"Guileful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had been checked but not smothered by his companion's evident desire to say nothing concerning himself, was busy thinking of various guileful schemes with which to entrap the castaway into the disclosure of his identity. Having prepared his bait, he proceeded to get ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... O thou guileful betrayer! there is a just God, whom thou invokest: yet the thunderbolt descends not; and thou livest to ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... must use other means than those which Francis and Dominic had employed. He had to make his Company, that forlorn hope of Catholicism, the exponent of a decadent and rotten faith. He had to adapt it to the necessities of Christendom in dissolution, to constitute it by a guileful and sagacious method. He had to render it wise in the wisdom of the world, in order that he might catch the powers of this world by their interests and vices for the Church. He was like Machiavelli, endeavoring to save a corrupt state by utilizing corruption for ends acknowledged ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... characteristic of euphuism, though less commonly found than the two kinds just mentioned, namely, those drawn from "unnatural natural history." Such are the comparisons to "the serpent Regius that hath scales as glorious as the sun and a breath as infectious as aconitum is deadly," to "the hyena, most guileful when she mourns," to "the colors of a polype which changes at the sight of every object," and to "the Sethin leaf that never wags ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... Out on the lawn, or where the trees Let in the lustre fitfully, As their boughs parted momently, To the soft, languid, summer breeze. Alas! that she should e'er have flung Those pure, though lonely joys away— Deceived by false and guileful tongue, She gave her hand, then suffered wrong; Oppressed, ill-used, she faded young, And died of ...
— Poems • (AKA Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte) Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
... And novel wits, that love none but themselves, Think wisdom's height as falsehood slyly couch'd, Seeking each other to o'erthrow his mate. O friendship! thy old temple is defac'd: Embracing envy,[103] guileful courtesy, Hath overgrown fraud-wanting honesty. Examples live but in the idle schools: Sinon bears all the sway in princes' courts. Sickness, be thou my soul's physician; Bring the apothecary Death with thee. In earth is hell, hell ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... an excellent strategy in faith, and yet 'twere wiser methinks to suffer me in Roger's place: for being guileful in war, so should I be a very beguiling miller, whereas Roger, an we plastered him with flour, would ne'er be other ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... He swept his hearers with him as dry leaves before the blast. "When he began to weave his words, one might have deemed him churlish, nay a fool, but when from his chest came his deep voice, and words like unto flakes of winter snow, then who could with him contend?" Thus Homer of Odysseus the Guileful, thus as truly of Themistocles saviour ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... favored haunt, Most hallowed of that blessed ground, Where tempting fiend with guileful taunt A resting-place would ne'er have found,— As shadowing it well might seek The loveliest home in that fair isle, Which in its radiance seemed to speak As to the charmed doth Beauty's smile, That whispers of a thousand things For which words find no picturings. ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... by secret treason, but I behold his tents whitening the hills and dales, while thousands are hourly flocking to his standard. Wo unto thee if thou hast dealt deceitfully with us, or betrayed us with guileful words.' ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... would have been bored by such confidences as these. Now he was eagerly drinking in every word that Peter uttered. His lively brain was putting the whole situation into a nutshell. Assuming that Peter was not the most guileful person on earth, it was quite obvious that he not only was in ignorance of the true state of affairs at Green Fancy but that he was to be banished from the place while ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... what contrast could be greater? Charles VII., "the Well-served," so easygoing, so open and free from guile; Louis XI., so shy of counsellors, so energetic and untiring, so close and guileful. History does but apologise for Charles, and even when she fears and dislikes Louis, she cannot forbear to wonder and admire. And yet Louis enslaved his country, while Charles had seen it rescued from foreign ...
— Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, Complete • Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre
... imperious in a high degree. He was not naturally cruel; but he was ruthless if it served his purpose, and could take pitiless vengeance for an insult or a wrong. He was too strong to prefer deceit when force would serve as well, but his diplomacy was subtle and guileful, and no scruple turned him aside from his aim. His temper, originally forgiving, was soured by opposition toward the end of his life, and his tyrannical tendencies were strengthened by the long exercise of uncontrolled power. His passionate devotion ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... the padding footsteps that followed, hurrying when she hurried and slackening when she went more slowly, and stopping dead when she paused and looked round, conveyed to her a haunting sense of something sinister, and at the same time greedy and guileful, that bided its time ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... her state they stand, They clear from doubt her brave but wavering band; Colonial charters in their hands they bore, And lawless acts of ministerial power. Some injured right in every page appears, A king in terrors and a land in tears; From all his guileful plots the veil they drew, With eye retortive look'd creation thro, Traced moral nature thro her total plan, Markt all the steps of liberty and man; Crowds rose to reason while their accents rung. And ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... over to the corral, an' except that new ponies, who ain't onto Bowlaigs, commonly has heart-failure at the sight of him, he don't found no disturbances nor get in anybody's way. Throughout his wakin' hours, as I su'gests former, Bowlaigs ha'nts about the Red Light, layin' guileful an' cunnin' for invites to drink; an' he execootes besides small excursions to the O.K. Restauraw for chuck, with now an' then a brief journey to the Post Office or the New York store. These visits of Bowlaigs to the last two places, both because he don't get no letters at the post office ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... a man named Valgard, he kept house at Hof by Rangriver, he was the son of Jorund the Priest, and his brother was Wolf Aurpriest (1). Those brothers, Wolf Aurpriest, and Valgard the Guileful, set off to woo Unna, and she gave herself away to Valgard without the advice of any of her kinsfolk. But Gunnar and Njal, and many others thought ill of that, for he was a cross-grained man and had ...
— Njal's Saga • Unknown Icelanders
... not," answered Ingona, "unless it were to satisfy the ambition of Sekosini. He has already confessed that he was the originator of the conspiracy, and therein he spoke no more than the truth. He is guileful as a snake; he has the gift of persuasive speech, and knowing that some of us were chafing under prolonged inaction, he used his cunning and the power of his tongue to stir our discontent into indignation, and finally into hatred and a fierce determination to effect a change. By the power ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... effective, definite and symbolic on which to concentrate their love and their devotion. And then, what is it, this Spirit of the Sea? It is too great and too elusive to be embraced and taken to a human breast. All that a guileless or guileful seaman knows of it is its hostility, its exaction of toil as endless as its ever-renewed horizons. No. What awakens the seaman's sense of duty, what lays that impalpable constraint upon the strength of his manliness, what commands his not always dumb if always dogged devotion, is not the spirit ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... [Hall] were despatched in various directions, still further to sound the neighbourhood. All returned ere noon, some bruised and maltreated by the stones and staves of the rustics, and not a voice had been heard to echo the cry, "Long live King Edward!" The profound sagacity of Gloucester's guileful counsel was then unanimously recognized. Richard despatched a secret letter to Clarence; and it was resolved immediately to proceed to York, and to publish everywhere along the road that the fugitive had returned but to claim his private heritage, ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Upton was not, in her flower-like satisfaction, one bit vain; but Mary suspected herself of feeling a real thrill of tempted vanity. The form of the temptation was, however, too sweet to be rejected, and Mrs. Upton's hair was so simply done, too, though, she suspected, done with a guileful simplicity. It wouldn't look vain to do it like that; but, on the other hand, it would probably take three times as long to do; there was always the question of one's right to employ precious moments in personal adornment. "How kind of you," she murmured. "I am so stupid ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... the motive of the woman - the hinge of the whole well-invented plot - until the instant of that highly dramatic declaration. It was not his tale; it was the little people's! And observe: not only was the secret kept, the story was told with really guileful craftsmanship. The conduct of both actors is (in the cant phrase) psychologically correct, and the emotion aptly graduated up to the surprising climax. I am awake now, and I know this trade; and yet I cannot better it. I am awake, and I live by this ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... said, 'devious men love women that be simple. And, for a profound, devious and guileful politician you shall find none to ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... Yet harmless as the turtle-dove, Still winning souls by guileful love And deep invention— So once the great Apostle strove With good ...
— Cottage Poems • Patrick Bronte
... simple garments, and bade them set forth and depart from paradise into a harder life. Behind them, by God's command, a holy angel with a 945 fiery sword shut the gate of their blissful home of peace and joy; nor may any guileful sin-stained man ever fare thither again, for the warder has might and strength 950 who keeps for the Lord that greater life rich in glories. Yet the Almighty, our First Father, would not take away all comforts from Adam and Eve, though they ...
— Genesis A - Translated from the Old English • Anonymous
... instructed—particularly is this true of vaudeville—and the writer daring enough to attempt to administer even homeopathic doses of instruction, must be a master-hand to win. Once in a generation a Shaw may rise, who, by a twist of his pen, can make the public think, while he wears a guileful smile as he propounds philosophy from under a jester's cap; but even then his plays must be edited—as some of Shaw's are—of all but the most dramatic of his belligerently ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page |
