"Trickster" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... adventure from the "Arabian Nights." The personification of the Queen by a little dressmaker who happened to resemble her, the forgery of the Royal signature, the final attainment of the diamonds, all seemed so easy to this consummate trickster that it is small wonder she became intoxicated with success and blind to consequences. No sooner was the necklace in her possession than, of course, as fast as possible it was turned, not into money, but into money's worth. Houses and lands, equipages and furniture, ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... am, it will need someone braver than you are to tame me!" she said—"A trickster is always ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... some passion we know nothing of, he looked like a bloated spider coming out of the cell where his victims were. "Gorging himself, while they and the country suffer the loss," he muttered. But Paul was a hot-brained young man. We should only have seen a vulgar, commonplace trickster in politics, such as the people make pets of. "Such men as Schuyler Gurney get the fattest offices. God send us a monarchy soon!" he hissed under his breath, as the gate closed after the politician. By which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... nothing but water to-day," said his brother. "I swear it—so help me, God! I know what I'm about. And I know you. I know you for the vilest cheat and trickster that ever walked the earth. I've been in hospital—I don't know how long. I know that you would cheat me if you could. You were to pay me within six months—and it's ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... plead. "Other holidays you have tramped it in the track of the stolid, unswerving sun; a belated truant, you have dragged a weary foot homeward with only a pale, expressionless moon for company. To-day why not I, the trickster, the hypocrite? I, who whip round corners and bluster, relapse and evade, then rally and pursue! I can lead you the best and rarest dance of any; for I am the strong capricious one, the lord of misrule, and I alone am irresponsible and unprincipled, and obey ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... on dangerous ground. Nature is a trickster, and she spread her net and caught the Highland maid and the Lowland laddie, and bound them with green withes as is her wont. So they were married by the Congregational "meenister," and for a wedding-tour fared forth Westward to fame and fortune. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... insult sneaks away from his look. It is not mere "pluck"; for pluck also comes by fits and starts, and can be disconnected from the other elements of character. A tradesman once had the pluck to demand of Talleyrand, at the time that trickster-statesman was at the height of his power, when he intended to pay his bill; but he was instantly extinguished by the impassive insolence of Talleyrand's answer,—"My faith, how curious you are!" Considered as an efficient force, it is sometimes below heroism, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... denials? What the world remembers is that Jem Temple Barholm was stamped as a cheat and a trickster. No one has time to remember the other thing. He is dead—dead! When a ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... down the road. The sailors were perhaps more road-weary than the gangsmen, and provided none of them succeeded in slipping away in the darkness, or made a successful resistance, in half-an-hour's time or less the whole party would be safe under lock and key, cursing luck for a scurvy trickster in delivering them ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... convincingly unassumed, that the truth is borne upon Bruennhilde: It was not he, despite all appearances, who took the ring from her, and if not he—"Ha!" she cries, in a burst of furious indignation, "This is the man who tore the ring from me; Siegfried, trickster and thief!" ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... companions? And whose fault was it that he had sent away Philostratus, the best of them all? Hers—the faithless traitoress, from whom he had looked for peace and joy, who had declared that she felt herself bound to him, the trickster in whom he had believed he saw Roxana—But she was no more. On the table by his bed, among his own jewels, lay the golden serpent he had given her—he fancied he could see it in the dark—and she had worn it even in death. He shuddered; he felt as though a woman's arm, all ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... to her a dark, mysterious tone that he could not fathom. There were too many things to explain; too many things which seemed to connect her directly with the Rodaines; too many things which appeared to show that her sympathies were there and that she might only be a trickster in their hands, a trickster to trap him! Even the episode of the lawyer could be turned to this account. Had not another lawyer played the friendship racket, in an effort to ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... distorted, overlaid by imagination, and quickened by superstition. Even the strange summons at the threshold, that he himself had vainly answered, was, after the first shock of surprise, rationally explained by him as malicious foolery on the part of some clever trickster, who withheld the key to ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... round the moon, or any other inane absurdity contrary to the evidence of science and their senses. The English Gladstonians who babble about brotherly love and conciliation should move about Dublin in disguise. Disguise would in their case be necessary to get at the truth, for Paddy is a shrewd trickster, and delights in humbugging this species of visitor, whom he calls "the slobbering Saxon." Then if they would return and still vote for Home Rule they are no less than traitors to their country and enemies to their ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... contradictory qualities; with nothing great but his crimes; and even those contrasted by the littleness of his motives, which at once denoted both his baseness and his meanness, and marked him for a traitor and a trickster. Nay, in his style and writing there was the same mixture of vicious contrarieties;— the most grovelling ideas were conveyed in the most inflated language, giving mock consequence to low cavils, and uttering ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... abbe were fated to remain eternally unknown to him,—not that they were difficult to fathom, but simply because he lacked the good faith and candor by which great souls and scoundrels look within and judge themselves. A man of genius or a trickster says to himself, "I did wrong." Self-interest and native talent are the only infallible and lucid guides. Now the Abbe Birotteau, whose goodness amounted to stupidity, whose knowledge was only, as it were, plastered on him by dint of study, who had no experience whatever of the world and its ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... these pugilists into the texture of his autobiography, so he does men who appear not once but a dozen times. Take Jasper Petulengro out of the books and he does not amount to much. In them he is a figure of most masculine beauty, a king, a trickster, and thief, but simple, good with his fists, loving life, manly sport and fair play. He and Borrow meet and shake hands as "brothers" when they are little boys. They meet again, by chance, as big boys, and Jasper says: "Your blood beat when mine was near, as mine always ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... fool of him as insensibly to persuade him to waive, in his exceptional case, that general law of distrust systematically applied to the race. He revolves, but cannot comprehend, the operation, still less the operator. Was the man a trickster, it must be more for the love than the lucre. Two or three dirty dollars the motive to so many nice wiles? And yet how full of mean needs his seeming. Before his mental vision the person of that ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... his mind that his present business was the only matter he would discuss with Fletcher Fogg. Even though the just wrath of an innocent man, ruined and persecuted, prompted him to assail this smug trickster with tongue, and even with fists, he bound himself by mental promise to wait until he had proofs other than vague words and ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... for suspicion. Never was a man more Catholic than Father Hecker, simply, calmly, joyfully, entirely Catholic. What better proof of this than the rage into which his lectures and writings threw the outright enemies of the Church? Grave ministers lost their balance and foamed at him as a trickster and a hypocrite, all the worse because double-dyed with ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... like the fiery cross of old! I'd fight—fight—fight till they had to kill every man o' my kind before I'd down! Before I'd see y'r law outraged, y'r courts perverted, y'r justice bartered and hawked and peddled from huckster to trickster, from heeler to headman, from blackmailer to high judge—but A didna mean to break loose. Y'r fair scene stirred m' blood; and A'm an old man; and A love the land. A was born West. A'm none of y'r immigration boomsters who goes in ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... and grim ascetics; and as having conspired against a state which had given him an honourable refuge, and brought disorder and bloodshed upon it. Between such contradictory statements, it is difficult to determine how much we should impute to the philosopher and how much to the trickster. In this uncertainty, the Pythagoreans reap the fruit of one of their favourite maxims, "Not unto all should all be made known." Perhaps at the bottom of these political movements lay the hope of establishing a central point of union for the numerous Greek colonies of Italy, which, though ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... end. Well might he be! Apart from the injury done to his family and belongings, his house was thronged night and day by inquisitive visitors from all sections of the country. He was denounced on the one hand as a trickster, and on the other as a man who must be guilty of some terrible secret sin, else he would not thus be vexed. Sermons were preached with him as the text. Factions were formed, angrily affirming and denying the supernatural ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... classes are united to each other by ties of respect and order on the part of the indigent, and of care and protection on the part of the wealthy. The sense of pecuniary insecurity is there little felt, and the ignorant poor are not left to the machinations of any trickster whose interest it may be to deceive them. It is for this reason that even in societies where the oppression of the poor and weak is, in other ways, infinitely greater than in this country, riots and seditions are difficult to create. It is because of the social providence which, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... soi-disant [Fr.], humbug; adventurer; Cagliostro, Fernam Mendez Pinto; ass in lion's skin &c (bungler) 701; actor &c (stage player) 599. quack, charlatan, mountebank, saltimbanco^, saltimbanque^, empiric, quacksalver, medicaster^, Rosicrucian, gypsy; man of straw. conjuror, juggler, trickster, prestidigitator, jockey; crimp, decoy, decoy duck; rogue, knave, cheat; swindler &c (thief) 792; jobber. Phr. saint abroad and a ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... man—Time, that merciless jester, who had always circled about playing various pranks on him; but Kranitski had never looked into the face of that jester, with attention. Occasionally, sorrow and grief had come to him in company with the trickster, but they were transient, not of the kind which go into the depth of the heart, but such as slip along over the surface. He grew gloomy; was sorry for having lost someone, or having missed something, and passed on with springy, lightly swaying gait, with his long continued ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... touches a kind of fairylike inspiration, unique and charming—the style, for example, of Jimbo. Then, on a lower plane, there is the frankly bogie creepiness of John Silence. Between the two he has created a position for himself, half trickster, half wizard, that none else in modern literature could fill. His new book, Incredible Adventures (MACMILLAN), is a combination of both methods. Four of the five adventures are of the mystically gruesome kind, removed however from being commonplace ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 2, 1914 • Various
... a friend, who pretended to quickwittedness and understanding; so he came up to him privily and said to him, 'Let me do, so I may put the change on this trickster, for I know him to be a liar and thou art near upon having to pay the money; but I will turn suspicion from thee and say to him, "The deposit is with me and thou erredst in imagining that it was with other than myself," and so divert him from thee.' 'Do so,' replied the merchant, 'and rid the folk ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... property see that is likely to be sold so low as not to cover the sum loaned upon it, they have the right, until the expiration of a certain time, to bid it in; that is, to offer more and keep the property in their own hands. If this trickster can't be hoodwinked as to the sale being a bona fide one until the time when his right to buy it expires, some other scheme must be resorted to. Now, is this business strictly legal? Am I justified in doing it for the benefit ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... thou child of a Trachinian sire, Henceforth will take good care, from far away To look on Troy and Atreus' children twain. Yea, where the trickster lords it o'er the just, And goodness languishes and rascals rule, —Such courses I will nevermore endure. But rock-bound Scyros henceforth shall suffice To yield me full contentment in my home. Now, to my vessel! And thou, Poeas' child, Farewell, right heartily farewell! May Heaven ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... out and reject the Greek gods, they should then worship that crucified sophist and live according to his laws. Therefore they despise all things and hold everything in common, having received such ideas from others, without any sufficient basis for their faith. If, then, any impostor or trickster who knows how to manage things came among them, he soon grew rich, imposing on these ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... feminine forms as are now applied to men, such as 'gamester', 'youngster', 'oldster', 'drugster' (South), 'huckster', 'hackster', (swordsman, Milton, prose), 'teamster', 'throwster', 'rhymester', 'punster' (Spectator), 'tapster', 'whipster' (Shakespeare), 'trickster'. Either, like 'teamster', and 'punster', the words first came into being, when the true significance of this form was altogether lost{174}; or like 'tapster', which was female in Chaucer ("the gay tapstere"), as it is still in Dutch and Frisian, ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... part of it with honesty. I have no virtues—where should I have got them from, forsooth, in a life like mine? I mean I have no women's virtues; but I have one that is sometimes—not always—a man's. 'Tis that I am not a coward and a trickster, and keep my word when 'tis given. You fear that I shall lead my lord a bitter life of it. 'Twill not be so. He shall live smoothly, and not suffer from me. What he has paid for he shall honestly have. I will not cheat him ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... bunglers in all the fine arts of manual operation, yet excel everybody in slight of hand and the delusive feats of activity."[16] Whatever may be said of Collins and his achievement, one fact remains constant. He was a brilliant and persistent trickster whose cunning in the techniques of polemic often silenced an opponent with every substantive right ...
— A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing (1729) • Anthony Collins
... among the ruck, was also of a pretty sunny tone. Then there was nothing else, nothing but Fagerolles' picture—an actress in front of her looking-glass painting her face. He had not mentioned it at first; but he now spoke of it with indignant laughter. What a trickster that Fagerolles was! Now that he had missed his prize he was no longer afraid to exhibit—he threw the School overboard; but you should have seen how skilfully he managed it, what compromises he effected, ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... is one devised by nature for the trickster. His success does not depend altogether on human gullibility; part of his argument rests on the conditions which surround the industry of mining, one which never can be free of extreme risk. All men know that gold ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... the face, even when, in the straits of distress and the agonies of calamity, it is indispensable to the salvation of the State. Put it upon the track with the showy and superficial, the conceited, the ignorant, and impudent, the trickster and charlatan, and the result shall not be a moment doubtful. The verdicts of Legislatures and the People are like the verdicts of juries,—sometimes ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... mark the trickster's cunning when he feigns To fear my vengeance, whom his taunts revile! Nay, Drances, be at ease; this hand disdains To take the forfeit of a soul so vile. Keep it, fit inmate of that breast of guile, And now, good Sire, if, beaten, we despair, If never Fate on Latin ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... knew no bounds. He railed at me as a trickster. He charged me with wishing to blackmail him. Then seeing that this was not the way to gain his point, he ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... abominable trickster! You would not be content with the keys of heaven if you had not got them by outwitting somebody! Do you fancy I had never seen the Duke of Ormskirk's portrait? Gaston sent ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... circulations, as well as in the outward statements made of individual circulations to those who purchase advertising space. In this, as in all other forms of enterprise, there are honest, clean-cut and business-like methods, and there are the methods of the time-server, the trickster and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 795, March 28, 1891 • Various
... the credulity of ignorant people by his knowledge of some simple secrets of chemistry; that he should pretend to prophetic gifts which in his heart he knew to be fraud, and should be recreant to his ancestral faith, proved him to deserve the penetrating sentence which Paul passed on him. He was a trickster, and knew that he was: his inspiration came from an evil source; he had come to hate ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... fetch them?" said the King, "I should be very glad to see if you are such a trickster as ...
— East O' the Sun and West O' the Moon • Gudrun Thorne-Thomsen
... his soul. Of all injured vanities, that of the reproved buffoon is the most savage; and when grave issues are involved, these petty stabs become unbearable. But Gondremark was a man of iron; he showed nothing; he did not even, like the common trickster, retreat because he had presumed, but held to his point bravely. 'Madam,' he said, 'if, as you say, he prove exacting, we must take the bull ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... guard happened along and the group broke up; noting Pastiri's movement of flight, the hayseed tried to seize him, grabbing at his coat, but the trickster gave a rude tug and ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... action without a basis of right and truth and in a bad cause, is to assume the terrible responsibility that must fall on the champion of error. Jesus scorned not to use suggestion so that he might move men to their benefit, but every vicious trickster has adopted the same means to reach base ends. Therefore honest men will examine well into their motives and into the truth of their cause, before seeking to influence ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... pardon any sooner than those injured by himself.' He was unconscious of any such malignity. It is pathetic to observe his utter freedom from suspicion that posterity could help characterizing him as resolute, wise, and just for his persecution of Ralegh, and not as a wretched trickster. ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... critics only quarrel about real genius, and while one school proclaimed that Tcheriapin had discovered an entirely new technique, a revolutionary system of violin playing, another school was equally positive in declaring that he could not play at all, that he was a mountebank, a trickster, whose proper place ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... fiercely cried Gurley, with an oath. "You shall stay to give me another chance, or I will brand you as a trickster and ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... their kind, there had been a hunter of the open country, a smaller cousin of the wolf, whose natural abilities had made an undeniable impression on the human mind. He was in countless Indian legends as the Shaper or the Trickster, sometimes friend, sometimes enemy. Godling for some tribes, father of all evil for others. In the wealth of tales the coyote, above all other animals, ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... often associated with the doctrine of the playfulness of God. This idea—so strange to Europe[433]—may have its roots partly in the odd non-moral attributes of some early deities. Thus the Rudra of the Satarudriya hymn is a queer character and a trickster. But it soon takes a philosophical tinge and is used to explain the creation and working of the universe which is regarded not as an example of capricious, ironical, inscrutable action, but rather as manifesting easy, joyous movement and the exuberant rhythm of a dance executed ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... showed many resemblances to the Islands of the south, as well as incidents of Indian lore. There is, in fact, a distinct feeling of Indian influence in the tales of the mythical period; yet they lack the epics of that people, and the typical trickster ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... into our own house of call to beard us!" he exclaimed between his profanities. "I should like to know who uses the 'Three-decker,' when the crew of the Fair Maid are here, without our licence? What is the matter with you, Trickster Tim? Are you afraid to handle ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... I have my way he will be, and if I hear that he's a skilful navigator, for I want no further recommendation. The way in which he, an old experienced hand, one who would be able to see at a glance how thoroughly I should be at his mercy if he were a trickster whose aim was to make as much money out of the transaction as he could, proved that he was as honest as the day and ready to lay himself open to every examination, that alone without his display of honest indignation when he suspected me of being ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... more scornfully. "That trickster! He is a fine one to look to. It was a sad day for us when thou didst rescue him from the underworld, where even his own did not ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... was a slow-minded closet-student like Halleck permitted to fritter away in the long-drawn-out operations against Corinth the advantage of position and of force that had been secured by the army of the West? Why was a political trickster like Butler, with no army experience, or a well-meaning politician like Banks with still less capacity for the management of troops, permitted to retain responsibilities in the field, making blunders that involved waste of life and of resources and the loss of campaigns? ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
... Claverhouse, irritated beyond control by Balcarres's apologies and his hint of compromise. "If I had my way of it, every time-serving trickster in the land would have justice—a rope round his neck and a long drop, for a bullet would be too honorable a death. But let Athole pass. He was once a loyal man, and there may be reason in what ye say. I have never known sickness myself, ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... son's death. "Certes he is rid of this miserable life of danger and difficulty, vain, sorrowful, brief, and inconstant; these times in which the major part of the good things of the world fall to the trickster's share, and all may be enjoyed by those who are backed up by wealth or power or favour. Power is good when it is in the hands of those who use it well, but it is a great evil when murderers and poisoners are allowed to wield it. To the ill-starred, to the ungodly, and to the foolish, death ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... know why you are running away, now that it is done. So help me God, I'll bring you to book for it if I have to make a lifetime job of it! It's all right for your political backers; they are thieves and bushwhackers, and they make no secret of it. But there is one thing worse than a trickster, and that is a ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... great glory for you in waiting to be the last to go. And there are things enough for you to do. If you ally yourself with the good causes that cry for support and leadership, you can be far more formidable than you have ever been as a skulking trickster; you can lead men up as you have ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... brought forward the third charge, relating to the treatment of the begams of Oudh in a speech held by all who heard it to be a marvellous display of oratory. He described Hastings as "by turns a Dionysius and a Scapin," a tyrant and a trickster, with a mind in which "all was shuffling, ambiguous, dark, insidious, and little".[210] Indeed throughout the proceedings against Hastings his accusers constantly disregarded moderation and even decency of ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... becoming more persistent in his fraud in proportion as the aggression is repeated; he abandons his trickery when he deems it futile. But hitherto we have subjected him only to a friendly examination-in-chief. The time has come to put a string of searching questions and to trick the trickster if there ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... preternaturally keen for flaws of language, not from pedantic exaction of superfluous accuracy, but, on the contrary, from too conscientious a wish to escape the mistakes which language not rigorous is apt to occasion. So far from seeking to "pettifogulize"—i.e., to find evasions for any purpose in a trickster's minute tortuosities of construction—exactly in the opposite direction, from mere excess of sincerity, most unwillingly I found, in almost every body's words, an unintentional opening left for double interpretations. Undesigned ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... As the miserable trickster passed Frank on the shore some time after, in the presence of the chief factor, Mr Ross, and several others, Frank sternly looked at him and uttered the one word "Sand". None but the two then knew what was meant, but the guilty rascal paled, and so trembled that it seemed as ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... an abominable trickster; loves to tease us. With one hand it gave Miss Porter a delectable male; with the other prevented her enjoying him. Furthermore, it prematurely deprived her of a ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... don't know where the reform is to begin. I've seen a perfectly capable, honest man, time and again, run against an illiterate trickster, and get beaten. I suppose if the people wanted decent members of congress they would elect them. Perhaps," continued Philip with a smile, "the women will ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... Deputy assisted at Mass, one of their number having inserted a sponge soaked in blood into the head of the celebrated statue of the Redeemer, blood began to trickle over the face of the image. Suddenly during the service a cry was raised by the trickster and his associates, "Behold Our Saviour's image sweats blood." Several of the common people wondering at it, fell down with their beads in their hands, and prayed to the image, while Leigh who was guilty of the deception kept crying ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... of an ancient gem of such rare beauty and size? Michael had often seen conjurers raise up palm-trees and flowers on the deck of a steamer, out of a pot full of sand; a wave of their magic wand had transformed the deck of the steamer into a flowery garden. But this poor sick wanderer was no trickster. ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... better being attacked than ignored. Later, he asserted that Hugo, after accepting the dedication of the Lost Illusions to himself, had induced Edouard Thierry to write an abusive article against him. "He is a great writer," said the novelist in telling this, "but he is a mean trickster." ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... them about the cave of Montesinos, in order to play him a famous one. But what the duchess marvelled at above all was that Sancho's simplicity could be so great as to make him believe as absolute truth that Dulcinea had been enchanted, when it was he himself who had been the enchanter and trickster in the business. Having, therefore, instructed their servants in everything they were to do, six days afterwards they took him out to hunt, with as great a retinue of huntsmen and ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... other train after that stops at Thorbury. If he had been at home he would have taken an early afternoon train, which was what she expected, I suppose. It will be a great pity for him to have to go tonight, and for no other reason than for that old trickster's telegram. If anything has really happened, he'll get news of it in some ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... Carter, you and I believe that these things are done by some clever trickster. It may be that some bogus medium who used to get the colonel's good money away from him, wants more of it, and is taking this means of driving my uncle back to the ...
— The Crime of the French Cafe and Other Stories • Nicholas Carter
... other hand, traced their descent in a direct line from one of the unbending old Scotch Covenanters of 1638, and it had always been a source of vague bewilderment to Eliza that a race sprang from so staunchly Puritan a stock should have been juggled by that inimitable trickster, Fate, into allying itself with a family in whose veins ran the hot French ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... an effect of burlesque; but of course the clash must not be too brutal. Certain characters of the heroic saga are, so to speak, at home with Satyrs and others are not. To take our extant specimens of Satyr-plays, for instance: in the Cyclops we have Odysseus, the heroic trickster; in the fragmentary Ichneutae of Sophocles we have the Nymph Cyllene, hiding the baby Hermes from the chorus by the most barefaced and pleasant lying; later no doubt there was an entrance of the infant thief himself. Autolycus, Sisyphus, Thersites are all ...
— Alcestis • Euripides
... the trickster Hadifah, in the evening he summoned one of his slaves named Dames, a rascal, if ever there was one. "O Dames," he said, "you frequently boast of your cunning, but hitherto I have had no opportunity of ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous
... of weaklings. I have no liking for the troubles of others; enough of my own, say I. I was but angered that the ditch-tender should have done the trick so clumsily, and upon an old man, at that. I cared not for the gray beard, nor what became of the chit. I clapped the trickster upon the shoulder and spun ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... fettered; perhaps I should add, in honesty, my own ill-regulated interest in the phases of life and human character. The fact is (at least) that we spent hours together daily, and that I was nearly as much on the forward deck as in the saloon. Yet all the while I could never forget he was a shabby trickster, embarked that very moment in a dirty enterprise. I used to tell myself at first that our acquaintance was a stroke of art, and that I was somehow fortifying Carthew. I told myself, I say; but I was no such fool as to believe ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... who I am. When I first came to you I was a mere irresponsible hobo, a wandering tramp who had adopted the name of Thursday Smith because he was ignorant of his own, but who had no cause to be ashamed of his manhood. To-day I am discovered in my true guise. As Harold Melville, the disreputable trickster, I am not fit to remain in your employ—to associate with honest men and women. You will forgive my imposition, I think, because you know how thoroughly ignorant I was of the truth; but I will impose upon you no longer. I am sorry, sir, ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne
... liar, for lies are his coin. Steal from a thief, for that is easy. Set a trap for a trickster, and catch him at the first attempt. But beware of the man who has no axe ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... indulging in and enjoying the banter. Later, when he come out of the door, it was more than likely that, if it were winter, he would be met by a volley of water soaked snowballs, or big buckets of icewater, or a mountain of snow shoved off the roof by some trickster, who had waited patiently for such an opportunity. On summer nights his horse would be stolen, led far into the woods and tied, or the wheels of his wagon would be taken off and hidden, leaving him to walk home. Usually the successful ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... permission to return to Florence.' Hearing all this, the bishop, although heartily vexed, could not restrain his laughter; and the rather, as he remembered that he who was thus tricked by an ape, was himself the most incorrigible trickster in the world. However, when they had talked and laughed over this new occurrence to their hearts' content, the bishop persuaded Buonamico to remain; and the painter agreed to set himself to work for the third time, when the chapel was happily ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... as to the other person," he resumed, after a pause, "it is not the first time he has acted like a trickster. He has crossed me before, and I will choose an opportunity to tell him my mind. I won't mince matters with him either, and will not spare him one insulting syllable that he deserves. He wears a sword, and so do I; if he pleases, he may draw it; he shall have the opportunity; but, at all events, ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... narrate began to occur, I had been unable to come to a definite decision, as far as my own belief was concerned, as to whether or not the spirits of the dead could communicate with the living. At one time I would be led to believe they could, but then the exposure of some well-known medium as a trickster would change my opinion and I would again find myself puzzling vainly over the ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... time, it conquers space, It cows that boastful trickster Chance, And bids the tyrant Circumstance Uncrown and fill a ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... weep whose beloved sire was slain, who was torn from her home to find herself in the power of a man she hated. Yet there was hope for her. Hassan, Eastern trickster as he might be, was her friend; and her uncle, Saladin, at least, would never wish that she should be shamed. Most like he knew nothing of this man Lozelle, except as one of those Christian traitors who were ever ready to betray the Cross for gold. But Saladin was far away and her home lay ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... an indomitable energy, a splendid sincerity, the most loyal of Fernhurst's sons. And as Gordon looked his last at his old foe, he felt that "the Bull" was so essentially big, so strong, so noble of heart, that it hardly mattered what he worshipped. There hung round him no false trapping of the trickster; sincerity was the keynote of his life. Gordon would search in vain, perhaps, for a brighter lodestar. As two vessels that have journeyed a little way together down a river, on taking their different courses at the ocean mouth, signal one another "good luck," ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... your right to it; and make him give it back to you." Gunther stammers, "The ring! I gave him no ring—er—do you know him?" The rejoinder is obvious. "Then where are you hiding the ring that you had from me?" Gunther's confusion enlightens her; and she calls Siegfried trickster and thief to his face. In vain he declares that he got the ring from no woman, but from a dragon whom he slew; for he is manifestly puzzled; and she, seizing her opportunity, accuses him before the clan of having ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... good reason for questioning Senator Wolfe's motives, but Cutten and Stetson and even Walker assured Wolfe that no reflection upon him was intended. What these men should have done was to have denounced Wolfe right there as a trickster and made no bones about it. But on the absurd assumption that a member of the State Senate is necessarily a gentleman, the much ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn
... you have hit it. Wretch that I am, I have been guilty of that once or twice by Forgetfulness, and lately rising from Table, after a long Dinner, I had forgot to say the Salutation of the Virgin. Why then, says Balbinus, it is no Wonder, that a Thing of this Moment succeeds no better. The Trickster undertakes to perform twelve Services for two that he had omitted, and to repay ten Salutations for that one. When Money every now and then fail'd this extravagant Operator, and he could not find out any Pretence to ask for more, he at last bethought himself of this Project. He comes Home ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... see a lot more with your blind eyes than we see. You pretend to be happy, too, as if you wanted to set everybody a good example. But it's all a pose—a pose! I shall study you till I find you out, a trickster like the rest ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... name!—with all our faults and weaknesses and craftiness and worldliness and sins. If He cared for that huckstering Jew, as He did, even in his earlier days, He will not put us away because He finds faults in us. 'The God of Jacob,' the supplanter, the trickster, 'is ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the interests of justice "Old Bogle" and Mr. Hawkins became acquainted, much to the advantage of the latter, as he happened to meet Bogle in the witness-box, a place where the counsel unravelled the trickster's most subtle of designs. The advocate liked "Old Bogle," as he called him, because, said he, Bogle, having white hair, was so like a Malacca cane with a silver knob, white at ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... dropping on his knees, his frame shaking with dishonest passion, "yes! call them so now. They will be blessed truth for me in a month, for me, for you. Hermes the Trickster is a mighty god. He has befriended Eros. I shall possess Athens and possess you. I shall be the most fortunate mortal upon earth as now I am most miserable. Ah! but I have waited so long." He sprang to his feet. "Tarry, makaira, ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... amateur published a theory of silken threads attached to light articles, and thick cords to heavy articles, whereof no trace was found by witnesses who examined the volatile objects. An elaborate machinery of pulleys fixed in the ceiling, the presence of a trickster in a locked pantry, apparent errors in the account of the flight of the objects, and a number of accomplices, were all involved in this local explanation, the explainer admitting that he could not imagine why the tricks were played. Six or eight ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... cried contemptuously. "Promised that shallow trickster! I might have known she had a hand in my misery. And you thought a promise to her more sacred than good faith to me? ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... know better than that. Can you imagine the great doctor the dupe of a mere trickster? The professor was a man of great science and was blessed with an almighty sound head. ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... narrative may take on a high degree of complexity, involving many well-differentiated characters and a well-developed art of conversation, and in some instances, especially in revenge, trickster, or recognition motives, approaching plot tales in our sense of ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... before he could have the heart to shoot him. He gave chase nevertheless, plunging along in a ziz-zag way over a carpet of moss and dry pine-needles, and through some dense tangles of undergrowth, uttering a welcoming screech whenever he saw the bright eyes of the little trickster peering down ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... for the trickster," said L'Estrange to the Austrian prince. "The revenge of a farce ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... has hundreds of enemies, and I, only I, know her and can defend her—weak, base shallow trickster, traitress that she is!' cried Alvan, and came down in a thundershower upon her: 'Yesterday—the day before—when? just now, here, in this room; gave herself—and now!' He bent, and immediately straightening his back, addressed ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... There was Trickster, a merchant of physical leanness, Distinguished alike for his means and his meanness; And Sharper, a lawyer, with manners as courtly, And practice as large, as his person was portly. There was Aderman Michaels, the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... like an avalanche, with Langur Dass hard after him afraid, now that he had done the trick. And hot on the trail of Langur Dass ran Ahmad Din, with his knife drawn not meaning to let that prize be lost to him at less than the cost of the trickster's life. ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... muttered. "I shall have to wait four or five dreary hours before my lady comes home from her morning calls—her pretty visits of ceremony or friendliness. Good Heaven! what an actress this woman is. What an arch trickster—what an all-accomplished deceiver. But she shall play her pretty comedy no longer under my uncle's roof. I have diplomatized long enough. She has refused to accept an indirect warning. ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... was to make both Egypt and himself rich beyond computation. Then followed a conversation with Haji Wali, whom age—he was 77—"had only made a little fatter and a little greedier," and the specious old trickster promised to accompany the expedition. As usual Burton began with a preliminary canter, visiting Moilah, Aynunah Bay, Makna and Jebel Hassani, where he sketched, made plans, and collected metalliferous specimens. He returned to Egypt ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... double-dealing! How in due season it will carve the frank, open face into wrinkles; how like a knife it will stab the honest heart. And then its transformations,—how it has been known to change a goodly face into a mask of brass; how with the evil custom of debt has the true man become a callous trickster! A freedom from debt, and what nourishing sweetness may be found in cold water; what toothsomeness in a dry crust; what ambrosial nourishment in a hard egg! Be sure of it, he who dines out of debt, ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... trickster!" echoed the other birds. "We will have no such fellow for our king. Cheat and trickster he is, and he shall be punished. You shall be king, brave Eagle, for without your strength he could never have flown so high. It is you whom we want for our protector and lawmaker, not this ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... unlawful combination like that of "the oil dealers in the Velabrum." Incidentally it is a rather interesting historical coincidence that the pioneer monopoly in Rome, as in our day, was an oil trust—in the time of Plautus, of course, an olive-oil trust. In the "Trickster," which was presented in 191 B.C., a character refers to the mountains of grain which the dealers had in their warehouses.[105] Two years later the "corner" had become so effective that the government intervened, and the curule ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... the last speech subdued the most violent emotion). What do I hear, archbishop? Can it be? Oh, tell me, by what signs and marks of proof This bold-faced trickster doth uphold himself As Ivan's son, whom ...
— Demetrius - A Play • Frederich Schiller
... listen reverently. It is not necessary for me to say to him all that comes into my head. But it came into my head to-day, as I stood gazing up at the equestrian statue at Charing Cross, that it would better become the English people to have John Hampden there than that miserable old trickster, Charles Stuart.' ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... nothing complicated; one thing follows another in a perfectly natural way; yet there are many questions in the reader's mind as to how the little rascal will turn out, and whether he will accomplish his mission. Much more cleverness is shown by the sleight-of-hand trickster, who, unassisted and in the open, with no accessories, dupes his staring assembly, than by him who, on the stage, with the aid of mirrors, lights, machines, and a crowd of assistants, manages to deceive your eyes. A story that by its frank simplicity takes the reader into its confidence, ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... leave to return to Florence." The Bishop, hearing the affair, although it vexed him, could not keep from laughing, and above all as he thought how an animal had played a trick on him who was the greatest trickster in the world. However, after they had talked and laughed their fill over this strange incident, the Bishop persuaded Buonamico to resume the work for the third time, and he finished it. And the ape, as punishment and penance for ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Volume 1, Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi • Giorgio Vasari
... opposition to them, and yet be hopelessly subject to them. Such centralization is despotism. It forms as well the opportunity for the demagogue of to-day—for him who as suppliant for votes is a wheedler and as politician and lawgiver a trickster. Centralization confuses the voter, baffles the honest newspaper, foments partisanship, and cheats the masses of their will. On the other hand, to the extent that local independence is acquired, a democratic community minimizes every such evil. In naturally guarding itself ...
— Direct Legislation by the Citizenship through the Initiative and Referendum • James W. Sullivan
... to be glad of The clash of the war-glaive— Traitor and trickster And spurner of treaties— He nor had Anlaf, With armies so broken, A reason for bragging That they had the better In perils of battle On places of slaughter— The struggle of standards, The rush of the javelins, The crash of the charges, The wielding ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... and the Moselle on one side, and beyond the Rhone and Garonne on the other. Of all the conjurers of his day he was the most famous and the most successful, always, of course, excepting that Corsican conjurer who ruled for so many years the destinies of France. From those who have seen that famous trickster, we have learned that the Charleses, the Alexanders, even the Robert Houdins, were children compared with the magical wonder-worker of the past generation. The fame of Comus was enormous, and his gains proportionate; and when he had shuffled off this mortal coil ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various
... the stone-couch by leaps and bounds. But while intent upon removing the stuff from Pao-y's face, she simultaneously ejaculated: "Master Tertius, are you still such a trickster! I'll tell you what, you'll never turn to any good account! Yet dame Chao should ever correct and ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... in that blissful realm above, Where the poor and the rich meet in meekness and love: Where the works of each heart are unveiled to the light, And Humbug and Cant yield to Truth and to Right— Where the trickster lays off his mask of deceit, And the cloak of the hypocrite drops to his feet, And Honor is given, where Honor is due— We may see that some from the Fifth Avenue, Most nobly will speak in that great reckoning day, While their earthly ...
— Nothing to Say - A Slight Slap at Mobocratic Snobbery, Which Has 'Nothing - to Do' with 'Nothing to Wear' • QK Philander Doesticks
... to see him applauded on the stage. And so skillfully did he know how to exhibit the resources of his brain, that he was generally taken for an educated man, while in reality he possessed only cleverness and the brazenness of a Warsaw loafer and trickster. Moreover, for Janina he was the first and only man to whom she had ever surrendered herself. It seemed to her that this bound them for ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... scoundrel, caitiff, scamp, knave, villain, miscreant, varlet, trickster, renegade, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... character intact. He is therefore seized with a sudden resolution, partly angry, partly frightened, and partly humorous, to become absolutely frank, and to tell the whole truth about himself for the first time not only to his dupe, but to himself. He excuses himself for the earlier stages of the trickster's life by a survey of the border-land between truth and fiction, not by any means a piece of sophistry or cynicism, but a perfectly fair statement of an ethical difficulty which does exist. There are some people who think that ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... have three slices of capon and five pieces of vegetable, so he had come to have a share. At this his father-in-law could do nothing but have another fowl killed and give him supper; he was naturally astonished at the Trickster's powers of dreaming and insisted that he must certainly go and try his luck at finding ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... "Shallow trickster!" Sire Edward thundered. "Am I not afraid? You grimacing baby, do you think to ensnare a lion with such a flimsy rat-trap? Wise persons do not hunt lions with these contraptions: for it is the nature of a rat-trap, fair cousin, to ensnare not the ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... said the trickster, slowly, passing his hand over his brow; "why, what's the matter ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... others, bewildered his ready sense, and filled him with astonishment at the magnitude of his achievements. The accomplished adventurer was always ready to regard himself rather as a sublime being endowed with great and stupendous attributes, than as a pitiful trickster. He became the God of his own idolatry, and stood astonished, as the witch of Endor in the English Bible is represented to have done, at the ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... "Thou art a trickster, good nurse; thou didst play upon me foully. Good, good nurse! Come, go quickly. Thou shalt see no more love-making; I forbid thee; kiss thy nestling and go. I will watch over her. Come, my sweet, come!" His Grace took the maid in his strong arms, and though his legs threatened ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... [Footnote: A politician is a person versed in the science of government, from the Greek words polis, a city, polites, a citizen. Though a very honorable title, it has been debased in familiar usage until it has come to mean in turn a partisan, a dabbler in public affairs, and even an artful trickster.] ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... Demands the critic's voice—the poet's rhyme. Can our light scenes add strength to holy laws! Such puny patronage but hurts the cause: Fair virtue scorns our feeble aid to ask; And moral truth disdains the trickster's mask For here their favourite stands, whose brow severe And sad, claims youth's respect, and pity's tear; Who, when oppress'd by foes her worth creates, Can point a poniard at the guilt ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... Nature is both a trickster and a humorist and sets the will of the species beyond the discernment of the individual. The picador has to blindfold his horse in order to get him into the bull-ring, and likewise Dan Cupid exploits ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... question. In the stillness of the night he made a business of patrolling that portion of the principal Government edifice, and, sure enough, the footsteps followed along behind him. He cornered them; it was surely some trickster! There was no possibility for the joker to get away. But, a moment later, the steps were heard in another part of the hall; they had evaded him successfully. Similar experiments were tried on other nights, but they all ended in ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... look pretty hard on the outside, but the inside works were all right." And so thought its jolly patrons. Seated at tables, well supplied with piles of gold and silver, where numerous disciples of that ancient trickster Pharaoh, being dubious perhaps of the propriety of adopting the literal orthography of his name, ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... Edward O'Sullivan Addicks, votary of rotten finance, perpetual candidate for the United States Senate, wholesale debaucher of American citizenship and all-round corrupter of men—J. Edward O'Sullivan Addicks, a corporation political trickster, who has done more to hold up American laws, American elective franchises, and American corporations to the scorn of the civilized world than any other man of this or ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... than mock: sometimes my tears At midnight break through bounden lids — a sign Thou hast a heart: and oft thy little leaven Of dream-taught wisdom works me bettered years. In one night witch, saint, trickster, fool divine, I think thou'rt Jester at ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... the old orthodoxy is owing to its clinging to the fallacy that the world's work is base, and Nature is a trickster luring us to our doom. Mrs. Eddy reconciled the old idea with the new and made it mentally palatable. And this is the reason why Christian Science is going to sweep the earth and in twenty years will have but one competitor, the ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... up as he came among them. There, then, he took his seat. But Juno, when she saw him, knew that he and the old merman's daughter, silver-footed Thetis, had been hatching mischief, so she at once began to upbraid him. "Trickster," she cried, "which of the gods have you been taking into your counsels now? You are always settling matters in secret behind my back, and have never yet told me, if you could help it, one word ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... of laughter: but, after it had an end, Dioneo, knowing that it was come to his turn to tell, said, "Gracious ladies, it is a manifest thing that sleights and devices are the more pleasing, the subtler the trickster who is thereby artfully outwitted. Wherefore, albeit you have related very fine stories, I mean to tell you one, which should please you more than any other that hath been told upon the same subject, inasmuch as she who was cheated was a greater mistress of the art of cheating ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... wearily, as if it tired him to carry so heavy a heart. Life was unkind, nature cruel, fate a trickster. One was caught, as a rat in a trap, "in the fell clutch of circumstance." What was the use of anything? ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... hath been observed to act in the case of a rattlesnake, which never meditates a human prey without giving warning of his approach. This observation will, I am convinced, hold most true, if applied to the most venomous individuals of human insects. A tyrant, a trickster, and a bully, generally wear the marks of their several dispositions in their countenances; so do the vixen, the shrew, the scold, and all other females of the like kind. But, perhaps, nature hath never afforded ...
— Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon • Henry Fielding
... hoax, finesse, imposition, imposture, swindle, humbug, bubble, wile, deception, stratagem, bunko, blind, thimblerigging; impostor, deceiver, quack, mountebank, thimblerigger, charlatan, empiric, trickster, swindler, blackleg, bamboozler, sharper; delusion, chicanery, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... for your own good, but you cannot understand it yet. What does it matter to me whether you do what I require or not? You are doing it entirely for your own sake." With such fine speeches you are paving the way for some kind of trickster or fool,—some visionary babbler or charlatan,—who will entrap him or persuade him to ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... gall and wormwood to the defeated trickster, who had been caught trying to defraud ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster
... attitude, smoking, and looking down moodily at the black chasm below the base of the tower. For the first time in his life this man, who was utterly without honour or principle—this man, who held self-interest as the one rule of conduct—this unscrupulous trickster and villain, felt the bitterness of a woman's scorn. He would have been unmoved by the loudest evidence of his victim's despair; but her silent contempt stung him to the quick. The hours dragged themselves out with a hideous slowness for the despairing creature who ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... talcum and rice powder. It begins to grow warm in the church, and a number of women open their vanity bags and duck down for stealthy dabs at their noses. Others, more reverent, suffer the agony of augmenting shines. One, a trickster, has concealed powder in her pocket handkerchief, and applies it dexterously while pretending to ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... of a place like Uist is the very height of folly. And yet it is precisely in such bare and rough regions where man has to fight with nature as with a constant foe, that the unseen powers are believed to be most terrible. The lutin of the smiling land of France is a mere capering trickster, and the "lubber fiend" of Milton's poem is pictured as an unpaid adjunct of the dairy. Duncan's "wee man up on the hill-side" is a permanent and unspeakable horror of the night. "What is he ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... elaborated a romance or a keen and playful witticism—and who really did injustice to his own powers,—not from modesty but meanness,—even he, the son of a prime minister and heir to a peerage—a man who was himself always something of a trickster, now mystifying a blind old woman at Paris; now sending open letters, privately nullified, recommending the bearers to his friend the envoy at Florence; now, with the mechanic aid of village carpenters and bricklayers, rearing a frail edifice bristling with false points, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... their money with your brain as sole guarantee? You! Get along; I am the only one to make bargains like that, and you are the only one with whom I make them. Go, Marechal, give him his money; I won't gainsay it. But you are a trickster, as usual!" ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... the "imperial dreamer," Charles the Bold, was brought into immediate rivalry with that royal trickster, the "universal spider," Louis XI. Charles was by far the nobler spirit of the two: his vigour and intelligence, his industry and wish to raise all around him to a higher cultivation, his wise reforms at home, and attempts to render his father's dissolute and careless rule into a well-ordered ...
— Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, Complete • Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre |
