"Knavish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Schumann's enthusiastic effusion was a prophecy rather than a criticism. But although we may fail to distinguish in Chopin's composition the flirting of the grandee Don Juan with the peasant-girl Zerlina, the curses of the duped lover Masetto, and the jeers and laughter of the knavish attendant Leporello, which Schumann thought he recognised, we all obey most readily and reverently his injunction, "Hats off, gentlemen: a genius!" In these words lies, indeed, the merit of Schumann's review as a ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... where they were and have nothing further to do with the lean, high house of the gnoles, but to quit this sinister wood in the nick of time and retire from business at once and buy a place in the country. Then he descended softly and beckoned to Nuth. But the gnoles had watched him though knavish holes that they bore in trunks of the trees, and the unearthly silence gave way, as it were with a grace, to the rapid screams of Tonker as they picked him up from behind—screams that came faster and faster until they were incoherent. And where they took him it is not good to ask, and what ...
— The Book of Wonder • Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany
... the reader, as showing what a large measure of success had already attended Mr. Brooke's wise and earnest efforts to restore peace and plenty to the poor persecuted Dyaks; what incessant vigilance on his part was still requisite to check the inveterate propensity of the knavish Malays to plunder and oppress them; and with what well-directed activity he pursues his labors for the physical welfare and the moral regeneration ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... gathering gear They spend the one half of the year; In gathering gear and knavish art They somehow ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... was a rough-hewn fellow, Timon, with a face That glowered as through a thorn-bush in a wild, bleak place. He too decided on flight, This very Furies' son, All the world's ways to shun And hide from everyone, Spitting out curses on all knavish men to left and right. But though he reared this hate for men, He loved the women even then, And never thought ...
— Lysistrata • Aristophanes
... officer who set on dishes and tasted them, Shaft-mon, handbreadth, Shaw, thicket, Sheef, thrust, Sheer-Thursday, Thursday in Holy Week, Shend, harm, Shenship, disgrace, Shent, undone, blamed, Shour, attack, Shrew, rascal, Shrewd, knavish, Sib, akin to, Sideling, sideways, Siege, seat, Signified, likened, Siker, sure, Sikerness, assurance, Sith, since, Sithen, afterwards, since, Skift, changed, Slade, valley, Slake, glen, Soil (to go to), hunting term for taking the water, Sonds, ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... here, that this lay Pharisee, Ananias, is we have seen he was, sect. 39, took upon him to appoint a fast at Tiberias, and was obeyed; though indeed it was not out of religion, but knavish policy.] ...
— The Life of Flavius Josephus • Flavius Josephus
... their Friends, nay, what is more, their Children, And seem'd like Fathers anxious for our Welfare. Whom see we now? their haughty Conquerors Possess'd of every Fort, and Lake, and Pass, Big with their Victories so often gain'd; On us they look with deep Contempt and Scorn, Are false, deceitful, knavish, insolent; Nay, think us conquered, and our Country theirs, Without a Purchase, or ev'n asking for it. With Pleasure I wou'd call their King my Friend, Yea, honour and obey him as my Father; I'd ...
— Ponteach - The Savages of America • Robert Rogers
... perfectly illiterate," said the man in black; "they are possessed, it is true, of a knavish acuteness, and are particularly noted for giving subtle and evasive answers—and in your answers, I confess, you remind me of them; but that one of the race should acquire a learned language like the Armenian, and have a general knowledge of literature, is a thing che ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... hath made me marvellous lightsome; I profess it hath a very notable Faculty,—very knavish—and as it were, waggish,—but hah, what have we there on the Table? a Sword and Hat? [Sees Wittmore's Sword and Hat on the ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... rise—your king secures you here; Your king, who scorns the haughty prelate's nod, Nor deems the voice of priests the voice of God. 600 Let me, (though lawyers may perhaps forbid Their monarch to behold what they wish hid, And for the purposes of knavish gain, Would have their trade a mystery remain) Let me, disdaining all such slavish awe, Dive to the very bottom of the law; Let me (the weak, dead letter left behind) Search out the principles, the spirit find, Till, from the parts, made master of the whole, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... has ever seen. The English marvelled alike at both classes. There were indeed many stouthearted nonconformists in the South; but scarcely any who in obstinacy, pugnacity, and hardihood could bear a comparison with the men of the school of Cameron. There were many knavish politicians in the South; but few so utterly destitute of morality, and still fewer so utterly destitute of shame, as the men of the school of Lauderdale. Perhaps it is natural that the most callous and impudent vice should be found in the near neighbourhood ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... infamy doubly apparent; and that a person in seedy raiment and tattered hat, possessed of courage, kindness, and virtue, is entitled to more respect from those to whom his virtues are manifested than any cruel, profligate emperor, selfish aristocrat, or knavish millionaire in ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... confederacy with the whole clan of his district or dependence, which in modern terms of art is called, "To live, and let live;" and yet their gains are the smallest part of the public's loss. Give a guinea to a knavish land-waiter, and he shall connive at the merchant for cheating the Queen of an hundred. A brewer gives a bribe to have the privilege of selling drink to the Navy; but the fraud is ten times greater than the bribe, and the public ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... 12th we reached the confines of the Kikuyu country, along which our further route to the Naivasha led. The evil reports of the knavish, hateful character of this people were repeated to us in a yet stronger form by the Kapte Masai, their immediate neighbours. But we had in the meantime received from another source a very different representation. Our two ladies had with them an Andorobbo girl whom they ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... the worker of evil could never be brave or virtuous, let the colour of the skin be what it might. He bade his young men look at the hands of the Big-knives. They were not empty, like those of hungry beggars. Neither were they filled with goods, like those of knavish traders. They were, like themselves, warriors, and they carried arms which they knew well how to use—they were worthy ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... what I don't know; unless he wished to take credit to himself for the good result which fortunately has arisen from his knavish conduct. ...
— Minna von Barnhelm • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
... were engaged in several other expeditions on shore, in which, though successful, several officers and a large number of men lost their lives. At length the Maoris discovered, what they might have known from the first, had they not been instigated by the knavish foes of England, who kept well in the background, that it was useless to contend against the power of Britain. Most of the rebel chiefs losing heart, tendered their submission, and promised in future to be faithful subjects of ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... at what she keeps concealed. Prior has translated several of Fontaine's Tales from the French; and they have lost nothing in the translation, either of their wit or malice. I need not name them: but the one I like the most, is that of Cupid in search of Venus's doves. No one could insinuate a knavish plot, a tender point, a loose moral, with such unconscious archness, and careless raillery, as if he gained new self-possession and adroitness from the perplexity and confusion into which he throws scrupulous imaginations, and knew how to seize on all the ticklish parts ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... wooers: she had no less than five younger sons sat down before her at one time, and she kept them well in hand, as they say, giving no definite answers to any of one of them." Small respect did Mistress Edward Palmer show her late husband's most intimate friend. For weeks she tortured the wretched, knavish fellow with coquettish tricks, and having rendered him miserable in many ways, made him ludicrous by jilting him. "He was held at the long saw above a month, doing his duty as well as he might, and that was but clumsily; for ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... merchantmen. As for the position into which Sweden has been lured by allowing her diplomatic agents to assist Germany's secret service, Mr. Punch would hardly go the length of saying that it justifies the revision of the National Anthem so as to read, "Confound their Scandi-knavish tricks." But he finds it hard to accept Sweden's professions of official rectitude, ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... charge some of this loss to Seward. "The clamour against Sewardism lost us many votes," it declared the morning after the election. Two or three days later, as the reduced majority became more apparent, it explained that "A knavish clamour was raised on the eve of election by a Swiss press against Governor Seward's late speech at Rochester as revolutionary and disunionist. Our loss from this source is considerable." The returns, however, showed plainly that one-half of the Americans, following the precedent set in 1857, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... Shang had no other evidence than the natural cunning of his own knavish soul—but he imagined in the intentions of Gust what he himself would have been glad to accomplish had the means lain ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... your pardon, young sir," he said. "That fool, Jan Lubber Fiend, will ever be at his tricks. 'Tis my young mistress that encourages him, more is the pity! For poor serving-men are held responsible for his knavish on-goings. Why, I had just set him cross-legged in the yard with a basket of pease to shell, seeing how he grows as much as a foot in the night—or near by. But so soon as my back is turned he will be forever answering the door and peeping out into the street to gather ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... vigorously to his touch; whilst others, not less free upon the wire, were carefully packed up, and sent home safe. By seizing and boxing up in the Tower mere bystanders, wholly unconcerned in the sport, he made his 'little tin soldiers' fancy that he did not see their antics. The only hitch in his 'knavish piece of work' arose when, too assured, he placed upon the boards a real live judge, who refused to take the bench in the manager's sham Court of Justice. In every other respect the mystery play was a complete success; everybody was puzzled, players, spectators, and the gentlemen ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... whistle as is our wont to do whenever one of us comes out." Cagnazzo at this speech raised his muzzle, shaking his head, and said, "Hear the knavery he has devised for throwing himself under!" Whereon he who had snares in great plenty answered, "Too knavish am I, when I procure for mine own companions greater sorrow." Alichino held not in, and, in opposition to the others, said to him, "If thou dive, I will not come behind thee at a gallop, but I will beat ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... an one, a blasphemer of the gods, and a renegade from thy father's love and admonition." But thou shalt not alway mock the invincible gods, nor shall their enemies rejoice for long, nor shall these knavish sorceries prevail. For except thou become obedient unto me, and right-minded toward the gods, I will first deliver time to sundry tortures, and then put thee to the cruellest death, dealing with thee not as with a son, but as with ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... could not summon courage to dwell upon this attachment of Lucy to another. A consciousness of his utter meanness and degradation of spirit in consenting to marry any woman under such circumstances, filled him with shame even to glance at it. He feared, besides, that if her knavish father had heard it, he would at once have attributed his conduct to its proper motives—that is to say, an eagerness to get into the possession and enjoyment of the large fortune to which she was entitled. He himself, in his conversations with the baronet, never ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... up as silent partners with people who are involved in the most knavish and hazardous market in the world, it would soon have to hand in its schedule. It has, even now, immense difficulty in protecting itself against forgeries and false circulations of all kinds. Where would it be if it had to take account of the business of every one ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... trembled When he struck, With his broad head, 'Gainst the old column of the house-wall. Uller's splendid flatterer Swung the iron beam Straight 'gainst the head Of the knavish giant. ...
— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre
... Johnson would be induced to write first. Johnson became anxious, though he half-guessed the truth, and in reference to Boswell's confession gave his disciple a piece of his mind. "Remember that all tricks are either knavish or childish, and that it is as foolish to make experiments upon the constancy of a friend as upon the chastity of ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... spirits. In the Californian tribes and others they become occasions of merrymaking; a peculiar feature of these gatherings among the Maidu and other tribes is the presence of a clown who mimics the acts and words of the dancers and performs knavish tricks; the origin of this feature of the dances is not clear. In all such ceremonies the tendency to regulate the details of religious performances is apparent, and such regulation is found in so many parts of the world that it may be regarded ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... personal motives, that my heart is as much inflamed at the sight or relation of any act of injustice (whatever may be the object, or wheresoever it may be perpetrated) as if I was the immediate sufferer. When I read the history of a merciless tyrant, or the dark and the subtle machination of a knavish designing priest, I could on the instant set off to stab the miscreants, though I was certain to perish in ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... not see the three fine MSS. again, the Doctor his brother having locked them up. He openly bid for his own books, merely to enhance their price, and the auction proves to be, what I thought it would become, very knavish'; and on the 11th of February he adds: 'Yesterday at five I met Mr. Noel and tarried long with him; we settled then the whole affair touching his bidding for my Lord [Oxford] at the roguish auction of Mr. Bridges's books. ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... would be realised. The gross, squarely-built man with the bushy whiskers and the light strange eyes, found success attend his every enterprise from that hour in which he had spilt life upon the pavement of the Convent chapel. The tarantula-pounce never missed a prey. Every knavish venture brought in money or money's worth, every base plot was carried through triumphantly. Bough, alias Van Busch, was not ordinarily a superstitious man, but his run of luck made ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... of Mantinea. He's a knavish fellow; his backers are recalling their bets. But he hopes to win on a trick; beware, lest he trip you ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... trod softly with sandal'd feet— Ah! why are the stolen waters sweet?— And one crept stealthily after; I would I had taken him there and wrung His knavish neck when the dark door swung, Or torn by the roots his treacherous tongue, ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... and witchcraft increased on every hand, and in 1317 Pope John XXII issued his bull Spondent pariter, levelled at the alchemists, but really dealing a terrible blow at the beginnings of chemical science. That many alchemists were knavish is no doubt true, but no infallibility in separating the evil from the good was shown by the papacy in this matter. In this and in sundry other bulls and briefs we find Pope John, by virtue of his infallibility as the world's instructor ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... you spend your time in the gymnastic schools, sleek and blooming; not chattering in the market-place rude jests, like the youths of the present day; nor dragged into court for a petty suit, greedy, pettifogging, knavish; but you shall descend to the Academy and run races beneath the sacred olives along with some modest compeer, crowned with white reeds, redolent of yew, and careless ease, of leaf-shedding white poplar, rejoicing in the season ...
— The Clouds • Aristophanes
... account, we have endeavoured, as much as possible, to bring them before the reader, and to make them speak for themselves. They are a half-civilised, unlettered people, proverbial for a species of knavish acuteness, which serves them in lieu of wisdom. To place in the mouth of such beings the high-flown sentiments of modern poetry would not answer our purpose, though several authors have not ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... now setting in, and the situation of the embassy became more comfortless from day to day. Notes were written, and answers received from the monarch, but the royal interview was still postponed, partly by the artifice of the knavish governors, who kept a longing eye on the presents, and partly by the barbarian etiquette of showing the natives the scorn with which their king was entitled to treat all the nations ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... bottle and staff, suitable to their present condition, but so little satisfying, that Newfangle receives a terrible drubbing for his trick. Judge Severity arrives on the scene conveniently to lecture him severely and witness his second knavish device, which is no other than to hand over to the Judge the two fugitives from justice, Cutpurse and Pickpurse, for the piece of land of which he spoke is the gallows. Hankin Hangman takes possession of his victims, and the Devil, entering with a 'Ho, ho, ho!', carries ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... shall go to walk with Votini, the well-dressed boy who is always polishing himself up, and who is so envious of Derossi. In the meantime, Garoffi came to the house to-day,—that long, lank boy, with the nose like an owl's beak, and small, knavish eyes, which seem to be ferreting everywhere. He is the son of a grocer; he is an eccentric fellow; he is always counting the soldi that he has in his pocket; he reckons them on his fingers very, very rapidly, ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... of Divine Providence prevent such a calamity. The emigrants will be eager in the acquisition of wealth, ease and power; and, having superior skill and discernment in trade, they will outwit and defraud the natives as often as occasion permits. This knavish treatment once detected,—as it surely will be, for even an uncivilized people may soon learn that they have been cheated,—will provoke retaliation, and stir up the worst passions of the human breast. Bloody conflicts will ensue, in which the colonists will be victorious. This success ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... equal, villain? no, he is my friend; Thou, but a poor anatomy of bones, Cas'd in a knavish tawny withered skin. Wilt thou not stoop? art ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... rank falsehood. Fear'st not thou death! Fie, there's a knavish itch In that salt blood, an utter foe to smarting. Had Jaffier's wife prov'd kind, he'd still been true. Faugh, how that stinks! thou die, thou kill my friend! Or thou! or thou! with that lean wither'd face. Away, disperse all to your several charges, And meet ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy • Thomas Otway
... combats. The address of a combatant, expert in all the niceties of his art, who knows how to shift and ward dexterously, to put the change upon his adversary with art and subtlety, and to improve the least advantages, must not be confounded here with the cowardly and knavish cunning of one who, without regard to the laws prescribed, employs the most unfair means to vanquish his competitor. Those who disputed the prize in the several kinds of combats, drew lots ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... and even there it would be difficult. The proper and only thing to do was to keep him in custody as long as possible. When he should be brought back to a region of law and justice, it might be that the Pole could be prevented, for a time, at least, from using the results of his knavish observations. ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton
... himself, that yesternight The said young gentleman came to me, And then desired that he might This morning betimes married be; But now I doubt it will be high noon, Ere that his business be quite ended, Unless the knavish fool come very soon, That this same thing may be despatched; And therefore, since that this naughty pack Hath at this present me thus served, He is like henceforward my good-will to lack, Or else unwise I might be judged. I am taught hereafter how such a one to trust In any matter concerning ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... Dolphus and Sir Launcelot went by themselves to the chamber of the former to make merry. And there, Sir Dolphus who counted the other's sympathy as beyond doubt, told more of his knavish plots. Until the listener sick with listening turned to him in the quiet and secrecy of the great chamber and ...
— In the Court of King Arthur • Samuel Lowe
... while in this situation, the indigo loses its colour and gloss, and is called aliad. Some deceitfully mix the crops of all the three years, steeping them together, which fraud is hard to be discovered, but is very knavish. Four things are required in good indigo; a pure grain, a violet colour, a gloss in the sun, and that it be light and dry, so that either swimming in water or burning in the fire it casts forth a pure light violet ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... not that from the inception of our acquaintance with the pages of Plautus we have all passed through a similar experience. In the beginning we have been vastly diverted by the quips and cranks and merry wiles of the knavish slave, the plaints of love-lorn youth, the impotent rage of the baffled pander, the fruitless growlings of the hungry parasite's belly. We have been amused, perhaps astonished, on further reading, at meeting our new-found friends in other ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... ought to go a little way towards 'confounding their knavish tricks,'" a man's deep ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... shuffle &c (lie) 544; live by one's wits, sail near the wind. disgrace oneself, dishonor oneself, demean oneself; derogate, stoop, grovel, sneak, lose caste; sell oneself, go over to the enemy; seal one's infamy. Adj. dishonest, dishonorable; unconscientious, unscrupulous; fraudulent &c 545; knavish; disgraceful &c (disreputable) 974; wicked &c 945. false-hearted, disingenuous; unfair, one-sided; double, double- hearted, double-tongued, double-faced; timeserving^, crooked, tortuous, insidious, Machiavelian, dark, slippery; fishy; perfidious, treacherous, perjured. infamous, arrant, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... advantage of this extraordinary accident. From a country so near and so readily accessible they can get plants home, pot them up, and sell them, before the withering process sets in. May this revelation confound such knavish tricks! The moral is old—buy your orchids from one of the great dealers, if you do not care to ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... made use of by unheroic self-indulgence? What are we to say when we see asceticism preached to the poor by fat and comfortable retainers of the rich? What are we to say when we see idealism become hypocrisy, and the moral and spiritual heritage of mankind twisted to the knavish purposes of class-cruelty and greed? What ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... was he out of sight than the young man began to walk off rapidly with the bundle. It was an old trick, that has been many times played upon unsuspecting boys, and will continue to be played as long as there are knavish adventurers who prefer dishonest methods of getting a living to ...
— The Telegraph Boy • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... sugar-box. You, footman, take this large salt. Serve me well, and I will remember you. For, on the word of a gentleman, I had rather bear in war one hundred blows on my helmet in the service of my country than be once cited by these knavish catchpoles merely to humour this ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... modern fashion of composition. The lover remains in the country and the heroine in her chamber during the whole action, leaving their fate to be decided by a foolish father, a cunning mother, and two knavish servants. Machiavelli has executed his task with judgment and taste. He has accommodated the plot to a different state of society, and has very dexterously connected it with the history of his own times. The relation of the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the dupe of Mosca the knavish confederate of Vol'pone (2 syl.). He is an old man, with seeing and hearing faint, and understanding dulled to childishness, yet he ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... hand was a pillar, round which stood a set of men, some rough, some knavish-looking, with the blue coats, badges, short swords, and bucklers carried by serving-men. They were waiting to be hired, as if in a statute fair, and two or three loud-voiced bargains were going on. In ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... frustrate his knavish tricks,' but we shall soon be out of his reach, spinning along to ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... cavil at Mr. JUSTIN HUNTLY MCCARTHY'S re-adjustment of history. It was all for our delight that Claude Duval, instead of perishing on the scaffold, should escape from prison, have his freedom confirmed by the KING'S pardon, confound everybody else's knavish tricks and marry the lady of his heart. Nor do I complain that the historic highwayman (as I am credibly informed—for I got the facts from another critic) was only twenty-nine when they hanged him, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 5, 1916 • Various
... he, with the familiar air of a privileged servant, "did you see that knavish-looking Gabinius following Madame Fabia all the way back to the Temple ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... whenever they are to have one, must not be remote. Beaumarchais has seized their full value, and the effects of his "Figaro" spring pre-eminently from this. Whereas such good-humored roguish and half-knavish pranks are practised with personal risk for noble ends, the situations which arise from them are aesthetically and morally considered of the greatest value for the theatre; as, for instance, the opera of "The Water-Carrier" treats perhaps the happiest subject ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... a tree not too sturdy!) on which its devilish meshes are wrought! There is no exaggeration in stating that the financial history of the past three decades in America has been one of peerless turpitude. Rome under the dying glories of the empire scarcely parallels its knavish gluttonies of illegal seizure. And Wall Street has been the boiling point of all this infectious train of outrages against a patient people—one that presumes to rate itself really democratic, and to sneer at ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... displays prudence, as your offense shows adventurous courage. Well then, and gave him the knight-stroke so I raise you to nobility, who begged for grace for your offense now kneels before me, rise as knight; knavish you have acted, and Knave of Bergen shall you be called henceforth, and gladly the Black knight rose; three cheers were given in honor of the Emperor, and loud cries of joy testified the approbation with which the Queen danced still once with the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... time, been a battle charger, and, perhaps, some memory of those martial days, the waving of plumes and the clashing of arms, reawoke his combative spirit of old. Or, possibly his brute intelligence penetrated the dwarf's knavish pusillanimity, and, changing his tactics that he might still range on the side of perversity, resolved himself from immobility into a rampant agency of motion. Furiously he dashed into the thick of the conflict, ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... practitioner, and to the scientific student of mind and body and of the properties of the materia medica. Why, even here in Connecticut, it is impossible to get a law to protect the community from the imposition of knavish or ignorant quacks, and to require of a man some evidence of capacity and training and skill, before he is let loose to experiment upon suffering humanity. Our teachers must pass an examination—though the examiner sometimes ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the knavish justice of this remark; and in my predominating zeal to serve Glanville, I looked upon the inconvenience of discovering myself to a pickpocket and sharper, as a consideration not worth attending to. In order, therefore, ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Friar John, even the knavish tricks of Panurge, cannot spoil our tenderness for these dear bully-boys, these mellow and magnanimous rogues! Certain paragraphs in Rabelais recur to one's mind daily. That laudation of Socrates at the beginning, and the description of the "little boxes called Silent" that outside have ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... nations, an honest sincerity and persevering courage. We sometimes judge with tolerable correctness; at others are wholly mistaken, and not unfrequently run into such extremes, that having established a principle, that a particular people are knavish, or cowardly, or stupid, we are unwilling to admit any exceptions, but include the whole race in our sweeping censure. We are prejudiced at first sight against a Portuguese or Italian, and are careful of our communications with him, even though we meet him on the high road, or ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 331, September 13, 1828 • Various
... discountenance bird-fowling, and to buy up draughts of fishes and bid them be thrown into the water again, and to forbid killing any but wild animals, much more noble is it, in dissensions and differences with human beings, to be a generous, just and true enemy, and to check and tame all bad and low and knavish propensities, that in all intercourse with friends a man may keep the peace and abstain from doing an injury. Scaurus was an enemy and accuser of Domitius, but when one of Domitius' slaves came to him to reveal some important matters which were unknown to Scaurus, ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... at the creature; if it is a true Iroquois I can tell him by his knavish look, and by his paint," said the scout; stepping past the charger of Heyward, and entering the path behind the mare of the singing master, whose foal had taken advantage of the halt to exact the maternal contribution. ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... he stands behind that other and turns towards the moon the letters written in the glass. The other looking fixedly on the shining orb reads in it all that is written on the mirror as if it were written on the moon. [278] This is precisely the modus operandi by which the knavish have imposed upon the foolish in all ages. The manipulator of the doctrine stands behind his credulous disciple, writing out of sight his invented science or theology, and writing too often with the blood of some innocent victim. The poor ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... with the boldest confidence, was, that I had my misses, yea, two wives at once, and the like. Now these slanders, with the others, I glory in, because but slanders, foolish, or knavish lies, and falsehoods cast upon me by the devil and his seed; and should I not be dealt with thus wickedly by the world, I should want one sign of a saint, and a child of God. "Blessed are ye (said the Lord Jesus) when men shall revile you and persecute ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... drawbridge was raised, and that he could not hope for stealthy entrance there, he crept silently to the rear of the great building and there, among the bushes, his men searched for the ladder that Norman of Torn had seen the knavish servant of My Lady Claudia unearth, that the outlaw might visit the Earl of ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs |
