"Deuce" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not; and Uncle Aribert is in a deuce of a stew about him, and telegraphing all over Europe. Altogether, things are working up ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... thanks awfully. Shed that habit long ago," said my cousin. "I've got precious little luggage, too; picked this thing up in a shop as I came along, and they charged me the deuce of a lot for it. You're awfully good, you know, and all that, to offer to put me up, but I only came prepared to spend a night ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... my arrest and the robbery that was committed in my house, I am alarmed every time I hear a door open, particularly in the night. What the deuce can you expect? I ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... walking side by side with the captain of his troop remark, as he passed up the stable, "Why, there's old Smut!" When the officer and civilian had passed out he turned to the next man, and asked who the deuce the bloke was in the brown hat. "Why, that's Captain Baden-Powell," said the man; and then he added with great pride, "I was his batman once." The young soldier had heard of Baden-Powell before, and was furious that he had not looked longer at him as he passed. An odd circumstance, by ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... be no doubt about it," he murmured. "I recognised her voice directly!... It's the very deuce!... It's going to complicate matters!... A lover's meeting? Not likely!... She must be going to the post, as she said.... She will return in about a quarter of an hour, and then ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... six months. The pleasure and enthusiasm with which I have got to do my work for Punch (since I have got better in health and so forth) are such that I should be content to go on so for ever, without any rise, if it weren't for my having such a deuce of a family! but what's a ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... playing cards, were all left strewed around their fires. One of the gamblers, (it is a serious truth) though shot dead, still held the cards hard gripped in his hands. Led by curiosity to inspect this strange sight, a dead gambler, we found that the cards which he held were ace, deuce, and jack. Clubs were trumps. Holding high, low, jack, and the game, in his own hand, he seemed to be in a fair way to do well; but Marion came down upon him with a trump that spoiled his sport, and ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... "You're having hallucinations, my love. You'll feel better in the morning. Where the deuce did you get such a foolish ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... on the word. "But everything has become uncanny within the last few days. Upon my word, when I look back into the past of, say, a fortnight ago, I ask myself whether I am a fool, or dreaming, or whether my health is going to the deuce. London seems different. I look on things strangely. I fancy, ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... deuce of it!" replied Tomsky: "she had four sons, one of whom was my father; all four were determined gamblers, and yet not to one of them did she ever reveal her secret, although it would not have been a bad thing either for them or for me. But this is what I heard from my uncle, Count Ivan ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... who the Deuce you are?" said Chaffery, suddenly tilting his head back so as to look through his glasses instead of over them, and laughing genially. "For thoroughgoing Cheek, I'm inclined to think you take the Cake. ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... uttered these words I asked myself angrily why the deuce did I want to say that? Mr. Burns in answer had only blinked at me. What on ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... "The deuce!" said the Dandy, who did not clearly comprehend the bent of the observation of his much pondering and philosophic friend, but was ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... I am a shade better. But, you see, the deuce of it is I never get more than a shade better. It always stops at that. The little woman can't complain of me now, can she, Sheldon? No more late hours, or oyster ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... deuce!" replied Bill, taken aback, for a moment, by the query. "I hadn't thought of that, but it's no difference; my plans are not alf made out in the details yet; but this is no bar to them; for I'd like to see the lock that Bill Mitchel can't make a key to fit, if he has a fair chance. I can make a ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... a principal hand in the formation of this peninsula. They form the ninety-ninth part of the rock in this quarter. It is a most convenient formation, being worked almost as easily as clay, and yet it makes substantial walls. Frost, I presume, would play the deuce with it. But that is a thing not much known here. I have not yet had the pleasure to fix my northern eye on a piece of ice this winter, though there has been a cream thickness of it once or twice. A pitcher frozen over here makes more noise than the river frozen ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... Thomas:—I'm devilish glad to see you, my lad. Why, my prince of charioteers, you look as hearty!—but who the deuce thought of seeing you ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... wife I could not kiss? I wonder if Blanche will speak to me again? Maybe all this was a dodge, women have so many; but she looked in earnest. I might have frightened her by being so sudden, but why the deuce should women be frightened at proposals, when they pass their lives in trying to get them? So Mrs. Stunner said. Poor birdie!, what a soft hand she has! Maybe some women are modest: I will ask Hardcash about it. She may not have known what she was saying—agitated, and all that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... but the latter is an idea, and abideth. I never before saw swine upon sattin. And then that pretty strawy canopy about him! he seems to purr (rather than grunt) his satisfaction. Such a gentlemanlike porker too! Morland's are absolutely clowns to it. Who the deuce ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... conveniences of the place for making a lady comfortable—a tolerably patient captive. But the draw-bridge was never raised, and Acton's brilliant visitor was as free to depart as she had been to come. It was part of his curiosity to know why the deuce so susceptible a man was not in love with so charming a woman. If her various graces were, as I have said, the factors in an algebraic problem, the answer to this question was the indispensable unknown quantity. The pursuit of the unknown quantity was extremely absorbing; ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... Deuce take the foolish woman with her dreams! Was anything so preposterous ever heard of? I must go and ask the help of ...
— The Learned Women • Moliere (Poquelin)
... "What the deuce," he said, and then paused. "I won't have it," he went on, jumping up, "I won't have it. I am not particularly fond of old de la Molle, perhaps because he is not particularly fond of me," he added rather drolly, "but it would be an infernal shame to break up that family ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... matter," said Fry, and he showed him a deuce of clubs, a five of hearts and an ace of diamonds, and so on; two or three cards of each suit. "A prisoner has been making these out ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... said he, musing; "but the postmark is Plymouth. How the deuce—!" The two first lines of the letter were read, and the old man's countenance fell. Susan, who had been all alive at the mention of McElvina's name, perceived the alteration in her ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... run— Was a jolly young chap, and a son of the SUN; Or rather of PHOEBUS—but as to his mother, Genealogists make a deuce of a pother, Some going for one, and some for another! For myself, I must say, as a careful explorer, This roaring young blade ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... there at the other end of the poop might have (and he probably did) suspect him of being criminally asleep on duty, he tried to "get hold of that thing" by some side which would fit in with his simple notions of psychology. "What the deuce are they worrying about?" he asked himself in a dazed and contemptuous impatience. But all the same "jailer" was a funny name to give a man; unkind, unfriendly, nasty. He was sorry that Mr. Smith was guilty ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... was evidently a personage of note. But a special would never do! Where the deuce was it going to ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... leaving him still standing in his pet attitude, taking mental stock of all the fast-looking fair ones who might come under his notice. "Oh, bother?" I am not prepared to assert positively that I did not use a much stronger expletive. He ought to have seen them! What the deuce was the use of his sticking star-gazing there, unless to observe people, ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... for a few days and then take him back. But they can't git him now—not if I can help it. A better cook never throwed dishwater over a guy-rope than that same old Mose, but—" He stopped and looked at Ford hesitantly. "Say! I hate like the deuce to tie a string on you as soon as you hit the ranch, Ford, but—if you've got anything along, you won't spring it on Mose, will you? A fellow's got to watch ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... present state, and we must own that his stories are so slightly constructed as to remind us of the showman's thread with which he draws up his pictures and presents them successively to the eye of the spectator. He seems seriously to have proceeded on Mr. Bays's maxim—"What the deuce is a plot good for, but to bring in fine things?"—Probability and perspicuity of narrative are sacrificed with the utmost indifference to the desire of producing effect; and provided the author can but contrive to "surprize ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... one day, after hearing Mobray through his lines in "The Deuce is in Him," "I'd give a finger but ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... dine at Mr. Harley's alone, about some business of importance; but there were two or three gentlemen there. Mr. Secretary and I went together from his office to Mr. Harley's, and thought to have been very wise; but the deuce a bit: the company stayed, and more came, and Harley went away at seven, and the secretary and I stayed with the rest of the company till eleven; I would then have had him come away, but he was in for it; and though ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... it back. Ace-of-trumps may it prove to you, Captain Paul; may it be impossible for you ever to be taken. But for me—poor deuce, a trey, that comes in your wake—any king or knave may take me, as before ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... which they smother a man in the Low Countries; and there he lay, melting between, two feather beds, like an anchovy sandwich between two slices of toast and butter. He was a warm-complexioned man, and this smothering played the very deuce with him. So, sure enough, in a little while it seemed as if a legion of imps were twitching at him and all the blood in his ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... ever saw. I wish she'd come back again," and, shutting his eyes, he tried to recall the bright, animated face which had so lately bent anxiously above him. "She tarries long," he said at last, beginning to grow uneasy. "I wonder how far it is; and where the deuce can this old Hagar be, ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... "What the deuce is she grateful to me for?" grumbled Mr. Redmain when he read it. "I never did anything for her! By Jove, the gypsy herself wouldn't let me! I vow she's got more brains of her own than any half-dozen women I ever had to ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... away.] Oh, dear; oh, dear! Deuce take Carlton Smythe an' 'is supper party— those are my sentiments; an' Lal Roper, busybody that 'e is! Things were goin' on with us as smooth an' peaceful as could ...
— The 'Mind the Paint' Girl - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... how the deuce do I see you here? You ought to be up at the fort. But, say, old man, I'm glad you broke out. That thirty-day term smelled to heaven when the old man gave it. ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... herself, however, the ground was occupied by Sir Claude, who, as he stood before their visitor with an expression half rueful, half persuasive, rubbed his hand sharply up and down the back of his head. "Then why the deuce do you grant so—do you, I may even say, rejoice so—that by the desertion of my ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... "The deuce there are!" ejaculated the skipper. "Which do you think will be the easier plan of the two: to climb the tree, or to make our way through the bush ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... we both in a breath: "Pogson is a commercial traveller, with thirty shillings a week, and how the deuce is he ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... alarmed, "Stretch out, men: never mind the shark. He can't jump into the boat surely," said the skipper. "What the deuce are you ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 579 - Volume 20, No. 579, December 8, 1832 • Various
... had come the thunderbolt. And then, while he was still dazed and furious, his grandfather had tried to convince him that he had done him a deuce of a good turn in showing up ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... his whip at them, 'if I listened to you idlers, you and I would both starve under the fence. The beggars are playing the deuce here!' ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... Confusion of pagan gods and Christian saints. 26. Church in North Europe. Thonar, etc., are devils, but Balda gets identified with Christ. 27. Conversion of Britons. Their gods get turned into fairies rather than devils. Deuce. Old Nick. 28. Subsequent evolution of belief. Carlyle's Abbot Sampson. Religious formulae of witchcraft. 29. The Reformers and Catholics revive the old accusations. The Reformers only go half-way in scepticism. Calfhill and Martiall. 30. Catholics. Siege of Alkmaar. Unfortunate mistake of ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... me—leave that to me!" said Melrose with an answering good humour. "Stable and carriage expenses are the deuce. There never was a coachman yet that didn't rob his employer. Well, thank you; I'm glad to have had this talk with you, and now, I go to bed. Beastly cold, I must say, this ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... place the side of the board with only two men on points nearest the window, so that there shall be a good light on the home tables. The points in the home tables are known by their numbers, which correspond to the faces of a die, and are called: ace point, deuce point, trey point, four point, five point, ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger
... big proposition to offer you. One that will beat Mascola's like an ace beats a deuce. Because this one ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... have been there now. I'm going to-morrow, ain't I, Nell? I had not a bit of business to be here. Winding up affairs in the bachelor line, don't you know; but I had to come on my way west to see this young lady first. It plays the deuce and all with one's plans when there's such a ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... lo! the Captain, Gallant Kidd,[4] commands the crew; Passengers their berths are clapt in, Some to grumble, some to spew. "Hey day! call you that a cabin? Why't is hardly three feet square! Not enough to stow Queen Mab in— Who the deuce can harbour there?" "Who, sir? plenty— Nobles twenty Did at once my vessel fill."— "Did they? Jesus, How you squeeze us! Would to God they did so still! Then I'd 'scape the heat and racket Of the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... despairing—now coming out towards you in a burst of light—and now fading away from you in a gathering of gloom—even as one might figure in his imagination a fallen Angel. On Thursday, confound you if you know what the deuce to make of his Springship. There he is, stripped to the buff—playing at hide-and-seek, hare-and-hound, with a queer crazy crony of his in a fur cap, swan-down waistcoat, and hairy breeches, Lodbrog or Winter. ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... "The deuce, my young fellow!" cried the usurer, fiercely. "But, bah!" he added, twirling his black moustache caressingly between his fingers, "I have proved my bravery scores of times—I, an old soldier, perforated with bullets, can pass ...
— A Cardinal Sin • Eugene Sue
... had no success on the stage, which greatly afflicted this previous tribunal. Being assembled the day after its performance, there was a general silence; but the lady, who had first given her favourable suffrage, spoke at length and said—"The piece, however, was not hissed." "How the deuce could it?" replied a stranger, who happened to be present; "people cannot gape and ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... "The deuce with nothing," he returned. "That fellow Kennedy's a clever one. He may come to. If he does, he won't ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... said I, dropping my arm, which had been sticking out like a pump brake, 'that's she that just now turned about and blushed so like the deuce—do you ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... best, I don't deny, Thou'st fee'd the keeper, and he likes to feed us, But, then the situation I decry, But crying's useless—who the deuce will heed us? Then, reader would you listen to my wail, Come, and but see ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 397, Saturday, November 7, 1829. • Various
... "The deuce you did not! Did another gentleman undertake the duty of escorting the lady back to town? It is all exceedingly pleasant for the Marchese Lamberto, upon my word!—oh, exceedingly!—and really a foretaste to him of the joys to come, quite ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... little old-fogyish, thinks we are too young for any definite engagement, and wants me to be permanently established in some business before we are married, and all that; when I can't see what in the deuce is the difference so long as I have plenty of stuff. So the upshot of it all was that he and his wife took Grace to Europe, and they're not coming back until the holidays, and if, by that time, we have neither of us changed our minds, and I am settled ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... to hear any more. Things were getting too hot. I sneaked softly out of my bush and raced for the front door. I sprinted up to my room and made for the drawer where I had put the parcel. And then I found I hadn't the key. It wasn't for the deuce of a time that I recollected I had shifted it to my evening trousers the night before and must have forgotten to take it ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... the deuce! a bad business!" said Jacquet, examining the letter as a usurer examines a note to be negotiated. "Ha! that's a gridiron letter! Wait ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... John's comment afterward. "How the deuce did he ever come to be Tod's son? Sheila, of course, is one of these hot-headed young women that make themselves a nuisance nowadays, but she's intelligible. By the way, that fellow Cuthcott's ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... for Dolcino," I said: surprised a moment afterwards at being in a position—thanks to Miss Ambient—to be so explanatory; and surprised even now that Mark shouldn't have shown visibly that he wondered what the deuce I knew about it. But he didn't; he simply declared with a tenderness that touched me: "Ah nothing shall ever ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... what he would do and say to-morrow if anything happened to Tom—nothing, of course, fatal, but something perhaps so grave that May himself would be unable to explain it. In that case Henry could only state facts exactly as they had occurred. But there would be a deuce of a muddle if he had to make statements and describe the exact sequence of recent incidents. Already he forgot the exact sequence. It seemed ages since he parted from May. He broke off there, rose, drank a glass of water, and lighted a ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... is all very fine, But if pleuro-pneumonia crosses the line, And with BULL'S bulls and heifers should play up the deuce, A Yankee Inspector won't be of much use, Which nobody ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, Sept. 27, 1890 • Various
... the chaps in the canoes might think when they came back. If they'd seen me in the boat before I went down, and without the helmet on—for they might have been spying and hiding since over night—they would very likely take a different view from the others. I was in a deuce of a stew about that for hours, as it seemed, until the shindy of the ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... that I wish he would go to the deuce with it, he will leave it to a hospital. Is that ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
... the deuce you have!" said Aiken. His tone was now one of respect, and he regarded me with marked interest. He was not a gentleman, but he was sharp-witted enough to recognize one in me, and my words and bearing had impressed him. Still his next ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... being the first to arrive, he found the old lady alone in the drawing-room. "Well! little one," he asked, with his smiling familiarity, "are your affairs going on all right? Why the deuce do you make ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... what it is, Angelica,' said he, 'since I came here yesterday, there has been such a row, and disturbance, and quarrelling, and fighting, and chopping of heads off, and the deuce to pay, that I am inclined to ...
— The Rose and the Ring • William Makepeace Thackeray
... tried, Wouldst thou have me swear? I shall be a steaming mass, Freeze to rock and stone, alas! If I don't remove. All this, love, I owe to thee, Winter-bumps thou'lt make for me, Thou confounded love! Cold and gloom spread far and wide! Ay, the deuce! ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... (The deuce he had! Flynn would lose his engagement as a boxing teacher if he didn't heed my ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... distant lake. From the grass arose, with measured sweep, a gull, and bathed luxuriously in blue waves of air. And now she has vanished on high, and appears only as a black dot: now she has turned her wings, and shines in the sunlight. Deuce take you, steppes, ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... composition. He happened one night to stop under the window of Bernardone Kurz, a director of a theatre and the leading clown of Vienna. Down rushed Kurz very excitedly. "Who are you?" he shrieked. "Joseph Haydn." "Whose music is it?" "Mine." "The deuce it is! And at your age, too!" "Why, I must begin with something." "Come ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... the wrong end foremost, as Briggs said," thought the young man. "I wonder where the deuce Briggs can be? I'm no match ...
— Iole • Robert W. Chambers
... It would tax his invention, certainly, and I felt, this time, over his real embarrassment, a curious thrill of triumph. It was a sharp trap for the inscrutable! He couldn't play any longer at innocence; so how the deuce would he get out of it? There beat in me indeed, with the passionate throb of this question an equal dumb appeal as to how the deuce I should. I was confronted at last, as never yet, with all the risk attached even now to sounding ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... turning with a bouncing flounce and looking straight at the Major. "Marry Pennington! Why, she shan't, John. That's all there is of it. We object and that settles it. Why, what the deuce can ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... the one that weakens all the others. Why the deuce do you want this thing known? Why do you want to put your ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... the deuce is in it!" Exclaimed the landlord; "try me yet, And fifty dollars to be bet." "Agreed, but we will play some trick, To make you of the bargain ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... his eye fell upon the contents. "What in creation is this? It isn't shorthand, but what the deuce is it?" ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... outright, "You played the wrong card at such and such a point." No, he always employed some such phrase as, "You permitted yourself to make a slip, and thus afforded me the honour of covering your deuce." Indeed, the better to keep in accord with his antagonists, he kept offering them his silver-enamelled snuff-box (at the bottom of which lay a couple of violets, placed there for the sake of their scent). ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... "What the deuce is the matter?" he puffed. "Oh! it is you, Giles, is it? What are you doing, sir, looking like that, all covered with blood and mud? Has a poacher shot you, ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... went a Goat of grass to take her fill, And browse the herbage of a distant hill, She latch'd her door, and bid, With matron care, her Kid; "My daughter, as you live, This portal don't undo To any creature who This watchword does not give: 'Deuce take the Wolf and all his race'!" The Wolf was passing near the place By chance, and heard the words with pleasure, And laid them up as useful treasure; And hardly need we mention, Escaped the Goat's attention. No sooner ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... First Consul. "I warn you, sir, that I wish no excuses, and I will add that unless an attempt is made on my life before ten o'clock to- night, you lose your place. The French people must be kept interested in this performance, and how the deuce it is to be done without advertising I don't know. Go, and remember that I shall be at home to assassins on Thursdays of ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs
... back by about a foot; that, however, was of little consequence, as the high chair concealed the deficiency; neither did the shortness of the sleeves matter much, as the ample shawl could be made to hide my too great length of arm; but the skirt was scarcely lower than a Highlander's, and how the deuce I was to crook my booted legs up out of view, even in that gloomy starlight, I could hardly imagine. The cap also was far too small; still, with an ample kerchief in my hand, my whiskers might, I thought, be concealed. I was still fidgeting ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... not a public character. So I have to take trouble to keep myself in print. And I do—a deuce of a ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... have mistaken your man, De Pean!" whispered Cadet. "Why the deuce did you pitch upon Le Gardeur to carry out ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... well) but how the deuce can you be funny in the Baltic? Why call it Baltic? For days and nights at sea, sometimes up, more often down, and a sense of inability coming over me in the middle of the boundless deep. Alas, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 9, 1890. • Various
... "The deuce he can't!" returned Mr. Schulemberg. "I'll see about that very soon, I can tell you. He promised to pay me cash for fifty thousand dollars' worth of Holland linens a week ago; I have not seen the color of his money yet, and I mean to wait no longer. Where does he live? for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... "Where the deuce are you going to sleep to-night, St. George? You came down hither all the way from London, did you not? You surely do not ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... the Professor angrily. "What the deuce is the matter with you, then? You sit there like a set of stuck pigs staring at ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... smiling, "We must do without him, and you will keep your Mr. Clinch. A thorough officer in a ship's hold is an advantage not to be thrown away; and I suppose, if Hotham had asked such a thing of old Agamemnon, he might have whistled for the favor. The deuce is in it, if we do not get as good ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... run, and an infernally daring one,' said Mr Rattenbury; 'in Lealand Cove, not half an hour ago. And the deuce of it is we had warning of it ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... son-in-law, be reasonable. God knows I don't say that Sidonie's conduct—But, for my part, I know nothing about it. I never wanted to know anything. Only I must remind you of your dignity. People wash their dirty linen in private, deuce take it! They don't make spectacles of themselves as you've been doing ever since morning. Just see everybody at the workshop windows; and on the porch, too! Why, you're the talk of the quarter, my ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... white teeth. "Come, now, none of that, my beauty. You're my wife all right, no matter how much of a fuss you make over it. I want to be agreeable, but you persist in raising the devil in me, and though you may not know it, I've a deuce of a temper when I'm thoroughly roused to anger—at least that's what the ...
— Mischievous Maid Faynie • Laura Jean Libbey
... less special. To listen to him was to combine the excitement of going out with the economy of staying at home. There was only one hindrance—that I seemed not to know any of the people this brilliant couple had known. I think he wondered extremely, during the term of our intercourse, whom the deuce I DID know. He hadn't a stray sixpence of an idea to fumble for, so we didn't spin it very fine; we confined ourselves to questions of leather and even of liquor- saddlers and breeches-makers and how to get excellent claret cheap- -and matters like ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... attending to Valre). Thither no coxcomb comes. (Valre again bows to him). What the deuce!... (He turns and sees Ergaste bowing on the other side). Another? What a great ...
— The School for Husbands • Moliere
... her down into the close cabin!' said Mrs Gamp, impatiently. 'What's the man about! The deuce is in him, I think. Why can't he leave her in ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... with his old loves and his new dances. He wondered how the deuce that fellow could be amused with such frivolity, and always look so serene and calm. Then there was Squib: that man never knew when to leave off joking; and Annesley, with his false refinement; and Darrell, with his petty ambition. He felt quite sick, and took a solitary ride: but he ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... Pansay, what the deuce was the matter with you this evening on the Elysium road?" The suddenness of the question wrenched an answer from me ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... are in our rear, everywhere. The railroad is torn up, the viaducts smashed, the wires cut, and general deuce to pay. I ran into an Uhlan or two—you notice it perhaps," he added, with a grim smile. "Could you drive me to Morteyn? Do you think the vicomte would lend me ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... himself, and was sure to make them some present or other—some said in proportion to his anger; so that the sexton, who was a bit of a wag (as all sextons are, I think), said that the vicar's saying, "The Devil take you," was worth a shilling any day, whereas "The Deuce" was a shabby sixpenny speech, only fit ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... involved in a block of traffic near the Mansion House, and rain began to fall. The two occupants of the car watched each other surreptitiously, mutually suspicious, like dogs. Scraps of talk were separated by long intervals. Mr. Prohack wondered what the deuce Softly Bishop had done that Angmering should leave him a hundred thousand pounds. He tried to feel grief for the tragic and untimely death of his old friend Angmering, and failed. No doubt the failure ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... a deprecating movement; he had been identified with a gentleman; not for a good deal of money now would he be classed with manufacturers. But his innate distrust of general principles revived. What the deuce was the good of talking about regularity and self-respect? It looked to him as if the house would ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... farmer, and I'm married, and I'm in a deuce of a stew because my spuds is drying up on me and no way to get water on 'em without I carry it to 'em in a jug," disclaimed Andy Green hastily. "All I know about punchers I learned from seeing picture shows when I go to ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... dizzy limit," Lawanne observed, when the tea and some excellent sandwiches presently appeared. "He bought another rifle the other day—paid forty-five bones for it. That makes four he has now. And they have to manage like the deuce to keep themselves in grub from one remittance day to the next. He's a study. You seldom run across such a combination of physical perfection and child-like irresponsibility. He was complaining about his limited income the other ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... "As if organized violence could have a steadying effect—could have any results that are not the offspring of violence. It is hard for me to talk about it. I've never even tried before to put it into words; but we are both suffering from the same cause, I think. I know it has played the very deuce with my life. It has made me discontented with what I have; but it hasn't shown me anything else that was worth striving for. I seem to have lost the power of wanting because I've discovered that nothing is worth having after ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... with her dear, soft touch, and her lips ready to kiss, and the sweet smell of her hair mounting to his brain like wine. Something pricked his arm: something that felt like the needle of a syringe; something that . . . But anyway, what the deuce was she doing? Then suddenly he recalled that pin at the back of her dress, where he'd pricked his wrist so badly the first time ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... bestow any personal presence at his interment. The wiser they, because he hath ordained nothing for them in his latter will and testament. The devil take me, if I go thither. If he be damned, to his own loss and hindrance be it. What the deuce moved him to be so snappish and depravedly bent against the good fathers of the true religion? Why did he cast them off, reject them, and drive them quite out of his chamber, even in that very nick of time when he stood in greatest need of the aid, suffrage, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... Robin. "There's the deuce of a current running over there, and Ann's not an experienced enough swimmer to tackle a drag ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... which simply said that the bearer, Gulab Lal Singh, would look after me and my belongings. So I paid attention to the man. He was a strapping fellow, handsome as the deuce, with a Roman nose, and the ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... tight case; but there was nothing to them, except that they were old Thompson's beyond a doubt. If I had thought there might be writing on them there was not so much as the scratch of a pencil. There seemed to be a card missing. I thought it was the deuce of hearts; but I was too sick over Marcia's discovery about Paulette to really examine the things and make sure. I shoved them into my coat pocket beside what was there already, just as Dudley came ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... got you and Elizabeth into a deuce of an unpleasant position. I've told you what a fine woman my mother is, and how she'd welcome Elizabeth with open arms, and now I find I was all wrong. My mother isn't a fine woman; she's an ancestor-worshiping, heartless, selfish snob. I'm ashamed ...
— Cupid's Understudy • Edward Salisbury Field
... hand, preaching, as I have already shown, in the most manly and emphatic style—which could have been emulated with advantage in other Episcopacies in my country. MacCarthy was a bookworm from Maynooth, who played the deuce with the diocese, allowing all the priests to run wild, and by his laxity becoming criminally responsible for much of the terrible condition of Kerry. Higgins was the nominee of a friend of Moriarty, and he worked hard to suppress ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... see that horse-thieving John Morgan is in this part of the country, cutting up the deuce. Between you and me, captain, if he comes this way, we'll try and give him the best we've got in ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... a deuce game, was hotly contested. Her face ablaze with interest, Keineth held her little body tensely poised on one toe, ready for instant action. The faces of the crowd around her blurred into nothing—there seemed only left in her small world those ...
— Keineth • Jane D. Abbott
... 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 ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... while, that it all led to nothing but superficiality and pedantry; we saw that our leading men, so-called advanced people and reformers, are no good; that we busy ourselves over foolery, talk rubbish about art, unconscious creativeness, parliamentarism, trial by jury, and the deuce knows what all; while, all the while, it's a question of getting bread to eat, while we're stifling under the grossest superstition, while all our enterprises come to grief, simply because there aren't honest men enough to carry ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... situations arise when esprit de corps is equivalent to, and even produces, discipline. That is where brother Boche fails to rise to the occasion. I am not of those who think the Boche a coward, but undoubtedly an unexpected situation very often plays the very deuce with both his courage and his organisation. In his plans he allows for most possibilities, but he is nonplussed when the situation does not turn out exactly as it should on paper. Again, man for man, he loses "guts" in tight corners, ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... up yourself," the doctor commented. "Watch this sun out here. Because it's dry here you Eastern people don't notice the heat until it plays the deuce ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... In a deuce of a pet For he liked not to fast in the least And the Parson and he On this point did agree They were far better pleas'd at ...
— The Entertaining History of Jobson & Nell • Anonymous
... of colonel Tamper, and the plighted hnsband of Mdlle. Florival.—G. Colman, sen., The Deuce ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... citizenship to try it. It ain't neighborly. Think of the lean years we've known. You can't do it. This war won't last forever—" Mr. Doolittle's voice was tinged with regret—"and it will be time enough to go in for playing the deuce with business when business gets slack again. That's the time for reforms, ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... effect upon the young men; they have been ruined by light wines and French quadrilles. "They've nothing," he says, "of the spirit of the old service. There are none of your six-bottle men left, that were the souls of a mess-dinner, and used to play the very deuce among the women." ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... at those fixed, glazed eyes in silence for a moment, would play, Scrooge felt, the very deuce with him. There was something very awful, too, in the spectre's being provided with an infernal atmosphere of its own. Scrooge could not feel it himself, but this was clearly the case; for though the Ghost sat perfectly motionless, its hair, and skirts, and tassels, were ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... "What the deuce brought you here, then?" he asked, in a more composed voice, putting his weapon back into his bosom. "Can't a gentleman live quietly without your coming to peep and pry? Have you no business of your own to look after, eh? And my daughter? how came you to know anything ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... "Why the deuce should I bore you with myself, when you're hot and tired? I've been a confounded fool; if not worse, and the devil's in the ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... has invented the lost girl's features and dress, and her disappearance into the bargain; and I hold with the schoolmen that she who does not exist cannot disappear. Poikilus, a puffing detective. S. I., Secret Inquiry. I spell Enquiry with an E—but Poikilus is a man of the day. What the deuce can Ned Severne want of him? I suppose I ought not to object. I have established a female detective at Hillstoke. So Ned sets one up at Islip. I shall make my own secret arrangements. If Poikilus settles here, he will be drawn through the horse-pond ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... "You must be in a deuce of a mess after the tornado. Just help yourself to a set of my dry things. The shirts are in the bottom drawer, the trousers are in the box under the bed, and then come over here to the sing-song. My leg is dickey or I'd come ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... shaking him.) What the deuce has got hold of you?"[130] And so in the case of practically all the ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... of the United States thought about English battue-shooting. Seemed to think we shot pheasants perched in the trees, and went on to say that wasn't the sport for him; he liked to go after his game, and find it for himself. Who the deuce cares if he does? If he can't talk better sense than that, no wonder CLEVELAND beat him ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 10, 1892 • Various
... with a dress-suit? How could he keep from feeling foolish in a low-cut vest, and what the deuce would he do with the tails? Did you part 'em or roll 'em up, when you sat down? And wouldn't everybody be able to tell from his foolish look that he didn't belong in one?" He could hear A.D.T. boys and loafers in front ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis |
