sting thee to the very core, and then devour thee. I hate her! She has robbed me of my peace, and now, with deep conceit and hellish pride, she deigns ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... my diary, you mean thing," cried Miss Molly, stamping her foot. "How dare you come creeping in here, spying at my private concerns! Oh! oh! oh!" with unpremeditated artfulness, relapsing into a paroxysm of sobs just in time to avert the volley of rebuke with which the hot-tempered old lady was about to greet this disrespectful outburst. "I am the most miserable girl in all the world. I wish I ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... knew that he was bringing her here to destroy his daughter's happiness. So that was why she held off from Mr. Hope,' cried Albinia, burning with such indignation, that on some one she must expend it, but a tirade against the artfulness of the little French witch was cut off short by ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Barnes knew of him. He knew him to be the personification of craftiness, and of daring. It was not surprising that he had been tricked by this devil's own genius. He recalled his admiration, his wonder over the man's artfulness; he groaned as he thought of the pride he had felt in being accorded the privilege ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... badness of quality ... especially malice, ill-will, spite, malevolence, artfulness, cunning, craft."—Riddle ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... in words, who wrestles for the exact nuance, and will not let a sentence go till he has obtained its blessing. Consequently he is never finicking in his phraseology, and seldom final. The subtle artfulness of Stevenson is beyond him; but he has a rarer quality—that subtler artlessness which has belonged in some measure to all the greater writers of sentiment. It is a quality independent of the mechanics of writing; whether the author echoes ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... was irreconcilable with his whole course and character that he should carry Bebelle off in state, or receive any compliments or congratulations on that feat, he devoted the next day to getting his two portmanteaus out of the house by artfulness and stealth, and to comporting himself in every particular as if he were going to run away,—except, indeed, that he paid his few debts in the town, and prepared a letter to leave for Madame Bouclet, enclosing a sufficient sum of money ...
— Somebody's Luggage • Charles Dickens
... case as it stood: we were living on the most friendly understanding, and, by the artfulness of her tales and complaints, she has set your ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... above. arriero muleteer. arrimar to draw near. arrodillar vr. to kneel. arrojar to throw. arrollar to roll up. arroyo brook, rivulet, stream. arroyuelo (dim.) brooklet. arruga wrinkle. arruinar to ruin, demolish. arrullo cooing. arte m. f. art, artfulness; malas artes evil practices. articular to articulate. artista m. artist. asador m. turnspit. asalto assault, storm. ascendiente forefather. ascetico ascetic. asco nausea. asegurar to secure, assure. asemejar vr. to be ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... get at. In the case of man, however, according to most authorities, the extremity of the great toe is the favorite part; and some writers, perhaps possessed of a strong poetical vein, have given wonderful descriptions of the artfulness with which these little blood-suckers make their approaches, and keep their victim comfortably asleep during the operation by fanning him with their wings. In fact, the Vampire Bats had so bad a reputation from the accounts given by travellers, that they seemed to be veritable ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... and bravest of womankind! The time is come to show yourself in turn uncompromising and conciliatory, exacting and yielding, haughty and condescending. Call up all your skill and artfulness. Lo! the foremost men in Hellas, seduced by your fascinations, are agreed to entrust you with the task of ending ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... it, and stop the noise, either by shutting the door, or leaving it wide open. I am a sound sleeper, but, if a door bangs, it wakens me at once. I try not to notice it. I hope it will leave off. Then it does leave off—that is the artfulness of it—and, just as you are falling asleep, knock it goes! A double knock, sometimes. Then I simply must get up, and hunt for ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... might be made to Wit in general, and the Art of Poetry in particular: And certainly our Passions are describ'd in them so naturally, in such lively, tho' simple, Colours, that how far they may fall short of the Artfulness and Embellishments of the Romans in their Way of Writing, yet cannot fail to please all such Readers as are not unqualify'd for the Entertainment ...
— Parodies of Ballad Criticism (1711-1787) • William Wagstaffe
... it, for he rested on the goodness of men, and not, as theologians rest, on their vileness. It is a most interesting thing, we may notice in passing, to consider what was the effect upon the Revolution of this artfulness or prudence with which its theoretic precursors sowed the seed. Was it as truly wise as Condorcet supposed? Or did it weaken, almost corrupt, the very roots? Was it the secret of the thoroughness with which the work of demolition was ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley |
