"Artifice" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and he, perhaps, had his two or three quarts, and neither interfered with the other? except that, at odd times, she succeeded, by dint of one little gentle artifice or another, to win him home an hour or two earlier at night; and now and then to spend an entire evening in his own house. They had been married a year, and on the morning of their wedding anniversary, the husband looked ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... falsification of the country's sentiments the foundation of her ruin, and the ground of the Union; to affirm that her parliament, constitution, liberty, honour, property, are taken away by her own authority,—there is, in such artifice, an effrontery, a hardihood, an insensibility, that can best be answered by sensations of astonishment and disgust, excited on this occasion by the British minister, whether he speaks in gross and total ignorance of the truth, or in shameless and ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... her to the rank of his Marchioness, was a crime in his eyes never to be expiated. He considered, not without reason, that Mrs. Lyndsay had shamefully deceived him; and fully believed that she had been an accomplice with Jasper in that artifice which he was quite gentleman enough to consider placed those who had planned it out of the pale of his acquaintance. And when Caroline, who had been weeping too vehemently to read her lord's countenance, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... defensible—Alsace-Lorraine and Belgium only by artifice, and with great numbers of men; Silesia only so long as Austria (and Hungary) stand firm. East Prussia has her natural arrangement of lakes to make invasion tedious, and to permit defence ...
— A General Sketch of the European War - The First Phase • Hilaire Belloc
... of the body, numerous and diversified, never preserving identically the same characters in two cases, or requiring the same exact treatment in diseases, apparently of the same nature, we discover that something more than the artifice of the quack is necessary ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... artillery carriages and enjoining silence under pain of death. Speckbacher attempted to impede his retreat at Hall, but arrived too late.[8] Teimer was accused of having been remiss in his duty through jealousy of the common peasant leaders. Arco escaped by an artifice similar to that of Deroy and abandoned the Scharnitz. The Vorarlbergers again spread as far as Kempten. Hormayr also returned, retook the reins of government, imposed taxes, flooded the country with useless ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... Bolingbroke's, is to consider whether in writing it he was thinking either of Sir Robert Walpole or of Revealed Religion. When either of these objects of his hatred was before his mind, he scrupled at no artifice or exaggeration that; might serve the purpose of his malignity. On most other occasions he may be followed with advantage, as he always may ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... an accepted fact that pearls are excretions of superimposed concentric laminae of a peculiarly fine and dense substance, consisting in major part of carbonate of lime. Linnaeus, believing in the possibility of producing pearls by artifice, suggested the collecting of mussels, piercing holes in their shells to produce a wound, and bedding them for five or six years to give pearls time to grow. The Swedish government succeeded in producing pearls of a sort by this process; but as they were of trifling ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... lettre Aujourdhui et comme le jour prochaine est mon jour de naisance je vous ecrit ce lettre. Ma grande gatteaux est arrive il leve 12 livres et demi le prix etait 17 shillings. Sur la soiree de Monseigneur Faux il y etait quelques belles feux d'artifice. Mais les polissons entrent dans notre champ et nos feux d'artifice et handkerchiefs disappeared quickly, but we charged them out of the field. Je suis presque driven mad par une bruit terrible tous les garcons kik up comme grand un bruit qu'il est possible. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Gisco shrugged his shoulders as he saw them growing pale. He thought that his courage would be useless against these exasperated brute beasts. It would be better to revenge himself upon them by some artifice later; accordingly, he signed to his soldiers and slowly withdrew. Then, turning in the gateway towards the Mercenaries, he cried to them that they would repent ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... possession of a steep narrow ridge and seemed desirous of magnifying their numbers in the eyes of the whites, as they ran rapidly from tree to tree, and maintained a steady yell in their most appalling tones. The pursuers, however, were too experienced to be deceived by so common an artifice, and being satisfied that the number of the enemy must be inferior to their own, they dismounted, tied their horses, and flanking out in such a manner as to enclose the enemy, ascended the ridge as rapidly as was consistent with a due regard to the shelter of their persons. The ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... tiny listener, I promise him that before long people will say that his sermons are simply sublime. Robert Louis Stevenson knew what he was doing when he discussed every sentence of Treasure Island with his schoolboy step-son before giving it its final form. It was by that wise artifice that one of the greatest stories in our ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... floor a pair of stays, old and soiled, sprawled with unconcern. The place looked sordid and miserable, and Hilda sitting in the middle of it, still in the yellow wig and painted face of Mrs. Halliday, all wrong at that range, gave it a note of false artifice, violent and grievous. Stephen stood in the doorway grasping the handle, saying nothing, and an instant passed before she knew with certainty, in the wretched light, that it was he. Then she sprang up and made a step toward him as if toward victory and reward, but checked ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... that," she admitted, with a laugh. "What a diverting piece of artifice this Wintergarten is, to be sure. Fancy arranging the electric lights to shine through a dome of purple glass, and look like stars. They do look like stars, don't they? Slightly overdressed, showy stars, indeed; stars in the ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... Age bows my shoulders down, And I have made too many kings my foes By breaking faith with them for love of thee. So once again I charge thee, promptly wed, Or show the means I seek, then live and die Even as it pleases thee." The proud maid then Used every artifice to thwart his will, Was sick with fury, yea, was nigh to death! And when the Emperor would not bate a jot, Hark what this wild she-devil ...
— Turandot, Princess of China - A Chinoiserie in Three Acts • Karl Gustav Vollmoeller
... all the effects of long familiarity with irresponsible power in himself. Such a moderation of feeling, we are almost obliged to consider as a genuine and unaffected expression of his real nature; for, as an artifice of policy, it had soon lost its uses. And it is worthy of notice, that with the army he laid aside those popular manners as soon as possible, addressing them as milites, not (according to his earlier practice) as commilitones. It concerned his own security, to be jealous ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... appear in the Book of Leinster; and the later version introduces several literary artifices that do not appear in the earlier one. That portion of the Glenn Masain version immediately following after Deirdre's lament is given as an instance of one of these, the common artifice of increase of horror at a catastrophe by the introduction of irrelevant matter, the tragedy of Deirdre's death being immediately followed by a cheerful account of the relationships of the chief heroes of the Heroic Period; a still better example of this practice in the old Irish literature ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... prepared for him by his red servants, who were also his comrades at home and on the dangerous trail. "Beloved old women" kept an eye on his small sons, put to drowse on panther skins so that they might grow up brave warriors. Nothing was there of artifice or pretense, only "the needful things to make a reasonable life happy." All was as primitive, naive, and contented as the woman whose outline is given once in a few strokes, proudly and gayly penciled: "I have the pleasure of writing this by the side ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... difficulties are raised about fixing bounds and degrees, and thus every moral obligation whatever may be evaded. Here is scope, I say, for an unfair mind to explain away every moral obligation to itself. Whether men reflect again upon this internal management and artifice, and how explicit they are with themselves, is another question. There are many operations of the mind, many things pass within, which we never reflect upon again; which a bystander, from having frequent opportunities of observing ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... escaped the action of the element, vivid traces of volcanic fire. It often encases a crystal of quartz, in which the pebble lies as if it had slumbered there from eternity; its beautiful repose sets human artifice at defiance. How strange that this ore should have lain here, scattered about in all directions, peeping everywhere out of the earth, and sparkling in the sun, and been trod upon for ages by white men and savages, and by the emissaries of every scientific association in the world, and never till ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... included in its ranks the young bloods of every party in the state, he was able, by the wise adjustment of his machinery, to deal, or at least to intend, disaster only to those that were opposed to him. Caesar might well have been praised for so intelligent an artifice, and yet Messer Simone of the Bardi, for all that he was brave enough, was very far from being a Caesar. However, he planned his plan well, and I praise him for it all the more light-heartedly because it came to grief so signally, ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... mean that Mrs. or Miss Ashleigh recoils from the engagement with me, and that I should meanly compel them both to fulfil it by calling in the public to censure them—if—if—Oh, madam, this is worldly artifice indeed!" ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... cunningly-devised and patched-together mode of salvation be, that men, studying the perversion of the gospel, and seeking the ruin of souls with all their skill, industry, and learning, are setting off with forced rhetoric, and the artifice of words of man's wisdom, and with the plausible advantages of a pretended sanctity, and of strong grounds and motives unto diligence and painfulness, to a very denying and renouncing Christian liberty, when ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... eulogistically of the book and also of the author's novel, "Capel Sion." I appreciate the qualities in the book that have won Mr. Wells' esteem, and the book is indeed memorable. But I believe that its excellence is an artificial excellence, and I commend it to the reader as a work of incomparable artifice rather than as a ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... shallow artifice, and hoisting the engine-driver on his own petard). Who would not risk a paltry L2 to gain L1000? Oh, a ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... play because the violent struggle between good and evil woke up many responsive memories in his mind. The hero of the play had been shown feeling precisely as Julian had often felt. That was enough. He did not very much care for the brilliant artifice, which Valentine had remarked with so much pleasure. He did not specially note the peculiar effect of nature produced by the simplicity and thoughtful directness of the dialogue. He only knew that he had seen somebody whose nature was akin to his own nature, ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... arts) music, painting, sculpture, architecture, poetry, engraving; (liberal arts) grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy, the sciences, philosophy, history; craft, dexterity, clevernes, ingenuity, cunning, artifice. Associated Words: technical, paleotechnics, technics, technic, intransigeant, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... kind of knavery seeks to hide itself, but it is easy to conjecture that the low ruffian type of villain, like that seen in Bill Sykes and Jonas Chuzzlewit, neither laughs nor smiles, being as destitute of the courage to listen to the sound of its own voice as of the wit that summons artifice to its aid in protection ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... the birds exert more artifice in building their nests on account of the monkeys and snakes: some form their pensile nests in the shape of a purse, deep and open at top; others with a hole in the side; and others, still more cautious, ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... condense it and keep its clearness of thought. Briefly, it amounts to this, that the formulation of the doctrine of Parallelism rests on an ambiguity in the terms employed in its statement, that it contains a subtle dialectical artifice by which we pass surreptitiously from one system of notation to another ignoring the substitution: logically, we ought to keep to one system of notation throughout. The two systems are: Idealism and ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... born again; but it remains, because it produces desires against which believers contend. Our adversaries know that Luther believes and teaches thus, and while they cannot reject the matter, they nevertheless pervert his words, in order by this artifice to ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... "Thou hast overreached artifice, Janet, and gone back to Bible days and corrupted them by borrowing parabolic speech to waste upon ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... to crush the Highlanders, and the more easily, as the King thought, to secure obedience to the laws, he used artifice by dividing the chiefs and promising high rewards to those who would capture or kill their brother lords; and, that writer continues "this diabolical plan, by implanting the seeds of disunion amongst the chiefs, succeeded, and they gradually ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... proximo, Ser apresentado, Ensaio de Casamento, and A Viuva inconsolavel—are prose translations from Mery, cleverly done, but not worth the doing. Horacio e Lydia (1872), a translation from Ronsard, is a good example of artifice in manipulating that dangerously monotonous measure, the Portuguese couplet. As an indication of a strong spiritual reaction three prose fragments (1873)—Anna, Mae de Maria, A Virgem Maria and A Mulher do Levita de Ephrain—translated from Darboy's Femmes de la Bible, are ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... that against me, which thyself Has been the wicked cause of? Which thy power, Thy artifice, thy favourites have done? Could Common Sense bear universal sway, No fool could ever possibly ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... specious argument! And why must every bright delightful fruit be forbidden by dull care or justified by flagrantly untenable artifice? Who but a fool would boggle over this chance, this gloriously deserved crown of the adventure, this gay, random ride over the deserts with Arlee?... To her it was nothing but a prolonging of the lark into which the affair had miraculously been turned. Billy was Big Brother—the American Big Brother ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... helping your companions out of difficulty, though even then, such tricks are departures from honorable dealing. But especially when there is no purpose to be served but that of appearing to know more than you do, it certainly must be considered a very mean kind of artifice. I think I have sometimes observed an individual to be prompted, where evidently the assistance was not desired, and even where it was not needed. To whisper to an individual the answer to a question, is sometimes to pay ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... these documents Monsieur Charles Maurras has written a book entitled Les Amants de Venise. It is the work of a psychologist and of an artist. The only fault I have to find with it is that the author of it seems to see calculation and artifice everywhere, and not to believe sufficiently in sincerity. We must not forget, either, that as early as the year 1893, all that is essential had been told us by that shrewd writer and admirable woman, Arvede Barine. The chapter which she devotes to the Venice episode, in her biography ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... in maritime enterprise, but it was otherwise during the Plantagenet period. Henry the Second possessed a most formidable fleet, numbering some five hundred vessels of war. During the reign of his successor a novel artifice in naval warfare was resorted to by the English which merits notice. The English admiral caused a number of barrels of unslaked lime to be placed in his ships. Having brought his fleet to windward of the enemy—the ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... Isle Tumbala, scituate on the firm Land, where they put to Death all they met with. And because the People terrified with their abominable Sins of Commission, fled from their Cruelty, they were accused of Rebellion against the Spanish King. This Tyrant made use of this Artifice, he commanded all that he took, or that had bestowed Gold, Silver and other rich Gifts on him, still to load him with other Presents, till he found they had exhausted their Treasures, and were grown naked and incapable of affording him farther supplies, and ...
— A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies • Bartolome de las Casas
... deserted, in order to pass the night in prayer, knowing from experience that the Spirit of God was communicated more freely to the soul in quiet solitary places. At the beginning of the night, the devils used every sort of artifice to interrupt his prayers and to disturb him. Then they attacked him in person, as St. Athanasius relates that they did St. Anthony, so that they seemed to come to blows with him. The more they annoyed him, the more fervently he prayed, and the more strenuously he invoked Jesus Christ with ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... said Hadrian when he saw at last the corpse encircled by a serpent, "that could alone strike down the giant." Flame and smoke were seen to issue from his lips in speaking, a portent which was rationalized centuries later into a mere conjurer's artifice. The concourse of the Jewish nation at his summons was symbolized, with a curious reference to the prevalent idea of Israel as a school and the Law as a master, by the story that at Bethar, the appointed rendezvous and last stronghold of the national defence, were four hundred ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... physical gifts are also needed by the opera-singer, according to the requirements of the line of roles to which he is inevitably assigned by the nature and type of his particular voice. It is true that stage artifice has now reached great perfection; but it has its limits, and ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... upward from the bosom of the earth, Before so cold and blank and unadorned, Spring fairest flowers to gladden and adore— That fillest the blue vault of heaven with smiles As of a mother smiling on her child, Pure, holy, without guile or artifice, Melting the spirit of each fleeting cloud From darkness unto beauty and soft grace— Thou art the emblem of that perfect love That sheddeth joy around it evermore, And from whose sweetness rise all gentle thoughts As scent from vernal flowers; that in the heart ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... Constitution is now placed in a conspicuous place in the hall, in a small monument for which David furnished the design.[1147]—The Convention, now, says Danton, "will rise to a sense of its dignity, for it is now invested with the full power of the nation." In other words, artifice completes what violence has begun. Through the outrages committed in May and June, the Convention had lost its legitimacy; through the maneuvers of July and August it recovered the semblance of it. The Montagnards still hold their slave by his lash, but they have restored ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... of Dahomey, yet subject to a regulation of state, at once humiliating and extraordinary. When the people have conceived an opinion of his ill-government, which is sometimes insidiously infused into them by the artifice of his discontented ministers, they send a deputation to him with a present of parrots' eggs, as a mark of its authenticity, to represent to him that the burden of government must have so far fatigued him that they consider ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... had, while the warriors and braves were engaged in the game of Lacrosse on the common, sought an audience of the governor of the fort. He received them in the mess-room, apparently not suspecting any artifice on ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... bark of trees by some shy dryad, unconcious translator into speech of the rustlings and whisperings of the woodland. It is, as the editor observes, an "effortless narrative," with "no attempt at fine or sensational writing, ... at that modern artifice which they call word-painting," but recording with "vivid exactness" what was seen and felt by the writer and her companions on a journey through regions then little frequented by tourists and unsmirched by the eloquence of guide-books. That the travelers were William ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... they had committed on five or six of our company. But it was very difficult to do this when we were armed, since, if we went to them prepared to fight, they would turn and flee into the woods, where they were not to be caught. It was necessary, accordingly, to have recourse to artifice, and this is what we planned: when they should come to seek friendship with us, to coax them by showing them beads and other gewgaws, and assure them repeatedly of our good faith; then to take the shallop well armed, and conduct on shore the most robust ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... the outer hall, and there the Greek, who could not make up his mind to see his golden dream vanish in smoke, examined with the most minute attention the shafts of the pillars to make certain that they did not conceal some artifice, that they did not mask some trap which might be discovered by displacing them; for in his despair he mingled the realism of Egyptian architecture with the chimerical constructions of the Arab tales. ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... Arson brulkrimo. Art arto. Artery arterio. Artful ruza. Arthritic artritulo. Artichoke artisxoko. Article artikolo. Article (commerce) komercajxo. Articulate elparoli. Articulation (anat.) artiko. Artifice artifiko. Artificial artefarita. Artillery artilerio. Artisan metiisto. Artist artisto. Artless simplanima, naiva. Artlessness naiveco. As kiel. As—as tiel—kiel. Ascend supreniri. Ascension ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... shore. Either of these elements, by itself, would be nothing. Confine the fluid contents of the noblest stream in a walled channel of stone, and it ceases to be a stream; it becomes what Charles Lamb calls "a mockery of a river—a liquid artifice—a wretched conduit." But take away the water from the most beautiful river-banks, and what is left? An ugly road with none to travel it; a long, ghastly scar on the bosom of ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... artifice consisted in finally taking advantage of my excess of virtue. After a few weeks of self-torture, over-fatigue, scant food, little sleep and insufficient clothing, I naturally fell ill, and the kind Tenders ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... reciting and by this means she could hold the paper under her desk and thus avoid Mr. Wilmot's suspicion. Her lessons for the next day were unusually long and hard, and as Mr. Miller would be present, she dared not resort to her usual artifice, particularly after what had been said about her "notes." She knew she never could learn all that long lesson in school hours, neither would she fail of having it for anything. What could she do? For some time she ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... appears to me that there are Multitudes of this Sort of People in the World, pursuing Fortune in a very giddy Way. I suppose it will be thought ridiculous, to call him wrong-headed, who by any Artifice shall improve his Estate; yet when the Misfortunes of others, and those by much the greater Number, and a Decay of Trade are put in Ballance against that Artifice, I doubt this Charge must be somewhere, tho' I am not cunning enough ...
— The Theater (1720) • Sir John Falstaffe
... motives of the Iroquois the Mohican could judge only by their acts. He thought they had detected the artifice of the fire, and were aware that it had been kindled with a view to mislead them; for, after a hasty examination of the spot, they had separated, some plunging again into the woods, while six or eight had followed the footsteps of Jasper along the shore, and come down the stream towards ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... 321: Hoolaau. The last part of this word, laau, taken in connection with the last word of the previous verse, form a capital instance of word repetition. This was an artifice much used in Hawaiian poetry, both as a means of imparting tone-color and for the punning wit it ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... cohorts if they were separated—and also that Civilis, not Brinno, was at the head of this war. Evidence of this gradually leaked out, as the Germans loved war too well to keep the secret for long. Finding his artifice unsuccessful, Civilis tried force instead, forming the Canninefates, Frisii and Batavi into three separate columns.[283] The Roman line faced them in position near the Rhine bank.[284] They had brought their ships there ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... I am very reasonable, and do act With more Sincerity than Artifice, I'll now desire no more. But have a care you use my Bounty well; For I am now grown kind enough to think That all you ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... never seemed moved by the desire. "All I have to ask," he said, "is that we talk reasonably and rationally;" and again: "I hope to deal in all things fairly with Judge Douglas." No innuendo, no artifice, in any speech, gave the lie to these protestations. Besides this, his denunciations were always against slavery, and never against slaveholders. The emphasis of condemnation, the intensity of ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... and, if ever man found himself in the position of not knowing what to say, made the discovery beyond all question that he was so circumstanced. The child-like ingenuousness with which his visitor spoke, her modest fearlessness, her truthfulness which put all artifice aside, her entire forgetfulness of herself in her earnest quiet holding to the object with which she had come; all this, together with her reliance on his easily given promise - which in itself shamed him - presented something in which he was so inexperienced, and against which he knew any of his ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... present it shall suffice to tell you, without other Preamble, both these were by the Artifice of their Enemies, dispossess'd of the Queen of the Island's Favour, and that with them fell the Juncto's and Squadrons of their Friends in most Part ...
— Atalantis Major • Daniel Defoe
... carcasses. The lion, enraged, chid the bear for finding fault with the amenity of the royal den, and tearing him up, cast away his carcass among the others. The wolf, who had been standing by, seeing in what danger he was, thought by artifice to soothe the haughty mind of the lion. He accordingly approached, was led round the den, and was asked whether the smell of the heap of carcasses was unpleasant to him. The wolf replied, in a carefully considered speech, that he had never seen anything more ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... from me, to make my search more curious? Or is this pretty artifice contrived, to signify that here the chase must end, and my pursuit be crowned, for you can ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... This artifice is not absolutely new to the French stage, and it is possible, as Fleury[119] thinks, that the idea of the double disguise may have been borrowed from a short play by Legrand, le Galant Coureur, The situation, most difficult ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... at a distance, saw what happened, and, hardly yet daring to trust himself too near so dangerous a foe, approached him cautiously, and peeped at him. Reynard addressed himself to him, with all the designing artifice imaginable. "Dear cousin," says he, "you see what an unfortunate accident has befallen me here, and all upon your account: for, as I was creeping through yonder hedge, in my way homeward, I heard you crow, and was resolved to ask you how you ...
— Aesop's Fables - A New Revised Version From Original Sources • Aesop
... blushed and smiled and evaded, assuring Gard that of all the men she had met that season he alone came up to her ideal, and employed every artifice a woman uses between the ages of nine and ninety, when she does not want to give an answer that answers. The very character of her replies, however, convinced Gard that there was more than a passing interest in her preference. There ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... I ever heard; and in Macbeth or Julius Caesar, or the like, I doubt if Kemble could have been more impressive. Yet the changes of intonation were so gently managed, that he contrived to set the different interlocutors clearly before us, without the least approach to theatrical artifice. Not so the others I have mentioned; they all read cleverly and agreeably, but with the decided trickery of stage recitation. To them he usually gave the book when it was a comedy, or, indeed, any other ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... ye divine the diplomatic reticence, the gestures of artifice, the veiled words, the looks of doubtful meaning which some evening may induce your wife to attempt the capture of ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... cause, and his utter freedom from any kind of doubt or fear—the eloquence of one of nature's orators that carries away the heart far more than the studied oratory which is the result of practice and artifice. ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... to know was that he knew nothing. But surely it is a mark of wisdom, to be sensible of the limited extent of human knowledge, to examine with reverence the ways of GOD, nor presumptuously reject any opinion which has been held by the judicious and the learned, because it has been made a cloak for artifice, or had a variety of fictions raised upon ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... Toads generally go in the spring to lay their eggs in streams and ponds. A Batrachian of Brazil and the hot regions of South America, the Cystignathus ocellatus, no doubt fearing too many dangers for the spawn if deposited in the open water, employs the artifice of hollowing, not far from the bank, a hole the bottom of which is filled by infiltration. It there places its eggs, and the little ones on their birth can lead an aquatic life while being guaranteed against ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... still beauty of death. Helen and those with her arrayed her for this farewell-view. All was ready for the sad or curious eyes which were to look upon her. There was no painful change to be concealed by any artifice. Even her round neck was left uncovered, that she might be more like one who slept. Only the golden cord was left in its place: some searching eye might detect a trace of that birth-mark which it was whispered she had always worn a necklace ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... objection was heard to this mode of taxation. In some, indeed, alarms were at first conceived, until they were banished by reason and patriotism. In the four western counties of Pennsylvania a prejudice, fostered and imbittered by the artifice of men who labored for an ascendency over the will of others by the guidance of their passions, produced symptoms of riot and violence. It is well known that Congress did not hesitate to examine the complaints which were presented, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson
... in the midst of the palace a door of teak-wood marquetried with ivory and ebony and plated with glittering gold, over which hung a silken curtain purfled with all manner of embroideries; and on this door were locks of white silver, that opened by artifice without a key. The Shaykh Abd al-Samad went valiantly up thereto and by the aid of his knowledge and skill opened the locks, whereupon the door admitted them into a corridor paved with marble and hung with veil- like[FN142] tapestries embroidered ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... that if the prisoner escaped he would kill him. And when Ahab had said that he would justly die, he took off the binding about his head, and was known by the king to be Micaiah the prophet, who made use of this artifice as a prelude to his following words; for he said that God would punish him who had suffered Benhadad, a blasphemer against him, to escape punishment; and that he would so bring it about, that he should die by the other's means [41] and his people by the other's army. Upon which Ahab ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... bring that Ford girl in here to ask me?" Aunt Lucretia, who had seen straight through her namesake's artifice, asked ...
— Young Lucretia and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... the silence amid which I floated on the water was disturbed by a sort of whispered singing that hovered all around me. It was half breath, half music; it rose softly from the waters of the lake; and I was surrounded by it through I knew not what artifice. It followed me, moved with me and was so soft that it did not alarm me. On the contrary, in my longing to approach the source of that sweet and enticing harmony, I leaned out of my little boat over the water, for there was no ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... example, but expanding with such force and rapidity as to place him in advance of his companion, on an eminence to which no later craftsman was able to climb.... He moderated the fire of Giorgione, whose strength lay in fanciful movement and a mysterious artifice in disposing shadows, contrasted darkly with warm lights, blended, strengthened, blurred, so as to produce the semblance of exuberant life." Certain works remain to link the two painters; even now critics are divided as to which of the two to attribute the "Concert" in the Pitti. The figures ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... could not let the artifice pass, nor let him remain in his error, which did you good service, and which pretty nearly extinguished his passion. No, honest soul, he cannot bear dissimulation. I cunningly get a footing at his rival's, who, like a dolt, was going ...
— The Blunderer • Moliere
... not an artifice of rhetoric which suggests this parallel between two great names in American history; for the suggestion springs spontaneously to every mind, and men scarcely speak of Lee without thinking of a mysterious connection ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... of his was like to raise; and in truth it is not probable she shou'd stay above five or six Lines speaking, since after she saw her Cheat had taken, she cou'dn't keep her countenance within Doors, and was so eager to revenge her self by laughing at the Fool without. Besides here's an excellent Artifice of the Poets, for had she tarry'd longer, Parmeno might ha' been gone, and her Mirth qualified when she saw the good Fortune Chaerea had met withal. His other Exception is, that our Author's Scenes are several times broken. He instances in the same Play, That Antipho enters singly in ...
— Prefaces to Terence's Comedies and Plautus's Comedies (1694) • Lawrence Echard
... IMAGE.—At the Italian exhibition in the Champ de Mars there was a statue that attracted much attention from the visitors. It represented Goethe's Marguerite standing before a mirror. This latter gave by reflection the image of Faust. The artifice was well concealed by the sculptor. In reality, it was not a double statue, but the figure of Faust was skilfully obtained by means of ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 • Various
... German headquarters upon many nights hoping to see her again or to pick up some clew as to her whereabouts, and at the same time he utilized many an artifice whereby he might bring terror to the hearts of the Germans. That he was successful was often demonstrated by the snatches of conversation he overheard as he prowled through the German camps. One night as he lay concealed ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... day crossed the country, ruminating on the disaster that had befallen his squire, and could now compare circumstances coolly, he easily comprehended the whole scheme of that adventure, which was no other than an artifice of Anthony Darnel and his emissaries to draw him from the inn, where he proposed to execute his design upon the innocent Aurelia. He took it for granted that the uncle, having been made acquainted with his niece's elopement, had followed her track by the ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... figure in Paris with no known source of wealth and no recognized employment is a position which can by no artifice be long maintained. So Lucien, as he crept up in the world, gave more and more weight to the question, "What does he live on?" He had been obliged indeed to confess to Madame de Serizy, to whom he owed the patronage of Monsieur Granville, the Public Prosecutor, ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... would recommend rank rebellion, either by force or artifice, according as circumstances might require?" ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... judgment required. If now one look away! or his mind wander! or a rein slip! And what attraction in the ensemble of the thousands over the spreading balcony! Calculating upon the natural impulse to give one glance—just one—in sooth of curiosity or vanity, malice might be there with an artifice; while friendship and love, did they serve the same result, might ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... paused at sight of this appalling figure; for whether it were a living being, or a statue of magic artifice, he could not tell. On its breast was a scroll, whereon was inscribed in large letters, 'I do my duty.' After a little while Roderick plucked up heart, and addressed it with great solemnity: 'Whatever thou ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... father made no show of artifice about it. He never would leave him alone. So numerous and severe were the mental trials of that unfortunate youth in vacation time, that the friends of the family (then resident near Bayswater, London) seldom approached the ornamental piece of water in Kensington Gardens,' without a ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... curses—here, too, have heroes paused, here checked their course, and risen to immortality. (More vehemently.) To know the hearts of Genoa mine! To govern with a master's hand this formidable state! Oh, artifice of sin, that masks each devil with an angel's face! Fatal ambition! Everlasting tempter! Won by thy charms, angels abandoned heaven, and death sprung from thy embraces. (Shuddering.) Thy syren voice drew angels from their celestial mansions—man thou ensnarest with beauty, riches, power. (After ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... the ministry, and the actions of which they were the authors, we shall see that they had formed and executed the project of re-establishing the old monarchy, and of overturning the constitutional government either by artifice or by main force. The royal charter was spurned by them, and they trampled without scruple on the civil and political rights which it consecrated. Every guarantee given to the army, the magistracy, the public functionaries, or the nation, was forgotten, ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... readers. The loftiest muse has ever a household and fireside charm about her. Mr. Poe's secret lies mainly in the skill with which he has employed the strange fascination of mystery and terror. In this his success is so great and striking as to deserve the name of art, not artifice. We cannot call his materials the noblest or purest, but we must concede to him the highest ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... common and allowable artifice, in those attempting to lead us up the hill of science, to point to some attractive object that is to be reached at the summit. Mr Kavanagh employs this expedient with great effect. He shows us, near the outset of our journey, one astonishing result to which it is to conduct ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... they really are; let the ministers of superstition tremble at finding their conspiracies discovered; let them dread the arrival of the day, when mortals, cured of those errors with which they have abused them, will no longer be enslaved by their artifice. ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... on the subject,—it is a dilemma from which Roman Catholics never will be able to escape; and, in the first case, nothing can be more preposterous than to divide adoration between the entire person and one of its parts; and, in the second case, the object of adoration is reduced to a mere verbal artifice, depending on vulgar custom or on the caprice of men. If the heart of the Virgin is adored under a supposition that it is the centre of the most pure and virtuous sentiments, why has there not been adoration ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... the secret of the extraordinary charm of this story that it does not appear to be a story; it has almost no marks of artifice; it hardly appears to have been planned; it affects us as a record, kept in the simplest and most informal way, of certain very interesting events ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... fair from winter's close emerging, As if no artifice of fashion, business, politics, had ever been, Forth from its sunny nook of shelter'd grass—innocent, golden, calm as the dawn, The spring's first ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... fact; for, with that care which the trained pioneer never permits himself to forget or disregard, the lad had adopted every artifice at his command to add to the ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... "The artifice of Louis Bonaparte, imitator of his uncle in this as in everything," said Michel de Bourges, "had been to throw out in advance an appeal to the People, a vote to be taken, a plebiscitum, in short, to create a Government in appearance at the very moment when he overturned one. In great crises, where ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... her course freely to attain the desired perfection, which consists in being virtuous. Naturalists tell us that the ermine is a little animal which has a fur of purest white, and that when the hunters wish to take it, they make use of this artifice. Having ascertained the places which it frequents and passes, they stop the way to them with mud, and then rousing it, drive it towards the spot, and as soon as the ermine comes to the mud it halts, and allows itself to be taken captive rather than pass through ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... considered her son's property, had taken care to spread the report of his being the accepted lover before she left the country. Mary felt all the unpleasantness of her situation. Although detesting deceit and artifice of every kind, her confused and stammering denials seemed rather to corroborate the fact; but she felt that she could not declare her resolution of never bestowing her hand upon Mr. Downe Wright without seeming at the same ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... reserved purposely for this occasion: Mrs. Clinton too, who attended her in her last illness, must accompany you to town.-But, without any other certificate of your birth, that which you carry in your countenance, as it could not be affected by artifice, so it cannot ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... woman! by what unworthy artifice did you gain his love? Was it by witchcraft? or some poisonous philtre learned ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARTIN GUERRE • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... apprehension of animals, these three elements which constitute it may be clearly seen. Although such a truth, precisely because it is evident, may appear simple to those who seek truth from the clouds, or by means of logical or tortuous artifice, yet such are the characteristics of true science. For the new facts which she interprets and classifies appear old as soon as they are understood, although they ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... feared the effect of the sudden surprise upon the old and feeble man, and had meant to break the good news to him softly. But human nature was too strong; his own emotions had baffled him, and the pious little artifice proved a complete failure. So now he could do nothing but stand by and make grim faces, struggling to keep down what was mastering him, and turning away ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... his suspicions. Her hostess's artifice was a transparent one, but she nevertheless fell in with it. She had seen Vane only in the company of others; this might be the same again to-morrow; and there was something to be said. By intuition as much as reason, she recognized that there was something working ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... course all proportion is lost. Macaulay lashed this vice in his celebrated essay on Robert Montgomery's poems. "We expect some reserve," he says, "some decent pride in our hatter and our bootmaker. But no artifice by which notoriety can be obtained is thought too abject for a man of letters. Extreme poverty may indeed in some degree be an excuse for employing these shifts as it may be an excuse for stealing ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... morality was flagrant; but the motives were those which have enabled us to contemplate with distressing complacency the secret of unhallowed lives. The code that is greatly modified by time and place, will vary according to the cause. The amnesty is an artifice that enables us to make exceptions, to tamper with weights and measures, to deal unequal justice to friends ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... are skilful at wheeling your horses round the post, but the horses themselves are very slow, and it is this that will, I fear, mar your chances. The other drivers know less than you do, but their horses are fleeter; therefore, my dear son, see if you cannot hit upon some artifice whereby you may insure that the prize shall not slip through your fingers. The woodman does more by skill than by brute force; by skill the pilot guides his storm-tossed barque over the sea, and so by skill one driver can beat another. If a man go wide in rounding ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... worse. If my views had been less pure, if I had felt less reliance on the firmness of my own principles, and less repugnance to artifice, I might easily have avoided some appearances, which have injured me in the eyes of the world. With real contrition I confess, that a fatal mixture of masculine independence of spirit, and of female tenderness of heart, has betrayed me into many imprudences; but of vice, and ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth |
