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Deceptive   Listen
adjective
Deceptive  adj.  Tending to deceive; having power to mislead, or impress with false opinions; as, a deceptive countenance or appearance. "Language altogether deceptive, and hiding the deeper reality from our eyes."
Deceptive cadence (Mus.), a cadence on the subdominant, or in some foreign key, postponing the final close.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Deceptive" Quotes from Famous Books



... asked him to dinner on the strength of it, how much further was he prepared to go? Why—provided he was sure of the genius, almost any length, short of introducing him to the ladies of his family. But was he sure? Savage Rickman was young, and youth is deceptive. Supposing he—Jewdwine—was deceived? Supposing the genius were to elude him, leaving him saddled with the man? What on earth should he ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair

... between forty and fifty of us. I had almost forgotten to mention that I was to be duly punished whenever I deserved it, but the master was, on no account, to hurt me, or make me cry. I deserved it regularly three or four times a day, and was as regularly horsed once. Oh! those floggings, how deceptive they were, and how much I regretted them when I came to understand the thing fundamentally. Old Isaacs could not have performed the operation more delicately, if he were only brushing a fly off the down of a lady's cheek. He never made ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... Thorndyke and see how they affected him. But as I approached the centre of the town the fog grew so dense that all my attention was needed to enable me to thread my way safely through the traffic; while the strange, deceptive aspect that it lent to familiar objects and the obliteration of landmarks made my progress so slow that it was already past six o'clock when I felt my way down Middle Temple Lane and crept through Crown Office Row ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman

... Count Stadion, "the Magyars are no children; they are men who know full well what to think of Bonaparte's insidious flatteries, and will not permit him to mislead them by his deceptive promises. They received the Archduke John with genuine enthusiasm, and every day volunteers are flocking to his standards to fight against the despot who, like a demon of terror, tramples the peace and prosperity of all Europe under his bloody feet. No, Bonaparte ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach

... and of sin, wherever found and however garbed, ought to be the continual accompaniment of all vigorous and manly cleaving to that which is good. Unless we shudderingly recoil from contact with the bad in our own lives, and refuse to christen it with deceptive euphemisms when we meet it in social and civil life, we shall but feebly grasp, and slackly hold, that which is good. Such energy of moral recoil from evil is perfectly consistent with honest love, for it is things, not men, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren

... great," he said, blandly. His tone was so deceptive that Hamilton smiled in appreciation of the compliment to his wife's undertaking, and even Mr. Delancy relaxed the harsh set of his features. "The longer you work in it," the Irishman continued innocently, "outside of hours of course, the stronger you get, and the ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan

... summer like a sort of warmer Brittany, the errant vapors on the Bay of Biscay assemble all in this depth of gulf, stop at the Pyrenean summits and melt into rain. Long showers fall, which are somewhat deceptive, but after which the soil smells of new ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti

... tendency in youth to rise with events that does not readily admit of depression, and the disorder of George Morton was one of all others the most flattering when near its close. Even the more mature experience of his parents was misled by the deceptive symptoms that his complaint assumed in the commencement of summer. They who so fondly hoped the result, began to believe that youth and the bland airs of June were overcoming the inexorable enemy. That the strength of the young man lessened with every succeeding ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper

... achromatic lenses can now be purchased so cheap that there is no longer any necessity of procuring one with the common lens. Besides, there is no reliability whatever to be placed in the revelations of the common lens; while on the contrary, the deceptive appearances which minute objects assume beneath such lenses are more injurious than otherwise. A small cheap set of magnifying glasses are all that is required for the purpose of blowpipe ...
— A System of Instruction in the Practical Use of the Blowpipe • Anonymous

... mounting; and in the deceptive quiet of the night, downfall and red revolt were brewing. The litter had passed forth between the iron gates and entered on the streets of the town. By what flying panic, by what thrill of air communicated, who shall say? but the passing bustle in the Palace had already reached and ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson

... object? Never had the apartments been so luxuriously arranged; flowers were there in profusion. The toilet of Charlotte was in exquisite taste, white with clusters of violets, and all the surroundings breathed an atmosphere of riches. Yet nothing could have been more deceptive. The Review was in a dying condition; the numbers appearing at longer intervals, and growing small by degrees and beautifully less. D'Argenton had swallowed up in it the half of his fortune, and now wished to sell it. It was this unfortunate ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet

... disposed to believe your eminence," he replied; "though I have had but little evidence of that good-nature of which your eminence speaks. Do not forget that I have been five years in the Bastile and that no medium of viewing things is so deceptive as ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... some way by which an extra-terrestrial Invader could be told instantly from a human being. Unmask and prove even one such creature, and the whole story would be proved. But how detect them? Their skin was perfectly deceptive. Scratched, of course, they could be caught. But one couldn't go around scratching people. There was nothing of the alien creature's own actual ...
— The Invaders • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... urged their horses faster. Finally they reached the summit of the slope. From that height they saw down into a round, shallow valley, which led on, like all the deceptive reaches, to the ranges. There was water down there. It glinted like red ribbon in the sunlight. Not a living thing was in sight. Joan grew more discouraged. It seemed there was scarcely any hope of overtaking Jim that day. His trail led off round to ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey

... session of 1847 to the opening of that of 1848 they kept France in a state of constant fever—an artificial and deceptive fever in this sense, that it was not the natural and spontaneous result of the actual wishes and wants of the country; but true and serious in this sense, that the political parties who took the initiative ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne

... test of love had been deceptive, the ordeal had failed, the verdict had been given against him. He went back to his chamber, where Dulac was still busily engaged in unpacking his valise, bade the astounded valet replace everything he had already taken out, and hurry at once to the Poste ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various

... breaking walnuts without the assistance of the ordinary cracker, and, seeing him in profile, one could not help remarking the extraordinary breadth of his sleeves, and the unusual thickness of his chest. He was one of those men who are commonly spoken of among men as deceptive; that is to say, that though he looked exceedingly strong he was in reality very much stronger than he looked. Of his features I need say little. His head is small, his hair is thin, his eyes are blue, his nose is large, he has a small moustache, and a square ...
— The Upper Berth • Francis Marion Crawford

... masquerade with festive expectations, but nothing could have been less festive than the atmosphere in which we donned those costumes. They were rich, accurate, and complete. The wigs of flowing hair were perfectly deceptive. The fur-trimmed surcoats and the long hose were in fabrics suggestive of lost weaving arts. Each dagger, buckle, hat-gem, and finger-ring, was a true antique. Even when the two ladies appeared, in sumptuous Renaissance dresses, their coiffures ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... the Capes—we must keep a sharp look out for them reefs. They are so deceptive that we'll be on to them before we know it. There's no telling by sounding. We may get forty fathoms one minute and strike the next. I've heard old West-India coasters say the white water was the best warning," ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams

... Helen, from the anteroom Gloucester had heard all that passed, and now he briefly confessed to Wallace, that he had too truly appreciated the pretended conciliation of the king. Edward's proposals to Helen were as artfully couched as deceptive in their design. Their issue was to make Wallace his slave, or to hold him his victim. In his conference with her, he addressed the vanity of an ambitious woman; then, all the affections of a devoted heart: ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... greatest human exponent of human nature at its best and worst,—the profound Thinker and Artist who dealt boldly with the facts of good and evil as they truly are,—and did not hesitate to contrast them forcibly, without any of the deceptive 'half-tones' of vice and virtue which are the chief stock-in-trade of such modern authors as we may ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli

... the prairies is wonderfully fantastic and deceptive. The effect which seamen call looming is one of the commonest of its forms. This brings real but distant objects into view, and dignifies them in size and color, till we can take a farm-house for a white marble palace, and leafless woods with sunset clouds ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various

... the finest of trees, are matters always in dispute. There is little but the resin to show the locality of many of the vanished forests. Where they once were the earth is hungry, white, and barren, though dressed in deceptive green by stunted fern and manuka. In the swamps and ravines, where they may thrust down their steel-pointed flexible spears as much as eight feet, the roaming diggers use that weapon to explore the field. In ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves

... treating of the development of the Japanese newspaper, he ignores the fact that it owed its origin to an Englishman, which surely, to a man whose object was reality, should have seemed an object worth recording. These letters, so full and apparently so frank, really so deceptive, are, as we have said, but one instance among many of the way in which popular writers on Japan travesty history by ignoring the part which foreigners have played. The reasons for this are not far to seek. A wonderful tale will please folks at a distance ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick

... could not leave her couch to soothe his last moments. She was nearly as far gone as he, and her attendants waited upon her with the gloomiest forebodings. To her impassioned cries for her husband, they returned deceptive answers. None of her kith and kin were near to comfort her. Her only brother, Vettor, had been dismissed the Tuscan Court in the year of her coronation for unseemly and presumptuous behaviour, and his wife went back with him to Venice. There was no time and no ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley

... marriages—in any marriage—is out of the question. No man knew how a marriage would turn out; you might as well pledge yourself for the weather next morning; certainly there were signs for the wise; but were weather almanacs deceptive institutions or were they not? The innocent old theory of marriages being made in heaven was the best. Clary was not such a mighty catch after all: a six thousand pounds' fortune was not inexhaustible, and the county member might never have come the length ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler

... fireplaces at either end, over one "Solomon's Prayer," by G. Flinck, and over the other "Jethro Counselling Moses to Appoint Judges from the People," by Bronkhorst. Quite a feature of this room is the wonderful deceptive painting by this master over each door, and on a continuous frieze. All of this is such an exact representation of sculptured relief, that it is almost necessary to touch it ere one can be convinced of its really level surface. I was ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes

... Michael quickly, seeing when too late that he had talked to his own undoing, "but ye'd better be lettin' me handle thim be moonlight; 't is deceptive, moonlight is," and he reached to take the reins from her. But alas! empires may be lost by a second's delay, and a second ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson

... grandly deceptive, either designedly or of ignorance prepense in his arithmetic. "There are over four hundred of these (anecdotes, fables, and stories) in the complete text, and Lane has not translated more than two hundred" (p. 172). * * * "Adding the omitted anecdotes ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... nothing to justify his anxiety; everything seemed still in the swamp. But he knew that this silence was deceptive, and the canopy of marsh loving trees completely hid the bushes and undergrowth from his sight. It was just noon when a Roman trumpet sounded, and at once at six different points a line of Roman soldiers issued from the bushes. Beric raised ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty

... that should accrue as a passport to what has been called his Coup d'Etat. There were no more conspiracies at home; Charles X. believed he had no domestic enemies. But in politics, as at sea, a calm may be deceptive. ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac

... floundered through swamps and marshes, over rocky, barren hills, and through thick growths of willows and alders, and at the end of the day's journey it would apparently be as far off as ever. The explanation was that in the rarefied atmosphere of interior Labrador distances are very deceptive; when George reported that the "big water" was three miles ahead it must have ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace

... one man in the world whom no event can move or surprise, who is always on his guard against deceptive appearances, and is capable of admitting everything and explaining everything, it certainly is a Parisian ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau

... Napoleon was indeed somewhat changed since I saw him in London in 1848, but it had not improved so much as his circumstances, as he was according to external appearances and popular belief now extremely well off. But appearances are deceptive, as was soon proved, for he was in reality on the verge of a worse bankruptcy than even his uncle underwent, for the nephew lost not only kingdom and life, but also every trace of reputation for wisdom and ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland

... and English ecclesiastics as regards geology, see Lyell, Principles of Geology, tenth English edition, vol. i, p. 33. For a philosophical statement of reasons why the struggle was more bitter and the attempt at deceptive compromises more absurd in England than elsewhere, see Maury, L'Ancienne Academie des Sciences, second edition, p. 152. For very frank confessions of the reasons why the Catholic Church has become more careful in her dealings with science, ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... bitter and despairing to think that women should be helpless—that they should need some man to protect them against some other man. He cursed the laws and traditions that had kept women subordinate and trivial and deceptive and vacillating. He wished they could be raised to the level of the brutes till, like the tigress or she-wolf, they could not only ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland

... South Australia two periods of the year which are equally deceptive to the stranger. The one is when the country is burnt up and suffering under the effects of summer heat—when the earth is almost herbless, and the ground swarms with grasshoppers—when a dry heat prevails in a calm still air. The other when vegetation is springing ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt

... every second was of vital import, and 'twas not until we had come into a stretch of country clear of trees, our horses' hoofs falling silently on the soft turf, that we caught the faint rustle of the sea. I knew not how far distant it was; sounds carry far and are deceptive at night; we smote the flanks of our horses and rode as for ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang

... and delirium and prickly heat and jaundice and tumour and ulceration of the bowels and excessive thirst.' (Q.) 'What are the symptoms of black bile and what has the patient to fear from it, if it get the mastery of the body?' (A.) 'The symptoms are deceptive appetite and great mental disquiet and care and anxiety; and it behoves that it be evacuated, else it will generate melancholy and leprosy and cancer and disease of the spleen and ulceration of the bowels.' (Q.) 'Into how many branches ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous

... I kept my secret I had power; everybody's destiny was in my hands. This was a sweet thought. I felt that I should enjoy going about with a deceptive meekness, and taking the severest snubs from Miss Browne, knowing that at any moment I could blossom forth into the most exalted and thrilling importance. Also, not only did I want a share in the treasure myself, but I wanted, if possible, to divide it up on a different basis ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon

... salt sea snakes is distinguished by its odd, deceptive shape—a broad, flattened tail whence the body consistently diminishes to the head, which is the thinnest part. Other ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield

... craft. His new story, Shepherd's Warning (ALLEN AND UNWIN), is a quiet tale of life in a not specially attractive village—a tale that conquers by its direct humanity and by an art so delicate and so deftly concealed that the book has a deceptive appearance of having written itself without effort on the part of its author. It concerns a group of peasants, agricultural labourers, inhabitants of Fidding, a village gradually yielding to the encroachments by tram and villa of the neighbouring town. The ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 4, 1920 • Various

... down among the straw of his bench, is a very deceptive animal. When he is, say, three years old, his beard and brows, massive shoulders, and set, assured expression give one fair warning of the commanding presence he will display when he rises. But when he is yet young he looks a much lesser creature than he is when seen on a show bench, particularly ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson

... be brought out here is the effect of the spell of environment in magnifying the importance of existing views and methods, and the deceptive part this trusty brain plays in binding ...
— Industrial Progress and Human Economics • James Hartness

... developed somewhat after the fashion of those plants which Hindoo jugglers cause magically to sprout, blossom, and bloom before the very eyes of astonished beholders—with this difference, however, that whereas the development of the jugglers is deceptive as well as quick, that of our botanists was genuine and ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne

... was but the manner in which a ruthless Nature set her lures; it was the deceptive vestment of romance. He held the ketch relentlessly on her course, with—now—all his thoughts, his inclinations, returning to Millie Stope. In a final, desperate rally of his scattering resolution he told himself that he was unfaithful to the ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer

... the news bureau, having taken the contract to lay out and carry through the deceptive part of the scheme by which the people are to be buncoed, now begins operations. First, bargains are made with conscienceless financial editors of the daily and weekly newspapers, whereby for so much stock or for "puts" or "calls" ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... sets of facts, all depending on the same general principle. The form of mimicry first elucidated by Mr. Bates is characterised by the presence in each locality of certain butterflies, or other insects, themselves edible and belonging to edible groups, which derived protection from having acquired a deceptive resemblance to some of the inedible butterflies in the same localities, which latter were believed to be wholly free from the attacks of insectivorous birds. Then came the extension of the principle, by Dr. F. Mueller, to the case of species ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... union by an interest which is but skin-deep, and which may fade like the morning flower, are allured by a dazzling meteor, by a mere bubble, beautifully formed and colored, but empty within. It may dazzle the eye, but it blinds us to all its blemishes and inward infirmities. It is deceptive. Often beneath its gaudy veil there lies the viper, ready to poison all the sweets of home-life, and cause its victim to lament over his folly with bitter tears and heart-burning remorse. How soon may beauty fade; and what then, if it was the only basis of your marriage ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips

... victory near him now. That also will fade in the desert of old barbed wire and weeds. When will he see that a doom is over all his ambitions? For his dreams of victory are like those last dreams that come in deceptive deserts to ...
— Tales of War • Lord Dunsany

... All these deceptive ideas were required to be infused into the minds of the people, in order to prepare the way for rebellious action. The right of secession was an indispensable condition, without which there could be no ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... never to have been denied; and some years after the organization of the Government, it was solemnly recognized in an amendment. We are not disposed, however, to look for arguments to the debates and discussions of the Convention, in our view often a deceptive and dangerous method of construing a law, since the vote is very frequently given on even conflicting reasons. Different minds arrive at the same results by different processes; and it is no unusual thing for men to deny each ...
— New York • James Fenimore Cooper

... "How deceptive resemblances are," said he in a hollow voice. "I once knew a woman who had the same contour of face, and one evening, by the sole power of my eye, I compelled her to fall at my feet, crying: 'Vladimir Paulitch, do with me what you ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne

... expended, and a greater effect produced. Public functionaries, who have been pleased to speak in contemptuous terms of the progress of abolitionism, both in Maine and New Hampshire, will, it is thought, soon be made to see, through a medium not at all deceptive, the ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... braced me up wonderfully. I feel more like a man and less like a feather-bolster than I did when I came in. I wonder if you couldn't—" He hesitated and pressed her fingers persuasively. "Couldn't you manage to drop a hint to Molly about appearances being deceptive, you know." ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith

... Ruskin, "take all kinds of strange shapes, as if to invite us to examine them. Star-shaped, heart-shaped, spear-shaped, arrow-shaped, fretted, fringed, cleft, furrowed, serrated, in whorls, in tufts, in wreaths, in spires, endlessly expressive, deceptive, fantastic, never the same from footstalks to blossom, they seem perpetually to tempt our watchfulness, and take delight in outstripping our wonder." Doubtless light is the factor with the greatest effect in determining the position ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al

... opportunity to understand, it seems sometimes as if we should never know their hearts. It seems as if we should never learn more of their ways than just the outside—that curiously varied outside which is so deceptive, and which is so apt to prevent our understanding that they are men just as we are, and not strange creations ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding

... paper a detailed account of the method used by the doctor. I will state that since that time I have very successfully operated this same test, minus the bowl of water and flame of fire; and that I can assure all that it is very practicable and that it is very deceptive. ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne

... That on the billows play With sweet deceptive ray, Where in glad choral song Shout the exulting throng; Where on ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe

... behind such a stretch of ice she could scarcely get a sea or swell without warning. It looks a wonderfully comfortable little nook, but, of course, one can be certain of nothing in this place; one knows from experience how deceptive the appearance of security may be. Pennell is truly excellent in his present position—he's invariably cheerful, unceasingly watchful, and continuously ready for emergencies. I have come to possess ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott

... to personal pronouns. But there are no terms in common use which have so rough and loose a meaning, which cover so equivocal and confused an experience; albeit the necessity and frequency of their use has made them standard currency and polished them into a sort of deceptive smoothness to the touch. There is no term so altogether handy as the term "I," nor is there any so embarrassed when called on to show its credentials in the shape of clear and verifiable experience. If, then, you stand upon your interests I shall not be convinced, for I shall {58} not know what ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry

... her hands tightly together, so tightly that she reduces the feathers on the fan she is holding to their last gasp. Because she is now disappointed in him; because he has proved himself, perhaps, unstable, deceptive to the heart's core, is she to vilify, him? A thousand times no! That would be, indeed, ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford

... can be found a posteriori by groping in the dim and deceptive light cast by an effect: or a process of exhaustion and elimination may be set up in which the qualities common to each side are cancelled and the result attributed to the credit balance which will appear under ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited

... he, "Brassfield is absolutely the most deceptive josher I ever saw. He had me going just now by pretending that he was about to publish a platform of principles, and a statement of campaign disbursements. So blooming solemn it gave me the shivers for a minute. List of disbursements: think ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick

... the land which they were sent to deliver. But the Goths grew weaker: they never recovered their losses before Rome. At last Belisarius got hold of Ravenna—not by capture, but after long negotiations, on both sides deceptive. Belisarius made the Goths believe that he would set himself at their head, and construct a new western empire. Vitiges, whether he trusted him or not, came to terms with him. Belisarius proclaimed Justinian emperor. The German ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies

... can be made with ease. Sometimes the water descends with a smooth, unruffled surface from the broad, quiet spread above into the narrow, angry channel below by a semicircular sag. Great care must be taken not to pass over the brink into this deceptive pit, but above it we can row with safety. I walk along the bank to examine the ground, leaving one of my men with a flag to guide the other boats to the landing-place. I soon see one of the boats make ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell

... tendency of the system. No one who has either reflected on the matter or observed the actual working of the system can honestly suppose that it is. It is a notorious fact that, as a general rule, wherever this system exists, the slave is indolent, deceptive, dishonest, improvident, not to be trusted away from the eyes ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various

... The same deceptive appearance of concord between King and Pope (p. 298) was employed to lull both Parliament and Convocation. The delays in the divorce suit disheartened Catherine's adherents. The Pope, wrote Chapuys, would lose his authority little by little, unless the case were decided at once;[831] every one, ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard

... turned quickly and looked at her father; then she bestowed her attention once more upon the Albula. "To be sure," resumed M. Moriaz, stroking his whiskers with the head of his cane, "Camille is just the man to make his way through difficulties. He has a youthful air that is very deceptive, but he always has been astonishingly precocious. At twenty years of age he became head of his class at the Central School; but the best thing about him is that, although in possession of a fortune, yet he has a passion for work. The rich man ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez

... legs covered as protection against stings or scratches. Don't ever forget to wear some kind of shoes in the water. Even though you're wearing a mask or goggles, take along a gig or some slender stick and feel your way along so you don't fall into a hole you can't see in the deceptive near-tropical waters. If, despite precautions, you get a sea urchin's needlelike spine broken off in your skin, soak the wound in vinegar which will dissolve the fragments and stop the pain in a ...
— Let's collect rocks & shells • Shell Oil Company

... the story that Mr. H—— related to me. While he was telling it, a gentle wind arose; the miniature sloops drifted feebly about the ocean; the wretched owners flew from point to point, as the deceptive breeze promised to waft the barks to either shore; the early robins trilled now and then from the newly fringed elms; and the old young man leaned on the rail in the sunshine, wearily, little dreaming ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various

... impossible to untie and which genius ought to cut. Far from accepting the pettiness of middle-class existence, she was angry at the delay which kept the great things of life from her grasp,—blaming fate as deceptive. Celestine sincerely believed herself a superior woman. Perhaps she was right; perhaps she would have been great under great circumstances; perhaps she was not in her right place. Let us remember ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac

... curious coincidence," said Queed, with great but deceptive mildness, "that Fifi said much the same thing to me, though in quite ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... are easily detected, if one uses as a guide the simpler narrative of the "Saga of Eric the Red," the only doubtful part of which is the "uniped" episode, a touch of mediaeval superstition so palpable as not to be deceptive. ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various

... endeavoring to make war from our shores, to urge our people into the fight which they avoid, and to embroil this Government in complications and possible hostilities with Spain. It can scarce be doubted that this last result is the real object of these parties, although carefully covered under the deceptive and apparently plausible demand for a mere ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson

... follow Saul through all the achievements and crimes of his eventful reign; the abandonment of him by the grieved and indignant Samuel; his deceptive prosperity; and his conscious desertion by God, until his fits of depression bordered on madness. He had genius and heroism, but a bad heart, and the hour of his ...
— Half Hours in Bible Lands, Volume 2 - Patriarchs, Kings, and Kingdoms • Rev. P. C. Headley

... yielded, when the majority of the chiefs favored Piqua instead of Chillicothe, but now he would certainly hold them to the agreement. The trail led on unceasingly, but the brightening of the skies was deceptive. The clouds soon closed in again, heavier and blacker than ever. Although it was only mid-afternoon it became almost as dark as night. Then the lightning began to play in swift flashes, so bright that the men were dazzled, and the thunder cracked and roared ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler

... has come home, safe and sound.... I had a letter from Alan Craig this morning. He is at Grey House now." He paused, puzzled. She was taking it so much more calmly than he had expected. The room was dusky and the fire-light deceptive, so he could hardly read her face. But presently he descried the glint of tears, and next moment she drooped and hid her eyes ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell

... eighty-pound collie has no chance against a six-hundred-pound pig. The pig's hide, for one thing, is too thick to pierce with an average slash or nip: And the pig is too close to earth and too well-balanced by build and weight, to be overturned: And the tushes and forefeet can move with deceptive quickness. Also, back of the red-rimmed little eyes flickers ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune

... massive-looking parish church, with its Norman tower, so sturdily built that its height seems scarcely greater than its breadth. There is surely no other church with such a ponderous exterior that is so completely deceptive as to its internal aspect, for St. Mary's contains the most remarkable series of beehive-like galleries that were ever crammed into a parish church. They are not merely very wide and ill-arranged, but they are superposed one above the other. The free ...
— Yorkshire—Coast & Moorland Scenes • Gordon Home

... suspicion that a bad motive lurks under every question which is put to him. I heard a subdued bustle coming from the right hand in the distance, and I ran hastily to the other end of the great empty place, seeing, as I thought, an opening. Vain delusion! Deceptive dream of the fancy! There was a glass window through which I looked and saw a street thronged with passengers and vehicles. I hurried back again to find my way to the entrance of the station and there try another door, when I heard a bell ring violently—a loud groaning ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill

... right-minded person. But we must—I say we must," Landis raised her finger impressively, and repeated the words as though she intended at that moment to root out the evil with tooth and nail, "We must get rid of this deceptive tendency. It will have an evil effect on Exeter. Perhaps, in time, destroy ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird

... are) small floating islands, are carried out to sea with their numerous feathered inhabitants. More than once when a sail had been reported in the offing, it proved to be one of those masses of vegetation, the branches and large fan-shaped leaves of which presented a deceptive likeness to masts and sails. Those which can be seen are not dangerous; it is only the half-submerged logs, almost invisible, yet large enough to sink a ship, for which a careful look-out has to be kept, ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey

... jealousy employ the energies of the beings who inhabit the "good old town"—the borough is always good and old—and a man with a soul who really tried to dwell in the moral atmosphere of the community would infallibly be asphyxiated. Nowhere are appearances so deceptive; nowhere do the glamour of antiquity and the beauty of natural scenery draw the attention away from so vile a centre. I could excuse any man who became a pessimist after a long course of conversations ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman

... certain potion which has the power to pervert all the senses of everyone who drinks it. Nothing is apprehended truly. Sight and hearing and taste are all disordered, and the victim is all unconscious of the confusion. The deadly draught is the minister of deceptive chaos. ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett

... any other part. I have sometimes thought that the earth and fragments of stone on the surface were perhaps less effectually removed by slowly percolating snow-water than by rain, and therefore that the appearance of a quicker disintegration of the solid rock under the snow was deceptive. (15/2. I have heard it remarked in Shropshire that the water, when the Severn is flooded from long-continued rain, is much more turbid than when it proceeds from the snow melting on the Welsh mountains. D'Orbigny ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin

... autumnal months; and their brightest sunshine is, after all, only a deceptive radiance when compared to the full glory of July. The weather grew too cold for the drawing-lessons under the elms, and there could be no more appointments made between Miss ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... little pool. The next day whilst Luck prospected I returned to the pool with a gun, and, building a hide of bushes, waited all day. Towards evening two fine emus came stalking along, and I shot one. By the time I had him skinned and the legs cut off it was dark. A most deceptive bird is an emu, for in reality he has but little meat on his body. The legs, that is the thighs, are the only parts worth taking, so shouldering these I started for camp a couple of miles off. It was pretty late when I got back, and found Luck ringing a camel-bell violently ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie

... shadowy, unreal. They are the creation of the mind itself, the web it weaves from its own gossamer substance; and beyond this are nothing. Space and time, or, as Koheleth expresses it, the universe and eternity, were placed in our consciousness from the very first, and are as deceptive as the mirage of the desert.[124] Kant would define them to be functions of the brain. A projection of the organ of human thought, the world is woven of three threads—space, time, and causality—which, being identical with the mind, appear and vanish with it. The one underlying ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon

... while committing arson and taken in the very act, in spite of his cleverness and his equally great luck, and it was to this circumstance that my father, who had been talked into going security by all sorts of cunning deceptive promises, owed the few years of quiet possession which he enjoyed during his ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various

... do with it, and expected to see her brighten up when he arrived. He did not come at all, however, and only once at table did she show any sign of the genuine intellectual activity which I was now pretty sure was either concealed or slumbering in these moods. The sign she made was deceptive, and probably only a man of my profession, accustomed to observe, and often obliged to judge more by indications of emotion than by words, would have recognized its true significance. In the midst of her chatter she became ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... of the Clementine Homilies shows conspicuously the extremely deceptive character of the argument from silence. All the quotations from the Old Testament found in them are taken from five Homilies (iii, xi, xvi, xvii, xviii) out of nineteen, although the Homilies are lengthy compositions, filling, with the translation and various readings, ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday

... the usual series of disturbances, with some facts which indicate a prospect of repose; but all such prospects in the Spanish states of this continent are apt to be deceptive. The birthday of Bolivar was celebrated at Caracas on the 28th of October with great public festivities. Treaties between Brazil and Uruguay were formed for alliance, military aid, commerce and navigation, and the mutual surrender of criminals, on ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various

... Mantua, to present it to him. Unwilling to part with so great a pictorial prize and unwilling also to disoblige the duke, Ottaviano got Andrea to make the copy, which was consigned to the duke as being the original. So deceptive was the imitation that even Giulio Romano, who had himself manipulated the original to some extent, was completely taken in; and, on showing the supposed Raphael years afterwards to Vasari, who knew the facts, he could only be undeceived when, a private mark ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... despise your books, I despise wisdom and the blessings of this world. It is all worthless, fleeting, illusory, and deceptive, like a mirage. You may be proud, wise, and fine, but death will wipe you off the face of the earth as though you were no more than mice burrowing under the floor, and your posterity, your history, your immortal geniuses will burn or freeze together ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... Indian-summer days that resemble early spring. There is the same suggestion of warmer sunshine yet to come; the air has a scent as of growing things, the kind of muffled hopes and suppressed excitement of April is in the deceptive air. This sort of day is dangerous to charming people not in their ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson

... government which is not of men but of laws, until one of us happens to be arrested (by mistake, of course) and learns by sad experience the practical methods of the police in dealing with criminals and the agreeable but deceptive character of the pleasant fiction ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train

... General Scott, that further bloodshed might be avoided by means of the armistice, proved deceptive. Military operations, after a temporary interruption, were actively renewed; and on the 8th of September was fought the bloody battle of Molino del Rey, one of the fiercest and most destructive of ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... performed by, ib.; miraculously multiplied, 241; anecdote of a box of, presented by the Pope to Prince Radzivil, ib.; Frederick the Wise, a great collector of, 242; phial of the blood of Christ sent to Henry III., ib.; fall in price of, ib.; deceptive, 243. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... fir-trees raised their heads among the beech and oaks. He cut a cross [image: anti-clockwise swastika] thus, on each one of them, because trees are so deceptive. This mark is the old symbol of the Mithras cult, two axes placed sideways signifying the striking of fire. It is an old sign known and respected by the fairies; so he hoped that the good folk would see it and further ...
— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt

... "Johnny." When finally, he hung out his shingle in Chicago: "Robertson R. Rigby, Attorney-at-Law," he lost his identity even among his classmates. It was weeks before the fact became generally known that it was Bobby who waited for clients behind the deceptive shingle. ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon

... pardon, Mr. Bramshaw," and the girl made him a slight graceful bow, "I really forgot that you are an artist. Appearances are so deceptive, you know. I shall leave you now to carry on your imbibing process. Perhaps Miss Sinclair will come with me, so that you can have the imbibing time all to yourself. It would be a pity to spoil ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody

... the destinies of the British Empire either had no eye for the triumphant progress of the German campaign that had been going forward for years unchecked, or, if they discerned any of its episodes, saw them only through the softening and distorting medium of deceptive assurances and explanations emanating from Berlin. And on the strength of these illusive phrases they kept the country in a state of unpreparedness for the military form of the struggle for which our enemy was making ready, ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon

... there, for tightening his grip upon this enterprise, for dumping his associates in that, for escaping with all the valuable assets from another. His appearance, as he and his nag dozed along the highroad, was as deceptive as that of a hive of bees on a hot day—no signs of life except a few sleepy workers crawling languidly in and out at the low, broad crack-door, yet within myriads ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips

... for some while with a boisterous and powerful young nephew, gradually realises that he is becoming too rough for her, is, as everybody knows, one of tremulous expectancy, in which a half-frightened flickering smile plays only a deceptive and scarcely convincing part in concealing the feelings of anxiety and disapproval that lie ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici

... this reason at the very last I added a goodly amount of fingering and pedal marks; kindly get the printers to excuse this, and I trust that the trouble it causes will not prove superfluous.—With regard to the deceptive Termpo rubato, I have settled the matter provisionally in a brief note (in the finale of Weber's A flat major Sonata); other occurrences of the rubato may be left to the taste and momentary feeling of gifted players. A metronomical performance is certainly tiresome and nonsensical; time and ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated

... to-morrow I will be exorcised by some priest or sophist. 'Go on; I am anxious to hear the rest.' Now that we have a general notion, how shall we proceed? What names will afford the most crucial test of natural fitness? Those of heroes and ordinary men are often deceptive, because they are patronymics or expressions of a wish; let us try gods and demi-gods. Gods are so called, apo tou thein, from the verb 'to run;' because the sun, moon, and stars run about the heaven; and they being the original gods of the Hellenes, ...
— Cratylus • Plato

... the cliffs below Kerselec with Goulven, looking out over the sombre moors among which I had now lost my way, these downs had appeared to me level as a meadow, stretching to the horizon, and although I knew how deceptive is distance, I could not realize that what from Kerselec seemed to be mere grassy hollows were great valleys covered with gorse and heather, and what looked like scattered boulders were in reality enormous cliffs ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers

... it must come very soon. The signs of the times are not deceptive. Our resurrection may be nearer than we imagine; and until then, Marie, let us endure ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai

... conviction seemed to open before me a vast and uncertain expanse, as of a crepuscular horizon on a plain at dawn—or was it, perchance, at the coming of the night? One had not the courage to decide; but it was a charming and deceptive light, throwing the impalpable poesy of its dimness over pitfalls—over graves. His life had begun in sacrifice, in enthusiasm for generous ideas; he had travelled very far, on various ways, on strange paths, and whatever he followed it had been without ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad

... though he sat beside her, seemed distant and strange and estranged, for his language was not hers; and still he was happy. For happiness, he told himself, is not being loved; that is satisfied vanity mingled with repugnance. Happiness consists in loving and snatching up perhaps tiny, deceptive approaches to the loved object. And he noted down this idea inwardly, thought it out in its entirety, and tasted it ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various

... their courage and send them, laden like beasts of burden, up once more to that hell of blood and mud, of nerve-shattering shell, of blinding glare and ear-bursting roar of gun fire, and, worse than all, to the place where, crouching in the farcical deceptive shelter of the sandbagged trench, their fingers gripping into the steel of their rifle hands, they would wait for the zero hour. But as the weeks passed and the orders failed to come they passed from that bewildering and subconscious ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor

... of a divine life, which matters. "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you." The most holy is the most Christian; this will always be the criterion which is least deceptive. "By this ye shall know my disciples, if they have love ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... of this marked difference in the dispensation of an avenging Providence to the two principal parties concerned, was obviously this; the woman was first in the transgression, and after listening to the deceptive counsel of her adversary, tempted when she ought to have warned her husband. It appears consonant to every principle of equity, that the atrociousness of her guilt should be characterized by appropriate expressions of displeasure; and that, in the future condition ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox

... love— Oh, I don't mean there is no marrying for love." He laughed in the shocked, wide-opened eyes. "I mean there is nothing so deceptive as love's counterfeit, and other considerations masquerade under it unguessed, perhaps. Many men and women are, doubtless, honest in thinking when they marry that they love each other, but if they live long enough a large ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher

... explorer, who has left his name on the most important island of the North Pacific coast, baffled by the deceptive appearances of the two capes that guard the way to a noble stream (Cape Disappointment and Cape Deception), passed them without a thought. But Captain Gray, sailing the good ship "Columbia," of Boston, who coasted those shores for more than two years, fully ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks

... said indignantly to the professor. 'You have no eyes for the Immaterial, the intangibly Ideal, that lies behind the shadowy and deceptive ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang

... five of the ten stamens have ceased to produce pollen, but are prolonged into fingers, each terminating in a shining yellow knob, which looks exactly like a drop of honey, and by which Flies are continually deceived. Paris quadrifolia also takes them in with a deceptive promise of the same kind. Some foreign plants have livid yellow and reddish flowers, with a most offensive smell, and are constantly visited by Flies, which apparently take them for ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock

... Hogg, we must believe, puts in two stanzas (xv., xviii.), of the lowliest order of printed stall-copy or "gangrel scrape-gut" style, and the same with intent to deceive. He introduces "Billop-Grace" as a deceptive popular corruption of Ville de Grace. This is far beyond any craft that I have found in the most artful modern "fakers." One ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang

... breaking very heavily, rendered it impossible to take a boat across without evident risk, by which no real good would be obtained, as the rise and fall of the tide, eighteen feet, on this low coast, was more than sufficient to account for the imposing, though deceptive appearance of this opening. From the main-top-gallant yard I was enabled to take an almost bird's-eye view of the level country stretched apparently at my feet. The shore, like the south side of Roebuck Bay, was fringed with mangroves, ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes

... descent from Adam downward, and his whole private fortune to the last shilling.' A responsible solid fellow was even so much moved by pity for my inexperience as to give me a word or two of good advice: that I was but a young man after all—I had at this time a deceptive air of youth that made me easily pass for one-and-twenty, and was, in the circumstances, worth a fortune—that the company at inns was very mingled, that I should do well to be more careful, and the like; to all which I made answer that I meant no harm myself and expected none ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson

... assassinated in a brothel. But the list of the calamities of all these worthies have as great variety as those of the Seven Champions.[18] Nor were the stationers, or book-venders, as the publishers of books were first designated, at a fault in the mysteries of "coney-catching." Deceptive and vaunting title-pages were practised to such excess, that TOM NASH, an "Author by Profession," never fastidiously modest, blushed at the title of his "Pierce Pennilesse," which the publisher had flourished in the first edition, like "a tedious mountebank." The booksellers forged great names ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... line of great rounded blocks, piled on the summit of a vertical cliff, at the height of fifteen feet above the line, where the sea now acts during the heaviest gales. This appeared, at first, good evidence in favour of the elevation of the land; but it was quite deceptive, for I afterwards saw on an adjoining part of this same coast, and heard from eye- witnesses, that wherever a recent stream of lava forms a smooth inclined plane, entering the sea, the waves during gales have the power of ROLLING UP ROUNDED blocks to a great ...
— Volcanic Islands • Charles Darwin

... of machination It constitutes a moral obligation, And honest wolves who think upon't with loathing Feel bound to don the sheep's deceptive clothing. So prospers still the diplomatic art, And Satan bows, ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce

... has a curious quality, a most unmilitary gentleness. Pendleton, when he gets you in a corner, purrs to you alone; yet you feel that he has claws. His voice rings on the parade ground; I'm sure of it. I can't make out what Captain Kirby's would sound like. There is a deceptive sympathy to it, deceptive because I feel in him much purpose. When an army officer can't flirt he either likes his profession too little or he ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French

... you that I should not have accepted; my heart, if not my head, should have revolted at this deceptive thought. But what did I know. A strange fatality, perhaps a frightful egotism, pushed me on. I accepted. I pressed Sidney in my arms, I took his clothes, and I said to him, 'To-morrow!' with the conviction ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue

... waiting.... Their movements being impeded by the hair pins on their legs they offered an apparently easy PRIZE to the superstitious Islamites.... Abandoning their present enterprise against our party they dashed after the deceptive animals and disappeared over the hills in a mad scamper for GOOD LUCK.... This little ruse cleared our pathway and permitted us to reach Saspoula before the sun had set.... Here we passed a number of shrines besides the French and Thibetan convents.... Avoiding the convent with the tri-color ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe

... a path across the snow, or fellows are very likely to lose their way. We lost ours, but we had a good lark on the snow snowballing. It got deep in one part, so we had to clamber up the rocks at the side to get to the top of the slope. It's rather deceptive, distance, on the snow, for it took us an hour to do what seemed only a few yards. We got on to a flat bit after awhile, and had another turn ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... as well can be!"— Take care! La Grippe's deceptive dontcher see, Beware! Beware! Trust it not, 'Twill ...
— Punch, Or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, Feb. 13, 1892 • Various

... helped me no more than the moaning of the wind; he explained the absolute necessity (for salvation) of certain beliefs and written sentences, and ceremonials in the Church. Love was not the way. Love was emotion, emotion was deceptive: the mind, and severe firm attention to the dictates of The Church was what was required; in fact, he unfolded before me the Ecclesiastical Mind. I shrank back from it, dismayed, frightened. Were ...
— The Prodigal Returns • Lilian Staveley

... as I can," I whispered, as it struck me that distances seemed to be more deceptive ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn

... his seat, reins sagging. He was a man of powerful physique, his skin deep coppered by long exposure to prairie winds and sun. In repose the face that was shadowed by the wide felt hat would have appeared somewhat deceptive in its placidity owing to the fact that the strong jaw and firm mouth were partly hidden by a heavy moustache and a ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse

... of ferocity in the speaker's face, that rendered his countenance terrible. Even Crowsfeather quailed a little before that fierce aspect; but the whole passed away almost as soon as betrayed, and was succeeded by a friendly and deceptive smile, that was characteristic of the wily Asiatic rather than of ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper

... tree-trunks and about the platform of the house, which seemed to float upon a restless and impalpable illusion of a sea. Only far away the tops of the trees stood outlined on the twinkle of heaven, like a sombre and forbidding shore—a coast deceptive, pitiless and black. ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad

... rather dubiously, his frank, wide-open eyes regarding me in that naive manner which was so deceptive. ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer

... than width. After having seen how frequently banks of sediment in the West Indian Sea are fringed by reefs, we can readily conceive that bars of sediment might be greatly aided in their formation along a line of coast, by the growth of corals; and such bars would, in that case, have a deceptive resemblance with ...
— Coral Reefs • Charles Darwin

... same time, this same love of praise is one of our most besetting and fatal temptations as long as we are in this false and double and deceptive world. Sin, God curse it! has corrupted and poisoned everything, the very best things of this life, and when the best things are corrupted and poisoned they become the worst things. And praise does not escape ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte

... but whiskers and moustache, very dark brown; and, in strange contrast, grey-blue eyes. Over these eyes, too light in colour to match the hair, the eyelids drooped a little, giving to them that partially- closed sleepy appearance which is often deceptive. Just now they were studying the girl standing before him with very keen interest. A slender girl, not quite sixteen years old, in a loose and broad-sleeved olive- green dress, and yellow scarf at ...
— Fan • Henry Harford

... conclusions with the artificial, as do the real artists of life. The angry and reverent spirit peculiar to youth appears to allow itself no peace, until it has suitably falsified men and things, to be able to vent its passion upon them: youth in itself even, is something falsifying and deceptive. Later on, when the young soul, tortured by continual disillusions, finally turns suspiciously against itself—still ardent and savage even in its suspicion and remorse of conscience: how it upbraids itself, how impatiently ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche

... quarter. He in turn passed it to the back, who got in a perfect kick that sent it far down the field and close to the enemy's goal. One of the 'Greys' made a grab at it, but it was one of those twisting deceptive punts and bounded out of his hands down toward the southern line. One of his mates was just behind him and, quick as lightning, he caught the ball on the bound, tucked it under his arm and scooted down the field toward ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield

... shades—cut the upper end so you need not be tempted to use too long needlefuls, and there your wools are neatly put away, and soon you can distinguish any shade by its position in the case, no matter how deceptive the lamp-light may be. Still, you will not need your case till you have a dozen different colors. If you buy your wools at first by the dozen, which is the cheaper way, be sure that your pinks, blues, greens, etc., have, so far as may be, ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... lover of this world and its vanities. I was self-righteous, and thought I had religion of my own which was better than that of the Bible. I did not know God, and did not serve him. Prayer was forgotten, public worship neglected; and worldly morality was the tree which brought forth its own deceptive fruit. ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous



Words linked to "Deceptive" :   unreal, deceive, delusory, deceptiveness, dishonest, dishonorable



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