"Blackguard" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cut by the disappointment, that I was little likely to be pleased with anything. A moment back and I had seen myself knocking at Mr. Rankeillor's door to claim my inheritance, like a hero in a ballad; and here was I back again, a wandering, hunted blackguard, on the ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... think me a blackguard, to put it mildly, for taking such a month of Sundays to answer your letter; Of course I thought to myself as soon as I had finished it: Dash it! here goes. I'll write him a "jaw." But "dash it" here didn't ...
— Canada for Gentlemen • James Seton Cockburn
... speechless. I had come there to find an impudent young blackguard and tell him what I thought of him. That was as near a definite reason for my coming as any. If I had not acted upon impulse, if I had stopped to consider, it is quite likely that I should not have come at all. ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... and gritting his teeth, as if he longed to do more, but didn't dare. It is wonderful how salt water develops character. Our (on land) debonnaire, chivalrous executive, is merged in the swearing blackguard as far as he can be; and yet strange as it may seem, no man can be braver in time of danger, or apparently more forgetful of self. Our paymaster, too, has suffered a sea change: the gentleman is put away with his Sunday uniform, and taken out to air only when ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... that blackguard Prabylov right for saying we forged the Tsar's letter, and firing on a flag of truce. Poor Volnow's ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... gentlemen, to do butcher's work with efficiency and despatch. The ideal soldier should, of course, think for himself—the Pocket-book says so. Unfortunately, to attain this virtue he has to pass through the phase of thinking of himself, and that is misdirected genius. A blackguard may be slow to think for himself, but he is genuinely anxious to kill, and a little punishment teaches him how to guard his own skin and perforate another's. A powerfully prayerful Highland Regiment, officered by rank Presbyterians, is, perhaps, one degree more terrible in action than a hard-bitten ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... dead yet, not by a long sight—and as long as there's a breath in his carcass, that good-natured old blackguard is likely to be a dangerous customer. But though Charlie's still the boss of his party, he controls no offices, and has got no real power. He's as helpless as Satan was after he'd been kicked out of heaven and before he'd landed that big job he holds ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... voluntarily proffered. It should be said in mitigation that all this delirious abasement in no degree tempers his rancor against the system of which the foreign notable is the flower and fruit. He keeps his servility sweet by preserving it in the salt of vilification. In the character of a blatant blackguard the American snob is so happily disguised that he does not ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... chap! Don't say another word, unless you like to blackguard me for my impertinence in putting these questions. I quite understand. We'll consider the whole thing erased from our memories. Go on studying for the Bar with all your might, if you must take up so barren a profession and won't become ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... said that "No man is a hero to his valet" seemed to suppose that the world worships good and divine qualities only. Nothing of the sort; it is not the heroic, it is the low and coarse and blackguard part the mass of people regard with such ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... he interposed hastily, "you don't know what you are saying. I am a blackguard—a scamp, unfit to touch a ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... answered Ephraim. "Who else could it be? He's a rascal, your worship! He's a drunkard and a blackguard, the like of which Heaven should not permit! He always took the master his vodka and put the master to bed. Who else could it be? And I also venture to point out to your worship, he once boasted at the public house that he would kill the ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... use saying anything more about it if you are willing to give your consent to Hallie traveling in the company of, and camping with, such a low blackguard ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... lying ill there would die if he wasn't carefully nursed; but I am here, in spite of all your brutality, for brutal you were, you that I thought so gentle. And you are one of that sort! Ah! now, you would not abuse a woman at your age, great blackguard—" ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... as bad, but not quite; because sometimes there's a cantankerous blackguard on the jury who won't convict, and insists on letting a man off. But, please, pray think better of it, and let it be a private matter, if you must needs punish me. I won't bring an action against you, whatever you ...
— The Tables Turned - or, Nupkins Awakened. A Socialist Interlude • William Morris
... betray my master, like Peter! Splendid to act like any common blackguard in the day of my proving! Woman: you are no Christian. (He moves away from her to the middle of the square, as if her neighborhood ...
— Androcles and the Lion • George Bernard Shaw
... correspondent of the. New York Times at this date described Grant as "a tall, thin, repulsive-looking man, of acute, vigorous intellect, a thorough-paced scoundrel, and the most essential blackguard in the pulpit. He was sometimes called Brigham's ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... sister. Takes a carriage to Sevenoaks to do it too, to avoid scandal. I happen to be at my sister's, on my way from Cairo to Norway, so I undertake to run down. He meets me at the station, and wants me to go straight home and blackguard Betty. But I prefer to deal ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... "The blackguard!" he said. "The insufferable cad! To have run away as he did, and then to let them believe him dead! For that's what they do believe. It is killing David Livingstone, and as for Elizabeth—She'll have to be told, mother. He's alive. He's well. And he has deliberately ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... right! I was a blackguard. But had it not been for those last words of his, I should straight-way have offered to have married Irene on the morrow. The words were on my lips, but the contempt of that monosyllable maddened me. The ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... those who have a mind to inform the world are become so cautious, as to keep themselves if possible out of the way of danger. My custom is to dictate to a 'prentice who can write in a feigned hand, and what is written we send to your house by a blackguard boy. But at the same time I do assure you upon my reputation, that I never did send you anything, for which I thought you could possibly be called to an account. And you will be my witness that I always desired you by a letter ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... natural, the honourable, and the divine provision for the legitimate cravings of our nature. Whenever I hear a man speak sneeringly of marriage, if I have to conclude that he says what he feels, I may not think him a fool, but I strongly suspect that he is a blackguard. "He who attacks marriage; he who by word or deed sets himself to undermine this foundation of our moral society, must settle the matter with me, and if I do not bring him to reason, then I have nothing ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... as the two slid down the ratlines when their task aloft was done, "I almost wish we were back among those bloody niggers ashore. 'Twould be better than standin' trial for bein' caught on a blackguard of ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... that myself, my lord; but he's as wary as a weazel, and I'm afeard he smells something in the wind. There's that blackguard Moylan, too, he'd be telling Barry—and would, when he came to find things weren't to be settled as ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... the bailiff. "Harkye, Mr. Robin Ogg, or whatever is your name, it's right we should tell you that we are all of one opinion, and that is, that you, Mr. Robin Ogg, have behaved to our friend Mr. Harry Wakefield here, like a raff and a blackguard." ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... acquaintance we were on our way to a race meeting, and he proposed to give me his company. Like all of his class, he knew many "certainties," and he offered, with engaging frankness, to put me in the way of "gittin' a bit." The racing blackguard never talks of money; indeed, his obliquity of mind prevents him from calling anything by its right name. For him the world is divided between those who "have got it"—it being money—and those who mean to "get ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... sausages should be diurnal; and he himself would not be puffed up, fat, lazy. No! he would work all the harder, be affable as ever, and, above all, never swamp the father, husband, and honest man in the poet and the blackguard of sentiment. ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... hands at the sight. He declared that those "blackguard vegetables" were wild, mad, sublime! He stoutly maintained that they were not yet dead, but, gathered in the previous evening, waited for the morning sun to bid him good-bye from the flag-stones of the market. He could observe their vitality, he declared, see their leaves ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... the tither hand present her, A blackguard smuggler, right behint her, An' cheek-for-chow, a chuffie vintner, Colleaguing join, Picking her pouch as bare as winter ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... in love with you I'd simply take you. I am only your friend—and I can't do you that injury. Curious, isn't it, how such a blackguard as I am ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... Francisco police are the handsomest and most-willing-to-flirt policemen in the United States, if not in the world. What a surly lot, the New York policemen. They treat one as though he were a blackguard for merely asking ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... by the heat—the Captain, who had been impatiently walking the deck, suddenly stopped short, and darting his eyes among the seamen, suddenly fixed them, crying out, "You, Candy, and be damned to you, you don't pull an ounce, you blackguard! Stand up to that gun, sir; I'll teach you to be grinning over a rope that way, without lending your pound of beef to it. Boatswain's mate, where's your colt? Give that ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... not finding out, Moreno. It's all easy enough so far as the major's concerned, but that blackguard Feeny's different, I tell you. He'd hear the gurgle of the spigot if he were ten miles across the Gila, and be here to bust things before you could serve out a gill,—damn him! He's been keen enough to put that psalm-singing Yankee on guard over your liquor. How're you ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... Pipkin, and while you're here she will see that you don't keep such hours any longer. You tell me that you're not disgraced, and yet you are out at midnight with a young blackguard like that! I've said what I've got to say, and I'm going away. But ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... at New York. John, tiring of the trade of cooper, to which he was apprenticed, ran away to sea. For many years he served both in men-of-war and in merchant ships. Although an unmitigated blackguard, he did not commit piracy nor murder until some years later, when, being at Ancona, he met a Captain Benjamin Hartley, who had come there with a loading of pilchards. Richardson was taken on board to serve as ship's carpenter, and sailed ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... with them, and you'll not get over that, I can tell you—they are well known for a nice lot. Your Mrs. Kilroy was notorious before she married. She was Angelica Hamilton-Wells, and she and her brother were called the Heavenly Twins. They are grandchildren of that blackguard old Duke of Morningquest. Nobody ever speaks of any of the family with the slightest respect. It's well known that Miss Hamilton-Wells asked old Kilroy to marry her, and when a girl has to do that, you may guess what she is! But they are all besmirched, that lot," Dan concluded ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... boot-black, is it?—Nice thing for the office, Jack!" remarked Marway, who was the finest gentleman, and the lowest blackguard among ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... now I think of the name in connection with the old days, there was a drunken fellow. To be sure, an awful blackguard, continually before the bench. Dear me! Well, well, but a man is not responsible for his undesirable relations, ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... you, preferring to live my life in peace with every man, you have said I was a coward, you unmanly slanderer! When I have desired to live the best life I could, you have turned even that against me. You lied and you know you lied—blackguard! You have laughed at the blood in my veins—the sacred ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... September morning, as Huxter was regaling himself with a cup of coffee at a stall in Covent Garden, having spent a delicious night dancing at Vauxhall, he spied the General reeling down Henrietta Street, with a crowd of hooting blackguard boys at his heels, who had left their beds under the arches of the river betimes, and were prowling about already for breakfast, and the strange livelihood of the day. The poor old General was not in that condition when the sneers and jokes of these young beggars had ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... for sale; Okhta pedlar-women with boxes of shoes. Each spectator expresses his admiration in his own peculiar way: peasants point with their fingers; soldiers gaze with stolid gravity; dirty foot-boys and blackguard apprentices laugh and apply the caricatures to each other; old serving men in frieze cloaks stand listless and agape, indulging ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... her and bring her back before she has made an utter idiot of herself with that miserable blackguard. Are you afraid of him? If you are, I will go with you, and not ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... Delaware," writes Jack. "My general was in a small boat, with Knox, and two boatmen. We were ten hours in the ice, and marched nine miles, after crossing, in a blinding storm of sleet. By God's grace we took one thousand of those blackguard Hessians, and, but for Cadwalader's ill luck with the ice, would have got Donop also. I had a finger froze, ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... the scalp from that blackguard Colombian prelate if he tries to trick me! Has Willett found ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... The truculent blackguard, who was about six feet three high and had a mouth like a wolf's throat, arrived in front of me ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... give her greater pleasure, but there was no such good fortune in store for either her or me; that she had discovered long ago that Colonel Ibbetson was the greatest blackguard unhung, and nothing new she might discover could make ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... This talented blackguard was wont to pray for alms from Mistress Oldfield; and that dear charitable creature (are not most actresses dear, charitable creatures?) would often waste her practical sympathy upon him. She despised the man, but, with that generosity ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... A gentleman will never tell a lie to screen himself, when he has got into a scrape. I wouldn't keep the smartest young officer in the service on board a ship of mine, if I caught him telling a lie; for I should know that he would not only be a blackguard, but a coward. Cowardice is at the bottom of half the lying of the world. I would overlook anything, except lying. Upon my word, I would rather that a boy were a thief ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty
... he did it, the blackguard! May God smite him both in this world and the next. If he has an aunt, may all harm descend upon her. And if his father is living, may the rascal perish, may he choke to death. Such a cheat! The son of the tailor ...
— The Inspector-General • Nicolay Gogol
... "does this beggar's brat think that he is to govern gentlemen's sons, because Master Merton is so good as to keep company with him?" "If I were Master Merton," said a third, "I'd soon send the little impertinent jackanapes home to his own blackguard family." And Master Mash, who was the biggest and strongest boy in the whole company, came up to Harry, and grinning in his face, said, "So all the return that you make to Master Merton for his goodness to you is to be a spy and an informer, is it, ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... to retort, but the words stuck in her throat. Fortunately just then she caught sight of her poor lamb playing with the other poor lamb. She dashed at her offspring, boxed its ears and crying, "You little blackguard, if I ever catch you playing with blackguards again, I'll wring your neck for you," she hustled the infant into the house and slammed the ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... eight thousand from him at a sitting. 'I shall drink your beer in future, Mr. Brewer,' said I. 'Every blackguard in London does,' said he. It was monstrous impolite of him, but some people cannot lose with grace. Well, I am going down to Clarges Street to pay Jew King a little of my interest. Are you bound that way? Well, good-bye, then! I'll see you and your young friend ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... do it, then!—and it will be the worse for you. My husband will see for himself what a blackguard you are, and you certainly ...
— A Doll's House • Henrik Ibsen
... world of fashion. He saw that the girl moved in, and was happiest in, a great world to which he had not the key. He had the ambition to belong to that world, though his common-sense might have told him that he never could do more than hang about its outer courts. He was a calculating blackguard, a man of loose life, and a vulgar fellow with vulgar ambitions. He saw astutely enough that this girl was well on the high-road to considerable fortune. The Dutch girl opposite necessitated wary walking. He played the romantic lover, and before six months were run out he was pressing ...
— Vigee Le Brun • Haldane MacFall
... methinks, should have a care Lest people deem them bred in city air; Should shun the cant of exquisites, and shun Coarse ribaldry no less and blackguard fun. For those who have a father or a horse Or an estate will take offence of course, Nor think they're bound in duty to ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... for her. "I don't know—probably he would. Lord, Lord, what a blackguard! What a skunk!" And Billy got up with a short breath, as if he were suffocating, walked away from her, and began to walk up and down across the ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... compare the Irish shoeblack's metaphorical language with the sober slang of an English blackguard, who, fortunately for the fairness of the comparison, was placed somewhat ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... something quite different, and I suppose it must be true, otherwise she would not have married him; but to me he was a source of supply coupled with a bad temper, that was all. That I was not utterly impossible, that, going my own gait as I did, I was not a complete young blackguard, I know now was due entirely to Mother. She and I were as close friends as I would permit her to be. Father had neglected us for years, though how much he had neglected and ill-treated her I did not know until ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... by S.R. Maitland, D.D., F.R.S., and F.S.A. A very monument of ignorant perversity. The writer shamelessly distorts facts to show that Chatterton was an utterly profligate blackguard and declares finally that neither Rowley nor Chatterton ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... face as red as blood, swinging the rope, and calling out to his officers: "Drag him aft!— Lay hold of him! I'll sweeten him!'' &c., &c. The mate now went forward, and told John quietly to go aft; and he, seeing resistance vain, threw the blackguard third mate from him, said he would go aft of himself, that they should not drag him, and went up to the gangway and held out his hands; but as soon as the captain began to make him fast, the indignity was too much, and he struggled; but, the mate and Russell holding ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... blackguard!" said Alloway, and stepped towards the kennel. Blazer shot out to the length of his chain; and Alloway, in his fury, cut him savagely with his whip. Blazer roared rather than barked; the noise stimulated Tinker's wits; and he ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... Smike, Smallweed, Miss Mowcher, and the dwarfs and wax-work of Nell's caravan; and runs entirely wild in Barnaby Rudge, where, with a corps de drame composed of one idiot, two madmen, a gentleman fool who is also a villain, a shop-boy fool who is also a blackguard, a hangman, a shrivelled virago, and a doll in ribands—carrying this company through riot and fire, till he hangs the hangman, one of the madmen, his mother, and the idiot, runs the gentleman-fool through in a bloody duel, and burns and crushes the shop-boy fool ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... where he says he was "brought up in a very mean condition among a company of poor countrymen." Here, with but little to elevate or refine his character, the boy contracted many bad habits, and grew up what Coleridge somewhat too strongly calls "a bitter blackguard." According to his own remorseful confession, he was "filled with all unrighteousness," having "from a child" in his "tender years," "but few equals both for cursing, swearing, lying and blaspheming the holy name of God." Sins of this kind ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... and up the little ungrateful chap came. Would you believe it, he burst into tears,—told that the waistcoat had been given him by his mother, and that he had been forced to give it for a debt to Copper-Merchant, as the nasty little blackguard called me? He then said how, for three-halfpence, he had been compelled to pay me three shillings (the sneak! as if he had been OBLIGED to borrow the three-halfpence!)—how all the other boys had been swindled (swindled!) by me in like manner,—and how, with ...
— The Fatal Boots • William Makepeace Thackeray
... my dear," interrupted Judith; "'the infernal mortgagees, and the damned charges, and that blackguard rebel, young Mangan, who cut the ground from under his feet,' and so on. I've heard it all from Papa, exactly five thousand times. But the point is that there was a meeting at Pribawn, with the priest in the chair, and there ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... head and a little bit of the Dark World came through and pressed him to death. "Pansay went off the handle," says Heatherlegh, "after the stimulus of long leave at Home. He may or he may not have behaved like a blackguard to Mrs. Keith-Wessington. My notion is that the work of the Katabundi Settlement ran him off his legs, and that he took to brooding and making much of an ordinary P. & O. flirtation. He certainly was engaged to Miss Mannering, ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... time after this interview. He wished he could be quite certain that his manner towards his brother was entirely the result of Andrew's disagreeable references to their father. He would be the most ill-conditioned sweep unkicked, the most dishonorable sneaking blackguard, if by any chance he had allowed his luckless passion to prejudice him! He began to wish he were back in India again. Was this beastly furlough never coming to an end? And so he drove off in his hansom, alternately ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... Kippletringan had been stopt on the high-road by a constable, who foresaw it would be necessary to convey Hatteraick to jail. The driver, understanding what was going on at Derncleugh, left his horses to the care of the blackguard boy, confiding, it is to be supposed, rather in the years and discretion of the cattle, than in those of their keeper, and set off full speed, to see, as he exprest himself, "whaten a sort o' fun was gaun ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... cried; "that sneak, that blackguard, that old fool, what a way he has to console his friends! I shouldn't wonder if he has committed some piece of barbarity—given a couple of kicks to this poor child, perhaps; and now I suppose he has gone back to the church to get everything ready to sing the funeral chant, and ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... birthday) and that girl who's training for the stage did not come home after the excursion till the night was half over. God knows where they were! They were certainly no cleaner when they got home. (Naturally, for where could they have had a wash.) His father gave the young blackguard a fine talking to, but of course the girl's mother takes her side. It would positively kill me to think of my Marina doing anything of the kind." Father was able to get a word in at last: "But my dear Alma, what has all this to do with my girls? As far as I know ...
— A Young Girl's Diary • An Anonymous Young Girl
... said grimly. "You are going to dine with me to-night. Come just for once; let us imagine we are on our honeymoon. That blackguard Fenwick is away, and he will be none the wiser. Now, I want you to ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... in keeping. In one corner of the room sat Miss Williams, apparently in the depth of wretchedness. She occasionally cast furtive glances at the captain, and then toward a small window, which was firmly barricaded; but seeing no prospect of escape, she relapsed again into hopeless sorrow. Groups of blackguard soldiers were seated on stools in different parts of the room, many of them following the example of their officers, and others amusing themselves with burnishing their muskets and equipments. After numerous ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... later the boat, which was crowded with natives, went about like a top, and then Tully—as fine a sailor man as ever put hand to a rope—brought her alongside in such a manner that I could not but admire and envy the little blackguard's skill. ...
— The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton - 1902 • Louis Becke
... grand unanimity, the name of "Tinkler." The heart of a people hung suspended (mostly in the public houses) on the chances for and against the possibility of replacing "Tinkler" by another man. The scene in front of the inn was impressive in the highest degree. Even the London blackguard stood awed and quiet in the presence of the national calamity. Even the irrepressible man with the apron, who always turns up to sell nuts and sweetmeats in a crowd, plied his trade in silence, and found few indeed (to the credit of the nation be it spoken) who had the heart to crack a nut ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... thinks wisely that Bunyan's biographers have exaggerated his early faults, considers that at worst he was a sort of 'blackguard.' This, too, is a wrong word. Young village blackguards do not dream of archangels flying through the midst of heaven, nor were these imaginations invented afterwards, or rhetorically exaggerated. Bunyan was undoubtedly given to story-telling ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... is over if I lose you," I said, "I suppose I was mad for a moment. Tell me that one day—when it is fit and proper that you should do so—you will give me a hearing, and I will perform any penance you choose. I acted like a blackguard." ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... stand by the ditch with their hands in their pockets sucking a stale pipe. They would rather lounge there in the bitterest north-east wind that ever blew than do a single hour's honest work. Blackguard is written in their faces. The poacher needs some courage, at least; he knows a penalty awaits detection. These fellows have no idea of sport, no courage, and no skill, for their tricks are simplicity itself, nor have they the pretence of utility, for ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... blackguard audience were sharing, unchecked, the amusement of the bar. The judge put up his hand to hide a laugh. Then he said to Lemuel, "Do you wish to ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... He'll blackguard you mortal, and the Dempster himself is past it. Just sitting with the brandy and drinking and drinking, and ateing nothing; but that dirt brought up on the Curragh shouting for beefstakes morning and night, and having his dinner laid on a beautiful ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... such a manner as to Rake ye deck where our people lay, telling us at ye same time with many Curses yt in Case of any Disturbance or the least noise in ye Night, they were to be Imediately fired on ye Damned Rebels." When allowed to come on deck "we were insulted by those Blackguard Villians in the most vulgar manner....We were allowed no water that was fit for a Beast to Drink, although they had plenty of good Water on board, which was used ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... thee, spruce and fine, With coat embroider'd richly shine, And dazzle all the idol faces, As through the hall thy worship paces; (Though this I speak but at a venture, Supposing thou hast tick with Hunter,) Methinks I see a blackguard rout Attend thy coach, and hear them shout In approbation of thy tongue, Which (in their style) is purely hung. Now! now you carry all before you! Nor dares one Jacobite or Tory Pretend to answer ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... bad taste of his Predecessors. For his Lutrin, replete with excellent poetry, wit, humour, and satire, he certainly was not obliged to the ancients. Excepting Horace, how little idea had either Greeks or Romans of wit and humour! Aristophanes and Lucian, compared with moderns, were, the one a blackguard, and the other a buffoon. In my eyes, the Lutrin, the Dispensary, and the Rape of the Lock, are standards of grace and elegance, not to be paralleled by antiquity; and eternal reproaches to Voltaire, whose indelicacy in the Pucelle degraded him as much, when compared with the three ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... among this number can you be sure that you have not had children by at least one of them, and that you have not in the streets, or in the bagnio, some blackguard of a son who steals from and murders decent people, i.e., ourselves; or else a daughter in some disreputable place, or, if she has the good fortune to be deserted by her mother, as cook in ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... he said to himself. "'Faint heart never won fair lady.' A happy inspiration, I am beginning to think. Losing that toss will perhaps result in my winning a higher stake. There's a good deal of dash and devilry in that infernal blackguard Horton, and doubtless that is why he has made some progress here. Well then, she ought to appreciate my spirit in coming to her at this time of night, or morning, rather. There's a wild, primitive strain in her; she's not to be wooed and won in the usual ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... something to us, after she had gien us a hearing on our duties. But deil a dram, or kale, or ony thing else—no sae muckle as a cup o' cauld water—do thae lords at Edinburgh gie us; and yet they are heading and hanging amang us, and trailing us after thae blackguard troopers, and taking our goods and gear as if we were outlaws. I canna say I tak it kind ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... bulwark of America's greatness. But what do I get in return, Mister Peterson? I come up here as a gentleman and talk to you. I treat you as a gentleman. I overlook what you've showed yourself to be. And how do you return it? By talking like the blackguard you are—you knock ...
— Calumet "K" • Samuel Merwin and Henry Kitchell Webster
... the kind above alluded to. In talking to an American gentleman on this subject, he told me that it was indeed but too common a practice, although by law nominally prohibited; and he further added, that once asking a vendor why he had such blackguard books which nobody would buy, he took up one of the worst, and said, "Why, sir, this book is so eagerly sought after, that I have the utmost difficulty in keeping up the requisite supply." It is a melancholy reflection, that in a country where education is ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... to Sister Theresa since coming to Glenarm. She had derived her knowledge of me from my grandfather, and, such being the case, she would naturally look upon me as a blackguard and a menace to the peace of the neighborhood. I had, therefore, kept rigidly to my own side of the stone wall. A suspicion crossed my mind, marshaling a host of doubts and questions that had lurked there since my first night ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... his remarks with expletives that can have no place here, "I want no more of your insults, and if you don't shut up I'll make you. I won't be insulted by a drunken blackguard like you, without resenting it. If it were not that I don't wish to disgrace my office and the company I am in, ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... prosper without the sense of feeling. To talk of riding and walking is insulting me, for I can as soon fly as do either. It is your pride or laziness, more than chair-hire, that makes the town expensive. No honour is lost by walking in the dark; and in the day you may beckon a blackguard boy under a gate, near your visiting place, (experto crede,) save elevenpence, and get half-a-crown's worth of health. The worst of my present misfortune is, that I eat and drink, and can digest neither for want of exercise; and, to increase my misery, the knaves are sure ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... man looked from his enemy to his deliverer, and back again. What new row was this? Never before had he seen the blackguard with that look in his dark, handsome, predatory face. It typified fear. And who was this big blond chap whose fingers ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... gross and palpable reprobate greatly took my fancy. I delighted in him immensely, and in his comrades, Pistol, and Bardolph, and Nym. I could not read of his death without emotion, and it was a personal pang to me when the prince, crowned king, denied him: blackguard for blackguard, I still think the prince the worse blackguard. Perhaps I flatter myself, but I believe that even then, as a boy of sixteen, I fully conceived of Falstaff's character, and entered into the author's wonderfully humorous conception ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... her father by accepting him. I've the word of this Prince Hermann for it. Now you can look upon a game of stale-mate. If I had gone to the prince, it wouldn't have been to back your play; but, if you hadn't been guilty of the tricks of a blackguard past praying for, this princess would never have been obliged to marry a man to protect her father and herself. They sent him here to stop any misunderstanding. He speaks good English, so that's certain. Your lies will be contradicted, every one of 'em, seriatim, in to-morrow's ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... dare to pass any of your blackguard remarks upon me, I'll make you feel my nails—and my teeth too, if necessary!" screamed Mrs. Pipelet: "and more than that, my lodger, my prince of lodgers, will pitch you from the top to the bottom of the staircase, ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... my duty," replied the girl simply, her eyes downcast in modesty. "Yet association with that dastardly blackguard, Dr. Weirmarsh, was horrible! How I refrained from turning upon him through all those months I cannot really tell. I detested him from the first moment Sir Hugh invited him to our table; and though I went to assist him under guise of consultations, I acted with one object all along," she declared, ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... conversation, Arnold, or, by Gad! you shall pay for it!" cried the tall, dark-haired, clean-shaven man, as he sprang from his chair and faced his visitor threateningly. "Taunt me as much as ever it pleases you. Allege what you like against me. I know I'm an infernal blackguard, posing here as a smug and respectable churchgoer. I admit any charge you like to lay at my door, but I'll not have my girl's name associated with my misdeeds. Understand that! She's pure and honest, and she knows nothing of ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... doubt," said he, "as to his being a blackguard. He was hunting for your money, and now that he knows you have got none, he will trouble you no further." Then he made a move from the place on which he stood, as ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... words only increased the anger of his Majesty. "Let him be arrested! Tear off his decorations; he is unworthy to wear them. Let him be tried in twenty-four hours." Then turning to the generals, who stood stupefied and immovable around him, he exclaimed, "Look, gentlemen! read this! See how this blackguard addresses a princess, and at the very moment when her husband is negotiating a peace ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... Mr. Becker, Elder du Toit, and self straight talk with E——. But oh, what a blackguard he is, and how devilishly good and obedient! Made himself out ...
— Woman's Endurance • A.D.L.
... went on, "you're assuming that the thing this letter hints at will really come off. I don't think it will. A man would have to be such an awful blackguard to go as low as that. The least grain of decency in him would stop him. I can imagine a man threatening to do it as a piece of bluff—by the way, the letter doesn't actually say anything of the sort, though I suppose it hints at it—but I can't imagine anybody ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... shan't repeat here), "Hark, to Ringwood!" and then, "There he goes!" says some one; and all of a sudden, helter skelter, skurry hurry, slap bang, whooping, screeching and hurraing, blue-coats and red-coats, bays and grays, horses, dogs, donkeys, butchers, baro-knights, dustmen, and blackguard boys, go tearing all together over the common after two or three of the pack that yowl loudest. Why all this is, I can't say; but it all took place the second Thursday of last March, in ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... lads, a bit. Sure I've burst the ropes at last. The moment I git howld o' that blackguard's knife I'll cut yer lashin's. Stand ...
— Sunk at Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... what I have to say, signore. I understand perfectly, but I shall fight no duel. It is an obsolete fashion, and proves nothing but mechanical skill. I do not know what kind of blackguard you are, but blackguard I know you to be. If you ever address me again I promise on the word of a gentleman to give you a whipping which will have a more lasting effect upon your future actions than a dozen sermons. If that will not serve, ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... more condemnation than the weaknesses of a child. In the theater he had the tidy habits of a sailor. He folded up his clothes and kept them in beautiful condition; and of a young man who had proposed for his daughter's hand he said: "The man's a blackguard! Why, he throws his things all over the room! The most untidy chap ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... him, and ordered him to open court then and there, which in all due form the sheriff proceeded to do. The bully was startled, and the judge, perceiving this, remarked to him authoritatively, "Now, you scoundrel, be off with yourself, or I will put you in jail for one year!"—when the blackguard speedily decamped, to the infinite amusement of ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... "that Mrs. Sheridan brought the baby home, and has raised her. That makes Miss Sheridan—Norma—the child of Annie and that German blackguard!" ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... a lazy blackguard called Ned Hanks; he's always poaching and getting drunk. He never does any work, except now and then he collects rags and bones, and sells ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... diverted with strokes of satirical humour, but it detests the blackguard. The same sense of propriety that governs in private companies, governs in public life. If a man in company runs his wit upon another, it may draw a smile from some persons present, but as soon as he turns a blackguard in his language the company gives him up; and it is the same in public life. The event of the late election shows this to be true; for in proportion as those papers have become more and more vulgar and abusive, the elections have gone more and more against the ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... yourself, you consider me such an utterly irreclaimable blackguard that you can't afford to be seen with me ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... good saying anything now,' he said to her. 'This blackguard has plenty more lies ready. Go to the house and tell my brother-in-law, will you? I dare say ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... and whether I did it with a bow or a bluster was of little importance. 'I am ruined for ever in their opinion,' said I to myself; 'I am shut out for ever from their society, they already think me an unprincipled fellow, this letter will only make them think me a blackguard one.' Such were my reasonings, as, in a sort of desperate carelessness, I copied my wife's words, and parted with the last relics of Marianne. Her three notes—unluckily they were all in my pocket-book, ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen |
