"Swindler" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... England. He could make or mar any company by buying or selling stock, and could make money dear or cheap as he pleased. All this was said of him in his praise,—but it was also said that he was regarded in Paris as the most gigantic swindler that had ever lived; that he had made that City too hot to hold him; that he had endeavoured to establish himself in Vienna, but had been warned away by the police; and that he had at length found that British ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... Republic made peace with the Turks. He was tall, well made; and, although he looked like a nobleman and had wit, reminded one at the same time of a country actor. He was a great liar, and a libertine in body and mind; a great spendthrift, a great and impudent swindler, with a tendency to low debauchery, that cursed him all his life. Having fluttered about a long time after his return, and found it impossible either to live with his wife—which is not surprising—or accommodate himself to the Court or ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... Eagle The Knave of Diamonds The Rocks of Valpre The Swindler The Keeper of the Door Bars of Iron Rosa Mundi The Hundredth Chance The Safety Curtain Greatheart The Lamp in the Desert The Tidal Wave The Top of the ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... my dear fellow," the painter retorted. "It's part of your swindler to assume that you do know why. You ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... don't understand. (Coming quickly down C., sits on stool L.C., facing her.) Look here, Olivia, old girl, the whole thing is nonsense, eh? It isn't your husband, it's some other Telworthy that this fellow met. That's right, isn't it? Some other shady swindler who turned up on the boat, eh? This sort of thing doesn't happen to people like us—committing bigamy and all ...
— Mr. Pim Passes By • Alan Alexander Milne
... word that day. Wool was an atrocious villain, an incendiary scoundrel, a cut-throat, and a black demon. Cap was a beggar, a vagabond and a vixen. Herbert Greyson was another beggar, besides being a knave, a fop and an impudent puppy. The innkeeper was a swindler, the waiters thieves, the whole world was going to ruin, where it well deserved to go, and all mankind to the demon—as he hoped and trusted ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... a dispatch from the Duke of Wellington, and, what was extraordinary, attained some consequence even in the estimation of his lady. All shook their heads at the recollection of the unlucky Tyrrel, and found out much in his manner and address which convinced them that he was but an adventurer and swindler. A few, however, less partial to the Committee of Management, (for whenever there is an administration, there will soon arise an opposition,) whispered among themselves, that, to give the fellow his due, the man, ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... Captain Vilson, to make hany hallowance for the eat of political discussion—but that is not hall that I ave to complain hof. Mr Easy thought proper to say that I was a swindler and ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... chap they called Chicory, or Checkerberry," whispered C. Skimmerhorn, Esq. "Anybody can see he is a swindler by his slouched hat, and beard. Shouldn't I enjoy having a good case ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... his wife's fortune, and explain to Mr Scruby that he would be justified in doing so by the fact that his own heritage would be settled on her at her marriage. I do not suppose that he altogether liked it. He was not, at any rate as yet, an altogether heartless swindler. He could not take his cousin's money without meaning,—without thinking that he meant, to repay her in full all that he took. Her behaviour to him this very morning had no doubt made the affair more difficult to his mind, and more unpleasant than it would have been had she ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... known fact that people who live outside the law keep to their own plane. The swindler very rarely commits acts of violence. The burglar who practises card-sharping as a side-line, is ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... a coward, sir,' replied Captain N——, with almost frightful vehemence, 'as every trickster and swindler IS. You are a contemptible dastard—a despicable, damned villain! Draw your sword, sir, and defend your life, or every post and pillar in this town shall ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... promise anything,' replied the brother, 'he promised he'd pay my college bills, when my father died; he promised he'd build the new wing to the Rectory. And it is to this man's son—this scoundrel, gambler, swindler, murderer, of a Rawdon Crawley, that Matilda leaves the bulk of her money. I say it's unchristian. By Jove it is. The infamous dog has got every vice except hypocrisy, and ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... that Howell will also be punished for his crime," the handsome woman cried. "Though I have been a thief, a swindler, and a decoy—ah! yes, I admit it all—I have never committed the crime of murder. I know, messieurs," she went on—"I know that I am a social outcast, the mysterious Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo, they call me! But I have suffered. I have indeed in these past months paid my debt to Society, and ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... answers down in his pocket-book. I thought this odd but concluded that he wished to verify my statements before entering into a close companionship with me, since for aught he knew I might be the largest liar in the world and a swindler to boot. So I said nothing, even when I heard through a roundabout channel on the morrow that he had sought an interview with the late secretary ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... of the monk was that of an arrogant and erotic swindler. His intelligence was, however, extremely perceptive, and he was not wanting in finesse of the mujik order, combined with a sense of foresight that was utterly amazing. These, with his suave manner, his affectation of deepest piety, and ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... "I comprehend the matter more clearly, if that is what you mean by twigging; but how shocking 58it all is! why, Cumberland is quite a swindler—gambling, borrowing money he ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... "My o' people didn't know any better, and went and paid thirty pounds premium—thirty pounds down to have me made THIS. The G.V. promised to teach me the trade, and he never taught me anything but to be a Hand. It's the way they do with draper's apprentices. If every swindler was locked up—well, you'd have nowhere to buy tape and cotton. It's all very well to bring up Burns and those chaps, but I'm not that make. Yet I'm not such muck that I might not have been better—with teaching. I wonder what the chaps who sneer and laugh ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... about the little office, and the simoom or the bulbul—but I leave this image to persons better acquainted with the East. His appearance, besides, was highly in his favour; the uniform of Sir Faraday, however inconvenient and conspicuous, was, at least, a costume in which no swindler could have hoped to prosper; and the exhibition of a valuable watch and a bill for eight hundred pounds completed what deportment had begun. A quarter of an hour later, when the train came up, Mr. Finsbury was introduced to the guard and installed in a first-class compartment, the station-master ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... swindler. I therefore journeyed, post-haste, to Vienna. No hearing; no satisfactory account was to be obtained. The answer was, "Sentence is passed, therefore all attempts are ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... and slothful; we are asleep and cold, and thanks to any one who will wake us up and warm us! . . . He is not an actor, as I called him, nor a cheat, nor a scoundrel; he lives at other people's expense, not like a swindler, but like a child. . . . He never does anything himself precisely, he has no vital force, no blood; but who has the right to say that he has not been of use? that his words have not scattered good seeds in young hearts, to whom nature has ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... the Commune, which held its meetings in the evening.... They scarcely took time for their natural requirements; they were often seen dining and supping at their posts when some action or an important murder was in the offing. Henriot, the commander-in-chief of both hordes, was at one time a swindler, then a police-informer, then imprisoned at Bicetre for robbery, and then one of the September murderers. His military bearing and popularity are due to parading the streets in the uniform of a general, and appearing in humbug performances; he is the type of a swaggerer, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... corrupt. The pressure may have come from anybody who has gained power or money anyhow. It may come from the foreign millionaire who owns all the expensive hairdressing saloons; it may come from some swindler in the cutlery trade who has contracted to sell a million bad razors. Hence the poor man looks about him with suspicion in the street; knowing that the lowest sneak or the loudest snob he sees may be directing the government of his country. Anybody ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... is," thought John, but he did not answer at once, as he was so excited he could hardly control his voice. He did not want the swindler to recognize him. ...
— Jack Ranger's Western Trip - From Boarding School to Ranch and Range • Clarence Young
... BAS'SET (Count), a swindler and forger, who assumes the title of "count" to further his dishonest practices.—C. Cibber, The Provoked ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... house—leave my park!" he cried in a shrill falsetto, "or I'll send for the constable to turn you off. Bah! You came to steal. You're no nephew of mine; I disown you! You're a common cheat—a swindler—an impostor! Go!" ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... dear John. This at once aroused my aunt's suspicions; and instead of lending the money, she wrote off to Mr. Smithers instantly to come up to her, desired me to give her up the 3,000l. scrip shares that I possessed, called me an atrocious cheat and heartless swindler, and vowed I had been the ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray
... spent too much money—only he didn't have any mother to get money out of a grandfather for him, so he was usually in debt. But I believe I've heard he's done fairly well of late years. No, I can't say I think he's a swindler, and I doubt if he needs anybody else's money ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... mentioned in history, sacred or profane. The collection of Mr. Samuel Ireland was like this, and an English student possessed autographs of most of the great reformers, carefully written by an ingenious swindler in contemporary books. The lovers of relics are apt to be thus deluded, and perhaps we should not regret this, as long as they are happy. But they should be very careful indeed when they are asked to buy Alvarado's spear, though probably ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... better that he and his family should come to want, than that hundreds of thousands should be ruined, soul and body, for time and eternity? If he has a right to derive his subsistence from the ruin of others, then others, as the thief, the swindler, and the robber, have a right to obtain their subsistence ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... correct, for nothing more was seen of the indignant fellow, and the boys made up their minds that he was only a swindler who had imagined that as he had only boys to deal with he would obtain a ...
— The Hilltop Boys on the River • Cyril Burleigh
... master. What a difference between men in power of face! A man succeeds because he has more power of eye than another, and so coaxes or confounds him. The newspapers, every week, report the adventures of some impudent swindler, who, by steadiness of carriage, duped those who should have known better. Yet any swindlers we have known are novices and bunglers, as is attested by their ill name. A greater power of face would accomplish anything, and, with the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... without referring the case to me. But it is all useless! The money grows and grows, and I begin to feel that my efforts to employ it wisely and wholesomely are making me a public laughing-stock as well as an easy mark for every swindler with a job or a scheme." He turned abruptly to me. "But you must often have heard the same from my old friend Strange. We used to talk these things over together, when our money was not the heap that mine is now; and it seems to ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... jealousy that ANOTHER might have profited by the lad's helplessness and inexperience. He had been tormented by this jealousy before in his son's liking for Van Loo. He had at first encouraged his admiration and imitative regard for this smooth swindler's graces and accomplishments, which, though he scorned them himself, he was, after the common parental infatuation, willing that the boy should profit by. Incapable, through his own consciousness, of distinguishing between Van Loo's superficial polish and ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... conversation of girls who stood near: 'What, John Snipes? Why, he don't pay! Look out for him every time. He'll keep you on trial, as he calls it, for weeks, and then he'll let you go, and get some other fool!' And thus Jane Smith gained her warning against the swindler. But the Union held him in the toils of the law until he paid the worth of each ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... suggestion. Antony, however, who retained more of Tristan's energy and love of fair play at home than any of his brothers, proved clearly that I did more good than harm. I was, he declared, a brave fighter, and there was no knowing when they might need an extra hand. I might also be shaped into a swindler. I was very young and very ignorant; but John, perhaps, would endeavour to win me over by kindness, and make my lot less wretched. Above all, he might enlighten me as to my true position, by explaining that ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... swearing by all that was good and bad, he would settle with me early the following Monday morning. I saw no more of him for two weeks! I went to Van Nickem's, he laughed at me. The bill was now $100. I was raging. I told Van Nickem I'd have my money out of Cutaway, or I'd advertise him for a villain, swindler, and scoundrel." ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... meant to assist the axiom by efforts to earn money. When these continued to fail, he tried to assist the axiom by borrowing money; but he found that his uncle had definitely done with him. He would have assisted the axiom by stealing money, but he had neither the nerve nor the knowledge to be a swindler; he was not even sufficiently expert ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... losing all control of himself. "It wasn't a trade at all! It's piracy! It's highway robbery! It was a barefaced swindle, and this swindler" ...
— The High School Boys' Canoe Club • H. Irving Hancock
... a princely title are but masks to cover a swindler, there is only one thing to be done. This swindler must be ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... Peter Teazle and damn all sentiment, and lo! the fellow is no better than a smirking jester, whose antics you can expose till men and women, who had foolishly laughed and wept as he moved them, turn from him, loathing him as a swindler. So it is that although Tristram Shandy continues one of the most popular classics in the language, nobody dares to confess his debt to Sterne except in discreet ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... this wretched war will play the very deuce with our foreign friends. If you Germans do not give that crowned swindler, whose fall I have been looking for ever since the coup d'etat, such a blow as he will never recover from, I will never forgive you. Public opinion in England is not worth much, but at present, it is entirely against France. Even the "Times," which generally contrives to be on the baser ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... a party that will give me enough for those mills to clear me of you, and I'll talk to you. But don't you come here with any man of straw. And I'll give you just twenty-four hours to prove yourself a swindler again." ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... If you have no luck in this world, then it's better not to live. There I spent out fifteen cents to stop up one hole, and it runs out another. How I ate out my gall bargaining with him he should let it down to fifteen cents! He wanted yet a quarter, the swindler. Gottuniu! my bitter heart on him for every penny he ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the courtyard, suffered Bertram to pause for a minute, and look upon his companions in affliction. When he had cast his eye around, on faces on which guilt, and despondence, and low excess, had fixed their stigma; upon the spendthrift, and the swindler, and the thief, the bankrupt debtor, the "moping idiot, and the madman gay," whom a paltry spirit of economy congregated to share this dismal habitation, he felt his heart recoil with inexpressible loathing from ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... talking to you about him, I blamed him for coldness? I was right, and wrong too, then. The coldness is in his blood—that is not his fault—and not in his head. He is not an actor, as I called him, nor a cheat, nor a scoundrel; he lives at other people's expense, not like a swindler, but like a child.... Yes; no doubt he will die somewhere in poverty and want; but are we to throw stones at him for that? He never does anything himself precisely, he has no vital force, no blood; but who has the right to say that he has ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... the speculation threatened to fail—I reproach myself for losing my courage. I ran away like a swindler and a thief, because I could not face my best friend and tell him I had ruined ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Stanislaus, "I am rotten, I am a tief, a blackguard, a swindler, a pickpocket, a housebreak, a sticker mit de knife. I vish somebody would call me names all de day long, because I forget sometime dat I am de nashty vurm of de creation. I tink I hire a boy to call me names, and make me not forget. Oh, my lady, I alvays remember ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... you were to retire. They're not genuine like you. They simply use the Chapel for self-advertisement and making money. Of course there are some genuine ones like the Miss Cardinals, but Thurston's an absolute swindler ..." ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... upon Lossing at the bridge, in which we both saw the hand of Voisin. Mrs. Camp, too, added her quota to the solution of this riddle when she recognised in Voisin the swindler of the Turkish Bazaar, and identified the hand of Voisin as the hand which had held out the Spurious bank-notes to Camp; and, finally, there came his second attempt to destroy Lossing in the Cold Storage fire, ending as it did in his own disaster and in revealing ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... that she is very lovely, and that pains have been taken with her education. Her mother was well born and well bred. If you would get at the truth, Miss Lovel, you must teach yourself to believe that they are not swindlers. They are no more swindlers than I am a swindler. I will go further,—though perhaps you, and the young Earl, and Mr. Flick, may think me unfit to be intrusted any longer with this case, after such a declaration,—I believe, though it is with a doubting belief, that the elder lady is the Countess ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... appears to the contrary, of "a thousand crimes." Remember how we limit the application of other parables. The lord, it will be recollected, commended the unjust steward because he had done wisely. His shrewdness was held up as an example, but after all he was a miserable swindler, and deserved the state-prison as much as many of our financial operators. The parable of the Pharisee and the Publican is a perpetual warning against spiritual pride. But it must not frighten any one of us out of being thankful that he is not, like this or that neighbor, under bondage ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... that day. Wool was an atrocious villain, an incendiary scoundrel, a cut-throat, and a black demon. Cap was a beggar, a vagabond and a vixen. Herbert Greyson was another beggar, besides being a knave, a fop and an impudent puppy. The inn-keeper was a swindler, the waiters thieves, the whole world was going to ruin, where it well deserved to go, and all mankind to the demon—as he hoped and trusted ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... Potts complained. Brandon had his son up on the spot; and after listening to his explanations gave him the alternative either to apologise to Potts or to leave the house forever. Louis indignantly denounced Potts to his father as a swindler. Brandon ordered him to his room, and gave him a ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... gigantic swindler had committed his frauds is simple enough. Having charge of the books in which the stock of the company is registered, he altered the sum standing in the name of some bona fide stockholder to a much larger sum, generally by placing a figure ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... next term, the Consul-General took wing, leaving his bail, a simple Frenchman, to pay the forfeit. It would be impossible for me to give anything like a history of his crimes in a letter. Suffice it to say that he is a notorious swindler, the most unblushing and inexhaustible liar and the most finished rascal I ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... have been the centre of an unpleasant amount of vulgar curiosity. As it is, the inquest will be more or less of a formal affair, and the public will never know that Fenwick has been anything more than a common swindler." ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... be simple misery. He is going to Petersburg in a day or two to sell his pictures, and at his wife's request will call on you to ask your advice. With a view to this his wife came to ask me for a letter of introduction to you. Be my benefactor, tell N. that I am a drunkard, a swindler, a nihilist, a rowdy character, and that it is out of the question to travel with me, and that a journey in my company will do nothing but upset him. Tell him he will be wasting his time. Of course it would ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... addressed to the Court of Directors in September 1836, in which he eagerly vindicates the freedom of the Calcutta Press, at a time when the writers of that Press, on the days when they were pleased to be decent, could find for him no milder appellations than those of cheat, swindler, and charlatan. ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... where they are, and roam among the lazzaroni, than return to corrupt the decencies of English life. If this sentimentalist has money, she is sure to be picked up by some "superb chevalier," some rambling fortune-hunter, or known swindler, hunted from the gambling table; probably beginning his career as a frizeur or a footman, and making rapid progress towards the galleys. If she has none, she returns to England, to grumble, for the next fifty years, at the climate, the country, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... opposition also to all the unsophisticated feelings of human Nature. No thinking person will venture to affirm, that the beauty of the courtezan, the strength of the robber, or the intelligence and sagacity of the swindler, are more to be honoured than the generous qualities of a Wilberforce or a Howard. And therefore it is, that from a calm and dispassionate consideration of these facts, and independently altogether of revelation, we cannot see how any impartial philosophic mind can evade the conclusion, ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... brilliant prospect. The partner, whose persuasive tongue and brilliant imagination had induced Mr. Andrews to join him with his four thousand pounds, proved to be an arrant cheat and swindler; and Mr. Andrews's application to us for legal help and redress was just too late to prevent the accomplished dealer in moonshine and delusion from embarking at Liverpool for America, with every penny of the partnership funds ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... wish we had known your intention. Mother would have gone with you to Edward's store. It is too bad that you should have been so cheated. The person who sold you the silk is no better than downright swindler." ...
— Finger Posts on the Way of Life • T. S. Arthur
... cheat, sir: you are nothing better than a common swindler, sir. I will not play with you any more. Do you call yourself a whist player and make signs to your partner. I should be ashamed to stay in ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... perhaps this gentleman prefers it to the endless noises of greater hotels. The gratified cabman, happy over his hasty bargain, which delivered him from a half hour's stamping of feet and clapping of his fur covered hands, never cares to wonder whether the occupant of his sleigh is a disguised swindler or an Earl in-cog, but jingles his sleigh bells hurriedly in ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... friend Patrick O'Shaughnessy, for after taking a noggin of your blue ruin, he went to blow out the candle on stepping into bed, when the poor dear creature went off in a blaze, and set fire to the house. Its all nothing at all but spirits of wine, you bog-trotting swindler!" ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... sharply, "it seems that you have been making rather free with my good name, of late; representing me as a cheat and a swindler." ...
— True Riches - Or, Wealth Without Wings • T.S. Arthur
... Swindler! Cast him into prison! Throw him to the lion!" Such epithets and recommendations rained from the spectators' seats, accompanied by a pelting of more substantial missiles. In an instant the yellow hair and common dress lay on the ground, and those who knew ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... cheated by an English swindler." The clothier raised his thin voice: "Kate, here's a ...
— My Neighbors - Stories of the Welsh People • Caradoc Evans
... of having more time to attend the office. Nimblecut, the hairdresser, has been endeavouring to raise his charge for shaving one half-penny per chin, to be enabled to speculate more largely. Shavings, journeyman carpenter, calculates upon clearing considerably more by 'Sister to Swindler' than a year's interest from the savings-bank. There are thousands of similarly circumstanced speculators: they make a daily, if not more frequent promenade to the betting-office; and on the days when the races come off, they may be observed in shoals, nodding and winking knowingly as they pass ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 447 - Volume 18, New Series, July 24, 1852 • Various
... liked Elodie. Dress her at whatever Rue de la Paix rag-swindler's that you pleased, you would never metamorphose the daughter of the people that she was into the lady at ease in all company. She was a bit mannieree—on her best behaviour. But she had the Frenchwoman's instinctive knowledge of conduct. ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... the jeweller presented his bill to the queen, who denied all knowledge of the matter; this led to a trial which extended over nine months, gave rise to great scandal, and ended in the punishment of the swindler and her husband, and the disgrace of the unhappy, and it is believed ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... infernal thieves and scoundrels unhung. If you attempt to hector with me, I will cane you; if you want more, I'll shoot you; if you meddle between me and Dawkins, I will do both. I know your whole life, you miserable swindler and coward. I know you have already won two hundred pounds of this lad, and want all. I will have half, or you never shall have a penny." It's quite true that master knew things; but ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... professions of friendship and feeling out of the question, you have no right to keep me here!—for it is in truth your act—if you had not forcibly withheld from me the twelve thousand pounds, in consequence of a threatening letter from a miserable swindler, whose claim YOU in particular knew to be a lie, I should at least have been out of the reach of this state of miserable insult—for that, and that only, lost me my seat in Parliament. And I assert that you cannot find a lawyer in the land, that is not ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... a while too with ourselves, was simply a tutor; a 'proser' was one who wrote in prose; an 'adventurer' one who set before himself perilous, but very often noble ventures, what the Germans call a gluecksritter; a 'swindler,' in the German from which we got it, one who entered into dangerous mercantile speculations, without implying that this was done with any intention to defraud others. Christ, according to Bishop Hall, was the ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... disagreeable question of his giving himself, both in this state of existence and in his spiritual circle, a name to which he never had any pretensions whatever, and likewise prudently suppressing any reference to his amiable weakness as a swindler and an infamous trafficker in his own wife, the guileless Mr. Balsamo delivered, in a "distinct voice", this distinct celestial utterance—unquestionably punctuated in a supernatural manner: "My power was that ...
— Contributions to All The Year Round • Charles Dickens
... a scoundrel," she said: "a swindler, gambler,—what I believe you Americans call a confidence-man. He is also my late husband's first cousin. Some years since he found it convenient to leave England, likewise his wife and daughter. Mrs. Calendar, ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... girl who had saved his life, and, after all, his ideas were not quite so liberal as he fancied they had become in the Western forest. It was a trifle disconcerting to discover that she was the daughter of a swindler. ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... with the morning would have come sober sense, the cheque stopped before it could have been presented, the swindler caught. No! those exquisite Parisians were never intended to rest in Mr. Shipman's safe until the morning. That last bottle of '48 port, with the aid of a powerful soporific, ensured that Mr. Shipman would sleep undisturbed ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... Parisian detectives—the best in the world—going to take down from the lady's lips a minute description of the adventurer, the swindler, who had imposed upon them, and attempted to cheat a poor hack-driver out of his hard-earned wages! Then would appear the reports in the newspapers,—how a well-dressed young man, an American, Monsieur X., (or perhaps my name would be given,) had been the means of enlivening the fashionable circles ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... and by scraping together all I possess, I can make up eight hundred livres. But may I be damned in the next world, or punished as a swindler in this, and one's as bad as the other to me, if I can ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... world, and he had been willing to barter all his life for it. It was here at last, and he was so far beggared that he had no price to offer in payment for it which was worth a thousandth part its value. He was bankrupt and had sought to buy this treasure, and must now needs go through life as a swindler. Even if his hopes were granted, what had he to pay? He knew at this moment as clearly as if he had even then been enlightened by the events of later years that there were scores of women who would draw their skirts away ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... child aged two years. Said slave has been purloined or enticed away by her former owner, Madame Widow Decaux, who secretly went out of this State on the 12th December, 1846. Said Widow Decaux is well known in New Orleans as a notorious swindler, having been prosecuted for having pawned logs of wood to a merchant of this city instead of dry goods. She has a scar on her forehead, and several others on her neck, and is accompanied by her aged mother, and her ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... these calamities on his country was not a mere visionary or a mere swindler. He was that William Paterson whose name is honourably associated with the auspicious commencement of a new era in English commerce and in English finance. His plan of a national bank, having been examined and approved by the most eminent statesmen ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... he was again made governor; and it was at this time, that, contrary to all expectations, he was prevailed on to sign the Yazoo Act. No charge of corruption was ever made against him. No thief or swindler was ever bold enough to try to bribe such a high-spirited and fearless man. But excitement in the State ran so high, that General Matthews was ruined so far as his influence was concerned. He left Georgia, ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
... woman. Consequently Comte Adam, pressed by questions, did not even attempt the innocent roguery of selling the suspected secret. It is always wise with a woman to get some good out of a mystery; she will like you the better for it, as a swindler respects an honest man the more when he finds he cannot swindle him. Brave in heart but not in speech, Comte Adam merely stipulated that he should not be compelled to answer until he ...
— Paz - (La Fausse Maitresse) • Honore de Balzac
... a victim, not a swindler,' sounded from him in a feeble voice. 'You see, he says that Geldershaw has robbed him of all ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... in lion's skin &c (bungler) 701; actor &c (stage player) 599. quack, charlatan, mountebank, saltimbanco^, saltimbanque^, empiric, quacksalver, medicaster^, Rosicrucian, gypsy; man of straw. conjuror, juggler, trickster, prestidigitator, jockey; crimp, decoy, decoy duck; rogue, knave, cheat; swindler &c (thief) 792; jobber. Phr. saint abroad and ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... of the landlady; for Captain Paget had offered her references, and the people to whom he referred were among the magnates of the land. The Captain knew enough of human nature to know that if references are only sufficiently imposing, they are very unlikely to be verified. The swindler who refers his dupe to the Duke of Sutherland and Baring Brothers has a very good chance of getting his respectability accepted without inquiry, on the mere strength of ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... One can't choose one's brother; but who would choose to be the friend of a swindler? Is that what the letter ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... I take to be either a swindler or Josiah Cheeks, Major-General of the Horse Marines, of his Majesty's ship, the Merry Dun, of Dover," handing to the admiral the acknowledgment; "and I am, sir, Ralph Rattlin, just come down to join his ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... and such epithets as liar, cheat, and swindler were freely interchanged, and then there was a simultaneous spring at each other, the chairs were overturned and they were rolling upon the floor, dealing each other fierce blows and tearing each other's hair like wild beasts. It was the peddler who struck first, but Peter, being the stronger ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... which the promoter imagines he will gain enormous wealth. Sometimes it is a trick in which the cupidity of the victims and their readiness to swallow promises of large and immediate profits play as important a part as the ability of the swindler. Sometimes it is a gigantic hoax, in which the deviser himself becomes keenly interested and for the carrying out of which he spends as much talent and energy as would suffice, if employed honestly, to acquire considerable wealth; but ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... Alexandre, whose companionship was rather dull, and his younger sister, Seraphine, a big, vicious, and flighty girl of eighteen, who, as it happened, soon left the house amid a frightful scandal—an elopement with a certain Baron Lowicz, a genuine baron, but a swindler and forger, to whom it became necessary to marry her. She then received a dowry of 300,000 francs. Alexandre, after his father's death, made a money match with Constance, who brought him half a million francs, and Marianne then found herself ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... in his mind all the time had developed. He had had proof in divers ways. He said to himself, "That man is a scoundrel, a common swindler, if I know one when I see him." But suspicions as to the girl had never for one minute dwelt in his furthest fancy. He had thought speculatively of the possible complicity of the other women of the household, ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Vaux, a Swindler and Thief, now transported to New South Wales, for the second time, and for life. Written ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... pitiful and rather sordid little domestic drama was in progress within fifty yards from my open windows. I discovered a son in the act of encouraging his aged and apparently imbecile parent to gamble with a professional swindler! Not that I have actually seen them thus engaged. As a matter of fact I have merely heard a few short remarks—and those were all spoken by the son. But, as everyone knows, even a single sentence ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 28, 1919. • Various
... true that you may not sit at meat with these especial persons; but how many live at hotels where the next neighbor at table, to whom, if you are a gentleman, you show politeness, is entirely unknown to you, and may be a swindler, cheat or knave. But you associate with him only as much as it is necessary for you to do; and that is just as much as you are obliged to do in an Association, and no more. It does not follow because ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... 4th December, Louis Bonaparte did not perhaps quite know himself. Those who studied this curious Imperial animal did not believe him capable of such pure and simple ferocity. They saw in him an indescribable mongrel, applying the talents of a swindler to the dreams of an Empire, who, even when crowned, would be a thief, who would say of a parricide, What roguery! Incapable of gaining a footing on any height, even of infamy, always remaining half-way uphill, a little above petty rascals, a little ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... Bankers' Association wants it; the Merchants' Protective Alliance wants it. Amapala is the only place within striking distance of our country where a fugitive is safe. It is the only place where a dishonest cashier, swindler, or felon can find refuge. Sometimes it seems almost as though when a man planned a crime he timed it exactly so as to catch the boat for Amapala. And, once there, we can't lay our hands on him; and, what's more, we can't lay our ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... Gardens. As the public will doubtless remember, they had been robbed of some valuable gems between London and Amsterdam in a singularly audacious manner. My second was the case of the celebrated Russian swindler, who called herself the Countess Demikoff. This case alone took me nearly six months to unravel, but I did not grudge the time, seeing that I was well paid for my labours, and that I managed to succeed where the police had failed. From that time forward I think I may say without boasting ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... you're driving at better than I do,' I said. And then I said: 'What's it all about? What's your game?' And he said, as if I'd been a common swindler ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... come under the general head of stealing. People call it theft, when it is effected with secrecy and slyness; robbery, when there is a suggestion of force or violence. The swindler is he who appropriates another's goods by methods of gross deception or false pretenses while the embezzler transfers to himself the funds entrusted to his care. Petty thieving is called pilfering or ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... cheek (but never permitted himself anything of the kind when talking to Rita); that surly dandy Cabanel (but he only once, from mere vanity), and everybody else at all distinguished including also a celebrated person who turned out later to be a swindler. But he was really a genius. . . All this according to Mr. Blunt, who gave us all those details with a sort of languid zest ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... was reviewing a two-hundred-and-fifty-guinea prize novel, selected by Messrs. Lang and Shorter.) Further, "He writes always from the point of a B.Sc." But the most humorous part of the criticism is this. After stating that Ponderevo acknowledges himself to be a liar, a swindler, a thief, an adulterer, and a murderer, Claudius Clear then proceeds: "He is not in the least ashamed of these things. He explains them away with the utmost facility, and we find him at the age of forty-five, not unhappy, and successfully engaged in problems of aerial navigation" (my italics). ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... Redburn, that gambler under cover of your pistol is guilty of a crime, punishable in the Black Hills by death. As you are his victim—or, rather, were to be—it only remains for you to aim straight and rid your country of an A No. 1 dead-beat and swindler!" ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler
... Smith's place, and told Smith he was a dirty, mean, despicable swindler—or something like that. Smith smiled. Dad put one leg through the slip-rails and promised Smith, if he'd only come along, to split palings out of him. But Smith did n't. The instinct of self-preservation must have been deep in that man Smith. Then Dad went home and said he would shoot the —— ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... That ain't my idea of a free country. I can work as well as another, but I ain't going to be told that I'm a swindler because I'm making the most of ...
— Harry Heathcote of Gangoil • Anthony Trollope
... Sparrow-hawk for half as much again as she was worth. Let me assure you that you will do nothing of the kind. I would not give half the sum which you ask for her. From the first I suspected that you were a swindler, and it was to obtain proof of it that my son shipped with you as a cook. Have you anything that you wish to say in your defence, or ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... wait on them. Dost thou not see—shortsighted being that thou art, and unlucky mortal that I am!—that if they perceive thee to be a coarse clown or a dull blockhead, they will suspect me to be some impostor or swindler? Nay, nay, Sancho friend, keep clear, oh, keep clear of these stumbling-blocks; for he who falls into the way of being a chatterbox and droll, drops into a wretched buffoon the first time he trips; bridle ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... acquaintance, until their bosom friends, Mrs. Porkenham and the Misses Porkenhams, and Mr. Sidney Porkenham, were ready to burst with jealousy and despair. And now, to hear, after all, that he was a needy adventurer, a strolling player, and if not a swindler, something so very like it, that it was hard to tell the difference! Heavens! what would the Porkenhams say! What would be the triumph of Mr. Sidney Porkenham when he found that his addresses had been slighted for such a rival! How should he, Nupkins, meet ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... everything mixed with everything, saint and swindler, gentleman and Jew, and every beast out of ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... obtained a rich dowry with his wife. The poor girl died of 'grief in the course of a year, but did not say a word till she was on her death-bed. Her foolish parents, ashamed of having been deceived so grossly, dared not say anything, and got the female swindler out of the way; she had taken good care, however, to lay a firm hold on the dowry. The story became known, and gave the good folk of Augsburg much amusement, while I became renowned for my ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... with a soldierly smartness in his manner. To be exact, he had acquired it in the navy. But that was all one; he had at least been trained to desperate resolves, so he accepted the match, and the white-haired swindler pronounced the connubial ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... realize on your hens to keep from bankruptcy, everybody would quit eating chicken and go to eating mutton, and there you are. I decline to invest in a hen ranch right here now, and if you try to inveigle me into it I shall have you arrested as a gold-brick swindler," and Uncle Ike patted the red-headed boy on the shoulder and ran a great hard thumb into ...
— Peck's Uncle Ike and The Red Headed Boy - 1899 • George W. Peck
... a nunnery would be far greater kindness to the poor childish being, than leaving her to the mercy of a runaway swindler; and all measures were promptly taken, Ford throwing himself into the chase with greater ardour and indignation than even Madison; for he had trusted to Robson's grand professions that he could easily throw dust into the young Lord's inexperienced ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the bogus trust company, and the fraudulent land and investment agent. When even the smallest community begins to "boom," the people of the community lose their heads and the harvest ripens to the sickle of the swindler. And the entire United States—sometimes in one part, sometimes in another, sometimes all together,—with only an occasional and short-lived panic to check the madness, boomed ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson |
