"Overreach" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... want; but I aver that in every instance in which I spoke of myself, I intended to keep, and now believe I did keep, Mr. E above myself. Mr. Edwards' first suspicion was that I had allowed Baker to overreach me, as his friend, in behalf of Don Morrison. I knew this was a mistake; and the result has proved it. I understand his view now is, that if I had gone to open war with Baker I could have ridden him down, and had the thing all my own way. I believe no such thing. With Baker and some strong ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... and accordingly they apply all their knowledge to bad purposes. They think they know, and they do know too truly on the whole, the motives and inducements which will prevail with men; and they use their knowledge to overreach, deceive, seduce, corrupt, or sway those with ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... child's work compared with the adjustment of dealings between the mutually suspicious private capitalists, who divided among themselves the field of business in your day, and sat up nights devising tricks to deceive, defeat, and overreach one another." ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... Dark-browed women in the very meridian of beauty bring up the rear, dragging or carrying a race of swarthy progeny, all alike distinguished for the sparkling eyes and raven hair, which, with a cunning nothing can overreach, and a nature nothing can tame, seem to be the peculiar inheritance of the Gipsy. Their costume is striking, not to say grotesque. Some of the girls, and all the matrons, bind their brows with various coloured handkerchiefs, which form a very picturesque and not unbecoming ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... understand, and, as St. Augustine teaches, a man would more readily live with his dog than with a foreigner, less pleasant certainly is our converse with those who make use of frauds artificially covered, overreach their hearers by deceits, address them insidiously, observe the right moment, and catch at words to their purpose, by which truth is hidden under a covering; and so on the other hand nothing is sweeter than the society of those, who both love ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... murder, nor break any one of the commandments so far as the laws of the state recognize these divine laws to be laws of common society. But, in his heart, and in act, so far as the law cannot reach him, he violates them daily. He will overreach you in a bargain, and think it all right. If your business comes in contact with his, he will use every means in his power to break you down, even to the extent of secretly attacking your credit. He will lend his money on usury, and when he has none to lend, will play the jackal to some money-lion, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... hollow that he seemed to be always sucking them in; and the sun had burnt him, not a wholesome red or brown, but dirty yellow. He had bright dark eyes, which he kept half closed; only peeping out of the corners, and even then with a glance that seemed to say, 'Now you won't overreach me; you want to, but you won't.' His arms rested carelessly on his knees as he leant forward; in the palm of his left hand, as English rustics have their slice of cheese, he had a cake of tobacco; in his right a penknife. He struck into the dialogue with ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... people who are thinking of marrying to attempt to deceive each other. What is the good of it? A very short period of married life will entirely dispel the illusion. I suppose people of the world may think it fair to overreach one another in their dealings, saying "everyone for himself." They have no intention of seeking to promote the other's happiness; present gain is all they want. But a married pair, to be ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... another the world is merely a great market, a warehouse filled with all kinds of goods, which may be bought and sold. To some the world is like a chess-board, where each man plays a selfish game, and tries to overreach his neighbour. To others the world is a mere play-ground, where they pass a frivolous, useless existence, sitting down to eat and drink, and rising up to play. To the selfish man the world is a vast slave plantation, where unhappy slaves are forced to toil and labour to supply ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... he played Sir Giles Overreach, in Massinger's "A New Way to Pay Old Debts," and the profound impression he made in it confirmed him in his purpose to devote himself to tragic acting. The story of an actor's life is seldom eventful, and Mr. Booth's history, after his first assured success, is the record of a long line ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... service the vilest means to make haste to be rich. The sordid parsimony of ninety-hundredths of the population shut out every sentiment of generosity, and rooted from the heart every emotion honorable to human nature. Neighborhood intercourse was poisoned with selfishness, and the effort to overreach, and make money out of, the ignorance or necessities of these, was universal. These degrading practices crept into every business, and petty frauds soon became designated as Yankee tricks. There was nothing ennobling ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... intimated; but he spoke with much confidence, and the Justice, who seemed to have some secret apprehension of being put to trouble in the matter, and, as sometimes occurs on the English frontier, a jealousy lest the superior acuteness of their northern neighbours might overreach their own simplicity, turned to his clerk with a ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... the third category belong a great number of animals in high position or of individuals who are remarkable neither for their mind nor for their energy, but who, by their position, have wealth, connections, influence, power. We must exploit them in every possible manner, overreach them, deceive them, and, getting hold of their dirty secrets, make them our slaves." (Sec. 18.) ... "The fourth class is composed of sundry ambitious persons in the service of the State and of liberals of various shades of opinion. With them we can conspire ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... time. It hasn't a genius for stiff morality, and indeed makes few pretensions in that direction. It scruples but scantly to represent the false as the true, and has been accused of cultivating the occasion to grasp and to overreach, and of steering a crooked course—not to your and my advantage—amid the sanctities of property. It has been accused further of loving if not too well at least too often, of being in fine as little austere as possible. I am not sure it is very brave, nor struck with its being very industrious. ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... reply that I do not believe that the horticulturist can sell his small fruits anywhere in the ordinary markets of the world at so high a price as to the Robin, provided that he uses proper diligence that the little huckster doesn't overreach ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... in the fourth-form, because the master treated them with implicit confidence, and being scrupulously honourable himself, was unsuspicious of others. He was therefore extremely indignant at this apparent discovery of an attempt to overreach him in a boy so promising and so much of a ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... right hand to ride, only it wouldn't carry him. I can't make horses. Harry brought home that brown mare on Tuesday with an overreach that she won't get over this season. What the deuce they do with their horses to knock them about so, I can't understand. I've killed horses in my time, and ridden them to a stand-still, but I never bruised them and battered them about as these ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... to me. It's because the only kind I've known is going to the church, dressed up, and sitting in the church feeling pious—and then, on the outside, and between times, being just as grasping, and as anxious to overreach everybody else, and trying just as hard to get even with their enemies, as if there wasn't a church on ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... his work—the drill, the sifting of patrol reports, the minutiae of the service—overreach into the afternoon hours: then he was free to range the country, to learn its trails and towns, its people and its spirit. His big gray pony had become a familiar sight in every village, on nearly every plantation. Sometimes he was gone upon two-day trips up or down the coast, or riding the narrow ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... in the sharp competition of the world where duty calls him, to resist the sly temptations to overreach, to keep keenly alert not to be overreached; and through all to preserve an uncensorious spirit, unhurt by the selfishness of the crowd—tell me, some of you men—will that not take power? Aye, more power than some of us know ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... secretary-general's office at Manila, and adds that the cruisers sold even the royal arms and ammunition, which had been entrusted to them, whence much passed into the hands of the Moros. The alcaldes were said to influence the commanders of the cruisers, and the latter to overreach the alcaldes; but both usually made common cause. La Perouse also relates (ii., p. 357), that the alcaldes bought a very large number of persons who had been made slaves by the pirates (in the Philippines); so that the latter ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... occupants. Their caution would only be the more increased on hearing of any commotion. Wait not, therefore, I implore you, for the dawning of the day: it could never dawn to you. Rivers I know too well; he would overreach you by some subtlety or other; and how easy, even while we speak, to shoot you down through these uneven logs. Trust not, trust not, I entreat you; there is a sure way of escape, and you still have time, if at once you avail yourself ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... his pollution and fairly rooted in good order and legality. (6) It was a design worth the venture: if they succeeded they would become the saviours of their country; if not—why, in the effort to grasp the fairest flower of happiness, they would but overreach, and find instead a ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... overreach themselves. Phillips had intended to secure the arms of his prisoner by winding a line around his body, but, considering him safe without it, he had neglected to do so. If he had done this, the runaways might have reached the shore before any one could come to the aid of the sufferer. He was ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... said, "Achilles, valiant though you be, you shall not thus outwit me. You shall not overreach and you shall not persuade me. Are you to keep your own prize, while I sit tamely under my loss and give up the girl at your bidding? Let the Achaeans find me a prize in fair exchange to my liking, or I will come and take your own, or that of ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... and from a British port, under the renowned Ashburton treaty? Would England give such a man up? No more than she will now give up the slaves that run from the American vessel, which is driven in by stress of weather. One of the vices of philanthropy is to overreach its own policy, by losing sight of ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... about the middle of the fourteenth century, when every petty prince in Europe was trying to overreach his immediate neighbor and grasp his lands, and when ties of blood seemed only to intensify feuds, there arose two claimants for the principality of Brittany. The Count of Montfort, half-brother of the last duke, and Charles of Blois, were the rivals; and each prosecuted his claim ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... be believed that, especially among the cunning Yankees, such "mines and treasures" stories should be credited; but it is a peculiar feature in the US that the inhabitants, so difficult to overreach in other matters, will greedily take the bait when "mines" or "hidden treasure" are spoken of. In Missouri and Wisconsin, immense beds of copper ore and lead have been discovered in every direction. Thousands of poor, ignorant farmers, emigrants from the East, have turned diggers, miners, ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... no object in following through all its sittings and all its twistings this odious and shameful trial, in which the judges' prejudiced servility and scientific subtlety were employed for three months to wear out the courage or overreach the understanding of a young girl of nineteen, who refused at one time to lie, and at another to enter into discussion with them, and made no defence beyond holding her tongue or appealing to God who had spoken to her and dictated to her that which she had done. In order ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... point to point in the surrounding landscape finds statement in lines 34-60. Of these lines Sharp (Life of Browning, p. 159) says, "There is a gulf which not the profoundest search can fathom, which not the strongest-winged love can overreach: the gulf of individuality. It is those who have loved most deeply who recognize most acutely this always pathetic and often terrifying isolation of the soul. None save the weak can believe in the absolute union of two spirits ... No man, no poet assuredly, could love as Browning ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... have any dealings with him say it is better to deal with a Turk than with him, for fairer dealings they shall have at his hands. This Talkative, if it be possible, will go beyond them, defraud, beguile, and overreach them. Besides, he brings up his sons to follow in his steps; and if he finds in any of them a 'foolish timorousness' (for so he calls the first appearance of a tender conscience), he calls them fools and blockheads, and by no means will employ them ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... to the enchantments and spells that shall overreach him, and as to the blade wherewith ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... simplicity and humility, they are so acute in their dealings that they are sure to deceive a person who is not very guarded. Although they would scorn to commit a robbery, yet they think it only fair to deceive or overreach in a bargain. Like the peasantry of Ireland, they are proverbial for their hospitality, and, like them, they are ever ready to fight on the slightest provocation. They swing themselves to and fro in their ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk
... notable mark of a martial spirit, when they hear a son miscall, or see him domineer over a poor peasant, or a lackey, that dares not reply, nor turn again; and a great sign of wit, when they see him cheat and overreach his playfellow by some malicious treachery and deceit. Yet these are the true seeds and roots of cruelty, tyranny, and treason; they bud and put out there, and afterwards shoot up vigorously, and grow to prodigious ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... habitually thoughtful, who, if the aid of books has been denied to him, still has won from life the kind of knowledge which develops character. Mrs. Peckover had small experience of faces which bear the stamp of simple sincerity. This man's countenance put her out. As a matter of course, he wished to overreach her in some way, but he was obviously very deep indeed. And then she found it so difficult to guess his purposes. How would he proceed if she gave him details of Jane's history, admitting that she was the child of Joseph James Snowdon? What, ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... ends. A dollar never meant anything to him except its equivalent in the filling of a need. Generosity and the impulse of giving were in his blood, yet it had gone hard several times with people who had tried to overreach him even to a trifling extent. But now he submitted without a word to losing ten dollars through cashing Arthur Carroll's worthless check. He himself was rather bewildered at his tame submission. One thing was certain, although it seemed paradoxical; if he had not ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... beauty, hedges in on age; Which tries the flight to perch in Lord Wynne's cage? Will Lady Bond or Clara be the queen? For Lady Bond is certain of her lien." He heard this talk while standing by a beech— Hugh Wynne—and planned how he might overreach Gilbert and Clara, break the pride of both, Part them for good, or make them plight their troth. "Now for a race," he cried, "to Martin's Mill; The boats are here; behold, the lake is still. Here, Gilbert, ...
— Poems • Elizabeth Stoddard
... hind feet, because the rabbit overreaches each time; the hind feet track ahead of the front feet; the faster he goes, the farther ahead those hind feet get; and what would happen if he multiplied his speed by ten I really cannot imagine. This overreach of the hind feet takes place in most ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... a strange new name, By paths unseen to reach the goal of fame; Thro courts and camps he teaches how to wind, To mine whole states and overreach mankind. Train'd in his school, a bold and artful race Range o'er the world, and every sect embrace, All creeds and powers and policies explore, New seats of science raise on every shore; Till their wide empire gains a wondrous birth, ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... yet awhile, I reckon," and Mr. Day chuckled. "I told ye them fule committeemen would overreach themselves. They've ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... Lord Lovell. Sir Giles Overreach. Justice Greedy. Wellborn. Allworth. Marall. Order. Furnace. Amble. Tapwell. Welldo. Watchall. Vintner. Tailor. Creditors. Lady Allworth. Margaret. Froth. ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... in this light before! I never thought of it until I was living there face to face with the old fool I was intending to overreach. I never was SURE of it until this morning, when he actually turned out one of his lodgers that I might have the very room I required to play off our little game in comfortably. When he did that, I made up my mind to drop the whole thing, ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... story of Fra Puccio, the queen with a commanding air bade Elisa follow on. She, rather tartly than otherwise, not out of malice, but of old habit, began to speak thus, "Many folk, knowing much, imagine that others know nothing, and so ofttimes, what while they think to overreach others, find, after the event, that they themselves have been outwitted of them; wherefore I hold his folly great who setteth himself without occasion to test the strength of another's wit. But, for that maybe all are not of my opinion, it pleaseth me, whilst following on the given order of ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... is writing in the light of later knowledge, and even, setting that aside, I am very far from agreeing with his psychological deduction. Just as a shy man will so overreach himself in his efforts to dissemble his shyness as to assume an air of positive arrogance, so might a pure lady who had succumbed as Miss Armytage pretended, upon finding herself forced to such self-accusation, bear ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... Convennole to a whetstone, which is blunt itself, but which sharpens others. His old master, however was sharp enough to overreach him in the matter of borrowing and lending. When the poet had collected a considerable library, Convennole paid him a visit, and, pretending to be engaged in something that required him to consult Cicero, borrowed a copy of one of the works of that orator, ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... art in all the nice management of its shades, its qualities, and its more complicated parts, from invective to puff, and from inuendo to prevarication! we may admire the scrupulous correction of a lie which they had told, by another which they are telling! and triple lying to overreach their opponents. Royalists and Parliamentarians were alike; for, to tell one great truth, "the father of lies" is ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... difficulties, her cash-book of 1863 was honorably pigeon-holed. In 1867 we can read account of herculean labor the second. Twenty thousand tracts are needed to convert the voters of Kansas to woman suffrage. Traveling expenses to Kansas, and the tracts, make the debtor column overreach the creditor some two thousand dollars. There is recognition on these pages of more than one thousand dollars obtained by soliciting advertisements, but no note is made of the weary, burning July days spent in the streets of New York to ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... legislative enactment, the {p.15} second grade of territorial government was hastily and high-handedly forced upon the people for this purpose. It was probably in view of these measures that Mr. Lemen recorded his belief that President Jefferson "will find means to overreach the evil attempts of the pro-slavery party." Early in the year 1806 the Vincennes memorial was introduced into Congress for the third time and again favorably reported from committee, but to no avail. It was about this time, as we learn from his ...
— The Jefferson-Lemen Compact • Willard C. MacNaul
... easily allow you to dress and to adorn yourself, and to live with comfort, even to enjoy honor and considerable pleasure, so long as you keep within proper bounds; you should, however, not go beyond the limits of temperance and moderation. In other words, do not overreach propriety and self-restraint, regardless of real pleasure, in the endeavor to show off in excessive and unprofitable squandering. Such conduct results in confusion and trouble—chastisement sent of God; in taxes, extortion, robbing and stealing, until finally ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... King's daughter shall not overreach us;' and, loading his gun, he shot so cleverly, that he shot away the horse's skull from under the runner's head, without its hurting him. Then the runner awoke, jumped up, and saw that his pitcher was empty and the King's daughter far ahead. ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... Powhatan at their request sent them venison, turkeys, and bread; the next day he feasted them, and then inquired when they were going, ignoring his invitation to them to come. Hereupon followed a long game of fence between Powhatan and Captain Smith, each trying to overreach the other, and each indulging profusely in lies and pledges. Each professed the utmost love ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... this grotesque but wonderful actor—a mountebank sometimes and sometimes a living truth—would play at home after driving us all mad in America, I went to see him in Sir Giles Overreach. He played with more spirit, more of settled purpose, than with us, being more in earnest, I think, and better supported. There is one absurdity in the play, which was made particularly offensive by Oxberry's exaggeration. The dinner is kept ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... wrong and outrage. Though it does not endeavor to usurp the place of religion, still its code of morals proceeds upon other principles than the municipal law; and it condemns and punishes offences which neither that law punishes nor public opinion condemns. In the Masonic law, to cheat and overreach in trade, at the bar, in politics, are deemed no more venial than theft; nor a deliberate lie than perjury; nor slander than robbery; ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... mistakenly, from the relation of other around him, then may he doubt what his eyes see with regard to this matter. Secondly, a man must not lean on his senses touching matters that come not within the discerning of sense. Now in regard to this bread, the Papists do overreach themselves. Did they but tell us that the change made was mystical and of faith,—not within the discernment of sense—we might then find it harder work to deal withal, and we must seek unto the Word of God only, and not unto our sense in any wise. But they go farther: they tell us the change ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... Legs, London Assurance, Old Heads and Young Hearts, and some other dramas. Dorothy and Mrs. Douglas were devotees of the theater. I enjoyed Richelieu and Macbeth, and I had seen Forrest as Sir Charles Overreach and Claude Melnotte; but for many of the plays I did not care. Douglas was indifferent to the theater. He was himself too much of a player on the stage of American affairs to be illusioned ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... years, had enriched themselves by peculation and monopoly. Mitchell, one of the grasping patentees who had purchased of the favourite the power of robbing the nation, was fined and imprisoned for life. Mompesson, the original, it is said, of Massinger's Overreach, was outlawed and deprived of his ill-gotten wealth. Even Sir Edward Villiers, the brother of Buckingham, found it convenient to leave England. A greater name is to be added to the ignominious list. By this Parliament was brought to justice that illustrious philosopher whose memory genius ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... came into a draught of air. Indeed he looked like a Jew, though a good Christian enough, and laughed about it, because he said that this appearance of his served him well in his trade, since Jews were always feared, and it was held to be impossible to overreach them. ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard
... paddling towards each other, while in the bows Collingwood and Westby rose to their feet and held their spears in front of them. They advanced cautiously and then swung apart, evading the collision—each trying to tempt the other to stab and overreach. ...
— The Jester of St. Timothy's • Arthur Stanwood Pier
... Benjamin's mind began to see that the affair would place his landlord and mortgagee in his power, and relieve him for evermore from financial pressure. To his peculiar conscience it was justifiable to overreach his grasping creditor, a right and proper thing to upset the shrewd Varnhagen's plans: a thought of the proposed breach of the law, statutory and moral, did not occur ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... open here, and Charles Kean is to-night playing for his last night. If it had been the 'rig'lar' drama I should have gone, but I was afraid Sir Giles Overreach might upset me, so I stayed away. My quarters are excellent, and the head-waiter is such a waiter! Knowles (not Sheridan Knowles, but Knowles of the Cheetham Hill Road[28]) is an ass to him. This sounds ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... me out as if there were some one there to see, - 'this, if you please, is the disinterested scholar, with not a design beyond his books! This, if you please, is the simple creature whom any one could overreach in a bargain! This, if you please, is Mr. Silverman! Not of this world; not he! He has too much simplicity for this world's cunning. He has too much singleness of purpose to be a match for this world's double-dealing. What did he ...
— George Silverman's Explanation • Charles Dickens
... half a dozen cows on the place, and Andy took the milk into town)—their customers, when they found out about the lantern, used to look oddly at Andy, and one or two of them had tried in consequence to overreach him in the bills. But no thimble-rigger had a keener eye for the cents than Fawcett. So their milk-speculation had prospered, until, this spring, they had added to their stock of cows. It was the only ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... boatman—"You be easy, missis; we'll catch 'em up!"—the less confident one of his mate—"Have a try at it, anyhow!" Then her joy when the sail filled and the plashing of her way spoke Hope beneath her bulwark as she caught the wind. Then her dread that the Devil's craft ahead would make sail too, and overreach them after all, and the blessing in her heart for her hopeful oarsman, whose view was that the officer in charge would not spare his convicts any work he could inflict. "He'll see to it they arn their ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... minute. 'Let us take it for granted,' says Sir Patrick, 'that this man unknown has really tried to deceive Miss Silvester, as you and I suppose. I can tell you one thing: it's as likely as not that, in trying to overreach her, he may (without in the least suspecting it) have ended in ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... shrewdness and cunning, attempt to take him with a trap. Rogue that he is, he always suspects some trick, and one must be more of a fox than he is himself to overreach him. At first sight it would appear easy enough. With apparent indifference he crosses your path, or walks in your footsteps in the field, or travels along the beaten highway, or lingers in the vicinity of stacks and remote barns. Carry the carcass of a pig, or a fowl, or a dog, to a ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... sixty-three years old, should he be still alive, and I am convinced that he remains an upright and honourable gentleman. I would also venture a surmise that business competitors find it very hard to overreach him, and that he has escaped the garrulous tendencies ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... call it vulgar, if they will, The trade that thrives while sleeps the sleepyhead; Yes, knavery, not bravery, call it still, To overreach ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... what a great and fortunate statesman should be, so long as mankind have evil passions as well as lofty virtues, and the state that he seeks to serve is surrounded by powerful and restless foes, whom it is necessary to overreach where ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Mistress Mary glowed and glittered and flamed in gorgeous apparel, until she seemed to fairly overreach all the innocent young flowery beauties of the spring with one rich trill of colour, like a high note of a bird above a wide chorus of others. Mistress Mary that morning wore a tabby petticoat of a crimson colour, and a crimson ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... green velvet, surmounted with three-cornered hats tagged with silver lace? Much, we suppose, must depend upon the characters of those who wear them, and the kind of services on which they will come to be bestowed. An Upper House of mere diplomatists—skilful only to overreach—imprudent enough to substitute cunning for wisdom—ignorant enough to deem the people not merely their inferiors in rank, but in discernment also—weak enough to believe that laws may be enacted with no regard to the general good—wrapped up in themselves, and acquainted with ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... of his person through the streets of his metropolis. They are very poorly furnished and nasty, far below similar conveyances in any continental city with which we are acquainted. Greater fault still is to be found with the drivers, a large proportion of whom are so prone to overreach, that it is hardly possible to settle for their fares without a squabble. Our experience leads us to say, that at an average a stranger pays 30 per cent. above the proper sum, besides having his temper in almost every instance ruffled ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various
... hear what he has to say? He would not have come here without some excellent reason—perhaps he wants to pay up part of his debt to me, or maybe he has some scheme with money in it to unfold. He'll certainly try to overreach me again; but then once bitten twice shy. I'll be on my guard." Then with an ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... and Merchandizes; from whence they seldom come before they have spent a large reckoning, and lost more then three of their five sences; thinking themselves no less rich then they are wise; and ly then very subtlely upon the catch to overreach another in a good and advantagious bargain; by which means they themselves are somtimes catcht by the nose with a mouldly old sort of unknown commodity, that they may walk home with, by weeping cross; ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... were freed from the necessity of preying upon one another, we found that there was no hurry. The good work would wait to be well done; and one of the earliest effects of the Evolution was the disuse of the swift trains which had traversed the continent, night and day, that one man might overreach another, or make haste to undersell his rival, or seize some advantage of him, or plot some profit to his loss. Nine-tenths of the railroads, which in the old times had ruinously competed, and then, in the hands of the Accumulation, ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... cheated. An attempt to deceive us, is an insult to our understandings and an affront to our morals. The pretender to politeness is a cheat. He tries to palm off the base for the genuine; and, although he may deceive the vulgar, he cannot overreach the cultivated. True politeness springs from right feelings; it is a good heart, manifesting itself in an agreeable life; it is a just regard for the rights and happiness of others in small things; it is the expression of true and generous ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady
... that Bacon staid every patent of monopoly that came before him? Of all patents in our history, the most disgraceful was that which was granted to Sir Giles Mompesson, supposed to be the original of Massinger's Overreach, and to Sir Francis Michell, from whom justice Greedy is supposed to have been drawn, for the exclusive manufacturing of gold and silver lace. The effect of this monopoly was of course that the metal employed in the manufacture was adulterated, to the great loss of the public. But this ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the patient yet uncured from some epidemic on the other. You pass to your business through a street full of roughs, and in your own store are men wishing you to die that they may take your place, seeking every opportunity to overreach you; and then wonder if I smile when you ask me ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... from such heart-piercing revelations of human passion. Persons who had schooled themselves to control their emotion till they had scarcely any emotion left to control, were repelled rather than attracted by Kean's relentless anatomy of all the strongest feeling of our nature. In Sir Giles Overreach, a character almost devoid of poetry, Kean's acting displayed with such powerful and relentless truth the depths of a cruel, avaricious man, baffled in all his vilest schemes, that the effect he produced was absolutely awful. As no bird but the eagle can look without blinking on ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... overreach themselves yet and be brought to justice," Doctor Wesselhoff remarked. "But is there no way of ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... wisdom to folly; for Kapchack has been so cunning for so many, many years, and all his family have been so cunning, and all his councillors, that now I do believe (only I do not meddle with politics) that this extreme cunning is too clever, and that they will overreach themselves. However, we shall see what is said at the ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... at old Nathan who was now retreating within his own doorway. Ben pulled him back by his coat-tails. "We aren't through with this yet," he went on as the man turned upon him with a few smothered words. "That isn't a pretty way to talk. You have something of a case, I admit, but you happened to overreach yourself this time. No, you're not going in yet. A little more fresh air won't hurt you. Sit down there and be good and I will tell you a pretty little story." He pushed the old man gently into his chair and stood guard over him. "No, you don't need your stick yet; you ...
— A Dear Little Girl's Thanksgiving Holidays • Amy E. Blanchard
... frontier town of Alcantara. As the conferences of the fair negotiators experienced none of the embarrassments usually incident to such deliberations, growing out of jealousy, distrust, and a mutual design to overreach, but were conducted in perfect good faith, and a sincere desire, on both sides, of establishing a cordial reconciliation, they resulted, after eight days' discussion, in a treaty of peace, with which the Portuguese infanta returned into her own country, in ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... the reader by dragging him through every conceivable horror, physical and moral, to depict with lurid excitement and with offensive minuteness the life in jail and brothel—all this is to overreach the object.... Even things actually terrible may become distorted when a writer screams them out in a sensational way and in a high pitched key.... More convincing if it ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... "By theft! What a thief stole, you steal from the thief! Could anything be easier? Only, Alberich is on his guard, you will have to proceed craftily if you would overreach the robber... in order to return their treasure to the Rhine-daughters, who ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... counterfeit. You would not know it from a good one. Only an expert can tell the difference. But all these crooks overreach themselves. Clever as they are, they usually leave some mark which betrays them. For example, in printing this bill which bears the head of Lincoln, they have spelled his first name 'Abrahem'—in other words, the engraver made an 'e' when ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... periods of time, though apparently, were not really coincident at the beginning point, the Treasury report including a considerable sum now which had previously been reported from the Interior, sufficiently large to greatly overreach the sum derived from the three months now reported upon by the Interior and not by the Treasury. The Indian tribes upon our frontiers have during the past year manifested a spirit of insubordination, and at several points have engaged in open hostilities against the white settlements ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... dealing with! It is just as he said; those seven hundred francs will prevent the father from paying seven thousand," the little lawyer thought within himself as he climbed the path to Angouleme. "Still, that old slyboots of a paper-maker must not overreach us; it is time to ask him for ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... weakness of all masters," the soldier replied, "and so they overreach themselves. Give me a little confidence, and I am content, but distrust me, and my ears are ever on the stretch to catch news which I may use to my advantage. But I have no quarrel with you. The Captain is out, you must await his return, and while you wait ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... he was a teacher, and teachers are not generally very rich. At last he went into business, starting in a small way, and worked his way up by degrees. But there was one thing he determined in the beginning: that he would be strictly honorable in all his dealings, and never overreach any one for the sake of making money. If there was a chance for him, Dick, there ...
— Ragged Dick - Or, Street Life in New York with the Boot-Blacks • Horatio Alger
... had fluttered to the ground, there was a knock at my door, and Sir Percival's solicitor, Mr. Merriman, was shown in. There are many varieties of sharp practitioners in this world, but I think the hardest of all to deal with are the men who overreach you under the disguise of inveterate good-humour. A fat, well fed, smiling, friendly man of business is of all parties to a bargain the most hopeless to deal with. Mr. Merriman was one of ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... fixed your abode in high places. Are there not recorded in history the names of kings and statesmen whom an irresistible desire to scheme, and trick, and overreach, has brought to the block? The times were difficult—that much one may admit. Noble heads of honourable and upright men were lopped in profusion; and it may be argued, with some show of reason, that the man whose character was as flawless as pure crystal, was like to fare ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, February 6, 1892 • Various
... in this section of the country believes the old thread-bare lie that Negro men rape white women. If Southern white men are not careful, they will overreach themselves and public sentiment will have a reaction; a conclusion will then be reached which will be very damaging to the moral reputation of ...
— Southern Horrors - Lynch Law in All Its Phases • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... It will be seen, from the record of their lives, that the delusion, humiliating as it was to human intellect, was not altogether without its uses. Men, in striving to gain too much, do not always overreach themselves: if they cannot arrive at the inaccessible mountain-top, they may, perhaps, get half way towards it, and pick up some scraps of wisdom and knowledge on the road. The useful science of chemistry is not a little ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... get a horse; but we differ from each other in this, that if you were in my place you would take the horse without giving an equivalent. Now I am a man of mercy, and if you will ask a fair price you shall have it. But mark me! Do not overreach yourself and kill the goose that is about to ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... the delight of the Washington playgoers in the Jackson Administration. His wonderful impersonations of Richard III., Iago, King Lear, Othello, Shylock, and Sir Giles Overreach were as grand as his private life was intemperate and eccentric. He was a short, dumpy man, with features resembling those of the Roman Emperors, before his nose was broken in a quarrel, and his deportment on the stage was imperially grand. He had a farm in Maryland, ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... was a very modest one for a beginner. It embraced only Richelieu, Bertram, Brutus, Lear, Richard, Shylock, Sir Giles Overreach, Hamlet, Othello, and Macbeth. My principal literary recreation for several years had been in studying these parts; and as I knew them by heart, I did not doubt that a few rehearsals would put me in possession of the requisite stage-business. And yet my familiarity with the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... little store by their word, but have known how to overreach men by their cunning, have accomplished great things, and in the end got the better of those who trusted to honest dealing. The prince must be a lion, but he must also know how to play the fox. He who wishes to deceive will never fail to find willing dupes. The prince, in short, ought not ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... further to recognise the fact that while man is inherently and completely satisfied with the difference between man and woman; satisfied with it and deriving his most thrilling pleasure from it; woman is always feverishly and frantically endeavouring to overcome and overreach this difference, endeavouring, in fact, to feel her way into every nerve and fibre of man's sensibility, so that he shall have nothing left that is a secret from her. That he should have any such secrets—that such secrets should ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... house built high above ground would be too parching and unsteady for the good of the mushrooms; besides, a second shelf is inconvenient enough, and when it comes to a third or a fourth the inconvenience would be too great, and overreach any advantage hoped for in economy of space. An unheated mushroom house must be regarded as a shed, and treated similarly, as described ...
— Mushrooms: how to grow them - a practical treatise on mushroom culture for profit and pleasure • William Falconer
... that inordinate selfishness and cupidity overreach themselves; while the liberal man deviseth liberal things, and is ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... little mother!" Then she added, in a different tone, "Don't you think there is any danger of our being too obliging? I'm not the only girl in town whose mother wishes her to oblige Dr. Ballard. May we not overreach ourselves?" ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... that presently he must overreach himself, so of set purpose I kept my blade short, and let him approach nearer. Immediately he began to press, thinking that he had me at his mercy. We had fought our way round to a spot on the upper side of the plateau, where ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... the hind foot strikes and injures the heel or quarter of the forefoot the horse is said to overreach. It rarely happens except when the animal is going fast; hence is most common in trotting and running horses. In trotters the accident generally happens when the animal breaks from a trot to a run. The outside heels and quarters are most ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... in Burr, had he been born under kindly Southern skies with a gold spoon in his mouth, if, when ambitions developed, he had had but to stretch out his hand to pluck the prizes of life, instead of exercising the basest talents of his brain to overreach more fortunate men, why it is possible that his nature might not have hardened into a glacier: its visible third dazzling and symmetrical, its deadly bulk skulking below the surface of the waters which divided the two parts of ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... to New York without having to wait more than five minutes, and late that night the Chester boys and the others of their party were in full possession of the details of the air-ship in which Luther Barr meant to overreach them if it lay ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... out in the name of the Lord, and disguise himself, and by such means he will do it. Let a point of truth or conscience come in debate, let a notion of religion, and one far off from an interest in Christ be in the business, and then he can take advantage to make a man overreach himself in it. He will present the truth as a thing of so great weight and consequence, that he must contend for it, and empty all his wit and power and parts for it. This good intention being established, ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... of the defects of the system, which are many, and while they demand to the last grain's weight "the pound of flesh," they are utterly unwilling to yield the requirements which the law makes of them. Where you find an overseer endeavoring in every way to overreach the apprentices, taking away the privileges which they enjoyed during slavery, and exacting from them the utmost minute and mite of labor, there you will find abundant complaints both against the master and the apprentice. And the reverse. The ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... adventure, and the good fortune which is so often its attendant. His contest therefore with Antonius and Sextus Pompeius was the contest of cunning with bravery; but from his youth upward he was accustomed to overreach, not the bold and reckless only, but the most considerate and wily of his contemporaries, such as Cicero and Cleopatra; he succeeded in the end in deluding the senate and people of Rome in the establishment of his tyranny; and finally deceived the expectations of the world, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... was too great, and after some acrimonious bargaining it was decided that I should continue on foot, my man indicating to me by gestures, in a most sarcastic way, that the "chiaodza" men had failed to overreach him. ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... who refused Christian baptism. Among the refractory citizens was a Chinese trader named Wong. So far as anybody could see, he led as moral a life as a Chinaman can endure comfortably; he was good to his family, good to himself, he was sober, he would overreach a Spaniard when he could, but when he had given his word he kept it; he burned incense before joss, he read the analects of Kung Foo Too and Mang Tse, and worshipped his ancestors; he never stole or used any kind of profanity ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... the eccentric tragedian, and the memoir which he printed of Kean will always be read with interest. I heard the poet one evening describe the player most graphically as he appeared in Sir Giles Overreach in 1816 at Drury Lane, when he produced such an effect on Lord Byron, who sat that night in a stage-box with Tom Moore. His lordship was so overcome by Kean's magnificent acting that he fell forward in a convulsive fit, and it was ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... study as by skilful veneering, and had taken great pains to stand well with the Faculty, at least one of whom, Byles Gridley, A. M., had watched him with no little interest as a man with a promising future, provided he were not so astute as to outwit and overreach himself in his excess of contrivance. His classmates could not help liking him; as to loving him, none of them would have thought of that. He was so shrewd, so keen, so full of practical sense, and so good-humored ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... implicit that he should be ready to risk his professional reputation upon it, when he is convinced beyond doubt that the man is being unfairly assailed, or that due process is not being followed. Both higher authority and civil authority occasionally overreach; an officer stands as a shield protecting his men against unfair treatment from any quarter. But it is decidedly not his duty to attempt to cheat law or thwart justice for the sake of his men simply because they are his men. His job, as Shakespeare puts it, is "to unmask falsehood and bring ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... nowadays that capital fattens on labour, naturally, instinctively, without much sense of wrong-doing, and has so fattened since the days when Laban tried to overreach Jacob. What we are not so often told is that the poor man not less instinctively looks upon the gen'leman as legitimate sport. 'An 'orrible lie' between two poor people is fair play from a poor man to a wealthier, just as, for instance, the wealthy ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... even more to blame for his misfortunes than he was himself. Instead of filling his mind with Christian principles, she had fed him with the dry husks of worldly wisdom. She had taught him to get money; that it was shrewd and praiseworthy to overreach and deceive. His father had died when he was young, and his mother had had the whole training of him. Before God, she was responsible, though her neglect and her errors could not excuse him. I thanked God anew, as I looked at him, for ...
— Desk and Debit - or, The Catastrophes of a Clerk • Oliver Optic
... cruelty are disappearing, and the butchery of men has greatly diminished. But most people apply to industrial pursuits a notion of antagonism derived from ages of warfare, and seek in all manner of ways to cheat or overreach one another. And as in more barbarous times the hero was he who had slain his tens of thousands, so now the man who has made wealth by overreaching his neighbours is not uncommonly spoken of in terms which imply approval. Though gentlemen, moreover, no longer assail one another ...
— The Destiny of Man - Viewed in the Light of His Origin • John Fiske
... he was such an admirable man of business. Certainly if he had said he would pay a sum of money at a certain time, the money would be forthcoming on the appointed day, and this is saying a good deal for any man. His constitutional timidity rendered him incapable of an attempt to overreach when there was the remotest chance of opposition or publicity, and his correct bearing and somewhat stern expression were a great protection to him against being overreached. He never talked of money, and invariably changed the subject whenever money was introduced. His expression ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... of social revolutionists that private business would overreach itself and defeat its own purpose, grew out of the expectation that its tribute exactions would draw the subjects of capital together in a common defensive movement; that the movement on account of its ...
— Creative Impulse in Industry - A Proposition for Educators • Helen Marot
... its abstract justice is merely a waste of time; for whenever the wolf is face to face with the lamb, it will eat up the lamb first and justify its conduct afterwards. And in this argument there is a certain amount of truth; but those who take it for the whole truth allow their own cynicism to overreach them. The fact remains that even the wolves of the human world are obliged to assume, as a kind of necessary armour, and often as their principal weapon, a semblance of justice, however they may despise the reality. The brigand chief justifies his war on society ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... answering, king Agamemnon addressed: "Do not thus, excellent though thou be, godlike Achilles, practise deceit in thy mind; since thou shalt not overreach, nor yet persuade me. Dost thou wish that thou thyself mayest have a prize, whilst I sit down idly,[22] wanting one? And dost thou bid me to restore her? If, however, the magnanimous Greeks will give me a prize, ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... credulity. One or more of all these classes will be found in the foregoing pages. It will be seen, from the record of their lives, that the delusion was not altogether without its uses. Men, in striving to gain too much, do not always overreach themselves; if they cannot arrive at the inaccessible mountain-top, they may perhaps get half way towards it, and pick up some scraps of wisdom and knowledge on the road. The useful science of chemistry is not a little indebted to its spurious ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... Honour, that meddlesome officious ill, Pursues thee even to death, nor there stops short; 180 Strange persecution! when the grave itself Is no protection from rude sufferance. Absurd to think to overreach the grave, And from the wreck of names to rescue ours! The best-concerted schemes men lay for fame Die fast away: only themselves die faster. The far-famed sculptor, and the laurell'd bard, Those bold insurancers of deathless fame, Supply their little feeble aids in vain. The tapering ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... seen, (reading them carefully the day beforehand,) quite all Shakspere's acting dramas, play'd wonderfully well. Even yet I cannot conceive anything finer than old Booth in "Richard Third," or "Lear," (I don't know which was best,) or Iago, (or Pescara, or Sir Giles Overreach, to go outside of Shakspere)—or Tom Hamblin in "Macbeth"—or old Clarke, either as the ghost in "Hamlet," or as Prospero in "the Tempest," with Mrs. Austin as Ariel, and Peter Richings as Caliban. Then other dramas, and fine players in them, Forrest as Metamora ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... any that had not some tincture of the absurd in their characters. I venerate an honest obliquity of understanding. The more laughable blunders a man shall commit in your company, the more tests he giveth you, that he will not betray or overreach you. I love the safety, which a palpable hallucination warrants; the security, which a word out of season ratifies. And take my word for this, reader, and say a fool told it you, if you please, that ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... conscience are worth more in our business than any other qualities. With these you may do as you list. They tell far better than all the 'one-price' and fair-dealing professions, in which people have little faith. In fact, the mass will overreach if they can, and therefore regard these ...
— True Riches - Or, Wealth Without Wings • T.S. Arthur
... the land, the matter took on quite a different colour. It was nonsense; it could not be allowed; and many were the friendly hints that Columbus doubtless received at this time to relinquish his wild demands and not to overreach himself. ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... concluded peace at Utrecht in the belief that they were dealing with a Jacobite, that their concession in regard to the crown of England amounted to nothing, that, by yielding now, they would secure hereafter the elevation of a dependent dynasty. Under that illusion they combined with Bolingbroke to overreach themselves and to institute party government, under ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... decorum of fashionable indifference." These were good reasons for his objection to the boxes. But he preferred the pit, in truth, because he could there see and hear so very much better. "We saw Mr. Kean's Sir Giles Overreach on Friday night from the boxes," he writes in 1816, "and are not surprised at the incredulity as to this great actor's powers entertained by those persons who have only seen him from that elevated sphere. We do not hesitate to say that those who ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... character, namely, the treachery and craft with which they attempt to overreach one another in war, may be illustrated by a short saga told by Ssanang Setzen, and probably relating to this period of Temudjin's career. It is curious how circumstantial many of these traditions are. "At that time," he ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... kinds, grades, and powers, benign and malicious, it seems a grand conception among the Indians to create a personage strong enough in his necromantic and spiritual powers to baffle the most malicious, beat the stoutest, and overreach the most cunning. In carrying out this conception in the following myth, they have, however, rather exhibited an incarnation of the power of Evil than of ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... the stage from his infancy; his first success was Shylock in the "Merchant of Venice" in 1814, and the representation of it was followed by equally famous representations of Richard III., Othello, and Sir Giles Overreach; he led a very dissipated life, and under the effects of it his constitution gave way; he broke down one evening beside his son as Iago, as he was playing the part of Othello, was carried off the stage, and never appeared ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... received with such enthusiasm that he settled permanently at Baltimore. From here he made professional excursions to other American cities. Among his most familiar personations were Iago, Hamlet, Shylock, Sir Giles Overreach, and Sir Edmund Mortimer. Over his audiences he ever exercised a wonderful power. On his death he left two sons, both actors like himself, and both destined to make their ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... in the city of Buffalo extended over the greater part of a year, and during this period I had frequent opportunities of witnessing that tendency to overreach that has, perhaps, with some justice, been called a disposition in the generality of Americans to defraud. I do not mean to stygmatize any particular class of men in this imputation, but I must record my decided conviction, ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... suspected me of ulterior aims she would suspect me less if I should be businesslike, and yet I consented not to be so. It was possible she intended her omission as an impertinence, a visible irony, to show how she could overreach people who attempted to overreach her. On that hypothesis it was well to let her see that one did not notice her little tricks. The real reading of the matter, I afterward perceived, was simply the poor old woman's desire to emphasize the fact that I was in the enjoyment of a favor as rigidly ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... partners—why had he married—why had he taken upon himself the responsibility of his parent's debts—why had he not explained every thing when he might have done it with honour and advantage—why had he not relied upon his own integrity—and why had he attempted, with cunning and duplicity, to overreach his neighbours? Why, oh why, had he done all this? When Michael was fairly hemmed in by his difficulties, and, as it is vulgarly said, had not a leg to stand upon, or a hole to creep through, then, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... by Cromwell, because he had no hold of enthusiasm by which he could govern or overreach them; he therefore treated them with great rigor and disdain, and usually denominated them the heathens. As the Millenarians had a great interest in the army, it was much more important for him to gain their confidence; and their size of understanding ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume |
