"Cunning" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... this opinion also, and do not recollect ever having succeeded in toling any other species of duck, unaccompanied by the canvass-back, although we have made the effort many times. These ducks are a very singular bird, and although very cunning under ordinary circumstances, seem perfectly bewildered upon this subject, as we were one of a party several years since, who actually succeeded in decoying the same batch of ducks three successive times in the course of an hour, and slaying ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... Cunning men are here apt to break in, and, without directly controverting the principle, to raise objections from the difficulty under which the sovereign labors, to distinguish the genuine voice and sentiments of his people, from the clamor of a faction, by which it is so easily counterfeited. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Wildman's fanaticism was joined a tender care for his own safety. He had a wonderful skill in grazing the edge of treason. No man understood better how to instigate others to desperate enterprises by words which, when repeated to a jury, might seem innocent, or, at worst, ambiguous. Such was his cunning that, though always plotting, though always known to be plotting, and though long malignantly watched by a vindictive government, he eluded every danger, and died in his bed, after having seen two generations of his accomplices ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the licensed world, Yet innocent himself withal, though shrewd, And can read lectures upon innocence; A miracle of scientific lore, 315 Ships he can guide across the pathless sea, And tell you all their cunning; he can read The inside of the earth, and spell the stars; He knows the policies of foreign lands; Can string you names of districts, cities, towns, 320 The whole world over, tight as beads of dew Upon a gossamer thread; he sifts, he weighs; All things are put to question; ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... the papers!" exclaimed Thugut, "either by means of cunning or by measures of open violence, do you understand? And as to the wounds and blood, I wish with all my heart to give these impudent republican fellows who are putting on such airs at Rastadt, as though they ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... holiness holy? And are justice and holiness opposed to one another?'—'Then justice is unholy.' Protagoras would rather say that justice is different from holiness, and yet in a certain point of view nearly the same. He does not, however, escape in this way from the cunning of Socrates, who inveigles him into an admission that everything has but one opposite. Folly, for example, is opposed to wisdom; and folly is also opposed to temperance; and therefore temperance and wisdom are the same. And holiness has been already admitted ...
— Protagoras • Plato
... pageant of Shakespeare imitated; his use of the word road ("This Doll Tearsheet should be some road") illustrated; mentioned in Captain Underwit Sharpe, play at. (Cf. Swetnam the Woman Hater, 1620, sig. G. 3:— "But cunning Cupid forecast me to recoile: For when he plaid at sharpe I had the foyle.") Shellain Sherryes Ship, the great Shipwreck by land Shirley, James, author of Captain Underwit; quoted Shoulder pack't Shrovetide, hens thrashed at ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... reflection I was about to shut my window, when suddenly I perceived, in a spot of sunshine on my right, the shadow of two pricked-up ears; then a paw advanced, then the head of a tabby-cat showed itself at the corner of the gutter. The cunning fellow was lying there in wait, hoping the crumbs would bring ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... don't know. They're half-wild sort of fellows—very cunning, and all that sort of thing. I daresay I should have done as they did if I had been a gipsy. But, never mind that now. They'll keep away from Greythorpe ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... cried Frederick, painfully agitated "Yes, yes, Rose will be yours; how came I, unhappy wretch that I am, ever to hope for such happiness?" "You are forgetting, my brother," Reinhold went on to say; "you are forgetting that Rose herself has not confirmed this, which our cunning Master Martin no doubt is well aware of. True it is that Rose has always shown herself kind and charming towards me, but a loving heart betrays itself in other ways. Promise me, brother, to remain quiet for three days longer, and to go to ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... Dominie, with great complacency, 'I did wrestle, and was not overcome, though my adversary was cunning in his art.' ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... influences and ways of acting, and to work as near as 'tis possible incognito; upon which supposal it is easy to conceive a reason why they most commonly work by and upon the weak and the ignorant, who can make no cunning observations or tell credible tales to detect their artifice.'[46] The act of bewitching is defined to be 'a supernatural work contrived between a corporal old woman and a spiritual devil' ('Discoverie,' vi. 2). The method of initiation is, according to a writer on the ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... turned it loose to graze. Then he sat down in the shade of a tree, while the others still held guard over the narrow pass. He had made up his mind that he would not offer them money. He would watch his chance to outwit them, he would match his intelligence against their cunning, his patience against their brute force. It would be worth a week's captivity to turn the tables on these two rogues and get back to civilization in time to set at work the police machinery of a hundred cities, so that, whatever ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... and kept him on the qui vive for any word, or look, or circumstance that might give him a clew to the mystery. And thus it followed that with a mother so simple and unguarded as Valerie, and a son so cunning and watchful as Archibald, the secret she wished to keep be soon discovered. But he kept his own counsel for the sake of gaining still more information. And, at length, the full revelation and confirmation of all that he had suspected came to him in a manner and ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... grilling by the keen, astute Hemingway. Dick and his chums told what they had heard Tip say before they pounced upon him. Tip, who was a round-headed, short, square-shouldered fellow of twenty-four, possessed more of the cunning of the prize ring than the cleverness of the ...
— The High School Freshmen - Dick & Co.'s First Year Pranks and Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... my eyes. She sat down, spread a square of clean fringed linen upon the ground, and laid out crusty rounds of buttered bread that were fragrant in the springing fragrance of the woods, firm slices of cold meat, and a cunning pastry which instantly maddened me. I was ashamed ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... Esau was a cunning hunter, a man of the field; and Jacob was a plain man, dwelling in tents. And Isaac loved Esau; but ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... bright, Dolly. He's cunning, like some animals, and that makes him seem cleverer than he is. But I think that he really just acts by instinct most of the time, and that that's one reason he's ...
— The Camp Fire Girls on the Farm - Or, Bessie King's New Chum • Jane L. Stewart
... weakness and cunning; and the strong, though ignorant, Barbarian was often entangled in the net of sacerdotal policy. The Vatican and Lateran were an arsenal and manufacture, which, according to the occasion, have produced or concealed a various collection of false or genuine, of corrupt or ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... cunning of the fox, the brutality of Cain, using modern science and invention! Feint and draw your enemy into a cul-de-sac; screen your flank attacks; mask your batteries and hold their fire till the infantry charge is ripe for decimation! ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... seen, the pirate of the brook— The pike, whose jaunty hulk denotes his speed— Swings pivoting about, with wary look Of low and cunning greed. ...
— Riley Farm-Rhymes • James Whitcomb Riley
... manner of streams or currents, by fair things or persons visibly present—green fields, for instance, or children's faces—into the air around them, acting, in the case of some peculiar natures, like potent material essences, and conforming the seer to themselves as with some cunning physical necessity. This theory,* in itself so fantastic, had however determined in a range of methodical suggestions, altogether quaint here and there from their circumstantial minuteness. And throughout, the possibility of some vision, as ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... attributed by mankind to the instinctive nobleness and generosity of the spirit of chivalry; but, in reality, as is indeed too often the case with the pretended nobleness and generosity of rude and violent men, a cunning and far-seeing selfishness lay at the bottom ...
— Richard I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... deep. One of the nurses, however, volunteered for the journey, and I arranged to carry her on a second komatik, while my driver broke the path with our impedimenta. Things did not go altogether well. Since I have enjoyed the luxury of a driver, or a "carter" as we call them, my cunning in wriggling a komatik at full speed down steep mountain-sides through trees has somewhat waned. Comparatively early in the day we looped the loop—and we were both heavy weights. It was nearly dark when we reached the last lap—an enormous bay with a direct ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... wilderness lay his road and his destiny; out of it he must win his way, by strategy, by cunning, by violence — creep out, lie his way out, shoot his way out — it scarcely mattered. He was going out! He was going back to life once more. Who could forbid him? Who stop him? Who deny him, now, when, in his pockets, he held all that ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... threaten to split the door with an axe if not immediately opened.' I begged her to say no more, for I was well acquainted with all such matters—to leave the ladies and everything else to my management. She said 'Yes; but do not ruin us: be artful and cunning, or Mr. White may be hanged and all our houses burnt over our heads.' We both secretly returned, she to the room where the young ladies were, and I to the piazza I had just left."*1* This little narrative will give some idea of the straits to which the ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... without delay the realization of that one idea which now possessed him—a crock of gold. When he put together one thing and another, he considered it almost certain that Ben had flung away among the lot no mere honey-pot, but perhaps indeed a money-pot: Burke hadn't half the cunning of a child; more fool he, and maybe so much the better for me, thought money-bitten, selfish Roger. Thus, in the night's hot imaginations, he resolved to find the spoil; to will, was then to do: to do, was then to conquer. However, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... immediate attendants, who thereupon kissed their hands with a grave face, and pressed them to their hearts. Then one of the girls, leaving the apartment for a moment, returned with a nargileh of crystal, set by the most cunning artists of Damascus in a framework of golden filigree crusted with precious stones. She presented the flexible silver tube, tipped with amber, to the lady, who, waving her hand that the room should be cleared, smoked a confection of roses and rare nuts, while she listened to a volume ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... you prefer, as I suspect, To philosophize, why, then, reflect: If the cunning rascal upon the limb Hadn't tempted her ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... field-rat of Martinique is, in Martinique folk-lore, the symbol of all cunning, and probably ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... possession of the Lodge of Antiquity, at London, that "no Master or Fellow shall supplant others of their work; that is to say, that, if he hath taken a work, or else stand Master of any work, that he shall not put him out, unless he be unable of cunning to make an end of his work." And, hence, no lodge can pass or raise a candidate who was initiated, or initiate one who was rejected, in another lodge. "It would be highly improper," says the Ahiman Rezon, "in any lodge, to confer a degree on a Brother who is not of their house-hold; for, every ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... barrow, mixed myself a glass of whisky, sat beside it for half an hour, and then aroused the servants. I was cunning, sir; and no one could trace my footprints on the turf and rock of Woeful Ness. The missing hand-bag, and the disarray I had been careful to make in the bed-room, provided them at once with a clue—but it did not lead them to the Quick-Boy. For two days they searched; ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... her arms swinging listlessly at her side. A spy, this man to whom she had joyously given the flower of her heart and soul? There was some mistake; there must be some mistake. She shivered; for the word spy carried with it all there was in deceit, treachery, cunning. In war time she knew that spies were necessary, that brave men took perilous hazards, without reward, without renown; but in times of peace nothing but opprobrium covered the word. A political scavenger, the man she loved? No; there ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... have helped her over a temporary difficulty, but when she found the house the servants told her he was away. She confided these things, leaning in Charlie's arms on a little striped divan by a gas fire. She made him a drink, and showed him the cunning and luxurious little contrivances for comfort about the flat. He loved it. She didn't try to conceal from him her real vocation, for that would have been too silly. Even Charlie might not have been such ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... Shag—"at the Pound; I know that death-trap. Half a Herd I lost there once through the conceit of a young Bull hardly out of the Spike Horn age. Well I know the Pound—even the old Indian of deep cunning who made it, Chief Poundmaker—that's how he came by his name, A'tim. But, as I was saying, when I tried to turn the Herd, knowing what was meant, this Calf Bull led a part of them straight into the very trap. Served him right, ...
— The Outcasts • W. A. Fraser
... kindle the peaks of Loch-na-Gar; tell me my heart does not beat, and I will believe you; but do not tell me the Bible is not divine. I have found its truth illuminating my footsteps; its consolations sustaining my heart. May my tongue cleave to my mouth's roof and my right hand forget its cunning, if I every deny what is my deepest inner experience, that this blessed book is the book of God.'"—"Church Before ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... prepares for himself, and knows how to cast up dikes around it, to preserve himself by the neighbouring inundation. Another, like a mole, has so pointed and so sharp a snout, that in one moment he pierces through the hardest ground in order to provide for himself a subterranean retreat. The cunning fox digs a kennel with two holes to go out and come in at, that he may not be either surprised or trapped by the huntsmen. The reptiles are of another make. They curl, wind, shrink, and stretch by the springs of ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... understand the freedom of an American girl, or that an heiress may have something else to do with her money than to expend it on the Baron's mortgages. But"—he stopped, and his simple, honest face assumed an air of profound and sagacious cunning—"I am glad to talk about it with you, who of course are perfectly familiar with the affair. I shall now be able to know what to say. My word, my friend, has some weight here, and I shall use it. And now you ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... Leghorn, he repaired to the house of a Jew, a dealer in precious stones, to whom he disposed of four of his smallest diamonds for five thousand francs each. Dantes half feared that such valuable jewels in the hands of a poor sailor like himself might excite suspicion; but the cunning purchaser asked no troublesome questions concerning a bargain by which he gained a round profit of at ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... well as a likeness to all the characters—heroes and villains impartially—who figured therein, just as a suspicious man finds in himself the signs of every possible disease when reading a book on medicine. I took pleasure both in the cunning designs, the glowing sentiments, the tumultuous events, and the character-drawing of these works. A good man was of the goodness, a bad man of the badness, possible only to the imagination of early youth. Likewise ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... opening to democratic influences. But the consular office he left untouched; because all its power was transferred to the imperator, by the entire command of the army, and by the new organization of the provincial governments. [Footnote: In no point of his policy was the cunning or the sagacity of Augustus so much displayed, as in his treaty of partition with the senate, which settled the distribution of the provinces, and their future administration. Seeming to take upon himself all the trouble and hazard, he did in effect appropriate all the power, and left to ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... based on the well-known facts that man-eating tigers are few, and exceptionally wary and cunning. The conditions which predispose a tiger to man-eating have been much discussed. It seems to be established that the animals which seek human prey are generally, though not invariably, those which, owing to old wounds ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... came out of the field of Bostworth a vistor, and ascended the throne of a nation whose leading nobles had been swept away. The sword had vied with the axe. Henry VII. was prudent and cunning; and in the absence of any preponderating oligarchical influence, planted the heel of the sovereign upon the necks of the nobles. He succeeded where the Plantagenets had failed. His accession became the advent of a series of measures which altered most materially the system of landholding. ...
— Landholding In England • Joseph Fisher
... instance) refused to accompany him—when the Thebans were being worsted and had lost a battle, and a trophy had been erected to celebrate their defeat—it was impossible for him to cross the Pass, if you rallied to its defence; and that if he made the attempt he would regret it, unless some cunning could be called in to aid him. How then, he asked, can I avoid open falsehood, and yet accomplish all that I wish without appearing perjured? How can it be done? It can be done, if I can get some of the Athenians to deceive the Athenians. ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes
... words was apparent to all. It was chance and not their cunning that had saved them from discovery. Had the owner of the camel but continued another hundred yards along the beach, he could not have failed to see the double "trail" made by the sailor, and of course would have followed it to the spot where they ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... Welsh fairies had learned the trick of catching farthings, pennies and sixpences from the folks who have more curiosity in them than even fairies do. These human beings, cunning fellows that they are, let the curtain fall on a show, just at the most interesting part. Then they tell you to come next day and find out what is to happen. Or, as they say in a story paper, "to be continued ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... purpose, suddenly set Niagara pouring very near the spot where it is pouring now; laid the various strata, and sprinkled the fossils through them like plums through a pudding; scratched the glacial grooves upon the rocks, and did a vast multitude of things, subtle and cunning, little and great, in all parts of the world, required to delude geologists of modern times into the conviction that all these things were the result of a steady progress through long epochs. On a similar plan, Mr. Southall proposed, at the very beginning of his ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... There was cunning in the plans of the pursuers of Mrs. McNamara's burglar this time. Three of them, each aided by several eager volunteers, dashed around Mertonville, searching every shop in which any sort of face-blacking might be used, and Deacon Abrams himself went to the station with a justice of the peace, ...
— Crowded Out o' Crofield - or, The Boy who made his Way • William O. Stoddard
... the birds are doing on every farm, in every garden, and about every home in the land. Think of the millions of beautiful wings, of the graceful and attractive figures, of the cunning nests, and of the singing throats! Do you think that the whole service of the birds is to be beautiful, to sing charmingly, and to rear their little ones? By no means is this their chief service to man. Aside from these services the greatest work of birds is to destroy insects. ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett
... died, you shall send home into this realme certaine Mowsters or pieces of Shew to be brought to the diers hall, there to be shewed, partly to remooue out of their heads, the tootoo great opinion they haue concerned of their owne cunning, and partly to mooue them for shame to endeuour to learne more knowledge to the honour of their countrey of England, and to the vniuersall benefit ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, v5 - Central and Southern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... me why you let that cunning man of the world, Colonel Vaughan, give you ten shillings? This has been on my mind for six or seven years, and I have never had an opportunity of getting it off before. You know if you won't have me for a lover, you may for ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... with the carob, apricot, and walnut. In all directions the grade sloped gently from the centre, where there was a reservoir, or deep marble basin, broken at intervals by little gates which, when raised, emptied the water into sluices bordering the walks—a cunning device for the rescue of the place from the aridity too prevalent elsewhere ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... in the lists in full armour Richard stopped the fight, and to preserve peace, as he said, banished Norfolk for life and Hereford for ten years, a term which was soon reduced to six. There was something of the unwise cunning of ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... must feel of it!—the cunning baby horse!" and down went Bab inside the rope to pat and admire the pretty creature, while its mother smelt suspiciously at the brown hat, and baby lazily opened one eye to see what was ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... kinds—the Rusa or Sambur (Rusa Aristotelis), the Kijang or roe, and the Plandok, or mousedeer, the latter a delicately shaped little animal, smaller and lighter than the European hare. With the natives it is an emblem of cunning, and there are many short stories illustrating its supposed more than human intelligence. Wild pig, the Sus barbatus, a kind distinct from the Indian animal, and, I should say, less ferocious, is a pest all over Borneo, breaking down fences and destroying ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... against eating cares, Lap me in soft Lydian airs, Married to immortal verse; Such as the meeting soul may pierce, In notes, with many a winding bout Of linked sweetness long drawn out, With wanton heed and giddy cunning, The melting voice through mazes running, Untwisting all the chains that tie The hidden soul of harmony; That Orpheus' self may heave his head From golden slumber on a bed Of heap'd Elysian flowers, and hear ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... this book which I have translated after mine author, as nigh as God hath given me cunning, to whom be given the laud and praises ... I have practised and learned, at my great charge and dispense, to ordain this said book in print, after the manner and form as ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 38, Saturday, July 20, 1850 • Various
... patience and humility of Law's reply.[599] As for the Moravians, not Warburton, nor Lavington, nor Stinstra, nor Duncombe, ever used stronger words against 'these most dangerous of the Antinomians—these cunning hunters.'[600] Count Zinzendorf, on the other hand, published a notice that his people had ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... of April, 1802, and in his sixty-ninth year, he sunk into his chair and expired. "Thus in one hour (says his affectionate biographer) was extinguished that vital light, which the preceding hour had shone in flattering brightness, promising duration; (such is often the cunning flattery of nature), that light, which through half a century, had diffused its radiance and its warmth so widely; that light in which penury had been cheered, in which science had expanded; to whose orb poetry had brought all her images; before whose influence disease had continually retreated, ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... impossible to raise the Indian to the standard of the white man. The head chief of the Winnebagoes was well known to me, and we became fast friends. He was a friendly man to all the settlers, but I knew the characteristics of the Indian well enough to trust none of them. He never overcomes the cunning and trickery in his nature and I learned to know that when he seemed most amiable and ingratiating was the time to look out for some deviltry. The Indians were great gamblers, the squaws especially. They would gamble away everything they owned, ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... Mr. Higgins, the new District Commissioner for Takwa, entered Tumento about 3 P.M. The carriers hired in addition to my canoe-men would now be wanted, said the cunning old chief, for the 'Government man,' with whom he wished to stand well. As the porters had received an advance of pay I objected to this proceeding. The fresh arrivals had to find other hands, and were not very successful in the search. Their detachment ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... cunning," returned Pencroft; "they won't show themselves again at the windows and so we can't kill them; and when I think of the mischief they may do in ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... many of thy kith and kind, Dug from thy native Asiatic clay, Fashioned by cunning hand and curious mind Into all shapes and features, grave ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... hundred times save one, On the sarcophagus, by cunning hand, Then lined with gold ere they pronounced it done; But then the grandest tomb in ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant
... sometimes been said that the style of Browning is essentially undramatic, that Pompilia, Guido, and the lawyers all talk in the same way, that is, like Browning. As a matter of fact nothing is more remarkable than the variety of style, the cunning adjustment of language and of rhythm to the requirements of every speaker. From the general construction of the rhythm to the mere similies and figures of speech employed in passing, each monologue is absolutely individual, and, though each monologue ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... and he was greatly perplexed as to what to do. On the one hand, he was tempted by the prospect of wealth; on the other hand, he knew that the sorcerer must have derived his knowledge from devils, and he feared to have anything to do with the powers of darkness. The cunning man strove hard to persuade him, and at length made him promise to shew the place where ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... having been careful to teach her how to live by her talons. Preciosa was rich in hymns, ballads, seguidillas, sarabands, and other ditties, especially romances, which she sang with peculiar grace; for the cunning grandmother knew by experience that such accomplishments, added to the youth and beauty of her granddaughter, were the best means of increasing her capital, and therefore she failed not to promote their cultivation in every way she could. Nor was the aid ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... acknowledged him as the chiefest among their football-kickers. He has the simple frankness of a man who feels himself to be perfectly sound in bodily, mental, and moral structure; and his self-revelation is a thousand times nobler than the assumed impersonality which is a common trick with cunning speakers who never forget their own interests. Thus it is, that, wherever Mr. Beecher goes, everybody feels, after he has addressed them once or twice, that they know him well, almost as if they had always known him; and there is not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... wind mills were very small indeed; and there were two or three which looked so "cunning," as Rollo said, that he wished very much that he had one of them to ...
— Rollo in Holland • Jacob Abbott
... poet's dream, He forms a scene beyond Elysium blest — Where sculptur'd elegance and native grace Unite to stamp the beauties of the place, 5 While sweetly blending still are seen The wavy lawn, the sloping green — While novelty, with cautious cunning, Through ev'ry maze of fancy running, From China borrows aid to deck the scene — 10 There, sorrowing by the river's glassy bed, Forlorn, a rural bard complain'd, All whom Augusta's bounty fed, All whom her clemency sustain'd; ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... be tolerably handsome, and has any share of cunning, the apprentice or her master's son is enticed away and ruined by her. Thus many good families are impoverished and disgraced by these pert sluts, who, taking the advantage of a young man's simplicity and ...
— Everybody's Business is Nobody's Business • Daniel Defoe
... treachery which accompanied their departure. But when the Japanese saw that he was going out of this port and that their design was known, they had recourse to arms, trying to do by force what they had not been able to do by cunning. But our men defended themselves so well, inflicting some loss on those of that kingdom, that they returned to these islands, which was a very fortunate outcome. Those who were left there, not being able ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson
... one of its passages is quoted with unction in many a shooting party. "Johnson, who was placed forward, again stood under a canopy of pheasants, and shot with brilliant success into the gaps.... The only theory which is accepted as explaining the catastrophe is one that imputes a malignant cunning to the birds." ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... Anselmo. He was shrewd and prudent, Wisdom and cunning had their shares of him; But he was shrewish as a wayward child, And pleased again by toys which childhood please; As-book of fables, graced with print of wood, Or else the jingling of a rusty medal, Or the rare melody of some old ditty, ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... was landless and penniless but for that one promise; and as for the sword, he said, he was but as a child playing before the sword of Don Alderon. And this Don Alderon said was in no wise so, though there were a few cunning passes that he had learned, hoping that the day might come for him to do God a service thereby by slaying some of the Moors: and heartily he gave his consent and felicitation. But this Rodriguez would not have: "Come with me," he said, "to the forest to the place where I met this man, and ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... figure like thine, such a hand, such an eye, Most brilliant accomplishments, statuesque face, Manners, carriage distingu and queenlike in grace,— Nothing wanting whatever, save only a heart, But, instead, double portions of cunning and art. ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... yet it thrilled the hearer. His face seemed the epitome of cunning, and the captain recoiled from it ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... Said the cunning spider to the fly: "Dear friend, what can I do To prove the warm affection I've always felt for you? I have within my pantry good store of all that's nice; I'm sure you're very welcome—will you please to take a slice?" "Oh no, no," said the little fly; "kind sir, that cannot be: I've heard what's ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... by discovering their histories and affairs, and, where facts failed, calling in the aid of fancy; and when there was nothing more to be discovered or invented, to lighten their money-chests by all the tyranny that power dare venture on, or the effrontery that cunning could devise and execute. Their curiosity regarding Tchitchikof was soon baffled, by discovering, like Socrates, that all they knew was, that nothing could be known. In vain did mine host essay to pump him: with a show of the most voluble confidence, Tchitchikof contrived always virtually ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 460 - Volume 18, New Series, October 23, 1852 • Various
... be true; and if so, they are a compound of every thing that is terrific in the rudest of the species, and of every thing that is odious in human nature, when corrupted to the extreme. Desperadoes in courage, and gluttons in revenge, they have also the low cunning and the treacherous plausibility with all the licentious propensities of the most designing and profligate of mankind. Their advancement in the arts which render life comfortable, and sometimes, too, embellish even vice, cannot in any measure redeem ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... place full of slackers, of lazy good-nature, of inefficiency. Into that softness he had come with a high explosive and an aim. He moved through life as a hunter among a covey of tame partridges—a brief flutter and a tumble of soft flesh. He had the cunning lines about the mouth, the glint in the eye, of the successful man. He had the easy generosities, too, of the man who, possessing much, can express power by endowing helpless things which he happens to like. There was an abundant sentiment in him, sentiment about his daughter and his flag, ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... his agent in Germany, to exert himself to induce the Protestant princes to send "special messengers" to England and persuade Elizabeth to join in "a confederacy of all parts professing the Gospel." In fact, the cunning secretary of state went even farther, and dictated to Mundt just what he should write to the queen. He was to tell her Majesty "that if she did not attempt the furtherance of the Gospel in France, and the keeping asunder of France and Spain, she would be in ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... wings, while the father-bird sat on the topmost bough of the apple-tree and sang to them. In time they grew and grew, and, instead of a nest full of little red mouths, there was a nest full of little, fat, speckled robins, with round, bright, cunning eyes, just like their parents; and the children began to ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... trade, pen and ink, and their account-books. The Gahois are Vaishnava Hindus, and abstain from all flesh and alcoholic liquor. They trade in grain and groceries, and are bankers and moneylenders. They are considered to be cunning in business, and a proverb says that a Gahoi will ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... it,—and there are all manner of things. In power of expression I pronounce it to be supreme; never did anybody who had such things to explain explain them better. And the bit of Egypt'n mythology, the cunning Dreams ab't Pthah, Neith, etc., apart from their elucidative quality, wh'h is exquisite, have in them a poetry that might fill any Tennyson with despair. You are very dramatic too; nothing wanting in the stage-direct'ns, in the pretty little indicat'ns: a very pretty ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... for a woman, even if she were born close to a throne, to acquire before the age of five-and-twenty the encyclopaedic knowledge of trifles, the practice of manoeuvring, the important small things, the musical tones and harmony of coloring, the angelic bedevilments and innocent cunning, the speech and the silence, the seriousness and the banter, the wit and the obtuseness, the diplomacy and the ignorance which make ...
— Another Study of Woman • Honore de Balzac
... such as swerve in faith With them, who, as our wise Apostle saith, Entangled are at unawares, with those Cunning to trap, to snare, and to impose By falsifyings, their prevarications: No, these are slyly taken from their stations, Unknown to nature; yea, in judgment they Think they have well done to forsake ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... and a look of cunning gradually pervaded the fellow's features. "No!" he said, "I've never found any of those things, but if you'll give me your word to say nothing about it, I'll show you something I once dug up over yonder ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... "What a cunning fellow you are!" said the Otter. "But, holloa, are you going off on the sly?" Yes, surely the ...
— Seven Little People and their Friends • Horace Elisha Scudder
... are some sins that cannot be taken away—the sins of faithless women, the "LITTLE" sins as they are called nowadays—for we have grown very lenient in some things, and very severe in others. We will imprison the miserable wretch who steals five francs from our pockets, but the cunning feminine thief who robs us of our prestige, our name and honorable standing among our fellow-men, escapes almost scot-free; she cannot be put in prison, or sentenced to hard labor—not she! A pity it is that Christ ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... wheat scattered in the basket. The number caught at once, is frequently more than theory would suggest; the contentions of a few that have entered, seldom failing to bring others to the combat. These mischievous birds, however, soon grow too cunning to be taken in any sort of trap to any extent, which has a chance of extirpating and destroying the race; consequently some more effectual and certain plan, such as that suggested above, or some other, ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... love will show; he is a bounteous man;"— And so they let Gayferos go, and turned them to Galvan. The heart and the small finger upon the board they laid, And of Gayferos' slaughter a cunning ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... to let out spirits and copper-colored birds which killed the farm animals. They also stole babies, leaving in their place changelings, goblins who were old in wickedness while still in the cradle, possessing superhuman cunning and skill in music. One way of getting rid of these demon children was to ill-treat them so that their people would come for them, bringing the right ones back; or one might boil egg-shells in the sight of the changeling, who ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... tansies run Nor weather-wisest bird gone home. How then Should wry eels in the pebbled shallows ken Lightning coming? troubled up they stole To the deep-shadowed sullen water-hole, Among whose warty snags the quaint perch lair. As cunning stole the boy to angle there, Muffling least tread, with no noise balancing through The hangdog alder-boughs his bright bamboo. Down plumbed the shuttled ledger, and the quill On the quicksilver ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... pity the Bee— For a cunning old hypocrite spider was he— "I'm sorry to see you so poorly," he said; And he whispered his wife, "He will ...
— The Diving Bell - Or, Pearls to be Sought for • Francis C. Woodworth
... enormities in France, was extremely prodigal and vicious; of a dark melancholy complexion, and cloudy countenance, such as in vulgar physiognomy is called an ill look. For the rest, his talents were very mean, having a sort of inferior cunning, but very small abilities; so that a great man of the late m[inist]ry, by whom he was invited over,[10] and with much discretion raised at first step from a profligate popish priest to a lieutenant-general, and colonel of a regiment of ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... bells peal far at sea Cunning fingers fashioned me. There on palace walls I hung While that Consuelo sung; But I heard, though I listened well, Never a note, never a trill, Never a beat of the chiming bell. There I hung and looked, and there In my grey face, faces fair Shone from under shining ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the king to plead any misunderstanding of the constitutional law of the kingdom. And the charter, no doubt, accomplished very much in this way. After Magna Carta, it required much more audacity, cunning, or strength, on the part of the king, than it had before, to invade the people's liberties with impunity. Still, Magna Carta, like all other written constitutions, proved inadequate to the full accomplishment ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... remained motionless, the letter on her lap, seeing through the cunning of this girl who had had such a hold on her son for so long, and had not let him come to see her once, biding her time until the despairing old mother could no longer resist the desire to clasp her son in her arms, and would weaken and grant ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... and I soon got over my feeling of depression. But even in play I was made to realise that I was not the master of the house. She ruled me with the utmost despotism, but I didn't mind. She permitted me to sip honey from that cunning place in her little neck and managed to call me Unko. My heart grew warm and soft again ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... wrote a little primer, a little body of autocratic laws, called the Manual of The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and put those laws in force, in permanence. Her government is all there; all in that deceptively innocent-looking little book, that cunning little devilish book, that slumbering little brown volcano, with hell in its bowels. In that book she has planned out her system, and classified and defined its purposes ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... acquisition of territory at the expense of their neighbours, and the treaty of Westphalia, though, as we have said, it was long the Public Law of Europe, was an embodiment, not of principles of justice or of the rights of nations, but of the relative force and cunning of what are happily called the powers. France obtained, as the fruit of the diplomatic skill with which she had prolonged the agony of Germany, a portion of the territory which she has recently disgorged. The independence of Germany was saved; and though it was not a national ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... impression that Rena was a fine, pure spirit, born out of place, through some freak of Fate, devoting herself with heroic self-sacrifice to a noble cause. Well, he had imagined her just as pure and fine, and she had deliberately, with a negro's low cunning, deceived him into believing that she was a white girl. The pretended confession of the brother, in which he had spoken of the humble origin of the family, had been, consciously or unconsciously, the most disingenuous feature of the whole miserable performance. They had tried by a show ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... their people, laden with heavy packs of sarongs,—the native skirts or waist-cloths,—trudging in single file through the forests and through the villages, hawking their goods to the natives of the place, with much cunning haggling or hard bargaining. But though they came to trade, they stayed long after the contents of their packs had been disposed of, for Haji Ali took a fancy to the place. Therefore he presently purchased a compound, and with his two sons set to work upon planting cocoa nuts, and cultivating a ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... green lawns, shaded with huge pyramids of the chenar trees, the terraced gardens where the marble steps climbed from one to the other, and the mountain streams flashed singing and shining down the carved marble slopes that cunning hands had made to delight the Empress of Beauty, between the wildernesses of roses. Her pavilion stands still among the flowers, and the waters ripple through it to join the lake—and she is—where? Even in the glory ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... do such big things; and I had just enough intelligence to want to understand you; to feel what you were thinking, to grasp its meaning, however dimly. Yet I have no real intellect. I am only quick and rather clever—sharp, as Jigger would say, and with some cunning, too. I have made so many people believe that I am brilliant. When I think and talk and write, I only give out in a new light what others like you have taught me; give out a loaf where you gave me a crumb; ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker |
