"Adroit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... adroit and circumspect art of the lawyer, sifting the testimony of the unconscious witness, and worming from his custody those minor details which seem to the uninitiated so perfectly unimportant to the great matter immediately in hand—Stevens now propounded his direct ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... laughter, related a dozen amusing anecdotes of his duns, and Rebecca's adroit treatment of them. He vowed with a great oath that there was no woman in Europe who could talk a creditor over as she could. Almost immediately after their marriage, her practice had begun, and her husband found the immense ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... behind, a harrowing legacy to one's friends; for tombs are even less sacred than houses. Memory, friendship, obligation,—all are lost sight of in the greed of desire to make an effective sketch, a surprising revelation, a neat analysis, or perhaps an adroit implication of honor to one's self by reason of an old association with greatness. Private letters and private conversations, which may touch living hearts in a thousand sore spots, are hawked about as coolly as if they had been old clothes, ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... Graham slipped it into your pocket. He was very quick and adroit, but I detected him. He wanted to throw suspicion ...
— The Young Adventurer - or Tom's Trip Across the Plains • Horatio Alger
... as he had registered at the hotel—having, by means of a more or less adroit bit of camouflage, obtained possession of the newspaper containing an account of the murder of Mrs. Darcy, and of the holding of her cousin and Harry King on suspicion, tossed the journal on the bed beside his well-worn copy of the "Complete Angler." Then, to demonstrate his ...
— The Diamond Cross Mystery - Being a Somewhat Different Detective Story • Chester K. Steele
... almost purely decorative, in geometrical patterns, not representative. They deemed themselves akin to all nature, and called cousins with rain and smoke, with clouds and sky, as well as with beasts and trees. They were adroit hunters, skilled trackers, born sportsmen; they now ride well, and, for savages, play cricket fairly. But, being invaded by the practical emigrant or the careless convict, the natives were not studied when in their prime, and science ...
— Australian Legendary Tales - Folklore of the Noongahburrahs as told to the Piccaninnies • K. Langloh Parker
... this discovery, being in the bow of the canoe. He heard no sound, but suddenly there loomed out of the darkness another canoe close to them—so close that they were on the point of running into it when the sharp-witted boy saw it, and, with an adroit turn of his paddle prevented a collision. Then he ceased to paddle, and held his breath. Not knowing what to do next he wisely did nothing, but left matters ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... adroit intervals, reminding us of the arrangement of voices in an ancient catch, where one voice takes up the phrase another has dropped, and thus seems to give the web of harmony a firmer and ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... seemed to think that the General, once accustomed to their sweetness and animation, could not do without it, and that their society would become indispensable to him. They mingled, too, with their adroit manoeuvres, familiar and delicate attentions, likely to touch an old man. They sat on his knees like children, played gently with his moustache, and arranged in the latest style the military ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... question led a truly chequered life in the gay garrisons of the new world, varied by a couple of voyages to the gayer Court he had left behind, but through all the reckless episodes of his long and stirring career, Francois was by his side, patient, adroit, silent when necessary, at other times a madcap for freak and fantasy. Faith of a gentleman—Francois Gaillard was everything his noble master should have been, and that master too often such as the ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... let him call to mind what we had to accomplish. We had to penetrate an enemy's lines, to enter a besieged city, to tell home truths to the desperate, unscrupulous leaders of the foulest rebellion the world has ever known, and to draw from those leaders, deep, adroit, and wary as they are, their real plans and purposes. And all this we had to do without any official safeguard, while entirely in their power, and while known to be their earnest and active enemies. One false step, one unguarded word, one untoward event would have consigned us to Castle ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... Rowlett was too adroit to betray by more than a single unguarded flash his jealous reaction to mention of the girl and he responded quietly ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... a resource, but that it was necessary to consider the point well. 'Mere play,' said he, 'with its ordinary chances, is the certain road to ruin; and as for attempting, alone and without an ally, to employ the little means an adroit man has for correcting the vagaries of luck, it would be too dangerous an experiment.' There was, he stated, a third course, which was to enter into what he called a partnership; but he feared his confederates would consider my youth an objection to my admittance. He, however, ...
— Manon Lescaut • Abbe Prevost
... because they are filled with acaridae and other hurtful insects. In the time of great drought the mules gnaw even the thorny cactus* in order to imbibe its cooling juice, and draw it forth as from a vegetable fountain. (* The asses are particularly adroit in extracting the moisture contained in the Cactus melocatus. They push aside the thorns with their hoofs; but sometimes lame themselves in performing this feat.) During the great inundations these same animals lead an amphibious life, surrounded by crocodiles, water-serpents, and manatees. Yet, ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... everybody up and down the street was smiling and saying, "That's Lawyer Ed's laugh. What's he up to now, I wonder?" Jock checked his mirth quickly; it was not seemly to rejoice too heartily over one's own humour, but before the joy of it had left, by an adroit turn, J. P. had sent the conversation into its ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... School.[184] It is a whole length; and is well known to you from the wonderful print of it by Drevet. The representation is worthy of the original; for Bossuet was one of the last of the really great men of France. He had a fine capacity and fine scholarship: and was as adroit in polemics as Richelieu was in politics. He resembled somewhat our Horsley in his pulpit eloquence,—and was almost as pugnacious and overbearing in controversy. He excelled in quickness of perception, strength of argument, and vehemence of invective; ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... we, after having distorted our faces with the hilarity of forced merriment in public, meet, in our privacies, with anger and fear; reproaching each other for some neglect, and commenting on the frowns of royalty. We need not study to be expert in ceremony, or adroit in flattery. When nature calls, we take our simple food, we rest when she requires relaxation, and when rest is satiety, innocent and useful labour improves our mental and corporeal functions. How pitiable are ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... to one of the head waiters in the hotel, and there was no difficulty in getting her address. It was 11 Rue de Trajan, Montpellier. All this I jotted down and felt that Holmes himself could not have been more adroit ...
— The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax • Arthur Conan Doyle
... caused him to speak a little inarticulately; and he missed a few details, but by adroit cross questioning his hearers obtained a clear understanding of the whole situation—starting with the rescue of Bug's brother and ending with the events that had ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... that Court both in Roman Catholic and Protestant countries, and who had acquired in his wanderings the art of catching the tone of any society into which chance might throw him. He was eminently vigilant and adroit, fertile in resources, and skilful in discovering the weak parts of a character. His own character, however, was not without its weak parts. The consciousness that he was of plebeian origin was the torment of his life. He pined for nobility with a pining at once pitiable and ludicrous. Able, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Sir Count, and you, Sir Karl," answered the duke, giving his right hand to Max and familiarly offering me his left. This hard duke had been beaten into a gracious mood by Max's adroit mixture of ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... Lupai tribe, from the east of the Irrawaddi; they had come to Meinkhoon for the purpose of procuring amber. In manners and dress they resembled the Shan-Chinese, they were provided with firelocks, in the use of which they were certainly adroit. The usual weapons of the Hookhoong Singphos are dhas and spears. I ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... deplorable tapestries huddle close upon elegant "bergeres" of Louis XVI, and sofas, tables and bronzes of master artists and craftsmen are mingled with cheap castings unworthy of a stage setting in a music hall. A process of adroit eviction will some day be necessary to bring these furnishings up to a ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... crystalline surface of Winnipiseogee is shattered with the stroke of steamer, laden with excursionists. The antlers of Adirondack deer rattle under the shot of city sportsmen. The trout make fatal snaps at the hook of adroit sportsmen and toss their spotted brilliance into the game-basket. Already the baton of the orchestral leader taps the music-stand on the hotel green, and American life puts on festal array, and the rumbling of the tenpin alley, and the crack ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... fire now; I dream of courts and armies, and ambassadors, and spies; I construct stories in which I am the heroine always—sometimes the interesting and temporary victim of wicked plots; sometimes the all-powerful, dauntless, and adroit champion of honour and righteousness against treachery ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... startled cows of the herd. The Greek forgot that the cows were really the clouds, and converted the son of the hound of the gods—a form devised merely for the particular purposes of that conception—into the adroit messenger of the gods ready for every service. When the thunder rolled among the mountains, he saw Zeus brandishing his bolts on Olympus; when the blue sky again smiled upon him, he gazed into the bright eye of Athenaea, the daughter of Zeus; and so powerful over him was the ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... paume, which he never abandons till compelled by positive infirmity. He is very adventurous, and fond of excitement; it is not, therefore, singular that he should be a hardy smuggler, so cunning and adroit that he contrives to evade the officers of the excise in a surprising manner. If, however, a smuggler falls beneath the shot of one of the guardians of right, all the natives become at once his deadly enemy, ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... judicious "Secretary for the North" after it. He conducted the reform of the Calendar through Parliament, and only gave up active participation in home politics because of his increasing deafness. In foreign affairs he was an adroit and successful diplomatist, and made an early and remarkably clear-sighted anticipation of the French Revolution. It is not extravagant to say that, if he had had his fortune and position to make, he might have been one of the foremost men of his time in politics ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... stockbroking friend, through whom he had effected the purchase, left for Europe, and it was then discovered that Mr. Pillbody's mines, if they existed at all, were ten feet under a swamp, on property which belonged to somebody else, the title deeds of which had been forged by the adroit operator. Mr. Pillbody could not endure his misfortune. He wrote notes bidding farewell to his wife and child, and commending them to the care of their relatives, to whom he had always been bountifully generous. Then he went to Staten Island by ferry, there took a row boat, proceeded to ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... and the old curly-coated water-dog were regarded as particularly adroit in the double work of finding and retrieving. Pointers and Setters who had been thus broken were found to deteriorate in steadiness in the field, and it gradually came to be realised that even the Spaniel's ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... eating stewed fruit across the table, gave Peter a swift glance of admiration, which he caught and acknowledged. He was rather exultant himself; certainly he had been adroit. ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... a false start, they began. Bobbing and circling, earnest, not very adroit, they went past and past his chair to the strains of that waltz. He watched them and the face of her who was playing turned smiling towards those little ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... sensitive to face the gaze of the coarse crowd, pauses without, silent and anxious, listening one moment and hoping the next will see her old father restored to her, the adroit Crimpton rises to object to "the Schedule." To the end that he may substantiate his objections, he proposes to examine the prisoner. Having no alternative, the ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... carry the world before him as a shop, keeper. Extremely civil, attentive to watch opportunities Of obliging, and assiduous to make use of them—skilful in discovering the taste or turn of mind of his Customers, and adroit in Putting in their way just such temptations as they are least able to withstand. Mrs. Thrale, at the same time that she sees his management and contrivance, so much admires his sagacity and dexterity, that, though open-eyed, she ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... broken glass drowned him out. In Varney's eye the look of anxiety had deepened. He understood everything at a glance. Adroit proddings of a few poor Hackleys, some cheap liquor, the word passed to Maginnis as from a friend—this was how the boss of Hunston had plotted to set his heel upon Reform and stamp it out forever. He came three steps back into the ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... did she bring them out, those vanities And trinkets of those girls of bygone days; with what adroit eloquence did she introduce all their foibles and virtues to Felicia! Oh, but she was a fine old gossip, was Margot! She couldn't quite trust herself to touch Octavia's clothes that first day. She ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... stooped to add to the gold which his confiscations amassed by trading on a vast scale; his ships, freighted with tin, wool, and cloth, made the name of the merchant-king famous in the ports of Italy and Greece. Henry was as adroit and as shameless a financier as his predecessor. He was his own treasurer, he kept his own accounts, he ticked off with his own hand the compositions he levied on the western shires for ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... I was little aware that he had, at that time, two hundred bottles of my best Tokay in his cellar. His pretended kindness was a snare; he was in partnership with robbers, only the stupid among whom he hanged, and preserved the most adroit for ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... hint that the young man needed looking after, and the adroit host, skilled in managing all kinds of people and in every condition, induced him to return to his room, under the pretence of wishing to taste his fine old brandy, and then kept him there until the lethargic stage set in as the result ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... Union would be preserved. Mr. Gladstone congratulated Jefferson Davis on having founded a new nation. I shall never forget Beaconsfield for his kindness, nor Gladstone for his malice. Beaconsfield was an intellectual gymnast, a political athlete, one of the most adroit men in the world. He had the persistence of his race. In spite of the prejudices of eighteen hundred years, he rose to the highest position that can be occupied by a citizen. During his administration England again became a Continental power and played her game of European chess. I have never regarded ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... "most susceptible Chancellor," made a very ingenuous defence of his colleagues. They were the unconscious victims of adroit interviewers, who obtained information from them by a process of extraction so painless that they did not know the value of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, May 10, 1916 • Various
... we see rushing to the various newspaper offices to countermand their advertisements! What gaps in the columns of the newspapers themselves! Where is the sugary lie—the adroit slander—the scoundrel meanness, masking itself with the usage of patriotism? All, all are vanished, for—the Morning Herald ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 18, 1841 • Various
... the acquaintance of a shrewd fellow named Neice. He used a small concave reflector about the size of a gold dollar, which he placed in the pile of chips before him, and which in dealing the cards enabled him to see every card, and where it went. He generally played with gamblers, and so adroit was he in his manipulations that they were unable to catch him. I made up my mind that we could both make some money, so I told him that I had a man for him who was well heeled. He was willing to help me, and we started for Alexandria. I got the Captain to land about ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... back to warmth. He is himself out there in the cold, accepting it, all the time, with the same quiet fortitude that a Polar bear might. But he will thole through, in the end. For with all his roughness he can be unexpectedly adroit. Whinstane Sandy once told me something he had learned about Polar bears in his old Yukon days: with all their heaviness, they can go where a dog daren't venture. If need be, they can flatten out and slide over a sheet of ice too thin to support ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... the risk of incurring the suspicion of disloyalty, if not of treason, the Republicans clung tenaciously to their rights as a minority. By persistent use of the press, by unremitting personal efforts, and by adroit electioneering, the leaders succeeded in arousing the apathetic masses and converted their minority into an actual majority. They won, therefore, for all time that recognition of the right of legal opposition which is the primary condition of ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... and not inclined to meddle in affairs that did not concern him. And colonial politics and the management of colonial affairs were certainly not his concern. Nevertheless, the horrible grouping together of facts, as the young Seditionist had grouped them for him, their adroit placing together, with the hideous, unavoidable connection between them, upset him tremendously. He sat on in the darkness trying to think, trying to see his way clear, trying to excuse or to justify. ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... appeared in 1743. He was also the author of several ingenious novels, and had a large share in the Dictionary of the Academy. After his death, which took place in 1772, his Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Louis XIV. and Louis XV. appeared. Rousseau describes him as a man "droit et adroit;" and D'Alembert said of him, "De tons les hommes que je connais, c'est lui qui a le plus ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... he took the sword from between his legs where he had hidden it, and commenced to make passes with it, jeering the while at our men whom he had deceived so easily. This theft, as well as many very adroit ones that they committed, has given these people the name of Ladrones, and is the reason for calling all the islands inhabited by them by the same name. This appellation is easily pardoned as long as they find opportunity to exercise their ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume VI, 1583-1588 • Emma Helen Blair
... existence at that moment, she took an all-absorbing pride in such displays, and would utter loud and frequent exclamations of triumph when Lee leaped out from behind some rock, where he had lain concealed, and with unfailing regularity secured the object of his adroit movement. In this manner a state of feeling which was by no means favourable to the aspiring picture-maker Pe-tsing had long existed between the two persons; but when Lee Sing put the matter in the form of an explicit petition before Chan Hung (to which adequate ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... during the whole day, borne on by monstrous waves, preserving always, fortunately, a speed equal to theirs. Twenty times she seemed almost to be submerged by these mountains of water which rose behind her; but the adroit management of the pilot saved her. The passengers were often bathed in spray, but they submitted to it philosophically. Fix cursed it, no doubt; but Aouda, with her eyes fastened upon her protector, whose coolness amazed her, showed herself ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... drew back. He was a son of that adroit traitor, the Baron, and what his presence in this camp meant, I could only surmise. But that he was of the Baron's blood was enough for me, and I was prepared to dislike him without searching for excuse. He, on his part, looked equally unfriendly. He resented my ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... I may ask without indiscretion," said the landlord innocently, expectorating after the adroit and periodical ...
— The Illustrious Gaudissart • Honore de Balzac
... writers of his own age, ventured to disparage some of the great authors of the ancient classics. Boileau lashed himself into a fury of opposition and hurled strident insults against the heretic. Racine, more adroit, pretended to think that the poem was a piece of ingenious irony. Most men of letters hastened to participate in the battle. No doubt Perrault's position was untenable, but he conducted his defence with perfect temper and much wit; and Boileau ...
— The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault • Charles Perrault
... which despotism had done so much to destroy, oratory and jurisprudence, still found a few votaries. The chief field for speaking was the senate, where men like Crispus, Eprius Marcellus, and Suillius the accuser of Seneca, exercised their genius in adroit flattery. Thrasea, Helvidius, and the opposition, were compelled to study repression rather than fulness. As jurists we hear of few eminent names: Proculus and Cassius Longinus ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... the unpleasantness, and for a frightened moment could not swallow. Then she rose, shook out her skirts, and to be rid of the moment carried her sewing up to Mrs. Dang's, where a euchre game was in session, and by a few adroit questions in between deals gained the reassurance that a nervous state in ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... conversation took place. Satisfied apparently with what he heard, Robeccal bade his men follow him. They went to Belleville, which at that time was an excessively pretty place, as almost all the houses of any pretension had gardens and grounds. Robeccal had been extremely adroit in diverting suspicion and the observation of the people they encountered. He now knocked at a door in a wall half hidden by ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... used to fatigue, to long marches and rapid evolutions. The brilliance of their success and its long duration are thus explained, for the chiefs of the empire never seem to have had the faintest suspicion of the adroit policy which was afterwards to bind so many conquered peoples to the Roman sceptre. The first necessity for civilized man is security: the hope, or rather the certainty, of enjoying the fruits of his own industry in peace. When this certainty is assured to him he quickly pardons and forgets the ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... you belong to a gang, do ye? Well, we don't want no gangsters round here!" cried the officer with adroit if unscrupulous sophistry. "Come along now, and keep quiet or it'll be ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... firmly declined. Then the papers said "it was rumored" that the General had forbidden his acceptance, despite the fact that the General had expressed publicly his gratification that the company had at last done something in recognition of its indebtedness to the army—which was most adroit, and equally impersonal. And all the while Loring himself was having anything but an enviable time of it. A man so reticent and retiring could not but be annoyed by the persistent calls and cross-questions of all manner of people in whom he had but small personal interest. He ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... adroit, cunning, diplomatic, intriguing, sharp, subtle, artful, deceitful, foxy, knowing, shrewd, tricky, crafty, designing, insincere, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... thoughts happy, to say to himself when he saw one of the wild young trappers leaving the cabin of Mademoiselle Ninon: "He has been for some of the good woman's hot cakes," till he grew quite to believe that the only attractions that the adroit Frenchwoman possessed were of a ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... less adroit than he, the change in the partnership might well have constituted a serious check in his upward career, but once more Bale's native resourcefulness asserted itself. This crisis in his private affairs took place when the country was torn by dissensions over Tariff Reform. He had early learnt ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson
... were scarcely noticed. His redoubtable strength, combined with a temperate disposition, lent him a majestic dignity which placed him above the level of an ordinary mortal. He had come to Leipzig from Mecklenburg in the company of a certain Degelow, who was as powerful and adroit, though by no means of such gigantic proportions, as his friend, and whose chief attraction lay in his great vivacity and animated features, he had led a wild and dissipated life in which play, drink, passionate love affairs, and constant and prompt duelling had rung the changes. ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... of an adroit interruption. She had checked the flow of Margaret's indignation for the moment, and was well aware that the girl would not probably begin her speech in quite the same tone a second time. At the same time she saw that she had given her daughter a momentary advantage. Margaret did not reseat herself ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... surrendered to a force sent by Elizabeth; its captain, Kirkaldy of Grange, was hanged for treason in the market-place; and the stern justice of Morton forced peace upon the warring lords. But hardly five years had passed when a union of his rivals and their adroit proclamation of the boy-king put an end to Morton's regency and gave a fresh aim to the factions who were tearing Scotland to pieces. To get hold of the king's person, to wield in his name the royal power, became the end of their efforts. The boy was safe only at Stirling; and even at Stirling ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... father, by means of trusted and skilful and adroit Brahmanas, seek to produce dissensions between the sons of Kunti and Madri. Or, let king Drupada and his sons, and all his ministers of state, be plied with presents of large wealth, so that they may ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... was approaching their station, the accomplices of the foiled ruffian, who had seen the whole affray, sunk into the covert; but, what was their mortification to perceive the traveller, though without any true command over his steed, by an adroit use of the broker bridle, so wheel him round as to bring him, in a few leaps, over the very ground of the strife, and before the staggering robber had yet fully arisen from the path. By this manoeuvre he placed himself in advance of the now approaching banditti. Driving his spurs resolutely ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... he had never heard anything so beautifully adroit as "positively negative," and directed his secretary to submit to him without delay the draft of a tactful letter to the anxious nobleman. They were agreed that a Prince was more to be desired than a Count and, ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... influence, not only in addresses to the passions and high-wrought feelings of mankind, but in the discussion of legal and political questions also; because a just conclusion is often avoided, or a false one reached, by the adroit substitution of one phrase, or one word, for another. Of this we have, I think, another example in the ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... could see each other clearly enough now, and those on the outside outnumbered those on the inside again by two to one. But those leaping the flames could not alight poised ready for a blow, and there were adroit and vengeful axmen awaiting them. There was a momentary pause for planning among the assailants, and then it was that Ab fumed over his own lack of foresight. His chosen band who were with him now were all bowmen, ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... James, though he always spoke of him as his dear brother Samuel, was not slow to say a word against him when opportunity offered. To speak the truth, Samuel was a cunning boy, and those even who loved him best could not but own that for one so young, he was too adroit in choosing his words, and too skilled in ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... By prudent and adroit management, Stuyvesant swept away many annoyances in the shape of territorial claims. When the Plymouth Company assigned their American domain to twelve persons, they conveyed to Lord Stirling, the proprietor of Nova Scotia, a part of New England and an island adjacent to Long ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... adroit to display her disappointment, expressed polite regret. "I hope you won't get storm-bound," she said, showing her white teeth in a ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... to be infallible. He knows nothing of the matter, does not understand the tools he is working with, any one of whom could buy and sell him and simple, clever Morley twenty times over. Both Gladstone and Morley are clever in books, in words, in theories, adepts in debating, smart and adroit in talk. But they know no more of Paddy than the babe unborn. I say nothing of Harcourt and the other understrappers. They'll say anything that suits, whatever it may be. We reckoned them up long since. Cannot the English people see through these nimble twisters and time-servers, ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... suzerain, the Pope owes him political fealty and military aid; failing in this, the endowment, which is conditional, lapses and his confiscated estates return to the imperial domain to which they have never ceased to belong.[5135] Through this reasoning and this threat, through the rudest and most adroit moral and physical pressure, the most insidious and most persevering, through spoliation, begun, continued and completed by the abduction, captivity and sequestration of the Holy Father himself, he undertakes the subjection ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... monstrous suppression of truth, and an adroit perversion of the explanation which General Reed gave to the demands of the American Commander-in-Chief, respecting his correspondence with the British Commissioners, his descendants have managed, so far, with tolerably general success, to thrust into the ranks of the Carrolls and Hancocks, the ...
— Nuts for Future Historians to Crack • Various
... Frost every splinter of power he could command by barter, and thrown in his own State delegation in the House by sheer stress of that machine which he had upreared for his own defense at home. It was not enough; even the subtraction of two State delegations from the standards of the foe, by the adroit scheme, applied to each delegation, of dragging one of its members forward to be a candidate for Speaker, was not enough. After ten months of labor, Senator Hanway went over the result and could read nothing therein save failure. And it was like an icicle through his heart; ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... were found to be gone, and no evidence appeared that any of the family had been killed. A search was made to find the direction the Indians had taken; but owing to the dryness of the ground, and the adroit manner in which they had departed, no discovery could be made. In this study and perplexity, the party being all good woodsmen, took that direction in pursuit of the Indians, which they thought it most probable they would take. After going a few miles, their attention was arrested ...
— Heroes and Hunters of the West • Anonymous
... merely rehearsing. Of course, I shall be more adroit, more careless, when I really come to it. But what I mean is that when we first see it together, the love-business, I shall want to feel that you are feeling every instant just ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... this would not drive any from our party." One must admit that it would not scare them to death. Mr. Broderick, however, was an honest believer in woman suffrage and later did attempt to secure some recognition for it in the platform. The Republicans sent an agent of adroit address among the suffrage clubs to explain to them how "an endorsement by the political parties would be really a hindrance to their success," and it was charged that this was done with the consent of ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... of Paoli that by following traditional lines he had not only shown in the constitution he framed for Corsica a historic intuition, but also had found "in his unparalleled activity, in his warm, persuasive eloquence, in his adroit and far-seeing genius," a means to guarantee it against the ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... have remarked a thousand times that God deprives slaves of half their judgment, lest, recognizing their miserable condition, they should be thrown into despair. For though they are very adroit in many things which they do, they are so stupid that they have no more sense of being enslaved than if they had never enjoyed liberty. Every land becomes their country, provided they find enough to eat and drink, which is very different from the state ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... Selwyn, the interests had not successfully concealed their hands. Sometimes the public had been mistaken as to the true character of their officials, but sooner or later the truth had developed, for in most instances, wealth was openly for or against certain men and measures. But the adroit Selwyn ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... magistrates, who were to represent their cities in the great assembly at Paris, dazzled with the unaccustomed role to which they were called, and desirous to please the King in their personal interest or in that of their towns, would be under the control of the adroit lawyers who were prepared to work on their minds and to direct the debates. The bull, nevertheless, if its exact tenor had been known, might well have produced in many respects a contrary effect to the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... happened to say in his presence that she should like to establish herself in some business. He approved the plan and paid her a succession of adroit compliments on her capabilities and cited the example of several women he knew who had made or were making ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... of the adroit bargain by which the Island of Manhattan was bought for sixty guilders; and in corroboration of it I will add that Mynheer Ten Breeches, for his services on this memorable occasion, was elevated to the office of land measurer; which ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... luncheon with us on the day of our departure, and with an adroit privacy, which in a layman would have been sly, presented her, in right of his holy calling, with a little book, the binding of which was mediaeval and costly, and whose letter-press dealt in a way which he commended, with some points on which ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... oppression, as a member of the Continental Congress and in other public offices. We are shown Samuel Adams as a man without great business or professional talents but wonderful in counsel, a cool headed patriot, an adroit tactician, and above all a thorough democrat. To mingle with the common people was his delight; he was a frequenter of the Caulkers' Club, popular with blacksmiths, ship carpenters, and mechanics. He was not a great orator; ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4 • Various
... me, though I catch a glimpse of his manly features through the oval glass of his chaise, as he drives by, a surgeon of skill and standing, so friendly, so modest, so tenderhearted in all his ways, that, if he had not approved himself at once adroit and firm, one would have said he was of too kindly a mould to be the minister of pain, even if he were ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Erie, the squadron under command of Captain Perry having met the British squadron of superior force, a sanguinary conflict ended in the capture of the whole. The conduct of that officer, adroit as it was daring, and which was so well seconded by his comrades, justly entitles them to the admiration and gratitude of their country, and will fill an early page in its naval annals with a victory never surpassed in luster, however much it ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Madison • James Madison
... other respect a remarkable man. He had come to the post by adroit management of a miscellaneous community, comprising British, Dutch, and Kaffirs. He was personally incorruptible, and he played the game according to the rules. He would have called himself, and so far as his opportunities ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... wife would endure when called upon to share her husband's affection and her home with other women, would seem to form a sort of natural check to polygamous marriages. But in Utah this check was overcome both by the absolute power of the priesthood over their flock, and by the adroit device of making polygamy not merely permissive, but essential to eternal salvation. That the many wives of even so exalted a prophet as Brigham Young could become rebellious is shown by the language employed by him in his discourse of September 21, 1856, of which the following will ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... Carolina politicians have hitherto shown themselves adroit managers, shrewd in detecting and profiting by the weaknesses of men; but their experience has not been of a kind to give them practical wisdom in that vastly more important part of government which depends for success on common sense and business-habits. The ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... auction between Cleon and the sausage-seller in Aristophanes is a fair caricature of what would be always going on. Such an institution would be a perpetual blister applied to the most peccant parts of human nature. It amounts to offering 658 prizes for the most successful flatterer, the most adroit misleader of a body of his fellow-countrymen. Under no despotism has there been such an organized system of tillage for raising a rich crop of vicious courtiership. [7] When, by reason of pre-eminent qualifications (as may at any time happen to be the case), it is desirable ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... themselves. The assailants, on the other hand, displayed great coolness, spirit, and judgment, in the manner in which they approached the defences. This was, in a great measure, to be ascribed to the steady and adroit manner in which they were conducted by their youthful leader, who showed as much skill in protecting his own followers as spirit in annnoying ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... which, after being on duty for a fabulous number of years, and finally pronounced past all further active service, had been resuscitated and remodelled, to suit the style of the day, by Madeleine. We will not enter into a description of the adroit method by which a portion of its primitive lustre had been restored to the worn and pressed velvet, nor particularize the skilful manner in which the corsage of the robe had been refashioned, and every trace of age concealed by an embroidery of jet ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... one of the leading managers was both adroit and hazardous. He would call up a candidate on the telephone and say to him: "The friends of Mr. Taft are very favorable to you for vice-president. Will you accept the nomination?" The candidate would hesitate and begin to explain his ambitions, his career and ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... so-called experiments in thought-transference which have been offered by "thought-readers," etc., from the public platform, have really had nothing at all to do with thought-transference, have depended either on abnormal delicacy of tactile and other sensory perception, or on the adroit use of preconcerted signals. It is only when the observer has complete control of the conditions (which he never has in any public exhibition), that it is worth while to conduct experiments between two ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... it to have been that Choiseul, by way of worming out poor Edelsheim's secrets, flung him into the Bastille for a day or two. Already in December foregoing, we have seen Choiseul's Black-Artist busy upon the Stolen EDITION of Friedrich's Verses. A Choiseul full of intrigues; adroit enough, ambitious enough; restlessly industrious in making mischief, if there were nothing else to be made; who greatly disgusted ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... bat; "I'm truly no such thing as that. Your eyesight strange conclusions gathers. What makes a bird, I pray? Its feathers. I'm cousin of the mice and rats. Great Jupiter confound the cats!" The bat, by such adroit replying, Twice saved herself ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... and seven feet square below; yet it was elevated in the Market-place, upon a modern pedestal, which bears four fulsome complimentary inscriptions to Lewis the XIV. neither of which will I copy. In elevating this monstrous single stone, the inhabitants were very adroit: they set it upright in a quarter of an hour, in the year 1676, just an hundred years ago, amidst an infinite number of joyful spectators, who are now all laid in their lowly graves; for though it weighed more than two thousand hundred weight, yet by the help ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, Volume II (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... Dexterous, facile, adroit, politic, versatile,—as Lord Palmerston certainly is,—fertile in resources, prompt to seize and use to the utmost every advantage, endowed with unusual popular gifts, and blessed with imperturbable good-humor, it cannot be denied that in many of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... favourite was sole arbiter of taste and ruled supreme over the arts, until his star paled before the rising luminary, his rival Mignard. Lebrun's best work is to be seen at Versailles, but 510, R. wall, The Battle of Arbela, is an excellent example of his facile and adroit style. In 1686 the old favourite was commanded by Louis to paint a rival picture to Mignard's, Christ bearing His Cross, which was incensed with extravagant adulation by the courtiers. Lebrun set to work and in three months completed his Christ on the Cross, which the king loudly appreciated. ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... length, leaving more than a hundred feet at each end covered by a plate of only five-eighths of an inch in thickness; and in case these portions should be injured, she must rely upon her water-tight compartments. An adroit foe, in a light craft of greater speed, avoiding her batteries, which are planted behind her armor, might possibly assail her unprotected ends, and, although he could not sink her, still, by shot between wind and water, he ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... go to him," he said, snatching the clock suddenly from my hands. And I had never intended to let the property get out of my possession again! This man was adroit; he might be one too many for me after all, if I betrayed the slightest doubt of him, or made anything like a scene. He was fidgeting with something in the right pocket of his snuffy, old greatcoat too—perhaps there was a pistol there—I ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... a dream, not understanding the calamity that had fallen upon him. He even commended the adroit way in which the Spaniards had entrapped him, adding that since the landing of the white men he had been made aware of all their doings, but had felt sure of being easily able to overpower them ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... last spring a stock-dove from Sussex, and are informed that they sometimes breed in that county. But why did not your correspondent determine the place of its nidification, whether on rocks, cliffs, or trees? If he was not an adroit ornithologist I should doubt the fact, because people with us perpetually confound the stock-dove ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... to be aware that Demosthenes was a great orator; he represents him sometimes as an aspirant demagogue, sometimes as an adroit negotiator, and always as a great rogue. But that in which the Athenian excelled all men of all ages, that irresistible eloquence, which at the distance of more than two thousand years stirs our blood, and brings tears into our eyes, he passes by with a few phrases of commonplace commendation. The ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... beach, and were now fighting above the knees in the spume and bubble of the breakers. Here his own superior activity was rendered useless; he found himself more or less at the discretion of his foe; yet a little, and he had his back turned upon his own men, and saw that this adroit and skilful adversary was bent upon drawing him ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Maud's light-brown hair, and loved it, and learned more of love than all the poets and singers had taught me with all their songs and sonnets. She flung it back with a sudden adroit movement, ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... were in the cab, and awoke in the other state, absolutely at a loss to know why she was in a mourning carriage with people who, according to custom, were praising the qualities of a deceased person whose name she did not even know. Accustomed to such positions, she waited; by adroit questions she managed to understand the situation, and no one suspected what had happened. Once when in her abnormal condition she discovered that her husband had a mistress, and was so overcome that she sought to commit suicide. Yet in her normal mind she meets the woman with perfect ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... dress and bonnet, as every woman will in the spring (or any time), Fanny Forrester wrote to Willis, of the New Mirror, an appeal which he called "very clever, adroit, and fanciful." ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... back as the commencement of the eighteenth century, Labat, who, with all his personal oddities, was undoubtedly a fine judge of men, declared:—"The mulattoes are as a general rule well made, of good stature, vigorous, strong, adroit, industrious, and daring (hardis) beyond all conception. They have much vivacity, but are given to their pleasures, fickle, proud, deceitful (cachs), wicked, and capable of the greatest crimes." A San Domingo historian, far more prejudiced than Pre Labat, speaks of them "as ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... been triumphantly sustained by a vote of the Legislature. On the latter occasion, his appointment of Celso Caesar Moreno as premier called forth the protest of the representatives of three great Powers, and such an uprising of the people that he had to give way. Adroit politicians were not wanting to flatter his vanity, defend his follies, and show him how to violate the spirit and intent of the Constitution, while keeping within the letter of the law. The Legislatures were packed with subservient office-holders, while every artifice was used to debauch the ...
— The Hawaiian Islands • The Department of Foreign Affairs
... unacquainted with every kind of useful labour, it was necessary to give them such work, at first, as was very easy to be performed, and in which the raw materials were of little value; and then, by degrees, as they became more adroit, to employ them in ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... "great west." Yes, and from other sources are individuals of that mixed band. I recognise the Teutonic type—the fair hair and whitish-yellow moustache of the German, the florid Englishman, the staid Scot, and his contrast the noisy Hibernian; both equally brave. I behold the adroit and nimble Frenchman, full of laugh and chatter, the stanch soldierly Swiss, and the moustached exile of Poland, dark, sombre, and silent. What a study for an ethnologist is that band of odd-looking ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... have received either moral or scientific truths unless they had supposed them supernaturally imparted, does it follow they would now give up moral truths any more than scientific because they believed them to have no other origin than wise and noble human hearts?" Overlooking the adroit introduction here of scientific truths as having originally been on the same footing with moral truths—for which we do not think there is any sufficient historic evidence—it is competent to reply that the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... to be guilty of rudeness, the latter contrived in a very adroit way to defy every proposition advanced by the fair guest, and while she never transcended the bounds of courtesy, she piqued and harassed and puzzled not only ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... in their motions, an apparent affectation of fear, almost ludicrous to see. Foxes, weasels, and opossums fared sumptuously. Even for the common armadillo (Dasypus villosus) it was a season of affluence, for this creature is very adroit in capturing mice. This fact might seem surprising to anyone who marks the uncouth figure, toothless gums, and the motions—anything but light and graceful—of the armadillo and perhaps fancying that, to be a dexterous mouser, an animal should bear some resemblance in habits and ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... have known each other for a few moments only, but already we have a secret between us!'" The Kaiser was very tickled by my retort ... very tickled ... and the Queen told me afterwards that it was very adroit of me to get out of it like that. She said it was my ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... history since the days of Stephen. Monk is its fitting hero, and Charles the Second its expensive saviour of society. The story how the Restoration was engineered by General Monk, who, if vulgar, was adroit, both on land and sea, is best told from Monk's point of view in the concluding chapter of Baker's Chronicle (Sir Roger de Coverley's favourite Sunday reading), whilst that old-fashioned remnant, who still love to read history for fun, may not object ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... began that other wonderful process called reconciliation, whereby the wish gradually overcomes scruples through the cunning mean of falsifying their aspects. Whereunto, again, the new mistress contributed in the adroit way of all such wretches—instilling into his ear the moral poison which deadened the apperception of these scruples at the same time that it brought out the advantages of disregarding them. The result of all which was, that ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various |
