"Double-dealing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... akin to secrecy. The result is a vicious circle, of which deceit and intrigue are the very essence. Secrecy and its natural consequences have given to diplomacy a popular reputation for trickery, for double-dealing, and in a more or less degree for unscrupulous and dishonest methods of obtaining desired ends, a reputation that has found expression in the ironic definition of a diplomat as "an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing
... men of a sacred calling to act contrary to their sense of duty. If they be sincere, as priests and truly spiritual-minded, they will find it impossible to accept of a stipend, known to be granted with such expectation. If they be worldlings and false of heart, they will practise double-dealing, and seem to support the Government while they are actually undermining it; for they know that if they be suspected of sacrificing the interests of the Church they will lose all authority over their flocks. Power and consideration are ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... for affording us, even in these latter days, the sight of an honest man! Amidst the heartlessness, the double-dealing, the evasions, the prevarications, the shameful treachery and falsehood, of political men of both parties, in respect to the question of slavery, how refreshing is it to listen to words like these! They renew our failing faith in ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... "In order to use them, one must know fact from falsehood, and be able to discriminate between honesty and double-dealing." Wang Hsi in a different interpretation thinks more along the lines of "intuitive perception" and "practical intelligence." Tu Mu strangely refers these attributes to the spies themselves: "Before using spies we must assure ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... things, deem the struggle folly. As well, they might say, let yonder scuffling vagabonds up any of the Veronese side-streets fall upon the patrol marching like one man, and hope to overcome them! In Vienna there was often despair: but it never existed in the Austrian camp. Vienna was frequently double-dealing and time-serving her force in arms was like a trained man feeling his muscle. Thus, when the Government thought of temporizing, they issued orders to Generals whose one idea was to strike the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... careless about his father's reputation for sanity, and reports him a crazy suicide; if he gaily accuses his publisher and good friend of double-dealing, shuffling, and dishonesty; if he tells stories about Mrs. Clermont, {205b} to which his sister offers a public refutation,—is it to be supposed that he will always tell the truth about his wife, when the world is pressing him hard, and every instinct of ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Arbour Court, Goldsmith had submitted to his brother Henry a sample of a heroi-comic poem describing a Grub Street writer in bed in 'a paltry ale-house.' In this 'the sanded floor,' the 'twelve good rules' and the broken tea-cups all played their parts as accessories, and even the double-dealing chest had its prototype in the poet's night-cap, which was 'a cap by night — a stocking all the day.' A year or two later he expanded these lines in the 'Citizen of the World', and the scene becomes the Red Lion in Drury Lane. From this second version he adapted, or extended ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... pieces of business savor of dishonesty," I remarked. "The successful business man cannot always, in these days of double-dealing chicanery and cut prices, act squarely, otherwise he is quickly left behind by his more ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... which by nature, position, and destiny it was entitled." Ordinary minds cannot grasp the guile and daring which seem to have foreseen and prearranged all the conditions necessary to plans which for double-dealing transcended the conceptions of men even in that age ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... times, those early days of '54. After half a century of peace the shadow of a great contest loomed dark and near. The whole British nation, sick and tired of Russian double-dealing, was eager to cut the knot of political difficulty with the sword. Everyone was mad to fight; only a few optimists, statesmen mostly, still relying on the sedative processes of diplomacy, had any hopes of averting war. A race reputed peace-loving, but most pugnacious ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... 45) was inspired by Blackmore's Essay upon Wit, to which he paid a compliment in his opening remarks (much to the disgust of Swift, who accused him of double-dealing). Although Addison had praised Blackmore's Creation warmly in the Spectator No. 339, he had not always been friendly, for earlier Blackmore had sneered at Addison in the Satyr against Wit, a jibe that drew Steele's reply ...
— Essay upon Wit • Sir Richard Blackmore
... full on her, the boy's dilated to fanaticism, glowing with obstinacy; the girl's, wet and pleading, miserable, but full of love. Luella, with narrowed lids, bored into those clear young eyes: no shadow of deceit, no hint of shuffling or double-dealing ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... anticipation. I suppose that when society is reconstructed, where there is now, in the course of a year, one fortune made, there will be a hundred fortunes made. Every one knows that the commercial world thrives in proportion as there is confidence between man and man; and the extirpation of all double-dealing and fraud from society will increase this confidence, and hence greater prosperity. The heavy commercial disasters that have smitten this land were the work of godless speculators and infamous stock-gamblers. It is crime that is the ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... it was a pleasure to know such an honorable fellow was to be an opponent, and that the Marshall boys were so utterly opposed to any form of double-dealing or trickery, in ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... Danger, peril, jeopardy, hazard, risk. Darken, obscure, bedim, obfuscate. Dead, lifeless, inanimate, deceased, defunct, extinct. Decay, decompose, putrefy, rot, spoil. Deceit, deception, double-dealing, duplicity, chicanery, guile, treachery. Deceptive, deceitful, misleading, fallacious, fraudulent. Decorate, adorn, ornament, embellish, deck, bedeck, garnish, bedizen, beautify. Decorous, demure, sedate, sober, staid, prim, proper. Deface, disfigure, mar, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... correspondent' at New York that the folks there rejoice in the losses and disasters of the allies. This can never be the case, surely? No one whose opinion is worth a rap can rejoice at any success of the Czar, whose double-dealing and unscrupulous greediness must have rendered him an object of loathing to every well-thinking man. But what have I to do with politics, or you? Our 'pleasant object and serene employ' are books, books. Let ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... requested her," interrupted the general, "not to ask your advice; I desired her not to speak to you on the subject—not to consult you. Deceit—double-dealing in every thing she does, ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth |
