"Overreach" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the third category belong a great number of animals in high position or of individuals who are remarkable neither for their mind nor for their energy, but who, by their position, have wealth, connections, influence, power. We must exploit them in every possible manner, overreach them, deceive them, and, getting hold of their dirty secrets, make them our slaves." (Sec. 18.) ... "The fourth class is composed of sundry ambitious persons in the service of the State and of liberals of various shades of opinion. With them ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... my right hand to ride, only it wouldn't carry him. I can't make horses. Harry brought home that brown mare on Tuesday with an overreach that she won't get over this season. What the deuce they do with their horses to knock them about so, I can't understand. I've killed horses in my time, and ridden them to a stand-still, but I never bruised them and battered them about ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... the reverse in his regard, according to the earliest and most accurate of his biographers. Erratic, fitful though the genius of Edmund Kean unquestionably was—rendering him peerless as Othello, incomparable as Overreach—we are told in Mr. Procter's life of him, that "he studied long and anxiously," frequently until many hours after midnight.{*} No matter what his occupations previously might have been, or how profound his exhaustion through rehearsing ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... themselves by peculation and monopoly. Mitchell, one of the grasping patentees who had purchased of the favourite the power of robbing the nation, was fined and imprisoned for life. Mompesson, the original, it is said, of Massinger's Overreach, was outlawed and deprived of his ill-gotten wealth. Even Sir Edward Villiers, the brother of Buckingham, found it convenient to leave England. A greater name is to be added to the ignominious list. By this Parliament was ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... this section of the country believes the old thread-bare lie that Negro men rape white women. If Southern white men are not careful, they will overreach themselves and public sentiment will have a reaction; a conclusion will then be reached which will be very damaging to the moral reputation ...
— Southern Horrors - Lynch Law in All Its Phases • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... in the former, the heart might be pierced, and the mind be overwhelmed, without the necessity of any such incurable affliction as children's deaths amount to. God's mercy may well have allowed the evil one to overreach himself; and when the restoration came, how double was the joy of Job over those ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... and turned his wisdom to folly; for Kapchack has been so cunning for so many, many years, and all his family have been so cunning, and all his councillors, that now I do believe (only I do not meddle with politics) that this extreme cunning is too clever, and that they will overreach themselves. However, we shall see what is said ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... of his mate—"Have a try at it, anyhow!" Then her joy when the sail filled and the plashing of her way spoke Hope beneath her bulwark as she caught the wind. Then her dread that the Devil's craft ahead would make sail too, and overreach them after all, and the blessing in her heart for her hopeful oarsman, whose view was that the officer in charge would not spare his convicts any work he could inflict. "He'll see to it they arn their breaffastis, missis. He ain't going to unlock their wristis off of the oars for ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... because the master treated them with implicit confidence, and being scrupulously honourable himself, was unsuspicious of others. He was therefore extremely indignant at this apparent discovery of an attempt to overreach him in a boy so promising and so much of ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... cheating his fellows, and living upon their credulity. One or more of all these classes will be found in the foregoing pages. It will be seen, from the record of their lives, that the delusion was not altogether without its uses. Men, in striving to gain too much, do not always overreach themselves; if they cannot arrive at the inaccessible mountain-top, they may perhaps get half way towards it, and pick up some scraps of wisdom and knowledge on the road. The useful science of chemistry is not a little indebted to its ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... privileges to all Mongols who refused Christian baptism. Among the refractory citizens was a Chinese trader named Wong. So far as anybody could see, he led as moral a life as a Chinaman can endure comfortably; he was good to his family, good to himself, he was sober, he would overreach a Spaniard when he could, but when he had given his word he kept it; he burned incense before joss, he read the analects of Kung Foo Too and Mang Tse, and worshipped his ancestors; he never stole or used any kind of profanity that moral Spaniards could understand. ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... air bade Elisa follow on. She, rather tartly than otherwise, not out of malice, but of old habit, began to speak thus, "Many folk, knowing much, imagine that others know nothing, and so ofttimes, what while they think to overreach others, find, after the event, that they themselves have been outwitted of them; wherefore I hold his folly great who setteth himself without occasion to test the strength of another's wit. But, for that maybe all are not of my opinion, ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... shared the spoil; but if they were caught they might be hanged as pirates by Philip or Alva. This condition, unthinkable now, was allowed by the inchoate state of international law; the very idea of neutrality was foreign to the time. States were always trying to harm and overreach each other in secret ways. In Elizabethan England the anti-papal and anti-Spanish ardor of the mariners made possible this buccaneering without government support, had not the rich prizes themselves been enough to attract the adventurous. ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... King how he 'calls the play, answers:—'The Mouse-trap.' Mosca calls his own cunningness with which he thinks he can overreach his master, the 'Fox-trap.' ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... (i.e., Ephraim Canaanised) has deceitful balances in his hand, and loves to overreach. Ephraim indeed saith, I am become rich, I have gained weealth; but all his profits will not suffice for (expiation of) the guilt which he has ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... it in these words: "To this question I, for my own part, can only reply that I do not believe that the horticulturist can sell his small fruits anywhere in the ordinary markets of the world at so high a price as to the Robin, provided that he uses proper diligence that the little huckster doesn't overreach him in the bargain." ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... ignorant of the cause of it. I was taken down to the forecastle, however, and heard not a word about being sent back. In truth, as Ben had already informed me in his mutterings, the skipper was rather pleased than otherwise, at being able to overreach King Dingo, and as he had found me useful to himself he had no desire to let me go. It was only the large profit he expected by the exchange that had tempted him to part with me; but so long as he had kept his bargain and regularly delivered me over, his conscience was satisfied, ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... peaceful industrial civilization. The coarser forms of cruelty are disappearing, and the butchery of men has greatly diminished. But most people apply to industrial pursuits a notion of antagonism derived from ages of warfare, and seek in all manner of ways to cheat or overreach one another. And as in more barbarous times the hero was he who had slain his tens of thousands, so now the man who has made wealth by overreaching his neighbours is not uncommonly spoken of in terms which imply ...
— The Destiny of Man - Viewed in the Light of His Origin • John Fiske
... mouths, legs, if not arms, and feet, so there was much in which we were both of a mind, but surely they must be mistaken in arming themselves so very heavily. Any creature on getting what the turtle aimed at would overreach itself and be landed not in safety but annihilation. It should have no communion with the outside world at all, for death could creep in wherever the creature could creep out; and it must creep out somewhere if it was to hook on to outside ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... glowed and glittered and flamed in gorgeous apparel, until she seemed to fairly overreach all the innocent young flowery beauties of the spring with one rich trill of colour, like a high note of a bird above a wide chorus of others. Mistress Mary that morning wore a tabby petticoat of a crimson colour, and a crimson satin bodice shining over her arms and shoulders ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... offered and the 7d. they asked the discrepancy was too great, and after some acrimonious bargaining it was decided that I should continue on foot, my man indicating to me by gestures, in a most sarcastic way, that the "chiaodza" men had failed to overreach him. ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... debts—why had he not explained every thing when he might have done it with honour and advantage—why had he not relied upon his own integrity—and why had he attempted, with cunning and duplicity, to overreach his neighbours? Why, oh why, had he done all this? When Michael was fairly hemmed in by his difficulties, and, as it is vulgarly said, had not a leg to stand upon, or a hole to creep through, then, and not ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... Tom Allworth. Sir Giles Overreach thought she would marry his nephew Wellborn, but she ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... at Utrecht in the belief that they were dealing with a Jacobite, that their concession in regard to the crown of England amounted to nothing, that, by yielding now, they would secure hereafter the elevation of a dependent dynasty. Under that illusion they combined with Bolingbroke to overreach themselves and to institute party government, under the supremacy of ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... they thought righteous vengeance. The Colonel came at once. The guard saluted and withdrew and the Red men seized their spoils. And, strange to say, among themselves they had not one dispute; none tried to overreach; each knew his mark and ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... Allworth, in love with Margaret Overreach, whom he marries.—Massinger, A New Way to pay ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... teachers are not generally very rich. At last he went into business, starting in a small way, and worked his way up by degrees. But there was one thing he determined in the beginning: that he would be strictly honorable in all his dealings, and never overreach any one for the sake of making money. If there was a chance for him, Dick, there is a ...
— Ragged Dick - Or, Street Life in New York with the Boot-Blacks • Horatio Alger
... such an admirable man of business. Certainly if he had said he would pay a sum of money at a certain time, the money would be forthcoming on the appointed day, and this is saying a good deal for any man. His constitutional timidity rendered him incapable of an attempt to overreach when there was the remotest chance of opposition or publicity, and his correct bearing and somewhat stern expression were a great protection to him against being overreached. He never talked of money, and invariably changed the subject whenever money was introduced. His ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... played Sir Giles Overreach, in Massinger's "A New Way to Pay Old Debts," and the profound impression he made in it confirmed him in his purpose to devote himself to tragic acting. The story of an actor's life is seldom eventful, and Mr. Booth's history, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... believed that, especially among the cunning Yankees, such "mines and treasures" stories should be credited; but it is a peculiar feature in the US that the inhabitants, so difficult to overreach in other matters, will greedily take the bait when "mines" or "hidden treasure" are spoken of. In Missouri and Wisconsin, immense beds of copper ore and lead have been discovered in every direction. Thousands ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... delight of the Washington playgoers in the Jackson Administration. His wonderful impersonations of Richard III., Iago, King Lear, Othello, Shylock, and Sir Giles Overreach were as grand as his private life was intemperate and eccentric. He was a short, dumpy man, with features resembling those of the Roman Emperors, before his nose was broken in a quarrel, and his deportment on the stage was imperially grand. He had a farm in Maryland, and at ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... the eccentric tragedian, and the memoir which he printed of Kean will always be read with interest. I heard the poet one evening describe the player most graphically as he appeared in Sir Giles Overreach in 1816 at Drury Lane, when he produced such an effect on Lord Byron, who sat that night in a stage-box with Tom Moore. His lordship was so overcome by Kean's magnificent acting that he fell forward ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... pointing me out as if there were some one there to see, - 'this, if you please, is the disinterested scholar, with not a design beyond his books! This, if you please, is the simple creature whom any one could overreach in a bargain! This, if you please, is Mr. Silverman! Not of this world; not he! He has too much simplicity for this world's cunning. He has too much singleness of purpose to be a match for this world's double-dealing. What did he give you ...
— George Silverman's Explanation • Charles Dickens
... the struggle for bread borrowed a peculiar desperation from the tenderest sentiments. For the sake of those dependent on him, a man might not choose, but must plunge into the foul fight,—cheat, overreach, supplant, defraud, buy below worth and sell above, break down the business by which his neighbor fed his young ones, tempt men to buy what they ought not and to sell what they should not, grind his laborers, sweat his debtors, cozen his creditors. Though a man sought ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... divides his days. Who bets on beauty, hedges in on age; Which tries the flight to perch in Lord Wynne's cage? Will Lady Bond or Clara be the queen? For Lady Bond is certain of her lien." He heard this talk while standing by a beech— Hugh Wynne—and planned how he might overreach Gilbert and Clara, break the pride of both, Part them for good, or make them plight their troth. "Now for a race," he cried, "to Martin's Mill; The boats are here; behold, the lake is still. Here, Gilbert, ...
— Poems • Elizabeth Stoddard
... as a matter of course, and deserving neither rest, nor gratitude, nor commendation. One really sometimes feels inclined to regret that Abud or somebody else was not more relentless—to pray for a Sir Giles Overreach or a Shylock among the creditors. For such a one, by his apparently malevolent but really beneficent grasping, would have in effect liberated the bondsman, who, as it was, was compelled to toil at a hopeless task to his dying day, and to hasten that dying ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... writing in the light of later knowledge, and even, setting that aside, I am very far from agreeing with his psychological deduction. Just as a shy man will so overreach himself in his efforts to dissemble his shyness as to assume an air of positive arrogance, so might a pure lady who had succumbed as Miss Armytage pretended, upon finding herself forced to such self-accusation, bear herself with a boldness ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... should bloom with flowers made by a poor shoeless girl in another: it instigates Mrs. C. to make a friendly call on Mrs. D. for the purpose of exulting over the inferior style in which her house is furnished: it tempts F. to overreach his business friend, or to embezzle his employer's money, that he may live in a house with a brown-stone front and give great dinners twice a month: and it sustains G. in his own eyes as he sits at F.'s table stimulating ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... a remarkable counterfeit. You would not know it from a good one. Only an expert can tell the difference. But all these crooks overreach themselves. Clever as they are, they usually leave some mark which betrays them. For example, in printing this bill which bears the head of Lincoln, they have spelled his first name 'Abrahem'—in other ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... Frances. Not since our short attendance at the pioneer school in Sonoma had Georgia and I been schoolmates, and never before had we three sisters started out together with books in hand; nor did our expectations overreach the sum of happiness which the day had in store ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... perception of human character, together with an iron memory which never lost a face, a place, or an event, once seen or known. He read the minds even the faces of men, like printed books. No man could overreach him, excepting only those to whom he gave his heart. He might be mistaken where he had confided, never where he had been distrustful or indifferent. He was deceived by Renneberg, by his brother-in-law Van den Berg, by the Duke of Anjou. Had it been possible ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... picture of composure I presented in the course of half a minute. 'Let us take it for granted,' says Sir Patrick, 'that this man unknown has really tried to deceive Miss Silvester, as you and I suppose. I can tell you one thing: it's as likely as not that, in trying to overreach her, he may (without in the least suspecting it) have ended ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... weakness of all masters," the soldier replied, "and so they overreach themselves. Give me a little confidence, and I am content, but distrust me, and my ears are ever on the stretch to catch news which I may use to my advantage. But I have no quarrel with you. The Captain ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... These clever people sometimes overreach themselves. How she suggested it to me, I cannot pretend to have discovered. But I did certainly suspect that she had led Philip, while they were together downstairs, into saying to her what he had already said to Miss Jillgall. I was so angry ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... it? What do we gain by trying to overreach each other? What advantage in a system where it's always the rogue that wins? If I was a king to-morrow, I'd rather fine a fellow for quoting Blackstone than for blasphemy, and I'd distribute all the law libraries in the kingdom as cheap ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... aid of books has been denied to him, still has won from life the kind of knowledge which develops character. Mrs. Peckover had small experience of faces which bear the stamp of simple sincerity. This man's countenance put her out. As a matter of course, he wished to overreach her in some way, but he was obviously very deep indeed. And then she found it so difficult to guess his purposes. How would he proceed if she gave him details of Jane's history, admitting that she was ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... you should go free, to perpetrate more cowardly interference, after spoiling that well-laid plan? Hee-hee! You poor fool! Busy-bodies such as you invariably overreach themselves. Having tricked me two or three times, you thought, didn't you? that you could draw me here to kill Scharnhoff, that poor old sheep. You were careful, weren't you? to let Omar Mahmoud go, in order that he might tell me how Scharnhoff had turned witness against us. And the Sikhs followed ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... object in following through all its sittings and all its twistings this odious and shameful trial, in which the judges' prejudiced servility and scientific subtlety were employed for three months to wear out the courage or overreach the understanding of a young girl of nineteen, who refused at one time to lie, and at another to enter into discussion with them, and made no defence beyond holding her tongue or appealing to God who had spoken to her and dictated to her that which she had done. ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... a large contempt for money used otherwise than for its material ends. A dollar never meant anything to him except its equivalent in the filling of a need. Generosity and the impulse of giving were in his blood, yet it had gone hard several times with people who had tried to overreach him even to a trifling extent. But now he submitted without a word to losing ten dollars through cashing Arthur Carroll's worthless check. He himself was rather bewildered at his tame submission. One thing was certain, although ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... enough nowadays that capital fattens on labour, naturally, instinctively, without much sense of wrong-doing, and has so fattened since the days when Laban tried to overreach Jacob. What we are not so often told is that the poor man not less instinctively looks upon the gen'leman as legitimate sport. 'An 'orrible lie' between two poor people is fair play from a poor man to a wealthier, just ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... humility, they are so acute in their dealings that they are sure to deceive a person who is not very guarded. Although they would scorn to commit a robbery, yet they think it only fair to deceive or overreach in a bargain. Like the peasantry of Ireland, they are proverbial for their hospitality, and, like them, they are ever ready to fight on the slightest provocation. They swing themselves to and fro ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk
... sucking them in; and the sun had burnt him, not a wholesome red or brown, but dirty yellow. He had bright dark eyes, which he kept half closed; only peeping out of the corners, and even then with a glance that seemed to say, 'Now you won't overreach me; you want to, but you won't.' His arms rested carelessly on his knees as he leant forward; in the palm of his left hand, as English rustics have their slice of cheese, he had a cake of tobacco; in his right ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... This is an important matter. This is no child's play." The subtle and criminal part of Benjamin's mind began to see that the affair would place his landlord and mortgagee in his power, and relieve him for evermore from financial pressure. To his peculiar conscience it was justifiable to overreach his grasping creditor, a right and proper thing to upset the shrewd Varnhagen's plans: a thought of the proposed breach of the law, statutory and moral, did ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... hated by Cromwell, because he had no hold of enthusiasm by which he could govern or overreach them; he therefore treated them with great rigor and disdain, and usually denominated them the heathens. As the Millenarians had a great interest in the army, it was much more important for him to gain their confidence; and their size of understanding afforded ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... [30] Sir Giles Overreach, in the play of "A new way to pay old debts," by Philip Massinger. It was difficult for the poet, or any other person, to libel such ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... shrewdness and cunning, attempt to take him with a trap. Rogue that he is, he always suspects some trick, and one must be more of a fox than he is himself to overreach him. At first sight it would appear easy enough. With apparent indifference he crosses your path, or walks in your footsteps in the field, or travels along the beaten highway, or lingers in the vicinity of stacks and remote barns. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... Venice, full of new hope and stronger convictions in his mission, that the caution of one upon whom he had counted as a firm ally had dissuaded an intending adherent from joining in the work. A man of the world, accustomed to overreach and to be overreached, would have taken the discovery coolly, and accepted an explanation. But Ruskin was never a man of the world; and now, much less than ever. He took it as treason to the great work of which he felt himself to be the missionary. Throughout ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... treaty? Would England give such a man up? No more than she will now give up the slaves that run from the American vessel, which is driven in by stress of weather. One of the vices of philanthropy is to overreach its own policy, by losing sight of all ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... hand, indicates a solitary life, that is, people will fail to understand your views and feelings. To burn your hands, you will overreach the bounds of reason in your struggles for wealth and fame, and ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... public advertisement. But he was persuaded by my lord to postpone that experiment, until every other method should have failed, because it would attract the attention of all the pettifoggers in London, who, though they might not be able to overreach, would infallibly harass and tease ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... Indeed he looked like a Jew, though a good Christian enough, and laughed about it, because he said that this appearance of his served him well in his trade, since Jews were always feared, and it was held to be impossible to overreach them. ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard
... fancifully pursues from point to point in the surrounding landscape finds statement in lines 34-60. Of these lines Sharp (Life of Browning, p. 159) says, "There is a gulf which not the profoundest search can fathom, which not the strongest-winged love can overreach: the gulf of individuality. It is those who have loved most deeply who recognize most acutely this always pathetic and often terrifying isolation of the soul. None save the weak can believe in the absolute union of two spirits ... No man, no poet assuredly, could love as Browning loved, ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... did not know him to be an incarnation of cunning, I should think he had lost his senses," replied Mr. Wyllys; "but happily for honest men, rogues generally overreach themselves; after they have spread their nets, made the mesh as intricate as possible, they almost invariably fall into their own snare. Such will, undoubtedly, be the result in ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... work compared with the adjustment of dealings between the mutually suspicious private capitalists, who divided among themselves the field of business in your day, and sat up nights devising tricks to deceive, defeat, and overreach ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... a wise man in his own generation, yet was he, notwithstanding, a great fool. He was one of that class who can sometimes overreach a neighbour, yet, in doing so, inevitably loses his own balance, and tumbles into the mire. A sagacious ninny, who had an "I told you so," for every possible event ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... morning, but the visitors stayed long enough to see him; for Mr. Featherstone asked Rosamond to sing to him, and she herself was so kind as to propose a second favorite song of his—"Flow on, thou shining river"—after she had sung "Home, sweet home" (which she detested). This hard-headed old Overreach approved of the sentimental song, as the suitable garnish for girls, and also as fundamentally fine, sentiment being the right thing ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... a farmer-general—you know the rest!' The same might have been said of the monopolists in the time of King James. One of them, indeed, has become in a manner illustrious in literature, by standing for the character of Sir Giles Overreach in the play of A New Way to Pay Old Debts. His prototype was Sir Giles Mompesson, a person whose oppressions created so much indignation, that parliament at last resolved to impeach him. In the proceedings, it ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440 - Volume 17, New Series, June 5, 1852 • Various
... manner. Their ways would never do for people who want to have done with lying and staring, and have always kept themselves clane from striopachas. Their word is not worth a rotten straw, yere hanner, and in every transaction which they have with people they try to cheat and overreach—ask my uncle Tourlough, who has had many dealings with them. But what is far worse, they do that which the wildest calleen t'other side of Ougteraarde would be burnt rather than do. Who can tell ye more on that point than I, yere hanner? I have been at ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... a few seconds to his normal self. But certain anxieties of a rather ghastly kind, and speculations as to what might be going on in London just then, were round him again, like armed giants, in another moment, and the riches or hypocrisy of his host were no more to him than those of Overreach or Tartuffe. ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... was even more to blame for his misfortunes than he was himself. Instead of filling his mind with Christian principles, she had fed him with the dry husks of worldly wisdom. She had taught him to get money; that it was shrewd and praiseworthy to overreach and deceive. His father had died when he was young, and his mother had had the whole training of him. Before God, she was responsible, though her neglect and her errors could not excuse him. I thanked God anew, as I looked at him, for the Christian ...
— Desk and Debit - or, The Catastrophes of a Clerk • Oliver Optic
... him with no further explanation than demurely telling him that you had always looked coldly upon him, and neither your wealth nor your ladyship (there was an emphasis of scorn on the word which would have become Sir Giles Overreach himself) can warrant you in treating with contempt the affectionate regard of ...
— Two Ghostly Mysteries - A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and The Murdered Cousin • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... credulity. One or more of all these classes will be found in the foregoing pages. It will be seen, from the record of their lives, that the delusion, humiliating as it was to human intellect, was not altogether without its uses. Men, in striving to gain too much, do not always overreach themselves: if they cannot arrive at the inaccessible mountain-top, they may, perhaps, get half way towards it, and pick up some scraps of wisdom and knowledge on the road. The useful science of chemistry is not a little indebted to its spurious brother of alchymy. Many valuable ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... Sheriff rued the day that first he meddled with Robin Hood, for all men laughed at him and many ballads were sung by folk throughout the country, of how the Sheriff went to shear and came home shorn to the very quick. For thus men sometimes overreach themselves through greed ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... Nikita's benefactor, and he knew how to put it so plausibly that all those who depended on him for their money, beginning with Nikita, confirmed him in the conviction that he was their benefactor and did not overreach them. ...
— Master and Man • Leo Tolstoy
... conscience are worth more in our business than any other qualities. With these you may do as you list. They tell far better than all the 'one-price' and fair-dealing professions, in which people have little faith. In fact, the mass will overreach if they can, and therefore regard these ...
— True Riches - Or, Wealth Without Wings • T.S. Arthur
... much by an argument, and politicians often overreach themselves in a scheme. Thus had it like to have happened to Mrs Honour, who, instead of recovering the rest of her clothes, had like to have stopped even those she had on her back from escaping; for the squire no sooner heard of her having abused his ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... Agamemnon addressed: "Do not thus, excellent though thou be, godlike Achilles, practise deceit in thy mind; since thou shalt not overreach, nor yet persuade me. Dost thou wish that thou thyself mayest have a prize, whilst I sit down idly,[22] wanting one? And dost thou bid me to restore her? If, however, the magnanimous Greeks will give me a prize, having ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... Carroll began paddling towards each other, while in the bows Collingwood and Westby rose to their feet and held their spears in front of them. They advanced cautiously and then swung apart, evading the collision—each trying to tempt the other to stab and overreach. ...
— The Jester of St. Timothy's • Arthur Stanwood Pier
... call it vulgar, if they will, The trade that thrives while sleeps the sleepyhead; Yes, knavery, not bravery, call it still, To overreach ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... arms I craved to see, Knights, burghers, filtering through those gates ajar, Their age of serfdom with my spirit free; We cannot all have wisdom; some there are Believe a star doth rule their destiny, And yet they think to overreach the star, For thought can weld together things apart, And contraries find ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... "Achilles, valiant though you be, you shall not thus outwit me. You shall not overreach and you shall not persuade me. Are you to keep your own prize, while I sit tamely under my loss and give up the girl at your bidding? Let the Achaeans find me a prize in fair exchange to my liking, or I will come and take your own, or that of Ajax or of Ulysses; ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... been observed, is apt to overreach itself, has passed into a proverb; and the case of Jacopo and his employers was one in point to prove its truth. The unusual silence of those who ordinarily sought him on similar occasions, had not been lost on the agent; and the sight of the felucca, as ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... with a muttered reply; but there was that about Edith that saved her from open insult—a dignity and distance they none of them could overreach. Besides, she was a favorite with madame and the forewoman. So silently industrious, so tastefully neat, so perfectly trustworthy in her work. Her companions disliked and distrusted her; she held herself aloof from ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... occurrence for a rascal to overreach himself. It is the thing Arthur Hoyt did when he refrained from shooting Harry and resorted to the more cruel but longer device of starving ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... adorn yourself, and to live with comfort, even to enjoy honor and considerable pleasure, so long as you keep within proper bounds; you should, however, not go beyond the limits of temperance and moderation. In other words, do not overreach propriety and self-restraint, regardless of real pleasure, in the endeavor to show off in excessive and unprofitable squandering. Such conduct results in confusion and trouble—chastisement sent of ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... been polished by time. It hasn't a genius for stiff morality, and indeed makes few pretensions in that direction. It scruples but scantly to represent the false as the true, and has been accused of cultivating the occasion to grasp and to overreach, and of steering a crooked course—not to your and my advantage—amid the sanctities of property. It has been accused further of loving if not too well at least too often, of being in fine as little austere as possible. ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... legality. (6) It was a design worth the venture: if they succeeded they would become the saviours of their country; if not—why, in the effort to grasp the fairest flower of happiness, they would but overreach, and find instead a glorious ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... converse with a god. The god had his own way of speaking, which was intelligible only to the man acquainted with it; but one who did rightly understand it knew not only how to ascertain, but also how to manage, the will of the god, and even in case of need to overreach or to constrain him. It was natural, therefore, that the worshipper of the god should regularly consult such men of skill and listen to their advice; and thence arose the corporations or colleges ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... man is inherently and completely satisfied with the difference between man and woman; satisfied with it and deriving his most thrilling pleasure from it; woman is always feverishly and frantically endeavouring to overcome and overreach this difference, endeavouring, in fact, to feel her way into every nerve and fibre of man's sensibility, so that he shall have nothing left that is a secret from her. That he should have any such secrets—that ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... involved in the difficulties which now threaten its occupants. Their caution would only be the more increased on hearing of any commotion. Wait not, therefore, I implore you, for the dawning of the day: it could never dawn to you. Rivers I know too well; he would overreach you by some subtlety or other; and how easy, even while we speak, to shoot you down through these uneven logs. Trust not, trust not, I entreat you; there is a sure way of escape, and you still have time, if at once you avail yourself ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... there was a knock at my door, and Sir Percival's solicitor, Mr. Merriman, was shown in. There are many varieties of sharp practitioners in this world, but I think the hardest of all to deal with are the men who overreach you under the disguise of inveterate good-humour. A fat, well fed, smiling, friendly man of business is of all parties to a bargain the most hopeless to deal with. Mr. Merriman was one ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... for the time when I should be a man, and do as I saw others do. I longed for the days when I should be able to drink and be idle; and, in the mean time, I set all my wits to work to baffle and overreach the viewer. ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... around him, then may he doubt what his eyes see with regard to this matter. Secondly, a man must not lean on his senses touching matters that come not within the discerning of sense. Now in regard to this bread, the Papists do overreach themselves. Did they but tell us that the change made was mystical and of faith,—not within the discernment of sense—we might then find it harder work to deal withal, and we must seek unto the Word of God only, and not unto our sense in any wise. But they go farther: they ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... selling of Goods and Merchandizes; from whence they seldom come before they have spent a large reckoning, and lost more then three of their five sences; thinking themselves no less rich then they are wise; and ly then very subtlely upon the catch to overreach another in a good and advantagious bargain; by which means they themselves are somtimes catcht by the nose with a mouldly old sort of unknown commodity, that they may walk home with, by weeping cross; ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... the Pirate's men, and before he could escape he might be beset by a crowd of ruffians against whom he would have no chance at all. He could but defend himself with his sword and hope that Diggle might overreach himself in his fury and give him an opportunity to get ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... had schooled themselves to control their emotion till they had scarcely any emotion left to control, were repelled rather than attracted by Kean's relentless anatomy of all the strongest feeling of our nature. In Sir Giles Overreach, a character almost devoid of poetry, Kean's acting displayed with such powerful and relentless truth the depths of a cruel, avaricious man, baffled in all his vilest schemes, that the effect he produced was absolutely awful. As no bird but the eagle can look ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... approve." It was natural to think, that the fear which the Dutch would conceive of our obtaining advantageous terms for Britain, might put them upon trying underhand for themselves, and endeavouring to overreach us in the management of the peace, as they had hitherto done in that of the war: the ambassador was therefore cautioned to be very watchful in discovering any workings, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... young people who are thinking of marrying to attempt to deceive each other. What is the good of it? A very short period of married life will entirely dispel the illusion. I suppose people of the world may think it fair to overreach one another in their dealings, saying "everyone for himself." They have no intention of seeking to promote the other's happiness; present gain is all they want. But a married pair, to be ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... was helping him; therefore he had no need to oppress or overreach any man. He believed that God's eye was on him; therefore he dared not oppress ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley
... 55 deg. in midwinter in a house built high above ground would be too parching and unsteady for the good of the mushrooms; besides, a second shelf is inconvenient enough, and when it comes to a third or a fourth the inconvenience would be too great, and overreach any advantage hoped for in economy of space. An unheated mushroom house must be regarded as a shed, and treated similarly, as ...
— Mushrooms: how to grow them - a practical treatise on mushroom culture for profit and pleasure • William Falconer
... Front-de-Boeuf, "it was then the boar of Rotherwood whom I ushered to the postern, and dismissed with my own hands!—And thou," he said to Wamba, "whose folly could overreach the wisdom of idiots yet more gross than thyself—I will give thee holy orders—I will shave thy crown for thee!—Here, let them tear the scalp from his head, and then pitch him headlong from the battlements—Thy trade is to jest, ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... told you once before,' said I, 'it is you who have been, in your greed and cunning, against all the world. It may be profitable to you to reflect, in future, that there never were greed and cunning in the world yet, that did not do too much, and overreach themselves. It ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... are talking about?" Doctor Prescott said, sharply; for this plain proposition that he overreach the other aroused him to a ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... ninety-hundredths of the population shut out every sentiment of generosity, and rooted from the heart every emotion honorable to human nature. Neighborhood intercourse was poisoned with selfishness, and the effort to overreach, and make money out of, the ignorance or necessities of these, was universal. These degrading practices crept into every business, and petty frauds soon became designated as Yankee tricks. There was nothing ennobling in their pursuits. The ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... Sheppard, Don Cesar de Bazan, His Last Legs, London Assurance, Old Heads and Young Hearts, and some other dramas. Dorothy and Mrs. Douglas were devotees of the theater. I enjoyed Richelieu and Macbeth, and I had seen Forrest as Sir Charles Overreach and Claude Melnotte; but for many of the plays I did not care. Douglas was indifferent to the theater. He was himself too much of a player on the stage of American affairs to be illusioned ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... grand and permanent results. He stands out to the gaze of time, the model of what a great and fortunate statesman should be, so long as mankind have evil passions as well as lofty virtues, and the state that he seeks to serve is surrounded by powerful and restless foes, whom it is necessary to overreach where it is ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... makes perpetual efforts to serve others, which, however, are perpetually baffled by the unselfishness of these others. People thus spend years in trying to overreach one another, so as to make others richer than themselves. In a race each one tries to keep behind; but as this leads to confusion, there is then a universal effort for each one to be first, so as to put ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... our next place of call was Barracouta harbour. It was here, if I am rightly informed, that a French naval officer shot himself, because he had allowed the Russian squadron to overreach him. It was during the Crimean war, the English and French squadrons had hunted the station all over to come up with the Russians, but though they often sighted the enemy, they never succeeded in engaging ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... bubble did not destroy the rage for speculation, although it taught many useful truths—that national prosperity is not advanced by stockjobbing; that financiers, however great their genius, generally overreach themselves; that great dividends are connected with great risk; that circumstances beyond human control will defeat the best-laid plan; that it is better to repose upon the operation of the ordinary laws of ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... the world, and is addicted to them, he may be said to bear Mrityu (death) in his mouth. Do thou, O Bharata, watch and observe the character of thy external and internal enemies, (by means of thy spiritual vision), And the man who is able to perceive the nature of the eternal reality is able to overreach the influence of the great fear (perdition). Men do not look with approbation upon the conduct of those who are engrossed in worldly desires and there is no act without having a desire (at its root) and all (Kama) desires are, as it ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... guarding you. I think I can assure you that you are in no danger. For the rest, I must beg of you to wait for me and to trust me. The women of the name you bear have often had the same burden laid on them and have carried it nobly. Yet I know that your courage will match and overreach anything they have shown. I salute you, madame, in homage. I shall come to you ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... and Charles Kean is to-night playing for his last night. If it had been the 'rig'lar' drama I should have gone, but I was afraid Sir Giles Overreach might upset me, so I stayed away. My quarters are excellent, and the head-waiter is such a waiter! Knowles (not Sheridan Knowles, but Knowles of the Cheetham Hill Road[28]) is an ass to him. This sounds bold, but truth is stranger than fiction. By-the-by, not the least ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... poorly furnished and nasty, far below similar conveyances in any continental city with which we are acquainted. Greater fault still is to be found with the drivers, a large proportion of whom are so prone to overreach, that it is hardly possible to settle for their fares without a squabble. Our experience leads us to say, that at an average a stranger pays 30 per cent. above the proper sum, besides having his temper in almost ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various
... Hark ye, Isaac, do you dare to complain of tricking? Don Jerome, I give you my word, this cunning Portuguese has brought all this upon himself, by endeavouring to overreach you, by getting your daughter's fortune, without making any ...
— The Duenna • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... compare Convennole to a whetstone, which is blunt itself, but which sharpens others. His old master, however was sharp enough to overreach him in the matter of borrowing and lending. When the poet had collected a considerable library, Convennole paid him a visit, and, pretending to be engaged in something that required him to consult Cicero, borrowed ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... "They may overreach themselves yet and be brought to justice," Doctor Wesselhoff remarked. "But is there no way ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... made my bow and went out before she'd time to say any more, for she stood with the purse in her hand, looking almost foolish. I didn't mean to be disrespectful, and I spoke as polite as I could; but I can give in to no man, if he wants to make it out as I'm trying to overreach him. And in the evening the footman brought me the one pound thirteen wrapped in paper. But since then I've seen pretty clear as th' old ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... ploughed, and tilled, that it may bring forth more fruit. To another the world is merely a great market, a warehouse filled with all kinds of goods, which may be bought and sold. To some the world is like a chess-board, where each man plays a selfish game, and tries to overreach his neighbour. To others the world is a mere play-ground, where they pass a frivolous, useless existence, sitting down to eat and drink, and rising up to play. To the selfish man the world is a vast slave plantation, where unhappy slaves ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... interposition." Does Mr. Montagu consider patents of monopoly as good things? or does he mean to say that Bacon staid every patent of monopoly that came before him? Of all patents in our history, the most disgraceful was that which was granted to Sir Giles Mompesson, supposed to be the original of Massinger's Overreach, and to Sir Francis Michell, from whom justice Greedy is supposed to have been drawn, for the exclusive manufacturing of gold and silver lace. The effect of this monopoly was of course that the metal employed in the manufacture was adulterated, to the great loss of the public. But this ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... station. He was fortunate in securing a train to New York without having to wait more than five minutes, and late that night the Chester boys and the others of their party were in full possession of the details of the air-ship in which Luther Barr meant to overreach them if ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... parsimony amounted to false economy; often it took on a pettifogging character in her dealings with the Dutch, with the Huguenots, and with the Scots, though in the last case at least it must be admitted that either party was equally ready to overreach the other if the chance offered. But for very many years a very close economy was absolutely essential if debts were to be paid. That economy was facilitated by the lavish expenditure of prominent men on public objects; due partly to a desire for display, partly—at least in the case of the buccaneering ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... (1584-1640) was a dramatic poet of great natural ability; but his plots and situations are usually so strained and artificial that the modern reader finds no interest in them. In his best comedy, A New Way to Pay Old Debts, he achieved great popularity and gave us one figure, Sir Giles Overreach, which is one of the typical characters of the English stage. His best plays are The Great Duke of Florence, The Virgin Martyr, ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... By'r Lady, so had not I. I was fain to overreach, as many times I do; but now experience hath taught me so much craft ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... curiosity that he might have derived from Dick's incautious manner. But knowing the scheme they had planned, why should he offer to assist it? This was a question more difficult of solution; but as knaves generally overreach themselves by imputing their own designs to others, the idea immediately presented itself that some circumstances of irritation between Quilp and the old man, arising out of their secret transactions and not unconnected perhaps with his sudden disappearance, ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... splendid prizes which had hitherto been carried off by daring adventure, and the good fortune which is so often its attendant. His contest therefore with Antonius and Sextus Pompeius was the contest of cunning with bravery; but from his youth upward he was accustomed to overreach, not the bold and reckless only, but the most considerate and wily of his contemporaries, such as Cicero and Cleopatra; he succeeded in the end in deluding the senate and people of Rome in the establishment of his tyranny; and finally deceived the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various |
