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Cunning   Listen
adjective
Cunning  adj.  
1.
Knowing; skillful; dexterous. "A cunning workman." ""Tis beauty truly blent, whose red and white Nature's own sweet and cunning hand laid on." "Esau was a cunning hunter."
2.
Wrought with, or exhibiting, skill or ingenuity; ingenious; curious; as, cunning work. "Over them Arachne high did lift" "Her cunning web."
3.
Crafty; sly; artful; designing; deceitful. "They are resolved to be cunning; let others run the hazard of being sincere."
4.
Pretty or pleasing; as, a cunning little boy. (Colloq. U.S.)
Synonyms: Cunning, Artful, Sly, Wily, Crafty. These epithets agree in expressing an aptitude for attaining some end by peculiar and secret means. Cunning is usually low; as, a cunning trick. Artful is more ingenious and inventive; as, an artful device. Sly implies a turn for what is double or concealed; as, sly humor; a sly evasion. Crafty denotes a talent for dexterously deceiving; as, a crafty manager. Wily describes a talent for the use of stratagems; as, a wily politician. A cunning man often shows his dexterity in simply concealing. An artful man goes further, and exerts his ingenuity in misleading. A crafty man mingles cunning with art, and so shapes his actions as to lull suspicions. The young may be cunning, but the experienced only can be crafty. Slyness is a vulgar kind of cunning; the sly man goes cautiously and silently to work. Wiliness is a species of cunning or craft applicable only to cases of attack and defense."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Cunning" Quotes from Famous Books



... common in Greece at that time. It went even further. Woman, even if a widow, stands so completely under the rule of the nearest male relative, that she no longer has even the choice of a husband. The suitors, tired of long waiting, due to the cunning of Penelope, address themselves to Telemachus through the mouth ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel

... the light, and then put out the light: If I quench thee, thou flaming minister, I can again thy former light restore Should I repent me; but once put out thy light, Thou cunning'st pattern of excelling nature, I know not where is that Promethean heat That can ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett

... and reflecting on these matters, there comes an Arab chieftain, Ariamnes[67] by name, a cunning and faithless man, and of all the misfortunes that were by chance combined to ruin the Romans the chief and crowning mischief. Some of them who had served with Pompeius knew him as one who had received favours from Pompeius, ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch

... while in the act of pressing on the mud. I noted the same complaining cry from the bees when working on the flower of the purple-flowering raspberry, what we called "Scotch caps." I tried to trap foxes and soon learned how far the fox's cunning surpassed mine. My first lesson in animal psychology I got from old Nat Higby as he came riding by on horseback one winter day, his huge feet almost meeting under the horse, just as a hound was running a fox across our upper mountain ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs

... tell you in few words, Senora. Ferdinand is the most ambitious man in Europe, false also if it serves his purpose. He lives for self and gain—that money and power. These are his gods, for he has no true religion. He is not clever but, being very cunning, he will succeed and leave a famous ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard

... which one of the rowers was to be landed. Oddo then exclaimed, "I wonder what we have all been thinking about. We have not settled a single thing about what is to be said and done; and here we are almost in sight of home, and Hund's cunning eyes." ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau

... eyes lost in dreamy revery. Brandes tossed his half-consumed cigar out of the open window and set fire to another. Stull waited for Curfoot to make up his mind. After several minutes the latter looked up from his cunning abstraction: ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers

... Chettle with great eagerness, "try, Mr. Allerdyke, try your best and cleverest to find out if he gave it to Fullaway. You can think—you with a sharp brain!—of some cunning fashion of ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher

... whose family has been established here many years, whose interests must be the same as those of the Order; and because a guest of his does not care to take any active part in my joking with the girls, and because you imagine that there is a cunning expression on his face, you must straightway take it into your head that he ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty

... on and human skill advanced By almost imperceptible degrees Of slow, experimental tutorage, Along a nobler, more artistic plane, He hewed the stones in form of ornament, Sculptured device of various design, Embellishment of cunning symmetry, Man's first attempt to scale ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King

... were far too wise to reveal their domestic secrets. I knew mysteries were on foot among them, as we know little folk are in mischief by their unnatural stillness, but I knew also that not until every jay baby was out of the nest, and there was nothing to hide, should I see that cunning bird in his usual ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller

... the shaven skull afforded an instance of this, and even more notable was his first meeting with Major Jack Ragstaff of the Cavalry Club, a meeting which took place after the office had been closed, but which led to the unmasking of perhaps the most cunning murderer in the annals ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer

... repair to Tiberias, are of all ages from twelve to sixty. If they bring a little money with them the cunning of their brethren here soon deprives them of it; for as they arrive with the most extravagant ideas, of the holy cities, they are easily imposed upon before their enthusiasm begins to cool. To rent a house in which some learned Rabbin or saint died, to visit the tombs of the most renowned ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt

... a humorous old hard case mysteriously took us aside and said he had a good yarn which we might be able to work up. We asked him how, but he winked a mighty cunning wink and said that he knew all about us. Then he asked ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson

... gradually become adapted to their new requirements. But man, under similar circumstances, does not require longer nails or teeth, greater bodily strength or swiftness. He makes sharper spears, or a better bow, or he constructs a cunning pitfall, or combines in a hunting party to circumvent his new prey. The capacities which enable him to do this are what he requires to be strengthened, and these will, therefore, be gradually modified by "natural selection," while ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace

... heard! The cunning creature! This was her trick to entice him from his home!—And just as the poor boy was beginning to repent too! She knew her trade! She would fall in with his better mood and pretend goodness! She would help him to do what he ought! She would be his teacher in righteousness! Deep, deep she ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald

... favour towards you, that you seek, by all the means you may, examining the Count Hollock, or any other party in this matter, to discover and to sift out how this malicious imputation hath been wrought; for we have reason to think that it hath grown out of some cunning device to stay the Earl's coming, and to discourage him from the continuance of his ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... jokes, I could wish that all Christians might have Dutch ears. When we consider their morals, no nation is more inclined to humanity and benevolence, less savage or cruel. Their mind is upright and void of cunning and all humbug. If they are somewhat sensual and excessive at meals, it results partly from their plentiful supply: nowhere is import so easy and fertility so great. What an extent of lush meadows, how many navigable rivers! Nowhere are so many towns ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga

... Plagiary,' 'Sir Christopher Curry,' 'Snarl' to Edwin's 'Sheepface,' and 'Lope Torry,' in The Mountaineers.... His forte lay in old men, his pictures of whom, in all their characteristics, passions, infirmities, cunning, or imbecility, was perfect. When 'Sir Sampson Legand' says to 'Foresight,' 'Look up, old star-gazer! Now is he poring on the ground for a crooked pin, or an old horse-nail with the head towards him!'" we are told there could not be a finer illustration of the character which ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... They alone can fit women truly to exert their most sacred prerogatives. Those who have enjoyed the best means of knowing the truth say, that the Harems of the East are the hot-beds of every wicked quality whose seeds slumber in the heart of woman. Surrounded by rivals; incessantly watched by those cunning and merciless monsters, the eunuchs; knowing nothing of science, art, literature, or industry— they must be devoured by animal passion, by love of intrigue and deception, by jealousy, envy, and hatred. The true remedy for the melancholy stagnation or the frightful effervescence ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger

... them by shifting round in a sidling fashion as he and Eric advanced. "I tell you what, laddie, you go round one way, and I shall take the reverse direction. By that means we will circumvent the cunning old gentleman." ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson

... admitted with a chilly smile. She knew what these demonstrations cost in cash from her son's leaky pockets. If she had lived later, doubtless she would have called Milly a cunning grafter. ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick

... and especially that he was landless and penniless but for that one promise; and as for the sword, he said, he was but as a child playing before the sword of Don Alderon. And this Don Alderon said was in no wise so, though there were a few cunning passes that he had learned, hoping that the day might come for him to do God a service thereby by slaying some of the Moors: and heartily he gave his consent and felicitation. But this Rodriguez would not have: "Come with me," he said, "to the forest to the place where I met this ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany

... means. Then my brother determined to substitute cunning for force. He took the papers, and presented himself here as the emissary of the cardinal, and in an hour or two a carriage will come to take me away by ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... groove with bread, strewed ashes and sand over it, rubbed all smooth, and was plunged in my copy of Montaigne when he entered. This time he went straight to the window, looked at it, tried the stanchions, and then, with an amused attempt at being cunning and hiding his own vigilance, he asked me, with laborious hypocrisy, if I had seen Captain Lancy pass the window. And so for weeks and weeks we played hide-and-seek ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... vast green wilderness. But he was sure that the Indians would not return to a headlong charge. The little fortress in stone was practically impregnable to frontal attack and they would resort instead to cunning ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler

... now come to warn you that there are those on the war-path who will before long attempt to take your fort, and possess themselves of the arms and powder and shot, and the rest of your property in it. They are cunning as the foxes, and it may be soon or it may be some moons hence before they appear, and they'll take good care not to give you warning. Miskwandib has spoken ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston

... centrifugal tendency which Plato is desirous to cure, by maintaining, over against it, the Dorian influence of a severe simplification everywhere, in society, in culture, in the very physical nature of man. An enemy everywhere to variegation, to what is cunning or "myriad-minded," he sets himself, in mythology, in music, in poetry, in every kind of art, to enforce the ideal of a sort of Parmenidean abstractness ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... pay one to stop a day in Sycamore Ridge to see that picture—though he does not know John Barclay, and only understands the era that made him, and gave him that refined, savage, cunning, grasping hand. ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White

... deliberate. As for himself, M. Belmont need not fear any further trouble from his goings and comings in the town. He had no dread of the wolves, only hate. He laughed at their threats. There was not an Englishman of them all cunning enough to entrap him. He would continue his visits as he pleased, but he would never come near M. Belmont's residence. As to M. Belmont's personal case, he would simply advise him to maintain his ground, and not compromise himself by flight. He knew that his friend was no coward, but flight was ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance

... little Irish girl. Her name is Norah, and she's just as pretty as she can be, only her face was dreadfully dirty, and her clothes all rags. Then her little sister Kathleen cried to come; so I took her too. Then I chose a cunning little German tot named Gretchen. She has yellow hair, braided in tight little tails down her back, and is a good deal cleaner than the rest, but not very clean, you know; and she hadn't any shoes at all. Then Mrs. Wallis brought up the funniest little ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge

... forces which primarily held it together to drop asunder in time? Not in vain, it seemed, had Prior Saint-Jean come to this mystic place for the improvement of his body's health. Thenceforth that fleshly tabernacle had housed him, had housed his cunning, overwrought and excitable soul, ever the better day by day, and he began to feel his bodily health to be a positive quality or force, the presence near him of that singular being having surely something to do with this result. He and his fascinations, his music, himself, might at least be taken ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... that you loved her! Ah, foolish boy! and you think that because the lips speak not, the passions of the heart are stilled! Do you think your silence in her presence is not a protestation that she, even she, child as she is, can read, with the cunning of her sex?" ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte

... school we knew this Stukely. A cunning plodding boy he was, sordid and cruel. Slow at his talk, but quick at shifts and tricking. He schemed out mischief, that others might be punished; and would tell his tale with so much art, that for the lash he merited, rewards and praise were given ...
— The Gamester (1753) • Edward Moore

... considering what you have said," she answered; "and I am very glad to hear that you did not know of this cunning little trap that Mrs Keswick has laid for me. It is all very plain to me, but I do not know why she should have selected you as one of the actors in the plot. Have you ever told her that you are ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton

... pewterer, Burgum. Imagine the fair-haired rosy boy, the brightness of his extraordinary eyes increased by the covert mischief which urged him forward—fancy his presenting himself to Master Burgum, who, dull as his own pewter, had the ambition, which the cunning youth fostered, of being thought of an "ancient family"—fancy Chatterton in his poor-school dress presenting himself to this man, whose business, Chatterton's biographer, Mr. Dix, tells us, was carried on in the house ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various

... there; leaf after leaf presenting itself to me, just as it was written out by the reality of the flitting hour, and vanishing as fast as written, only because my brain wanted the insight and my hand the cunning to transcribe it. At some future day, it may be, I shall remember a few scattered fragments and broken paragraphs, and write them down, and find the letters turn to gold upon ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... welcome, old Stannard and Jack went off among the pines and built a little blaze all by themselves, and there talked gravely over the strange events of the summer now so fully set before them in those volumes from Russell. All Wolf's wild infatuation. All Gleason's cunning malice, and—ah! De mortuis nil nisi bonum. May God forgive him! All Ray's loyal and devoted services, and his cruel suffering and wrongs. What wonder was it that for days the regiment could talk of nothing but Ray? What wonder that they could not fathom the secret of the ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King

... hissed Jean, and quickly as he leaped behind the pine he was not quick enough to escape the cunning rustlers who had waylaid him thus. He felt the shock, the bite and burn of lead before he heard a rifle crack. A bullet had ripped through his left forearm. From behind the tree he saw a puff of white smoke along the face of the bluff—the ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey

... marry that old fellow, Mat Jones," said Mr. Benton. "He'd make a good husband if she isn't too particular," and he laughed as if he thought his remark suggestive of great cunning. No one gave it even a smile. He did not like Matthias, and often spoke slurringly of him. This was strange, for I could see no harm coming to him from this harmless soul who was good and true and faithful as the sun. He was to us the very help we needed, ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell

... do your Holiness's heart good to rub it out again, wherever he may have had the cunning to ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor

... his ruse, Lecoq could not keep his countenance, and Plantat, who perceived that he had been caught in the snare, laughed heartily. Not a word, however, was exchanged between these two men, both subtle in the science of life, and equally cunning in its mysteries. They quite ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau

... in a single sentence, Defoe catches for us the whole soul and character of the situation. It seems very simple, but it sums up marvellously an exact observation and knowledge of the arts of the gipsy child-stealer, of her cunning flattery and brassy boldness, and we can see the simple little girl running back to the house to tell the nurse that a fine lady was kissing the child, and had told her to tell where they were and she should not be frightened, &c.; and this picture again calls up the hue and cry after the ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe

... accomplishments. As I have already stated, she can have no pretensions to either, but she is extremely insinuating, sings tolerably well, has a fresh and healthy look, and possesses an unusually good share of cunning, presumption, and duplicity. Her husband, also, everywhere took care to make her fashionable; and the vanity of the first of their dupes increased the number of her admirers and engaged the vanity of others in their turn to sacrifice themselves at ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith

... of just claims, Eagerly set upon them to revile, And banish from their councils! Worse than all When the great man, succumbing to the mass, Yields up his mind as a low instrument To vulgar fingers, to be played upon:— Yields to the vulgar lure, the cunning bribe Of place or profit, and makes sale of ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various

... Lloyd-Jones and his mines, made his way across the room to Madame Reynier. The cunning of old Adam, was in his eye, but otherwise he was the picture ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger

... Vandals, he was a cruel and cunning man, but he had great ability in many ways. He fought in battles even when a boy and was known far and wide for his bravery and skill as ...
— Famous Men of The Middle Ages • John H. Haaren, LL.D. and A. B. Poland, Ph.D.

... himself simply as one of the police. This was not so much modesty as calculation. By hiding one's self on well-chosen occasions, one gains greater notoriety when one emerges from the shade. It was also through cunning that he gave Gevrol such a prominent position. These tactics, rather subtle, perhaps, but after all perfectly fair, could not fail to call attention to the man who had shown himself so efficient when the efforts of his chief had been merely ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau

... with him I don't know!" despairingly exclaimed Miss Lucinda. "He was such a dear little thing when you brought him, Israel! Do you remember how pink his pretty little nose was,—just like a rosebud,—and how bright his eyes looked, and his cunning legs? And now he's grown so big and fierce! But I can't help ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various

... French, two nations that used to be trusty allies. There is, indeed, a bond to unite "Caledonia stern and wild" and "the sunny land of France;" a weft of passionate poetry crosses alike the woof of the simple cunning of the Highlander and the slow canniness of the Lowlander. Scotland as ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler

... Highland officers and others on board who had been wounded and were now going back to Natal after recovery; they told us how cunning the Boers were in selecting positions; one saw nothing of them, they said, on a hill but the muzzle of their rifles; they are only killed in retreat; they pick out any dark object as a man, such as a great-coat, training their rifles on it so as to ...
— With the Naval Brigade in Natal (1899-1900) - Journal of Active Service • Charles Richard Newdigate Burne

... with eyes, nose, and mouth in a narrow line of cold defiance. To Grace, the acute wedge of white forehead, gleaming its way to the roots of the black hair, and the sharp chin cutting its way down from the tightly drawn mouth, spoke only of cunning. She regarded Fran as a ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis

... Churchill. He loved to make his appearance at the post in a wild and picturesque rush when the rest of the forest rovers were there to look on, and to envy or admire. He was one of the few of his kind who had developed personal vanity along with unerring cunning in the ways of the wild. Everybody liked Gravois, for he had a big soul in him and was as fearless as a lynx; and he liked ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood

... words. The panic soon passed away. It was all, I say, a false alarm. Vulnerable though his temper—though there was in him still enough of the hot onrush of battle and of resistance under all the snow of advancing years—the great old tactician had not forgotten his cunning. He at once seized the opportunity of saying he was not finally committed to the ninth clause in its present shape, and so we ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor

... not be sufficient to purchase a pint of butter-milk for their wedding supper, nor have any prospect of supporting their honourable state, but by service, or labour, or thievery. Nay, their happiness is often deferred until they find credit to borrow, or cunning to steal a shilling to pay their Popish priest, or infamous couple-beggar. Surely no miraculous portion of wisdom would be required to find some kind of remedy against this destructive evil, or at least, not to draw the consequences of it upon our decaying ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift

... Louis XI's cunning had full play. He involved Charles in fights with every neighbor. Finally he lured him into conflict with the Swiss, and those hardy mountaineers won the repute of being the best soldiers of Europe by defeating Charles ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson

... to all his People according to Custom, to collect the usual quantity of Feathers for that purpose; and because he would be sure not be used as his Brother and Father had been, he took care to send certain Cunning-men Express, all over the Country, to bespeak the People's Care, in collecting, picking and culling them out, these were call'd in their Language, Tsopablesdetoo; which being Translated may signify in English, ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe

... this friendly contest the youth emerged very humble. The old sheepman dazzled him with his cunning. He shot equally well from either hand. He could walk by a tree, wheel suddenly, and fire both revolvers over his shoulders, putting the two bullets within an inch of each other. "That's for use when a man is sneaking ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland

... a more cunning and worse trick, albeit a profitable one. Litterateurs, hack-writers, and productive authors have succeeded, contrary to good taste and the true culture of the age, in bringing the world elegante into leading-strings, so that they have been taught to ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer

... as we had! One man got bitten; but after a while foxy was caught. Then what did the cunning little thing do but make believe he was dead! Foxes are very cunning: they can play ...
— The Nursery, June 1873, Vol. XIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest People • Various

... searched in one of the bedrooms. A police-matron was brought for this purpose. She was a dirty, cunning sycophant. The contact of her coarse hands was repulsive. Elisaveta felt uncomfortably unclean after she had passed through the policewoman's paws. Elena shivered with ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub

... his low growl in the thicket. To turn back or stop were alike useless. Unpleasant recollections of the fangs of a huge dried snake's head he had just before examined, would come across his memory; and many a tale of the fierceness and cunning of the jaguar would not be forgotten. Suddenly he found his feet in water, and then he had to grope for a narrow bridge it was necessary to cross. Of its height above the water, or the depth of the stream, he was utterly ignorant. To walk along a plank four inches wide, under ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... did not disguise my opinion from him, nor did he disguise in any way from me the unscrupulous means he meant to employ in order to get this bull accepted by the clergy. Indeed, he was so free with me, showed me so plainly his knavery and cunning, that I was, as it were, transformed with astonishment and fright. I never could comprehend this openness in a man so false, so artificial, so profound, or see in what manner it ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon

... lights of his experience. He was incapable of analogy. What had never happened in his time, he was perfectly persuaded never could happen. Thus, though generally esteemed an able diplomatist, he had the cunning of the intriguant, and not the providence of a statesman. If, however, pride made him arrogant in prosperity, it supported him in misfortune. And in the earlier vicissitudes of a life which had partly been consumed in exile, he ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... the canals. There should be books in the cabin, and tobacco-jars, and some old Burgundy as red as a November sunset and as odorous as a violet in April. There should be a flageolet, whence the Cigarette, with cunning touch, should draw melting music under the stars; or perhaps, laying that aside, upraise his voice—somewhat thinner than of yore, and with here and there a quaver, or call it a natural grace-note—in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... day; or have his laugh with the poacher he was transporting with equal good humour. His politeness for the fair sex has already been hinted at by Miss Rebecca Sharp—in a word, the whole baronetage, peerage, commonage of England, did not contain a more cunning, mean, selfish, foolish, disreputable old man. That blood-red hand of Sir Pitt Crawley's would be in anybody's pocket except his own; and it is with grief and pain, that, as admirers of the British aristocracy, we find ourselves obliged to admit the existence ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... if they found a dead young one they immediately helped each other, like good scavengers, to carry away the carcase. When men were employed out of doors they had to drive the foxes away with sticks, and they became, in consequence of the slyness and cunning with which they knew how to carry out their thefts and the skill which they showed in combining to gain an end which they could not compass as single animals, actually dangerous to the shipwrecked men, by ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold

... it up in front of his public baths. Here it became such a favorite with the people that when Tiberius removed it to his own house there was a demonstration in the theatre, and so violent a demand was made for its restoration that the cunning emperor dared not refuse. This statue may be called an example of a grand genre style. It represents a scene from common life in Greece, but it is so simply natural, so graceful and free from restraint, that one could not weary of it. The expression of the ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement

... which one perceives the relation of things to his selfish wishes. By this nature, man is a selfish and intellectual animal; a polyp with arms that go round the world; a sponge with eyes and energies and delights; a cunning ego, to whom all outside of himself is but for a prey. But aloft over this, and constituting the second nature, into whose kingdom one should be born as by a second birth, is the sovereign eye and soul of Reason, discerning Justice and Beauty and the Best, creating in man's bosom ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... had a Charm for Man in every State; Beauty for the Youthful, Prudence for the Old, Scripture for the Godly, for the Miser Gold; Wit for the Ingenious, silence for the Grave, Flatt'ry for the Fool, and Cunning for the Knave: Compounded thus of such Varieties, } She had a knack to every Temper please, } And as her self thought fit was every one of these. } I lov'd, I sigh'd and vow'd, talk'd, whin'd, and pray'd, And at her Feet my panting Heart I lay'd; She smil'd, ...
— The Pleasures of a Single Life, or, The Miseries Of Matrimony • Anonymous

... to all parties as a no-party man. But, when he turned politician, he made himself amenable to the harsh laws of political warfare, and became (as his paper phrased it) "the hoary-headed victim of the unprincipled tyrant who, with the cunning of the serpent and the vindictive ferocity of the hyena, weaves his spider's web of mischief in his dark corner of the City Hall." Uncle Ith retired to private life with a snug property, patiently saved up and thoughtfully invested. But, as ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton

... it do for me to bring up here just these three out of all I saw ..." Her voice broke into pitiful, self-excusing quavers, "but when I saw them ...the baby was so sick ... and little Sigurd is so cunning ... he took to me right away, came to me the first thing ... this morning he wouldn't pick up his new rubbers off the floor for his mother, but, when I asked him, he did, right off ... you ought to have seen what he had on ... such rags ... such dirt ... and 'twan't her ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield

... As they were Rebels it was slow work. Reading and writing never came by nature, as Dogberry would say, to any man fighting for Secession. As a rule, he took to them as reluctantly as if, he thought them cunning inventions of the Northern Abolitionist to perplex and demoralize him. What a half-dozen boys taken out of our own ranks would have done with ease in an hour or so, these Rebels worried over all of the afternoon, ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... there is hardly mentioned by name from this period any Roman sculptor or painter except a certain Arellius, whose pictures rapidly went off not on account of their artistic value, but because the cunning reprobate furnished, in his pictures of the goddesses faithful portraits of his ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... millstone. Material progress is the upper millstone. Between them, with an increasing pressure, the working classes are being ground. Historically, as ethically, private property in land is robbery. It has everywhere had its birth in war and conquest, and in the selfish use which the cunning have made ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various

... genial temperature. Man alone, that is to say, the social man alone, can want and duly conceive and invent that which is digestion going forth into nature as a creative art, namely, cookery, which by recondite processes of division and combination,—by cunning varieties of shape,—by the insinuation of subtle flavors,—by tincturings with precious spice, as with vegetable flames,—by fluids extracted, and added again, absorbed, dissolving, and surrounding,—by the discovery ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various

... him into a corner. "M. le Comte has been in a fracas to-night, as you perchance may have divined. His arch-enemy gave us the slip. And I am not easy for monsieur while this Lucas is at large. He has the devil's own cunning and malice; he might track him here to the Three Lanterns. Therefore, maitre, I beg you to admit no one to M. le Comte—no one on any business whatsoever. Not if he comes from the Duke ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle

... friends," Macdougal replied, "but there is one coming whose wit and cunning, science and skill are all-conquering. He will brush you away, Sanford Quest, like a ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... went to Buckskin and gathered Williamson and McKenna and Rath in one public place. And when the morning came Williamson and McKenna and Rath had left this vale of tears and Mac Strann was back on his mountain. He was not even arrested. For there was a devilish cunning about the fellow and he made his victims, without exception, attack him first; then he destroyed them, suddenly and surely, and retreated to his lair. Things like this happened once or twice and then the men of the Three B's understood ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand

... and his eyes grew cunning. "Besides, and after all, there's another way, if I choose. Oh, I've thought and thought, I'd have you know." And shrugging his shoulders, almost to his ears, he raised and lowered his open hands alternately, while his back hid the movement from the Chamber. "See-saw! See-saw!" he muttered. ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman

... capacity, and a sensibility of mind, which may characterize as well the savage as the citizen, the slave as well as the master; and the same powers of the mind may be turned to a variety of purposes. A modern Greek, perhaps, is mischievous, slavish, and cunning, from the same animated temperament that made his ancestor ardent, ingenious, and bold, in the camp, or in the council of his nation. A modern Italian is distinguished by sensibility, quickness, and art, while ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.

... enemy's yard. But that face, when at last it came, was full of sorrowful displeasure. And in his heart he knew that it was because of a certain transaction in horse-dealing wherein he had hitherto lauded his own cunning—adroitness, he considered it—and success. One word only he heard from the lips of the Man, "Worker of iniquity!" and woke with a great start. From that moment truths began to be facts to him. The beginning of the change was indeed very small, but every beginning is small, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various

... Norwegian Cabinet hastened, craftily, to construe the contents af the Prime Minister's speech, by maintaining that there was a possibility for dissolving the Union[63:1]. Of all the cunning devices, the object of which has been, on Norway's side, cowardly to cast the blame on Sweden, this has been one of the most disgusting, so much the more so as the majority of the Storthing itself opposed Mr HAGERUP'S proposal, and this was certainly not previous to, nor after the Council of the ...
— The Swedish-Norwegian Union Crisis - A History with Documents • Karl Nordlund

... smiling, "I thought Adam lost his estate through a cunning notary who persuaded his wife to break the lease he held; and poor Adam lost possession because he could not find a second notary ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... The cunning constable held carefully on to his tongue, however. He quietly produced a knife and staggered in his turn to the cask, unobserved by the unsuspecting Buzzard, whose eyes were tightly closed in the realization of a dream of his highest ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.

... of the Goddess. This unity of character also is stated by Pallas; "both of us are skilled in wiles; thou art the best of mortals in counsel and in words; I am famed among the Gods for wisdom and cunning." Hence her argument runs, let us throw off disguise to each other, for we have a great work ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider

... cheeks, a rim of hair which people said he dyed, and bulging grey eyes slightly bloodshot. He was short in body and wind, drank port wine, was suspected of taking snuff, read The Times, spoke always in a husky voice, and used a very small brougham with a very old black horse. But he had a certain low cunning, which had defeated many ailments, and his reputation for assisting people into the world stood extremely high. Every morning punctually at twelve, the crunch of his little brougham's wheels would be heard. Winton would get up, and, taking a deep breath, cross ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... and Grampus, who was still glowering at Tom and had not quite finished pushing the cartridges into his gun, shut it up in a hurry and fired first one barrel and then the other. But my father, who was very cunning, jumped into the air at the first shot and ducked at the second, so that he was missed; at least I suppose that ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard

... afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner." And is this thy way, poor Publican! O cunning sinner! O crafty Publican! thy wisdom has outdone the Pharisee; for it is better to apply ourselves to God's mercy than to trust to ourselves that we are righteous. But that the Publican did hit the mark, yea, get nearer unto, and more in the heart of ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan

... his latter days omitted the Isaac) left off portrait painting, and took almost entirely to designing and etching, I assisted him at first to a great extent in some of his drawings on wood and his etchings." If this be the case, it is at least possible that he lent the assistance of his cunning hand and original fancy to the preparation of some of these contributions to pictorial satire. It appears to us, therefore, that a just idea of George's own work as an artist can scarcely be arrived at (especially his share of the famous "Life in London") until we have first considered the early ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt

... And meanwhile, with uncouth cunning, Adam was striving to telegraph by winks and gestures to the boy who had so grievously disappointed him, that the moment of his own summary execution would be an excellent one for his ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge

... succeeded Gregory, proved himself a very cunning adversary. He might have {17} won an easy victory over Frederick II if the exactions of the Papacy had not angered the countries where he sought refuge after his first failures. It was futile to declare at Lyons that the Emperor was deposed when all France was crying out upon the greed of ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead

... and privileges with me; those I leave here in the depths below the precipice. You see, Vera, I don't deceive you, but speak frankly. Naturally you possess the same rights as I. The mob above there lies to itself and others, and calls these his principles. But in secret and by cunning it acts in the same way, and only lays its ban on the women. Between us there must be equality. Is ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov

... do, if we are sure to be well paid; and then a pardon may do good; by the same rule, "That it is better to have but one fox in a farm than three or four." But we generally make a shift to return after being transported, and are ten times greater rogues than before, and much more cunning. Besides, I know it by experience, that some hopes we have of finding mercy, when we are tried, or after we are condemned, is always ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift

... hero that here, maybe, was to overtake him such an adventure as that which he had just a moment before been desiring so ardently. Nor was he mistaken; for the negress, first looking this way and then that, with an extremely wary and cunning expression, and apparently having satisfied herself that the street, for the moment, was pretty empty of passers, beckoned to him to draw nearer. When he had approached close enough to her she caught him by the sleeve, and, instantly drawing him into the garden ...
— The Ruby of Kishmoor • Howard Pyle

... a fool! He knows well what kind of knights we have; and he also knows that the greatest knights remained home, because the queen was not pleased when Witold began the war on his own authority. Ej, he is cunning, that old Edyga! He understood at Tavania that the prince's army had increased and had gone ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... my Aunt Bridget, "who would have imagined you didn't know. I thought every girl in the world knew before she put up her hair and came out of short frocks. My Betsy did, I'm sure of that. And to think that you—you whom we thought so cute, so cunning. . . . Mary O'Neill, I'm ashamed of you. I really, really am! Why, you goose" (Aunt Bridget was again trying to laugh), "how did you suppose the world ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine

... the same blessed end—the happiness of the individual, the harmony of the species, and the glory of the Creator. In the Vices, on the other hand, it is the discord that insures the defeat—each clamors to be heard in its own barbarous language; each claims the exclusive cunning of the brain; each thwarts and reproaches the other; and even while their fell rage assails with common hate the peace and virtue of the world, the civil war among their own tumultuous legions defeats the purpose of the foul conspiracy. These are the Furies of the ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore

... not heard, I believe, about the three little boys I call "my babies." They are yet in dresses, and as cunning as can be, very regular in attendance. Harry, Eddie, and—well I must tell you about the other name. Down here, many nick-names are used, such as son, bubba, or boysa for the boys, and sister or missy for the little girls. When this little fellow was asked his name, he very bashfully ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 6, June, 1889 • Various

... with excitement, while we remember the disappointments of the past year, while we hope for better things from a hand that has lost its cunning, a mind that has lost ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy

... title of Catholics, gloried in the simplicity and steadiness of their own creed, and insulted the repeated variations of their adversaries, who were destitute of any certain rule of faith. The sincerity or the cunning of the Arian chiefs, the fear of the laws or of the people, their reverence for Christ, their hatred of Athanasius, all the causes, human and divine, that influence and disturb the counsels of a theological faction, introduced among the sectaries a spirit of discord and inconstancy, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... His cunning glance changed instantly to an absolutely expressionless mask. My white skin no longer made any difference to him. We were now ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers

... writing. Dorris keeps house up there in two rooms. The little one is her bedroom; and Mr. Kincaid sleeps on the big sofa. Dorris makes crackle-cakes, and asks us over. She cooks with a little gas-stove. I think it is beautiful to keep house with not very much money. She goes out with a cunning white basket and buys her things; and she does all her work up in a corner on a white table, with a piece of oil-cloth on the floor; and then she comes over into her parlor, she says, and sits by the window. It's a kind of a play ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... warriors of the northwest were not formidable in numbers, but they were terrible in their ferocity, their knowledge of woodcraft, and their cunning strategy. General Harrison says that for a decade prior to the treaty of Greenville, the allied tribes could not at any time have brought into the field over three thousand warriors. This statement is corroborated by Colonel James Smith, who had an intimate knowledge ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce

... too remote, when Apaches, Arrapahoes, and even Cheyennes raided southward, and they had been constructed with the idea of defense paramount. Upon more than one occasion a solitary line-rider had retreated within their adobe walls and had successfully resisted all the cunning and ferocity of a score of paint-bedaubed warriors and, when his outfit had rescued him, emerged none the ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford

... fond of, should be set before Proserpina. He had a secret motive in this; for, you are to understand, it is a fixed law that, when persons are carried off to the land of magic, if they once taste any food there, they can never get back to their friends. Now, if King Pluto had been cunning enough to offer Proserpina some fruit, or bread and milk (which was the simple fare to which the child had always been accustomed), it is very probable that she would soon have been tempted to eat it. But he left the matter entirely to his cook, who, like all other cooks, considered ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various

... strategy culminated seven years ago in the election of James Buchanan. In pursuance of the secret and treacherous preparations for the present infamous rebellion, the people were ignorantly and blindly led by cunning intrigue into that fatal mistake; but it was not less the circumstances of the tunes and the sinister combination of parties, than the weakness and wickedness of the man chosen, which gave him the immense power for mischief which he wielded ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various

... would have been the part of an impostor, who wished his readers to believe that this book was written before the event, when in truth it was written after it, to have suppressed any such intimation carefully. But this was not the character of the authors of the Gospel. Cunning was no quality of theirs. Of all writers in the world, they thought the least of providing against objections. Moreover, there is no clause in any one of them that makes a profession of their having written prior to the Jewish wars, ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley

... sons, Abdulrahman and Abas. They came, as is the manner of their people, laden with heavy packs of sarongs,—the native skirts or waist-cloths,—trudging in single file through the forests and through the villages, hawking their goods to the natives of the place, with much cunning haggling or hard bargaining. But though they came to trade, they stayed long after the contents of their packs had been disposed of, for Haji Ali took a fancy to the place. Therefore he presently purchased a compound, and with his two sons set to work upon planting cocoa nuts, and cultivating a ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford

... such marvellous cunning that Jack perceived no movement of his legs or feet. The latter were partly shrouded in shadow, but the Indian himself suggested a statue set up among the trees. Nevertheless he was inching toward the camp-fire, and was already a ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis

... of an objector urging that such devices as the above are merely ways of avoiding the actual problems, and that they display more cunning than skill. But science, like good sense, puts up with the best that can be had; and, like prudence, does not reject the half-loaf. The position, that a conceivable case that can be dealt with ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read

... not skilled in woodcraft beyond the cunning necessary for surprising easy game such as turkeys, squirrels and rabbits. Regardless of his enormous appetite food was gladly given him at every cabin; for wherever he sought shelter, that place was safe ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter

... neighborliness, love of frontier life, love of travel and of adventure. The same may be said of immoral traits, such as criminality, pauperism, delinquency, irascibility, lying, truancy, superstition, clannishness, secretiveness, despondency, slyness, exclusiveness, vanity, cunning, cruelty, quickness to ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk

... tremendously interested in the party. He spent hours with Georgianna and the Board of Strategy, preparing the list of guests. His cunning in ascertaining from the unsuspecting child who, among her schoolmates, she would like to ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln

... dancing, and turn the heads of the town; though beautiful, a jury of art critics might pronounce her not to be. Irregular features are condemned in beauty. Beautiful figure, they could say. A description of her figure and her walking would have won her any praises: and she wore a dress cunning to embrace the shape and flutter loose about it, in the spirit of a Summer's day. Calypso-clad, Dr. Middleton would have called her. See the silver birch in a breeze: here it swells, there it scatters, and it is puffed to a round and it streams like a pennon, and now gives ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... submission on her part; it was such a common experience, in my life, to find my sister guiding herself by my advice. But experience is not always to be trusted. Events soon showed that I had failed to estimate Eunice's resources of obstinacy and cunning ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins

... tales of the red men, but the story of Blue Elk remained the favorite. That glimpse of a far-away boyhood struck a sympathetic chord that tales of middle-aged wisdom and cunning failed to awaken. The colonel left Ellen's Isle at noon the next day and the whole camp escorted him as far at St. Pierre in the canoes, like a squadron of battleships accompanying a liner. They parted from him with genuine regret and sang a mighty cheer in his honor as they ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey

... of Michillimakinack were those among the French allies who most dreaded the conclusion of a treaty of which they feared to become the first victims. Through the extraordinary machinations and cunning of their chief, Kondiaronk, or the Rat, they continued to reawaken the suspicions of the Iroquois against the French, and again strove to stir up the ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton

... of truth is simple, and those things which are just need not wily interpretations; for they have energy themselves; but the unjust speech, unsound in itself, requires cunning preparations to gloze it. But I have previously considered for my father's house, and my own advantage and that of this man; desiring to escape the curses, which Oedipus denounced formerly against us, I myself of my own accord departed from this land, having given him to rule over his own ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides

... contend that the claim to ascendancy of the Indian over the white, in respect of sagacity and cunning and craft, which this condition of things presupposes, is not satisfactorily made out. And I can readily conceive of the application of that astuteness, that distinguishes the Indian in his present trading ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie

... taken back and beaten, time after time; but in a few hours he was always off again, and at last they let him go his own way. There is nothing he hasn't turned his hand to. First he lived in the woods, I fancy; and they say he was the most arrant young poacher in the district, though he was so cunning that he was never caught. At last he had to give that up. Then he fished for a bit, but he couldn't stick to it. He has been always doing odd jobs, turning his hand to whatever turned up. He worked in a shipyard for a ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty

... must know," said Souwanas, "that, next to the wolverine, the raccoon is the biggest mischief in the woods. He is full of tricks, but he is very cunning and suspicious. So before he interfered with the rope he cautiously followed it up and found that its other end was at the wigwam of these two old blind men. Hearing no noise, he cautiously peered into the wigwam and saw them both sleeping near the ...
— Algonquin Indian Tales • Egerton R. Young

... Infelice's face, her brow, her eye, The dimple on her cheek: and such sweet skill Hath from the cunning workman's pencil flown, These lips look fresh and lively as her own. False colours last after the true be dead. Of all the roses grafted on her cheeks, Of all the graces dancing in her eyes, Of all the music set upon her tongue, Of all that was past woman's excellence In her ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving

... Her jailer, though cunning, lacks wit to devise How to fetter her thoughts, as her limbs he has done; The eagle that's snatched from his flight to the skies, From the bars of his cage may still gaze ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various

... dash through the now subdued group of animals and ran swiftly along the planking on which she stood. It was a handsome specimen of the Eskimo malamoot—tall, gray, and coated like a wolf, with the speed, strength, and cunning of its cousin. Its head hung low and swung from side to side as it trotted, the motion flecking foam and slaver. The creature had scattered the pack, and now, swift, menacing, relentless, was coming towards Helen. There was no shelter near, no fence, no house, ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach

... War, Each able to undo mankind, Death's servile emissaries are; Nor to these alone confined, He hath at will More quaint and subtle ways to kill; A smile or kiss, as he will use the art, Shall have the cunning skill to break ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... better than tell the truth. Truth's best at all times, they say; and for sure it is when folk have to do with lawyers; for they're 'cute and cunning enough to get it out sooner or later, and it makes folk look like Tom Noddies, when truth ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell

... a young fellow in the commercial line. Jarman was Young London personified—blatant yet kind-hearted; aggressively self-assertive, generous to a fault; cunning, yet at the same time frank; shrewd, cheery, and full of pluck. "Never say die" was his motto, and anything less dead it would be difficult to imagine. All day long he was noisy, and all night long he snored. He woke with a start, bathed ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome

... and exhume them. Presently the little map fluttered and the voices sank. A fine story for two, stranded British wastrels to hear! Evans' dream shifted to the moment when he had Chang-hi's pigtail in his hand. The life of a Chinaman is scarcely sacred like a European's. The cunning little face of Chang-hi, first keen and furious like a startled snake, and then fearful, treacherous, and pitiful, became overwhelmingly prominent in the dream. At the end Chang-hi had grinned, a most incomprehensible and startling grin. Abruptly things became very unpleasant, ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... he, that sweet obliging youth? He looks the picture of ingenuous truth. Oh, that's his antipode, of courteous race, The man of bows and ever-smiling face. Why Nature made him, or for what design'd, Never he knew, nor ever sought to find, 'Till cunning came, blest harbinger of ease! And kindly whisper'd, 'thou wert born to please.' Rous'd by the news, behold him now expand, Like beaten gold, and glitter o'er the land. Well stored with nods and sly approving winks, Now first with this and now with that he thinks; Howe'er opposing, still assents ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston

... the Senator spoke was not one who would have attracted any notice from him if it had not been for his knowledge of English. He was a narrow-headed, mean-looking man, with very seedy clothes, and a servile but cunning expression. ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille

... or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterward the very engines which have lifted them to ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing

... pretended to pity the Bee— For a cunning old hypocrite spider was he— "I'm sorry to see you so poorly," he said; And he whispered his wife, "He will have to ...
— The Diving Bell - Or, Pearls to be Sought for • Francis C. Woodworth

... him something of the reasons for the general distrust and fear of the man. But the doctor himself had never seen him, and, naturally enough, thought of him as the usual coarse leader of lawlessness, only more daring and cunning, perhaps, than the rest of his kind. Thus it was that trying to understand only bewildered the young man more and more, so that he was still filled with shocked wonder when he came ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks

... AUSTRALIAN employed low cunning and heartless cruelty in obtaining his wife. Laying in ambush, with club in hand, he would watch for the coveted woman, {163} and, unawares, spring upon her. If simply disabled he carried her off as his possession, but if the blow had been ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis

... sprang up among them as they related stories of wonderful recoveries made by men whose bodies had been beaten to a jelly. One, carried away by enthusiasm, declared that it did a man good to be shattered like glass, for the doctors, with satanic cunning seized the opportunity to knead the broken limbs like putty into a more desirable shape. But their words fell on deaf ears. The woman crouched over the prostrate man, stroking the bruised limbs with a stupid, mechanical movement as an animal licks ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone

... cried Jacqueline. "To think of their cunning; coming here under the very shadow of Notre-Dame! Still," she went on, "or ever I ask the Dean, why not warn that fair and noble lady of the risk ...
— The Exiles • Honore de Balzac

... times have been instigated and directed by Jews. They have caused the assassination of rulers and heads of states, so that behind the murderous fanaticism of individuals there has generally been the cold calculation of the most cunning and unscrupulous intellects of the human race. According to the same evidence, the wars which have drenched the world with blood and rent it with passion, including racial wars in Asia and Africa, the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, the Russo-Japanese War, and the recent World War, were all brought ...
— The Jew and American Ideals • John Spargo

... asked Aunt Eliza if she thought he looked mean and cunning? She laughed, and replied that she was bound to think that Mr. Lemorne's lawyer ...
— Lemorne Versus Huell • Elizabeth Drew Stoddard

... their talk, the Postmaster presently became convinced that the butcher was a constant and assiduous suitor of Flip's. The absurdity of his sending parcels and letters by post when he might bring them himself did not strike the official. On the contrary, he believed it to be a masterstroke of cunning. Fired by jealousy and Flip's indifference, he "deemed it his duty"—using that facile form of cowardly ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte

... father," the man in the long caftan said plaintively. He had a brown, cunning little face, a thin greyish beard. Trying to light a tin lantern he hugged it to his breast and ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad

... other's presence. I quite believed, however, that Niemann's voice must be on a par with his imposing personality. About that time (15th July) I fetched my wife from Brestenberg. During my absence my servant, who was a cunning Saxon, had thought fit to erect a kind of triumphal arch to celebrate the return of the mistress of the house. This led to great complications, as, much to her delight, Minna was convinced that this ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner

... slew ten flies— very black they were, the black shrivelled souls of parricides,—and afterward I wept for it. I often weep; the Mediterranean hath its sources in my eyes, for my daughter cheats at cards. Cheats, sir!—and I her father!" The incessant peering, the stealthy cunning with which Charles whispered this, the confidence with which he clung to his destroyer's hand, was that of ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell

... kind occurred. It seems she was sometimes accustomed to ask the young ladies of the court—her maids of honor—if they ever thought about being married, and they, being cunning enough to know what sort of an answer would please the queen always promptly denied that they did so. Oh no! they never thought about being married at all. There was one young lady, however, artless ...
— Queen Elizabeth - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... comedy which is the Roman road, and she carries in her train types that have done service to many since the ancients fashioned them years ago. Jealous husbands, foolish pragmatic fathers, a dissolute son, a boastful soldier, a cunning slave—they all are merely counters by which the game of comedy used to be played. In England, since Shakespeare took his hold on the stage, that road has been stopped for us, that game has ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair

... "If faulty all delay, the first I came. "A tender wife me kept; a tender tie, "A mother, kept Achilles. Our life's spring "To them was given, the rest reserv'd for you. "Nor should I fear, even were this crime, I share "With such a man, of all defence deny'd. "Yet his disguise Ulysses' cunning found: "Ajax ne'er found Ulysses. Needs surprize "To hear th' abusing of his booby tongue, "When with like guilt he stigmatizes you? "Shames most that I this Palamedes brought, "Falsely accus'd your sentence to receive, "Or that you doom'd him so accus'd to die? "But Nauplius' son not ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid

... Your lordship is very cunning, but I never imagined that you were remarkably wise. The talents you received at your birth, if we were to speak with mathematical strictness, should rather be denominated knacks, than abilities. They consist rather in a lucky dexterity of face, and a happy conformation of limb, than in any ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin

... out," said Gatton quietly; "undoubtedly it formed part of a scheme planned with extraordinary cunning; it was not an accident or an oversight, I mean. The men who are assisting me haven't been idle, for we have already learned some most amazing facts about the case. I haven't yet visited the house ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer

... vengeance for the insult their chief had received. The captain laughed, declaring that he did not fear what ten times the number of savages who as yet had come on board, would venture to do. "They are daring fellows, though, Captain Pyke, and treacherous, and cunning in the extreme," observed Mr Duncan. "Take my advice and keep them out of the ship. We have already done a fair trade here, and the natives have not many more skins ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston

... like the looks of the fellow—that affectation of simplicity is evidently intended to conceal the real cunning of his character. (Aloud). You are of course aware of the nature and the duties of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 5, 1841 • Various

... probably it referred to some unspeakable form of cruelty, but she read enough in the first few sentences of the article to discover that her cousin Robert, the man at whose house she was about to stay, was an unscrupulous, unprincipled character, of a low order of intelligence, yet cunning withal, and that he and his associates were responsible for most of the misery, disease, poverty, and ignorance with which the country was afflicted; never, except in one or two of the denunciatory Psalms, which she had ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki



Words linked to "Cunning" :   foxiness, tricky, craft, shrewdness, knavish, artful, clever, ingenious, cute, crafty, guile, wily, sly, slyness, dodgy, foxy, artfulness, attractive, adroit, astuteness, tricksy, perspicacity, slick, guileful, wiliness, craftiness



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