"Gullible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to help out certain unsubtle "complications." If I mistake not, these very novels are beginning to pall, as such stupid, meaningless vaporings should do. One cannot resist the belief that one-half of them are written with an eye upon the gullible playwright, for a play means larger remuneration than any novel could ever hope ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... of being the wealthiest in Ionia, was quite cleared out. No sooner was this the case, than Chariclea abandoned Dinias, and went off in pursuit of a certain golden youth of Crete, irresistible as he, and not less gullible. Deserted alike by her and by his parasites (who followed the chase of the fortunate Cretan), Dinias presented himself before Agathocles, who had long been aware of his friend's situation. He swallowed his first feelings of embarrassment, and made ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... gaining money. These involve methods which are not always straight-forward; yet, since he believes in the success of what he advocates, he is not absolutely unprincipled, though he does not mind to some extent gulling the gullible. His chief aim is to trick his creditors—themselves, as it happens, not worthy of much pity; and, himself kind-hearted, loving his wife and daughter, and not a libertine, he appeals to the sympathies of the reader or the audience. Most of the amusement of the play—and it is very amusing ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... abnormally so. It may be, as McDougall suggests, that they have so large an amount of submission or negative self-feeling in their make-up that they believe anything, just because some one else says it is true. Sometimes it is lack of knowledge that makes us gullible, and at other times the cause of our suggestibility is failure to use the knowledge that we have. Sometimes our ideas are locked away in air-tight compartments with no interaction between them. The psychologists tell us that suggestion is greatly favored by a narrowing of the attention, ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... confidence and breeds discord. Many a good, honest, piratical enterprise has been busted up by concealment and lack of confidence. Always trust your fellow pirates,—especially in things they know all about by extrinsic evidence,—and keep concealment for the great world of the unsophisticated and gullible, and to catch the sucker vote with. But among ourselves, my beloved, fidelity to truth, and openness of heart is the first rule, right out of Hoyle. With dry powder, mutual confidence, and sharp cutlasses, we are invincible; and ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... taken place. Words had become bodied, the unseen was becoming the visible—Responsibility, Honesty, Fairness, Truth! they had all been words to conjure with—for use in political speeches, in interviews—because they seemed to exercise an occult influence upon the gullible public. "Law," "Peace," "Order," "The Greatest Good to the Greatest Number," he had used them all as an Indian medicine-man shakes bone rattles, and waves a cow's tail before the tribe, laughing behind his gaping mask at ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... Sherwood, "this may be merely a scheme by unprincipled people to filch small sums of money from gullible people. The 'foreign legacy swindle' is worked in many different ways. There may be calls for money, by this man who names himself Andrew Blake, for preliminary work on the case. We haven't much; but if he is baiting for hundreds ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... Desiree woman is concerned," said Harry, and his tone began to show impatience, "I can only repeat that I have never heard of the creature. And"—he continued—"if you're trying to bamboozle a gullible world by concocting a tale as silly as your remarks to me would seem to indicate, I will say that as a cheap author you are taking undue liberties with your family, meaning myself. And what is more, if ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... extent that they elected him king, and for several years he ruled over them. Then the Chilians started a war and Orelie I decamped. In Paris he still calls himself King of Araucania, and makes a precarious living by selling titles of nobility to gullible or vain people. ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various
... should have it. But it did not come in. No wonder, considering that it was owed by the loafers and ne'er-do-wells of the town and surrounding country, who, because no one else would trust them, bestowed their custom upon good-natured, gullible Captain Dan. The more recent letters from the hat dealers had been sharper and less kindly. They had ceased to request; they demanded. At last they had threatened. And now the threat was to ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... sauce that has disguised its real flavor. Anything in the Bible, no matter how raw, is taken as God's food. It is used to demonstrate problems of diet which do not provide a balanced ration; it is accepted by the gullible though contradicted by the revelations of Geology, Astronomy, Anthropology, Zoology, and Biology. Taken as prescribed by the doctors of divinity, the Bible is a ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... show the goods; but clerks were expected and instructed to use persuasion, to expatiate on quality and beauty, and to take less than they first asked. The cost price was marked with secret characters; the selling price was variable. The more you could get out of a gullible customer, the better; and he who could get the most was the smartest clerk. A thrifty purchaser would beat down the price little by little, the sharp clerk yielding with many protestations until a last offer was made, when, with feigned hesitation, the ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... compensations in which nature seems now and then to make a struggle to adjust the average of human characteristics with something approaching fairness, Snaffle was hardly less gullible than he was skilful in ensnaring others. He was continually making a fortune by launching some bogus stock or other, but it seemed always to be fated that he should lose it again in some equally wild scheme started ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... rush to a conclusion; think the moon is made of green cheese; take for granted, grasp the shadow for the substance; catch at straws, grasp at straws. impose upon &c. (deceive) 545. Adj. credulous, gullible; easily deceived &c. 545; simple, green, soft, childish, silly, stupid; easily convinced; over-credulous, over confident, over trustful; infatuated, superstitious; confiding &c. (believing) 484. Phr. the wish the father to the thought; credo quia ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... meteor-wise across the world with his huge scheme to finance France out of difficulty with his Mississippi Bubble. Among other considerations mentioned in the charter for twenty-five years, which he obtained from the gullible French government, was the stipulation that before the expiration of the charter, he must transport to Louisiana six thousand white persons, and three thousand Negroes, not to be brought from another French colony. These slaves, so said the charter, were to be sold to those ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... magicians attempt nowadays. Ministers of the apostolic succession cannot cast out devils or take up serpents, and they are affected by deadly drinks the same as others. Jesus had a primitive idea of the value of such magic. Either he sought to deceive the gullible, or, as is more likely, was himself overcredulous. It is important to remember that Jesus stressed the value of enchantment and advised his successors to conjure in ...
— The Mistakes of Jesus • William Floyd
... great favorite with the young ladies, who would go to him in great numbers to get their fortunes told. And it was generally believed that he could really penetrate into the mysteries of futurity. Whether true or not, he had the name, and that is about half of what one needs in this gullible age. I found Uncle Frank seated in the chimney corner, about ten o'clock at night. As soon as I entered, the old man left his seat. I watched his movement as well as I could by the dim light of the ...
— The Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave • William Wells Brown
... habits of the members; for they gamed hard, drank hard, and talked hard, and lived so uncommonly fast, that it was not surprising that, though quite young, they should have many of the infirmities of age. To these worthies Bruin was an acquisition; for he was rich, ignorant, and gullible, whilst they were poor, grasping, and unscrupulous. At the very first interview, all parties were equally delighted with each other; the ease of his new companions' manners was perfectly charming to Bruin, who considered it as a proof of their breeding, and ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes
... GULLIBLE!—Since I saw you on Lake George, I have run back to London, and promptly come out again. I had business to transact there, indeed, which I have now completed; the excessive attentions of the English ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... not surprising that an actor like Flambeau, dressed as another priest, could lead him to Hampstead Heath. So far the crime seemed clear enough; and while the detective pitied the priest for his helplessness, he almost despised Flambeau for condescending to so gullible a victim. But when Valentin thought of all that had happened in between, of all that had led him to his triumph, he racked his brains for the smallest rhyme or reason in it. What had the stealing of a blue-and-silver cross from a priest ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... prayerfulness of which I was capable; but found it to be a heterogeneous conglomeration of words—mere words, a hodge podge of all the exploded philosophical, religious, and scientific heresies of the past ages, so cunningly jumbled that the gullible, unable to find any meaning to it, conclude that it is too profound for their comprehension, and unwilling to acknowledge the fact for fear of being called ignorant, solemnly pronounce ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... Juan Lanas: purely imaginary; name applied to a characterless, gullible person ...
— Ms vale maa que fuerza • Manuel Tamayo y Baus
... in the newspapers, copied from the paper of last year, saying that this is the most severe spring in thirty years. Every one, in fact, believes that it is, and also that next year the spring will be early. Man is the most gullible of creatures. ...
— Widger's Quotations of Charles D. Warner • David Widger
... of the butcher whether he had any cattle for sale, and arranged to meet him in the forest and pay 300 crowns in cash for 500 horned heads. But, when the gullible sheriff reached the trysting-spot, he was borne captive to Robin's camp, where the chief, mockingly pointing out the king's deer, bade him take possession of five hundred horned heads! Then he ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... of old, as the men of Taiarapu tell, A youth went forth to the fishing, and fortune favoured him well. Tamatea his name: gullible, simple, and kind, Comely of countenance, nimble of body, empty of mind, His mother ruled him and loved him beyond the wont of a wife, Serving the lad for eyes and living herself in his life. Alone ...
— Ballads • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of fish for two such smooth men as Barney and Old Jimmie when they've got a clever, good-looking girl as bait, and when they know how to use her. He's generous, easily impressed, thinks he is a wise man of the world and is really very gullible." ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... invitation to avail himself of a short cut out of his embarrassment. A mere scratch of a pen and he would have money enough to move on to some other Dallas, and there gain the start he needed—enough, at least, so that he could tip his waiter and pay cash for his Coronas. Business men are too gullible, any how; it would be a good lesson to Roswell and ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... who never submitted his proofs, but who found a credulous publisher and a gullible public. ...
— Who Was Who: 5000 B. C. to Date - Biographical Dictionary of the Famous and Those Who Wanted to Be • Anonymous
... for the Secret Service. They sent him over here. The fellow must have no end of pluck, for, as I dare say you know, they let him down from the observation car of a Zeppelin. He finds his way here all right, makes his silly little bargain with our dear but gullible womenkind, and sets himself to watch—to watch me, mind. The whole affair is too ridiculously transparent. For a time he can't bring himself even to touch my papers here, although, as it happens, they wouldn't have done him the least bit of good. It was only the stress and excitement of ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... representing Lydia in 1905, sitting in her laboratory at Lynn, Massachusetts, engrossed in assuaging the sufferings of ailing womanhood,—these are eloquent of the type of fraud perpetrated through the press upon a gullible public. ...
— Commercialism and Journalism • Hamilton Holt
... half way to his mouth. There was no superstition in the affair this time. The once gullible Dragoon, moreover, was playing all the leads. "Of course," Driscoll agreed heartily, "I'd certainly like it right well," and he went on eating. But his wits were in a receptive state, alert for the meaning when it should come. The opening innuendoes exasperated him, for ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... could not be shaken; his nerve never failed. He said a gentleman had hired him as a clerk, and that was all he knew. He had left him at the Stock Exchange; if they would let him go, he would try and find him and bring him around to the bank. J. Bull is gullible, but not so much so as to swallow ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... changed the object, and human nature, gullible ever, sees no reason why it should not flock in thousands to drop a visiting card into the tomb (so called) of "Juliet" at Verona, with as fond credulity as their fathers, when they deposited their candle at the tomb of some miracle-working saint; with this difference, however—that ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... one who appreciates least that it is due to the skill and intelligence of the medical men of to-day that he owes his comfort, his health, and his freedom from pestilence, plague and disease. Unthinking people laud and praise some upstart whose ability lies in his faculty to fool the gullible, or they will rush to seek the false aid of some nondescript science, because it is popular and well advertised, while they pass by or ignore the men whose labors have made the world what it is, and who alone possess the ability to intelligently wage the battle ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume IV. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • Grant Hague
... conditions. Usually many stems emerging from the ground, creating a low thicket. Maoriland: Lawson's name for New Zealand marine, dead: see dead mooching: wandering idly, not going anywhere in particular mug: gullible person, a con-man's 'mark' (potential victim) mulga: Acacia sp. ("wattle" in Australian) especially Acacia aneura; growing in semi-desert conditions. Used as a description of such a harsh region. mullock: the tailings left after gold has been removed. In Lawson ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... result, when the thing has been done, is not always entirely satisfactory either to the victorious individual or to the community at whose expense he has won his spoils. The prize of victory is wealth and buying power, and the means to victory is, in the main, providing an ignorant and gullible public with some article or service that it wants or can be persuaded to believe that it wants. The kind of person that is most successful in winning this kind of victory is not always one who is likely to make the best ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers
... Jadoo-wallah. I admit that Magic may have come originally from the East. The Egyptians for instance, had wonderful illusions that were freely used by their priests in the temples mainly for the extortion of money or valuables from their gullible disciples. These illusions were merely mechanical devices such as the mysterious opening and shutting of doors on the sound of a certain word like "Abracadabra." These devices can be duplicated by our skilful mechanics, but would not ...
— Indian Conjuring • L. H. Branson
... spectre knight, for genuine antiquities. No Edie Ochiltree ever revealed to him the truth about these forgeries, and the spectre knight, with the ballad of "Anthony Featherstonhaugh," hold their own in "Marmion," to assure the world that this antiquary was gullible when the sleight was practised by a friend. "Non est tanti," he would have said, had he learned the truth; for he was ever conscious of the humorous side of the study of the mouldering past. "I do not know anything which relieves the mind so much from the sullens as a trifling discourse ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... meekness which I felt was praiseworthy; "it is the feebleness of my capacity, bringing me nearer than you to the human average, that perhaps enables me to imagine certain results better than you can. Doubtless the very fishes of our rivers, gullible as they look, and slow as they are to be rightly convinced in another order of facts, form fewer false expectations about each other than we should form about them if we were in a position of somewhat fuller intercourse with their species; for even as it is we have continually ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... more, and, difficult as it appears to the intelligence of honest and commonplace folk, he went forth to prosper and live luxuriously—so gullible is the world, so ready and eager to be cheated and deceived. Sir Edward Lytton has somewhere declared that a single number of the 'Times' newspaper, taken at random, would be the very best and most complete picture of our daily ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... be congratulated on her engagement, mentioning the man whose attentions Marguerite had accepted as a heavenly dispensation. This was in Florence. The woman hurried away that day for London. The Grey One, just a gullible girl, was left half dead. When her lover came, she refused to see him. He wrote a letter which she foolishly sent back, unopened. And she returned to Paris—all this in the first shock.... She did not hear from him again for two years. Word came ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... position. I think your dear old party relies upon holding the regular party men out of loyalty and protection, and buying enough Democrats and crooks to get the majority. But I don't believe it can be done. The Republican organization is perfect, but the people are not as gullible as once they were. ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... William II. They go on saying the same old things. In different words they ask: "Isn't the young Emperor amusing?" (tis' a great word with us French people), and before long, they will be appealing to the gullible weaklings among us by suggesting "After all, why shouldn't he give us back Alsace-Lorraine?" And thus are being sown the seeds of our ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... attitude toward the newspaper, Queed was something like those eminent fellow-scientists of his who have set out to "expose" spiritualism and "the occult," and have ended as the most gullible customers of the most dubious of "mediums." The idea of being editor for its own sake, which he had once jeered and flouted, he had gradually come to consider with large respect. The work drew him amazingly; it was ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... beyond a readiness to poison all and sundry for a reward. Michael would be a murderer were he not a coward. Greene is a revengeful sleuth-hound, tracking his victim down relentlessly from place to place. Arden is a miser in business, and a weak, gullible fool at home, alternately raging with jealous suspicion, and fawning with fatuous trustfulness upon the man who is wronging him. Mosbie is a cold-blooded, underhand villain whose pious resolutions and protestations of love could only deceive those blinded by fate, and whose ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... door and motioned Barrent inside. Barrent paused, thinking about the stories he had heard of gullible citizens falling into mutant hands. Then he half-drew his ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... been away from them, but he laid it all to some startling necromancy on the part of Nora Black, some wondrous play which had captured them all because of its surpassing skill and because they were, in the main, rather gullible people. He was wrong. The magic had been wrought by the unaided foolishness of Mrs. Wainwfight. As soon as Nora Black had succeeded in creating an effect of intimacy and dependence between herself and Coleman, the professor had flatly stated to his wife that the presence of Nora Black ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... going beyond all the rest in audacity, had the impudence to offer stock for sale in an enterprise "which shall be revealed hereafter." He found the public so gullible and so greedy that he sold 2000 pounds worth of the new stock in the course of a single morning. He then prudently disappeard with the cash, and the unfortunate investors found that where he went with their money was not among the things to "be ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... policy of fraud in place of that of violence. The people were gullible; they might be made to believe that the senators of Rome were their best friends. A rich and eloquent politician, Drusus by name, proposed measures more democratic even than those which Gracchus had advocated. This effort had the effect that was intended. ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... a sudden attack. Jacot doubted this, however, since the strangers were evidently making no attempt to conceal their presence. They were galloping rapidly toward the camp in plain view of all. There might be treachery lurking beneath their fair appearance; but none who knew The Hawk would be so gullible as to hope to trap ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... hanging? Do you know that he was not dead before he was hung? If that is the case, then obviously, he could not have hung himself. Perfectly astonishing to me, Mr. Hale, that a man who has followed your profession as long as you have should be so gullible. For that matter, do you know those ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... his house attacked at night, presumably while he was at home; but he had felt that it was not necessary for him to stay there to make sure. Lawless men of this class were sometimes exceedingly simple and gullible. ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... lack of knowledge, and upon the tendency of human nature to give credence to widely advertised and high-sounding descriptions and specious promises of vast profits, these men find little difficulty in conjuring money out of the pockets of the unsophisticated and gullible, who rush to become stockholders in concerns that have "airy nothings" for a foundation, and that collapse quickly when ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... open her eyes. "I know the puppy. He is what is called a divine nowadays; but used to be called a skeptic. There never was so infidel an age. Socinus was content to prove Jesus Christ a man; but Renan has gone and proved him a Frenchman. Nothing is so gullible as an unbeliever. The right reverend father in God, Cocker, has gnawed away the Old Testament: the Oxford doctors are nibbling away the New: nothing escapes but the apocrypha: yet these same skeptics believe the impudent lies, and monstrous ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... and mercantile place as Manila a title without rent-roll, or grandeur, or anything of the nature of an employment, or Cross of Maria Christina, or rewards such as have been showered broadcast by three Captain-Generals would, in Philippine circles, make me appear as the gullible boy and the laughing-stock of my fellows. To express my private opinion, I aspire, above all, to the preservation of my name and prestige, and if I were asked to renounce them for a childish prize, even though it be called a title of Castile, despised by serious statesmen in Europe, I think ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... while the good they do is microscopic and the number of converts or "rice-Christians" coincides with the amount of alms distributed, and who, when nothing further is to be acquired, revert to the faith, or indifference, of their forefathers. Building fine residences with the funds provided by gullible folks at home, and constructing diminutive churches with the few remaining bricks, drawing fat salaries which increase pari passu with the number of their children, and taking long summer holidays in Japan or in the mountains when business men must be hard at work, nothing but ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... cowardly creature, always howling about the Boer, but too discreet to go out and fight him, though ready at all times to malign him, to ridicule him as a farmer or a fighter, and it is a perfect bear's feast to this hybrid animal to get hold of a gullible newspaper correspondent to tell him gruesome tales relative ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... Smith," urged Mr. Tescheron, whose ideas had been strengthened by the tonic of Smith's stimulating rejoinder, and I may add that the turn was about what Smith had planned to happen. "What are those papers you put back in your pocket?" The observing, gullible man of business was trying to swim where the current was a little too ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... old gentlemen kept on shaking their heads all the first week, and saying they had seen no marvels there that could not have been produced by collusion; and they were pretty vain of their unbelief, too, and liked to show it and air it, and be superior to the ignorant and the gullible. Particularly old Dr. Peake, who was the ringleader of the irreconcilables, and very formidable; for he was an F.F.V., he was learned, white-haired and venerable, nobly and richly clad in the fashions of ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... the general trend of the character of the city and its people. There were the same busy mechanics, barbers, traders, wayside cooks, traveling fortune-tellers, and lusty coolies; the wag doctor, the bane of the gullible, was there to drive his iniquitous living; now and then the scene's monotony was disturbed by the presence of the chair and the retinue of a city mandarin. Yet with all the hurry and din, the hurrying and the scurrying in doing and driving ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... could do that. He's absolutely gullible. He'd swallow anything. I say, how do you explain it? Why is it that big-brained, well-balanced men ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... when the rising generation was more easily amused and not quite so wide-awake as at present. The point of the narrative is, that a facetious old gentleman named Captain Compass beguiles a group of juveniles—who must have been singularly gullible even for those early days—by describing in mysterious and alien-sounding terms the commonest home objects, such as coals, cheese, butter, and so on. It would almost seem as though Hood must have been perpetrating a kindred joke upon grown-up ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... thee and me," he went on, "and not for publication, was this Jeddy Conway, as you knew him, all that your eminent citizenry would lead a poor gullible stranger to believe, or was he just a small-sized edition of the full-blown crook he happens to be at the present stage of developments? Not that it makes any difference here," he tapped the big notebook under his arm, "but I'm just curious, a little, because the Jed The Red whom I happen to know ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... consideration Grandmother Penny's adventuresome spirit; he had also neglected to avail himself of the information that a certain Mr. Baxter, registered from Boston, was at the hotel, and that his business was selling shares of stock in a mine which did not exist to gullible folks who wanted to become wealthy without spending any labor in the process. He did a thriving business. It was Coldriver's first experience with this particular method of extracting money from ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... the recollection of recent defeat, it is not strange that I thought I detected the old political ruse of dressing the wolf in sheep's clothing, of using handsome pledges as a mask to deceive the gullible, and that I assumed that this scholarly amateur in politics was being used for their own purposes by masters and veterans in the old ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... less than half a league, Natt had realized that Paul Ritson himself had driven the mare to the station in order that he might be there to come home at eight o'clock, and thus complete the deception which he had practiced on gullible and slow-witted persons. But in his satisfaction at this explanation Natt overlooked the trifling difficulty of how the trap had been got ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... but wait in the hope that either information about Edward S. would be forthcoming some day or that in time the law could be invoked to gloss over the title. But Samuel, in hope of inducing some gullible purchaser to run the risk, had the Field carefully fenced and put signs upon it. For he needed the money, and needed it more as the years went by and John's invalidism turned into chronic laziness and incapacity for earning a livelihood. Everitt Adams moved away after a time and his successors ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... as she threw out this illusory prospect, devoutly hoping that Apollyon was gullible; but her hope sank when the old gypsy-woman said, "Stop a bit, stop a bit, little lady; we'll take you home, all safe, when we've done supper; you shall ride home, like ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... 'Gullible, however, by fit apparatus, all Publics are; and gulled, with the most surprising profit. Towards anything like a Statistics of Imposture, indeed, little as yet has been done: with a strange indifference, our Economists, nigh buried under Tables for minor Branches ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... Stefan Mali sprang himself upon the land. He claimed to be the murdered Peter III. of Russia, and easily imposed himself upon the gullible Montenegrin. But he had the interests of Montenegro sincerely at heart, and proved an excellent ruler. His imposture was exposed by Catherine II., but owing to the weakness of the Petrovic heir, the people ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... of the sky falling in on him, Philon found himself out on the street. No one could be trusted nowadays and he shouldn't have been surprised at the MacDonalds. Everyone had a little sideline, a gimmick, to put one over on whoever was gullible enough ...
— The House from Nowhere • Arthur G. Stangland
... never has been, nor ever will be, any Negro domination in that State, and no one knows it any better than the Democratic party. It is a convenient howl, however, often resorted to in order to consummate a diabolical purpose by scaring the weak and gullible whites into support of measures and men suitable to the demagogue and the ambitious office-seeker, whose craving for office overshadows and puts to flight all other considerations, ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... to say 'twas actually so," mumbled he apologetically. "Like as not the young man's 'xactly what he claims to be. Still, Willie's awful gullible, an' there's times when a word of warnin' ain't such a bad thing. I'm sorry if you ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... have produced replicas more than once, for we hear of such being sent to Burma and China.[72] Again, the offer to ransom the tooth came not from Ceylon but from the king of Pegu, who, as the sequel shows, was gullible in such matters: the Portuguese clearly thought that they had acquired a relic of primary importance; on any hypothesis one of the kings of Ceylon must have deceived the king of Pegu, and finally Vimala Dharma had the strongest political reasons for accepting as genuine the relic kept at ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... tragic light. He was angry with Geoffrey, but not indignant. He was angry with him for being a blunderer, an elephant, for being so easily amenable to Lady Cynthia's intrigues, for being so good-natured, stupid and gullible. He argued that if Geoffrey had been a wicked seducer, a bold Don Juan, he would have excused him and would have felt more sympathy for him. He would have thoroughly enjoyed sitting down with him to a discussion of Yae's psychology. But what did an oaf like Geoffrey understand about ...
— Kimono • John Paris |
