"Overreach" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fourth-form, because the master treated them with implicit confidence, and being scrupulously honourable himself, was unsuspicious of others. He was therefore extremely indignant at this apparent discovery of an attempt to overreach him in a boy so promising and so much of a ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... peaceful industrial civilization. The coarser forms of cruelty are disappearing, and the butchery of men has greatly diminished. But most people apply to industrial pursuits a notion of antagonism derived from ages of warfare, and seek in all manner of ways to cheat or overreach one another. And as in more barbarous times the hero was he who had slain his tens of thousands, so now the man who has made wealth by overreaching his neighbours is not uncommonly spoken of in terms which imply approval. Though gentlemen, moreover, ...
— The Destiny of Man - Viewed in the Light of His Origin • John Fiske
... 5d. he offered and the 7d. they asked the discrepancy was too great, and after some acrimonious bargaining it was decided that I should continue on foot, my man indicating to me by gestures, in a most sarcastic way, that the "chiaodza" men had failed to overreach him. ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... a whole work of art; he never seems to me to intend to be any one of his parts, but I think he intends that all his parts should be him. So it is not Othello who is driven frantic by doubt and jealousy, nor Shylock who is buying human flesh by its weight in gold, nor Sir Giles Overreach who is selling his child to hell for a few years of wealth and power; it is Kean, and in every one of his characters there is an intense personality of his own that, while one is under its influence, defies all criticism—moments ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... least been polished by time. It hasn't a genius for stiff morality, and indeed makes few pretensions in that direction. It scruples but scantly to represent the false as the true, and has been accused of cultivating the occasion to grasp and to overreach, and of steering a crooked course—not to your and my advantage—amid the sanctities of property. It has been accused further of loving if not too well at least too often, of being in fine as little austere as possible. I am not sure it is very ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... boatman—"You be easy, missis; we'll catch 'em up!"—the less confident one of his mate—"Have a try at it, anyhow!" Then her joy when the sail filled and the plashing of her way spoke Hope beneath her bulwark as she caught the wind. Then her dread that the Devil's craft ahead would make sail too, and overreach them after all, and the blessing in her heart for her hopeful oarsman, whose view was that the officer in charge would not spare his convicts any work he could inflict. "He'll see to it they arn their breaffastis, missis. He ain't going to unlock their wristis off of the oars for ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... detached hand, indicates a solitary life, that is, people will fail to understand your views and feelings. To burn your hands, you will overreach the bounds of reason in your struggles for wealth ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... tragedian, born in London; trod the stage from his infancy; his first success was Shylock in the "Merchant of Venice" in 1814, and the representation of it was followed by equally famous representations of Richard III., Othello, and Sir Giles Overreach; he led a very dissipated life, and under the effects of it his constitution gave way; he broke down one evening beside his son as Iago, as he was playing the part of Othello, was carried off the stage, and never appeared on the boards ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Dryden, Warburton and Doctor Johnson used collectively or individually the following expressions in describing the work of the author of "Hamlet": conceit, overreach, word-play, extravagance, overdone, absurdity, obscurity, puerility, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... characters was a very modest one for a beginner. It embraced only Richelieu, Bertram, Brutus, Lear, Richard, Shylock, Sir Giles Overreach, Hamlet, Othello, and Macbeth. My principal literary recreation for several years had been in studying these parts; and as I knew them by heart, I did not doubt that a few rehearsals would put me in possession of the requisite stage-business. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... many, and while they demand to the last grain's weight "the pound of flesh," they are utterly unwilling to yield the requirements which the law makes of them. Where you find an overseer endeavoring in every way to overreach the apprentices, taking away the privileges which they enjoyed during slavery, and exacting from them the utmost minute and mite of labor, there you will find abundant complaints both against the master and the apprentice. And the reverse. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... that their concession in regard to the crown of England amounted to nothing, that, by yielding now, they would secure hereafter the elevation of a dependent dynasty. Under that illusion they combined with Bolingbroke to overreach themselves and to institute party government, under ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... noticeable feature about villains that they almost always overreach themselves at some point or other—in story-books they always do—and to this characteristic De la Zouch proved no exception, for the very intensity of the words he chose, and the excessive flattery he employed, instead of gaining their object, aroused in John Manners' ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... a weakness of all masters," the soldier replied, "and so they overreach themselves. Give me a little confidence, and I am content, but distrust me, and my ears are ever on the stretch to catch news which I may use to my advantage. But I have no quarrel with you. The Captain is out, you must await his return, and while you wait you ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... I hoped to escape pursuit in the labyrinth of little, crooked, winding alleys. As I rounded a corner, I perceived him out of the tail of my eye, still following, but now within fifty yards of me, he having run to thus overreach me; and ere I had turned up a couple of alleys he was on my heels and ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... he should be ready to risk his professional reputation upon it, when he is convinced beyond doubt that the man is being unfairly assailed, or that due process is not being followed. Both higher authority and civil authority occasionally overreach; an officer stands as a shield protecting his men against unfair treatment from any quarter. But it is decidedly not his duty to attempt to cheat law or thwart justice for the sake of his men simply because they are his men. His job, as Shakespeare puts it, is "to ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... fear that he'll fall into your clutches again. And I hope, I most earnestly hope, that before you can do much more harm, you'll overreach yourself, and the law—stupid as it is—will get hold of you. Remember the father I was, Charles, and think what it means that the best wish I can now form for you is that you may ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... hind foot strikes and injures the heel or quarter of the forefoot the horse is said to overreach. It rarely happens except when the animal is going fast; hence is most common in trotting and running horses. In trotters the accident generally happens when the animal breaks from a trot to a run. The outside heels and quarters are most ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... Ephraim Canaanised) has deceitful balances in his hand, and loves to overreach. Ephraim indeed saith, I am become rich, I have gained weealth; but all his profits will not suffice for (expiation of) the guilt which he ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... is writing in the light of later knowledge, and even, setting that aside, I am very far from agreeing with his psychological deduction. Just as a shy man will so overreach himself in his efforts to dissemble his shyness as to assume an air of positive arrogance, so might a pure lady who had succumbed as Miss Armytage pretended, upon finding herself forced to such self-accusation, bear herself ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... be involved in the difficulties which now threaten its occupants. Their caution would only be the more increased on hearing of any commotion. Wait not, therefore, I implore you, for the dawning of the day: it could never dawn to you. Rivers I know too well; he would overreach you by some subtlety or other; and how easy, even while we speak, to shoot you down through these uneven logs. Trust not, trust not, I entreat you; there is a sure way of escape, and you still have time, if at once you ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... so eager is he for gain. He will not steal, nor commit murder, nor break any one of the commandments so far as the laws of the state recognize these divine laws to be laws of common society. But, in his heart, and in act, so far as the law cannot reach him, he violates them daily. He will overreach you in a bargain, and think it all right. If your business comes in contact with his, he will use every means in his power to break you down, even to the extent of secretly attacking your credit. He will lend his money on usury, and when ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... Allworth. Sir Giles Overreach thought she would marry his nephew Wellborn, but she ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... 1857, he played Sir Giles Overreach, in Massinger's "A New Way to Pay Old Debts," and the profound impression he made in it confirmed him in his purpose to devote himself to tragic acting. The story of an actor's life is seldom eventful, and Mr. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... in following through all its sittings and all its twistings this odious and shameful trial, in which the judges' prejudiced servility and scientific subtlety were employed for three months to wear out the courage or overreach the understanding of a young girl of nineteen, who refused at one time to lie, and at another to enter into discussion with them, and made no defence beyond holding her tongue or appealing to God who had spoken ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... be your helper: we are two, and they are two: two Sisters, rich alike, only the elder has the prouder Dowry: In troth I pity this disgrace in you, yet of mine own I am senceless: do but follow my Counsel, and I'le pawn my spirit, we'l overreach 'em ...
— The Scornful Lady • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... Certainly if he had said he would pay a sum of money at a certain time, the money would be forthcoming on the appointed day, and this is saying a good deal for any man. His constitutional timidity rendered him incapable of an attempt to overreach when there was the remotest chance of opposition or publicity, and his correct bearing and somewhat stern expression were a great protection to him against being overreached. He never talked of money, and invariably changed the subject ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... daughter shall not overreach us;' and, loading his gun, he shot so cleverly, that he shot away the horse's skull from under the runner's head, without its hurting him. Then the runner awoke, jumped up, and saw that his pitcher was empty and the King's daughter far ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... his race and color. No race can be successful until it does these things. I would not change my color, because I am proud of it. If there is any one thing that will clog the wheels of our material progress, it is the fact that some of us try to overreach ourselves. We should not become dazzled at the splendor and magnificence of those who have had hundreds of years to make this country what it is to-day. No man is a success who has not a fixed sign post, an aim in life to attain unto. A man should get that amount of education ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... natures, and the wider variety of faculties and passions included in the strict unity of their natures. Richard III., for example, is one of his earlier characters, and though excellent of its kind, its excellence has been approached by other dramatists, as, for instance, Massinger, in "Sir Giles Overreach." But no other dramatist has been able to grasp and represent a character similar in kind to Macbeth, and the reason is that Richard is comparatively a simple conception, while Macbeth is a complex one. There ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... think you should go free, to perpetrate more cowardly interference, after spoiling that well-laid plan? Hee-hee! You poor fool! Busy-bodies such as you invariably overreach themselves. Having tricked me two or three times, you thought, didn't you? that you could draw me here to kill Scharnhoff, that poor old sheep. You were careful, weren't you? to let Omar Mahmoud go, in order that he might tell me how Scharnhoff had turned witness against us. And the Sikhs followed ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... little mother!" Then she added, in a different tone, "Don't you think there is any danger of our being too obliging? I'm not the only girl in town whose mother wishes her to oblige Dr. Ballard. May we not overreach ourselves?" ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... secure legal sanction, by legislative enactment, the {p.15} second grade of territorial government was hastily and high-handedly forced upon the people for this purpose. It was probably in view of these measures that Mr. Lemen recorded his belief that President Jefferson "will find means to overreach the evil attempts of the pro-slavery party." Early in the year 1806 the Vincennes memorial was introduced into Congress for the third time and again favorably reported from committee, but to no avail. It was about this time, as we learn from his diary, ...
— The Jefferson-Lemen Compact • Willard C. MacNaul
... three-cornered hats tagged with silver lace? Much, we suppose, must depend upon the characters of those who wear them, and the kind of services on which they will come to be bestowed. An Upper House of mere diplomatists—skilful only to overreach—imprudent enough to substitute cunning for wisdom—ignorant enough to deem the people not merely their inferiors in rank, but in discernment also—weak enough to believe that laws may be enacted ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... years, had enriched themselves by peculation and monopoly. Mitchell, one of the grasping patentees who had purchased of the favourite the power of robbing the nation, was fined and imprisoned for life. Mompesson, the original, it is said, of Massinger's Overreach, was outlawed and deprived of his ill-gotten wealth. Even Sir Edward Villiers, the brother of Buckingham, found it convenient to leave England. A greater name is to be added to the ignominious list. By this Parliament was brought to justice that ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... took on a pettifogging character in her dealings with the Dutch, with the Huguenots, and with the Scots, though in the last case at least it must be admitted that either party was equally ready to overreach the other if the chance offered. But for very many years a very close economy was absolutely essential if debts were to be paid. That economy was facilitated by the lavish expenditure of prominent men on public objects; due partly to a desire for display, partly—at least in the case ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... and Merchandizes; from whence they seldom come before they have spent a large reckoning, and lost more then three of their five sences; thinking themselves no less rich then they are wise; and ly then very subtlely upon the catch to overreach another in a good and advantagious bargain; by which means they themselves are somtimes catcht by the nose with a mouldly old sort of unknown commodity, that they may walk home with, by weeping cross; and next morning there ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... here, and Charles Kean is to-night playing for his last night. If it had been the 'rig'lar' drama I should have gone, but I was afraid Sir Giles Overreach might upset me, so I stayed away. My quarters are excellent, and the head-waiter is such a waiter! Knowles (not Sheridan Knowles, but Knowles of the Cheetham Hill Road[28]) is an ass to him. This sounds bold, but truth is stranger than fiction. By-the-by, not the least comical thing ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... thought which he fancifully pursues from point to point in the surrounding landscape finds statement in lines 34-60. Of these lines Sharp (Life of Browning, p. 159) says, "There is a gulf which not the profoundest search can fathom, which not the strongest-winged love can overreach: the gulf of individuality. It is those who have loved most deeply who recognize most acutely this always pathetic and often terrifying isolation of the soul. None save the weak can believe in the absolute union of two spirits ... No man, no poet assuredly, could love ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... chickens, he persuades Doctor Rat that if he will creep through this same opening he will see the needle lying on Dame Chat's table. The consequences for the curate are severe. Master Bailey's assistance is next requisitioned, and him friend Diccon cannot overreach. The whole truth coming out, Diccon is required to kneel and apologize. In doing so he gives Hodge a slap which elicits from that worthy a yell of pain. But it is a wholesome pang, for it finds the needle no further away than in ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... next place of call was Barracouta harbour. It was here, if I am rightly informed, that a French naval officer shot himself, because he had allowed the Russian squadron to overreach him. It was during the Crimean war, the English and French squadrons had hunted the station all over to come up with the Russians, but though they often sighted the enemy, they never succeeded in engaging them. From China to Japan, from Japan to ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... heaven. Dark-browed women in the very meridian of beauty bring up the rear, dragging or carrying a race of swarthy progeny, all alike distinguished for the sparkling eyes and raven hair, which, with a cunning nothing can overreach, and a nature nothing can tame, seem to be the peculiar inheritance of the Gipsy. Their costume is striking, not to say grotesque. Some of the girls, and all the matrons, bind their brows with various coloured handkerchiefs, which form ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... eyes, and what a picture of composure I presented in the course of half a minute. 'Let us take it for granted,' says Sir Patrick, 'that this man unknown has really tried to deceive Miss Silvester, as you and I suppose. I can tell you one thing: it's as likely as not that, in trying to overreach her, he may (without in the least suspecting it) have ended ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... rate they agreed with me. Nay, they had eyes, mouths, legs, if not arms, and feet, so there was much in which we were both of a mind, but surely they must be mistaken in arming themselves so very heavily. Any creature on getting what the turtle aimed at would overreach itself and be landed not in safety but annihilation. It should have no communion with the outside world at all, for death could creep in wherever the creature could creep out; and it must creep out somewhere if it was to hook on to outside things. ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... Bless me! that accounts for the young gentleman's melancholy. I thought they would overreach themselves with their own tricks. The day of reckoning, Mr. Mac Quedy, is the point which your paper-money science always ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... resort to the peeled rods. He had but to speak, and the flocks bare according to his desire.[211] What Laban deserved was utter ruin, for having permitted the pious Jacob to work for him without hire, and after his wages had been changed ten times, and ten times Laban had tried to overreach him, God rewarded him in this way.[212] But his good luck with the flocks was only what Jacob deserved. Every faithful laborer is rewarded by God in this world, quite regardless of what awaits him in the world to come.[213] With empty hands Jacob had come to ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... model of what a great and fortunate statesman should be, so long as mankind have evil passions as well as lofty virtues, and the state that he seeks to serve is surrounded by powerful and restless foes, whom it is necessary to overreach where it ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... wickedness than for young people who are thinking of marrying to attempt to deceive each other. What is the good of it? A very short period of married life will entirely dispel the illusion. I suppose people of the world may think it fair to overreach one another in their dealings, saying "everyone for himself." They have no intention of seeking to promote the other's happiness; present gain is all they want. But a married pair, ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... answering, king Agamemnon addressed: "Do not thus, excellent though thou be, godlike Achilles, practise deceit in thy mind; since thou shalt not overreach, nor yet persuade me. Dost thou wish that thou thyself mayest have a prize, whilst I sit down idly,[22] wanting one? And dost thou bid me to restore her? If, however, the magnanimous Greeks will give me a prize, having suited it to my mind, so that it shall be an equivalent, [it is well]. But ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... living with those whose language we do not understand, and, as St. Augustine teaches, a man would more readily live with his dog than with a foreigner, less pleasant certainly is our converse with those who make use of frauds artificially covered, overreach their hearers by deceits, address them insidiously, observe the right moment, and catch at words to their purpose, by which truth is hidden under a covering; and so on the other hand nothing is sweeter than the society of those, who ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... unhealthy offices, in fetid ante-chambers, in little barred dens, and spend their days bowed down beneath the weight of affairs; they rise at dawn to be in time, not to be left behind, to gain all or not to lose, to overreach a man or his money, to open or wind up some business, to take advantage of some fleeting opportunity, to get a man hanged or set him free. They infect their horses, they overdrive and age and break them, like their own legs, before their time. Time is their tyrant: it ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... section of the country believes the old thread-bare lie that Negro men rape white women. If Southern white men are not careful, they will overreach themselves and public sentiment will have a reaction; a conclusion will then be reached which will be very damaging to the ...
— Southern Horrors - Lynch Law in All Its Phases • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... the most elegant figure on the stage, and that Mr. Macready's Romeo was quite beautiful, I vow to God I knew nothing of it. So little could I tell of the matter that at one time I mistook Mr. Horrebow for Mr. Abbott. I have seen Mr. Kean play Sir Giles Overreach one night from the front of the pit, and a few nights after from the front boxes facing the stage. It was another thing altogether. That which had been so lately nothing but flesh and blood, a living fibre, 'instinct with fire' and spirit, ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... the periods of time, though apparently, were not really coincident at the beginning point, the Treasury report including a considerable sum now which had previously been reported from the Interior, sufficiently large to greatly overreach the sum derived from the three months now reported upon by the Interior and not by the Treasury. The Indian tribes upon our frontiers have during the past year manifested a spirit of insubordination, and at several points have ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... hath aught against thee"—note exactly Christ's words; He did not say, "If thou rememberest that thou hast aught against thy brother"; alas, it is very easy for most of us to do that; what He said was, "If thou rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee." Whom did I overreach in business yesterday? Whose good name did I drag through the mire? What heart did I stab with my cruel words? "If thou rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee, leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way, first be reconciled to thy brother, ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... debauch; you sit, possibly, between the pickpocket on one side and the patient yet uncured from some epidemic on the other. You pass to your business through a street full of roughs, and in your own store are men wishing you to die that they may take your place, seeking every opportunity to overreach you; and then wonder if I smile when you ask me how ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... things mistakenly, from the relation of other around him, then may he doubt what his eyes see with regard to this matter. Secondly, a man must not lean on his senses touching matters that come not within the discerning of sense. Now in regard to this bread, the Papists do overreach themselves. Did they but tell us that the change made was mystical and of faith,—not within the discernment of sense—we might then find it harder work to deal withal, and we must seek unto the Word of God only, and not unto our sense in any wise. But ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... right hand to ride, only it wouldn't carry him. I can't make horses. Harry brought home that brown mare on Tuesday with an overreach that she won't get over this season. What the deuce they do with their horses to knock them about so, I can't understand. I've killed horses in my time, and ridden them to a stand-still, but I never bruised them and battered them about ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... compare Convennole to a whetstone, which is blunt itself, but which sharpens others. His old master, however was sharp enough to overreach him in the matter of borrowing and lending. When the poet had collected a considerable library, Convennole paid him a visit, and, pretending to be engaged in something that required him to consult Cicero, borrowed a copy of one of the works of that orator, which was ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... impossible that either he or the mate could be ignorant of the cause of it. I was taken down to the forecastle, however, and heard not a word about being sent back. In truth, as Ben had already informed me in his mutterings, the skipper was rather pleased than otherwise, at being able to overreach King Dingo, and as he had found me useful to himself he had no desire to let me go. It was only the large profit he expected by the exchange that had tempted him to part with me; but so long as he had kept his bargain and regularly delivered me over, his conscience was satisfied, and he was in no ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... farm, to be divided, and ploughed, and tilled, that it may bring forth more fruit. To another the world is merely a great market, a warehouse filled with all kinds of goods, which may be bought and sold. To some the world is like a chess-board, where each man plays a selfish game, and tries to overreach his neighbour. To others the world is a mere play-ground, where they pass a frivolous, useless existence, sitting down to eat and drink, and rising up to play. To the selfish man the world is a vast slave plantation, where unhappy slaves are forced to toil and labour to supply the needs ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... the man of honour's come, Newly alighted——Overreach: In without reply, And do as I command.... Is the loud music I gave order for Ready ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... enough nowadays that capital fattens on labour, naturally, instinctively, without much sense of wrong-doing, and has so fattened since the days when Laban tried to overreach Jacob. What we are not so often told is that the poor man not less instinctively looks upon the gen'leman as legitimate sport. 'An 'orrible lie' between two poor people is fair play from a poor man to a wealthier, just as, for instance, the wealthy ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... the demon appears like Satan in the garden of Eden. The infant, radiant as love, extends its little hand for money; the adult, with his keen grey eye, searches into you to ascertain in what manner he may overreach you. Avarice rules over ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... books has been denied to him, still has won from life the kind of knowledge which develops character. Mrs. Peckover had small experience of faces which bear the stamp of simple sincerity. This man's countenance put her out. As a matter of course, he wished to overreach her in some way, but he was obviously very deep indeed. And then she found it so difficult to guess his purposes. How would he proceed if she gave him details of Jane's history, admitting that she was the child of Joseph James ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... Sheriff rued the day that first he meddled with Robin Hood, for all men laughed at him and many ballads were sung by folk throughout the country, of how the Sheriff went to shear and came home shorn to the very quick. For thus men sometimes overreach themselves through ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... for several hours, but the long strain of the preceding day did not make him overreach the time he had set for himself, and he was up at six o'clock. Wegaruk had not forgotten her old habits, and a tub filled with cold water was waiting for him. He bathed, shaved himself, put on fresh clothes, and promptly at seven was at breakfast. The table at which he ordinarily sat ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... of religion, still its code of morals proceeds upon other principles than the municipal law; and it condemns and punishes offences which neither that law punishes nor public opinion condemns. In the Masonic law, to cheat and overreach in trade, at the bar, in politics, are deemed no more venial than theft; nor a deliberate lie than perjury; nor slander than ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... of the pirate commander, who had only changed the mode of John's death because he thought that by so doing he should render it more fearful and bitter to the victim, was the means of saving the poor cockney's life. So do revenge and malice often overreach themselves. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... surpassing shrewdness and cunning, attempt to take him with a trap. Rogue that he is, he always suspects some trick, and one must be more of a fox than he is himself to overreach him. At first sight it would appear easy enough. With apparent indifference he crosses your path, or walks in your footsteps in the field, or travels along the beaten highway, or lingers in the vicinity ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... couch, I could not help thinking that his mother was even more to blame for his misfortunes than he was himself. Instead of filling his mind with Christian principles, she had fed him with the dry husks of worldly wisdom. She had taught him to get money; that it was shrewd and praiseworthy to overreach and deceive. His father had died when he was young, and his mother had had the whole training of him. Before God, she was responsible, though her neglect and her errors could not excuse him. I thanked God anew, as I looked at him, for the Christian teachings of Mr. Gracewood, who had ...
— Desk and Debit - or, The Catastrophes of a Clerk • Oliver Optic
... social revolutionists that private business would overreach itself and defeat its own purpose, grew out of the expectation that its tribute exactions would draw the subjects of capital together in a common defensive movement; that the movement on account of its numbers would overturn business and that in place of private management democratic ...
— Creative Impulse in Industry - A Proposition for Educators • Helen Marot
... By'r Lady, so had not I. I was fain to overreach, as many times I do; but now experience hath taught me so much craft that I excel ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... built high above ground would be too parching and unsteady for the good of the mushrooms; besides, a second shelf is inconvenient enough, and when it comes to a third or a fourth the inconvenience would be too great, and overreach any advantage hoped for in economy of space. An unheated mushroom house must be regarded as a shed, and treated similarly, as described ...
— Mushrooms: how to grow them - a practical treatise on mushroom culture for profit and pleasure • William Falconer
... and from a British port, under the renowned Ashburton treaty? Would England give such a man up? No more than she will now give up the slaves that run from the American vessel, which is driven in by stress of weather. One of the vices of philanthropy is to overreach its own policy, by losing sight of all ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... you may imagine, I too had battered my brain with various conjectures, but without practical result till one night after hunting all day, and having lamed my mare badly with an overreach, I was returning slowly homeward by a short cut across Eston Nab, so as to strike the Guisboro' Road, and ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... folk he is dealing with! It is just as he said; those seven hundred francs will prevent the father from paying seven thousand," the little lawyer thought within himself as he climbed the path to Angouleme. "Still, that old slyboots of a paper-maker must not overreach us; it is time to ask him for ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... often made a prey of and cheated by the unprincipled settlers, who think it no crime to overreach a red-skin. One anecdote will fully illustrate this fact. A young squaw, who was near becoming a mother, stopped at a Smith-town settler's house to rest herself. The woman of the house, who was Irish, ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... Persons who had schooled themselves to control their emotion till they had scarcely any emotion left to control, were repelled rather than attracted by Kean's relentless anatomy of all the strongest feeling of our nature. In Sir Giles Overreach, a character almost devoid of poetry, Kean's acting displayed with such powerful and relentless truth the depths of a cruel, avaricious man, baffled in all his vilest schemes, that the effect he produced ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... 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 as long as things went on to his liking, that few ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... overreaches each time; the hind feet track ahead of the front feet; the faster he goes, the farther ahead those hind feet get; and what would happen if he multiplied his speed by ten I really cannot imagine. This overreach of the hind feet takes ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... Mr. Balfour would in the end secure the oyster, while Mr. Coe was left with the shell. But Harry had darker forebodings still; she was instinctively confident that there was enmity at work in the new-comer, as well as the readiness common to all speculators to overreach a friend. There was a look in his pallid face, when it glanced, as he thought unheeded, on either Charles or Solomon, which, to her mind, boded ill. If it did so, it was certainly unsuspected by those on ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... She, rather tartly than otherwise, not out of malice, but of old habit, began to speak thus, "Many folk, knowing much, imagine that others know nothing, and so ofttimes, what while they think to overreach others, find, after the event, that they themselves have been outwitted of them; wherefore I hold his folly great who setteth himself without occasion to test the strength of another's wit. But, for that maybe all are not of my opinion, it pleaseth me, whilst following on the given order ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... ground, there was a knock at my door, and Sir Percival's solicitor, Mr. Merriman, was shown in. There are many varieties of sharp practitioners in this world, but I think the hardest of all to deal with are the men who overreach you under the disguise of inveterate good-humour. A fat, well fed, smiling, friendly man of business is of all parties to a bargain the most hopeless to deal with. Mr. Merriman was one of ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... to keep quiet. If Miss Bordereau suspected me of ulterior aims she would suspect me less if I should be businesslike, and yet I consented not to be so. It was possible she intended her omission as an impertinence, a visible irony, to show how she could overreach people who attempted to overreach her. On that hypothesis it was well to let her see that one did not notice her little tricks. The real reading of the matter, I afterward perceived, was simply the poor old woman's desire to ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... Mr. Montagu consider patents of monopoly as good things? or does he mean to say that Bacon staid every patent of monopoly that came before him? Of all patents in our history, the most disgraceful was that which was granted to Sir Giles Mompesson, supposed to be the original of Massinger's Overreach, and to Sir Francis Michell, from whom justice Greedy is supposed to have been drawn, for the exclusive manufacturing of gold and silver lace. The effect of this monopoly was of course that the metal employed in the manufacture was adulterated, to the great loss of the public. But this ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... are in the world, who look upon it as a notable mark of a martial spirit, when they hear a son miscall, or see him domineer over a poor peasant, or a lackey, that dares not reply, nor turn again; and a great sign of wit, when they see him cheat and overreach his playfellow by some malicious treachery and deceit. Yet these are the true seeds and roots of cruelty, tyranny, and treason; they bud and put out there, and afterwards shoot up vigorously, and grow to prodigious bulk, cultivated by custom. And it is a very dangerous mistake to excuse ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... about hopeless that a handful of ragged homesteaders ever can make a stand against them. But they're usurping the public domain, and they'll overreach themselves one of these days. Chadron has title to this homestead, but that's every inch of land that he's got a legal right over. In spite of that, he lays the claim of ownership to the land fifteen miles north of here, where I've nested. He's been telling ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... murderer and his pollution and fairly rooted in good order and legality. (6) It was a design worth the venture: if they succeeded they would become the saviours of their country; if not—why, in the effort to grasp the fairest flower of happiness, they would but overreach, and find instead a ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... grotesque but wonderful actor—a mountebank sometimes and sometimes a living truth—would play at home after driving us all mad in America, I went to see him in Sir Giles Overreach. He played with more spirit, more of settled purpose, than with us, being more in earnest, I think, and better supported. There is one absurdity in the play, which was made particularly offensive by Oxberry's exaggeration. The dinner is kept waiting, and the whole ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... frequently fixed your abode in high places. Are there not recorded in history the names of kings and statesmen whom an irresistible desire to scheme, and trick, and overreach, has brought to the block? The times were difficult—that much one may admit. Noble heads of honourable and upright men were lopped in profusion; and it may be argued, with some show of reason, that the man ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, February 6, 1892 • Various
... found in the foregoing pages. It will be seen, from the record of their lives, that the delusion, humiliating as it was to human intellect, was not altogether without its uses. Men, in striving to gain too much, do not always overreach themselves: if they cannot arrive at the inaccessible mountain-top, they may, perhaps, get half way towards it, and pick up some scraps of wisdom and knowledge on the road. The useful science of chemistry is not a little indebted to its spurious brother ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... in; and the sun had burnt him, not a wholesome red or brown, but dirty yellow. He had bright dark eyes, which he kept half closed; only peeping out of the corners, and even then with a glance that seemed to say, 'Now you won't overreach me; you want to, but you won't.' His arms rested carelessly on his knees as he leant forward; in the palm of his left hand, as English rustics have their slice of cheese, he had a cake of tobacco; in his right a penknife. He struck into the dialogue ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... abstract justice is merely a waste of time; for whenever the wolf is face to face with the lamb, it will eat up the lamb first and justify its conduct afterwards. And in this argument there is a certain amount of truth; but those who take it for the whole truth allow their own cynicism to overreach them. The fact remains that even the wolves of the human world are obliged to assume, as a kind of necessary armour, and often as their principal weapon, a semblance of justice, however they may despise the ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... shaggy coat of ugly brown, and put on one of velvety black. After a few days of trial I discovered not only that he was an easy goer, but had the speed of the wind. When at his fastest pace he is liable to overreach; it was thus that his left fore hoof had been shattered. To prevent a recurrence of the accident, I keep his hoof protected by leathers. I believe he is the fastest horse in the Army of ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... we were freed from the necessity of preying upon one another, we found that there was no hurry. The good work would wait to be well done; and one of the earliest effects of the Evolution was the disuse of the swift trains which had traversed the continent, night and day, that one man might overreach another, or make haste to undersell his rival, or seize some advantage of him, or plot some profit to his loss. Nine-tenths of the railroads, which in the old times had ruinously competed, and then, in the hands of the Accumulation, had been united to impoverish and oppress ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... it comes at all, it'll be by the way of self-interest. And really it looks as if the military tyrants might overreach themselves here and there. Italy, for instance. Think of Italy, crushed and cursed by a blood-tax that the people themselves see to be futile. One enters into the spirit of the men who freed Italy from foreigners—it was glorious; but how much more glorious to excite a rebellion ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... perfectly hated by Cromwell, because he had no hold of enthusiasm by which he could govern or overreach them; he therefore treated them with great rigor and disdain, and usually denominated them the heathens. As the Millenarians had a great interest in the army, it was much more important for him to gain their confidence; and their size of understanding afforded ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... farmer-general—you know the rest!' The same might have been said of the monopolists in the time of King James. One of them, indeed, has become in a manner illustrious in literature, by standing for the character of Sir Giles Overreach in the play of A New Way to Pay Old Debts. His prototype was Sir Giles Mompesson, a person whose oppressions created so much indignation, that parliament at last resolved to impeach him. In the proceedings, it was stated that Sir Giles, for the purpose of effectually ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440 - Volume 17, New Series, June 5, 1852 • Various
... that sum might well have made to him the whole difference between being at ease and being pinched during twelve months. If the bill had passed, if the gentry and yeomanry of the kingdom had found that it was possible for them to obtain a welcome remission of taxation by imposing on a Shylock or an Overreach, by a retrospective law, a fine not heavier than his misconduct might, in a moral view, seem to have deserved, it is impossible to believe that they would not soon have recurred to so simple and agreeable a resource. In every age it is easy to find rich ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... have no right to dismiss him with no further explanation than demurely telling him that you had always looked coldly upon him, and neither your wealth nor your ladyship (there was an emphasis of scorn on the word which would have become Sir Giles Overreach himself) can warrant you in treating with contempt the affectionate regard of an ...
— Two Ghostly Mysteries - A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and The Murdered Cousin • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... whether the firm of Buchler & Vieweg still exists. One thing I do know: Vieweg must be now sixty-three years old, should he be still alive, and I am convinced that he remains an upright and honourable gentleman. I would also venture a surmise that business competitors find it very hard to overreach him, and that he has escaped the garrulous tendencies ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... a remarkable counterfeit. You would not know it from a good one. Only an expert can tell the difference. But all these crooks overreach themselves. Clever as they are, they usually leave some mark which betrays them. For example, in printing this bill which bears the head of Lincoln, they have spelled his first name 'Abrahem'—in other words, the engraver made an 'e' when it ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... full of pompous speech, The ignorant may overreach; But is the laughing-stock of those Who know how far his valor goes. Once on a time it came to pass, The Lion hunted with the Ass, Whom hiding in the thickest shade He there proposed should lend him aid, By trumpeting ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... of air. Indeed he looked like a Jew, though a good Christian enough, and laughed about it, because he said that this appearance of his served him well in his trade, since Jews were always feared, and it was held to be impossible to overreach them. ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard
... of his courage that saved him from what they thought righteous vengeance. The Colonel came at once. The guard saluted and withdrew and the Red men seized their spoils. And, strange to say, among themselves they had not one dispute; none tried to overreach; each knew his mark and claimed ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... private man! Honour, that meddlesome officious ill, Pursues thee even to death, nor there stops short; 180 Strange persecution! when the grave itself Is no protection from rude sufferance. Absurd to think to overreach the grave, And from the wreck of names to rescue ours! The best-concerted schemes men lay for fame Die fast away: only themselves die faster. The far-famed sculptor, and the laurell'd bard, Those bold insurancers of deathless fame, Supply their little feeble aids in vain. The tapering ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... his countrymen. He possessed, also, a rare perception of human character, together with an iron memory which never lost a face, a place, or an event, once seen or known. He read the minds even the faces of men, like printed books. No man could overreach him, excepting only those to whom he gave his heart. He might be mistaken where he had confided, never where he had been distrustful or indifferent. He was deceived by Renneberg, by his brother-in-law Van den Berg, by the Duke of Anjou. Had ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... each other, while in the bows Collingwood and Westby rose to their feet and held their spears in front of them. They advanced cautiously and then swung apart, evading the collision—each trying to tempt the other to stab and overreach. ...
— The Jester of St. Timothy's • Arthur Stanwood Pier
... be believed that, especially among the cunning Yankees, such "mines and treasures" stories should be credited; but it is a peculiar feature in the US that the inhabitants, so difficult to overreach in other matters, will greedily take the bait when "mines" or "hidden treasure" are spoken of. In Missouri and Wisconsin, immense beds of copper ore and lead have been discovered in every direction. Thousands of poor, ignorant farmers, emigrants from the East, have ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... sacrificial knife than the goat that awaits its stroke. Why should I not hear what he has to say? He would not have come here without some excellent reason—perhaps he wants to pay up part of his debt to me, or maybe he has some scheme with money in it to unfold. He'll certainly try to overreach me again; but then once bitten twice shy. I'll be on my guard." Then with an attempt ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... saw it in this light before! I never thought of it until I was living there face to face with the old fool I was intending to overreach. I never was SURE of it until this morning, when he actually turned out one of his lodgers that I might have the very room I required to play off our little game in comfortably. When he did that, I made up my mind to drop the whole ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... by daring adventure, and the good fortune which is so often its attendant. His contest therefore with Antonius and Sextus Pompeius was the contest of cunning with bravery; but from his youth upward he was accustomed to overreach, not the bold and reckless only, but the most considerate and wily of his contemporaries, such as Cicero and Cleopatra; he succeeded in the end in deluding the senate and people of Rome in the establishment of his tyranny; and finally deceived the expectations of the world, and falsified ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... "that the barrier for the States-General shall be such as England shall agree upon and approve." It was natural to think, that the fear which the Dutch would conceive of our obtaining advantageous terms for Britain, might put them upon trying underhand for themselves, and endeavouring to overreach us in the management of the peace, as they had hitherto done in that of the war: the ambassador was therefore cautioned to be very watchful in discovering any workings, which might ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... is unnecessary for me to enjoin the strictest justice in dealing with the natives. This your own principles will lead you invariably to follow, but while doing so yourself, it is decidedly necessary to be careful not to appear to overreach or insult any one by the conduct of those under ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... of arms I craved to see, Knights, burghers, filtering through those gates ajar, Their age of serfdom with my spirit free; We cannot all have wisdom; some there are Believe a star doth rule their destiny, And yet they think to overreach the star, For thought can weld together things apart, And contraries ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... criminal part of Benjamin's mind began to see that the affair would place his landlord and mortgagee in his power, and relieve him for evermore from financial pressure. To his peculiar conscience it was justifiable to overreach his grasping creditor, a right and proper thing to upset the shrewd Varnhagen's plans: a thought of the proposed breach of the law, statutory and moral, did not occur ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... Government has never been violated. The Indians feel that the soil they inherit is to them and their posterity protected from the base arts so frequently devised to overreach ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... perpetual servitude, and to be the prey of kidnappers, she should have long since directed almost her undivided efforts to civilize and convert them,—not by establishing colonies of ignorant and selfish foreigners among them, who will seize every opportunity to overreach or oppress, as interest or ambition shall instigate,—but by sending intelligent, pious missionaries; men fearing God and eschewing evil—living evidences of the excellence of christianity—having but one object, not the possession of wealth or the obtainment ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... his face represented an ecstasy of cunning thought. I could read there, plain as print, that he but thought to overreach me. ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... hated in this world; the wretch who, by his possession of some compromising secret, was forcing Sabine into a detested marriage; the villain whom he, M. de Breulh, and Madame de Bois Arden had sworn to overreach, was within a few paces of him, and that now he should see him face to face. Their eyes would meet, and he would hear the tones of the scoundrel's voice. His rage and agitation were so intense that it was with ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... and is addicted to them, he may be said to bear Mrityu (death) in his mouth. Do thou, O Bharata, watch and observe the character of thy external and internal enemies, (by means of thy spiritual vision), And the man who is able to perceive the nature of the eternal reality is able to overreach the influence of the great fear (perdition). Men do not look with approbation upon the conduct of those who are engrossed in worldly desires and there is no act without having a desire (at its root) and all (Kama) desires are, as it were, the limbs (offshoots) of the mind. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... he was persuaded by my lord to postpone that experiment, until every other method should have failed, because it would attract the attention of all the pettifoggers in London, who, though they might not be able to overreach, would infallibly harass and tease ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... of his person through the streets of his metropolis. They are very poorly furnished and nasty, far below similar conveyances in any continental city with which we are acquainted. Greater fault still is to be found with the drivers, a large proportion of whom are so prone to overreach, that it is hardly possible to settle for their fares without a squabble. Our experience leads us to say, that at an average a stranger pays 30 per cent. above the proper sum, besides having his temper in almost every instance ruffled to some extent by the sense of having no adequate protection ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various
... anticipations, we hurried off to public school with Frances. Not since our short attendance at the pioneer school in Sonoma had Georgia and I been schoolmates, and never before had we three sisters started out together with books in hand; nor did our expectations overreach the sum of happiness which the day had in ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... no friction and no motive for any indirection, such accounting is child's work compared with the adjustment of dealings between the mutually suspicious private capitalists, who divided among themselves the field of business in your day, and sat up nights devising tricks to deceive, defeat, and overreach ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... tell of the litigiousness of the people, their constant attempts to overreach each other, the carefully woven lies which they have daily to unravel, the trust put in bribes to influence decisions, and the deeply ingrained notion in the minds of native officials that they should get more for their services to the public than the bare pay, the sookha tulub—dry ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... while man is inherently and completely satisfied with the difference between man and woman; satisfied with it and deriving his most thrilling pleasure from it; woman is always feverishly and frantically endeavouring to overcome and overreach this difference, endeavouring, in fact, to feel her way into every nerve and fibre of man's sensibility, so that he shall have nothing left that is a secret from her. That he should have any such secrets—that such secrets should be an inalienable and inevitable part of his essential ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... had made some most disgraceful attempt to overreach the good lady, besought Mr. Grewgious to rest content with any signature. And accordingly, in a baronial way, the sign- manual BILLICKIN ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... said Warren Hastings did, in the said proposal, endeavor to circumvent and overreach the Council-General, by converting an apparent and literal compliance with their resolution into a real and substantial opposition to and disappointment thereof. For his first proposal was, to withdraw the Company's troops from the Vizier's country ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... business than any other qualities. With these you may do as you list. They tell far better than all the 'one-price' and fair-dealing professions, in which people have little faith. In fact, the mass will overreach if they can, and therefore regard these ...
— True Riches - Or, Wealth Without Wings • T.S. Arthur
... have as few scruples as you as to how I get a horse; but we differ from each other in this, that if you were in my place you would take the horse without giving an equivalent. Now I am a man of mercy, and if you will ask a fair price you shall have it. But mark me! Do not overreach yourself and kill the goose that is about to lay ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... are talking about?" Doctor Prescott said, sharply; for this plain proposition that he overreach the other aroused him to a show ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... that wolfish society the struggle for bread borrowed a peculiar desperation from the tenderest sentiments. For the sake of those dependent on him, a man might not choose, but must plunge into the foul fight,—cheat, overreach, supplant, defraud, buy below worth and sell above, break down the business by which his neighbor fed his young ones, tempt men to buy what they ought not and to sell what they should not, grind his laborers, sweat his debtors, cozen his creditors. Though a man sought ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... simplicity and humility, they are so acute in their dealings that they are sure to deceive a person who is not very guarded. Although they would scorn to commit a robbery, yet they think it only fair to deceive or overreach in a bargain. Like the peasantry of Ireland, they are proverbial for their hospitality, and, like them, they are ever ready to fight on the slightest provocation. They swing themselves to and fro in their hammocks all day long, smoking their cigars or scraping a guitar. ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk
... much confidence, and the Justice, who seemed to have some secret apprehension of being put to trouble in the matter, and, as sometimes occurs on the English frontier, a jealousy lest the superior acuteness of their northern neighbours might overreach their own simplicity, turned to his clerk with ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... God was helping him; therefore he had no need to oppress or overreach any man. He believed that God's eye was on him; therefore he dared not oppress ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley
... [30] Sir Giles Overreach, in the play of "A new way to pay old debts," by Philip Massinger. It was difficult for the poet, or any other person, to libel such ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... of this inn was delicate and courteous to a degree, and at every point attempting to overreach her guests, who, as regularly as she attacked, countered ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... callous selfishness, the hypocrisy, the passionate resistance to all appeals to sentiment and the imperviousness to affection. One can detect in the creation strong resemblances to Macklin's interpretation of Shylock, something of Sir Giles Overreach, who was also known to eighteenth-century play-goers, and possibly of Tartuffe. In his resolute defiance of the conventions of comedy of sensibility, Macklin resisted the pressure to allow Sir Pertinax to soften in the end and ...
— The Man Of The World (1792) • Charles Macklin
... when I should be a man, and do as I saw others do. I longed for the days when I should be able to drink and be idle; and, in the mean time, I set all my wits to work to baffle and overreach ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... rather ghastly kind, and speculations as to what might be going on in London just then, were round him again, like armed giants, in another moment, and the riches or hypocrisy of his host were no more to him than those of Overreach or Tartuffe. ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... shall be watching you, guarding you. I think I can assure you that you are in no danger. For the rest, I must beg of you to wait for me and to trust me. The women of the name you bear have often had the same burden laid on them and have carried it nobly. Yet I know that your courage will match and overreach anything they have shown. I salute you, madame, in homage. I shall come to you the moment that ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... just been observed, is apt to overreach itself, has passed into a proverb; and the case of Jacopo and his employers was one in point to prove its truth. The unusual silence of those who ordinarily sought him on similar occasions, had not been lost on the agent; ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... refractory citizens was a Chinese trader named Wong. So far as anybody could see, he led as moral a life as a Chinaman can endure comfortably; he was good to his family, good to himself, he was sober, he would overreach a Spaniard when he could, but when he had given his word he kept it; he burned incense before joss, he read the analects of Kung Foo Too and Mang Tse, and worshipped his ancestors; he never stole or used any kind of profanity ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... Don Cesar de Bazan, His Last Legs, London Assurance, Old Heads and Young Hearts, and some other dramas. Dorothy and Mrs. Douglas were devotees of the theater. I enjoyed Richelieu and Macbeth, and I had seen Forrest as Sir Charles Overreach and Claude Melnotte; but for many of the plays I did not care. Douglas was indifferent to the theater. He was himself too much of a player on the stage of American affairs to be illusioned ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... that inordinate selfishness and cupidity overreach themselves; while the liberal man deviseth liberal things, and is ...
— Lessons in Life, For All Who Will Read Them • T. S. Arthur
... with lying and staring, and have always kept themselves clane from striopachas. Their word is not worth a rotten straw, yere hanner, and in every transaction which they have with people they try to cheat and overreach—ask my uncle Tourlough, who has had many dealings with them. But what is far worse, they do that which the wildest calleen t'other side of Ougteraarde would be burnt rather than do. Who can tell ye more on that point than ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... otherwise than for its material ends. A dollar never meant anything to him except its equivalent in the filling of a need. Generosity and the impulse of giving were in his blood, yet it had gone hard several times with people who had tried to overreach him even to a trifling extent. But now he submitted without a word to losing ten dollars through cashing Arthur Carroll's worthless check. He himself was rather bewildered at his tame submission. One thing was certain, although it seemed paradoxical; if he had not had suspicions as to Arthur ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... However, in this the young lady herself afterwards took care to prevent him. As to the old Mr. Wild, he did not sufficiently attend to all the designs of Snap, as his faculties were busily employed in designs of his own, to overreach (or, as others express it, to cheat) the said Mr. Snap, by pretending to give his son a whole number for a chair, when in reality he was intitled to a ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... character, namely, the treachery and craft with which they attempt to overreach one another in war, may be illustrated by a short saga told by Ssanang Setzen, and probably relating to this period of Temudjin's career. It is curious how circumstantial many of these traditions are. "At that time," ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... reply that I do not believe that the horticulturist can sell his small fruits anywhere in the ordinary markets of the world at so high a price as to the Robin, provided that he uses proper diligence that the little huckster doesn't overreach ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... though you be, you shall not thus outwit me. You shall not overreach and you shall not persuade me. Are you to keep your own prize, while I sit tamely under my loss and give up the girl at your bidding? Let the Achaeans find me a prize in fair exchange to my liking, or I will come and take your own, or that ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... delight of the Washington playgoers in the Jackson Administration. His wonderful impersonations of Richard III., Iago, King Lear, Othello, Shylock, and Sir Giles Overreach were as grand as his private life was intemperate and eccentric. He was a short, dumpy man, with features resembling those of the Roman Emperors, before his nose was broken in a quarrel, and his deportment on the stage ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... Kemble (June 23, 1817), he had no rival on the stage, especially in such parts as "Othello," "Lear," "Hamlet," "Sir Giles Overreach," and the two already mentioned. His last appearance on the stage was in "Othello" at Covent ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... "You overreach yourself, Mr. Clifford. Your gross insinuation compels me to go at once to Lady Clifford and inform her that I cannot remain longer under the same roof with a person who has so ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... men call it vulgar, if they will, The trade that thrives while sleeps the sleepyhead; Yes, knavery, not bravery, call it still, To overreach ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... 17.) "To the third category belong a great number of animals in high position or of individuals who are remarkable neither for their mind nor for their energy, but who, by their position, have wealth, connections, influence, power. We must exploit them in every possible manner, overreach them, deceive them, and, getting hold of their dirty secrets, make them our slaves." (Sec. 18.) ... "The fourth class is composed of sundry ambitious persons in the service of the State and of liberals of various shades of ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... know him to be an incarnation of cunning, I should think he had lost his senses," replied Mr. Wyllys; "but happily for honest men, rogues generally overreach themselves; after they have spread their nets, made the mesh as intricate as possible, they almost invariably fall into their own snare. Such will, undoubtedly, be the ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... cheated. An attempt to deceive us, is an insult to our understandings and an affront to our morals. The pretender to politeness is a cheat. He tries to palm off the base for the genuine; and, although he may deceive the vulgar, he cannot overreach the cultivated. True politeness springs from right feelings; it is a good heart, manifesting itself in an agreeable life; it is a just regard for the rights and happiness of others in small things; it is the expression ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady
... of cheating his fellows, and living upon their credulity. One or more of all these classes will be found in the foregoing pages. It will be seen, from the record of their lives, that the delusion was not altogether without its uses. Men, in striving to gain too much, do not always overreach themselves; if they cannot arrive at the inaccessible mountain-top, they may perhaps get half way towards it, and pick up some scraps of wisdom and knowledge on the road. The useful science of chemistry is not a little indebted to its spurious ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... You would like me to confess to some black iniquity that would make us better friends, eh? Well, it so happens that I was not alone to-night, but that another person saw the poor woman's death and can bear me out in everything I say. No, Pancho, you overreach yourself. Now then"— Esteban was quick-tempered, and for years he had struggled against an instinctive distrust and dislike of the plantation manager— "remember that I have become the head of this house, and your employer. You will ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... religion's nothing to me. It's because the only kind I've known is going to the church, dressed up, and sitting in the church feeling pious—and then, on the outside, and between times, being just as grasping, and as anxious to overreach everybody else, and trying just as hard to get even with their enemies, as if there wasn't a ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... his council and turned his wisdom to folly; for Kapchack has been so cunning for so many, many years, and all his family have been so cunning, and all his councillors, that now I do believe (only I do not meddle with politics) that this extreme cunning is too clever, and that they will overreach themselves. However, we shall see what is ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... retreating within his own doorway. Ben pulled him back by his coat-tails. "We aren't through with this yet," he went on as the man turned upon him with a few smothered words. "That isn't a pretty way to talk. You have something of a case, I admit, but you happened to overreach yourself this time. No, you're not going in yet. A little more fresh air won't hurt you. Sit down there and be good and I will tell you a pretty little story." He pushed the old man gently into his chair and stood guard ...
— A Dear Little Girl's Thanksgiving Holidays • Amy E. Blanchard
... obviously have more to offer her than their rivals. But the somewhat equivocal attitude of her statesmen has been determined not merely by an astute desire to win the spoils of war without making the necessary sacrifice—a policy which is apt to overreach itself—but also by a very pardonable anxiety as to the attitude of Bulgaria and Turkey. Roumania has hitherto been the foremost upholder of the Treaty of Bucarest, and it is only in the event of drastic territorial changes farther west that she is likely to consent to its ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... Featherstone asked Rosamond to sing to him, and she herself was so kind as to propose a second favorite song of his—"Flow on, thou shining river"—after she had sung "Home, sweet home" (which she detested). This hard-headed old Overreach approved of the sentimental song, as the suitable garnish for girls, and also as fundamentally fine, sentiment being the ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... young man into a sale, or rather an exchange of his valuable farm for another, or wild lands, at false valuations and of doubtful titles. But, finding himself wholly mistaken in the character of the person whom he thus endeavored to overreach, and consequently failing in his attempt, he next began to think of the quibbles of the law, as the means of accomplishing his purpose. And having discovered some slight irregularity in Woodburn's deed, to begin upon, he then resorted to a ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... times about the middle of the fourteenth century, when every petty prince in Europe was trying to overreach his immediate neighbor and grasp his lands, and when ties of blood seemed only to intensify feuds, there arose two claimants for the principality of Brittany. The Count of Montfort, half-brother of the last duke, and Charles of Blois, were the ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster |
