"Tamper" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Are not the creatures sacred to the Sun dead? And is not a priest of the Sun also dead, but now slain by the magic of these strangers, who come as the winds out of heaven, whence we know not, and who are what we know not? Beware, oh Queens, how ye tamper with the great majesty of the God, even before His high altar! There is a Power that is more than your power; there is a Justice that is higher than your justice. Beware how ye lift an impious hand against it! Let the sacrifice ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... preserves a story that illustrates the prevalence of judicial corruption in the seventeenth century, and the jealousy with which that Right Reverend Lord Keeper watched for attempts to tamper with his honesty. Whilst he was taking exercise in the Great Park of Nonsuch House, his attention was caught by a church recently erected at the cost of a rich Chancery suitor. Having expressed satisfaction with the church, Williams inquired of ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... himself a Socialist. If he does accept it, he will seek the shortest and most direct road to the attainment of justice rather than any longer and more indirect ones, of which it is at best doubtful whether they will attain the end at all. For be it remembered the moment you tamper with the sacredness of private property, no matter how mildly, you surrender the conventional bourgeois principle of justice, while the moment you talk of compensation you surrender the Socialist principle of justice, for compensation ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... That chaos of accusations, sermons, revelations, which the Devil had dictated by the mouth of Louisa, the Fleming who wrote it down maintained to be the very word of God, and expressed his fear that somebody might tamper with the same. He owned to a great mistrust of his chief, Michaelis, who, he was sore afraid, would so amend the papers in behalf of Madeline, as to ensure the ruin of Louisa. To guard them to the best of his power, he shut himself up in his room ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... of loving in silence, and while I wronged no one, I was willing to indulge in the sweet poison of her society; but a moment of danger to her destroyed my self-control. What has been may be again—I have learned to distrust myself—I cannot tamper with temptation, lest I should one day use the position in which you have placed me, and the advantages which you have bestowed on me, in endeavoring to win from you a treasure which you may well be reluctant ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... accuracy. That leads to doing things by rule. Still, by the look of those terraced fields, where the water is led so cunningly from level to level, the Japanese cultivator must enjoy at least one excitement. If the villages up the valley tamper with the water supply, there must surely be excitement down the valley—argument, protest, and ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... you, Princess. The name I give him is Yea-and-Nay: beware of it. He is ever of two minds: hot head and cold heart, flaming heart and chilled head. He will be for God and the enemy of God; will expect heaven and tamper with hell. With rage he will go up, laughing come down. Ho! He will be for you and against you; eager, slow; a wooer, a scorner; a singer of madrigals, ah, and a croaker afterwards. There is no stability in him, neither length ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... I tried to quiet my fears by reasoning that Craig must have had perfect confidence in the value of his discovery if he were willing to risk his life on it, yet I felt that at least a show of vigilance on my part might bluff any one off from an attempt to tamper again with the air-supply. ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... some day awake to the notion That statesmen can tamper too much with the law, And send them to regions less genial than Goshen; Sic semper e ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various
... in certain departments of life where the great instincts are concerned the accumulated conscious and subconscious experience of thousands of years of mankind have produced a kind of instinctive knowledge which logic cannot tamper with; which is bound up with human nature and is near to a thousand subtle truths never yet brought within the scope of scientific knowledge; which it is dangerous to attack by a brutal frontal assault, as if the issue were a single and simple debating issue; which is defied only under ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... destroy the potsherd and the writings, and let a cause of troubling be removed from our race for ever. Perhaps that will be wisest. The unknown is generally taken to be terrible, not as the proverb would infer, from the inherent superstition of man, but because it so often is terrible. He who would tamper with the vast and secret forces that animate the world may well fall a victim to them. And if the end were attained, if at last you emerged from the trial ever beautiful and ever young, defying time and evil, and lifted above the natural decay of flesh and intellect, who shall say that the ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... young girl, Sosia! Proh pudor! Are there not fruits ripe enough on the wall, but that thou must tamper with such green...' ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... entreaty that he should be left in Gaul; partly, because, being unaccustomed to sailing, he feared the sea; partly, because he said he was prevented by divine admonitions. After he saw that this request was firmly refused him, all hope of success being lost, he began to tamper with the chief persons of the Gauls, to call them apart singly and exhort them to remain on the continent; to agitate them with the fear that it was not without reason that Gaul should be stript of all her nobility; that it was Caesar's design to bring over to Britain ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... poisoned his mind with lies, and had hurled him into depths of Plutonian ignorance inconceivably more profound than his original estate; and now he was about to debase another fellow-creature of his own race, to tamper with his manhood, to confuse his identity, to render him among his own kindred and people perhaps tabooed, ostracised, despised—perhaps an object of pity. If he should succeed? Surely he had not come thus near success to suffer his splendid Yankee captain to be brained there ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... hunter through the fence. "My friend," said he, "please wait; I'll be with you a moment hence, And fetch our porter of the gate." This porter was a dog immense, That left to wolves no future tense. Suspicion gave our Wolf a jog— It might not be so safely tamper'd. "My service to your porter dog," Was his reply, as off he scampered. His legs proved better than his head, And saved him life ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... that should be written. "And yet I marvel," said the indignant physician, "that none did warn him of it; many have died thereof." Oh if I could but get the ears of all the sons of godly fathers and mothers who are beginning to tamper with Beelzebub's orchard- trees, I feel as if I could warn them to-night, and out of this text, of what they are doing! I have known so many who have died thereof. Oh if I could but save them in time from those ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... with them well enough," he answered, "and hell could spare one filthy Jew for ten years or so, but I see no way. What I do see, is that probably all of you will join him. It is a great crime to try to tamper with a ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... Philocrates, by the side of my own; for the comparison will bring out their character more vividly. Well, they first pronounced the exclusion from the Peace of the Phocians and the people of Halus, and of Cersobleptes, contrary to your decree and to the statements made to you. Then they attempted to tamper with and alter the decree, which we had come there as ambassadors to execute. Then they entered the Cardians as allies of Philip and voted against sending the dispatch which I had written to you, sending ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes
... I began to doubt my discretion in having trusted this person; but I had no better or safer means of despatching the letter, and I was not warranted in suspecting him of such wanton dishonesty as an inclination to tamper with it; but I could not be quite satisfied of its safety until I had received an answer, which could not arrive for a few days. Before I did, however, an event occurred which ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... different from what he was, so that she might have been able to return his love. Leam had none of that shifting uncertainty, that want of a central determination, which makes so many women transact their lives by an If. She knew what she did not feel, and she did not care to regret the impossible, to tamper with the indefinite. She knew that she neither loved Alick nor, wished to love him. Whether she had unwittingly deceived him in the first place, and in the second ought to sacrifice herself for him, unloving, was each a question on which she pondered full of those doubts and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... right?" he thought, in the first agony of this new horror—"have I done right to tamper with justice; and to keep the secret of my doubts in the hope that I was shielding those I love from sorrow and disgrace? What shall I do if I find him ill, very ill, dying perhaps, dying upon her ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... in the meshes of that snare which the Enemy had spread for the undisciplined and wandering multitude. No, not even struggling now. That Clifton had fought through solitary days against the wretched enervation which invited him, I had reason to know. But he had dared to tamper with the normal functions of mind and body, to try fantastic tricks with that mysterious agent through which the healthy will commands the organism. And when the mental disorder, mocked at and preached against in happier years, at length ran through Foxden, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... that Christ's appeal to this motive leaves no loophole for selfishness or laziness. Responsibility is all the greater because we are left to assess ourselves. The blank form is sent to us, and He leaves it to our honour to fill it up. Do not tamper with the paper, for remember there is a Returning Officer that will examine your schedule, who knows all about your possessions. So, when He says, 'Give as you like; and I do not want anything that you do not like,' remember that 'Give ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... "You'll learn if you tamper with my affairs," said Dysart. He whipped off his mask and turned a corpse-like visage on the younger man. Every feature of his face had altered: his good looks were gone, the youth in his eyes had disappeared, only a little evil lustre played over ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... slight occasion, to dispossess the sequestrators by my own proper warrant, although having, perhaps, sufficient authority in the state both to do so, and to despise the murmurs of those who blame me. In brief, I would be both to tamper with my privileges, and make experiments between their strength, and the powers of the commission granted by others, without pressing need, or at least great prospect of advantage. So, if thy Colonel will undertake, for his love of the Republic, to find the means ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... was again a huge disc. It settled over the exact center of the dome—and went down. The dome caved in. It was crushed under a load utterly inestimable. Then the great disc, like some monstrous tamper, tamped the entire works of the Thessians into the bed-rock of the island. Every ship, every miniature fort, every man was caught under ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... poor service to spread culture, if this be its result, among the comparatively innocent and cheerful ranks of men. When our little poets have to be sent to look at the ploughman and learn wisdom, we must be careful how we tamper with our ploughmen. Where a man in not the best of circumstances preserves composure of mind, and relishes ale and tobacco, and his wife and children, in the intervals of dull and unremunerative labour; where a man in this predicament can afford a lesson by the ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... literati, should not have been able to spell, is a matter for some astonishment. I could but remember this fact, as I perused the epistles of Matthew Haygarth. I felt that these letters had in all probability been carefully numbered by the lady to whom they belong, and that to tamper with them to any serious extent might be dangerous. I have therefore only ventured to retain one insignificant scrawl as an example of Matthew Haygarth's caligraphy and signature. From the rest I have taken copious notes. ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... vases. Then she carried in the candelabra, the crystal pendants ringing as she walked in a way that delighted Larry. She knew perfectly well that she was never allowed to tamper with the costly ornaments in the parlor; but she excused herself by the plea: "I'm doing it for the Blessed Virgin." Larry also had a certain uneasiness about it, but he said to himself: "Oh, it must be all right if Abby thinks so! She is a great deal older than I am, and ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... trusts the strength will with the burden grow, That God makes instruments to work His will, If but that will we can arrive to know, Nor tamper with the weights of ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... the expression of Simoun's face that he was leaving the fated house forever, that the lamp was lighted. Alea jacta est! Seized by the instinct of self-preservation, he thought then of saving himself. It might occur to any of the guests through curiosity to tamper with the wick and then would come the explosion to overwhelm them all. Still he heard Simoun say to the ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... with Mr. Gage, as it seems to us somewhat too strongly, for certain features of this work. He has been blamed for adapting it "to the use of Biblical students," as though thereby he must necessarily tamper with scientific accuracy of statement,—for too much condensation, and for too little,—for omitting Ritter's maps,—and for certain incongruities of figures and measurement. It has also been said, that the book itself, being fifteen ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... was to spring to his feet, with a yell that would give the dreadful stranger to understand that he was a fellow it would not be well to tamper with. But his woodcraft stayed him. He was not by any means sure that he could spring to his feet. Still less was he sure that such an action would properly impress the great wolf, who, for the moment at least, ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... both openly and privily taking many precautions, as his pride and covetousness increased, he began to tamper with the exiles and the soldiers, promising them rewards sufficient to tempt them as far at least as the circumstances and ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... awakens the malevolent passions as the facility of gratification. The courts of law would never be so crowded with petty, vexatious, and disgraceful suits were it not for the herds of pettifoggers. These tamper with the passions of the poorer and more ignorant classes; who, as if poverty were not a sufficient misery in itself, are ever ready to embitter it by litigation. These, like quacks in medicine, excite the malady to profit by the cure, and retard the ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... Young man, will you tamper and trifle with strong drink? Do you say you can drink or let it alone? I admit you can drink but are you sure you can let it alone? If you can now, are you sure you can two years hence? I saw a giant oak tree lying in the track of the wind. It had been called ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... is permitted, and a second wife is sometimes taken in order to obtain children, but this number is seldom if ever exceeded. It is stated that the Bhil married women are generally chaste and faithful to their husbands, and any attempt to tamper with their virtue on the part of an outsider is ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... threatened me. By a spasmodic movement, in which I failed to recognize any presence of my will, the manuscript was closed and handed to Clifton. Welcome existence under coarsest and harshest terms, rather than tamper with such ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... still and laugh. But they are engraven where no amusement can conceal them, and of a kind for which there is no recompense. Can ye restore to us the beloved dead? Can ye say to the grave, give up the murdered? Can ye obliterate from our memories those who are no more? Think not then to tamper with our feelings by an insidious contrivance, nor suffocate our humanity by seducing ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... reasoning on the increase of mankind in general, we overlook their freedom and their happiness, our aids to population become weak and ineffectual. They only lead us to work on the surface, or to pursue a shadow, while we neglect the substantial concern; and in a decaying state, make us tamper with palliatives, while the roots of an evil are suffered to remain. Octavius revived or enforced the laws that related to population at Rome; but it may be said of him, and of many sovereigns in a similar situation, that they administer the poison, while ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... great. A wise doubtfulness prompts conservative minds to throw every mover for change upon the defensive, when liturgical interests are at stake. So many men are born into the world with a native disposition to tamper with and tinker all settled things, and so many more become persuaded, as time goes on, of a personal "mission" to pull down and remake whatever has been once built up, esteeming life a failure unless they have contrived to build each his own monument upon a clearing, ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... his name at every turn?" asked Zenobia in an undertone, and with a malign look which wandered from my face to Priscilla's. "You know not what you do! It is dangerous, sir, believe me, to tamper thus with earnest human passions, out of your own mere idleness, and for your sport. I will endure it no longer! Take care that it does not happen again! ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... not the first step in the path that leads here. Let not the flame of strong drink ever scorch your tongue. You may tamper with these things and escape, but your influence will be wrong. Can you not make a sacrifice for the good ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... Fawn. The anxiety to hear Lord Fawn undergo his penance was intense, and had been greatly increased by the conviction that Mr. Chaffanbrass would resent upon him the charge made by the Attorney-General as to tampering with a witness. "I'll tamper with him by-and-bye," Mr. Chaffanbrass had whispered to Mr. Wickerby, and the whispered threat had been spread abroad. On the table before Mr. Chaffanbrass, when he took his place in the Court on the Saturday, was laid ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... after a moment, "an' I'd keep my hands from meddlin' with him, if I was you. That thing shan't happen agin at my place, an' it wouldn't have happened then if I'd been around at the beginnin'. You may tamper with yo' own salvation as much as you please—that's my gospel, but I'll be hanged if you've got a right to tamper with ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... of the mysterious revelation given him may be so deep that he dares not tamper with his first impetuous transcription of it. But as a sculptor toils over a single vein till it is perfect, the poet may linger over a word or phrase, and so long as the pulse seems to beat beneath his fingers, no one has a right ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... lawfully effected, the court is indifferent to the treatment of its stationery; but such behaviour, though lawful, is childish. To obstruct a witness on his way to give evidence, or to threaten him if he does give evidence, or to tamper with the jury, are all serious contempts. In short, there is a divinity which hedges a court of justice, and anybody who, by action or inaction, renders the course of justice more difficult or dilatory than it otherwise would be, incurs the penalty of contempt. Consider, for example, the ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... occasioning such a copious discharge of gas that nothing short of a providential landing could save disaster. But the providential landing came, the party falling into the embrace of a fruit tree in an orchard. It transpired afterwards that the labourer had been seen to tamper with the valve, the connecting lines of which he ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... manufactured; they are not the work of mere party excitement; there is nothing spurious and nothing hollow in them; but they well up from the deep heart of nations, showing that a chord of sympathy has been touched, with which it is fatal to tamper or to sport. Call it fanaticism, if you will; call it delusion; call it anything; but recollect also that it is out of such feelings that revolutions are born, and by them that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... had suddenly come up, enjoined silence to the men on foot, and, approaching the side of the cart, said to me, with a strong and determined voice, 'Young man, there is no personal harm designed to you. If you remain silent and quiet, you may reckon on good treatment; but if you endeavour to tamper with these men in the execution of their duty, I will take such measures for silencing you, as you shall remember the longest day ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... innocence, is of this vraie verite. It is so obviously true, spiritually, that it is unreal in the commonplace of ordinary life. Its very effectiveness is too apt for the dramatist, who can ill afford to tamper further with the indifferent banalities of actual existence. The poet, unhampered by the exigencies of dramatic realism, can safely, and artistically, achieve an equally exact, even a higher verisimilitude, by means which are, or should ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... of us can do, my dear Lady Kitty. No one can satisfy his intelligence. But religion speaks to the will—and it is the only thing between us and the void. Don't tamper with it! ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to keep Lord Hill and Fitzroy Somerset at the head of the army, from which the violent of his party would gladly oust them, but he evidently contemplates the possibility of having occasion for the army, and does not wish to tamper with the service or play any tricks with it. It is curious to see the working and counterworking of his real opinions and principles with his false position, and the mixture of bluntness, facility and shrewdness, discretion, levity and seriousness, which, colouring his mind and character ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... a convention at Montgomery, and he had spoken there against one of the greatest of the Southern orators. His state had upheld him, but the Major had not. He came home to find his old neighbour red with resentment, and refusing for the first few days to shake the hand of "a man who would tamper with the honour of Virginia." At the end of the week the Major's hand was held out, but his heart still bore his grievance, and he began quoting William L. Yancey, as he had once quoted Mr. Addison. In the little meetings at ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... astonishment, "how came you to be employed in this affair? Could you believe for one moment that I would tamper with a magistrate in order to induce him ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... badly sick and he's got a fine white doctor, but will I stake him to enough to get this fine Injin doctor?—thus making a cure certain. Well, I tore into the old fool for wanting to let this depraved old medicine man tamper with his baby, and I warned him the Kulanche doctor probably wasn't much better. Then I tell him he's to send down for the best doctor in Red Gap at my expense and keep him with the child till it's well. I tell him he can have the whole ranch if it would cure his ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... Victor. "He took her away, and he must needs bring her back. We await them here. He shall see whether he may tamper with the granddaughter of ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... I have been under constant surveillance. I'm followed wherever I go— to my office, to luncheon, to the theater, everywhere; and day and night, day and night, there are two men watching this house, and two other men watching at my office. They tamper with my correspondence, trace my telephone calls, question my servants, quiz my clerks. You don't understand, dear," ...
— The Diamond Master • Jacques Futrelle
... Champers' bearers and the flogging of some others, these punishments were inflicted for mutiny," went on Aylward. "It was obviously necessary that she should be moved back to the coast, but I found out that they were trying to desert her in a body and to tamper with my own servants, and so was obliged ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... peoples, to enforce its own fundamental laws; the specter, too, of an aroused public opinion which will compel Congress and the Courts to preserve the liberties of the Republic, which are the liberties of the people. To wilfully neglect the suffrage, to hold it lightly, is to tamper with a sacred right; to yield it for anything else whatever is simply suicidal. Dropping the element of race, disfranchisement is no more than to say to the poor and poorly taught, that they must relinquish the right to defend themselves against ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.
... more than could be compensated by his saving in wages. The less proportion wages bear to the value of the goods, the higher, generally speaking, is the recompense of labour. The prudent master of a fine spinning-mill is most reluctant to tamper with the earnings of his spinners, and never consents to reduce them till absolutely forced to it by a want of remuneration for the capital and skill embarked in his business" (Philosophy of Manufactures, p. 330). This does not, however, prevent Dr. Ure ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... hear," he continued. "It happened when I was passing through the city of Peking, some years ago, during their revolution. There was a good deal of lawlessness rife at the time, and bands of natives were running about, pillaging and looting anything they thought it safe to tamper with. One day, in one of the open places of the city, I happened along just in time to see ten or a dozen lawless natives pulling from its pedestal a great bronze idol, hideous as they make 'em, that had stood there probably ...
— The Dragon's Secret • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... right now, dear; but things might have been that are not. As to Dora, I think she may be trusted with Basil Stanhope. He is one of the best and handsomest men I ever saw, and he has now rights in Dora's love no one can tamper with. Mostyn is an ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... protestations of punctuality, was soon out of sight. He was hardly gone when I began to doubt my discretion in having trusted him; but I had no better or safer means of despatching the letter, and I was not warranted in suspecting him of such wanton dishonesty as a disposition to tamper with it; but I could not be quite satisfied of its safety until I had received an answer, which could not arrive for a few days. Before I did, however, an event occurred which a little surprised me. I was sitting in my bed-room early in the day, reading by myself, when I heard a knock ...
— Two Ghostly Mysteries - A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and The Murdered Cousin • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... Madame Roland had distrusted Danton. It was not long before her intuitions proved correct, for Danton soon showed his jealousy and dislike of the minister, whom he found too honest to tamper with. He feared, too, the penetration, frankness, and genius of Roland's wife. Men who saw the insidious, selfish qualities of Danton, began to cultivate and conciliate him out of fear ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... there were others through whom the thing could be done. Grio, indeed, who had access to the room and the box, was Basterga's creature; and the Syndic dared not tamper with him. But there was a third lodger, a young fellow, of whom the inquiries he had made respecting the house had apprised him. Blondel had met Gentilis more than once, and marked him; and the lad's ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... themselves; theirs was the fault. As well blame a railway engine for running over the well-meaning individual who lies down on the track to rest and meditate on higher things, as blame the natural law with which men tamper. The All-Wise shows His goodness to His creatures in that He has laid down law of any sort, not left the universe to chance and wilful freakishness. As for gospel, the essential thing to preach was the duty of living according ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... is over, for instance, Schloss would swing the heavy safe doors together and over them place the doors of a wooden cabinet. That signals an alarm to us here. We answer it and if the proper signal is returned, all right. After that no one can tamper with the safe later in the night without sounding an alarm that would bring ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... sensitiveness about that far-off episode of his life. So much memory shocked Charles Gould. It was like morbidness. And again he shook his head. He refused to tamper with the open rectitude of Don Pepe's conduct, both from taste and from policy. Instructions would have to be either verbal or in writing. In either case they ran the risk of being intercepted. It was by no means certain that a messenger ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... has another and still stronger reason for not desiring to tamper with the existing order of things. He finds it good. He loves existence as he knows it, with its mysteries and its beauties; its complex causes and incalculable effects; the good it extracts from evil; the virtue it evolves from suffering. He reveres that Temple ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... stable State. Perhaps, with Gibbon, he deemed it useful to the Magistrate. But his science is impersonal. He will not tolerate a Church that poaches on his political preserves. Good dogma makes bad politics. It must not tamper with liberty or security. And most certainly, with Dante, in the Paradiso, he would either have transformed or omitted the third Beatitude, that the Meek shall inherit the earth. With such a temperament, Machiavelli ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... let any of us try that perilous experiment. You cannot melt away Jesus and keep grace and truth. You cannot tamper with His character, with His nature, with the mystery of His passion, with the atoning power of His cross, and preserve the blessings that He has brought to the world. If you want the grace which is the unveiling of the heart of God, the gift of a giving God and the pardon ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... found out something about capillary attraction, suppose that you should go to the imaginary switchboard again and tamper with some other law of nature. An innocent-looking switch, right above the capillary attraction switch, would be labeled ADHESION. Suppose you ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... there is not a man who holds, nor is there any man who can hold, any office in the gift of the United States, or of this State, or of any other State, who does not bind himself, by the solemn obligation of an oath, to support the Constitution of the United States. Well, is he to tamper with that? Is he to palter? Gentlemen, our political duties are as much matters of conscience as any other duties; our sacred domestic ties, our most endearing social relations, are no more the subjects for conscientious ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... of James I, which was in the making before he reached the throne. In other respects—such as monopolies, the power of the crown to levy indirect taxation without consent of parliament, to imprison subjects without cause shown, and to tamper with the privileges of the House of Commons—the royal prerogative was called in question. Popular acquiescence in strong personal monarchy was beginning to waver now that the need for it was disappearing with the growing security of national independence. People could ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... still. Our back teeth were built for the purpose of grinding; hence their broad crowns, strong shafts, and firm roots; the teeth in the front of the mouth were intended for tasks not at all so arduous. Tamper with this arrangement; transfer the laborious work of mastication to the front teeth, and see how nature will punish you. This illustrates the outrage committed when the strain and effort that should ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... great man's character. The wrong which he promoted did but the more forcibly proclaim the warmth and fidelity of his friendships. So much the more generally was the uprightness of the emperor appreciated, who would neither tamper with justice himself, nor countenance any motion in that direction, though it were to serve his very dearest friend, either by his personal presence, or by the use of his name. And, as if it had been a trifle merely to forbear, and to show his regard to justice in this negative ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... popularity and personal influence were made useful in preventing the people of the provinces from being misled by seditious persons who came from France on purpose to tamper with them." (Miles' School History of Canada, Part Third, ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... and to rise renewed of plumage, as a dove that is covered with silver, and her feathers like gold; for these, indeed, it may be permissible to waste their numbered moments, through faith in a future of innumerable hours; to these, in their weakness, it may be conceded that they should tamper with sin which can only bring forth fruit of righteousness, and profit by the iniquity which, one day, will be remembered no more. In them, it may be no sign of hardness of heart to neglect the poor, over whom they know their ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... familiar with German to translate Fischart for us, or at least, by long extracts from him, give an idea of the vagaries of German taste when it thought it could do better than Rabelais. It is dangerous to tamper with so great a work, and he who does so runs a great risk of burning ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... sternly, "I've never heard you give expression to such sentiments before, and I hope I shall never again. No honest man would excuse or tamper with murder or murderers. No more of this, Cannie, or you will lose my good opinion, although perhaps you would think ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... organism, is eminently under the control of the cerebro-spinal nervous centres—a fact which, unless I am again mistaken, is contrary to one of Mr. Spencer's fundamental assumptions. In the animal organism, Government does meddle with trade, and even goes so far as to tamper a good deal ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... intelligences which manifest themselves are the spirits of the dead. The Bible says that they are not the spirits of the dead. Then if the Bible is true, the whole system rests upon deception and falsehood. No one who believes this will tamper with Spiritualism. One cannot have Spiritualism and the Bible, too. One or the other must be given up. But he who still holds on to the theory that the dead are conscious, contrary to the testimony of the Scriptures has no shield ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... I was too much absorbed in my experiment on Brande to bear with patience any delay which served to postpone the crisis of my scheme. I had treated him well, so far as his bodily health went, but I deliberately continued to tamper with his brain, so that any return of his telepathic power was thus prevented. Indeed, Brande himself was not anxious for such return. The power was always exercised at an extreme nervous strain, and it was now, he said, unnecessary to ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... inhabitants of the earth when he gets loose again. After reading the description of the millennial reign, as it shall be, as described by the Prophet Isaiah, can anyone be so stupid as to believe that we are now living in that holy day? Shame on him who would deceive and tamper with the souls of men! The gentleman who told you ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... what only came to my knowledge many years later, and not through himself, of attempts made to tamper with his integrity, and gain private information from him which ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... come to judgment with a vengeance. To be more modern, it reminds one of Begbie, the great frontier judge on the west coast, who tamed the outlaw miners who tried to start rough-house in the gold-rush days. The dishonest extortioners on the prairie could do nothing to frighten or flatter or tamper with men like Colonel MacLeod and his red-coated patrols. Hence, we read the sequel in the Colonel's report in December, 1874: "I am happy to be able to report" (happy is a choice word—there are some things that make a good man happy)—"to be able to report the complete stoppage of the whisky ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... should go to Leghorn in the boat. Strange that no fear of danger crossed our minds! Living on the sea-shore, the ocean became as a plaything: as a child may sport with a lighted stick, till a spark inflames a forest, and spreads destruction over all, so did we fearlessly and blindly tamper with danger, and make a game of the terrors of the ocean. Our Italian neighbours, even, trusted themselves as far as Massa in the skiff; and the running down the line of coast to Leghorn gave no more notion of peril than a fair-weather ...
— Notes to the Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley • Mary W. Shelley
... intense internal illumination necessary to promote the release of oxygen in the photosynthetic process of the chlorophane when there was no sun—had been replaced by a chemical battery of a far smaller active life-span! The armor locker! Rodan had extra keys, and could tamper and make replacements, any ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... and Tenderness for his Lass; but he is almost out of Humour with himself for being so soft. He is suppos'd to be brought up in the lonely Cave with Paplet; and his natural Tamper is wild and excessive brisk; hating the House, and delighting in Hunting. But you show, I see, only a Glimpse of his Natural Temper, which breaks out at times; but he is drawn as tender, being all the Time in Love ...
— A Full Enquiry into the Nature of the Pastoral (1717) • Thomas Purney
... to tamper with gentlemen's letters, or to answer damned impertinent questions," Major Pendennis cried out, in a great tremor of emotion and indignation. "There was a girl in your rooms when I came up at great personal inconveinence, daymy—and ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Gentis Anglorum, lib. i. cap. 15, p. 34 of Mr. Stevenson's edition. In some editions of Bede's History (as in Dr. Giles' Translation, for example) the name of Vitta is carelessly omitted, as a word apparently of no moment. Such a discussion as the present shows how wrong it is to tamper with the texts of such ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... Don't tamper with the street lamp, or the plugs in the water trough; nor change the pins, tubs or tube at the well; nor roughly jerk the pump handles at the well ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... nothing of his manhood, to bind himself by anything else. I will confess, also, to having occasionally enjoyed a glass of wine or champagne. But I have completely changed my mind. Who knows what might happen to me, in some unguarded moment, if I should continue to tamper with that which is in its very nature a deceiver? But, even supposing I were to escape all evil consequences, some one weaker or less favored than I am might be influenced by my example to take that which would injure him in body or soul. St. Paul said he would 'eat no more meat and drink no more ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow
... not were given an enema every third day. Of 322 women who were delivered by the same technique and the same operators but were purged in the usual routine manner, twenty-eight had some fever." This experience of one physician is corroborated by that of others who find that the more we tamper with the natural functions in time of stress the harder do we make the recuperative process. There are certainly times when catharsis is necessary but "one thing is certain, the day for routine purgation is past."[54] Even in emergencies we need to know why we ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... the water was not wasted by the selfishness or ignorance of individuals, since otherwise there would be famine. To this end its use was strictly regulated and systematized, and individuals of their mere caprice were not permitted to dam it or divert it, or in any way to tamper with it. ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... Katy procured a couple of stout bottles, and every morning slowly and carefully cut up two pounds of meat into small pieces, sealed the bottle with her own seal ring, and sent it down to be boiled for a specified time. This answered better, for the thieving cook dared not tamper with her seal; but it was a long and toilsome process, and consumed more time than she well knew how to spare,—for there were continual errands to be done which no one could attend to but herself, and the interminable flights of stairs taxed her strength painfully, and seemed ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... to foreign influence in innumerable ways, such attachments are particularly alarming to the truly enlightened and independent patriot. How many opportunities do they afford to tamper with domestic factions, to practise the arts of seduction, to mislead public opinion, to influence or awe the public councils!—such an attachment of a small or weak, towards a great and powerful nation dooms the former to be the satellite of ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... now ached with the intensity of its emotion. "Everybody said I had no heart, and I believed them. You first taught me that there was a vital spark burning within it, and blew upon it with a breath of flame. I tell you, Clinton, you had better tamper with the lightning's chain than the passions of this suddenly awakened heart. I tell you I am a dangerous being. There is a power within me that makes me tremble with its consciousness. I am a young girl, with no experience. I know nothing of the blandishments of art, ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... as real beings as he did men. But then how living are his men, whether coarse or noble! What a picture, for instance, is that in A Legend of Montrose of the conceited, pragmatic, but prompt and dauntless soldier of fortune, rejecting Argyle's attempts to tamper with him, in the dungeon at Inverary, suddenly throwing himself on the disguised Duke so soon as he detects him by his voice, and wresting from him the means of his own liberation! Who could read that scene and say for a moment that Dalgetty is painted "from the skin ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... go against the plain letter of the Bible, and put another day in the place of that day which the Bible has commanded. The command to keep holy the seventh day is one of the ten commandments; you believe that the other nine are still binding; who gave you authority to tamper with the fourth? If you are consistent with your own principles, if you really follow the Bible and the Bible only, you ought to be able to produce some portion of the New Testament in which this fourth commandment is expressly ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... and it gets extremely tough. Then you fry it in such a way that it's quite limp, and sprinkle a little soot on it. I've often tried to eat bacon done that way—before I was married, of course—and I never could. I don't suppose the judge will be able to either. Boiled eggs are difficult things to tamper with, but you could always see that they ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... an Italian's volubility, commenced to hurl imprecations upon the heads of the unknown sons of dogs who dared to tamper with his master's safe, and while we were engaged in putting the scattered papers in order the door-bell rang, and the clerk went to ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... rebellion! To which Wodnianskey replied, "You take away our lives under a pretended charge of rebellion; and, not content with that, seek to destroy our souls; glut yourselves with blood, and be satisfied; but tamper not with our consciences." ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... through the guard stationed at my residence in the suburbs of the city, with which the revolutionists had the folly to tamper in their efforts to spread disaffection among my troops. This discovery, and the premature mutiny of the regiment ordered to New Madrid, nipped the plot in the bud. I refer to the circumstances now ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... see his changing moods, and above all, should presume to tamper therewith, aroused in James the fierce spirit of revenge. ...
— The Prose Marmion - A Tale of the Scottish Border • Sara D. Jenkins
... conflicts of Barnet, Towcester, Tewkesbury, St. Albans! How happy for Spain, had no modern line of French coxcombs (not succeeding by any claim of blood, but under the arbitrary testament of a paralytic dotard) interfered to tamper with the old Castilian rules, so that no man knew whether the Spanish custom or the French innovation really governed. The Salic law or the interested abrogation of that law were the governing principle ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... said that he hoped nothing would be done to tamper with such traditions as Sir ARTHUR complained of. It was the duty of a stage servant to begin plays and to be funny. The curtain of a farce should rise on a butler and a parlourmaid remarking on the fact that master was suspiciously late last night; and the ...
— Punch, Volume 156, 26 March 1919 • Various
... on the sun which he can find through a telescope? The sun still shines, and gives light to the whole earth, and the Bible still shines, and gives light to every soul of man who will read it in reverence and faith. But that the prophets ever invented, or ever dared to tamper with truth, is a thing not to be believed of men whose writings are plainly, by their own meaning and end, inspired by the Holy Spirit ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley
... his rifle. Nowadays he never for a moment was separated from some weapon of defense. For he knew that an attack upon his life was almost a certainty in the near future. Though his manner was debonair, he saw to it that nobody got a chance to tamper with ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... deformity, and shrink back from the view. We have not, and we intend not, to use any weapons against slavery, but the moral power of truth and the force of public opinion. If we enter the slave States, and tamper with the slave contrary to law, punish us, we deserve it; and if a slaveholder is found in a free State, and is guilty of a breach of the law there, he also ought to be punished. These petitioners, as far as I understand them, disclaim all right to enter a slave State for ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... sat silent behind their cigar fumes. Then Draper Spence broke out, with a catch in his throat: "That's what I can't bear, Millner, what I simply can't bear: to hurt him, to hurt his faith in me! It's an awful responsibility, isn't it, to tamper with ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... If it had been Maria Muller who had thus set herself to tamper with a man's life, she would have done it trembling, with fear and self-distrust. She had brains which could feel and react against the passions she evoked, and were competent to warn her of the peril of her ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... and when the polls closed at six o'clock it was planned that the election officers should set the ballot-box up on this shelf, lock the closet door, and go out for their suppers, leaving one of each side to watch in the room so that nobody could open the closet-door with a pass-key and tamper with the ballots before they were counted. Now, the ceiling over the shelf in the closet wasn't plastered, and it formed, of course, part of the flooring in the room above. The boards were to be loosened by a Gorgett man upstairs, as soon as the box was ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... "How dare you tamper with the old astronomer, sir?" roared Sir Tiglath. "Am I in a madhouse? Who are all these crazy ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... cannot rightly belong to any civil or earthly power, since "ofttimes the causes of seeking divorce reside so deeply in the radical and innocent affections of nature, as is not within the diocese of law to tamper with." He adds that, for the prevention of injustice, special points may be referred to the magistrate, who should not, however, in any case, be able to forbid divorce (op. cit., Bk. ii, Ch. XXI). ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... of the little attention which the Directory had hitherto paid to his personal interests. "That is all true enough," said Napoleon, "but for four millions I will not place myself in the power of this duke." Austria herself, it is said, did not hesitate to tamper in the same manner, though far more magnificently, as became her resources, with his republican virtue. He was offered, if the story be true, an independent German principality for himself and his heirs. "I thank the ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... John Ruskin, who had the means to acquire some very fine natural specimens of gem material was of the opinion that man ought not to tamper with the wonderful crystals of nature, but that rather they should be admired in the rough. While one can understand Ruskin's viewpoint, nevertheless the art of man can make use of the optical properties of transparent minerals, properties no less wonderful than those ...
— A Text-Book of Precious Stones for Jewelers and the Gem-Loving Public • Frank Bertram Wade
... certificate of health was very satisfactory; and he told the Captain that he had seldom seen a heartier, healthier set o' decent bodies in sic a sma' vessel, and hepathetically entreated him not to tamper with their constitutions, by giving them dangerous drugs whose chemical properties he did not understand, declaring emphatically, "That nature was the best phesician after all." The Captain considered this gratuitous piece of advice as an insult, for he very gruffly ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... well aware that, by the plain language which he has used in speaking of the various kinds of nonsense prevalent in England, he shall make himself a multitude of enemies; but he is not going to conceal the truth, or to tamper with nonsense, from the fear of provoking hostility. He has a duty to perform, and he will perform it resolutely; he is the person who carried the Bible to Spain; and as resolutely as he spoke in Spain against the superstitions of Spain, will he speak ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... true manhood, such as fearless truth, scrupulous honour, dauntless courage, and so on; but don't, for Heaven's sake, adopt the follies and vices of men. As I have said, Dick, vanity is certainly your great weakness, and I want you to be especially on your guard against it. It will tempt you to tamper with the truth, even if it does no worse," (I thought involuntarily of Lady Mary and my tacit admission of the justice of Lord Fitz-Johnes' impeachment of me with regard to her), "and it is quite possible that it may lead you ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... before each pillared mount, Speak tidings of a leprous flood. And where giants' carcants flare and sit, The battle-crests and surging foams That toss each swoll'n Cauldron's Count As pyramidal realms unsunned Glare at the stricken, tamper'd souls, Stark wenches seek blind seers of lust And curse each monster's hairless head. Where fungus-fagots gleam unstunned As witches dig unfathomed holes And bury Helms in powdered dust, Sleep mourners of the newly dead Until rayed Aureoles bright, flare, And sparkle like Asian stars. ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... to tamper with it in my pride. You begin to see a lot of things when you are going blind. I could not be frank with an old chum even. I was not frank with Massy—no, not altogether. I knew he took me for a wealthy sailor fool, and I let him. I wanted to keep up my importance—because ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... few who have any just conception of the deceptive power of Spiritualism and the danger of coming under its influence. Many tamper with it, merely to gratify their curiosity. They have no real faith in it, and would be filled with horror at the thought of yielding themselves to the spirits' control. But they venture upon the forbidden ground, ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... (Kamrasi's greatest enemy), and I had been warned by Speke not to set foot upon Rionga's territory, or all travelling in Unyoro would be cut off. I plainly saw that Bacheeta was in favour of Rionga, as a friend of the murdered Sali, by whom she had had two children, and that she would most likely tamper with the guide, and that we should be led to Rionga instead of to Kamrasi. There were "wheels within wheels." It was now reported that in the past year, immediately after the departure of Speke and Grant from Gondokoro, when Debono's people had left me in the ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... He'll find nothing and the shock will kill him. My God, Webber, you can't tamper with a man's mind like this and hope to save his life! You're obsessed; you've always been obsessed by this impossible search for something in our society, some undiscovered factor to account for the mental illness, the divergent minds, but ...
— The Dark Door • Alan Edward Nourse
... She redeemed her own slaves with a great price. She sacrificed her West-Indian interest. She counts that achievement higher than her victories. She spends annually much money and many lives and risks much enmity in her crusade against the slave-trade. When your Southern statesmen have tried to tamper with her, they have found her true. If they had bid us choose between a concession to their designs and war, all aristocratic as we are, we should have chosen war. Every Englishman who takes the Southern side is compelled by public opinion to preface ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... open and his eyes stuck out. "John," he said, and the restraint he put upon his voice rippled it, "John, don't tamper with the affections of an old and infirm man. Drive me off the bayou plantation, compel me to acknowledge and to feel that I am a hypercrite and a liar, but don't whet a sentiment and then cut my throat with it. Be merciful unto a sinner ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... possible to conjecture the state of the country in these circumstances, even if we had not been informed of it by means of the prophetical book of Hosea, which dates from the time when the Assyrians had begun indeed to tamper with the country, but had not yet shown their full design. After the death of Jeroboam II. there had been wild outbursts of partisan war; none of the kings who in quick succession appeared and disappeared had real power, none ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... constitution is so sound that it will not suffer from a day's fasting. To set your mind at rest I may tell you that escape is impossible. This mechanism has been proved too often, and if you did break loose from it my servants would deal with you. But I must speak a word of caution. If you tamper with it or struggle too much it will act in a curious way. The floor beneath you covers a shaft which runs to the lake below. Set a certain spring at work and you may find yourself shot down into ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... usurer, or money-lender—no speculation answers so well as this snug property. The ranter exhibits to his audience once a-week—the place is crowded when he appears upon the stage—deserted when he is absent, and his place is occupied by one who fears, perhaps, to tamper with his God—is humble, honest, quiet. The crowds who throng to listen to the one, and will not hear the other, profess to worship God in what they dare to call his sanctuary, and look with pity on such as have not courage to unite in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... shook her head. "I was strictly commanded by my guru not to divulge the secret. It is not his wish to tamper with God's drama of creation. The farmers would not thank me if I taught many people to live without eating! The luscious fruits would lie uselessly on the ground. It appears that misery, starvation, and disease are whips of our karma which ultimately drive ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... King, That passionate perfection, my good lord - But who can gaze upon the Sun in heaven? He never spake word of reproach to me, He never had a glimpse of mine untruth, He cares not for me: only here to-day There gleam'd a vague suspicion in his eyes: Some meddling rogue has tamper'd with him—else Rapt in this fancy of his Table Round, And swearing men to vows impossible, To make them like himself: but, friend, to me He is all fault who hath no fault at all: For who loves me must have a touch of earth; The low sun makes the colour: I am yours, Not Arthur's, as ye know, ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... so limited but that you had time to tamper with the books and make false entries ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... of the recognition of literary property, and against such infringement of it as had been ventured upon in the case of La Fontaine. He had no reason to be especially friendly to booksellers, but for one thing, he saw that to nullify or to tamper with copyright was in effect to prevent an author from having any commodity to sell, and so to do him the most serious injury possible. And for another thing, Diderot had equity and common sense enough to see that no high-flown nonsense about the dignity of letters and the spiritual power could ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... presently backed by a sergeant of regulars and two of his men, who had come running over the foot-bridge at the stop of the train, and now silently ranged themselves in tacit support. What Cullin had demanded was how Shiner dared tamper with the signals—how, in fact, he had managed to, since they had been carefully locked—and who was he, anyhow. And Shiner had simply answered: "I've a boy shot and dying at Silver Shield. I only heard it ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... loose, and unless the damage could be speedily repaired the ship would soon be a prey to current and wind. The Pinta was the vessel whose owners repented having sold her. No wonder then that Columbus suspected the rascals of having bribed the crew to tamper with the rudder, in the hope of forcing their ship to put back into Palos. But he would not put back, he declared. Martin Pinzon was commanding the Pinta, and Martin knew what to do with perverse rudders and perverse men. He immediately set to work to have the damage ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... breaking that contact. And this enemy of ours, this Satan, the hater, is subtle and deep and experienced and more than a match for any of us. But greater is He that is now in you than he that is in the world. Satan will do his best by bold attack and cunning deceit to tamper with your couplings. ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... the summer of 1602, had desired the judge, Sir John Doddridge, to draw up a conveyance of Sherborne to his son, and then to his brother, with a rent-charge of 200l. a year for life to Lady Raleigh. For the present Cecil firmly refused to allow anyone to tamper with this conveyance, and Sherborne was the raft upon which the Raleighs sailed through the worst tempest of the trial. Cecil undoubtedly retained a certain tenderness towards his old friend Lady Raleigh, and for her sake, rather than her husband's, he extended a sort of ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... how to impart them to Annette, was a matter of still greater perplexity. Her state of mind had been so morbid; she had been subject to such violent changes, and the cause of her derangement had been of such an inconsolable and hopeless kind, that her friends had always forborne to tamper with her feelings. They had never even hinted at the subject of her griefs, nor encouraged the theme when she adverted to it, but had passed it over in silence, hoping that time would gradually wear the traces of it from ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... material, or any material that may create a spark, shall be used for tamping, and some soft material must always be placed next to the cartridge or explosive. When it is necessary to tamp dynamite, nothing but a wooden tamper shall be used. (Sec. ...
— Mining Laws of Ohio, 1921 • Anonymous
... player. She would idly finger the other pieces, and shift them carelessly hither and thither; but it was of no avail: the game lay between the two knights. She would shut her eyes and long for some kind hand to come and tamper with the board; she would open them and see the two knights standing immovable, face to face. It was nothing new. A fancy had come in and offered defiance to a fact; they must fight it out. Lizzie generously inclined to the fancy, the unknown champion, with a reputation to make. Call her blasee ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... he soon brought his affairs into order. He had under his command an army of thirty thousand Saracen soldiers, with whom it was impossible for his enemies to tamper. A bitter recrimination took place with the pope, in which the emperor managed to bring the general sentiment of Europe to his side, offering to convict Gregory of himself entering into negotiations with the infidels. Gregory, finding that he was getting the worst of the controversy with his ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... viewing in Mr. C. much to approve, and in other features of his character, much also to regret and deplore. Once Mr. Coleridge expressed to me, with indescribable emotion, the joy he should feel, if he could collect around him all who were "beginning to tamper with the lulling, but fatal draught;" so that he might proclaim as with a trumpet, "the worse than death that opium entailed." I must add, if he could now speak from his grave, retaining his earthly, benevolent solicitude for the good of ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... displayed the rash despotism of a soldier, he was sure to be reproved by his employers. Did he change the rate of duties arbitrarily, the directors, sensitive to commercial honor, charged him "to keep every contract inviolate." Did he tamper with the currency by raising the nominal value of foreign coin, the measure was rebuked as dishonest. Did he attempt to fix the price of labor by arbitrary rules, this also was condemned as unwise and impracticable. Did he interfere with the merchants by inspecting their accounts, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... stories, idealise my unworthy self, and, as I said last night, make me a peg on which to hang your own best thoughts—Sunchildism will be as near truth as anything you are likely to get. But if Hankyism triumphs, come what may you must get rid of it, for he and his school will tamper with the one sure and everlasting word of God revealed to us by human experience. He who plays fast and loose with this is as one who would forge God's signature to a cheque drawn on ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... idea of a special being (as cause), but as it denotes a special non-intelligent thing which cannot be admitted as the cause of the intelligent part of the world we must deny all authoritativeness to the attempt to tamper, in the interest of that one word, with the sense of other texts which have the power of giving instruction as to an entirely new thing (viz. Brahman), distinguished by the possession of omniscience, the power of realising ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... induced him to change every thing, began with that most perilous of all things to tamper with—the army of a great military power. He ordered the Austrian costume to be adopted. Nothing could equal the general indignation. The hair must be powdered, curled, and pomatumed; a practice which the Russian, who washed his locks every day, naturally abhorred. The long tail made him the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... As for the cards—well, I must plead guilty to weakness there. I have not the slightest objection to taking the life of a man who is making a nuisance of himself, but his honor I think one should not tamper with. May I offer you a cigarette? ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... those of legitimate elevation and storage charges, although these authorized charges paid ample return on capital investment. The farmers wanted this temptation of handling and mixing grain at the terminals removed so that terminal operators could not tamper with the grain while it was in their custody. The claims of the Grain Growers that mixing was going on at Fort William and Port Arthur were based upon the report of the Royal Grain Commission which had investigated the ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... bound; he should be sorry to see them in trouble. Only no tampering with his witnesses. He was a man for Law. Rank was much: money was much: but Law was more. In this country Law was above the sovereign. To tamper with the Law was treason ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... man? Was it not fit that he should tell her how great was this sin? His ideas on the matter were perhaps too strong, but they certainly are not peculiar. We—speaking for the educated male sex in England—do not like to think that any one should tamper with ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... air of a conqueror, and having occasion to go to the village looked in at the shoe-maker's window as he passed and smiled broadly. For years Little Haven had regarded Mr. Quince with awe, as being far too dangerous a man for the lay mind to tamper with, and at one stroke the farmer had revealed the hollowness of his pretensions. Only that morning the wife of a labourer had called and asked him to hurry the mending of a pair of boots. She was a voluble woman, and having ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... a little way, to show. For the lady's hands alone were to open it clear out, to remove the contents. Gwen felt that perhaps she had undertaken this responsibility rashly. It is rather a ticklish matter to tamper unbidden ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... critic has been pleased to like this extravaganza better than anything I have written. Personally I prefer "The Offshore Pirate." But, to tamper slightly with Lincoln: If you like this sort of thing, this, possibly, is the sort of ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... drunk Till well sufficed, then, artful to effect His shrewd designs, Ulysses thus began. Hear, O ye suitors of the illustrious Queen, My bosom's dictates. But I shall entreat Chiefly Eurymachus and the godlike youth Antinoues, whose advice is wisely giv'n. Tamper no longer with the bow, but leave 330 The matter with the Gods, who shall decide The strife to-morrow, fav'ring whom they will. Meantime, grant me the polish'd bow, that I May trial make among you of my ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... stubble'; nor were there any hope that this damnable thing that is killing and sucking the life-blood out of our spirits should ever be destroyed and cast aside. Oh! it is short-sighted wisdom, and it is cruel kindness, to tamper with the thought of the wrath of God, the 'everlasting burnings' of that eternally pure nature wherewith it wages war against ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... Congress would be any thing but the messenger of peace to which the honorable Senator from Kentucky looks. Why, sir, it has been found indispensable in slaveholding States, as a part of their police regulations, to punish all persons who were either of the State or otherwise, who tamper with the slaves, who have intercourse with them that is forbidden by law, far more those who preach to them sedition, or insurrection, or revolt; and yet, if we were to be controlled within the body of the State ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... was soon equipped. Mrs. Gaunt put a parcel and a letter into her hands. Ryder no sooner got out of her sight than she proceeded to tamper with the letter. But to her just indignation she found it so ingeniously folded and sealed that she could not read ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... the favour their lady showed to the foreigner, and watched them both. Then what—what would happen? Under the Abati law it was death for any one outside of the permitted degree of relationship to tamper with the affections of the Child of Kings. Nor was this wonderful, since that person held her seat in virtue of her supposed direct descent from Solomon and the first Maqueda, Queen of Sheba, and therefore the introduction of any alien ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... need not now be so diligent, watchful, and painful in my ministry as formerly; the church is but small, without opposition and also well settled in the truth; I may now take to myself a little time to tamper with worldly things." So he makes an essay upon husbandry: "He began to be a husbandman." Ha, Noah, it was better with thee when thou wast better employed; yea, it was better with thee when a world of ungodly men set themselves against thee—yea, when ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... and the Hungarian radicals played into his hands. The fate of the Habsburg empire depended upon the issue of the campaign in Italy, which would have been lost by the withdrawal of the Magyar and Croatian regiments; and the Hungarian government chose this critical moment to tamper with the relations of the army to the monarchy. In May a National Guard had been established; [v.03 p.0016] and the soldiers of the line were invited to join this, with the promise of higher pay; on the 1st of June the garrison of Pest took the oath to the Constitution. On the 10th ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... to feed it with perfidious words. I do not know whether really the Supreme Government ever did—as he complained afterwards—send orders for his arrest. It seems certain that the Civil Governor began to tamper with his officers, and that Gaspar ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... you, miss, this half hour," interposed Murty, who now entered from the back kitchen where he was smoking, "and I am really shocked to find you tamper so with the virtue of this innocent girl. You first attempt to reach her pure soul through her vanity, by praising her dress and accomplishments; and she nobly rejects the temptation. Next you attempt to conquer her fortitude, by maligning and ridiculing the most ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... "record heads," of any species of deer command a price among those who desire to pose as sportsmen, and have not the strength or skill to hunt themselves, it has become a regular business for dealers to buy up unusual heads. The temptation to tamper with such a head and increase its size is very great, and heads passing through the hands of such dealers must be discarded as of little scientific value. A favorite device is to take a green head, force the antlers apart ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... in the North were saying that all principle and truth was abandoned for the sake of such States as Kentucky and Missouri. "Virginia is gone; Maryland cannot go. And slavery is endured, and the new virtue of Washington is made to tamper with the evil one, in order that a show of loyalty may be preserved in one or two States which, after all, are not truly loyal!" That is the accusation made against the government by the abolitionists; and that made by us, on the other side, ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... and Barbius, the one an optio, the other a tesserarius (these are men who have the duties of messengers and scouts), with whom Onomastus, one of Otho's freedmen, went to the camp, to tamper with the army, and brought over some with money, others with fair promises, which was no hard matter, they being already corrupted, and only wanting a fair pretense. It had been otherwise more than the work of four days (which elapsed between the adoption and murder) so completely to infect ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... walked down the street, stung to the quick. He went straight to his solicitor and arranged to borrow L1900 on his own property. "For," said he, "I'll show them both how little a snob can understand a gentleman. I won't tamper with her son's money, but I'll give her my own to throw into his well. Confound him! why did ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade |
