"Artifice" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with a certain jauntiness, and he had need of what assistance artifice could lend him, for he was singularly unprepossessing. He was a man who might as well have been sixty as fifty. His clothes soiled, torn and greasy, were of good cut. The shirt was filthy, but it was attached to a frayed ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... turned the public calamity to his own private advantage. He promised to remove the bodies that lay amid the ruins, and to clear the ground at his own expense. By that artifice he secured all the remaining property of the unhappy sufferers for his own use. To add to his ill-gotten store, he levied contributions in the provinces, and by those means ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... there is in bonnets or boots. Sometimes nature is the mode, sometimes art. Just now the latter is in the ascendant, though, as a rule, only in that inferior phase which has not reached the "concealment of art"—the point where extremes meet and the perfection of artifice presents all the appearance of artlessness. No one of an observant turn of mind, who is accustomed to the sight of English maids and matrons, can deny that making-up, as at present practiced, partakes of the amateurish element. Impossible reds and whites grow still more impossibly red and white ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... pretended to be written by the Nabob, as well as on those actually written by the minister, without previously communicating the matter of the said complaint to the said Resident, and did give credit to the same, and coming, as aforesaid, from a person by himself, the said Hastings, charged with artifice, falsehood, and duplicity, and with abusing to his own evil purposes the name and seal of his master without his knowledge, and without any previous inquiry into the facts and circumstances; and did thereon ground an accusation against the said Resident, Bristow, before the board at Calcutta, ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... all mankind venerate and admire so much as simple truth, exempt from artifice, duplicity, and design. It exhibits at once a strength of character and integrity of purpose in which all are willing ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... apresentado, Ensaio de Casamento, and A Viuva inconsolavel—are prose translations from Mery, cleverly done, but not worth the doing. Horacio e Lydia (1872), a translation from Ronsard, is a good example of artifice in manipulating that dangerously monotonous measure, the Portuguese couplet. As an indication of a strong spiritual reaction three prose fragments (1873)—Anna, Mae de Maria, A Virgem Maria and A Mulher do Levita de Ephrain—translated from Darboy's Femmes de la Bible, are full of significance. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... done? what arguments can I use? This savage will understand nothing! The newest and most cunning fancies are a dead letter to the ignorant. Let us invent some artifice to fit in ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... what would her brother think of her absence? what would Fernand conjecture? And what perils might not at that moment envelop her lover, while she was not near to succor him by means of her artifice, her machinations, or her gold. Ten thousand-thousand maledictions upon Stephano, who was the cause of all her present misery! Ten thousand-thousand maledictions on her own folly for not having exerted all her energies and all her faculties to escape from his ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... through once more, with no diminished sense of its truth, but with somewhat less than my first satisfaction in its art. Perhaps this was because I had reached the point through my acquaintance with Tolstoy where I was impatient even of the artifice that hid itself. In "Smoke" I was now aware of an artifice that kept out of sight, but was still always present somewhere, invisibly operating the story.—From "My ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... possible and impossible factory. Unpractical and reserved as she was on ordinary occasions, she could be full of artifice and coquetry whenever she wished to gain access to a steam bakery and particular as she generally was about her toilette, she would come away again sooty and grimy if thereby she could procure for Rafael some insight into mechanics. She shrank from foul air as from ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... now, Metem," asked Aziel, as the camels strode forward, "and why am I set free who was expecting death? Is this some new artifice of yours, or has the lady ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard
... but still I enjoyed the society of Ellen so much, that whenever the skipper called upon me, I feigned myself too weak to go to my duty, and pleaded that Langley might stay ashore to take care of me. Captain Smith, though not deceived by this artifice, granted us liberty from day to day; and Bill and I were the two happiest fellows in the world. But there is an end to every thing. One day while sitting in the back verandah with Ellen, her father and mother, in rushed the skipper, in ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... for Love, she spends herself prodigally in the endless effort to find it, little guessing, sometimes, that it is not the most obvious thing Man has to offer. With colour and scent and silken sheen, she makes a lure of her body; with cunning artifice she makes temptation of her hands and face and weaves it with her hair. She flatters, pleads, cajoles; denies only that she may yield, sets free in order to summon back, and calls, so that when he has answered she may ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... no more carry the artifice of the Bar into the common intercourse of society, than a man who is paid for tumbling upon his hands will continue to tumble upon his hands when he should walk on his feet,' ...
— Life of Johnson, Volume 6 (of 6) • James Boswell
... whether only a logical process takes place, I can not decide. In the whole earlier and later behavior of the child there is no ground for the first assumption, and the fact that he employs this artifice while in his carriage, immediately after he has been waited on, is ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... peoples and for princes, a great and powerful voice, the voice of justice and of truth, impartial and without preference, free from all arbitrary influence, and which can neither be repressed by fear nor circumvented by artifice. How could it have been that at this very moment the prelates of the church, arriving from all points of the universe, should have come here in order to represent all peoples, and confer in security on the gravest ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... the discourse of men always conforms to the temper of the times. Among savage nations [a] language is never copious. A few words serve the purpose of barbarians, and those are always uncouth and harsh, without the artifice of connection; short, abrupt, and nervous. In a state of polished society, where a single ruler sways the sceptre, the powers of the mind take a softer tone, and language grows more refined. But affectation follows, and ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... rise I and say:—'How shameful in an official person to throw dust in the eyes of the House by detaining it upon a miserable trifle, whilst the criminal gravities of his conduct are skulking in the rear under this artifice for misleading the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... practiced under the barbarism of the ages of antiquity? Do not the women of this age go lower in shamelessness than the women of ancient times? Here we see them veiling their faces with the flimsy gauze of artifice, and befouling the pure waters of life with the turbulent stream of their own vanity. They pollute the purity of real beauty by the foul arts of beautifying, and cry out in loud rude voices in every assembly and gathering. They strut about in vain-glorious conceit, and flaunt their gaudy apparel ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... Pertinax, that thy so great love hath loosed thy tongue at last, Love hath touched thy lips with eloquence beyond all artifice since now, methinks, it is thy very soul doth speak me. And who shall resist such wooing? Surely not I that do—love thee beyond telling. So take me, my lord, thy right hand in mine, the talisman in thy left—so! Now, my Pertinax, speak ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... laying its eggs in the buried corpse. And when Gleditsch attached a dead bird to a cross made out of two sticks, or suspended a toad to a stick planted in the soil, the little beetles would in the same friendly way combine their intelligences to overcome the artifice of Man. The same combination of efforts has been noticed among ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... speaking for herself, as she had burned to do, all through this narrative; "and when she knew his purpose, she advised him by all means to keep his secret close; for his old friend John Peerybingle was much too open in his nature, and too clumsy in all artifice—being a clumsy man in general," said Dot, half laughing and half crying—"to keep it for him. And when she—that's me, John," sobbed the little woman—"told him all, and how his sweetheart had believed him to be dead; and how she had ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... from classes, thinking upon her devoutly with a great deal of love and a good deal of annoyance in the bargain, the annoyance began to fade away out of my mind; and spying in a window one of those forced flowers, of which the Hollanders are so skilled in the artifice, I gave way to an impulse and bought it for Catriona. I do not know the name of that flower, but it was of the pink colour, and I thought she would admire the same, and carried it home to her with ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sprawled with unconcern. The place looked sordid and miserable, and Hilda sitting in the middle of it, still in the yellow wig and painted face of Mrs. Halliday, all wrong at that range, gave it a note of false artifice, violent and grievous. Stephen stood in the doorway grasping the handle, saying nothing, and an instant passed before she knew with certainty, in the wretched light, that it was he. Then she sprang up and made a step toward him as if toward victory and reward, but checked herself ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... have enabled us to contemplate with distressing complacency the secret of unhallowed lives. The code that is greatly modified by time and place, will vary according to the cause. The amnesty is an artifice that enables us to make exceptions, to tamper with weights and measures, to deal unequal justice ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... talking to her mother, she readily found an excuse to buy something—ribbons, or candles, or hair-pins, or dried apples—something kept in the very miscellaneous stock of the "Emporium," and she knew who would wait upon her, and who would kindly prolong the small transaction by every artifice in his power, and thus give her time to tell him about her Brother Albert. He would be so glad to hear about Albert. He was always glad to hear her tell ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... almost caused a revolution among the adorers of Zoroaster's doctrine. Nevertheless, the priests refrained from killing him, out of fear of the people's vengeance. They resorted to artifice, and led him out of town at night, with the hope that he might be devoured by wild beasts. Jesus escaped this peril and arrived safe and sound in ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch
... man I ever heard; and in Macbeth or Julius Caesar, or the like, I doubt if Kemble could have been more impressive. Yet the changes of intonation were so gently managed, that he contrived to set the different interlocutors clearly before us, without the least approach to theatrical artifice. Not so the others I have mentioned; they all read cleverly and agreeably, but with the decided trickery of stage recitation. To them he usually gave the book when it was a comedy, or, indeed, any other drama than Shakespeare's or Joanna ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... would come when I should be restored to liberty, and that he had an important secret, which he would one day communicate. I should have been more tantalized with the expectations that these remarks were calculated to raise, had I not suspected them to be a good-natured artifice, to save me from despondency, as they were never made except when he saw me looking ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... him," says Crockett, "that it was a burlesque on human nature, that an able-bodied man, possessed of his full share of good sense, should voluntarily debase himself, and be indebted for subsistence to such a pitiful artifice. ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... industry of a certain French priest, commonly called Peter the Hermit; who being at Jerusalem upon pilgrimage some time before, and entering often into private treaty with the patriarch of that city, came back fully instructed in all the measures necessary for such a war: to these was joined the artifice of certain dreams and visions that might pass for divine admonition: all which, added to the piety of his exhortations, gave him such credit with the Pope, and several princes of Christendom, that he became in his own person the leader of a great army against the infidels, and was very instrumental ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... fiction becomes lost with more sophisticated hearers and authors: a man is no longer the dupe of his own artifice, and cannot deal playfully with truths that are a matter of bitter concern to him in his life. And hence, in the progressive centralisation of modern thought, we should expect the old form of fable to fall gradually into desuetude, and be gradually succeeded ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... determining and thus acting, you will pursue the plain and direct road to the attainment of your wishes; you will defeat the insidious designs of your enemies, who are compelled to resort from open force to secret artifice; you will give one more distinguished proof of unexampled patriotism and patient virtue rising superior to the pressure of the most complicated sufferings; and you will, by the dignity of your conduct, afford occasion for posterity to say, when speaking of the glorious example ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... quickly reassured his friends in the city, that his fall had in no wise harmed him. He was only a little shaken up and weak; as soon as he had his accustomed daily meal, a roasted ox, he would be able to scale the wall and resume the struggle with the Babylonians. But human strength and artifice avail naught against God. A gust of wind arose, and Akiba was thrown from the wall, and he died. Thereupon the Chaldeans made a breach in the wall, and penetrated into ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... egoist was also 'a bonny fighter.' He flung himself into the fray as wild with excitement as any soldier on a stricken field. With every artifice of the orator he wrought the people of Nova Scotia to madness. It was poor stuff, most of it; coarse jokes, recrimination, crowd-catching claptrap. Eighty cents per head of population was, according to the agreement, to be the subsidy from the federal ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... remember that he was Lord Airlie, nor sought by any artifice to keep him near her. The bright, sunny hours seemed to pass rapidly as a dream. Long before the day ended, the young earl said to himself that he had met his fate; that if it took years to win her he would count ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... in arms he was; one grievous blot, So deem'd full many a courtly dame, I wot, Cross'd the full growth of his aspiring days, And dimm'd the lustre of meridian praise: With bootless artifice their lures they troll'd; Still, Gugemer lov'd not, or nothing told. The court's accustom'd love and service done, To his glad sire returns the welcome son. Now with his father dwelt he, and pursued Such pastimes as are meet for youth of noble blood. The woods of Leon now would shrilly ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... correspondence between them being restored, to write letters to some French soldiers that were in Weybhays's company, promising them six thousand livres apiece if they would comply with his demands, not doubting but by this artifice he should be ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton
... congressman of that name.—-Then the Van Hoesens, of Sing-Sing, great choristers and players upon the jew's-harp. These marched two and two, singing the great song of St. Nicholas. Then the Couenhovens, of Sleepy Hollow. These gave birth to a jolly race of publicans, who first discovered the magic artifice of conjuring a quart of wine into a pint bottle.—Then the Van Kortlandts, who lived on the wild banks of the Croton, and were great killers of wild ducks, being much spoken of for their skill in shooting with the long bow.—Then the Van Bunschotens, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... as it is," said Ingram—"a solitary costume produced by certain conditions of climate and duties, acting in conjunction with a natural taste for harmonious coloring and simple form? That dress, I will maintain, sprang as naturally from the salt sea as Aphrodite did; and the man who suspects artifice in it or invention has had his mind perverted by the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... of the four syllogistic figures concerns only categorical syllogisms; and although it is nothing more than an artifice by surreptitiously introducing immediate conclusions (consequentiae immediatae) among the premises of a pure syllogism, to give ism' give rise to an appearance of more modes of drawing a conclusion than that in the first figure, the artifice would not have had much success, had ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... other views of the Nancy school have been questioned by several observers. As Myers justly pointed out, although suggestion is the artifice used to excite the phenomena, it does not create the condition on which they depend. The peculiar state which enables the phenomena to be evoked is the essential thing, not the ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... chiefly wished to have the credit of; because she was sensible that by this method she effectually retained his own vanity as her advocate for whatever she said afterwards. Nay, I have been informed by one who knew her perfectly well, that, young as she was, she sometimes carried her artifice so far as to begin a dispute with the person she intended to deceive, and after a little sharp altercation pro and con to flatter his vanity by gradually giving up the argument, and at last yielding him a victory, ...
— Vice in its Proper Shape • Anonymous
... hardly improve his present execution, since he is now at the age of thirty-two, and can never fill more easily the youthful beauty of the part, without artifice, and, we may say, by the first intention. We should like to see him, ere many winters have passed over his head, in some new classic play, whose arrangement should not be confined to the bald, antique model, nor drawn ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... with zeal, and they adapted their methods to the requirements of the age. Yet, in the long run, art, science, literature, religion, morality and politics, all suffered from their interference. By preferring artifice to reality, affectation to sincerity, shams and subterfuges to plain principle and candor, they confused the conscience and enfeebled the intellect of Catholic Europe. When we speak of the Jesuit style in architecture, rhetoric and poetry, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... Valkyrie, relates how Wotan still covets the ring. He cannot take it himself, for he has given his word to the giants. He stands or falls by his word. So he devises an artifice to get the ring. He will get a hero-race to work for him and recover the ring and the treasures. Siegmund and Sieglinda are twin children of this new race. Sieglinda is carried off as a child and is forced into marriage with Hunding. Siegmund comes, ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... They offer you an affront, and call it "plain truth;" they wound your feelings, and tell you it is manly "to speak their minds;" at the same time, while they have neglected all the graces and charities of artifice, they have adopted all its falsehood and deceit. While they profess to abhor servility, they adulate the peerage—while they tell you they care not a rush for the minister, they move heaven and earth for an invitation from the minister's ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of the sudden surprise upon the old and feeble man, and had meant to break the good news to him softly. But human nature was too strong; his own emotions had baffled him, and the pious little artifice proved a complete failure. So now he could do nothing but stand by and make grim faces, struggling to keep down what was mastering him, and turning away blindly ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... of the miserable Charles grew hourly worse, and he rapidly approached his last moments. None knew better than his heartless mother, as she had herself admitted, that he must die; but yet, with so much artifice and intrigue did she envelope in mystery his lost condition, that, even in the Palace of the Louvre, his own nearest relations were ignorant how near approached the hour, which, by leaving the crown as heirloom to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... comme le jour prochaine est mon jour de naisance je vous ecrit ce lettre. Ma grande gatteaux est arrive il leve 12 livres et demi le prix etait 17 shillings. Sur la soiree de Monseigneur Faux il y etait quelques belles feux d'artifice. Mais les polissons entrent dans notre champ et nos feux d'artifice et handkerchiefs disappeared quickly, but we charged them out of the field. Je suis presque driven mad par une bruit terrible tous les garcons kik up comme grand un bruit qu'll est possible. I hope you will find your house ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... inadequate "z"—such things became desperately boring. One was not even let go to sleep, and if one wept from sheer ennui, then one was clouted. School, he shortly decided, was not worth anybody's while, but he also discovered that a torment had commenced which was not by any artifice to be evaded. ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... period of the war the Grecian army was deprived of Palamedes, one of its ablest chiefs. Odysseus had not forgiven the artifice by which Palamedes had detected his simulated insanity, nor was he without jealousy of a rival clever and cunning in a degree equal, if not superior, to himself; one who had enriched the Greeks with the invention of letters of dice for amusement of night-watches ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... days the partners had haunted the court-room where their lawyer, together with the counsel for the Scandinavians, had argued and pleaded, trying every possible professional and unprofessional artifice in search of relief from the arbitrary rulings of the court, while hourly they had become more strongly suspicious of some sinister plot—some hidden, powerful understanding back of the Judge and the entire mechanism of justice. ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... properly belongs to the individual facts or observations of which it expresses the general result; the major itself being no real part of the argument, but an intermediate halting-place for the mind, interposed by an artifice of language between the real premises and the conclusion, by way of a security, which it is in a most material degree, for the correctness of the process. The minor, however, being an indispensable part of the syllogistic expression of an argument, without ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... over, the ball is lost, and you prepare to go. But you decide to go home by a rather roundabout way that brings you by the spot that you have scoured in vain. You are not going to search for the ball. That would simply put the creature up to some new artifice. No, you are just walking round that way accidentally. What so natural as that you should have your eyes on the ground? And there, sure enough, lies the ball, taken completely unaware. It is so ridiculously ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... took to cooing, so to speak—a hasty blend of excerpts would be required for the "Epithalamium." So it was all a highly difficult business, needing adaptability, a quick wit, a goodly stock of songs, a retentive memory and every artifice to assist it. Take "Widsith," for example, the ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... the tenets of Protestantism, and even to act as a Protestant pastor, for the purpose of more complete deception. The good of the church was the plea which purified all imposture; the power of Rome was the principle on which this tremendous system of artifice was constructed; and the reduction of all modes of human opinion to the one sullen superstition of the Vatican, was the triumph for which those armies of subtle enthusiasm and fraudulent sanctity were prepared ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... night to quest for meat— She is desired to hold her peace. But at the word her cries increase; Again requested to abate Her noise, she's more importunate. The Owl perceiving no redress, And that her words were less and less Accounted of, no longer pray'd, But thus an artifice essay'd: "Since 'tis impossible to nod, While harping like the Delphian god, You charm our ears, stead of a nap, A batch of nectar will I tap, Which lately from Minerva came; Now if you do not scorn the same, Together let us bumpers ply." The Grasshopper, extremely dry, And, finding ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... immediate danger of war with the Scots, which he regarded as the more important concern, this politic prince, blinded by his favorite passion for subduing that nation, allowed himself to be deceived by so gross an artifice.[***] He sent his brother orders to sign and execute the treaty with the two queens; Philip solemnly promised to execute his part of it; and the king's citation to appear in the court of France, was accordingly recalled; but the French monarch was no sooner put in possession ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... world—looking at these with a constant admiration, and with a great and lenient love for their author—is not anxious to know what he did with his guineas, or whether the milkman was ever paid. "He had raised money and squandered it, by every artifice of acquisition and folly of expense. BUT LET NOT HIS FRAILTIES BE REMEMBERED: HE WAS A VERY GREAT MAN." This is Johnson's wise summing up; and with it we may here take ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... observers. It is fair to mention here, that we owe a great deal to the art of minute injection, by which we are enabled to trace the smallest vessels in the midst of the tissues where they are distributed. This is an old artifice of anatomists. The famous Ruysch, who died a hundred and thirty years ago, showed that each of the viscera has its terminal vessels arranged in its own peculiar way; the same fact which you may see illustrated in ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the cohorts if they were separated—and also that Civilis, not Brinno, was at the head of this war. Evidence of this gradually leaked out, as the Germans loved war too well to keep the secret for long. Finding his artifice unsuccessful, Civilis tried force instead, forming the Canninefates, Frisii and Batavi into three separate columns.[283] The Roman line faced them in position near the Rhine bank.[284] They had brought their ships there after the burning ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... repugnance to unvarnished truth; but,—without prejudice to Othello,—since varnish brings out in wood veins of beauty invisible before the application, why not also in the sober facts of life? When the transparent artifice has been penetrated, the familiar substance underneath will be greeted none the less kindly; nay, the observer will perhaps regard the disguise as an oblique compliment to his powers of insight, and his attention may thus be better secured than had ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... years older than her brother, but, without a trace of artifice or intention, contrived to look the younger of the two. Her thick hair, drawn simply from her temples into a knot behind, was of that palest brown which assimilates grey. Her face, long, plain, masculine in contour and spirit, conveyed no message as to years. ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... which he was then exerting upon the Life of Marlborough, let him know, that in the series of great men quickly to be exhibited, he should find a niche for the hero of the theatre. Garrick professed to wonder by what artifice he could be introduced; but Mallet let him know, that by a dexterous anticipation he should fix him in a conspicuous place. "Mr. Mallet," says Garrick in his gratitude of exultation, "have you left off to write for the stage?" Mallet then confessed that he had ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... poetic symbol, a beautiful artifice employed by the poets to perpetuate a legend by associating it with the imperishable hieroglyphs of the galaxy. It is not credible that men imagined that group of stars only outlined in such shape by the help of arbitrary ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... both the Seeds, Male and Female, so by our artifice, an artificial and like conjunction is made of Agents and Patients."(1) "All teaching," says KELLY, "that changes Mercury is false and vain, for this is the original sperm of metals, and its moisture must not be dried up, for otherwise it will not dissolve,"(2) and ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... child these two slight imperfections disappeared. With a more delicate figure she became more graceful, and no woman ever had a finer complexion. Being endowed with a most sturdy constitution, she owed all her beauty to nature and nothing to artifice; her face needed no paint, her wit no coquetry; with no fondness for luxury or dress, possessing simple and quiet tastes, never striving for effect, always preferring half-tints to a blaze of light, her expression and demeanor always ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... is healthful, is just so much gained upon the wholesale filcher, death. We shall have the less in our pockets, the more in our stomach, when he cries stand and deliver. A swift stream is a favourite artifice of his, and one that brings him in a comfortable thing per annum; but when he and I come to settle our accounts, I shall whistle in his face for these ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... save their property, had taken "protection" under the enemy. Colonel Ferguson, with chosen troops, was ravaging the whole western portion of upper South Carolina, subduing in his progress to western North Carolina, all opponents of English power, and encouraging, by bribes and artifice, others to join ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... United-States statutes respecting slavery in the Territories. This was the euphuistic plea of those Northern senators and representatives who had given dire offense to their constituents by voting for it. It was the clever artifice of Douglas which suggested that construction. It was a deception, and it was contradicted and exposed by the logic of argument in the North and by the logic of action in the South. No double- dealing was attempted by the Southern men. They understood the question perfectly ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... from him with scorn and disbelief. "My father," exclaimed she, "is too innocent and blameless to be convicted of crime; this is some base, some cruel artifice!" Don Ambrosio repeated his asseverations, and with them also his dishonourable proposals; but his eagerness overshot its mark: her indignation and her incredulity were alike awakened by his base suggestions; and he retired from her presence, ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... have often known a bell introduced into several tragedies with good effect, and have seen the whole assembly in a very great alarm all the while it has been ringing." Pope has his mention in "The Dunciad" of the same artifice: ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... Thereupon she returns to the hive, and waits yet one week more; and then, with her sisters born the same day as herself, she will for the first time set forth to visit the flowers. A special emotion now will lay hold of her; one that French apiarists term the "soleil d'artifice," but which might more rightly perhaps be called the "sun of disquiet." For it is evident that the bees are afraid, that these daughters of the crowd, of secluded darkness, shrink from the vault of blue, from ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... But artifice was necessary, he had found, for stemming the cold and inhumane blast of the world's contempt. And here were the materials ready made. By getting Sue back and remarrying her on the respectable plea of having entertained erroneous ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... mirror of truth herself, she could not imagine that any one—least of all any woman—could be so false and cruel as to practice the artifice to which the milliner had resorted; and, here, just as she saw a way opened by which she might support both her grandmother and herself until the handkerchief was completed, a change threatened her, by which she was to be left altogether without food. Still her conscience was so tender ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... of yourself—or being made a fool of—which you please," he assured me; and his face wore for the moment an almost friendly look. I saw clearly that he believed he had won the day. The old lady had managed to make him think that—by what artifice I knew not. But what I did know was that I believed not a jot of the insinuation he was conveying to me, and had not a doubt of the truth, and sincerity ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope
... faculty, certain physical gifts are also needed by the opera-singer, according to the requirements of the line of roles to which he is inevitably assigned by the nature and type of his particular voice. It is true that stage artifice has now reached great perfection; but it has its limits, and cannot ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... the gayety, not to say the licentiousness, of a station calculated to gratify such a disposition; and a prepossession for Major Sanford, infused into your giddy mind by the frippery, flattery, and artifice of that worthless and abandoned man. Hence you preferred a connection with him, if it could be accomplished; but a doubt whether it could, together with the advice of your friends, who have kindly espoused my cause, has restrained you from the avowal of your real sentiments, ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... artificial. Whoso fixes and externalizes, operates with natural materials, which he does not create, but combines and transforms. In this sense, every artificial product is a mixture of nature and artifice; and there would be no occasion to speak of a mixed beauty, as of a special category. But it happens that, in certain cases, combinations already given in nature can be used a great deal more than in others; as, for instance, when we design a beautiful ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... utterly condemn the practice, as it obtains in England; and for a reason superior to all these I must disapprove it. I cannot, indeed, discover that Scripture forbids it in so many words. But that anxious solicitude about the person, which such an artifice evidently betrays, is, I am sure, contrary to the tenor and spirit of it throughout. Show me a woman with a painted face, and I will show you a woman whose heart is set on things of the earth, and not ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... directions. The prince of the Hittites rallies, and succeeds in bringing them again to the combat, but they are repulsed by the King. It will be observed that sometimes the writer himself speaks, but generally the narrative is put into the mouth of the King—a poetical artifice which gives a certain liveliness to ...
— Egyptian Literature
... it is very fine, but it is always liable to the danger of degenerating into mannerism. Nay, where the imagination is absent and the artifice remains, as in some of the theological discussions in "Paradise Lost," it becomes mannerism of the most wearisome kind. Accordingly, he is easily parodied and easily imitated. Philips, in his "Splendid Shilling," has caught ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... was a real change of sentiment or only artifice, on a supposition of our being too far engaged in affection to retract, and therefore that we should steal a marriage, which would leave them at liberty to give or withhold what they pleas'd, I know not; but I suspected the latter, resented ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... quite unforeseen by us, the jemadar of a small Beluch garrison (Chogue), about seven miles up the river, came to pay his respects, and by a clever artifice—purely an Oriental dodge, as anybody who has lived in India will readily admit—at once perceiving an advantage to be gained by which he might profitably fill his own pocket at the same time that he would save ours, and give a job to his own Beluches to the prejudice of those ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... coal (like the colza bean) is 'a product of the soil,' the result of creative forces which, in the geological past, have worked together for the good of landed families. Soap, on the other hand, is the result of human artifice, and is certainly advertised with more of emphasis and of ingenuity than of delicacy. But, by her own line of descent, Mrs. Brown-Smith came from a Scottish house of ancient standing, historically renowned for its assassins, traitors, ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... law, and not a creation by artifice, and cause and effect is as absolute and undeviating in the hidden realm of thought as in the world of visible and material things. A noble and Godlike character is not a thing of favour or chance, but is the natural result of continued effort in right thinking, the effect of long-cherished association ...
— As a Man Thinketh • James Allen
... was several years older than you and one of the dames galantes of her day. She has taken the treatment and looks many years younger, at least, than when she was a painted old hag with a red wig. She is still forced to employ artifice, but she has lovers again, and that is all she did it for. Vienna is highly amused. No doubt all women of her sort will take it for no other purpose. But many of the intellectual women of Europe are taking it, too—and with the sole ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... is no harm in their saying so. It was an artifice of benevolence. You saw the bull, and had not seen the sheep. So is the superior man affected towards animals, that, having seen them alive, he cannot bear to see them die, and, having heard their dying cries, he cannot bear to ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... of its effect. Johnson, who thought that 'all was false and hollow,' despised the honeyed words, and was even indignant that Lord Chesterfield should, for a moment, imagine that he could be the dupe of such an artifice. His expression to me concerning Lord Chesterfield, upon this occasion, was, 'Sir, after making great professions, he had, for many years, taken no notice of me; but when my Dictionary was coming out, ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... old historian of the county, in an amusing manner. "We come to the arts that respect mankind," says Plot, "amongst which, as elsewhere, the civility of precedence must be allowed to the woman, and that as well in punishments as favours. For the former, whereof they have such a peculiar artifice at Newcastle [under Lyme] and Walsall for correcting of scolds, which it does, too, so effectually and so very safely, that I look upon it as much to be preferred to the cucking-stool, which not only endangers ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews
... a confederacy subsists by good-will, and all parties to the war have a common interest, men are willing to co-operate and bear hardships and persevere. But when one has grown strong, like Philip, by rapacity and artifice, on the first pretext, the slightest reverse, all is overturned and broken up. [Footnote: The original [Greek: anechaitise] is "shakes off," or "throws off," as a horse does his rider, when he rears and tosses up his neck. It will be observed that Demosthenes is very high-flown in his language ...
— The Olynthiacs and the Phillippics of Demosthenes • Demosthenes
... having four feet. Pen'du-lous, hanging down. Com'merce, trade, Pro-bos'cis, snout, trunk. 3. Strat'a-gem, artifice. Doc'ile, teachable. 6. Ar'rack, a spirituous liquor made from the juice of the cocoanut. A-sy'lum, a refuge. 7. Un-wield'y, heavy, unmanageable. Tac'-it-ly, silently. 8. Ep-i-dm'ic, affecting many people. Na'bob, a ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... admits nowadays that it is advisable to collect materials on separate cards or slips of paper. The notes from each document are entered upon a loose leaf furnished with the precisest possible indications of origin. The advantages of this artifice are obvious: the detachability of the slips enables us to group them at will in a host of different combinations; if necessary, to change their places: it is easy to bring texts of the same kind together, ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... elements, by itself, would be nothing. Confine the fluid contents of the noblest stream in a walled channel of stone, and it ceases to be a stream; it becomes what Charles Lamb calls "a mockery of a river—a liquid artifice—a wretched conduit." But take away the water from the most beautiful river-banks, and what is left? An ugly road with none to travel it; a long, ghastly scar on ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... undertaken by Pilatre des Rosiers and the Marquis d'Arlandes, four months after the discovery of balloons. Louis XVI. refused his consent to this voyage; two condemned criminals were to have first attempted aerial travelling. Pilatre des Rosiers was indignant at this injustice and, by means of artifice, succeeded in setting out. This car, which renders the management of the balloon easy, had not then been invented; a circular gallery surrounded the lower part of the aerostat. The two aeronauts stationed themselves at the extremities ...
— A Voyage in a Balloon (1852) • Jules Verne
... been a pleasant sight to see these old enemies converted into new and loving friends, and to behold their first meeting after being cheated into mutual liking by the merry artifice of the good-humored prince. But a sad reverse in the fortunes of Hero must now be thought of. The morrow, which was to have been her wedding-day, brought sorrow on the heart of Hero and her ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... afterwards an exchange of prisoners was being made, in which Colonel Schuyler was to be included, he, fearing that Putnam would be indefinitely held should his importance as a partisan leader become known, used a skilful artifice to obtain his release. Speaking to the governor with great politeness and seeming indifference of ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... glorious privilege, not often felt, nor long conferred, of surrendering themselves to the magic of that spell, cease for the time to be artists; they take no thought of ornament, or of any rhetorical artifice, but throw themselves headlong into their subject, trusting to nature for that language which is at once the shortest and the most appropriate to the occasion; spurning all far-fetched metaphors aside, and ringing out ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... Speckbacher attempted to impede his retreat at Hall, but arrived too late.[8] Teimer was accused of having been remiss in his duty through jealousy of the common peasant leaders. Arco escaped by an artifice similar to that of Deroy and abandoned the Scharnitz. The Vorarlbergers again spread as far as Kempten. Hormayr also returned, retook the reins of government, imposed taxes, flooded the country with useless law-scribbling, and, at the same time, refused ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... Briggs, his father made no show of artifice about it. He never would leave him alone. So numerous and severe were the mental trials of that unfortunate youth in vacation time, that the friends of the family (then resident near Bayswater, London) seldom approached the ornamental piece of water in Kensington Gardens,' without a vague expectation ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... been taken to point out the way to them by chopping the trees, one would have thought that the rawest among them, who had only spent a few months on the border, could have seen through so transparent an artifice. But these indications were disregarded in the desire felt to punish the Indians ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley
... I knew it. He thought himself possessed of a very important document, as you know, of which he has made, or means to make, some use. You are aware of the artifice I employed to prevent any possible evil consequences from any action of his. I have the genuine document, of course. I wish you to go over with me to The Poplars, and I should be glad to have good old Father Pemberton go with us; for it is a serious matter, and will be a great ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... report these sounds? If I did not err, my brother was restored to just perceptions. He knew himself to have been betrayed to the murder of his wife and children, to have been the victim of infernal artifice; yet he found consolation in the rectitude of his motives. He was not devoid of sorrow, for this was written on his countenance; but his soul was tranquil ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... these numskulls may serve me in good stead?" said the youth to himself, laughing to think what excellent substitutes for a living man an empty helmet with a spear-head beside it may be made to appear. This little artifice being satisfactorily accomplished, and lights set burning in various rooms of the castle still further to aid the delusion, he returned once more to the east terrace and ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... double meaning, one of which is conform to my mind, the other at variance. In the first place, I do not speak against my mind; I say what I think; the word I use means what I mean. But the other fellow! that is another matter. He may take his choice of the two meanings. If he guesses aright, my artifice has failed; if he is deceived, that is his loss. I do him no injustice, for he had no right to question me. If my answer embarrasses him, that is just what I intended, and I am guilty of no evil for that; if it deceives him, that I did not intend ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... was to penetrate into the castle by the postern gate in disguise, steal from the Margrave by artifice the key of the great door, and then by a blast of his horn summon his followers to the assault. Alas! there was need for haste, for at this very Yuletide, on this very night, the Margrave, wearied of Isolde's resistance, had determined to bestow her ...
— Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... had been brought in triumph into the city a few days before, but the mob of Jerusalem, with whom the ecclesiastical authorities had influence.[3] The priests and scribes, then, mingled among them and used every artifice they could think of. Probably their most effective argument was to whisper that Jesus was obviously the choice of Pilate, and ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... than what you are I might meet you with some of this artifice; I might pretend not to know aught of what has been said; I might attempt some elaborate apology. It would be worse than folly from me to you. Let me tell you that could I have shielded you from this insult with my life, I ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... conscious method, a practical philosophy, an art of life itself, in which all those specific arts would be but subsidiary—an all-supplementing ars artium, a master-art, or, in depreciatory Platonic mood one might say, an artifice, or, cynically, a trick. The great sophist was indeed the Athenian public itself, Athens, as the willing victim of its own gifts, its own flamboyancy, well-nigh worn out now by the mutual friction of its own parts, given over completely to hazardous political experiment with ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... you are a Christian," said Sir Andrew. "Yet, although I fought against them, I have known many a good Mussulman. Nor do I think it necessary to spit at the name of Mahomet, who to my mind was a great man deceived by the artifice of Satan." ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... Philip the bold despatches of Escovedo, and the effusions of Don Juan's restless and desponding ambition. In forwarding to the king a letter from Escovedo, he at once boasts, and clears himself of this disloyal artifice. 'Sire,' says he, 'it is thus one must listen and answer for the good of your service; people are held much better thus at sword's length; and one can better do with them whatever is conducive to the ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... doth more invite a greedy reader than an unlooked-for subject. And what more unlooked-for than to see a person of an unblamed life made ridiculous or odious by the artifice of lying? But it is the disease of the age; and no wonder if the world, growing old, begin to be infirm: old age itself is a disease. It is long since the sick world began to dote and talk idly: would she had but doted still! but her ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... intrigues had become proverbial; yet, for a long time, was he completely foiled by the fair Debouchette. No specious pretences, nor the flattering attentions of the most polished man in Europe, could induce the lady to depart from the paths of prudence and of virtue; every artifice to lure her into the snare of the seducer had been tried and found ineffectual, and his lordship was about to retire discomfited and disgraced from the scene of his amorous follies, with a loss of ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... bluntly. Mr. Herndon is naturally a very direct writer, and he has been industrious in gathering material. Whether an incident happened before or behind the scenes, is all the same to him. He gives it without artifice or apology. He describes the life of his friend Lincoln just as ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright
... Street, two blocks below, with the marshal's hand cupped under Mr. Trimm's right elbow and Mr. Trimm's plump legs almost trotting in their haste. For a moment it looked as if the warden's well-meant artifice would ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... devoured her body. He then slew the seventy sons of Ahab, and all his great men, and his kinsfolk, and his priests, so that none remained of the house of Ahab, as Elijah had predicted. His zeal did not stop here, but he collected together, by artifice, all the priests of Baal, and smote them, ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... plotted against him, though he saw that his birth-day was solemnly kept by the public, and divine honours paid to golden images of him in every quarter, yet it was with difficulty at last, and more by artifice than his imperial power, that he accomplished his death. In the first place, to remove him from about his person, under the pretext of doing him honour, he made him his colleague in his fifth consulship; which, although then absent from the city, he took upon him for that purpose, long after his ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... efforts to check its further growth and to eradicate the evil. The men who profit by the abuses and desire to perpetuate them will continue to besiege the halls of legislation in the General Government as well as in the States, and will seek by every artifice to mislead and deceive the public servants. It is to yourselves that you must look for safety and the means of guarding and perpetuating your free institutions. In your hands is rightfully placed the sovereignty of the country, and to you everyone placed in authority is ultimately ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... often that the gipsies used violence or openly resisted authority; they more frequently had recourse to artifice and cunning in order to attain their end. A certain Captain Charles acquired a great reputation amongst them for the clever trickeries which he continually conceived, and which his troop undertook to carry out. ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... piazza, and adorned it with many noble buildings and a fine park, which he filled with beasts of prey for the pleasure of the ducal family. He also laid out some most beautiful gardens, and since all this country was very dry and arid, he constructed aqueducts with great artifice and ingenuity, and brought water into the place in such abundance that these lands, which had hitherto been sterile and barren, bore fruit in great quantities. And so entirely did he improve and alter the whole place ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... inspection "it is discovered[89] that not a single one of these lines is truly straight." The columns swell at the middle, vertical lines are slightly inclined to the centre, and horizontal lines bulge a little at the middle. And all this is so fine that exact measurements are necessary to detect the artifice. Greek architects discovered that, to produce a harmonious whole, it is necessary to avoid geometrical lines which would appear stiff, and take account of illusions in perspective. "The aim of the architect," says ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... acceded to her proposition. He had not denied his engagement to Lucy. He had left her presence without a word of encouragement, because of that engagement. But he believed that Lizzie was sincere. He believed, now, that she was genuine; though he had previously been all but sure that falsehood and artifice were second ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... and he suddenly pretends to see a lizard on the wall, and proceeds to wonder what the lizard has to do with the Romans. For this he has been quite properly laughed at by Dr. Holmes, because he has resorted to an artifice and has failed to create an illusion. Indeed, Dr. Holmes is somewhere so irreverent as to remark that a gill of alcohol will bring on a psychical state very similar to that suggested by Emerson; and Dr. Holmes is accurately happy in his jest, because ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... both faced by the same difficulty; one of them is acutely aware of it, and takes very deep-laid precautions to circumvent it; the other, I suppose, does not trouble about the theory of his procedure, but he too adopts a certain artifice which carries him past the particular problem, though at the same time it involves him in several more. Little as Richardson may suspect it, he—and whoever else has the idea of making a story out of a series of letters, or a running diary written from ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... those legitimate emotions which her ambition and her genius would equally have tended to inspire in any justly-minded nature, might well be considered frigid—regarded as the result of deliberate artifice—the true offspring of an habitual and ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... another man, whose autograph it bore— But this was Dreyfus' artifice, and proved his guilt the more: No motive for the horrid deed confessedly he had: And crimes which are gratuitous ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley
... thee there. His words bore sterling weight; nervous and strong, In manly tides of sense they roll'd along: Happy in art, he chiefly had pretence To keep up numbers, yet not forfeit sense; No actor ever greater heights could reach In all the labour'd artifice of speech. 950 Speech! is that all? And shall an actor found An universal fame on partial ground? Parrots themselves speak properly by rote, And, in six months, my dog shall howl by note. I laugh at those who, when the stage they tread, Neglect ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... thousand men, and the forces of Tu Wensiu found themselves obliged to withdraw from the eastern side of the city. A long period of inaction followed, but during this time the most important events happened with regard to the ultimate result. Ma Julung employed all his artifice and arguments to show the rebel chiefs the utter hopelessness of their succeeding against the whole power of the Chinese empire, which, from the suppression of the Taeping Rebellion, would soon be able to be employed against ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... flies As swift as shafts the bowmen pour; Nor famed Pygmalion's artifice, Whereof the like was ne'er before; Nor Oleus, that drank of yore The salt wave of the whole great sea: Why? dost thou ask? 'Tis as I swore - To ...
— Ballads in Blue China and Verses and Translations • Andrew Lang
... rien.—J'ajoute ici malgre sa disgrace, que les sentimens en sont assez vifs et nobles, les vers assez bien tournes, et que la facon dont le sujet s'explique dans la premiere scene ne manque pas d'artifice." ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott |
