"Trickster" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... were getting on dangerous ground. Nature is a trickster, and she spread her net and caught the Highland maid and the Lowland laddie, and bound them with green withes as is her wont. So they were married by the Congregational "meenister," and for a wedding-tour fared forth Westward ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... better than that. Can you imagine the great doctor the dupe of a mere trickster? The professor was a man of great science and was blessed with an almighty sound head. But he ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... inane absurdity contrary to the evidence of science and their senses. The English Gladstonians who babble about brotherly love and conciliation should move about Dublin in disguise. Disguise would in their case be necessary to get at the truth, for Paddy is a shrewd trickster, and delights in humbugging this species of visitor, whom he calls "the slobbering Saxon." Then if they would return and still vote for Home Rule they are no less than traitors to their country and enemies to their ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... There was Trickster, a merchant of physical leanness, Distinguished alike for his means and his meanness; And Sharper, a lawyer, with manners as courtly, And practice as large, as his person was portly. There was Aderman Michaels, the head of his faction, Who had learned, it was whispered, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... furious factions splutter, Power's cheated claimants mutter, And foiled fire-eaters utter Most sanguinary threats. "He Freedom's fated suckler? The traitor, trickster, truckler!" So fumes the fierce ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various
... masters time, it conquers space, It cows that boastful trickster Chance, And bids the tyrant Circumstance Uncrown and fill a ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... other person," he resumed, after a pause, "it is not the first time he has acted like a trickster. He has crossed me before, and I will choose an opportunity to tell him my mind. I won't mince matters with him either, and will not spare him one insulting syllable that he deserves. He wears a sword, and so do I; if he pleases, he may draw it; he ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... carve the frank, open face into wrinkles; how like a knife it will stab the honest heart. And then its transformations,—how it has been known to change a goodly face into a mask of brass; how with the evil custom of debt has the true man become a callous trickster! A freedom from debt, and what nourishing sweetness may be found in cold water; what toothsomeness in a dry crust; what ambrosial nourishment in a hard egg! Be sure of it, he who dines out of debt, though his meal be a biscuit and an onion, dines in 'The Apollo.' And then, ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... the God of Israel. Wonderful God! Blessed assurance, that "the God of Jacob is our refuge,"—the God who saves the man without character, irrespective of character,—makes of him,—Israel. Jacob, the supplanter, the trickster, the weak character, the warped character, the sinner, God takes, and through trials, tests, develops him and makes of him Israel,—a prince of God. That is God's plan with men. ...
— God's Plan with Men • T. T. (Thomas Theodore) Martin
... both a trickster and a humorist and sets the will of the species beyond the discernment of the individual. The picador has to blindfold his horse in order to get him into the bull-ring, and likewise Dan Cupid exploits the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... dared to remain sitting, but all stood up as he came among them. There, then, he took his seat. But Juno, when she saw him, knew that he and the old merman's daughter, silver-footed Thetis, had been hatching mischief, so she at once began to upbraid him. "Trickster," she cried, "which of the gods have you been taking into your counsels now? You are always settling matters in secret behind my back, and have never yet told me, if you could help it, one word of ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... the safety of the community, for the majesty of the law. He demanded instant conviction for this trickster, this Fagin among men, this hoary-headed old scoundrel who had insulted the intelligence of twelve of the most upright men he had ever seen in a jury-box, insulted them with a tale that even a child would laugh at. When at last ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... for want of provisions before he could have the heart to shoot him. He gave chase nevertheless, plunging along in a ziz-zag way over a carpet of moss and dry pine-needles, and through some dense tangles of undergrowth, uttering a welcoming screech whenever he saw the bright eyes of the little trickster peering down at ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... us say: 'Gart is a bad man; Gart is a good-for-nothing, a city trickster?' No, we said: 'This thing has never happened here before,'" ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... all the conjurers of his day he was the most famous and the most successful, always, of course, excepting that Corsican conjurer who ruled for so many years the destinies of France. From those who have seen that famous trickster, we have learned that the Charleses, the Alexanders, even the Robert Houdins, were children compared with the magical wonder-worker of the past generation. The fame of Comus was enormous, and his gains proportionate; and when he had shuffled off this mortal coil it was ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various
... Pewetseli (long-tailed weasel). These heroes are responsible for many of the natural features of the region so references to this myth are rather frequent. The Coyote, in the form of a rather malevolent and stupid trickster, and the Wolf, a generally patriarchal and protective figure, appear in several myths, as do cannibalistic giants and a giant ...
— Washo Religion • James F. Downs
... reminded me of the old lady's description of her watch, for she said, "it might look pretty hard on the outside, but the inside works were all right." And so thought its jolly patrons. Seated at tables, well supplied with piles of gold and silver, where numerous disciples of that ancient trickster Pharaoh, being dubious perhaps of the propriety of adopting the literal orthography of his name, and abbreviated it ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... away, now that it is done. So help me God, I'll bring you to book for it if I have to make a lifetime job of it! It's all right for your political backers; they are thieves and bushwhackers, and they make no secret of it. But there is one thing worse than a trickster, and that is a ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... statements made of individual circulations to those who purchase advertising space. In this, as in all other forms of enterprise, there are honest, clean-cut and business-like methods, and there are the methods of the time-server, the trickster and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 795, March 28, 1891 • Various
... insult sneaks away from his look. It is not mere "pluck"; for pluck also comes by fits and starts, and can be disconnected from the other elements of character. A tradesman once had the pluck to demand of Talleyrand, at the time that trickster-statesman was at the height of his power, when he intended to pay his bill; but he was instantly extinguished by the impassive insolence of Talleyrand's answer,—"My faith, how curious you are!" Considered ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... don't know where the reform is to begin. I've seen a perfectly capable, honest man, time and again, run against an illiterate trickster, and get beaten. I suppose if the people wanted decent members of congress they would elect them. Perhaps," continued Philip with a smile, "the ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... the other birds. "We will have no such fellow for our king. Cheat and trickster he is, and he shall be punished. You shall be king, brave Eagle, for without your strength he could never have flown so high. It is you whom we want for our protector and lawmaker, not this sly fellow ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... by nature for the trickster. His success does not depend altogether on human gullibility; part of his argument rests on the conditions which surround the industry of mining, one which never can be free of extreme risk. All men know that gold is found far away, where living is high ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... of them to whose eyes the tears had not come a dozen times for excess of laughter: but, after it had an end, Dioneo, knowing that it was come to his turn to tell, said, "Gracious ladies, it is a manifest thing that sleights and devices are the more pleasing, the subtler the trickster who is thereby artfully outwitted. Wherefore, albeit you have related very fine stories, I mean to tell you one, which should please you more than any other that hath been told upon the same subject, inasmuch ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... part of the indigent, and of care and protection on the part of the wealthy. The sense of pecuniary insecurity is there little felt, and the ignorant poor are not left to the machinations of any trickster whose interest it may be to deceive them. It is for this reason that even in societies where the oppression of the poor and weak is, in other ways, infinitely greater than in this country, riots and seditions are difficult to create. It is because of the social providence ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... bewildered his ready sense, and filled him with astonishment at the magnitude of his achievements. The accomplished adventurer was always ready to regard himself rather as a sublime being endowed with great and stupendous attributes, than as a pitiful trickster. He became the God of his own idolatry, and stood astonished, as the witch of Endor in the English Bible is represented to have done, at the success ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... more wearily, as if it tired him to carry so heavy a heart. Life was unkind, nature cruel, fate a trickster. One was caught, as a rat in a trap, "in the fell clutch of circumstance." What was the use of anything? Why ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... natural way; yet there are many questions in the reader's mind as to how the little rascal will turn out, and whether he will accomplish his mission. Much more cleverness is shown by the sleight-of-hand trickster, who, unassisted and in the open, with no accessories, dupes his staring assembly, than by him who, on the stage, with the aid of mirrors, lights, machines, and a crowd of assistants, manages to deceive your eyes. A story that by its frank ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... He to be glad of The clash of the war-glaive— Traitor and trickster And spurner of treaties— He nor had Anlaf, With armies so broken, A reason for bragging That they had the better In perils of battle On places of slaughter— The struggle of standards, The rush of the javelins, The crash of the charges, The wielding of weapons— The play ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... men, such as 'gamester', 'youngster', 'oldster', 'drugster' (South), 'huckster', 'hackster', (swordsman, Milton, prose), 'teamster', 'throwster', 'rhymester', 'punster' (Spectator), 'tapster', 'whipster' (Shakespeare), 'trickster'. Either, like 'teamster', and 'punster', the words first came into being, when the true significance of this form was altogether lost{174}; or like 'tapster', which was female in Chaucer ("the gay tapstere"), as it is still in Dutch and Frisian, and distinguished from 'tapper', the man who ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench |
