"Pitfall" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... light of the moon. But often a fox may be seen jogging along in the full daylight. The very keenness of the animal seems sometimes to work his undoing. He knows well that the dogs cannot catch him so he jollies along just in front of them over his accustomed route where he knows every possible pitfall of the way. And the hunter waiting to leeward shoots him. Had the fox had fewer brains and simply bolted in a panic as soon as the dogs got on his trail he might have lived to bolt again the next time. Once ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... particularly I wanted a she-goat great with young. For this purpose I made snares to hamper them; and I do believe they were more than once taken in them; but my tackle was not good, for I had no wire, and I always found them broken and my bait devoured. At length I resolved to try a pitfall; so I dug several large pits in the earth, in places where I had observed the goats used to feed, and over those pits I placed hurdles of my own making too, with a great weight upon them; and several times I put ears of barley and dry rice without setting the trap; and I could easily perceive ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... him along the devious, unsuspicious path that conducted to the trap and then suddenly shot at him the question that should have plunged him into it, he very quietly and nimbly walked around the pitfall. Again and again she tried to involve him, but ever with the same result. He was abashed, ready to answer—and always elusive. At the end she had gained nothing from him, and for a minute stood looking silently ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... made a thousand jokes at the poor Barnabite's expense, the point of which he never saw; his simplicity saved him from every pitfall. To drown the suspense that racked them and escape the torments of idleness, the prisoners played at draughts, cards and backgammon. No instrument of music was allowed. After supper they would sing, or recite verses. ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... want you to find out, for us, when a tiger was last seen near the village; where its lair is supposed to be; and whether, according to its situation, we should have the best chance of killing it by digging a pitfall, on the path by which it usually comes from the jungle; or by getting a kid and tying it up, to attract the tiger to a spot where we shall be stationed in ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... weakness. I can comprehend the effrontery of a fair aggression; but I scorn the meanness of intrigue. I may face the man-at-arms, but I shudder at the assassin. I may determine to hunt down and destroy the lion, but I disdain the trap and the pitfall. And what has been the pretext of his majesty's ministers? Moderation. In this spirit of moderation they invaded France; in this spirit of moderation they captured her fortresses, and then handed them over to the Emperor; in this spirit of moderation they denounced the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... stocking and a bottle inside upon the best East End model. He swung it round his head once, broke an outhouse window with a flying fragment of glass, and ruined the stocking beyond all darning. He developed a subtle scheme with the cellar flap as a sort of pitfall, but he rejected it finally because (A) it might entrap the plump woman, and (B) he had no use whatever for Uncle Jim in the cellar. He determined to wire the garden that evening, burglar fashion, against the ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... breath; You are fat, and many words may melt ye, This is three Bawdes beaten into one; bless me Heaven, What shall become of me? I am i'th' pitfall: O' my conscience, this is the old viper, and all these little ones Creep every night into her belly; do you hear plump servant And you my little sucking Ladies, you must teach me, For I know you are excellent at carriage, How to behave my self, for I am rude yet: ...
— Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (2 of 10) - The Humourous Lieutenant • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... the Puritan did not condemn bear-baiting because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectator. The Puritan regarded beauty as a pitfall and a snare: that which gave pleasure was a sin; he found his gratification in doing without things. Puritanism was a violent oscillation of the pendulum of life to the other side. From the vanity, pretense, affectation and sensualism ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... caught in various ways. The pitfall is now prohibited, so also is the Assam plan of inclosing a herd in a salt lick. Noosing and driving into a kheddah or inclosure are now the only legitimate means of capture. The process is too long for description here, but I may conclude this article, which owes so ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... valued all things from a miser's standpoint, could not understand that there might lurk in the Indian a tinge of sentiment. He was mistaken, and the mistake was a little pitfall placed ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... to yield to ordinary measures. It was a difficult problem, for the rocky river-bed held many a snare and pitfall. There was a certain ledge under the water, so artfully placed that every log striking under its projecting edges would wedge itself firmly there, attracting ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... seek to cure are not worthy of much care; but they have dependants; and it is of the women and children that I think. Here is another pitfall into which the eager novice stumbles; and once more on grounds of expediency I ask the novice to consider his position. According to the decision of the peculiarly-constituted senate which rules racing affairs, I understand that, ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... avenge itself—lest like the Assyrian conqueror of old, while we stand and cry, "Is not this great Babylon which I have built?" our reason, like his, should reel and fall beneath the narcotic of our own maddening self-conceit, and while attempting to scale the heavens we overlook some pitfall at our feet, and fall as learned idiots, suicidal pedants, to be a degradation, and a hissing, and ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... the above was written Prof. Lloyd Morgan has published a closely similar notice of the passage in question. "This language," he says, "seems to savour of teleology (that pitfall of the evolutionist). The cart is put before the horse. The recognition-marks were, I believe, not produced to prevent intercrossing, but intercrossing has been prevented because of preferential mating between individuals possessing special recognition-marks. To miss this point is to miss an ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... trip up, it seems, on one snare after another, and kindness ever conceals a pitfall. (To Marie) But tell ...
— The Resources of Quinola • Honore de Balzac
... crumble of old crimes; she had taken her way amid the grime and corruption which Paganism had left there, and a perverted Christianity had made more noisome; walking saint-like through it all, with white, innocent feet; until, in some dark pitfall that lay right across her path, she had vanished out of sight. It was terrible to imagine what hideous outrage might have thrust her ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... end there. A child of this age has a genuine curiosity about where things come from and where they go to. "What's it for?" indeed, implies a dim conception beyond the "here" and the "now," a conception which his stories should help him to clarify. If we try to escape the pitfall of "fairy stories,"—abandoning a child in unrealities,—we must not fall into the opposite pitfall and continue the easy habit of merely recounting a series of events, neither significant in themselves nor, as in the earlier years, significant because they are personal experiences. ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
... declared the act regulating freight rates unconstitutional on the ground that it attempted to prevent not only unjust discrimination but any discrimination at all. The legislature then passed the Act of 1873, which avoided the constitutional pitfall by providing that discriminatory rates should be considered as prima facie but not absolute evidence of unjust discrimination. The railroads were thus permitted to adduce evidence to show that the discrimination was justified, but the act expressly stated that ...
— The Agrarian Crusade - A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics • Solon J. Buck
... crevasse, Nature's pitfall—that grim trap for the unwary—no hunter could conceal his snare so perfectly—the light rippled snow bridge gives no hint or sign of the hidden danger, its position unguessable till man or beast is floundering, clawing and struggling for ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... character, and that it was an honest character. If that same tale had been told about a girl who was not straightforward it might have been a different thing. Be thankful for your head-mistress's trust in you, and always act up to the principles you have been taught; it will save you from many a pitfall or from the trouble a weak young lady like Miss ...
— A City Schoolgirl - And Her Friends • May Baldwin
... law of its own development in itself, and working out its perfection merely by the fact of being what it is. Now, if we adopt the former, which we may style the theological view, we shall be in continual danger of tripping into the pitfall of some a priori conclusion—that bourne from which, it has been truly ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... ascertain the fact, the precise terms of the forfeit, the provisoes for getting out of paying it at last, led to a long and inextricable discussion. Kirkpatrick's vanity, however, one night led him into a terrible pitfall. He recklessly ventured money on the fact that The Mourning Bride was written by Shakespeare; headlong he fell, and ruefully he partook of the bowl of punch for which he had to pay. As a rule his nightly outlay seldom exceeded sevenpence. Four hours' good conversation ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... been a pitfall, dresses were even worse, for here the prices were largely increased. It was a new experience to be ushered into what looked more like a luxurious house than a shop, and to find oneself confronted ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... they are for it, their legislation will favour its extension." Douglas had decided. Southern newspapers took up his statement and the tide of anger rose against the "little giant" that cost him the presidency. Lincoln had digged a pitfall for unwary feet, and the ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... candidates propose to themselves in writing is to convey no meaning at all. And here is a quite unsuspected pitfall into which they successively plunge headlong. For it is precisely in such cryptographies that mankind are prone to seek for and find a wonderful amount and variety of significance. Omne ignotum pro mirifico. How do we admire at the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... One pitfall has to do with Federal Cost-sharing and the way it affects the freedom of choice of the States and localities on which the primary responsibility for eliminating pollution must rest. In building treatment plants to lessen ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... reason soberly over the adventure, the conclusion seemed obvious that the pitfall had been a consequent upon the breaking out of one of the ancient springs, so that the water, in endeavoring to find an outlet, had finally undermined the whole roadway. The chasm, as he looked back upon it, extended dear across the street. Its depth was only ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... and was led away by the man, its owner following at its heels. A short distance from the kraal they came to a well, from which a covering of earth had recently been removed. The well, for some purpose, had been concealed, as if it were a pitfall for the ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... infancy tumbled into the enormous rainwater-troughs with which every well-regulated house was furnished. I have seen one or two of these having a capacity of fifty barrels dug from a single tulip bole. In such a pitfall some budding Washington or Lincoln may have been whelmed without causing so much as a ripple on the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... is over—it is over now!" She exclaimed exultingly. "His reign of wickedness is over! The tool, which he moulded for his own purposes, shall be the instrument to quell him. The pitfall which he would have digged in the way of others, shall be to them a door whereby they shall escape his treason, and his ruin. You are saved, my Arvina! By all the Gods! you are saved! And, if it lost me once, it has preserved me now—my wild, ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... generally claim historical precedence, as is by no means certain. As long as man hunted with very inferior weapons, he must have depended a good deal on drives, that either forced the game into a pitfall, or rounded them up so as to enable a concerted attack to be made by the human pack. No wonder that the bull-roarer is sometimes used to bring luck in a mystic way to hunters. More commonly, however, at the present day, the bull-roarer serves another type of mystic purpose, its noise, which is ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... the pitfall at its lowest depths. Here where they first saw the place, more than two hundred feet below the level of the sea, great beds of rock salt covered its floor worn by the wind into a myriad of pinnacles, as high as a man's waist, sharp as knives and coated with brown dust. In the center of this ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... is not good, you may go away again." Still Nino hesitated. Sorrowful and fearful of the future as he was, his love gnawing cruelly at his heart, he would have given the whole world for a strain of rare music if only he were not forced to make it himself. Then it struck him that this might be some pitfall. I ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... to keep this fact in mind throughout. On the one hand, the book must suffer a loss of objectivity; but, on the other hand, there may be some compensating gain of intensity. The author trusts, at all events, that, though he has not written with indifference, he has escaped the pitfall of undue partiality. ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams
... spirit of carping criticism or fault-finding. We hold no such mental attitude, and indeed could not if we remain true to our conception of Truth. We are mentioning these matters simply that the student may avoid this "I Am God" pitfall which awaits the Candidate just as he has well started on the Path. It would not be such a serious matter if it were merely a question of faulty metaphysics, for that would straighten itself out in time. But it is far more ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... onward with outstretched arms, half in fear, half in fun, plying her round little legs with wonderful promptitude, as if to escape Time or Death, in the person of Grandsir Dolliver, and happily avoiding the ominous pitfall that lies in every person's path, till, hearing a groan from her pursuer, she looked over her shoulder, and saw that poor grandpapa had stumbled over one of the many hillocks. She then suddenly wrinkled up her little visage, and sent forth a full-breathed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... now condignly to relate how Pantagruel did demean himself against the three hundred giants! O my Muse, my Calliope, my Thalia, inspire me at this time, restore unto me my spirits; for this is the logical bridge of asses! Here is the pitfall, here is the difficulty, to have ability enough to express the horrible battle that was fought. Ah, would to God that I had now a bottle of the best wine that ever those drank who shall ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... They now separated the executive and judiciary from each other and from the legislature, divided the latter into two branches, so as to cool the heat of popular sentiment before it was expressed in statutes, and, avoiding the pitfall dug for itself by the National Assembly, made members of the Convention eligible for election under the ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... more to say to her," I cried in great heat, vexed and irritated beyond measure at her capricious temper. I should only be dragged into some pitfall, some snare, some dire unpleasantness. But what did I know of her real character? What of my first doubts and suspicions? She had by no means dispelled them. She had only bamboozled me by her insinuating ways, had drawn me on by her guileful cleverness to pity and ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... The second pitfall to avoid is any pulling or straining of the material during the operation of embroidering it. Success in avoiding this depends primarily upon the various threads being drawn at each stitch to the proper tension, so that it may just have the proper ...
— English Embroidered Bookbindings • Cyril James Humphries Davenport
... my companion, seizing me with one hand by the collar, and hauling, or rather lifting me back, as if I had been a poodle dog. "Why, you were as near as possible into a pitfall." ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... my deeds, all, bad as they have been,— The way was dark, the awful pitfall bare;— In my weak hands, up through the fires of sin, I hold them for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... a piece of rope from his saddle-bag and tied it about the priest's waist and his own. "If you have any holy pitfall in view for me, I shall have the pleasure of your company. And if I am led into labyrinths to die of starvation, you at least will have a meal: I could ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... and by one who has never examined these boys. The Uncommercial, invited to add another, falteringly demands how many birthdays a man born on the twenty-ninth of February will have had on completing his fiftieth year? A general perception of trap and pitfall instantly arises, and the fifer is seen to retire behind the corduroys of his next neighbours, as perceiving special necessity for collecting himself and communing with his mind. Meanwhile, the wisdom of the serpent suggests that ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... much to be ashamed of, Ruth," he said, soberly. "I've always had the woman I should marry in my mind—'the not impossible she,' and my ideal has kept me out of many a pitfall I wanted to go to her with clean hands and a clean heart, and I have. I'm not a saint, but I'm as clean as I could be, and live in the world ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed
... a providential interference," rejoined Mrs. Bloundel. "From what a snare of the evil one—from what a pitfall have you been preserved!" ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... steadily, even leisurely; for I had him, as in a pitfall, whence no escape might be. He thought that I feared to approach him, for he knew not where he was: and his low disdainful laugh came back. "Laugh he who ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... methods which Britz had pursued in the conduct of the investigation had puzzled and alarmed them. To the chief it had looked as if Britz were running around in a circle, hopelessly bewildered, mistrusting every palpable lead as a new pitfall. ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... pitchy dark in this tunnel, and there was no space in which to attempt to kindle a light. Once the thought came into Gaston's head that if he were falling into a treacherous pitfall laid for him with diabolic ingenuity by his foes, nothing could well be better than to entrap him into such a place as this, where it would be almost impossible to go forward or back, and quite out of his power to strike a single blow for ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... chief concern, and where a broad, well-informed outlook on life is rare. Since so many of my colleagues insist that young Ph.D.'s tend constantly to "shoot over the heads" of their students, the best way of avoiding this particular pitfall seems to lie along the road of simple, elementary, concrete fact. The discussion method in the classroom will soon put the instructor right if he has gone to the other extreme of depreciating his students through kindergarten methods. Likewise he can guard against being ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... of the steps was reached in safety, the candle being held low down, so as to guard against any pitfall or fresh flight ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... the ground at my feet broke sharply away. Setting my back to the storm again, I followed the lip of this ditch around the wall's angle. Here it shallowed, and here, too, was shelter; but not wishing to mistake a bed of nettles or any such pitfall for solid earth, I kept pretty wide as I went on. The house was dark on this side, and the wall, as before, had no opening. Close beside the next angle there grew a mass of thick gorse bushes, and pushing through these I found myself suddenly on a sound high-road, ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... soul would remain unshaken. I am what they made me. Belief in humanity, pity for the poor, hatred of injustice, all that Shelley gave may never have been very deep or earnest; but I did love, I did believe. Gautier destroyed these illusions. He taught me that our boasted progress is but a pitfall into which the race is falling, and I learned that the correction of form is the highest ideal, and I accepted the plain, simple conscience of the pagan world as the perfect solution of the problem that ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... disputant is so eager to refute an opponent as to lay down, or imply, principles from which an easy inference destroys his own position. To appeal to a principle of greater sweep than the occasion requires may easily open the way to this pitfall: as if a man should urge that 'all men are liars,' as the premise of an argument designed to show that another's assertion is less ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... intelligence! You read the words, and never trouble about the connection. Who in their sane senses would ask you to compare a warrior king with old Miss Yonge? A little reflection would have saved you from the pitfall into which you have all fallen headlong. Five bad marks each! Now, then, for the next two. What have you got to say ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... so; and evermore shall be, That year by year thy honors may increase, No shadow darken thy prosperity, Nor treach'rous pitfall mar thy way of peace. My loving eyes would always joy to see Thy path lie fair until ...
— Edward MacDowell • Elizabeth Fry Page
... oracle; le dessous des cartes [Fr.], undercurrent. implication, logical implication; logical consequence; entailment. allusion, insinuation; innuendo &c 527; adumbration; something rotten in the state of Denmark [Hamlet]. snake in the grass &c (pitfall) 667; secret &c 533. darkness, invisibility, imperceptibility. V. be latent &c adj.; lurk, smolder, underlie, make no sign; escape observation, escape detection, escape recognition; lie hid &c 528. laugh in one's sleeve; keep back &c (conceal) 528. involve, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... speaking, we did not mention the oversight and contented ourselves with drinking out of the bottles in true democratic spirit. Did you ever imbibe Tiffany Water direct from its native heath, as it were? No? Then let me warn you from that lurking pitfall. It has the same taste, but the effect, di mi, the effect is multiplied ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey
... great deal too much potency to the grave," said Septimius, pausing involuntarily alone by the little hillock, whose contents he knew so well. "The grave seems to me a vile pitfall, put right in our pathway, and catching most of us,—all of us,—causing us to tumble in at the most inconvenient opportunities, so that all human life is a jest and a farce, just for the sake of this inopportune death; for I observe it never waits for us to accomplish anything: ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... my peace," she answered; and with a quick movement she closed the door which I had left open behind me. As its sharp bang rang through the room, I realized into what a pitfall I had stumbled. Only a political intrigue of the most desperate character could account for the words I had heard and the actions to which I had been a witness. But I was in no mood to recoil even from such dangers as these, and so my look showed her as she ...
— The Bronze Hand - 1897 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... great injustice to the stammerer, because he is giving him a false hope—in fact the most futile hope that any stammerer ever had. I wish I could paint in the sky, in letters of fire, the truth that "Stammering cannot be outgrown," because this, of all things, is the most frequent pitfall of the stammerer, his greatest delusion and one of the most prolific causes of continued suffering. I know whereof I speak, because I tried it myself. I know how many different people held up to me the hope that I would ...
— Stammering, Its Cause and Cure • Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue
... he said, "I'll soon trap Greyboots," and so he set to work to dig a pitfall. When he had dug it deep enough, he put a pole down in the midst of the pit, and on the top of the pole he set a board, and on the board he put a little dog. Over the pit itself he spread boughs and branches and leaves, and other rubbish, and a-top of all he strewed ...
— East O' the Sun and West O' the Moon • Gudrun Thorne-Thomsen
... till they came close to a clump of large trees, and then brought them to a pitfall which he had dug, about six feet wide and eight feet long, and nine ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... considered a pitfall of destruction Alas! we must always have something to persecute Argument is exhausted and either action or compromise begins Beware of a truce even more than of a peace Could handle an argument as well as a sword God alone can protect us against those whom we trust Humble ignorance as the safest ...
— Quotations From John Lothrop Motley • David Widger
... move safely in the matter, with such a pitfall as I see here open under my feet? How can I tell? Where can I find an experienced person to inform me? I must shut ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... was a rather young and a very handsome man, had been very kind, and was now looking at her with eyes actually moistened with tears, a sudden sense of being on the edge of a pitfall overcame Mrs. Hastings; and she turned pale and red alternately. Yet, with the instinct of a pure woman, to avoid recognizing an ugly thought, she answered with a laugh as gay as she could ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... Well, never mind us. Tell me more about your work," she besought, setting the feminine pitfall—half unconsciously—into which trapper and prey so ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... before they have the time to sign it. Every heart that has beat strong and cheerfully has left a hopeful impulse behind it in the world, and bettered the tradition of mankind. And even if death catch people, like an open pitfall, and in mid-career, laying out vast projects, and planning monstrous foundations, flushed with hope, and their mouths full of boastful language, they should be at once tripped up and silenced: is there not something brave and spirited in such a ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... honesty and honour: they came after me with inimitable effrontery, believing that though I said I would not take them, they were so valuable, I was only saying what I knew to be false. The goats were brought by a Manyuema man, who found one fallen into a pitfall and dead; he ate it, and brought one of his own in lieu of it. I gave him ten strings of beads, and he presented a fowl in ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... for our'n, 'n' at it we went for th' next two days. Don't believe we'd even 'a started, though, if we hadn't known two days at th' most 'd cure them o' still-huntin'. Gettin' out 'fore sun-up, with every log in th' brules frosted slippery 's ice 'n' every bunch o' brush a pitfall, climbin' 'n' slidin' jumpin' 'n' balancin,' any 'n' every kind o' leg motion 'cept plain honest walkin,' was several sizes too big a order for them. So th' second ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... Another pitfall about using whole grains is that to be nutritious they must still be fresh enough to sprout vigorously. A seed is a package of food surrounding an embryo. The living embryo is waiting for the right conditions (temperature and moisture) to begin sprouting. ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... from a fault than which hardly any is more disagreeable in letters. This is the manifestation of what is called, in various more or less familiar terms, "giving oneself airs," "side," "patronising," etc. He may sometimes come near this pitfall of "intellectuals," but he never quite slips into it, being probably preserved by that sense of humour which he certainly possessed, though he seldom gave vent to it in verse and not very often in prose. Taking them altogether, Gray's letters ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... stayed eating his own thoughts at Cloom, when religion either falls away entirely from a boy or flares up into a sudden vitality. Ishmael's blood ran with too much of inherited aptitude for prayer for the former pitfall to ensnare him, but the latter yawned beside him now and he thrilled to its attractions. Sliding his stout, shiny shoe back and forth with the stiff attempt at elegance so deprecated by Mr. Eliot, he asked ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... "I am like that foolish philosopher who, walking abroad to read the destinies of nations in the stars, fell down a pitfall dug by idle children and broke his bones and perished there. Never did I guess that with all these glories stretched before thee like mountain top on glittering mountain top, making a stairway for thy mortal feet to the very dome ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... his surprise, his companion told him that the environs of the Castle, except the single winding path by which the portal might be safely approached, were, like the thickets through which they had passed, surrounded with every species of hidden pitfall, snare, and gin, to entrap the wretch who should venture thither without a guide; that upon the walls were constructed certain cradles of iron, called swallows' nests, from which the sentinels, who were regularly posted there, could ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... trick of applying his rosin. But if we had not these direct testimonies, no one of any critical faculty could mistake the presence of consciously perceived principles in the books themselves. A man does not suddenly, and by mere blind instinct, avoid such a pitfall as that of incongruous speech and manners, which has been noticed above. It is not mere happy-go-lucky blundering which makes him invariably decline another into which people still fall—the selection of historical personages ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... runs the risk of failing 'to see the wood for the trees,' and only the mind trained to contemplate each factor in its relation to the whole, and with a clear idea of the ultimate purpose for which this whole is intended, will be able to avoid this pitfall; for only an intellect thus prepared can successfully harmonize the whole with its part, and, while keeping the essentials clearly before its eyes, treat the unessential as ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi
... harm to the defenders, who were hidden behind the walls, whereas the shafts of the garrison, rained on them from above, killed or wounded the slaves by scores, who, poor creatures, when they turned to fly, were driven onward by the spear-points of the savages, to be slain in heaps like game in a pitfall. Still, some of them lived, and running under the shelter of the wall, began to breach it with the rude battering rams, and to raise the scaling ladders till death found them, or they were worn out with excitement, fear ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard
... these negative defects, she was positively attractive! Mrs. Vavasour almost shuddered as she thought of the son "missed" at Lucerne, the son who would arrive at Maloja on the morrow, in the company of someone whom he preferred to his mother as a fellow traveler. What a pitfall she had escaped! She might have made a friend of this impossible person! Nevertheless, rendered wary by many social skirmishes, she did not declare war at once. The girl was too outspoken to be an adventuress. She must wait, and watch, ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... to the emperor. Such a noble! Of such high talents! What is human greatness? I often said, this can't end happily. His might, his greatness, and this obscure power Are but a covered pitfall. The human being May not be trusted to self-government. The clear and written law, the deep-trod footmarks Of ancient custom, are all necessary To keep him in the road of faith and duty. The authority intrusted to this man Was unexampled and unnatural, It placed him on a level with his ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... every lion within five miles of us, laddie," expostulated MacGregor, kneeling at the edge of the pitfall and peering into the ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... wet and slobbery, every hole was a pitfall to trap the unwary; boulders and sandbags which had fallen in waited to trip the careless foot. I met a party of soldiers, ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... gentlemen then?" cried Barbara; "or where is the good of being a gentleman? Is it that he knows better how to lie to a woman? A knight used to be every woman's castle of refuge; a gentleman now, it seems, is a pitfall in the bush!" ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... perform a fatal surgical operation upon himself, in emulation of a juggling-trick achieved by his arch- enemy at breakfast-time; not even he fell half so readily into the snare prepared for him, as the old lady did into this artful pitfall. The fact of Tackleton having walked out; and furthermore, of two or three people having been talking together at a distance, for two minutes, leaving her to her own resources; was quite enough to have put her on her dignity, and ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... poor, to see their foibles and follies. The satire expresses a humorous, but lofty conception of life, based upon profound morality and sincere faith. It fulfils every requirement of a satire, steering clear of the pitfall caricature, and not obtruding the didactic element. The lesson to be conveyed is involved in, not stated apart from the satire, an emanation from the poet's disposition. His aim is not to ridicule, but to improve, instruct, influence. One of the most amusing ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... good, honest plant, which hates anything secret. Our ponies didn't need the heather signal, though; they shied away from bogs as if by instinct, they knew the moor so well. If we had stumbled into a pitfall, our only hope would have been to lie quite flat, and crawl along the surface with the same motion that you make ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... in our pitfall; but being older than the first, they showed no inclination to become domesticated, so we were compelled to kill them, and to cut up and dry their flesh—which, though rather tough, was not otherwise unpalatable. ...
— The Wanderers - Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco • W.H.G. Kingston
... Percy's bantering mood did not quite fit in with his own elaborate plans, moreover the ex-ambassador feared a pitfall of some sort, and did not quite like to trust to this ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... caves. As they raged against each other no less desperately than against their human adversaries, the issue of the war was never in doubt. The Hillmen stood together solidly, fought with all their cunning of pitfall and ambuscade, and overwhelmed the mightiest by sheer weight of numbers. But again the victory was dearly bought. When the last of the monsters, sullen and amazed, withdrew to seek less difficult encounters, he left mourning and lamentation ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... confusedly, plunging into another pitfall. She had challenged him, and he knew it. "Nothing what-ever," she answered, with an urbanity that defied the suggestion of malice. Yet, now that she remembered, she had sweetly challenged one of a royal house for the like lapse into the vulgar tongue. A man ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... an accident which merely impeded free will in its activity, Flacius, in the heat of the controversy, exclaimed: "Originale peccatum non est accidens. Original sin is not an accident, for the Scriptures call it flesh, the evil heart," etc. Thus he fell into the pitfall which the wily Strigel had adroitly laid for him. Though Flacius seemed to be loath to enter upon the matter any further, and protested against the use of philosophical definitions in theology, Strigel now was eager to entangle him still ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... had so ruthlessly set a pitfall for his neighbor had suddenly tumbled into one which retributive justice had dug deep ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... best quality; but it had no other effect upon Dora than to depress her spirits, and make her always nervous with the dread that it would be her turn next. I found myself in the condition of a schoolmaster, a trap, a pitfall; of always playing spider to Dora's fly, and always pouncing out of my hole ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... The contrary view taken of the matter by Ibsen's fellowcountryman, Bjornsen, appears to me to be so much more commonsense and humanizing. He holds that if we know that our ancestors drank and gambled to excess, or were violent-tempered or immoral, we can quite easily avoid the pitfall, knowing it to be there. Too readily wrongdoers are prepared to lay their failings at the door of ancestors, society, or some other blamable source, instead of attributing them, as they should do, to their own selfish and ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... to us before you come again?" Hansie inquired. "By what sign will you know that we have been taken and that Harmony is a pitfall instead of ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... little previous frost, lay soft and thick over the whole ground; it covered the holes in the bridges, and so choked up the drains that in many places they were completely concealed, and what appeared to be a smooth level surface of ground might really be a dangerous pitfall. Here, however, Clarkson chose to go. He flogged his horse unmercifully, and the sleigh flew over the ground, scattering the snow and striking every moment against some roughness of the road which it concealed. They passed ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 2 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... relentless, and bloodthirsty, the Dragon fly would be our choice. From the moment of its birth until its death, usually a twelve-month, it riots in bloodshed and carnage. Living beneath the waters perhaps eleven months of its life, in the larva and pupa states, it is literally a walking pitfall for luckless aquatic insects; but when transformed into a fly, ever on the wing in pursuit of its prey, it throws off all concealment, and reveals the more unblushingly ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... people a "sneeze" which is not something of an offence, and that not even one possessing the loveliness of Ninon de l'Enclos can look anything but a monstrous spectacle when a crumb "goes down the wrong way." But there are other "pitfalls" which it is in the power of all of us to avoid, and the "pitfall" of eating ungracefully is not the ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... be applied to so consummate a draughtsman as the illustrator of Dante, Cervantes and Victor Hugo. But Dor's almost superhuman memory was no less of a pitfall than manual dexterity. The following story will partly explain his dislike of facsimile ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... race-track tipsters, and the specious and deadly fallacies of the medical quacks. Appealing as it did to an ignorant and "easy" class of the public ("Banneker's First-Readers," Russell Edmonds was wont to call them), The Patriot offered a profitable field for all the pitfall-setters of print. The less that Banneker knew about them the more comfortable would he be. So he turned his face ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... which guided me from the pitfall of wedded life! What an escape! I must inform Monsieur le Marquis. He will certainly relish this bit of scandal which all but happened at his own fireside. Certainly I shall inform him. It will be like caviar ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... white roses red. I should love to read the diary of the one who trimmed the borders while Boccaccio's gay company were occupying that garden; or to hear what the head gardener of the d'Este's could tell us, but I know now why it is so. With the best of intentions I haven't been able to avoid the pitfall myself. ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... Harry, who was an habitual rider, and knew all the environs of Oldport pretty well, and was fonder of short cuts and going over grass than most American horsemen are, had not been altogether ignorant of the existence of the pitfall; it looked very much as if he had led Edwards, who was no particular friend of his, purposely into it: but if such was the case, he kept his own counsel. When the fallen man and mare had scrambled out of the hole, which they did before ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... perplexing way with boastful misery to tempt his particular friends into this subject, and the moment they touch it, to turn on them with that trenchant severity about the chords in the human mind, both Mr. Jobling and Mr. Smallweed decline the pitfall by remaining silent. ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... through the trackless bush, painfully slow going over the stones and the fallen trunks, with many a pitfall concealed under the smooth moss. After an hour of this he finally came upon them all five standing dejectedly about in a narrow opening, as if ashamed of their escapade and perfectly willing ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... bulk, quick and graceful. She was happy; her ideals were satisfied; it was probably happiness that had made her stout. Her massiveness was apparently no grief to her; she had fallen into the carelessness which is too often the pitfall of women ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... his field force and gave his travelers a free hand on the price list. Persuasion and diplomacy having failed, a frenzy like that of one who finds himself slipping into the sharp-staked pitfall prepared for others seized on him. It was the madness of those who have seen the clock hands stop and begin to turn steadily backward on ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... particularly, I wanted a she-goat great with young. For this purpose, I made snares to hamper them; and I do believe they were more than once taken in them; but my tackle was not good, for I had no wire, and I always found them broken, and my bait devoured. At length I resolved to try a pitfall: so I dug several large pits in the earth, in places where I had observed the goats used to feed, and over those pits I placed hurdles, of my own making too, with a great weight upon them; and several times I put ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe
... greater pitfall before us is that we read history not as men, but as gods, knowing the event. The name of Marathon to us implies not struggle, not danger, but triumph; and as we think of the little band of Athenians defiling from the mountains and looking on the sea, with the utmost ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... mile or more of rugged, blinding ice—the sky blue in every part, the sun shining warm, the wind blowing light and balmy from the south. What with the heat, the glare, the uneven, treacherous path—with many a pitfall to engulf us—'twas a toilsome way we travelled. The coast lay white and forsaken beyond—desolate, inhospitable, unfamiliar: an unkindly refuge for such castaways as we. But we came gratefully to the rocks, at last, ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... we again turned off at right angles, traveling as quickly as we were able back towards the lake shore. It was an exciting chase in the darkness, for we knew not whither we were going, nor into what pitfall or ravine or treacherous marsh we might fall. Once we saw afar through the trees the light of a lantern held by a guard, and already the sweet-faced girl beside me seemed tired and terribly fatigued. But we hurried on and on, striving to make no noise, ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... than the top. This is ingeniously covered with light branches and leaves, and located in the path where a tiger has been tracked. For some reason this animal, having once passed through a jungle, will ever after follow as nearly as possible his own foot-prints, and can thus easily be led into a pitfall of the character we have described. Having once got into this well he cannot possibly get out, and here he is permitted to become so nearly starved as to deprive him of all powers of resistance, in which condition he ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... over, and the rusty carriages had gone, together with many of the spectators; but Power lingered in the churchyard as if he were looking for some one. At length he entered the church, passing by the cavernous pitfall with descending steps which stood open outside the wall of the De Stancy aisle. Arrived within he scanned the few idlers of antiquarian tastes who had remained after the service to inspect the monuments; and beside a recumbent effigy—the effigy in alabaster whose features ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... home-with his pittance of pay in his pocket, heartbroken, overwhelmed. One more bandage had been torn from his eyes, one more pitfall was revealed to him! Of what help was kindness and decency on the part of employers—when they could not keep a job for him, when there were more harvesting machines made than the world was able to buy! What a hellish mockery it was, anyway, that a man ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... possess—the power of eloquence. The strength of the suggestion had been almost painful. Men who have attained self-repression are occasionally open to a perilous onrush of feeling. Believing that they know themselves, they walk boldly forward towards the high-road and the pitfall alike. ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... will occur at once to the reader. The easiest plan may seem to drag the captive from the pit by sheer strength, but as the hole is deep and has vertical sides, the elephants contrive a better way. They bring bits of timber, which they throw into the pitfall, the captive treads them down until he is elevated to a position whence he can escape ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... force or the indestructibility of matter,'' the question then is, how far a critical analysis of our belief in the last-named doctrines will leave us in a position to regard them as the last stage in systematic thinking. It is the pitfall of physical science, immersed as its students are apt to be in problems dealing with tangible facts in the world of experience, that there is a tendency among them to claim a superior status of objective reality and finality for the laws to which their data ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... cabined, his whole power of dramatic movement was scrupulously confined; conventional rules of every conceivable denomination hurried out to restrain his genius, with the alacrity of Lilliputians pegging down a Gulliver; wherever he turned he was met by a hiatus or a pitfall, a blind-alley or a mot bas. But his triumph was not simply the conquest of these refractory creatures; it was something much more astonishing. It was the creation, in spite of them, nay, by their very aid, of a glowing, living, soaring, and enchanting ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... appointment. It is true that, like his predecessors, Fitzroy was not fairly supported by the authorities at Home. They supplied him with neither men nor money, and on them therefore the chief responsibility of the Colony's troubles rest. But a study of his two years of rule fails to reveal any pitfall in his pathway into which ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... admitted, getting along very well, considering that he had only been presented to the young lady ten minutes before. That was Dick's way; and when the young lady is attractive, it is a way that has many recommendations, only sometimes it leads to a pitfall—a ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... annihilate all four mutineers, like four pigeons at one shot. Besides, at first he did not sleep in his accustomed hut; every lurid sunset, for a time, he might have been seen wending his way among the riven mountains, there to secrete himself till dawn in some sulphurous pitfall, undiscoverable to his gang; but finding this at last too troublesome, he now each evening tied his slaves hand and foot, hid the cutlasses, and thrusting them into his barracks, shut to the door, and lying down before it, beneath a rude ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... too extensive to be a partially buried box, it might safely be concluded to be some part of the roof, and only required to be skirted in order to reach the vertical entrance. The lost man often discovered this pitfall by dropping suddenly through ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... trembling herself almost to the point of falling, caught him by the arm and sought to read his face what had happened. Something disastrous she was sure; something which he had feared and was partially prepared for, yet which in happening had crushed him. Was it a pitfall into which the poor little lady had fallen? If so—But he is speaking—mumbling low words to himself. Some of them she can hear. He is reproaching himself—repeating over and over that he should never have taken such a chance; that he should have remembered ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... voluntarily, The devil and the whirlwind go with him: I will you never fro thence tidings bring; Go you before, and show me the way, And as to follow you I will not say nay: For, by God's body, and you be in once, By the mass, I will shit[150] the door at once, And then ye be take in a pitfall. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... to expend his breath in useless curses. But his eyes scintillated with fiery gleams. He, the man who took no chances, who foresaw every pitfall and smiled at the devices of outraged law, to compromise his own ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... Browne shot one: certainly it is a most extraordinary animal; a stuffed specimen does not at all give a good idea of the appearance of the head and beak when fresh; the latter becoming hard and contracted. (19/5. I was interested by finding here the hollow conical pitfall of the lion-ant, or some other insect: first a fly fell down the treacherous slope and immediately disappeared; then came a large but unwary ant; its struggles to escape being very violent, those curious little jets of sand, described by Kirby and Spence ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... acquainted with our surroundings that we might be able fully to realize every snare and pitfall, we were taught to begin to walk alone. What weak, tottering, childish steps they were. How often our eyes would wander to the face of our guide, as if to implore his help. But he, knowing it was for our good, would simply encourage us instead ...
— Silver Links • Various
... is classic; it does not differ greatly from the others. He excavates a conical pitfall, in which he conceals himself, and seizes the unfortunate ants and other insects whom ill-chance causes ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... Another pitfall, however, opens here. These contrasted doctrines may change roles. So long as by redemption we understand, in the mystic way, exaltation above finitude and existence, because all particularity is sin, to be redeemed is to abandon the Life ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... mosquitoes, sun on back, serenely fishing. He had supposed the horse grazing near by, enjoying semi-freedom with his grass. Now it seemed far otherwise. Miss Sapphira had even had him telephone to Bob to bring her hither. With his own hands he had dug his pitfall. ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... by certain unknown men. A dark conspiracy was on foot in the midst of us; and our beloved and innocent friend had been entangled in its meshes. When the Christian hero of a hundred charitable victories plunges into a pitfall that has been dug for him by mistake, oh, what a warning it is to the rest of us to be unceasingly on our guard! How soon may our own evil passions prove to be Oriental noblemen who pounce ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... and painfully amidst loose rocks and boulders, avoiding many a pitfall, many a black depth, until the dawn was at hand. Just then they heard a deep sound, like a cathedral bell, booming down ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... and women make the mistake of thinking that "well dressed" necessarily means being expensively dressed, and, with this erroneous idea in mind, they fall into as great a pitfall as those who think clothes are of no importance. They devote the time that should be given to the culture of head and heart to studying their toilets, and planning how they can buy, out of their limited salaries, this or that expensive hat, or tie or coat, which they see exhibited in some fashionable ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... purpose; as he is entitled to conceal similarly from his fellow-man, when he is authorized to kill him as an enemy, in time of war waged for God. Thus it is quite proper for a man to conceal the hook or the net from the fish, or the trap or the pitfall from the beast; but it is not proper to deceive an animal by an imitation of the cry of the animal's offspring in order to lure that animal to its destruction; and the moral sense of the ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull
... who envied him his large custom, and many was the pitfall set for me, so that he never dared to let me out of his sight. One day a woman, who had not been in the shop before, came to ask for bread, like the rest. As usual, I was lying on the counter, and she threw down six coins before me, one ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.
... good sense interrupted this temporary thought, and made him see to what a horrible life of suspense he should condemn a human creature, and live a perpetual lie, and be always at the edge of some pitfall or other. ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... as to lead the tyro to imagine that dozens must have passed, when in truth the tracks all belong to one and the same brute. So acute is their perception, so narrowly do they scrutinize every minute object in their path, so suspicious is their nature, that anything new in their path, such as a pitfall, a screen of cut grass, a mychan, that is, a stage from which you might be intending to get a shot, nay, even the print of a footstep—a man's, a horse's, an elephant's—is often quite enough to turn them from a projected expedition, or at any rate to lead them to seek some ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... my enemy carefully, steadily, even leisurely; for I had him as in a pitfall, whence no escape might be. He thought that I feared to approach him, for he knew not where he was; and his low disdainful laugh came back. "Laugh he who ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... herded not with soulless swine, Nor let strange snares their path environ: Their only pitfall was a mine— Their pigs were ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... fraud when it is detected, is the proper act of vindictive justice; but to prevent frauds, and make punishment unnecessary, is the great employment of legislative wisdom. To permit Intromission, and to punish fraud, is to make law no better than a pitfall. To tread upon the brink is safe; but to come a step further is destruction. But, surely, it is better to enclose the gulf, and hinder all access, than by encouraging us to advance a little, to entice us afterwards a little ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... Besides, I was thinking what I should say to Pavannes when I saw him—in what terms I should warn him of his peril, and cast his perfidy in his teeth. We had hurried along in this way—and in absolute silence, save when some obstacle or pitfall drew from us an exclamation—for about a quarter of a mile, when my companion, turning into a slightly wider street, slackened her speed, and indicated by a gesture that we had arrived. A lamp hung over the porch, to which she pointed, and showed ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... twinkling, was half buried in the hay and leaves; while to right and to left he scattered soil and bedding that fell like a shower over his mother and sister. Before the old dog-badger had realised the meaning of the commotion, Brock had grabbed his treasure, and, withdrawing his head from the shallow pitfall he had hurriedly fashioned, had caused his drowsy parent to roll helplessly over. This was more than a self-respecting father could possibly endure in his own home and among his own kin, so, with unexpected agility, as he turned in struggling to recover his ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... ourselves, also needs some explanation. We ought not under pretence of humility to slight and despise the graces which God has given us. To do so would be to throw ourselves over the precipice of ingratitude in order to avoid perishing in the pitfall of vanity, "Nothing," said he, "can so humble us before the mercy of God, as the multitude of his benefits; nothing can so abase us before the throne of His justice, as the countless number of our misdeeds. We need never fear ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... is human to err, and in my anxiety not to do so on the side of sentiment I own myself in danger of flying to the other extreme. Well, you know which is the common extreme in such cases; and at all events we shall avoid the usual pitfall. I am going to give you a few minutes to think it over; then, if you care to go into it further, I shall be most happy; if not, the matter is ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... she. "In my younger days I had no experience; I only thought of vengeance, and lately the weapons I forged myself have been turned against me. I dug a pitfall for my adversaries and ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... book begins well with a description of Herod's court and Rome in Judea, but as a whole it is unsatisfactory. Once the plot develops Saltus seems to lose interest. He lazily quotes whole scenes from the Bible (George Moore very cleverly avoided this pitfall in "The Brook Kerith"). The early chapters suggest "Imperial Purple," which appeared a year later and upon which he may well have been at work at this time. There is a foreshadowing, too, of "The Lords of the Ghostland" in ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... Ramsden's servant crouching in a corner, as far as possible from Mrs Forster, evidently about as well pleased with his company as one would be in a pitfall with a tiger. At last it stopped at the door of the lunatic asylum, and the post-boy dismounting from his reeking horses, pulled violently at a large bell, which answered with a most lugubrious tolling, and struck awe into ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... feet of youth are the roads of Manhattan beset "with pitfall and with gin." But the civic guardians of the young have made themselves acquainted with the snares of the wicked, and most of the dangerous paths are patrolled by their agents, who seek to turn ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... journey passed through the forest upon a dark and gloomy night. He journeyed in dread; he feared the robbers who infested the route he was traversing; he feared that he might slip and fall into some unseen ditch or pitfall on the way, and he feared, too, the wild beasts, which he knew were about him. By chance he discovered a pine torch, and lighted it, and its gleams afforded him great relief. He no longer feared brambles or ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... in the tree exercised an extra caution, since his comrade below could no longer attain safety in a moment. But the work was done at last, that is, the work of digging, and there remained but the completion of the pitfall, a delicate though not a difficult matter. Across the pit, and very close together, were laid criss-crosses of slender branches, brought in armfuls from the forest; over these dry grass was spread, thinly but evenly, ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... enduring; otherwise the clumsy royal octavos of Leslie Stephen's edition of Fielding would be as attractive as "the dear and dumpy twelves" of the original editions. Royal octavo, indeed, seems to be the pitfall of the book designer, though there is no inherent objection to it. Where in the whole range of reference books will be found a more attractive set of volumes than Moulton's "Library of Literary Criticism," with their realization in this format of the Horatian simplex munditiis? For extremely different ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... than compensate for this, since the two horns of General von Buelow's army could not combine without crossing those marshes, now boggy enough, and growing boggier every second. The task was harder than General Foch anticipated, for the same rainy conditions that provided a pitfall for the Germans were also a manifest hindrance to the rapid execution of military maneuvers. But, in spite of all difficulties, by evening of that day, the flank broke and gave way, and two entire corps from General von Buelow's right were precipitated into the marshes. Forty guns were ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... again. My followers Surround the house; my vessels are a match For all of thine, and I myself have come To win the country in an honest fight. Thyself hast urged me with thy plots to do it. Thou standest like a despicable thrall In his own pitfall caught at last; but I Will make no use of these advantages Which fate has granted me. I am convinced That I may boldly meet thee face to face. Thy purpose, as thou seest, has wholly failed, And in his own blood does thy Thorer swim. Thou seest 'twere easy for me to have ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... escaping a pitfall, he had floundered in. "Like other men?" Northrup sneered at himself. No other man could be such a consummate ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... analyzed. Assuming even that he may be in a position to account for his syncope by illness or the stifling atmosphere of the locality, he has none the less given rise to suspicion! He has lied incomparably, but he has counted without nature. Here is the pitfall! Again, a man off his guard, from an unwary disposition, may delight in mystifying another who suspects him, and may wantonly pretend to be the very criminal wanted by the authorities; in such a case, he will represent the person in question a little too closely, he will place his foot a little too ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... temporary disorder. It has passed; I have thought enough about the unthinkable; I feel my quiet returning. Is it any merit of mine that I begin to be in health once more? Could I, by any effort of the will, have shunned this pitfall? ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... little knowing what a pitfall had been dug in his seemingly prosperous path, was still at Royston, enjoying the most intimate familiarity with the king, when the messenger returned. Deception was so much of an avowed principle with ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various |
