"Unscrupulous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... full of bitterness and envy, an ambitious, unscrupulous, gloomy, crafty man, who had acquired a great empire over my son. Gilbert made the mistake of confiding in him and asking his advice. That was the origin of all the mischief. Vaucheray convinced him and convinced me as well that it would be better if we acted by ourselves. He studied the business, ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... are correct, Bobinette is naught but a girl of low birth—of the lowest—a creature who will stick at nothing, who has been mixed up with a band of criminals, the most cunning, the most artful, the most unscrupulous, the most dangerous band of criminals in all this round world—a band I have, time and again, pursued, decimated, broken up, dispersed ... only to see them spring to an associated evil life again, a ceaseless rebirth of maleficent forces, forming and reforming, a malevolent, ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... that I can make nothing of him. I shall never be surprised to hear anything in connexion with him. I recommend you to avoid him like the plague. He can be no one's friend. As an acquaintance he is treacherous and insincere; as an enemy, I can well imagine that he would be as merciless as he is unscrupulous. ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... respect which I felt for scores in general helped me to overcome my regret at not finding anything by my beloved masters. It is true I learnt later that poor Flachs had only come into the possession of these particular scores through unscrupulous dealers, who had traded on his weakness of intellect and palmed off this worthless music on him for large sums of money. At all events, they were scores, and that was quite enough for me. Flachs and I became most intimate; we were always seen ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... followers, dispersed through the town, were slaughtered without mercy on the signal of a gun fired from the castle; and the army, panic-stricken at the fate of its leaders, quickly melted away. But no sooner was the semblance of tranquillity restored, than the Kaimakam Ismail Pasha, an unscrupulous agent of the merciless decrees of the vizir, was sent into Asia under the new title of Moufetish, or inquisitor; and an unsparing proscription almost utterly exterminated all the remaining partizans of Abaza-Hassan, without distinction of rank; while the suppression of numerous timars or fiefs, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... dreaded Chilkoot Pass and across the treacherous lakes to Dawson City. In those days catastrophes were only too frequent in that graveyard of the Pacific, Bering Sea, and this was chiefly on account of unseaworthy ships patched up for passenger-traffic by unscrupulous owners in San Francisco. Nome City can now be reached by the fine steamships of the "Alaska Commercial Company" as safely and comfortably as New York in an Atlantic liner, but these boats are unfortunately in the minority, and even while we were at Nome, passengers were arriving ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... sixteenth century king and Parliament were united against an alien power, the Catholic Church, and a foreign prince, the Pope. Before England was free she had to become Protestant, and Henry, whatever his motives, was on the Protestant side. That he was himself an unscrupulous tyrant is beside the point. He was an ephemeral phaemomenon, and, as a matter of fact, his tyranny, which the people never felt, died with him. The Church of Rome was a permanent fact, immortal, if not unchangeable, which would ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... day, she cried so hard; and Mrs. Sinclair said that, of course, one should be above these things, but as far as she was concerned, she felt she needed all the Christian grace she possessed to forgive the unscrupulous person who ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... plausible mask for that immense Unknown with a strange taste for furbishing up older plays. I would merely deny to Will his GENIUS, and hand THAT over to Bacon—or Bungay. Believe me, Mr. Greenwood, this is your easiest way!—perhaps this IS your way?—the plot of the unscrupulous Will, and of your astute Bungay, might thus more conceivably escape detection from the ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... angry when he found that his orders had not been obeyed, and he immediately determined to send Arthur to another prison, which was in the town of Rouen, the keeper of which he knew to be an unscrupulous and merciless man. This was done, and soon afterward it was given out through all the kingdom that Arthur was dead. Every body was convinced that John had caused him to be murdered. There were several different rumors in respect to the way in which the deed was done. One story was ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... strangle me even as yonder black slaves?' Bhanavar knew the mind of Aswarak, and considered, 'The King is cunning and weak, a slave to his desires, and in the bondage of the jewel, my beauty. The Vizier is unscrupulous, a hatcher of intrigues; but that he dreads me and hopes a favour of me, he would have wrought against me ere now. 'Tis then a combat 'twixt him and me. O my soul, art thou dreaming of a fair youth that was the bliss of thy bosom night ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Tom was attacked by the gang of unscrupulous men and the model was stolen. He was assaulted and carried far away in an automobile. In an attempt to capture the gang in a deserted mansion, in the woods on the shore of Lake Carlopa, Tom was aided by Mr. Damon, of whom he had purchased the motor-cycle. The ...
— Tom Swift and his Motor-boat - or, The Rivals of Lake Carlopa • Victor Appleton
... and the result and expression of many different habits and dexterities. His features were bold and aquiline; his expression arrogant and predatory; his whole appearance that of a swift, violent, unscrupulous man of action; and his copious white hair and the deep sabre-cut that traversed his nose and temple added a note of savagery to a head already remarkable ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Bishop of Rome could negotiate as with a faithful son of the Church. It is from the orthodox Gregory of Tours that most of our knowledge of Clovis and his successors is derived. In Gregory's famous History of the Franks, the cruel and unscrupulous king appears as God's chosen instrument for the extension of the Catholic faith.[18] Certainly Clovis quickly learned to combine his own interests with those of the Church, and the alliance between the pope and the Frankish kings was ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... spread it? But that is neither here nor there. If I had been always as lucky as the other members of this club, who seem to have remained dignified in their misfortunes, then I might be less reticent. And if I were so unscrupulous as to speak only of things less bitter to remember, then I might tell how on a Bavarian railway I was once waked at midnight by an excited official who—with an air as if life and death hung on my answers—plied me with questions in spite ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... and his black eyes bulged with horrified amazement. The unscrupulous, daring, infallible duelist whom he had induced to try conclusions with Quentin in a regular and effective way, had been overthrown at the outset by a most peculiar transaction of fate. He had assured the ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... and twenty-two. [180] After a large dividend had been paid to the proprietors, a surplus remained amply sufficient, in those days, to corrupt half a cabinet; and this surplus was absolutely at the disposal of one able, determined and unscrupulous man, who maintained the fight with ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... powerful a witness do the enemies of Christ's Church, and of our English branch of it, bear to the usefulness and effect of its doctrine, even in its most helpless and lowest condition, by the ceaseless and unscrupulous pains which they take in ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... compilation of Domesday Book, and they were always active in bringing in money. Under the Conqueror they were expected to observe at least something of the rules of justice. Under the Red King they were expected to disregard them entirely. Of all the clerks Ranulf Flambard was the most unscrupulous; therefore he rose into the greatest favour. The first William had appointed high officers, known as Justiciars, to act in his name from time to time when he was absent from England, or was from any cause unable ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... character. The eyes themselves were hazel-coloured, and, whatever her mood, preserved a singular pathos of expression, a look as of self-pity, of unconscious appeal against some injustice. In contrast with this her lips were defiant, insolent, unscrupulous; a shadow of the naivete of childhood still lingered upon them, but, though you divined the earlier pout of the spoilt girl, you felt that it must have foretold this danger-signal in the mature woman. Such cast of countenance could belong only to one ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... to Ponte in the Engadine, with orders to seize her if he could see her, and have her conveyed to Cles, in Tyrol. Vittoria being only by the gentlest interpretation of her conduct not under interdict, an unscrupulous Imperial officer might in those military times venture to employ the gendarmerie for his own purposes, if he could but give a plausible colour of devotion to the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... traditions is the 'third term tradition,' it has never been violated and is an effective safeguard against unscrupulous ambition, but never before has been established a test case of its inviolability as a warning to ...
— The Attempted Assassination of ex-President Theodore Roosevelt • Oliver Remey
... towards the Belgrade Cabinet. The answer was unsatisfactory, and to-day Austria is mobilizing. She can no longer draw back without risking a collapse at home as well as a loss of influence abroad. It is now a question of life and death to her. She must put a stop to the unscrupulous propaganda which, by raising revolt among the Slav provinces of the Danube valley, is leading towards her internal disintegration. Finally, she must exact a signal revenge for the assassination of the Archduke. For all these reasons Serbia is to receive, by means of a military expedition, ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... and puts it into the hands of his superior officer. And yet, and yet, when one has soldiered with a man, Barbara, and roughed it with him and been shelled and shot at with him, there seems to be a bond of sympathy between you and him for ever after. And he was a brave man, Barbara, cruel and unscrupulous, I admit, but there was no fear in him, and I can't help admiring courage. I seem to think of him as two men—the man I soldiered with and the heartless brute who watched while ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... argument is correct. The economic gains by such an exodus are equally clear, provided the philanthropy that starts it will maintain a careful watch to prevent the old slum conditions being reproduced in the new places and unscrupulous employers from taking advantage of the isolation of their workers. With this chance removed, strikes are not so readily fomented by home-owners. The manufacturer secures steady labor, the worker a steady job. The young are removed from the contamination of the tenement. ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... honest to give it? Would not the general loss be too great to justify such relief? Would it not be just as honest and prudent to authorize each debtor to issue his own legal-tenders to the extent of his liabilities? Than to do this, would it not be safer, for fear of overissues by unscrupulous creditors, to say that all debt obligations are obliterated in the United States, and now we commence anew, each possessing all he has at the time free from incumbrance? These propositions are too absurd to be entertained for a moment by thinking or honest people. Yet every delay in preparation ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ulysses S. Grant • Ulysses S. Grant
... in South America," said he, "comes wholly from an unscrupulous man, named Francisco Lopez, who has contrived to make himself Dictator of Paraguay. Lopez is an imitator of Napoleon Bonaparte. He has an insatiate ambition to conquer all South America and found an empire there, much ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... this shady transaction; at least never to appear in his court in the guardianship case. (It may be said here that the firm did withdraw from the case, as there was, in their words, "nothing doing." But not much was accomplished, for another equally eminent and unscrupulous firm of lawyers was employed the next day and went to work in a more devious manner to get hold ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... to correct my statement prominently in the Illustrated London News; I hope I should do so in any case; but in this case it supports my main actual contention; that there is in the press a very vulgar and unscrupulous attack on ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... harmonize at all with her conception of Mrs. Dillingham's nature and character. Was she trying her arts upon her? She knew of her intimacy with Mr. Belcher, and naturally connected the visit with that unscrupulous ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... of his father. Having Jews to govern, he held, as his father had done, to a show of Judaism, though at heart he was as much of a pagan as Philip. He, too, loved building, and Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee was built by him for his capital. His unscrupulous tyranny and his gross disregard of common righteousness appear in his relations with John the Baptist and with Herodias, his paramour. Jesus described him well as "that fox" (Luke xiii. 32), for he was sly, and worked often by indirection. While his father had energy and ability which command ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... devastated Serbia, looked to us for sympathy and help, and all the sympathy they got came from private persons in America, and of help there was none. Meanwhile, the Germans undermined and gangrened the American people. Every ship brought over their slyest and most unscrupulous propagandists, who cooperated with the despicable German professors and other agents already planted here, and opened the sewers of their doctrines. Their spies began to go up and down the land, without check. Count Bernstorff, the German Ambassador, assumed to play with the Administration ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... their misfortune. Of their prosperity, because they cleverly contrived to become possessors of all the coin; and of their misfortune, because their usurious demands became so detrimental to the public welfare, and were often exacted with such unscrupulous severity, that people not unfrequently became exasperated, and acts of violence were committed, which as often fell upon the innocent as upon the guilty. The greater number of the acts of banishment were those for which no other motive was assigned, or, at all events, ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... Ireneus, for this unscrupulous thrusting on you of my paternal egotism. I should first have inquired after you and your hopes which were crushed so soon. Ebba, however, is ever a ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... followed. That silence struck terror into Kenneth's heart. He encountered Crispin's eye bent upon him with a look he could not fathom, and much would he now have given to recall the two words that had burst from him in the heat of his rage. He bethought him of the unscrupulous, deadly character attributed to the man to whom he had addressed them, and in his coward's fancy he saw already payment demanded. Already he pictured himself lying cold and stark in the streets of Waltham with ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... the poverty, too, of a member of his own family. Here was jealous enmity also, a hatred that seemed to point ominously to trouble before them, to all the harm that could be accomplished by an angry, unscrupulous man. No wonder Cousin Jasper looked changed, and haunted. What hold did Anthony Crawford have upon his cousin; why should one have so little and the other so much; why did that high wall forbid all intercourse with that strange neighbor? It was plain to Oliver ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... "Possession is nine parts of the law. I have no more doubt than you have as to the claims of this boy; but can you prove them without documents or evidence of any sort? Can you expect to overcome a powerful and unscrupulous opponent? You have perfect trust in Providence, Andrew—so have I, lawyer though I am; and be assured that in God's good time justice will be awarded ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... such speculations, and his talents, which were unquestionably great, were wholly perverted to extravagant intrigues, or to the embellishment of a gorgeous ostentation with something of classic grace. His immense wealth, his imperious pride, his unscrupulous and daring character, made him an object of no inconsiderable fear to a feeble and timid court; and the ministers of the indolent government willingly connived at excesses which allured him at least from ambition. The strange visit and yet more strange departure of Mejnour filled ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Pittsburgh inspector. James Marshall, the same who opposed the ratification of the federal Constitution, David Bradford, the "empty drum," and Judge Brackenridge of Pittsburgh, attended this meeting. Bradford, the most unscrupulous of the leaders, sought to shirk his responsibility, but was intimidated by threats, and thereafter did not dare to turn back. Brackenridge was present to counsel the insurgents to moderation. In spite of ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... recklessness that can seize with avidity whatever coarse fragments of pleasure the day or the hour may afford. But this poverty applies itself to nerves strung for the subtlest happiness. No torpor here; no moments of rash and unscrupulous gratification—unreflected on, unrepented of—which being often repeated make, in the end, a large sum of human life; but the heart incessantly demands a genuine and enduring happiness, and is incessantly ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... career. Accordingly, when, in a voice of thunder, he demanded of Michele an immediate explanation—wanted to know how he dared address the princess—we all felt that he was putting himself in the wrong and that a catastrophe was imminent. Giants, that is, unscrupulous people in power, are too fond of assuming this attitude of unprovoked hostility and overbearing insolence, but they assume it once too often. Had he remembered Adam and Eve and the apple it might have occurred to him to inquire whether in the present case also the lady had not ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... liked him; he had a hard inscrutable face, and unless I greatly misjudged him was capable of bolder enterprises than petty larceny. He was just the man to steal secretly away and return with a horde of unscrupulous treasure-seekers, for he knew now that there were diamonds in the neighborhood, and he must have heard that we had found gold and silver ornaments and vessels in ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... fact he wound up by quoting the poem by Burns, "A Man's a Man for A' That." Such a shifting of propositions is a frequent error of speakers. It occurs so often that one might be disposed to term it a mere trick to deceive, or a clever though unscrupulous device to secure support for a weak claim. One of the first ways for the speaker to avoid it is to be able to recognize it when it occurs. One of the most quoted instances of its effective unmasking is the ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... ("agent"), a big black slave, Abdullah Mohammed, ready of tongue and readier of fist. Lastly, I must mention one Audah Adayni, a Huwayti bred in the Baliyy country, a traveller to Cairo, passing intelligent and surpassing unscrupulous. Confidential for a consideration, he told all the secrets of his employers, and it is my firm conviction that he was liberally paid for so doing by both parties ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... debauchery that can be imagined; but they were, on the whole, less bad for Peter than the palace. He met there something besides mere jesters: he encountered new elements which had as yet no place in the terem, but contained the germ of the regeneration of Russia. He came across Russians who, if unscrupulous, were also unprejudiced, and who could aid him in his bold reform of the ancient society. He there became acquainted with Swiss, English, and German adventurers—with Lefort, with Gordon, and with Timmermann, who ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... half of its men, who were taken prisoner; and which delivered some thousands of our wounded comrades to the assaults and knives of the brutish enemy, full of liquor and encouraged to massacre by their unscrupulous officers! There was widespread grief! Each regretted the loss of a relative, a friend, some comrade in arms! The Emperor seemed appalled!...However, he ordered Sbastiani's cavalry to retrace their steps to the bridge, in order to gather and protect any stragglers who had been able to cross ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... are an expert, don't undeceive him. I could not let you go to see the collection without first telling you. It is full of bogus things, full of frauds and shams that unscrupulous dealers have palmed off on him. But don't let him know. He takes such pride in them, and—and he's breaking down—God pity me, his health is breaking down every day, Mr. Rickaby, and I want to spare him every pang, if I can, even so little ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... but his persistent neglect has made me open my eyes a little, and I begin to see others, on a far horizon. Red blood has a way of answering to red blood, whether there are barriers between or not, and if I loved another man, and he were unscrupulous——" ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... are. Others are living very quietly, and behaving themselves in a proper manner. But there are several very bitter and unscrupulous agitators, chief of whom are the half breeds, Flazeet and Rauchad, who will stop at almost nothing. They are full of hatred and long for revenge. They have not only drawn with them a number of lawless Acadians, and English-speaking traitors, but they are now ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody
... as his throws a flood of light on our possibilities and perils, showing unscrupulous men both what they may possibly win, and what they will ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... to convince all thoughtful-minded women, as well as men, that probably the speaker was justified in whatever he had said to this professional heckler. Furthermore, as evidence of the depths to which a totally unscrupulous and irresponsible press could descend in its efforts to ridicule a great leader, the whole story of flight was, from the beginning to end, a malicious controversion of fact. This was proven by the ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... with buying the valuable wood from the natives, but tried to get directly at the rich supplies inland. Naturally, they came into conflict with the natives, and fierce wars arose, in which the whites fought with all the weapons unscrupulous cruelty can wield. As a result, the population of Erromanga has decreased from between ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... to issue from the tomb. His thin, cadaverous face was sufficient in itself to inspire wonder. Those great, blazing eyes had within them all the fires of lunacy, fanaticism and cunning. Mr. Parris was nothing more than an unscrupulous bigot. He was ambitious, as is proven by his machinations in getting himself declared the pastor of Salem. He was greedy, as is shown by his taking the parsonage and lands as well as demanding an increase in his stipend. He was ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... congenial to the habits and taste of Sir James Turner, who appears, says Sir Walter Scott, ("Tales of a Grandfather," vol. ii. p. 211. Edin. 1829), by the account he gives of himself in his Memoirs to have been an unscrupulous plunderer, and other authorities describe him as a fierce and dissolute character. On coming to Glasgow, the way he took, as he himself tells us with considerable gusto, "to make the hardest headed Covenanter ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... upon his face. "I don't know what your experience may have been. We have only our own lights to go by; and mine have taught me to expect nothing from women. Fair-weather friends; creatures that must be amused, and are unscrupulous at whose cost or how great. One of their amusements is to be worshipped by a man; and to bring that about they will pretend love, with a pretence that would deceive the devil himself. The moment they are bored with the pastime, they will drop the pretence, and feel injured ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... added to lucre, or are the consequences of it. A boy led to masturbation by pornographic pictures, or by the seduction of a corrupted individual, becomes in his turn the seducer of his comrades. Certain libidinous and unscrupulous women have often persuaded adolescents and schoolboys to sleep with them, thus awakening precocious and unhealthy ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... at length done her very worst for them. How much longer, I wondered, would they thus tamely suffer themselves to be hectored and browbeaten? how much longer go quietly to the gangway and submit to be severely flogged for the most trifling offences? Then, too, I felt indignant at the unscrupulous way in which the skipper had misrepresented the nature of the officers' recent interview with him, and had conveyed the impression that they were rather favouring than deprecating the severity of his discipline. Such conduct struck me as being not only barbarously tyrannical, but also in the ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... wouldn't take it. You have just offered me $25,000 to drop the affair. That's an insult to my integrity. I've investigated this girl's claim pretty thoroughly and I believe she is trying to fleece you. I have given up the case. None of that sort of thing for me. She'll go to some unscrupulous lawyer, no doubt, but I am out of it. I don't handle that kind of business. You have insulted me. Get out of my office, sir, and never ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... saloonists, gamblers, and that unknown quantity of indefinite quality, ever present, content to allow others to fix a status of society, provided they do not touch on their own special interests, and that other, the unscrupulous but active professional politician, having been dishonored at home, still astute and determined, seeks new fields for booty, obtain positions of trust and then consummate peculation and outrage under the forms of law. ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... committed by Mr. Arnot's clerk, Egbert Haldane, but of the young man himself. It would seem that our disposition to be kindly led us into error, for we learn from our most respectable German contemporary, published in this city, that this same unscrupulous young fraud has been guilty of the meanness of taking advantage of a poor foreigner's ignorance of our language. Having found it impossible to obtain lodgings among those posted in the current news of the day, and thus to impose on any one to whom he ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... qualified to embark on a historical analysis, and shall do no more than say that many of the persons who are involved in the tale actually existed, and the events referred to actually took place. The weak and vicious King and his malign and unscrupulous mother are real enough, as is a Duc de Montpensier, a Prince of the Blood, who achieved some notoriety for the cruelty with which he treated any Huguenots who fell into his hands, and for the leadership he gave to the assassins during the atrocious massacre ...
— The Princess of Montpensier • Madame de La Fayette
... if hopes they could be called, were now destined to be most bitterly disappointed. Egmont entered Flanders, not as a chief of rebels—not as a wise pacificator, but as an unscrupulous partisan of government, disposed to take summary vengeance on all suspected persons who should fall in his way. He ordered numerous executions of image-breakers and of other heretics. The whole province was in a state of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... dropped her mantle of reserve before this stranger? That he had saved her from the bush-fire was excuse for her own gratitude, but was it valid reason for exposing her best friends to danger at his hands, if they proved treacherous? The revenuers, she had been informed, were men of devilish craft, unscrupulous cunning. Might not this youth with the fine clothes, the splendid manner, the great learning, the soft voice, the quick resource and the undoubted bravery, very well be ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... through a universal struggle for existence, in which the life and well-being of some can be secured only through the suffering and final extinction of others; and even in its higher stages, cunning and unscrupulous strength frequently overcomes humane wisdom fettered by weakness. "Nature, red in tooth and claw, with ravin shrieks against the creed" of the Theist. If God is working through evolution, we must admit that he has marvellously hidden himself, ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote
... of the hollowness of his triumph, and the world takes a pretty accurate measure of it. It is the privilege of the novelist, without introducing into such a career what is called disaster, to satisfy our innate love of justice by letting us see the true nature of such prosperity. The unscrupulous man amasses wealth, lives in luxury and splendor, and dies in the odor of respectability. His poor and honest neighbor, whom he has wronged and defrauded, lives in misery, and dies in disappointment and penury. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... had this in common with the worst; that when he really wanted anything, everything had to go to the wall: all rights of others, principles and pity were forgotten, everything was thrown over—everyone pushed out of the way. He became unscrupulous. So when he had required money he threw over his first love who, he knew, adored him; now when he found out the mistake and was seriously in love with Bertha, he would have thrown over anything on earth to ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... despotism prevailed. In many of the cities the excessive power of the despots made their reign a prolonged terror. As long as enlightened absolutism prevailed, government was administered by upright rulers and judges in the interests of the people; but when the power fell into the hands of unscrupulous men, the privileges and rights of the people were lost. It is said that absolutism, descending from father to son, never improves in the descent; in the case of some of the Italian cities it produced monsters. As the historian says: "The last Visconti, the last La Scalas, the last Sforzas, the ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... his adieux, and had got as far as the hall, when something occurred to Laura. She said to herself, "I don't simply want his vote under compulsion—he might vote aye, but work against the bill in secret, for revenge; that man is unscrupulous enough to do anything. I must have his hearty co-operation as well as his vote. There is only one ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... effective effort at occupation by any other European people, the Spanish church and nation had held exclusive occupancy of the North American continent. The Spanish enterprises of conquest and colonization had been carried forward with enormous and unscrupulous energy, and alongside of them and involved with them had been borne the Spanish chaplaincies and missions, sustained from the same treasury, in some honorable instances bravely protesting against the atrocities they were compelled to witness, ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... avowed object of which was to expose the vicious doctrines of the French Revolution, and to hold up to ridicule and contempt the advocates of that event, and the sticklers for peace and parliamentary reform. The editor was William Gifford, the vigorous and unscrupulous critic and poetaster the writers, Mr. John Hookham Frere, Mr. Jenkinson (afterward Earl of Liverpool); Mr. George Ellis, Lord Clare, Lord Mornington (afterward Marquis Wellesley), Lord Morpeth (afterward Earl of ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... leaving only thirty. The parents had a legal right to remove the children on the payment of the money, but what shall be said of the cruelty of the Jesuits who turned back these wretched children to the destitution and misery of a Syrian orphan? The Jesuits are the same everywhere, unscrupulous and intriguing, counting all means as right, which promote ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... the idea of parting so distasteful to him that, as his mind began to dwell upon it, the feeling amounted almost to agony. And this, too, quite apart from the sensation of indignant disgust with which he regarded Williams' unscrupulous resolution to involve him and his fortunes with the future career of the mutineers. But it should not be; he would outwit the rascals somehow, and join the little party of passengers when they were landed, even if he had to steal over the ship's side, drop overboard, ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... of unscrupulous people who would buy them in small lots, and thus he'd gradually get rid of ...
— The Bradys and the Girl Smuggler - or, Working for the Custom House • Francis W. Doughty
... description, without fixed origin or birthplace, did Raspe give a classical setting amongst embroidered versions of the baron's sporting jokes. The unscrupulous manner in which he affixed Munchausen's own name to the completed jeu d'esprit is, ethically speaking, the least pardonable of his crimes; for when Raspe's little book was first transformed and enlarged, and ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... Hagen who killed Siegfried, grandson of Alberich, King of the Nibelungs, comes to this earth from Nibelheim, for a completion of his education, and it is the effect of our modern morality on a brilliant and unscrupulous mind which forms the basis of Mr. Sinclair's story. Prince Hagen's first exploits are at school; then in the thick of New York's corrupt politics as a boss. Later, after he has inherited the untold wealth of the Nibelungs, he tastes the ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... on Tower Hill, August 22, 1553. Northumberland was but once married, though he left a large family. His wife was Jane, daughter of Sir Edmund Guilford; a fitting wife for such a husband, being as ambitious and unscrupulous as himself. His children were thirteen in number, of whom only two left issue—the famous Earl of Leicester, and Lady Mary Sidney. The entire Dudley race is now extinct, except ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... isn't. You all know that it is the caprice of chance encounter, the result of propinquity, the invention of poets and novelists, the superstition of the victims, the unscrupulous make-believe of the witnesses. As an impulse it quickly wears itself out in marriage, and makes way for divorce. In this country nine-tenths of the marriages are love-matches. The old motives which delay and prevent marriage in other countries, ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... against those that will refuse to give us our dues. The rod of chastisement is intended for the wicked. It is not intended for self-aggrandisement. They who oppress the god deserve death, it is said. They who seek to aggrandise their fortunes by afflicting kingdoms in unscrupulous ways, very soon come to be regarded as vermin in a dead body. Those robbers again that would conduct themselves by conforming to these restraints of the scriptures, would soon win salvation although leading a ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... classes and the artisans looked on, and for a time not without satisfaction, at the strife of the great men; but it grew evident that one party must crush the other and become dominant in Florence; and of the two, the Cerchi and their White adherents were less formidable to the democracy than the unscrupulous and overbearing Donati, with their military renown and lordly tastes; proud not merely of being nobles, but Guelf nobles; always loyal champions, once the martyrs, and now the hereditary assertors, of the great Guelf cause. The Cerchi, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... assumption, which nobody denied or questioned, that at any cost the Labour candidate must be defeated. The success of the Labour candidate was regarded as a calamity. It would jeopardise the entire social order. It would deliver into the destroying hands of an ignorant, capricious, and unscrupulous rabble all that was best in English life. It would even mean misery for the rabble itself. The tones grew more solemn. And Edwin, astonished, saw that beneath the egotism of their success, beneath ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... murmured. "Oh, but that crowd shall be punished for this! If she comes to harm it will almost kill Mrs. Stanhope." And his heart sank like a lump of lead as he thought of his dearest friend in the power of her unscrupulous enemies. ...
— The Rover Boys on the Ocean • Arthur M. Winfield
... guards, and returned to the war without having seen Bathsheba. David made him the bearer of an order to Joab to expose him to certain death, in some perilous enterprize against the enemy. He was obeyed by that unscrupulous general; and when David heard that Uriah was dead, he sent for Bathsheba, and made her his wife. He had already several wives, as was customary in those times; and among them was Michal, whom he had long ago reclaimed from the man ...
— Half Hours in Bible Lands, Volume 2 - Patriarchs, Kings, and Kingdoms • Rev. P. C. Headley
... at first, but I afterward forgave her, when a more careful examination taught me to know this adorable woman's character. Coquetry was with her not a vice of the heart or of an unscrupulous mind; having nothing better to do, she enjoyed it as a legitimate pastime, without giving it any importance or feeling any scruples. Like all women, she liked to please; her success was sweet to her vanity; perhaps flattery turned her head at times, but in the midst of this ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... pronounce her an unfit guardian for the little Maharajah, her son. This clever woman, a constant source of vexation to the Resident, had long forfeited the respect of friend and foe; but her intrepidity, cunning, and unscrupulous thirst for power conspired to render her formidable to the one, and to the other a partisan to be courted and retained. Her messages of insolent defiance to the Durbar are historic, but of the countless schemes and intrigues ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... his calmness and yet firmness of purpose, his skill in the healing art, his devotion to the cause of his Saviour, his tact in winning the confidence even of those who never before trusted their own friends, his fearlessness in the presence of unscrupulous and cruel men and his ascendency over them, his lively faith under appalling discouragements, and his unyielding perseverance, form an array of excellence rarely combined in one man. Like the holy Apostle, he was "in journeyings often, in perils ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... convinced, member of the Radical or any party. He may have been a Republican in his youth, though for my part I should like more trustworthy evidence for it than that of Thomas Jefferson Hogg, a very clever but a distinctly unscrupulous person. If he was—and it is not at all improbable that he had the Republican measles, a very common disease of youth, pretty early—he certainly had never been a democrat. Even his earlier satire is ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... There was fear in her glance, which darted on her and then dropped guiltily. Oh, Katharine had everything—beauty, mind, character. She could never compete with Katharine; she could never be safe so long as Katharine brooded over her, dominating her, disposing of her. She called her cold, unseeing, unscrupulous, but the only sign she gave outwardly was a curious one—she reached out her hand and grasped the volume of history. At that moment the bell of the telephone rang and Katharine went to answer it. Cassandra, released from observation, dropped her book and clenched her hands. She suffered ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... He was the medicine-man of the tribe—a sort of magician; a sharp, clever, unscrupulous, presumptuous, and rather fine looking-fellow, who held the people in some degree of subjection through their superstitious fears, though there were some of the men among them who would not give in to his authority. As Eskimos have no regular chiefs, ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... White settlement, and set apart for their use. But this system, though more lenient in its operation than the other, is not unattended with difficulties of its own. The laws enacted for their protection, and in the absence of which they fall an easy prey to the more unscrupulous among their energetic neighbours, tend to keep them in a condition of perpetual pupillage, and the relation subsisting between them and the Government, which treats them, partly as independent peoples, and partly as infants under its guardianship, involves many anomalies and contradictions. ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... Parysatis, a high-spirited but unscrupulous woman, by whom he had two sons, destined to be known in history. The eldest was Artaxerxes, a youth of but little character; and the second, Cyrus, who inherited the decided qualities of his mother. In order ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... steel, made his suspicion waver. She was young and good to look upon; there was the gloriously fresh bloom of youth upon her; and yet, were it not for the mere matter of sex, he might have looked upon her as a gay and utterly unscrupulous young adventurer of the old type, the kind to bow gallantly to a lady while wiping the stain of wet blood from a ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... were altogether different. Generally speaking, with the world at large, he was a jolly, rollicking, popular man, fond of eating and drinking, known to be devoted to the duke's interests, and supposed to be somewhat unscrupulous, or at any rate hard, when they were concerned; but in other respects a good-natured fellow: and there was a report about that he had once lent somebody money, without charging him interest or taking security. ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... Colleague Tonof has already pointed out that ignorance and indifference, those most dangerous characteristics of most shareholders, are not to be feared in those who take part in labour associations. Here it can never happen that an unscrupulous minority will obtain control of the management and exploit the undertaking for the benefit of some private interest; here it is natural that the whole body of members, who are interested in the successful conduct of the business, should incessantly ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... too, over having thus sent off Guy Waring, as he believed, to his grave in Cape Colony. He was not at heart a bad man, though he was pushing, and selfish, and self-seeking, and to a certain extent even—of late—unscrupulous. He had his bad half-hours every now and again with his own moral consciousness. But he had learnt to stifle his doubts and to keep down his terrors. After all, he had told Guy no more than the truth; and if Guy in his panic-terror chose to run away ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... might not overlook nor gloze the fact that hers had been the hands responsible for the theft of the jewels; innocent though she had been in committing that larceny, a cat's-paw guided by an intelligence unscrupulous and malign, the law would not hold her guiltless were she once brought within its cognizance. Nor, possibly, would the Hallams, ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... moreover, is only very rarely due to the economy and abstinence of the present possessor or of some industrious ancestor of his; it is most frequently the time-honored fruit of spoliation by military conquest, by unscrupulous "business" methods, or by the favoritism of sovereigns; but it is in every instance always independent of any exertion, of any socially useful labor of the inheritor, who often squanders his property in idleness ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... very steep marching indeed, and produces a palpitation of the heart. They have no doubt that it is a damnable business in which they are concerned; they are all peaceably inclined. Now, what are they? Men at all? or small movable forts and magazines, at the service of some unscrupulous man in power? Visit the Navy Yard, and behold a marine, such a man as an American government can make, or such as it can make a man with its black arts—a mere shadow and reminiscence of humanity, a man laid out alive and standing, ...
— On the Duty of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... many followers. If there be a single great, and apparently well-authenticated, miracle, others will accrete round it; then, in all religions that have so originated, there will follow temples, priests, rites, sincere believers, and unscrupulous exploiters of public credulity. To chronicle the events that followed Higgs's balloon ascent without shewing that they were much as they have been under like conditions in other places, would be to hold the mirror up to something very ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... history affords; and there can be little doubt as to its decisiveness. The measure of that decisiveness is to be found in the completeness of the reconciliation that has already, despite the feeble wails of unscrupulous place-hunters and unteachable bigots, cemented the Federal Union so powerfully that all likelihood of its disruption may be said to have disappeared forever. When we consider this wonderful harmony which so soon has followed the deadly struggle, we may well ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... at that as much as she did. Her reputation was saved now, but his honour was in the balance, and at the mercy of a worldly and unscrupulous woman. When he broke the engagement, the Princess would tell the story of his marriage and publish it on the housetops. He told ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... get the better of his judgment, and many times when he was in the right he ruined his position by his hasty temper. His fame, despite his enemies—and no general in the field had stronger nor more unscrupulous ones—as the greatest strategist of the war, is permanently fixed in history. What it might have been had he not been hampered, annoyed, and insulted as no other commanding general was at any time by both the Secretary of War and the General-in-Chief, ...
— The Army of the Cumberland • Henry M. Cist
... saluted Augustus, he was too small to wear the purple robe, and they called him Augustulus!—a bitter mockery, recalling the foundation and the imperial greatness of Rome. This prince, feeble and powerless, was dethroned by Odoacer—chief of the Heruli, and one of the unscrupulous mercenaries whose aid the last emperor had invoked. The throne of the Caesars was now hopelessly subverted, and Odoacer portioned out the lands of Italy among his greedy followers, but allowed Augustulus to live as a ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... wars, both Henry VII, the founder of the Tudor line, and his son, Henry VIII, adopted the policy of replacing it with able and wealthy men of the middle class, who would be strongly devoted to themselves. The court therefore became a brilliant and crowded circle of unscrupulous but unusually adroit statesmen, and a center of lavish entertainments and display. Under this new aristocracy the rigidity of the feudal system was relaxed, and life became somewhat easier for all the dependent classes. Modern comforts, too, were largely introduced, and with them the Italian ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... the Russians, as unscrupulous as the Austrians in observing the conditions of a capitulation which are usually considered sacred, had just trampled under their feet the stipulations made at Dantzic. In the name of the Emperor Alexander, the Prince of ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... discussions. But these are generally settled peacefully by the bystanders, who act as umpires,—and the excitement goes off in talk. The question arises almost invariably upon the number of fingers flashed out; for an unscrupulous player has great opportunities of cheating, by holding a finger half extended, so as to be able to close or open it afterwards according to circumstances; but sometimes the losing party will dispute as to the number called out. The thumb is the father of all evil at Mora, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... at her steadfastly, and for the moment Eleanor's expression turns the unscrupulous man dizzy with a vague ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... Rushton had had considerably the best of the bargain. In the first place, it will be seen that the latter had bought over one who might have proved a dangerous competitor, and now, after fifteen years, the business that had been so laboriously built up, mainly by Hunter's energy, industry and unscrupulous cunning, belonged to Rushton & Co. Hunter was but an employee, liable to dismissal like any other workman, the only difference being that he was entitled to a week's notice instead of an hour's notice, and was but little ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... tell your General that if he likes to fight I shall be pleased to meet him at any time in the open. You have killed some of my Red Cross people, but I know it was done by those 'damned' unscrupulous Johannesburgers. Tell them I shall ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... a purpose—to save, in spite of herself, if need be, the daughter of my dead friend from a life of suffering which would inevitably fall to the lot of any pure-hearted woman who linked her life with that of an unscrupulous scoundrel, in whom even common decency is dead, if, indeed, it ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... uncle. An unscrupulous, hard-hearted rascal, grasping and proud. He ruined the estates both of Wellborn and Allworth, and by overreaching grew enormously rich. His ambition was to see his daughter Margaret marry a peer; ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... prosaic rationalism as to human sentiments which stand in the way of raising needful money. Gwendolen's dominant regret was that after all she had only nine louis to add to the four in her purse: these Jew dealers were so unscrupulous in taking advantage of Christians unfortunate at play! But she was the Langens' guest in their hired apartment, and had nothing to pay there: thirteen louis would do more than take her home; even if she ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... apartment went on, covering the things Belright Fogg was to do while Pelter and Japson were in hiding in Canada. The unscrupulous lawyer was to produce a power of attorney dated some days before, so that he might act in place of the brokers. He was also to do his best to help the brokers prove an alibi when accused of the abduction ...
— The Rover Boys in New York • Arthur M. Winfield
... of the Intendant sat his Secretary, De Pean, crafty and unscrupulous, a parasite, too, who flattered his master and ministered to his pleasures. De Pean was a military man, and not a bad soldier in the field; but he loved gain better than glory, and amassed an enormous fortune out of ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... handsome face! But such historians as Macaulay, McCrie, McKenzie, and others, refuse to whitewash Claverhouse. Even Sir Walter Scott—who was very decidedly in sympathy with the Cavaliers—says of him in Old Mortality: "He was the unscrupulous agent of the Scottish Privy Council in executing the merciless seventies of the Government in Scotland during the reigns of Charles the Second and James the Second;" and his latest apologist candidly admits that "it is impossible ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... "Talk of old world courtesy and ceremonial! Anyhow, I shall know whether she's at Long Barton by the time it takes to get an answer. If it's two days, she's there. If it's longer she isn't. He'll send my letter on to her—unless he suppresses it. Your really pious people are so shockingly unscrupulous." ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... itself in his mind. And why should the fellow not possess friends at Yellow Banks? He knew the river intimately and all the river towns; possibly he had even landed here before. He was a man feared, hated, but obeyed the full length of the great stream; his name stood for reckless daring, unscrupulous courage everywhere; he could command the admiration and loyalty of every vicious character in the steamboat service between Fort Crawford and New Orleans. It was hardly likely that none of these men, floaters ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... the second maid, and as arrant a coquette as lives in all Italy. Her picture has been painted on more than one fisherman's sail, for it is rumoured that she has been six times betrothed and she is still under twenty. The unscrupulous little flirt rids herself of her suitors, after they become a weariness to her, by any means, fair or foul, and her capricious affections are seldom good for more than three months. Her own loves have no deep roots, but she seems to have the power of arousing in others ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... one who knew the evil genius in person, and yet they were held in a thralldom of fear which no offer of riches could break. What manner of man was this Cardi? What hellish methods did he follow to wield such despotism? Those card-players were impudent, unscrupulous blades, as ready to gamble with death as with their jingling coins, and yet they dared not lift ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... as to the choice of the people. Even the strongest Protestants hated civil turmoil more than they did Catholicism, and the people as a whole felt instinctively that if the crown was put up as a prize for unscrupulous politicians there would be no end of strife. All therefore flocked to Mary, and almost without a struggle she overcame the conspirators and entered her capital amid great rejoicing. Northumberland, after a despicable and fruitless recantation, was executed and so ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... The landless freedman furnished occasion for the creation of the share-tenant and crop-lien systems. In many cases these handicaps often became intolerable under dishonest merchants, unscrupulous landlords, and ill-treatment by overseers.[7] All this tended to loosen the hold of the Negro tenant ...
— The Negro at Work in New York City - A Study in Economic Progress • George Edmund Haynes
... would she stay and what would become of her? No doubt, as the officer had remarked, such a girl would easily become the prey of the unscrupulous, and at this thought Dagmar shuddered. What dreadful things always happen to runaway girls in the movies? Again the standard asserted ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis
... principal under whom he had suffered, years ago, in Vicksburg, Mississippi. Rand began to suspect that Goode might be just another such self-righteous, opinionated, egotistical windbag. Such men could be dangerous, were usually quite unscrupulous, and were almost always unpleasant to ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... of Navarre in 1512 the entire Spanish peninsula came under his sway. He was a shrewd and adroit ruler, whose undoubted abilities, both as administrator and general, were, however, somewhat marred by an unscrupulous cunning, which found a characteristic expression in the institution of the notorious Inquisition, which in 1480 was started by him, and became a powerful engine for political as well as religious persecution ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... had been up to the elbows, as it were, in the diplomacy of an unscrupulous, grasping age ever since his college days. He had been behind the scenes in more than one European crisis, and that which goes on behind the scenes is not always edifying or conducive to a squeamishness of touch. He was not the man to be mawkishly afraid of soiling his fingers. But the ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... considering the fact that they wore jackets, were not incongruous gifts. Then there were scarfs, scarf-pins, and big darning-needles; in short, a most munificent variety of presents: for though we must needs pronounce Kit and Wade a trifle unscrupulous in their way of getting possession of the island, yet they were now princely ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... d'hote. Out of the reckless dinners with you nothing remains but the memory that too much was eaten and too much was drunk. And my yielding to your demands was bad for you. You know that now. It made you grasping often: at times not a little unscrupulous: ungracious always. There was, on far too many occasions, too little joy or privilege in being your host. You forgot—I will not say the formal courtesy of thanks, for formal courtesies will strain a close friendship—but simply the grace of sweet ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... tears) Zara—I—I admit I am not altogether a free agent. I—I am controlled. I try to make the best of it, but sometimes I find it very difficult—very difficult indeed. Nominally a Despot, I am, between ourselves, the helpless tool of two unscrupulous Wise Men, who insist on my falling in with all their wishes and threaten to denounce me for immediate explosion if I remonstrate! (Breaks ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... supposed to do so, in the face of their strong traditions, in which they are so thoroughly drilled. Therefore, if Russians stand sponsors to Jews, while expressing skepticism as to conversion in general, they cannot complain if unscrupulous persons take advantage of their inconsistency. I should probably have refused to act as godmother, even had I known that I was legally entitled to ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... War Europe, in spite of her great sub-divisions, represented a living economic whole. To-day there are not only victors and vanquished, but currents of hate, ferments of violence, a hungering after conquests, an unscrupulous cornering of raw materials carried out brutally and almost ostentatiously in the name of the rights of victory: a situation which renders production, let alone its development and increase, ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti
... of spades denotes death, malice, a duel, a general misfortune; the king, a man of very dark complexion, ambitious, and unscrupulous; the queen, a very dark-complexioned woman of malicious disposition, or a widow; the knave, a lawyer, a person to be shunned; the ten, disgrace, crime, imprisonment, death on the scaffold; the eight, great danger from imprudence; the six, a child, to the unmarried ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... countenance fell. He began to look unhappy; perhaps Miss Jones was an unscrupulous adventuress who would turn the joke into earnest and sue him for breach of promise after they got home. To be sure, she looked as innocent as an angel, but it is a notorious fact that women are just the most dangerous ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... farmer is, from bitter experience, suspicious especially of propositions emanating from concerns that are new to him. After one or two satisfactory dealings with a house he places absolute faith in it but every legitimate mail-order concern is handicapped by the fact that unscrupulous firms are continually lying in wait for the unwary: the man with the county rights for a patent churn and his brother who leaves a fanning mill with a farmer to demonstrate and takes a receipt which turns ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... we have invited battle. We have earned the hatred of entrenched greed. The very nature of the problem that we faced made it necessary to drive some people from power and strictly to regulate others. I made that plain when I took the oath of office in March, 1933. I spoke of the practices of the unscrupulous money-changers who stood indicted in the court of public opinion. I spoke of the rulers of the exchanges of mankind's goods, who failed through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence. I said that they had admitted their failure ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt • Franklin D. Roosevelt
... memory to that night at the hospital almost twenty years ago. Hettie was a buxom girl then, full of life and animation, not much like the thin dragged-out creature of to-day. Twenty years! And the two babies, innocent pawns in the unscrupulous bargain, had again drifted together as ardent lovers. What would they think if they knew the truth? In what light would they consider the woman who had taken part in the transaction? Her mind was in a tumult. She felt that it would be ...
— Jess of the Rebel Trail • H. A. Cody
... land now followed each other in quick succession for many years. It was in 1499 that the accomplished but unscrupulous Amerigo Vespucci made his first voyage to Hispaniola, following it up by voyages along the coast of South America. He returned thence to claim, after the death of Columbus, the honors due ...
— The Nation in a Nutshell • George Makepeace Towle
... way, which proves, so she seems to think, her love and wisdom. She has arranged matters—goodness knows how—so that Leonard will be on excellent terms with two beautiful young matrons in her set and in this way he will not be vamped off by any unscrupulous chorus girl. These two beauties are to serve for the delectation of this young warrior until he can make a suitable marriage. What a commentary upon the morals and standards ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... new act of oppression does honour to my heart, and therefore I care very little though my enemies can reproach me for want of prudence; for what is termed prudence by the world is nothing else than blind submission, servility, flattery, and being unscrupulous how or in what manner a place is obtained; but an independent being like myself seeks for happiness by purer means. I had the misfortune to be allied, by the bonds of friendship, to the present Minister from the time we ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... Parliament. Unopposed, the Catholic superstition may sink into dust, with all its absurd ritual and solemnities. Still it is an awful risk. The world is in fact as silly as ever, and a good competence of nonsense will always find believers."[50] That is the view of a strong and rather unscrupulous politician—a moss-trooper in politics—which Scott certainly was. He was thinking evidently very little of justice, almost entirely of the most effective means of keeping the Kingdom, the Kingdom which he loved. Had he understood—what none of the politicians ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... see you! Fancy your sitting in the twilight chatting with the mater. You must have been an unscrupulous bore, maman.' ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... English and Americans as Hebraizers. The fundamental maxim of Hebrew ethics, according to him, is 'Walk by the light you have'; of Greek ethics, 'Take heed that the light which is in thee is not darkness'. The Hebraizer is conscientious but unenlightened; the Hellenizer is clear-headed but unscrupulous. Professor Santayana has lately noted the same difference between the type of character developed by the Latin nations and by the Anglo-Saxons. The Mediterranean civilization, older and more sophisticated, ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... President Jackson, in 1830, offered $5,000,000 for Texas. The Mexican Government, foreseeing the coming danger, by law prohibited American immigration into Texas, but this was unavailing, as the ever-unscrupulous hand of slavery was reaching out for more room and more territory to perpetuate itself. Americans, like their natural kinsmen the Englishmen, then regarded not the rights of others, the weak especially, when the slave power ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... regrets, we know enough of the interior working of the institutions of Athens to see that she had to pay in licence and in fraud the bitter price of equality and freedom. That to the influence of disinterested statesmen succeeded, as the democracy accentuated itself, the tyranny of unscrupulous demagogues, is evidenced by the testimony, not only of the enemies of popular government, but by that of a democrat so convinced as Demosthenes. "Since these orators have appeared," he says, "who ask, What is your pleasure? what shall I move? how can I oblige you? ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... often a downright unscrupulous one. If it's only politics, I'll have a chat with him myself. You pump the newspapers. You leave it to me to swing the boys into ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... others add to their fault the disgrace of speculation. Thus Madame Marneffe is, as it were, the type of those ambitious married courtesans who from the first accept depravity with all its consequences, and determine to make a fortune while taking their pleasure, perfectly unscrupulous as to the means. But almost always a woman like Madame Marneffe has a husband who is her confederate and accomplice. These Machiavellis in petticoats are the most dangerous of the sisterhood; of every evil class of Parisian woman, ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... a precarious position. We're fighting a battle against an unscrupulous enemy, an undercover battle, Steve. If we could get something on Phelps, we'd expose him and his Medical Center like that. Conversely, if we slip a millimeter, Phelps will clip us so hard that the sky will ring. ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... was an election. During the election, Frank gained the good-will of a local solicitor and political agent. He proved himself an active and perhaps a discreetly unscrupulous assistant. The solicitor thought he saw in Frank talent of a certain order—a talent through which he (the solicitor) might draw unto himself a share of other people's money. The lawyer's judgment of men was as keen as Frank's judgment of cattle. ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... it suddenly occurs to the business-like Master Cusack that he had better secure a good position for the great race without delay, and accordingly he pilots his father out of the crush, and makes for a spot near the winning-post, where the crowd at the cords has a few gaps; and here, by a little unscrupulous shoving, he contrives to wedge himself in, with his father close behind, at about the very best spot on the course, with a full view of the last two hundred yards, and only a few feet ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... court in the Free States could help deciding that, if he sent her to Nassau, she became free. If he should discover her whereabouts, I shouldn't wonder if attempts were made to kidnap her; for men of his character are very unscrupulous, and there are plenty of caitiffs in Boston ready to do any bidding of their Southern masters. If she were conveyed to the South, though the courts ought to decide she was free, it is doubtful whether they would do it; for, like Achilles, they scorn ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... are a dirty, jovial and unscrupulous crew. But that, at least, lets them be opportunists. They would have fixed poor dear Edward up all right. (Forgive my writing of these monstrous things in this frivolous manner. If I did not I should break down ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... methinks I see the villainous dens of the wicked surging with joy and gladness, all the most recklessly unscrupulous threatening a new crop of lying informations, the good prostrate with terror at my danger, every ruffian incited by impunity to new daring and to success by the profits of audacity, the guiltless not only robbed of their peace of mind, but even of all means of defence. Wherefore ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... Sobber was not satisfied, and soon he made a move that caused the worst kind of trouble. There was a learned but unscrupulous man named Josiah Crabtree who had once been a teacher at Putnam Hall, but who had been discharged and who had, later on, been sent to prison for his misdeeds. This Josiah Crabtree had once sought to marry Mrs. Stanhope, thinking thereby to get control of her money and the money she ...
— The Rover Boys in the Air - From College Campus to the Clouds • Edward Stratemeyer
... point of view. But if that is the law, it would seem well to alter it, for it gives the Spanish authorities absolute control over the persons and property of Americans on American vessels, and that privilege in the hands of persons as unscrupulous and as insolent as are the Spanish detectives, is a dangerous one. So dangerous a privilege, indeed, that there is no reason nor excuse for not keeping an American ship of war in the harbor ...
— Cuba in War Time • Richard Harding Davis
... most civilised part of the world, including our own Anglo-Saxondom, did entertain enough of these notions to relax military vigilance, lay stress on points of honour, place trust in treaties, and permit a powerful and unscrupulous nation to indulge unchecked and unsuspected in nearly fifty years of preparation for world-wide robbery and slaughter. We are reaping the result ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... Mexico now comes upon the scene—young, bold, devout, unscrupulous, "a respectable gentleman of good birth"—Hernando Cortes. Great was the enthusiasm in Cuba to join the new expedition to the long-lost lands of the Great Khan; men sold their lands to buy horses and arms, pork was salted, ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... books. Louis of Orleans, usually credited with the worst of this prodigality, was by no means singular in his conduct. His uncle, the Duke of Berry, while daily earning the execrations of the tax-payers by his unscrupulous employment of the public money, was constantly enriching his library, and both he and his brothers and nephews were in the habit of sending priceless volumes, illuminated by the best artists, as wedding and birthday gifts, to ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley
... to the trio on the other side of the room, for she had perceived (as she devoutly hoped Miss Chancellor had not) that Verena was endeavouring to persuade either of her companions to go and talk to her dear friend, and that these unscrupulous young men, after a glance over their shoulder, appeared to plead for remission, to intimate that this was not what they had come round for. Selah wandered out of the room again with his collection of cakes, and Mr. Pardon began to talk to Olive about Verena, to say that he felt as if he couldn't ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... been carried on as it was but for the assistance rendered by the H. B. Co., and I considered I was acting as much for the Government as for the Company, in the services then rendered, which, being unofficial, have not been in any way recognized. The unscrupulous way in which Douglas wished to saddle all expenses on the Company, and his attempts to deprive us of the lands which he himself made over to me as Company's property, led to serious differences ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... but handsome for all that. She had beautiful chestnut hair, coils of it; her forehead was low and smooth, and her commanding dark eyes regarded the world indifferently and fearlessly. She looked bold and resourceful and unscrupulous, and she was all of these. They were handsome girls, had the fresh color of their country up-bringing, and in their eyes that brilliancy which is called,—by no metaphor, alas!—"the light ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather |
