"Cunning" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and beaten, time after time; but in a few hours he was always off again, and at last they let him go his own way. There is nothing he hasn't turned his hand to. First he lived in the woods, I fancy; and they say he was the most arrant young poacher in the district, though he was so cunning that he was never caught. At last he had to give that up. Then he fished for a bit, but he couldn't stick to it. He has been always doing odd jobs, turning his hand to whatever turned up. He worked in a shipyard for a bit, then I took him as a ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things to become potent engines by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people, and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson
... disposed to hurt them, if they had not such great and powerful paters among them, who had a superior power, and could catch, and bring them into subjection. It is not difficult for the sorcerers thus to impose upon the poor ignorant people, for they really do possess superior cunning, and astonishing dexterity, being the most expert jugglers on earth. Every one who has visited the East Indies, well knows, with what unaccountable exhibitions and slight of hand tricks the jugglers endeavour to amuse the people; ...
— Letters on the Nicobar islands, their natural productions, and the manners, customs, and superstitions of the natives • John Gottfried Haensel
... an' Sarah, for you don't understan' your father, nor ain't used to 'im as I am. But that's not a bad idea o' yours that Sarah should ask one o' the young ladies at 'er school to come an' stay 'ere for a bit.—There's that Miss Cunning'am that you've got the photograph o' in your room. She's got a ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... your bones, and many shall grudge you that abiding-place. Keep ye heedfully from wiles, for marvellously have my dreams gone. Be well ware of sorcery; yet none the less shall ye be bitten with the edge of the sword, for nothing can cope with the cunning of eld.' And when she had thus spoken she wept right sore. Then said Grettir, 'Weep not, mother; for if we be set upon by weapons it shall be said of thee that thou hast had sons and not daughters.' And ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... man, and spare not, and when thou hast drunk thy fill thou shalt lodge with us this night. We'll make ready a bed for thee. None shall vex thee. Come now, eat and drink whatever thy soul desires." So the Jews flattered him with devilish cunning, and almost forced ...
— Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales • Anonymous
... slaves from Mississippi or Alabama on account of the fears entertained that such property may be already mortgaged to the banks of the above named states. Our moneyed men and speculators are now wide awake. It will take a pretty cunning ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... calling on the gods that are above and the gods that are below, saying, "This covenant shall stand forever, whatsoever may befall. As sure as this sceptre which I bear—once it was a tree, but a cunning workman closed it in bronze, to be the glory of the Latian kings—shall never again bear twig or leaf, so surely shall this covenant ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... lie under. They excel in dancing and music, for they are active and lively, though of a thicker make than the French; they cut their hair close on the middle of the head, letting it grow on either side; they are good sailors, and better pirates, cunning, treacherous and thievish; above three hundred are said to be hanged annually at London; beheading with them is less infamous than hanging; they give the wall as the place of honour; hawking is the ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... entirest strangers; nay, in so wide a Universe there was even, unconsciously, by Commerce, some mutual helpfulness between them. How then? Simpleton! their Governors had fallen out; and, instead of shooting one another, had the cunning to make ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... the most savage tacklers I've ever seen, and if he can only get his conditions worked off soon, we won't have to worry about right half. Morley, the man I put in his place, is a dandy, but doesn't come up to Axtell. Henderson at quarter is as quick as a cat and as cunning as a fox. Trent at center and Drake at right end are as good as they make 'em. Those fellows I've named are stars. The rest are good, but I've seen as good and better ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield
... all the cunning of them, for fear Judith should become chargeable to the parish, and there! her fine friends would die, or give her up, or she would just be thrown on the parish, and passed on to a strange workhouse, and then she would see what she got by leaving ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the Church, sire, I would say that the devil has given these men such cunning of hand and of brain that they are the best workers and traders in your Majesty's kingdom. I know not how the state coffers are to be filled if such tax-payers go from among us. Already many have left the country and taken their trades with them. If all were ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the Felis concolor of naturalists, is considerably less than the true lion, being about the size of a large wolf, of a lively red colour tinged with black, but without spots. It climbs trees, whence it drops down by surprise on animals passing below; and though fierce and cunning, hardly ever ventures ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... was flushed with much wine, and he was a man whose arrogance in that condition was apt to become extreme. "In vino veritas!" The sober devil can hide his cloven hoof; but when the devil drinks he loses his cunning and grows honest. Mr. Bonteen looked Phineas full in the face a second or two before he answered, and then said,—quite aloud—"You have crept ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... six moons back. And he came from the land of the English to his cousin, who lived here. If you have dealings with Daireh, I know your business,"—and here the barber looked inexpressibly cunning—"Gordon Pasha spoilt that trade; but since he has gone there is good profit to be made. And what are the pagans fit for but slaves, sons of pigs that they are? But they tell me there will be fine times when the Mahdi rules. Not that I know, but while ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... touches on congenial subjects, such as agriculture or law. The ancient legal phraseology had been seriously complained of as being so technical as to baffle all but experts in deciphering its meaning. Horace ridicules the cunning of the trained legal intellect in more than one place. But this reproach was no longer just. The series of able and thoughtful writers who had carried out a successive and systematic treatment of law since ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... Inkosikaas (i.e. 'Chieftainess,' for so was this famous weapon named) sunk so low as to drink the blood of beasts. Still, the stroke was a good one so she need not be ashamed. But, Yellow Man, how comes it that you who, I have been told, are cunning, watch your master ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... and an onion and a cup or so of water, and evolve a pot roast that you could cut with a fork. She could turn out a surprisingly good cake with surprisingly few eggs, all covered with white icing, and bearing cunning little jelly figures on its snowy bosom. She could beat up biscuits that fell apart at the lightest pressure, revealing little pools of golden butter within. Oh, ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... think I needn't tell you that we're fighting in the most terrible war the world has ever seen. We're matched against a foe whose force and cunning will need every atom of strength of which we're capable. They are not only shooting our soldiers at the front, and bombing our towns, but by their submarine warfare they are deliberately trying to reduce us by starvation. There is already a food crisis in our country. ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... that depth of reflection, variety of knowledge, and richness of illustrative memory, which distinguished him; and which offered so striking a contrast to the sharp talent, the shallow information, and the worldly cunning, that make ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... sister put forth her protecting power for thee, she scattered abroad those who were her enemies, she drove away evil hap, she pronounced mighty words of power, she made cunning her tongue, and her words failed not. The glorious Isis was perfect in command and in speech, and she avenged her brother. She sought him without ceasing, she wandered round and round the earth uttering cries of pain, and she rested (or ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge
... logicians, keen observers of life and manners, prophesying, interpreting, talking unknown tongues, working miraculous cures, coming down with messages from God to the House of Commons. We have seen an old woman, with no talents beyond the cunning of a fortuneteller, and with the education of a scullion, exalted into a prophetess, and surrounded by tens of thousands of devoted followers, many of whom were, in station and knowledge, immeasurably her superiors; and all this in the nineteenth century; and all this in London. Yet why not? For ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... she had induced her husband to make his spiritual ministrations indispensable to the tottering vitality of Lady Bray; with what cunning she herself had persuaded the old woman to be present at her garden parties over the last five years, though the poor creature was nothing but the head of death and the bones of decay, barely kept together by the common support of her clothes, it would ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... prospect of the continuance of fair weather in the ordinary course of nature: but should he fail there is an effectual salvo. He always promises to fulfil his agreement with a Deo volente clause, and so attributes his occasional disappointments to the particular interposition of the deity. The cunning men who, in this and many other instances of conjuration, impose on the simple country people, are always Malayan adventurers, and not unfrequently priests. The planter whose labour has been lost by such interruptions generally finds ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... made his way to the shore, and with much labour climbed upon the ship. Neither mariner nor merchant was therein. A large pavilion of silk covered part of the deck, and within this was a rich bed, the work of the cunning artificers of the days of King Solomon. It was fashioned of cypress wood and ivory, and much gold and many gems went to the making of it. The clothes with which it was provided were fair and white as snow, ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... and you have planted the seeds of despotism at your own doors. Familiarize yourselves with the chains of bondage and you prepare your own limbs to wear them. Accustomed to trample on the rights of others, you have lost the genius of your own independence and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises among you. And let me tell you, that all these things are prepared for you by the teachings of history, if the elections shall promise that the next Dred Scott decision and all future decisions will be quietly acquiesced in ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... marvellous, most healthy and most fertile; where now the best sugar of the island is made. Its king was called Caonabo. In strength, and dignity, in gravity, and pomp he surpassed all the others. They captured this king with great cunning and malice, he being safe in his own house. They put him on a ship to take him to Castile and, as there were six ships in the port ready to leave, God, who wished to show that this, together with the other things, was a great iniquity ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... keenly alive to the influence of kindness and affection. Of course if your kindness, forbearance, or affection, take the form of action which leads them to think that you are afraid of them, they will merely esteem you cunning, and treat you accordingly; but if you convince a Kafir, or any other savage, that you have a disinterested regard for him, you are sure to find him ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne
... "This much sunk me. I thought my condition was alone; but how to get out of, or get rid of, these things I could not." Again the very ground of his faith was shaken. "Was the Bible true, or was it not rather a fable and cunning story?" All thought "their own religion true. Might not the Turks have as good Scriptures to prove their Mahomet Saviour as Christians had for Christ? What if all we believed in should be but 'a think-so' too?" So powerful and so real were his illusions that he had hard ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... is gained. The Self chooses his body as its own." When the personal tumult is silence, then arises the meditation of the Wise within. Whoever speaks out of that life has earned the right to be there. No cunning can stimulate its accents. No hypocrisy can voice its wisdom. Whose mind gives out light—it is the haunt of the Gods. Does this seem to slight a guarantee for sincerity, for trust reposed? I know of none weightier. Look back in memory; of the martyrdom of opposing passions, ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... Kfilah. 'Alayn was apprized of their project; and, reaching the Wady Umm Gehaylah, he left his caravan under a guard, and secretly posted fifty matchlock-men in El-Suwayrah, east of the hills of El-Muwaylah. He then (behold his cunning!) tethered between the two hosts, at a place called Zila'h, east of the tomb of Shaykh Abdullah,[EN97] ten camel-colts without their dams. Roused by the bleating, the negro slaves followed the sound and fell into the ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... into the circle. It was Bagheera the Black Panther, inky black all over, but with the panther markings showing up in certain lights like the pattern of watered silk. Everybody knew Bagheera, and nobody cared to cross his path; for he was as cunning as Tabaqui, as bold as the wild buffalo, and as reckless as the wounded elephant. But he had a voice as soft as wild honey dripping from a tree, and a skin softer ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... legal subordination and comparative physical weakness, they reveal their sentiments in a less brutal form, but malice and bad temper are not wanting. In such cases, the woman's principal weapon is cunning, which may go as far as poisoning the husband. More commonly she simply abandons him, ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... ambition to get fire by friction. Now and then I got the sticks to smoke and I hoped that practice would give me the little extra speed and cunning that makes for flame. I'd always been pretty good at games, if ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... knowledge of any sort to act with the humanity necessary. The candidates for popular favour, amongst the lower housekeepers, are generally flattering, fauning sic, cringing men, and such are almost without exception, cunning, ignorant, and overbearing, wherever they have the least [end of page 255] authority over others. Such, in general, are the parish-officers, to whose care this important ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... habitations of civilized human beings. In fact, the populace of these towns consists chiefly of the families of the briganti. The women we saw here were bold coarse Amazons; and the few men who appeared had a slouching gait, and looked at us from under their eyebrows with an expression at once cunning and fierce. We met many begging friars—horrible specimens of their species: altogether I never beheld such a desperate set of canaille as appear to have congregated in ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... me!" Bella bridled her head and half shut one eye that gave her an unpleasant look of cunning. "He swore me not to tell and said little girls were often better than ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... as a sound rule among civilised people that games which may be won by disabling your adversary, or wearing out his strength, or killing him, ought to be prohibited, at all events among its youth. Swiftness of foot, skill and agility, quickness of sight, and cunning of hands, are things to be encouraged in education. The use of brute force against an unequally matched antagonist, on the other hand, is one of the most debauching influences to which a young man can be exposed. The hurling of masses of highly trained ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... he is my spoil, in my tent,' said Amalek, with a cunning smile; 'but put him on a round hat in a walled city, and then he is the brother of the Queen of ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... future life they strove to preserve the body for it, and built ever stronger and more gigantic tombs. They strove to fit the mind for it, and cultivated virtues, not wholly animal such as physical strength, nor wholly commercial such as cunning. They even carved around the sepulchre of the departed a record of his doings, lest they—and perhaps he too in that next life—forget. There were elements of intellectual growth in all this, conditions to stimulate the mind ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... occurred in Ilocos Sur. The Alcalde was deposed, and escaped after he had been forced to give up his staff of office. The leader of this revolt was a cunning and wily Manila native, named Diego de Silan, who persuaded the people to cease paying tribute and declare against the Spaniards, who, he pointed out, were unable to resist the English. The City of Vigan was ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... least elegant in his manner." The moral attributes of this ugly little fellow were only less attractive than his physical imperfections. "He has a turn for gallantry, but Nature has denied him the proper gifts; he is fond of play, but his cunning always renders him suspected." He was at this time thirty-two years of age, and, as the phrase goes, a man of pleasure, but his militant prowess had hitherto been more conspicuous in the courts of Venus than in the field ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... "Bless me! How cunning she's getting!" laughed Raymond. But he did not laugh long. Estelle handed him his coffee and lit a match for his cigar; while Arthur, guessing what was coming, resigned himself helplessly to ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... nature had been further developed at the cost of darker and sterner qualities, the consequence might have proved unfortunate for the nation. No people so ruled by altruism as to lose its capacities for aggression and cunning could hold their own, in the present state of the world, against races hardened by the discipline of competition as well as by the discipline of war. The future Japan must rely upon the least [462] amiable qualities of her character for success in the universal struggle; ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... was accused of eating to such a pitch of distention that it had to squeeze itself between two close-growing trees for relief ere it returned again to the repast. There is no doubt, however, that it is to a great extent voracious and extremely cunning; and what it cannot eat it will carry off and hide. The trappers complain bitterly of it, and spare no pains to kill every one they can come across; but it is not easily to be caught, and only a ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... through a dozen residence streets in town and then out upon the long, straight roads in the rich, flat country to the north. It had skirted the town as a hungry wolf might have encircled silently and swiftly the fire-lit camp of a hunter. To Clara the machine seemed like a wolf, bold and cunning and yet afraid. Its great nose pushed through the troubled air of the quiet roads, frightening horses, breaking the silence with its persistent purring, drowning the song of insects. The headlights also disturbed ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... not fly away from her, for her watch was too vigilant; but he hoped for some chance of secret flight in which, if he once escaped, he might find his way to the Continent. With something of that cunning which characterizes the insane, and which, perhaps, is born of the presence of a "keeper," Sir Lionel watched his opportunity, and one day nearly succeeded in ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... and who possesses as much energy for getting divorces (this being his third time on earth) as Roosevelt exhibits in the Baby market, has taken to peddling "The Ladies Home Journal," and the "Saturday Evening Post," and if you only knew how cunning he looks with his abbreviated coat and short, quick, little steps, you would give a dollar for a picture of him to paste in your book of curiosities of ...
— Letters of a Dakota Divorcee • Jane Burr
... carved this face, And set this vine-work round it running, Perhaps ere mighty Phidias wrought Had lost its subtle skill and cunning. ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... her into the chair was the difficulty, and some proposed one thing and some another. Sapskull said, "We must make her merry with some beer." Hardy said, "We must tie her down." But I proposed to ask her to sit for her picture as a guy, and then to carry her off. Master Quidd was, however, more cunning than any of us, and said, "I know how to nab her; I have a plan, and a capital one it ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... build, its model, the closeness and regularity of the grain of the wood of which the belly was fashioned: the neatness, or, wanting that, the original style of the purfling—the exquisite mottling of the back, which is wrought, he tells you, 'by the cunning hand of nature in the primal growth of the tree'—twang. Then he will break out in placid exclamations of delight upon the gracefulness of the swell—twang—and the noble rise in the centre—twang—and make you pass your hand over it to convince yourself; ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... drapery of the finest linen, minutely plaited, bound about the waist by a belt inlaid with small enamel and gold plates. Between the band and the belt his torso appeared, shining and polished like pink granite shaped by a cunning workman. Sandals with returned toes, like skates, shod his long narrow feet, placed together like those of the gods on the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... you so!' cried Charley. Don't you see? He is the most cunning arguer—beats Despair in ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... about I dare not let them rest on the beauty of Love and Friend, for even if my tongue were cunning enough to sing this, the revelation of reality here is too sacred and the fancy too untrue. Of one world-beauty alone may we at once be brutally frank and that is the glory of physical nature; this, though the last ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... Crossen, and Ex-Dictator Wedell does),—Law-practitioner in Crossen; who had been in strife with the Custrin Regierung, under rebuke from them (too importunate for some of his pauper clients, belike); was a cunning fellow too, and had the said Regierung in ill-will. An adroit fellow Bech might be, or must have been; but his now office of Regiment's-Auditor is certificate of ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... and guile, of shopkeeper's shrewdness, and the studied carelessness of a member of the Jockey Club, was that form of disgust which set a pistol in the hands of a young Werther, bored to death less by Charlotte than by German princes. It was a thoroughly German face, full of cunning, full of simplicity, stupidity, and courage; the knowledge which brings weariness, the worldly wisdom which the veriest child's trick leaves at fault, the abuse of beer and tobacco,—all these were ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... only the day before yesterday nothing of the sort had occurred to her, and she even begged you to advise me.... It was a strange request, wasn't it? Now she calls you ... Dimitri, a hypocrite and a cunning fellow, says that you have betrayed her confidence, and predicts that you ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... then, come to this? If none beside Will stand for justice, then, at least, will I. I'll rend the woof of cunning into shreds, And lay its falsehoods open to the day. Most reverend primate! art thou, canst thou be So simple-souled, or canst thou so dissemble? Are ye so credulous, my lords? My liege, Art thou so weak? ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... a cast, apparently the death-mask of a woman, by which the eye was immediately attracted with something of a shock and held by a curious fascination. The face was smiling, a smile of great peace, and also of a strange cunning. One other characteristic it had: the woman looked as though at any moment she would suddenly open her eyes, and if you turned away from her and looked again, she seemed to be smiling to herself because she had opened them that moment ...
— The Worshipper of the Image • Richard Le Gallienne
... slightest resistance to the hampering ropes they put on me, with the cunning knots known to seamen, I knew they would not hesitate to make an end of me. So I stood up and allowed Buckrow to lash my wrists to my knees in such a way that I was bent nearly double, but with my hands sufficiently free to grasp a burden, and my ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... her handsome body, pressed her towards me in such a manner that her snowy breasts beat against my face. I took one of her rosy nipples in my mouth, and while she was pumping up my spermatic treasures, I sucked and titillated the cunning little strawberry top of her alabaster globes. Nor was this all, for I lowered one of my hands and tickled her bottom—sometimes gently slapping her fleshy cushions, at others forcing a finger in le ...
— The Life and Amours of the Beautiful, Gay and Dashing Kate Percival - The Belle of the Delaware • Kate Percival
... had to be signed, all with sole responsibility and as sole partner, while Foggatt, behind the scenes absorbed the larger share of the profits. In brief, my unhappy and foolish father was a mere tool in the hands of the cunning scoundrel who pulled all the wires of the business, himself unseen and irresponsible. At last three companies, for the promotion of which my father was responsible, came to grief in a heap. Fraud ...
— Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... well, and make good their professions: and they sullenly told her not to prescribe to them, for they knew their duty; but to strive to content her husband, who had taken her (as they tauntingly expressed it) as Fortune's alms. And Cordelia with a heavy heart departed, for she knew the cunning of her sisters, and she wished her father in better hands than she was about to ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... bright face of May? Rogue though she be and disturber of sane men's peace, no wise virgins cunning nor cold storage shall make her bow her head in the bright galaxy ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... a month the house was completed, and much to the regret of both the junior partners, a considerable sum of ready money was paid to the tradesmen who performed the work. Mr. Jones was of opinion that by sufficient cunning such payments might be altogether evaded. No such thought rested for a moment in the bosom of Mr. Robinson. All tradesmen should be paid, and paid well. But the great firm of Brown, Jones, and Robinson would be much less ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... inscrutable purpose, suddenly set Niagara pouring very near the spot where it is pouring now; laid the various strata, and sprinkled the fossils through them like plums through a pudding; scratched the glacial grooves upon the rocks, and did a vast multitude of things, subtle and cunning, little and great, in all parts of the world, required to delude geologists of modern times into the conviction that all these things were the result of a steady progress through long epochs. On a similar plan, Mr. Southall proposed, at the very beginning of his book, as a final solution of the problem, ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... valour: nothing at all comparable to the brilliant if sometimes hazardous operations of the great Plantagenets. Nothing more is heard of that once triumphant arm, the Archery: the English bowmen had not, it would seem, lost their cunning, but they could no longer overwhelm hostile battalions. Nor does this seem to have been owing as yet to the displacement of the bow by firearms, though cannon both for defence and destruction of fortresses were improving—as exemplified at Maynooth. In the Scots wars, ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... did I hope that ever again I should look upon your face. Welcome to you, a thousand welcomes, and to you too, Light-in-Darkness, Lord-of-the-Fire, Cunning-one whose wit saved us in the battle of the Gate. But where is Dogeetah, where is Wazeela, and where are the Mother and the Child ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... as they make them; she was as merry and gay, as it is possible for any of her sex, even of the human kind, to be. Her proper name was the Fair Maid of Perth; but somehow, from her lively, troublesome, and wanton vagaries, they called her the Sow-Cow. My own riding-horse, a small, sleek, cunning little bay, a fine hack with excellent paces, called W.A., I also had out previously. He would pull on his bridle all day long to eat, he would even pretend to eat spinifex; he was now very bad and ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... at his victim with an air of cunning mystery. She jumped up so suddenly that he started back. Mrs. Fyne rose too, and even the spell was removed from her husband. But the girl dropped again into the chair and turned her head to look at Mrs. ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... severely frost-bitten. While suffering from the frost he was kept in the poor-house. After partial recovery he made his way to Baltimore and thence to Philadelphia. Once or twice he was captured and carried back. The Committee suspected that he was a cunning impostor who had learned how to tell a tale of suffering simply to excite the sympathies of the benevolent; yet, with the map of Virginia before them, he proved himself familiar with localities adjacent to the neighborhood in which he was raised. ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... Coaita is mild in the extreme— it has none of the painful, restless vivacity of its kindred, the Cebi, and no trace of the surly, untameable temper of its still nearer relatives, the Mycetes, or howling monkeys. It is, however, an arrant thief, and shows considerable cunning in pilfering small articles of clothing, which it conceals in its sleeping place. The natives of the Upper Amazons procure the Coaita, when full grown, by shooting it with the blowpipe and poisoned darts, and restoring life by putting a little salt (the antidote to the Urari poison ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... skull afforded an instance of this, and even more notable was his first meeting with Major Jack Ragstaff of the Cavalry Club, a meeting which took place after the office had been closed, but which led to the unmasking of perhaps the most cunning murderer ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... arising from inability to fuse unfamiliar thoughts into a coherent conception. I have insisted on this at some length in "Life and Habit," but can do so no further here. (Note: Butler returned to this subject in "Luck, or cunning?" which was originally published ...
— God the Known and God the Unknown • Samuel Butler
... "Chinese line" is a cunning device invented by the people whose name it bears. By a simple system of floats, weights, and anchors, thousands of hooks, each on a separate leader, are suspended at a distance of from six inches to a foot above the bottom. The remarkable thing about such ...
— Tales of the Fish Patrol • Jack London
... burned within me. I had been thwarted on every side, not, I believed, by the revelation of truth, but by Carson Wildred's superior cunning. He had boasted to me that, in the role of villain, he would have been more successful than I; and I was quite ready to agree with this statement. All things seemed against me, and yet something which ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... of our women novelists without snorts—snorts, sir—of disgust, or bellows of derisive mirth. Why? Because these pages no longer contain an acute transcript of life as only a sensitive feminine mind would have the cunning to observe it, and of a form of human life in itself highly feminine in its character, but they now present a singularly insular travesty of man, an unconscious caricature of man as he could only appear to a feminine mind bound by the romantic limitations of sex, a mind, ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... painting that the success of a pianoforte virtuoso to-day depends upon his ability to arouse within his listeners' imagination the idea of colour—in reality, the emotional element. The engraver evokes colour by his cunning interplay of line and cross hatching; the mezzotinter by his disposition of dark masses and white spaces. Indeed, the mezzotint by reason of its warm, more sympathetic, and ductile medium has always seemed more colourful in his plates ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... sounds as if they were telling one another some pretty story, and often I am sure there must be humour in it, for every now and then one hears a little twittering laugh. I delight in having them there, so close to me. The fancy comes to me that one day, when my brain has grown more cunning, I, too, listening in the twilight, shall hear the stories ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... paces. We won't only show the knickerbockers: we demonstrate how the ordinary petticoat bunches and crawls up under the heavy plush and velvet top skirt. We'll show 'em in street clothes, evening clothes, afternoon frocks. Each one in a different shade of satin knicker. And silk stockings and cunning little slippers to match. The store will stand for that. It's a big ad ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... they had left the curving shore of the harbour through the cunning and counsel of prudent Tiphys son of Hagnias, who skilfully handled the well-polished helm that he might guide them steadfastly, then at length they set up the tall mast in the mast-box, and secured it with forestays, drawing them taut ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... exploit to any one of his acquaintance. He had of course not been able to ascertain whether the desired effect had been produced, for he did not know at what church the meeting between Faustina and Gouache was to take place, and he was too cunning to follow her as a spy when he had struck so bold a blow at her affection for the artist-soldier. His intellect was keen, but his experience had not been of a high order, and he naturally thought that she ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... my thought; I could have said it myself; and indeed it was the thought of all there present. A sort of awe crept over us, to think how that untaught girl, taken suddenly and unprepared, was yet able to penetrate the cunning devices of a King's trained advisers and defeat them. Marveling over this, and astonished at it, we fell silent and spoke no more. We had come to know that she was great in courage, fortitude, endurance, patience, conviction, fidelity to all duties—in all things, indeed, that make ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... entirely, he speculated, the value of the ring as an antique would have proven inestimable. As for the emerald itself, in its original state, before cutting, it must have been worth the ransom of an emperor; much had certainly been sacrificed to fashion it in its present form. The cunning of a jewel-cutter whose art was lost before Tyre and Nineveh upreared their heads must have been taxed by the task. Its innumerable facets reproduced with wonderful fidelity a human eyeball, unwinking, sleepless. In the enigmatic heart of its ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... effect was instantaneous. There was all the open veldt, or plain, spreading out for hundreds of miles before the bird, and it had only to dart off and leave the swiftest horse far behind. But its would-be cunning nature suggested to it that its enemy had laid a deep scheme to cut it off, and instead of going straight away, it turned on the instant to spin along in the same direction as that taken by the boy, ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... understood matters ever thought of going direct to the duke in such an affair as that. If one wanted to speak about a woman or a horse or a picture the duke could, on occasions, be affable enough. But through Mr. Fothergill the duke was approached. It was represented, with some cunning, that this buying over of the Framley clergyman from the Lufton side would be a praiseworthy spoiling of the Amalekites. The doing so would give the Omnium interest a hold even in the cathedral close. And then it was ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... wore her diamond cross from principle, he was the very poet of a passion flower, such holy mysteries as its opening petals disclosed to him! To Lucy Grey, who wore pensive curls, and had a sweet voice, he presented constantly fragrant little sprays of mignonette, cunning moss baskets with a suspicion of heliotrope peeping out, and crushed myrtle blossoms between the leaves of her most exquisitely bound books. To Katy Lessing, who rowed a small green boat somewhere up the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... transcendental school that creates purely inferential languages—East Germanic and West, General Teutonic, Original Slavic, Indo-European and the like. These are the Dii majores and their inventions are as complete as if one should detect, say, the relation of the little to the big fleas not by the cunning use of the microscope but by sheer inference. This larger game Hauptmann sagaciously left to others, ranging himself with those who piece together the scanty and uncertain fragments of languages that have existed but have failed to perpetuate ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... for the most part erred therein, whereof daily complaints were made amongst her loving subjects,—that for the redress hereof her majesty had been so importunately sued unto by the lords of her council and other of her nobility, not only to be content that some special cunning painter might be permitted by access to her majesty to take the natural representation of her, whereof she had been always of her own right disposition very unwilling, but also to prohibit all manner of other persons to draw, paint, grave, or portrait her personage or visage ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... on the exact spot at which he and Solomon Hyde, called the shiftless one, had parted, but he knew all the while that his last comrade was not coming. The same powerful and mysterious hand that swept the others away had taken him, the wary and cunning Shif'less Sol, master of forest lore and with all the five senses developed to the highest pitch. Yet his powers had availed him nothing, and the boy again felt that cold chill ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... favor. Gallop, therefore, my Official Gentleman:—alas, another Gentleman, Non-official, knowing how it would turn, already sat booted and saddled, a good space beyond the walls of Frankfurt, waiting till the cannon should fire; at the first burst of cannon, he (cunning dog) gives his horse the spur; and is miles ahead of the toiling Official Gentleman, all the way. [Adelung, iii. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Because some cunning English contractors in South America took advantage of the statements in this book to depreciate the American railway system and American civil engineers, for their own private advantage in obtaining work, some ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... not so cunning as he thought himself. Hendrik's eye was upon him; and in a moment the quagga was turned ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... sides exhibited the most extraordinary artfulness, cunning and ingenuity in the discovery, adaptation and invention of "cover." The great desideratum, of course, was to hide where we could see without being seen, to shoot from where there was ...
— A Soldier's Sketches Under Fire • Harold Harvey
... against complacency. We must not underrate the enemy. He is powerful and cunning—and cruel and ruthless. He will stop at nothing that gives him a chance to kill and to destroy. He has trained his people to believe that their highest perfection is achieved by waging war. For many years he has prepared for this very conflict—planning, and ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt • Franklin D. Roosevelt
... with its constant smile, and receive the quick and ceaseless tribute of his vigilant affection, the tears had stolen down his lately-excited features, all the consoling beauty of his visions had vanished into air, he had felt the deep curse of his desolation, and had anathematised the cunning brain that made his misery a thousand-fold keener by the ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... nouveau riche speculator. Again, most people have relations in the country, whom they visit from time to time, bringing back with them great bags of flour. It is illegal for private persons to bring food into Moscow, and the trains are searched; but, by corruption or cunning, experienced people can elude the search. The food market is illegal, and is raided occasionally; but as a rule it is winked at. Thus the attempt to suppress private commerce has resulted in an amount of unprofessional buying and selling which far exceeds what happens in capitalist ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... join them. But HENGIST had a beautiful daughter named ROWENA; and when, at a feast, she filled a golden goblet to the brim with wine, and gave it to VORTIGERN, saying in a sweet voice, 'Dear King, thy health!' the King fell in love with her. My opinion is, that the cunning HENGIST meant him to do so, in order that the Saxons might have greater influence with him; and that the fair ROWENA came to that feast, golden goblet ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... And gave me this staff, Telling me neither to smile nor to laugh. Buff says 'Baff,' to all his men, And I say 'Baff' to you again. And he neither laughs nor smiles, In spite of all your cunning wiles, But carries his face with a very good grace, And passes his staff to the ...
— My Book of Indoor Games • Clarence Squareman
... 1794. (This sect (the Encyclopaedists) propagate with much zeal the doctrine of materialism, which prevails among the great and the wits; we owe to it partly that kind of practical philosophy which, reducing Egotism to a system, looks upon society as a war of cunning; success the rule of right and wrong, honesty as an affair of taste or decency: and the world as the patrimony of ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... full Autumn, I was always after one or the other as fancy led, or opportunity offered; but was obliged to be more and more cunning, for fear I should be found out. Although I had heavy fucking at times, yet had good rests between. It was a jolly time, but mainly with three of the four women now. Nelly got the most of my cock at first, ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... knew, she was such a chatterbox; but this one may find out a vast deal, and never breathe a word about it, she is so sly. Some fine day we may have the country raised, and the gendarmes down upon us from Strasburg, and all owing to your pretty doll, with her cunning ways of ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... Opechancanough, a warrior of very different character, had taken his place as chief of the confederacy of tribes. We have met with this savage before, in the adventurous career of Captain John Smith. He was a true Indian leader, shrewd, cunning, cruel in disposition, patient in suffering, skilled in deceit, and possessed of that ready eloquence which always had so strong an influence over the savage mind. Jealous of the progress of the whites, he nourished ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... IV, who succeeded Gregory, proved himself a very cunning adversary. He might have {17} won an easy victory over Frederick II if the exactions of the Papacy had not angered the countries where he sought refuge after his first failures. It was futile to declare at Lyons that the Emperor ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead |
