"Petard" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... those without, in which Roland distinguished the remarkable harsh voice of Lindesay in reply to Sir Robert Melville, who appeared to have been using some soothing language—"No! no! no! I tell thee, no! I will place a petard against the door rather than be baulked by a profligate woman, and bearded ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... set his port vent to his mouth, rapidly filled his bag, while the man stared as if it were a petard with which he was about to blow the door to shivers, and then sent from the instrument such a shriek, as it galloped off into the Lossie Gathering, that involuntarily his adversary pressed both hands to his ears. With a sudden application of his knee Malcolm sent ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... closed, no sentry outside it. Everything was asleep. We landed in dead silence, and the column formed up. The sappers ran on ahead, laid the powder bag, and masked it, then a sergeant of sappers lighted the match and shrank back behind a projecting bit of wall. Bang! The mask of the petard just grazed our heads, and one side of the gate lay on the ground. At the same moment firing began in the direction of Parseval's column. "Forward! God save the King!" We caught sight of the guard at the gate bolting off, and then lost it in the fog. There wasn't a cat in the streets. The noise ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... the intention I suspected of carrying me "vi et armis" across the frontier. But they were, in turn, subjected to as close an espionage by several members of the expedition, who were prepared for any emergency. "The engineer would have been hoisted with his own petard" probably, if they had attempted the arrest. That dare-devil Thompson, in fact, proposed one night that I should take a walk alone along the canal, and see what would come of it, but I declined ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... artificiality, with the patent fact that the writers were looking for a bargain. All these letters, even the most poorly written, gave Sophy the impression that the correspondents were dangerous people, she knew not why, and might perhaps hoist her with her own petard. She studied them over and over again, with a feeling of disappointment, and reluctantly decided that the game ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... minutes in this posture of defence, when Pipes, who acted as the enemy's forlorn hope, advanced to the gate with great intrepidity, and, clapping his foot to the door, which was none of the stoutest, with the execution and despatch of a petard, split it into a thousand pieces. This sudden execution had an immediate effect upon the apprentice, who retreated with great precipitation, and escaped at a postern; but the master placed himself, like another Hercules, in the breach; and when Pipes, brandishing ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... where they have been let alone by the capability-villain. Visited the enceinte of the Castle, and passed into the dungeon. There is also an armoury, but damp, and the arms in indifferent order. One odd petard-looking thing struck me.—Mem. to consult Grose. I had the honour to sit in Hotspur's seat, and to see the Bloody Gap, where the external wall must have been breached. The Duchess gave me a book of etchings of the antiquities ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... different promenades. Even the churches are not exempt from these demonstrations: I was present at the Te Deum performed on the Emperor's birthday, in St. Mark's, when the moment of elevating the host was signalized by the bursting of a petard in the centre of the cathedral. All this, which seems of questionable utility, and worse than questionable taste, is approved by the fiercer of the Italianissimi, and though possibly the strictness of the patriotic discipline ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... time, and went and tried again till I managed my task, having to take great care that I did not hoist myself with my own petard, for it was a terribly dangerous engine that I was setting, though I did not ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... Assembly made protests on various points, but were pacified after the security of the Kirk had been guaranteed. Finally, Hamilton prepared a parliamentary mine, which would have blown the Treaty of Union sky-high, but on the night when he should have appeared in the House and set the match to his petard—he had toothache! This was the third occasion on which he had deserted the Cavaliers; the Opposition fell to pieces. The Squadrone volante and the majority of the peers supported the Bill, which ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... a battle should be. One December morning, a few days after he had taken over the command, Sir William Waller, a Parliament General, rode up at the head of his dragoons and demanded surrender. Of course Sir John refused, and Sir William proceeded to fix a petard to the gate, to blow it in. A military genius like Wither would have ordered his men to fire their muskets at the enemy; but all the soldiers on both sides escaped that day. The explosive was securely fastened ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... and, I believe, throughout the Cotton States. Certainly, when I was there, the war-party, the party of the "Mercury," was not in the ascendant, unless in the sense of having been "hoist with its own petard" when it cried out for immediate hostilities. Not only Governor Pickens and his Council, but nearly all the influential citizens, were opposed to bloodshed. They demanded independence and Fort Sumter, but desired and hoped to get both by argument. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... of the engineer hoist by his own petard is Tolstoy's. The peasants of his country understand him as little as they understand Beethoven, that Beethoven he so bitterly, so unjustly assailed in The Kreutzer Sonata. (Poor Beethoven. Why did not Tolstoy select Tristan and Isolde if he wished some fleshly music, some sensualistic caterwauling, ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... letters seal'd: and my two schoolfellows,— Whom I will trust as I will adders fang'd,— They bear the mandate; they must sweep my way And marshal me to knavery. Let it work; For 'tis the sport to have the enginer Hoist with his own petard: and 't shall go hard But I will delve one yard below their mines And blow them at the moon: O, 'tis most sweet, When in one line two crafts directly meet.— This man shall set me packing: I'll lug the guts into the neighbour room.— Mother, good-night.—Indeed, ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... why sea water is heavier than fresh; why hail descends in summer; why the sages said that bastards are mostly clever. To these questions, which Enan pours out in a stream, Joseph readily gives answers. But now Enan is hoist with his own petard. ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... and black magic she refused to make answer, save that she denied harming man, woman, child, or beast. She was still hoist with her own petard: the pitiful belief in the potency ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... to see whether she really was not hoisting him with his own petard. Perceiving that she was sincerely acting according to her sense of principle, he fumed, and departed to his privacy, unable to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... think that the thirty-eight are hoist with their own petard. Their "appeal to antiquity" turns out to be nothing but a round-about way of appealing to the tribunal the jurisdiction of which they affect to deny. Having rested the world of Christian supernaturalism ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... the author of that capital collection of Scottish anecdote, Thistledown, for the following story, as illustrating one of the many humorous attempts to get the better of the law, and one in which the lawyer was "hoist with his own petard." A dealer having hired a horse to a lawyer, the latter, either through bad usage or by accident, killed the beast, upon which the hirer insisted upon payment of its value; and if it was not convenient to pay costs, he expressed his willingness ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... admirer of the lady who presides at the bar, and always stops to have a little badinage with her en passant. He has his regular walks on the Boulevards and in the Palais Royal, where he sets his watch by the petard fired off by the sun at midday. He has his daily resort in the Garden of the Tuileries, to meet with a knot of veteran idlers like himself, who talk on pretty much the same subjects whenever they meet. He has been present at all ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... and night as long as you live, sixty-five billions, five hundred and seventy thousand millions. Errors excepted.—Did I hear some gentleman say, "Doubted? "—I am the Professor. I sit in my chair with a petard under it that will blow me through the skylight of my lecture-room, if I do not know what I am talking about ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... was, she had afterward to admit, that the disaster had been largely of her own contriving. She had been caught in the net of her own stratagem—hoist by her own petard. ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster |
