"Mischievous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the hook for her, although she accepted his word when he assured her that worms couldn't feel (it was Tom's private opinion that it didn't much matter if they did). He knew all about worms, and fish, and those things; and what birds were mischievous, and how padlocks opened, and which way the handles of the gates were to be lifted. Maggie thought this sort of knowledge was very wonderful,—much more difficult than remembering what was in the books; and she was rather in awe of Tom's superiority, for he was the only person ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... sun, the flies are often extremely troublesome to them; on which occasions they tread the dry ground into dust with their feet, and throw it over their bodies with their trunks, to drive away the flies. The males are usually mad once a year after the females, at which time they are extremely mischievous, and will strike any one who comes in their way, except their own keeper; and such is their vast strength, that they will kill a horse or a camel with one blow of their trunks. This fury lasts only ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... mischievous boys' pranks had not hurt the cat, for Snoop was safe enough in the stove, only, of course, it was very dark and close in there, and Snoop thought he surely was deserted by all his good friends. Perhaps he expected Freddie would find him, at any rate he immediately started ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore • Laura Lee Hope
... are hereby accused of having, by a false and malicious denunciation, slandered the person of a representative of the people; you caused the Revolutionary Tribunal, through this same mischievous act, to bring a charge against this representative of the people, to institute a domiciliary search in his house, and to waste valuable time, which otherwise belonged to the service of the Republic. And this you did, not from a misguided sense of ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... than a man advanced in years ever likes to own even to his nearest friend—hazarded a proposal, and met with a rebuff? If so, Alban conjectured the female culprit by whom the sentiment had been inspired, and the rebuff administered. "That mischievous kitten, Flora Vyvyan," growled the Colonel. "I always felt that she had the claws of a tigress under her patte de velours!" Roused by this suspicion, he sallied forth to call on the Vyvyans. Mr. Vyvyan, a widower, one of those quiet gentleman-like men who sit much in the drawing-room ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... weakest in the suppressed[12] part of 'De Profundis'; but in my opinion it had better be published, for several reasons. It explains some of his personal weakness by the stifling narrowness of his daily round, ruinous to a man whose proper place was in a large public life. And its concealment is mischievous because, first, it leads people to imagine all sorts of horrors in a document which contains nothing worse than any record of the squabbles of two touchy idlers; and, second, it is clearly a monstrous thing that Douglas should have a torpedo launched ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... category of pestilent "abstractionists." Negro Slavery was considered simply as a fact; and general irritation among most politicians of all sections was sure to follow any attempt to explore the principles on which the fact reposed. That these principles had the mischievous vitality which events have proved them to possess, few of our wisest statesmen then dreamed, and we have drifted by degrees into the present war without any clear ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... enjoys the chase as much as the hound, especially when the latter runs slow, as the best hounds do. The fox will wait for the hound, will sit down and listen, or play about, crossing and recrossing and doubling upon his track, as if enjoying a mischievous consciousness of the perplexity he would presently cause his pursuer. It is evident, however, that the fox does not always have his share of the fun: before a swift dog, or in a deep snow, or on a wet day, when his tail gets heavy, he must put his best ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... the henyard gate ajar. If he had pushed it wide open things might have been different. But he didn't push it wide open. He left it only halfway open. By and by there happened along a mischievous little Night Breeze. There is nothing that a mischievous little Night Breeze enjoys more than making things move. This mischievous little Night Breeze found that that gate would swing, so it blew against that gate and ...
— Bowser The Hound • Thornton W. Burgess
... startling. He was, it seemed, a real idiot—or so had always been regarded by those who had known him from his birth. Not one of the ugly, mischievous sort, but a gentle, chuckling vacant- brained boy, who loved to run the streets and mingle his harmless laughter with the shouts of playing children and the ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... change, as if your soul were just a weathercock that answers to every changing breeze. So perhaps you hope that some habit of self-indulgence or idleness will drop off, or some evil temper be eradicated; and whilst all this vague and mischievous dreaming goes on you yield very likely to some besetting sin, making no serious effort to get away from it now, and you yield all the more because of this misleading hope that some day you will be touched by a supernatural hand, and will ...
— Sermons at Rugby • John Percival
... than two newspapers will be published in Savannah; their editors and proprietors will be held to the strictest accountability, and will be punished severely, in person and property, for any libelous publication, mischievous matter, premature news, exaggerated statements, or any comments whatever upon the acts of the constituted authorities; they will be held accountable for such articles, even ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... and your camps, in your mischievous moods and your philosophic moods, always indeed theoretically, you consider all women immoral (except just, of course, your own mothers); but practically, when your good-feeling is awakened, or your honest faith honestly appealed to, you will believe in a woman's honour with a heartiness ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... led through fire and through flame] Alluding to the ignis fatuus, supposed to be lights kindled by mischievous beings to lead ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... news, and about your neighbours. Captain Ackland is going to marry a niece of Massy Dawson. Mischievous things are said about poor Lady M——, all false, you may be sure. Admiral Aylmer after all his services under Nelson, &c., &c., is unable to procure a commission in the marines for his nephew, Frederick Paynter. Lord A. will not ask. I am a suitor to all the old women I know, and shall ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... her by the hand to lead her up the stairs; she recalled how her prattle drove from his brow the judicial cares he did not always lay aside with his black or his red robes, the white fur of which fell one day by chance under the snipping of her mischievous scissors. She cast but one glance at the confessor of her aunt, the mother-superior of a convent of Poor Clares, a rigid and fanatical old man, whose duty it was to initiate her into the mysteries ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac
... intermediate possessors. These are circumstances which almost, without positive objections, are sufficient by their own negative force to justify a summary rejection of the whole account. Unless, indeed, the history had been perverted to a mischievous purpose, we should esteem it impertinent to direct argument against a mere romance, and to subject a work of ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... has as truly directed that vicious actions, considered as mischievous to society, should be punished, and has as clearly put mankind under a necessity of thus punishing them, as he has directed and necessitated us to preserve our lives by food."—Butler's Analogy, p. 88. "An author may injure his works by altering, and even amending, the successive ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... but there was everything except cancan. There was presented the scene in which, but for the timely arrival of the representatives of the law, the women would have come to blows and torn one another's hair out, incited thereto by the mischievous peasants, who, like our students, hoped to see something ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... be of some of the sweet kinds. Old Hock has been found on enquiry to yield more than ten times the acid of the sweet wines; and in red Port, at least in what we are content to call so, there is an astringent quality, that is most mischievous in these cases: it is said there is often alum in it: how pregnant with mischief that must be to persons whose bowels require to be kept open, is most evident. Summer fruits perfectly ripe are not only harmless but medicinal; but if eaten unripe they will be very prejudicial. ...
— Hypochondriasis - A Practical Treatise (1766) • John Hill
... world is better lost for love, than love for the world. At least, let us say so. I met Reckage at the Travellers' yesterday, and had some talk with him about his Association. I think it far better that Aumerle should not resign, as he could, and probably would, be very mischievous as a freelance. Reckage is all for shaking him off, but these things, in any circumstances, should ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... accompanying the report of the Secretary of the Interior it appears that this disorderly band was as fully supplied with the necessaries of life as the 4,700 other Indians who remained quietly on the reservation, and that the disturbance was caused by men of a restless and mischievous disposition among the Indians themselves. Almost the whole of this band have surrendered to the military authorities; and it is a gratifying fact that when some of them had taken refuge in the camp of the Red Cloud Sioux, with whom they had been in friendly relations, the Sioux held them ...
— Messages and Papers of Rutherford B. Hayes - A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • James D. Richardson
... Radicals who got soaked, it was the Conservatives who sneezed," Mongery went on, his face glowing with mischievous amusement. "It seems that while they were holding a monster rally at Hague Hall, in North Jersey Borough, some person or persons unknown got at the air-conditioning system with a tank of sneeze gas, which didn't exactly improve either the speaking style of Senator Grant Hamilton or the attentiveness ...
— Null-ABC • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... however mischievous it may have been by aggravating the discontent which had already spread through the mass of the people, was yet more mischievous by stopping up that channel through which popular discontent discharges itself with most safety—that of petition and remonstrance. So little effect had been ...
— The Causes of the Rebellion in Ireland Disclosed • Anonymous
... boy, just out of Oxford, and just into my fortune. I was on my way to Paris—my first visit—and was full of no end of projects for enjoyment. I went from Dover, and in the steamer there was the most infernally pretty girl. Black, mischievous eyes, with the devil's light in them; hair curly, crispy, frisky, luxuriant, all tossing over her head and shoulders, and an awfully enticing manner. A portly old bloke was with her—her father, I afterward learned. Somehow my hat blew off. She laughed. I ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... before us, in the broad moonlight, Two forms were mirrored: and I turned my face To catch the teasing and mischievous glance Of Helen's eyes, as, heated by the dance, Leaning on Vivian's arm, ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... had been greatly out of health for the last few months, and kept much to her bedroom, while the children had been running wild in a quite deplorable fashion. Letty, who ought to have had some influence over the others, was the naughtiest of all, and the ringleader in every mischievous undertaking. Having occupied the position of "eldest" for thirteen weeks, she was not at all disposed to submit to her sister's authority, and there were many ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... doctrine of future retribution as the vindication of present impunity. For though, indeed, to the right-minded that doctrine was true, and of sufficient solace, yet with the perverse the polemic mention of it might but provoke the shallow, though mischievous conceit, that such a doctrine was but tantamount to the one which should affirm that Providence was not now, but was going to be. In short, with all sorts of cavilers, it was best, both for them and everybody, that whoever had the true light should stick behind ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... frowning in the intentness with which she followed him. She had thought of him as one with the careless, mischievous soul of a child but now, in quick, deep glances, ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... the spirit of self-sacrifice can be roused in the masses? It savours far too much of the old implacable bitterness of the Terrorists—reasonable and natural enough in their secret conspiracies, where a fellow-conspirator might be a police agent—but utterly out of place and mischievous when introduced into ...
— Bolshevism: A Curse & Danger to the Workers • Henry William Lee
... off in their sleigh, tenderly squeezing Bluebell's hand, who fell to his share, but did not return with them. Indeed, he was walking soon in quite an opposite direction, by the side of a shrouded figure in a rose-coloured cloud, out of which laughed the mischievous eyes of the second ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes, but the boy's face expressed such blank disappointment that he took pity upon him, and, picking up a newspaper, ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... those commercial improvements with which his name is associated, and to which he owes all his glory and most of his unpopularity. It is equally true that all the ablest men in the country coincide with him, and that the mass of the community are persuaded that his plans are mischievous to the last degree. The man whom he consulted through the whole course of his labours and enquiries was Hume,[8] who is now in the Board of Trade, and whose vast experience and knowledge were of incalculable ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... stables for Edmund, to talk about his own, and marvellous were the portraits of the inhabitants with which he would decorate Edmund's elevations, whenever he found them straying about the room. Very mischievous indeed was the young gentleman, and Marian considered him to have been "a great deal too bad" when on a neat, finished plan, just prepared to be sent to the builder, she found unmistakeable likenesses of the whole Wortley family, ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... hero, a patriot, a solemn prophet, any more than we should demand of a gazelle that it should draw well in harness? Nature has not made him of her sterner stuff—not of iron and adamant, but of pollen of flowers, the juice of the grape, and Puck's mischievous brain, plenteously mixing also the dews of kindly affection and the gold-dust of noble thoughts. It is, after all, a tribute which his enemies pay him when they utter their bitterest dictum, namely, that he is "nur Dichter"—only a poet. ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... would wish to ask for a continuation of the existing state of affairs. Only entirely mischievous people could wish for the continuation of such a failure as our Commissioners of British rule have brought about on these Fields. We have formerly expressed ourselves openly about this matter, and our local contemporaries ...
— A Century of Wrong • F. W. Reitz
... five years old, very beautiful, and clad in a robe which glittered with precious stones. At the sight of him, Sherasmin's terror was extreme. He seized the reins of Huon's horse, and turned him about, hurrying the prince away, and assuring him that they were lost if they stopped to parley with the mischievous dwarf, who, though he appeared a child, was full of years and of treachery. Huon was sorry to lose sight of the beautiful dwarf, whose aspect had nothing in it to alarm; yet he followed his friend, who urged on his horse with all possible speed. Presently a storm began ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... of time, trouble, and money our own countrymen would be spared could they only occasionally forget that there is such a word as "Yes" in English! How many marriages, which have ended in misery, would never have come off but for this mischievous monosyllable! But to continue this is to be Hamletising, and to consider too curiously. For the SPEAKER to own it, stamps him as the genuine ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 6, 1892 • Various
... on observed facts these could be explained on grounds other than those of the malevolent activities of certain old women, the belief in witchcraft was not "purified," neither did it advance to any so-called higher stage; it was simply abandoned as a useless and mischievous explanation of facts that could be otherwise accounted for. Are we logically justified in dealing with the belief in God on any other principle? We cannot logically discard the world of the savage and ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... was hired by Captain Kirle to wait upon him. His name was John Hilliard, and he was precisely what any of these good-humored, mischievous fellows outside would have been, hired on a brigantine two centuries ago; disposed to shirk his work in order to stand gaping at Black Ben fishing, or to rub up secretly his old cutlass for the behoof of Kidd, or the French when they should ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... Well, see that you don't wake up again as soon as my back is turned," he went on, and soon after walked below again, a faint smile on his features. He knew that boys were bound to be more or less mischievous, no ...
— The Rover Boys in the Jungle • Arthur M. Winfield
... of an enormous pocket of a soiled vest of embossed silk, heavily ornamented with tarnished silver lace, projected an instrument, which, from being seen in such martial company, might have been easily mistaken for some mischievous and unknown implement of war. Small as it was, this uncommon engine had excited the curiosity of most of the Europeans in the camp, though several of the provincials were seen to handle it, not only without fear, but with the utmost familiarity. A large, ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... our prince was guilty of incredible outrages upon various persons and, what was most striking these outrages were utterly unheard of, quite inconceivable, unlike anything commonly done, utterly silly and mischievous, quite unprovoked and objectless. One of the most respected of our club members, on our committee of management, Pyotr Pavlovitch Gaganov, an elderly man of high rank in the service, had formed the innocent habit of declaring vehemently on all sorts ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... thing actually exists; not as a poetic fiction like the nymphs and fauns, but really living, drawn out of the earth by moisture and sunshine! Imagine the deer, with his wonderful antlers, at home here, and the mischievous squirrel, the wood-cock, and the jay!" He stooped and picked a mushroom, praised its deep red color and delicate white lines, and put a handful of cones ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... grown-ups sat in rather solemn state. And how those guests did eat and frankly enjoy the good things before them! How nicely they all behaved, even to the French Joes! Myra had secretly been a little dubious about those four mischievous-looking lads, but their manners were quite flawless. Mrs. French Joe had been drilling them for three days—ever since they had been invited to "de Chrismus dinner at ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... only to bid me a mischievous goodbye, ere he ran down the spiral stair, leaving me to listen till I lost his feathery foot-falls in the base of the tower, and then to mount guard over my tethered, handcuffed, somnolent, and yet always formidable prisoner at ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... oath of allegiance; they say it is their duty to obey the "Queen," and they have but hazy notions as to obeying laws without a queen. In former times, when our Constitution was incomplete, this notion of local holiness in one part was mischievous. All parts were struggling, and it was necessary each should have its full growth. But superstition said one should grow where it would, and no other part should grow without its leave. The whole cavalier party said it was their duty to obey the king, whatever the king did. There was ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... to post. That morning he had received an epistle from a benevolent acquaintance, one Mackintosh, regarding a group of urchins who called themselves the "Gorbals Die-Hards." Behind the premises in Mearns Street lay a tract of slums, full of mischievous boys, with whom his staff waged truceless war. But lately there had started among them a kind of unauthorized and unofficial Boy Scouts, who, without uniform or badge or any kind of paraphernalia, followed the banner of ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... of the sandy desert was a queer sort of fold for a shepherd to build. To judge the past, however, by the present is one of the most mischievous of errors. Nothing is easier than to criticise the actions of men in a bygone age, and nothing is more difficult than to do justice to their motives. The militant bishop is intolerable now even, when he is ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... hereditary right, with its gables, and its smooth lawn; the witch-meetings in which his ancestor used to take part; Aunt Keziah on her death-bed; and, flitting through all, the shade of Sibyl Dacy, eying him from secret nooks, or some remoteness, with her peculiar mischievous smile, beckoning him into the sphere. All such visions would he see, and then become aware that he had been in a dream, superinduced by too much watching, too intent thought; so that living among so many dreams, he was almost afraid that ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... hand. He said that within a small radius his parents had made paths, by constant peregrinations in search of food, that had become so familiar to them that they could move hither and thither, hand in hand, with considerable precision and alacrity. It was one of his earliest mischievous instincts to place obstacles in those paths, and take a humorous view of the ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... at all pretty; and with them was a little girl of about fifteen or sixteen, a niece of Don Calixto's, a veritable little devil, named Amparo. This Amparo is a tiny, flat-faced creature, with black eyes, and extraordinarily vivacious and mischievous. During dinner I ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... time of night, When church-yards groan, and graves give up their dead, And many a mischievous, enfranchised Sprite Had long since burst his bonds of stone or lead, And hurried off, with schoolboy-like delight, To play his pranks near some poor wretch's bed, Sleeping, perhaps, serenely as a porpoise, Nor dreaming of this ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... fellows of your age begin thinking more of others than of themselves; though they are pretty good at that latter, and particularly fond of arranging their plumage so as to excite admiration. But you held on to your merry, mischievous boyhood, so take my advice and don't worry yourself any more. I hope you have got many, many years to come, and you will find yourself serious enough then. So you thought yours might be a case ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... criminal matter when published. Every freeman has an undoubted right to lay what sentiments he pleases before the public: to forbid this, is to destroy the freedom of the press: but if he publishes what is improper, mischievous, or illegal, he must take the consequence of his own temerity. To subject the press to the restrictive power of a licenser, as was formerly done, both before and since the revolution, is to subject all freedom of sentiment to the prejudices of one man, and make him the arbitrary and infallible ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... when school was being dismissed, the master found Octavia Dean lingering near his desk. Looking into the girl's mischievous eyes, he good-humoredly answered their expectation by referring to her morning's news. "I thought Miss McKinstry had been married by this ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... iniquity at our heels is sometimes an old sin in a new form. You remember the difficulty that Hiawatha had in hunting down Pau-puk Keewis. That mischievous magician assumed the form of a beaver, then that of a bird, then that of a serpent; and though each in turn was slain, the magician escaped and mocked his pursuer. Surely a parable of our strife with sin. We smite it in one form and it ...
— The Threshold Grace • Percy C. Ainsworth
... here after me in that time? Perdition hold me, if I am not as dutiful to my trade as the best of you, but the wisest is sometimes at fault." Then said Lucifer: "Throw him into the school of the fairies, who are still under castigation for their mischievous tricks in days gone by, when they were wont to strangle and threaten their neighbours, and so awaken them from their torpor; for their fear probably had more influence ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... that echoed from Ludgate to Charing Cross, and her voice drowned all the City. He grinned rarely and with malice; he piped in a voice shrill and acid as the tricks of his mischievous imagination. She knew no cruelty beyond the necessities of her life, and none regretted more than she the inevitable death of a traitor. He lusted after destruction with a fiendish temper, which was a grim anticipation of De Sade; ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... of her neighbours called "proper feeling," she was a most exemplary bride—even to the point of looking prettier than she had ever been known to do before, and almost eclipsing her bridesmaids. But, the ceremony over, she did not remain long so unlike herself. She was quiet, certainly, but as gay, mischievous, and childish as ever. ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... were some miles from Paris. The Marquis then asked the person who rode by the carriage where they were taking him: they answered that his plots against the King had been found out, and that he was going to be put into a place where it would be out of his power to execute any of his mischievous purposes. On hearing this, the Marquis broke out into a violent rage, abusing the King, and calling him every vile name he could think of; after which he became sullen, and continued so to the end of his journey. The Marchioness cried almost without ceasing, calling ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... were beginning to lengthen once more when Celine was released from duty, and went wearily up to her room; wearily, yet with undimmed eyes, and the mischievous dimples still lurking about ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... In Australia, a god is swallowed. As in the myth preserved by Aristophanes in the 'Birds,' the Australians believe that birds were the original gods, and the eagle, especially, is a great creative power. The Moon was a mischievous being, who walked about the world, doing what evil he could. One day he swallowed the eagle-god. The wives of the eagle came up, and the Moon asked them where he might find a well. They pointed out a well, and, ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... one he met with, which was excessively confiding in its disposition, very lively and nimble, and in no way mischievous. It delighted to be caressed by all persons who came into the house. It used to sleep in the hammock of its owner, or nestle in his bosom half the day as he lay reading. From the cleanliness of its habits, and the prettiness ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... very pretty girl came to the door at his summons, listened to his polite request, and stood for a moment blushing and confused. Then, running into the garden, she plucked a flower, handed it with a mischievous air to the warrior, and disappeared within the house. Ota, angrily flinging down the flower, turned away, after an impulse to force his way into the house and help himself to the coat. He returned to the castle wet and fuming at the slight to his ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... strewed with straw, to which they conveyed those wretches who were overwhelmed with intoxication. In these dismal caverns they lay until they recovered some use of their faculties, and then they had recourse to the same mischievous potion; thus consuming their health, and ruining their families, in hideous receptacles of the most filthy vice, resounding with riot, execration, and blasphemy. Such beastly practices too plainly denoted a total want of all policy and civil regulations, and would have reflected disgrace ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... mischievous smile crossed her lips now as eleven years ago in the Rue d'Egypte, and recalling that ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the Gods be good, Then, if the Gods be other than mischievous, Down from their footstools, down With a million-throated shouting, swoops and storms War, the Red Angel, the Awakener, The Shaker of Souls and Thrones; and at her heel Trail grief, and ruin, and shame! The woman weeps her man, the ...
— Hawthorn and Lavender - with Other Verses • William Ernest Henley
... this plan of yours as a mischievous trick, baroness," he said earnestly. "It is a great, a noble sacrifice—so great, indeed, that living woman could not perform a greater—to be willing to blush with shame while innocent. She who blushes for her love does not suffer; but to flush with shame out of friendship must ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... Siriatus, or ground squirrel, is much smaller and more mischievous than any of the former species. The ridge of the back is marked with a black stripe; the sides are of a reddish yellow, spotted with white; the feet and legs pale red; the eyes black and projecting. These pretty little creatures never run up trees, unless they are pursued. They burrow and form ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... against the mischievous a priori method, which people will not understand is as gross an anachronism in social matters as it would be in Hydrostatics. The so-called "Sociology" is honeycombed with it, and it is hard to say who are worse, the individualists or the collectivists. ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... wanted to know whether these birds were the same as our sparrows, which are so common everywhere, even in the busy streets London, and so mischievous in the country, eating the grain, and stealing the peas, and nipping off the ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... "Is it confidential? Do you want me to send this man away?" he inquired, with a mischievous glance at the giant whose eyes, save when they dropped before her own, remained fixed on the girl with a ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... was now a senior in the gymnasium and had begun to play mischievous pranks. He also declared that he was no longer minded to tolerate the tyranny of the school, and that he had not the slightest desire to enter the university. He was a wilful, obstinate boy with a marked tendency to sociability. He paid a ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... of Pellico,' said Madame de Beaumont, 'was broken. When released, he gave himself up to devotion and works of charity. Perhaps the humility, resignation, and submission of his book made it still more mischievous to the Austrian Government. The reader's indignation against those who could so trample on so ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... all," said Griffin, a good-humoured lad, but terribly mischievous, and, for some cause best known to himself, warmly espousing the cause of Gerald Yorke. "Shall you sign ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... into the deep water in the middle of the stream, evidently with the intention of speaking us. As, however, she was just half-way across, floating helplessly, unable to reach the bottom with the spear she had used as a puntpole in the shallower water, a mischievous black imp canted her over, and souse she went into the river. It was amazing to see how boldly and well the old woman struck out for the shore, keeping her white head well out of the water; and, having reached dry land once more, sat down on her haunches, and began scolding with a volubility ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... a step forward, hesitated, and glanced over his shoulder into the deserted room. Everything was quiet. With a sudden resolution he parted his huge mustaches with both hands and stooped over the sleeping boy. But even as he did so a mischievous blast, lying in wait, swooped down the chimney, rekindled the hearth, and lit up the room with a shameless glow from which Dick fled ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... want some rather high-priced advice for nothing," said the old and mischievous lawyer, "don't do it. You ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the zeal and good management of Mr. and Mrs. Ferry, and the fostering encouragement of the congregation, the school was in great repute, and it was pleasant to observe the effect of mental and religious culture in subduing the mischievous, tricky propensities of the half-breed, and rousing the stolid apathy of ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... sea-otter retire to some solitary rocky islet to bring forth their young. Certain it is they are rocked on the deep from their birth, "cradled" in the sea, sleeping on their backs in the water, clasping the young in their arms like a human being, tossing up seaweed in play by the hour like mischievous monkeys, or crawling out on some safe, sea-girt rocklet, where they shake the water from their fur and make their toilet, stretching and arranging and rearranging hair like a cat. Only the fiercest gales ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... of a new Macedonian state, and for reuniting the scattered elements of society in Lower Egypt after the Persian conquest, in the only form in which a government could be made to stand, he deserves to be placed among the least mischievous of conquerors. We trace his march, not by the ruin, misery, and anarchy which usually follow in the rear of an army, but by the building of new cities, the more certain administration of justice, ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... are obliged to act as far as our power reacheth toward the good of the whole community. And he who doth not perform that part assigned him towards advancing the benefit of the whole, in proportion to his opportunities and abilities, is not only a useless, but a very mischievous member of the public; because he takes his share of the profit, and yet leaves his share of the burden to be borne by others, which is the true principal cause of most miseries and misfortunes in life. ...
— Three Sermons, Three Prayer • Jonathan Swift
... sings it," he cried, and with a last laugh turned and fairly ran away down the street, like a mischievous boy who has thrown his squib and flies from the ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... admirable work.... Full of humor, boisterous, but delicate,—of wit withering and scorching, yet combined with a pathos cool as morning dew,—of satire ponderous as the mace of Richard, yet keen as the scymitar of Saladin.... A work full of 'mountain-mirth,' mischievous as Puck, and lightsome as Ariel.... We know not whether to admire most the genial, fresh, and discursive concinnity of the author, or his playful fancy, weird imagination, and compass of style, at once both ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... shook his sides and laughed spitefully as he left her, and then rambled away to talk the same shallow philosophy to the Honeysuckle that was trained up against a wall. Indeed, not a flower escaped his mischievous suggestions. He murmured among them all—laughed the trim cut Box-edges to scorn—maliciously hoped the Sweet Peas enjoyed growing in a circle, and running up a quantity of crooked sticks—and told the flowers, generally, that he should report their ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... deprive us of the means of clearly distinguishing between right and wrong at all times at which the power of so distinguishing is of practical value. Bluntly enough, I have pronounced it to be false. With equal bluntness, I now add that, even if it were true, it would, all the same, be practically mischievous, and directly opposed to the very utility from which it takes its name. The argument in support of this charge shall now ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... him that no maid will stay with her? That she shows no desire to improve? That she mimics and angers her teachers, refuses to study and plays impish tricks like some mischievous little elf? Am I ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... admirable results, provided it be duly allied and tempered with its opposite. For these opposites I hold to be correlative and polaric, each required by the other. But chasm is worse than indistinction; and he that breaks the circle of human fellowship is more mischievous than he who blurs ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... so desirable as permanent and substantial work at the point of discharge." The outlet is the place, of all others, where obstruction is most likely to occur. Everywhere else the work is protected by the earth above it, but here it is exposed to the action of frost, to cattle, to mischievous boys, to reptiles, as well as to the obstructing deposits which are discharged from the drains themselves. In regular work, under the direction of engineers, iron pipes, with swing gratings set in masonry, are used, ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... alone knows at the cost of what efforts and of what happy accidents, a vigorous and original personality has been able to unfold, nothing is rarer than not to see it degenerate into a mere personage. History teaches us that men exceptional in will and energy almost always become obstructive and mischievous. They commence by serving a cause and end by taking possession of it so completely that, from being its servants, they become its masters. Instead of being men of a cause, they make the cause that of a man, and they degrade the most sacred realities to ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various
... do not seem even to have begun trusting them: they speak and think of them as if they were children in leading-strings; as if they were certain to accept with gratitude whatever gifts may be bestowed upon them, even when they are safe-guarded and carefully regulated as for mischievous boys; as if the working men were constantly looking for guidance to the class which has the money. It is true that the working men are always looking for guidance, just like the rest of us. 'Lord, send a leader!' It is the ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... power, the enraged Great Hare, Manito (such seems the meaning of Manabozho), changed the dead carcass of his enemy into the great caniew, or war eagle. Nothing had given Manabozho half the trouble and vexation of the flighty, defying, changeable and mischievous Paup-Puk-Keewiss, who eluded him by jumping from one end of the continent to the other. He had killed the great power of evil in the prince of serpents, who had destroyed Chebizbos his grandson—he ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... fear," the big man said. There was no doubt that he was master of the situation. "Do you know that in the words of the same learned person whom I have cited—a marvellous exemplar amid that fog-headed people—vindictive persons live the life of witches, who as they are mischievous, so end ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... farmer was milking, he was startled by hearing apples coming down in showers from the Golden Sweet tree back of the barn. Thinking that some mischievous boy had climbed the tree and was shaking off apples for sport, he rushed into the back yard, determined to punish the ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... over their heads, to watch them progress triumphantly through long division and measles and skates, to see milk glasses emptied and plates scraped, to realize that Wolf was as strong morally as he was physically, and that all her teachers called Rose an angel, to spoil and adore the beautiful, mischievous, and amusing "Baby"; this made a life full to the brim, for Kate, of pride and happiness. Kate had never had a servant, or a fur coat; for long intervals she had not had a night's unbroken rest; and there had been times, when Wolf's fractured ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... without sugar. She then helped De la Haye and me, not forgetting to put plenty of sugar in our cups, and she poured out one for herself exactly like the one she handed to Dubois. It was much ado for me not to laugh, for my mischievous French-woman, who liked her coffee in the Parisian fashion, that is to say very sweet, was sipping the bitter beverage with an air of delight which compelled the director of the Mint to smile under the infliction. But the cunning hunchback was even with ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Beasley. "The most mischievous, perhaps, and the most troublesome; full of bubbling spirits and misplaced energy, but straightforward and truthful. There is something very lovable ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... need capture by the Prussians, if they again intend that way. And in the mean while, Friedrich, to counterpoise those mischievous Croat people, has bethought him of organizing a similar Force of his own;—Foot chiefly, for, on hint of former experience, he already has Hussars in quantity. And, this Winter, there are accordingly, in different Saxon Towns, three Irregular Regiments getting ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Seven-Years War: First Campaign—1756-1757. • Thomas Carlyle
... suddenly said with a mischievous smile such as Princess Mary had not seen on her face for a long time, "he has somehow grown so clean, smooth, and fresh—as if he had just come out of a Russian bath; do you understand? Out of a moral bath. ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... of course—but that needn't make you look as if I'd intimated that YOU had them! I was only asking for your opinion, Mr. Smith," she twinkled, with mischievous eyes. ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... about the country plundering whomsoever they are pleased to denominate tories, and converting what they get to their own private profit and emolument. This is an abuse that cannot be tolerated; and as I find the license allowed them, has been made a sanction for such mischievous practices, I am under the necessity of recalling it altogether. You will therefore immediately make it known to your whole corps, that they are not under any pretence whatever to meddle with the horses or other property ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... have been well, but the workman's mischievous little daughter chanced to come by that way again. At once she espied the banyan trees and the rose-bush. "It is a curious thing that I never saw these trees before," she thought. "I will gather a bunch ...
— Tales of Folk and Fairies • Katharine Pyle
... races of mankind. Hence, just as some plants would in process of time acquire a sacred character, others would do the reverse. Amongst the legendary stories and folktales of most countries we find frequent allusion to the devil as an active agent in utilising various flowers for his mischievous pursuits; and on the Continent we are told of a certain evil spirit named Kleure who transforms himself into a tree to escape notice, a superstition which under a variety of forms still lingers here and there.[2] ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... in your youth, sir," cried John, who had rather a mischievous propensity to start the old man on ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... terrible effect. The brute had made one bound after being struck, and crashed through the fence, to lie afterwards completely paralysed in the hind-quarters, so that a carefully-directed shot now quite ended her mischievous career, for she uttered one furious snarl, clawing a little with her forepaws, and then rolled over dead, close to the unfortunate cow she had dragged down and torn in the ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... she was sacred to me. I have carried her image in my heart for sixty-three years—all lonely thee, yes, solitary, for it never has had company—and I am grown so old, so old; but it, oh, it is as fresh and young and merry and mischievous and lovely and sweet and pure and witching and divine as it was when it crept in there, bringing benediction and peace to its habitation so long ago, so long ago—for it ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... with his bundle, sorely incommoded by the size and weight of the wrapping blanket, the corners of which, one after the other, would keep working from his hold, and dropping and trailing on the ground. Behind him came Tommy, a scarecrow monkey, with mischievous face, and greedy beads for eyes—type not unknown to the policeman, who brought up the rear, big enough to have all their sizes cut out of him, and yet pass for a man. Down the stair they went, and out at the front door, which Clare for the ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... undistressed by the fact he could not speak to those around him or even return the pressure of their hands, for he was feeling all the old intoxicating joy of discovery at breaking into new lands. He even felt a mischievous elation that all this secret pageant, this retrospective wonder that was life, should be his to watch and enjoy, while all around ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... Its ozone and oxygen were rapidly absorbed, and in return the atmosphere was loaded with carbonic acid, carbon, nitrogen, and other effluvia, from the lungs and pores of the dense and heated company; this mischievous matter being much increased from the products of the combustion of numerous ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade
... Mandy slipped the words in slyly, for she knew that they were against the pastor's wishes, but she was unable to restrain her mischievous impulse to sow the seeds of curiosity that would soon bear fruit in the inquisitive mind ...
— Polly of the Circus • Margaret Mayo
... provinces. Mr. Stephen's examination of this question is the more important because it involves the problem of regulating private morals by public enactments; and also because the confusion of motives with intentions lies at the bottom of much mischievous sophistry, for some of the worst crimes in history have been suggested by plausible motives, and have been defended on that ground. He shows that Bentham's survey of the springs of human action was incomplete, ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... took the form of fidgets, during which he would be constantly trying to stop and eat snow, and then rush forward to catch up the other ponies. Life was a constant source of wonder to him, and no movement in the camp escaped his notice. Before we had been long on the Barrier he developed mischievous habits and became a rope eater and gnawer of other ponies' fringes, as we called the coloured tassels we hung over their eyes to ward off snow-blindness. However, he was by no means the only culprit, and he lost his own fringe ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... Thomas departed. He was no sooner out of the shop, than out started, from behind the deal boards that stood against the wall, Willie, the eldest hope of the house of Macwha, a dusky-skinned, black-eyed, curly-headed, roguish-looking boy, Alec Forbes's companion and occasional accomplice. He was more mischievous than Alec, and sometimes led him into unforeseen scrapes; but whenever anything extensive had to be executed, Alec was ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... inflating the stomach at such a period, we inevitably counteract those muscular contractions of its coats which are essential to chymification, whilst the quantity of soda thus introduced scarcely deserves notice; with the exception of the carbonic acid gas, it may be regarded as water; more mischievous only in consequence of the exhilarating quality, inducing us to take it at a period at which we would not require the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 383, August 1, 1829 • Various
... whole world, even down to the smallest grass-blade, seems to me different because you are alive." She said these words with a passionate vehemence, and tears in her eyes. Then, changing in a second to a mischievous, ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... rigid old Israelite indeed might naturally enough take offence (Exodus xx. 24-26), but the temple itself nevertheless ultimately acquired a great and positive importance for religion. It need not be denied that mischievous consequences of various kinds slipped in along with the good. The king, moreover, can hardly be blamed for his conduct in erecting in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem altars to deities of Ammon and Egypt. For those altars remained undisturbed until ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... one of us spoke of the frequently false and mischievous statements purporting to come from spirits—predictions which did not come to pass, descriptions which were wholly wrong, and sending credulous believers on wild-goose chases after hidden treasure, etc., the occasion being an ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various |
