"Swindler" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... proved before you; but I must have it for my own use." We have heard of governors being everything that is bad and wicked; but a governor putting himself in the situation of a common cheat, of a common swindler, never was, I believe, heard of since the creation of the world to this day. This does not taste of the common oppressions of power; this does not taste of the common abuses of office; but it in no way differs from one of those base swindling cases ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... scoundrel," she said: "a swindler, gambler,—what I believe you Americans call a confidence-man. He is also my late husband's first cousin. Some years since he found it convenient to leave England, likewise his wife and daughter. Mrs. Calendar, a country-woman ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... lose count once in a while," he complained to his companion. "But nope—fifty even a night, no more ... Well, come on, Pete. We'd better get back to Fats and tell him the swindler got away." ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... eyes. There was a light in his own that shone like a blue flame. "Thanks!" he said again, as he released it. "You're very good, Miss Mortimer. But you mustn't be seen with me, you know. You've got to remember that I'm a swindler." ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... don't look upon me as a swindler. I am a man of honor. If I tell you that I was imprisoned, 'tis ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... was not the time to make the attempt to bring Hotchkiss to justice she pulled the veil closer over her face and avoided the man's eyes when he chanced to look back. She hoped the fellow was just worried. Of course, being a thief and a swindler, he was suspicious of everybody. He showed very plainly that he distrusted even Carlitos. The Mexican, however, seemed in a cheerful mood again. His outbreak against the "buzzard," Se[n]or Baldasso Nunez, must ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long
... be gled t' hear that Colonel Brentwood—him that befreended me—is a' richt. His lawyer turned oot to be a leear an' a swindler. The will that was to turn the Colonel oot o' a' his possessions is a forgery. His bonny bairn Rosa, is, like mysel', gaun' to be mairried; an' as the Colonel has nae mair bairns, he's gaun' to devote himsel'—so ...
— The Garret and the Garden • R.M. Ballantyne
... special indictments? In the first place, for an action of assault and batterification, in cuffing me, an elder of our kirk, with a sticked killing-coat, in my own shop; and, in the second place, as a swindler, imposing on his Majesty's loyal subjects, taking the coin of the realm on false pretences, and palming off goat's flesh upon Christians, as if they ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... a smart run, but Merrick could run also, and fear now lent speed to his flying feet. On and on went the swindler, with the Rover boys less than a square behind him. Then, as they came to a number of tall buildings, Merrick darted around a corner and ...
— The Rover Boys on the Farm - or Last Days at Putnam Hall • Arthur M. Winfield (AKA Edward Stratemeyer)
... Way of an Eagle The Knave of Diamonds The Rocks of Valpre The Swindler The Keeper of the Door Bars of Iron Rosa Mundi The Hundredth Chance The Safety Curtain Greatheart The Lamp in the Desert The Tidal Wave The Top of the ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... regretfully, defiantly, or otherwise—he judged whether they were being adequately punished or not. Yet he could not talk to Cowperwood as he now saw or as he would to the average second-story burglar, store-looter, pickpocket, and plain cheap thief and swindler. And yet he scarcely knew how ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... with the morning would have come sober sense, the cheque stopped before it could have been presented, the swindler caught. No! those exquisite Parisians were never intended to rest in Mr. Shipman's safe until the morning. That last bottle of '48 port, with the aid of a powerful soporific, ensured that Mr. Shipman would ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... byword that in offenses which result in a large accession of property to the offender he does not ordinarily incur the extreme penalty or the extreme obloquy with which his offenses would be visited on the ground of the naive moral code alone. The thief or swindler who has gained great wealth by his delinquency has a better chance than the small thief of escaping the rigorous penalty of the law and some good repute accrues to him from his increased wealth and from his spending the irregularly ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... notorious swindler and gambler doing here? He left New Orleans suddenly, or he would be in prison now, and you will see if he stops ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... he tried to assist the axiom by borrowing money; but he found that his uncle had definitely done with him. He would have assisted the axiom by stealing money, but he had neither the nerve nor the knowledge to be a swindler; he was not even sufficiently expert ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... will promise anything,' replied the brother, 'he promised he'd pay my college bills, when my father died; he promised he'd build the new wing to the Rectory. And it is to this man's son—this scoundrel, gambler, swindler, murderer, of a Rawdon Crawley, that Matilda leaves the bulk of her money. I say it's unchristian. By Jove it is. The infamous dog has got every vice except hypocrisy, and that belongs ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... allowed more than ever a free hand, on purpose to escort her to the Continent and encompass her there, and had dedicated to her, from the moment of their meeting, all the treasures of his experience. She had judged him in advance—polyglot and universal, very dear and very deep—as probably but a swindler finished to the finger-tips; for he was forever carrying one well-kept Italian hand to his heart and plunging the other straight into her pocket, which, as she had instantly observed him to recognise, fitted it like a glove. The remarkable thing was that these ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... out of the pocket of my coat which was hanging over the back of a chair. COME AT ONCE STOP AM IN TERRIBLE TROUBLE ... The only kind of terrible trouble Matilda could be in was if some swindler talked her out of some of her capital! And that definitely would not be easy to do. I grinned to myself at the recollection of her worrying herself sick once over what would happen to her if there was a revolution and ...
— The Gallery • Roger Phillips Graham
... lovely, and that pains have been taken with her education. Her mother was well born and well bred. If you would get at the truth, Miss Lovel, you must teach yourself to believe that they are not swindlers. They are no more swindlers than I am a swindler. I will go further,—though perhaps you, and the young Earl, and Mr. Flick, may think me unfit to be intrusted any longer with this case, after such a declaration,—I believe, though it is with a doubting belief, that the elder lady is the ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... known fact that people who live outside the law keep to their own plane. The swindler very rarely commits acts of violence. The burglar who practises card-sharping as a side-line, ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... can't choose one's brother; but who would choose to be the friend of a swindler? Is that ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... of a valet of the late Duc de Bouillon, Turreaux called himself before the Revolution Chevalier de Grambonville, and was, in fact, a 'chevalier d'industrie' (a swindler), who supported himself by gambling and cheating. An associate of Beurnonville, Barras, and other vile characters, he with them joined the colours of rebellion, and served under the former in 1792, in the army of the Moselle, first as a volunteer, and afterwards as an aide-de-camp. ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... that we cannot indict the Lady Superior as a swindler, whatever opinion we may secretly form of her," answered Mr Franklin, laughing. "I daresay that Miss Maynard will soon be able to replace her loss. We would rather not have her adventure made public, except for the sake ...
— Clara Maynard - The True and the False - A Tale of the Times • W.H.G. Kingston
... is good to murder Protestants under the guise of a Land Reform cry. The Land Leaguers have proved themselves murderers and robbers! Why allow the system to be introduced into Tyrone? They are boasted rebels. The swindler Parnell stated in his speech in Cincinnati, 'We will not be satisfied till we have destroyed the last link which keeps Ireland bound to England.' It is now sought to have this disloyal society and association of murderers established in Omagh. They ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... and a humbug, if not a swindler, was enough, Wade thought, to account for any failure. But he did not mention ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... to Smith's place, and told Smith he was a dirty, mean, despicable swindler—or something like that. Smith smiled. Dad put one leg through the slip-rails and promised Smith, if he'd only come along, to split palings out of him. But Smith did n't. The instinct of self-preservation must have ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... startled out of his usual calm propriety, 'do you not comprehend if that woman had gone out of your store with the calico, that she not only would never enter it again, but she would publish your name over town as a swindler and a cheat, and you never would hear the end of it. Pease had charged her double prices, and the goods would not stand a single washing. And you know whether or not you are ready to pay off the mortgage Deacon Esterbrook holds on ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... either Pitt or Fox in real eloquence, and, in the midst of all his changings and vacillations, he was always, without one exception, the steady and zealous friend of the liberty of the press. Poor Sheridan was always in pecuniary difficulties, and overwhelmed with debt; and he at last became quite a swindler in order to evade his creditors, and he died at a time when he could not obtain credit for a pot of porter. On the 22d, the Duke of Gloucester, who was called by the Royal Family Silly Billy, was married ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... faulty goods in a bad light, a device said to be practised by some horse-dealers. At any rate the words for horse-dealer in all languages, from the Lat. mango to the Amer. horse-swapper, mean swindler and worse things. Cozen is a favourite word with the Elizabethan dramatists, because it enables them to bring off one of those stock puns that make one feel ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... aunt's suspicions; and instead of lending the money, she wrote off to Mr. Smithers instantly to come up to her, desired me to give her up the 3,000l. scrip shares that I possessed, called me an atrocious cheat and heartless swindler, and vowed I had been ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray
... aloneness, of uncertainty, of the feeling of hopelessness, goodness of heart seemed the supreme charm. Such a woman as a landlady, and a landlady in New York, was pathetically absurd. Even to still rather simple-minded Susan she seemed an invitation to the swindler, to the sponger with the hard-luck story, to the sinking who clutch about desperately and drag down with them everyone who permits them to get ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... bulbul—but I leave this image to persons better acquainted with the East. His appearance, besides, was highly in his favour; the uniform of Sir Faraday, however inconvenient and conspicuous, was, at least, a costume in which no swindler could have hoped to prosper; and the exhibition of a valuable watch and a bill for eight hundred pounds completed what deportment had begun. A quarter of an hour later, when the train came up, Mr. Finsbury was introduced to the guard and installed in a first-class compartment, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... wretch, an impostor and a cheat. He is arrested and imprisoned "for obtaining property under false pretences" or, as Webster says, "fair pretences." He is punished for his villainy. The public do not call him a "humbug;" they very properly term him a swindler. ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... opinion and guarded by intellectual tastes, would lapse into vice as soon as the traditional sanction was removed. But what is to prevent the withdrawal of the traditional sanction from producing its natural effect upon the morality of the mass of mankind? The commercial swindler or the political sharper, when the divine authority of conscience is gone, will feel that he has only the opinion of society to reckon with, and he knows how to reckon with the opinion of society. If Macbeth is ready, provided he can succeed in this world, to "jump ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... you confessed to one of your men that you were about to sell the Sparrow-hawk for half as much again as she was worth. Let me assure you that you will do nothing of the kind. I would not give half the sum which you ask for her. From the first I suspected that you were a swindler, and it was to obtain proof of it that my son shipped with you as a cook. Have you anything that you wish to say in your defence, or will ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... "Look here, you swindler!" roared the owner of the suburban property to the real-estate man. "When you sold me this house, didn't you say that in three months I wouldn't part with ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... administrations has instructed four ministers to arrange such a treaty. The Bankers' Association wants it; the Merchants' Protective Alliance wants it. Amapala is the only place within striking distance of our country where a fugitive is safe. It is the only place where a dishonest cashier, swindler, or felon can find refuge. Sometimes it seems almost as though when a man planned a crime he timed it exactly so as to catch the boat for Amapala. And, once there, we can't lay our hands on him; and, what's more, we can't lay our hands on the money ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... panic, through the bewildered stage, the frozen stage and the stage of blanched apprehension, down to the instinctive prudence of extreme terror—the stillness of the mouse. But when she heard herself called the child of a cheat and a swindler, the very monstrous unexpectedness of this caused in her a revulsion towards letting herself go. She screamed out all at once "You mustn't speak ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... is done with. It is right to look our life-accounts bravely in the face now and then, and settle them honestly. And he is a poor self-swindler who lies to himself while he reckons the items, and sets down under the head—happiness that which is misery. Call anguish—anguish, and despair—despair; write both down in strong characters with a resolute pen: you will the better pay your debt to Doom. Falsify: insert ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... soldierly smartness in his manner. To be exact, he had acquired it in the navy. But that was all one; he had at least been trained to desperate resolves, so he accepted the match, and the white-haired swindler pronounced the connubial benediction, and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... questions to the bar of the Bible? I have indeed heard no distinctively religious conversation here yet; but I cannot be mistaken; I see what they are; I know what they will say when they open their lips. I feel as if I were a swindler, taking your money on false pretences; setting about an enterprise which may succeed, possibly, but would succeed little to your advantage. Think better of it and give it up! I am unselfish in saying that; for the people please me. Life in their house, I can fancy, might be very agreeable ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... be most widely and most quickly reached. Does good become evil because hypocrites use it as a cloak? It is also true that I have been "undignified." Let the stupid cover their stupidity with "dignity." Let the swindler hide his schemings under "dignity." I am a man of the people, not afraid to be seen as the human being that I am. I laugh when I feel like it. I have no sense of jar when people call me "Matt." I have a good time, ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... sir,' replied Captain N——, with almost frightful vehemence, 'as every trickster and swindler IS. You are a contemptible dastard—a despicable, damned villain! Draw your sword, sir, and defend your life, or every post and pillar in this town shall ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... gaol sooner or later; if you try to be too honest the chances are that the bailiff will get into your house—if you have one—and make a holy show of you before the neighbours. The honest softy is more often mistaken for a swindler, and accused of being one, than the out-and-out scamp; and the man that tells the truth too much is set down as an irreclaimable liar. But most of the time crow low and roost high, for it's a funny world, and you never know what ...
— On the Track • Henry Lawson
... the face of God and of man, and that oath he has violated;" the sequestrator will say: "The chief of the State has arrested, and detained against all law, the representatives of the sovereign people;" the swindler will say: "The chief of the State got his election, got power, got the Tuileries, all by swindling;" the forger will say: "The chief of the State forged votes;" the footpad will say: "The chief of the State stole their purses from the Princes of Orleans;" the murderer ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... done so more than once, but he had a warm regard for the girl who had saved his life, and, after all, his ideas were not quite so liberal as he fancied they had become in the Western forest. It was a trifle disconcerting to discover that she was the daughter of a swindler. ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... people didn't know any better, and went and paid thirty pounds premium—thirty pounds down to have me made THIS. The G.V. promised to teach me the trade, and he never taught me anything but to be a Hand. It's the way they do with draper's apprentices. If every swindler was locked up—well, you'd have nowhere to buy tape and cotton. It's all very well to bring up Burns and those chaps, but I'm not that make. Yet I'm not such muck that I might not have been better—with teaching. I wonder ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... that he's a swindler," said Cameron. "I was a fool to fall into his snare. Keep your money and ...
— The Young Explorer • Horatio Alger
... ladies in your train; or ponder well, and examine the characters of the keepers thereof, before you lead your innocent daughters, and their mamma, into places so dangerous. In the first place, you have bad dinners; and, secondly, bad company. If you play cards, you are very likely playing with a swindler; if you dance, you dance with a —— person with whom you had better have nothing ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and next to not incurring a debt, the greatest degradation would have been voluntarily to pay one." And yet was there great pretension to honor, but a man of honor of those days would in our time be considered a ruffian certainly, and probably a blackleg or a swindler. "It was a favorite boast of his (the first Lord Norbury) that he began life with fifty pounds, and a pair of hair-trigger pistols." "They served his purpose well.... The luck of the hair-triggers ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... know you to be one of the most infernal thieves and scoundrels unhung. If you attempt to hector with me, I will cane you; if you want more, I'll shoot you; if you meddle between me and Dawkins, I will do both. I know your whole life, you miserable swindler and coward. I know you have already won two hundred pounds of this lad, and want all. I will have half, or you never shall have a penny." It's quite true that master knew things; but ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... three half-sucked oranges (in case it should come to pelting), and rush to the theatre, was the work of just twelve minutes and a half. In another brief moment, payment having been tendered and accepted, Fitzflam was in the boxes, ready to expose the swindle and the swindler! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 30, 1841 • Various
... not. The King is not handling my money, nor the Prince Kalonay. It is in the keeping of Father Paul, the Father Superior of the Dominican monks, who is the only one of these people I know or who knows me. He is not a swindler, too, is he, or a retired croupier? Listen to me now, and do not fly out like that at me, or at mother. It is not her fault. Last summer mother and I went to Messina as tourists, and one day, when passing through a seaport town, we saw a crowd of people on the shore, ...
— The King's Jackal • Richard Harding Davis
... the compliment. I liked Elodie. Dress her at whatever Rue de la Paix rag-swindler's that you pleased, you would never metamorphose the daughter of the people that she was into the lady at ease in all company. She was a bit mannieree—on her best behaviour. But she had the Frenchwoman's instinctive knowledge of conduct. She conveyed, very charmingly, ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... he, with that exceedingly frank manner he had, the sort of manner particularly taking with reserved people, because it saves them so much trouble—"for otherwise how should you know that I am not an impostor—a swindler—instead of your cousin, which I hope you believe I really ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... carelessly took up the newspaper, and read the first paragraph which caught her eye. It was one of those mournful episodes which are sometimes revealed at the London police-courts. A young girl—a lady swindler—had been brought up for trial there. In her defence came out the story of a life, cradled in shame, nurtured in vice, and only working out its helpless destiny—that of a rich man's deserted illegitimate child. The report added, that "The convict was led from the dock in a state of ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... the hairdresser, has been endeavouring to raise his charge for shaving one half-penny per chin, to be enabled to speculate more largely. Shavings, journeyman carpenter, calculates upon clearing considerably more by 'Sister to Swindler' than a year's interest from the savings-bank. There are thousands of similarly circumstanced speculators: they make a daily, if not more frequent promenade to the betting-office; and on the days when the races come off, they may be observed in shoals, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 447 - Volume 18, New Series, July 24, 1852 • Various
... villing, Captain Vilson, to make hany hallowance for the eat of political discussion—but that is not hall that I ave to complain hof. Mr Heasy thought proper to say that I was a swindler and ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... has been a victim, not a swindler,' sounded from him in a feeble voice. 'You see, he says that Geldershaw has robbed him of all his ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... to their agreement, began to hope for his return, a letter in a very different tone burdened her with dismal doubts. Tarrant had quarrelled with his friend. He had discovered that Sutherland was little better than a swindler. 'I see that the fellow's professed energy was all sham. He is the laziest scamp imaginable; lazier even than his boozing old father. He schemes only to get money out of people; and his disappointment on finding that I have no money to lose, has shown itself at length ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... forehead]. How could I, how could I, old fool? I've grown childish, stupid mule. I have been in the service thirty years. Not one merchant, not one contractor has been able to impose on me. I have over-reached one swindler after another. I have caught crooks and sharpers that were ready to rob the whole world. I have fooled three governor-generals. As for governor-generals, [with a wave of his hand] it is not even worth ...
— The Inspector-General • Nicolay Gogol
... at three of the morning, woke sharply and fully; and sharply and coldly as her father pronouncing sentence on a cruel swindler she gave judgment: ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... than Sir Peter Teazle and damn all sentiment, and lo! the fellow is no better than a smirking jester, whose antics you can expose till men and women, who had foolishly laughed and wept as he moved them, turn from him, loathing him as a swindler. So it is that although Tristram Shandy continues one of the most popular classics in the language, nobody dares to confess his debt to Sterne except ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... so unpleasant that the mere mention of it has roused the bile of every penny-a-liner in the Republican press. I undertook to demonstrate that one of the fifteen millions of the 'ablest men in the country,' whom you are always hearing about, is a swindler. He is, but he does not ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... London Bridge for use. We, if we met such a ruffed and ruffled worthy as used to swagger by dozens up and down Paul's Walk, not knowing how to get a dinner, much less to pay his tailor, should look on him as firstly a fool, and secondly a swindler: while if we met an old Puritan, we should consider him a man gracefully and picturesquely drest, but withal in the most perfect sobriety of good taste; and when we discovered (as we probably should), over and above, that the harlequin cavalier ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... writing novels to entertain the world, and the philosophers in France trying experiments on electro-magnetism, Davy tumbling down stairs, and Denham and Co. in Africa looking for the Niger, here is all London rushing out to look at the cottage in which a swindler lived who murdered another swindler, and buying bits of the sack in which the dead body was put! Have your newspapers given what we have had in the Morning Chronicle? views of Roberts's cottage and the pond with Thurtell and Hunt dragging the ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... does not necessarily follow. The clever people of the under-world do nothing by halves nor without careful inquiry beforehand; that is what makes the difference between the common pickpocket and the brilliant swindler." He turned to Ailsa. "Is that all, Miss Lorne, or am I right in supposing that there is even ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... it under our very noses: it was all done in a way to take in the very devil. There's no Richard Martin; there never was a Richard Martin; there never will be: all this was contrived and executed by a swindler well known to the police, only they can't catch him; he is here, and there and everywhere; they call him 'Shifty Dick.' He and his myrmidons have bled the 'Gosshawk' to the tune ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... constant toil, but the women also are saying let us go free. They are demanding release just as much from their intolerable endless specialization as females. The tramp on the roads who won't work, the swindler and the exploiter who contrive not to work, the strikers who throw down their tools, no longer for twopences and sixpences as you say but because their way of living is no longer tolerable to them, and we women, who don't bear children or work or help; we are all in one movement ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... part of the United Kingdom, and had commenced some mining operations in country Donegal, when he was carried off by scarlet fever at Muckross in 1794. Such in brief outline was the career of Rudolph Erich Raspe, scholar, swindler, and undoubted creator ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... fatal discovery of my real name on my linen—of his misplaced confidence of affection, and the shame with which he should be obliged to meet his fashionable friends and confess that he had harboured a swindler, he gathered up the linen, clothes, silver toilet articles, and the rest of my gear, saying that he should step out that moment for an officer and give me up to the just revenge ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... up his little fat hand and clawed them off clumsily, felt inefficiently for his pocket-handkerchief, and then, to my horror, as he clung to me, he began to weep aloud, this little, old worldworn swindler. It wasn't just sobbing or shedding tears, it was crying as a child cries. It ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... the leavings of a swindler—the leavings of a swindler—and you stole, in my house, the place of an honest woman! Your lies have brought the curse of God on my family and it's you who are the cause of everything. The misfortune that's just befallen us, it's you who are the cause of it, I tell you! You're ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux
... found myself in a tight place and the unexpected happened—the inconceivable. The market went to pieces. And of course it was at the minute I was asked to account for the funds I had. I couldn't. So I was a swindler. I was tried. I was sentenced, and I ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... when he proved to them that he had lost his private means by Hunting's treachery, and insisted on making over to them all his right and title to the property he had invested with them, they saw that he was no confederate of the swindler, but that he had suffered more than ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... robber, the way he fixed it! If you have no luck in this world, then it's better not to live. There I spent out fifteen cents to stop up one hole, and it runs out another. How I ate out my gall bargaining with him he should let it down to fifteen cents! He wanted yet a quarter, the swindler. Gottuniu! my bitter heart on him for every penny he took from ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... it is," thought John, but he did not answer at once, as he was so excited he could hardly control his voice. He did not want the swindler to recognize him. ...
— Jack Ranger's Western Trip - From Boarding School to Ranch and Range • Clarence Young
... notoriety such as has for low and bad minds all the attractions of glory. He was not long without coadjutors and rivals. A wretch named Carstairs, who had earned a livelihood in Scotland by going disguised to conventicles and then informing against the preachers, led the way. Bedloe, a noted swindler, followed; and soon from all the brothels, gambling houses, and spunging houses of London, false witnesses poured forth to swear away the lives of Roman Catholics. One came with a story about an army of thirty thousand men who were to muster in the disguise of pilgrims at Corunna, and to sail ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... accomplished swindler, demanded two dollars as the fee for entering the mosque, which others of our party subsequently saw for sixpence, so we did not care to examine that place of worship. But there were other cheaper sights, which were to the full as picturesque, for which there was no call to pay money, ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... compliment to a nation to receive the congratulations of men who assert not only people-king, but people-God; and those Americans who are delighted with them are worse enemies to the American democracy than ever were Jefferson Davis and his fellow conspirators, and more contemptible, as the swindler is ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... seemingly tame, insipid clown of a husband counteracts the base manoeuvres of a dashing Paris roue; and finally, after refusing to fight the would-be seducer, whom he has ascertained to be an arrant swindler, takes truncheon in hand, and belabours him in presence of his intended victim and of a roomful of company. But setting aside any moral tendency which goodwill towards such a vastly pleasant author as De Bernard may induce us, by the aid of our most complaisant spectacles, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... conducted himself as to inspire a belief that he had entirely reformed. But no sooner was he raised a step, than committing some fresh peccadillo, he was compelled to desert in order to avoid punishment. He came thence to Paris, where his exploits as swindler and pickpocket procured him the unenviable distinction of being pointed out to the police as one of the most skilful ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 379, Saturday, July 4, 1829. • Various
... house, you sneaking lying swindler. You clear out and never open your head to me one word about your damned ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... for sometimes The Devil is a gentleman; At others a bard bartering rhymes For sack; a statesman spinning crimes; A swindler, living as ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... pretty unmitigated rascal," he said at last. "And I can't flatter myself that any repentance for his misdeeds offers one an excuse for condoning them. He was a swindler and a hypocrite. You can't get away from it. I never met a more agreeable companion. He's taught ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... passed between them, and Louis struck the scoundrel. Potts complained. Brandon had his son up on the spot; and after listening to his explanations gave him the alternative either to apologise to Potts or to leave the house forever. Louis indignantly denounced Potts to his father as a swindler. Brandon ordered him to his room, and gave him a week ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... dying by inches of mental disorder, and his pardon was procured by the influence of Mr. Watson. He went back to his home. The ten thousand dollars which Dock had borrowed of him was recovered, in process of law, of the person with whom the swindler had deposited it. The old man had really lost but a thousand dollars, the amount of his fine; but he was too miserable to survive long, and died two years after his discharge from prison. Levi was his heir, ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... the matter more clearly, if that is what you mean by twigging; but how shocking 58it all is! why, Cumberland is quite a swindler—gambling, borrowing money he can't ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... dove into Dick's pocket, and drew out a rusty jack-knife, a battered cent, about fifty cents in change, and the capacious pocket-book which he had received from the swindler who was anxious to get back to his ...
— Ragged Dick - Or, Street Life in New York with the Boot-Blacks • Horatio Alger
... called Chicory, or Checkerberry," whispered C. Skimmerhorn, Esq. "Anybody can see he is a swindler by his slouched hat, and beard. Shouldn't I enjoy having a good ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... down to business," Gibson said as he turned back to face them, a paper in his hand. "Here's the story. I'm going to arrest one of 'Gink' Cummings' lieutenants. The man I'm after is 'Big Jim' Hatch, a notorious bunko swindler, and I've got him cornered but he ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... use of the sayin' about curin' with the hair of the dog that bit you. Figgered a swindler wouldn't never suspect nobody of swindlin' him with one of his own tricks. This here Mr. Baxter, or Mr. Bowman, or whatever his name is, used to make a livin' sellin' gold bricks. When I found that there fact out I jest calc'lated he was ripe ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... extinct public opinion which permitted and justified acts of violence. People need only come to be as much ashamed to do deeds of violence, to assist in them or to profit by them, as they now are of being, or being reputed a swindler, a thief, a coward, or a beggar. And already this change is beginning to take place. We do not notice it just as we do not notice the movement of the earth, because we are moved together with ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... "ring" relics of the war, with their profligacy and corruption, on each one of which Colonel Mulberry Sellers would have remarked: "There's millions in it." Yet the lobbyists and schemers enriched by these plunder schemes, who bore the brand of "swindler" in scarlet letters of infamy upon their foreheads, did not lose their ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... abusing the hospitality of his lodgings, has conveyed away and sold the best goose feathers of his landlady. What then, with his name ripe enough to drop from the tree of life, remains to Wiggins, but to subside into Smith? What hope was there for the well-known swindler, the posted pickpocket, the callous-hearted, slug-brained Tory? None: he was hooted, pelted at; all men stopped the nose at his approach. He was voted a nuisance, and turned forth into the world, with all his vices, like ulcers, upon him. Well, Tory adopts the inevitable policy ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... in a robbery at Hampstead; B. remembers that similar peculiarities were present in an affair in which he arrested Bill Smith, at Brixton, some years ago. Resolved unanimously that Bill's recent movements will bear looking into. Opinions will be discussed of the identity of a swindler who has been duping furniture dealers by selling them furniture from houses or flats he has rented. Many a fraud has been detected by these informal discussions in that ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot
... how terribly his heart sank within him when he heard these words! Yes; he could have little doubt about it. This mimic and swindler, he felt assured, was none other than his own brother-in-law. Happily, however, he was pretty sure to be now out of the neighbourhood, and was not likely to show himself soon again. But what of his unhappy wife? Alas! ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... Kennedy in his righteous wrath, "fake nobleman, real swindler of five continents. Marie de Nevers alive stood in the way of your marriage to the heiress Miss Lovelace. Dead, she ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... of buying him. It was his own idea to do what he did. For the pleasure of being insolent and showing his boldness, he has pulled down from its pedestal what he adored, consequently the most criminal among the members of the Commune, once a swindler, now a pilferer, is free to say to M. Rossel, who is, I am told, a man of intelligence and honesty, "You are worse than I am, for ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... and such epithets as liar, cheat, and swindler were freely interchanged, and then there was a simultaneous spring at each other, the chairs were overturned and they were rolling upon the floor, dealing each other fierce blows and tearing each other's ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... He wondered that such an old Tory as Madam Esmond of Castlewood was suffered to go at large, and was for ever crying out against her amongst the gentlemen of the new Assembly, the Governor, and officers of the State. He and Fanny had high words in Richmond one day, when she told him he was an old swindler and traitor, and that the mother of Colonel Henry Warrington, the bosom friend of his Excellency the Commander-in-Chief, was not to be insulted by such a little smuggling slave-driver as him! I think it was in ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... you the truth, for you don't know me. Because you sometimes meet with deception, you think I am deceiving you; but I pledge you my honor that a fortnight from this day I will be with you again, and you will confess your self ashamed of your suspicions." "Bah! you're a swindler!" ejaculated Boniface; "this will be the last of you: take that!" and with a vigorous coup de pied, was "sped the parting guest." "You will live to regret this, landlord, I am sure; but I do not blame you, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... gain enormous wealth. Sometimes it is a trick in which the cupidity of the victims and their readiness to swallow promises of large and immediate profits play as important a part as the ability of the swindler. Sometimes it is a gigantic hoax, in which the deviser himself becomes keenly interested and for the carrying out of which he spends as much talent and energy as would suffice, if employed honestly, to acquire considerable wealth; but the swindler delights ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... quite certain that in a year or two you will be offered some really big and responsible position—you would be insane to tie yourself to a girl who seems to have been allowed to run perfectly wild, whose uncle is a swindler . ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... town—his good looks convincing them at once, as the chronicler says, that he was the true prince. Justices sitting at Horsham, however, having less susceptibility to the testimony of handsome features, found him to be the son of an innkeeper named Savage, and imprisoned him as a vagrant and swindler. ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... love of fair play at home than any of his brothers, proved clearly that I did more good than harm. I was, he declared, a brave fighter, and there was no knowing when they might need an extra hand. I might also be shaped into a swindler. I was very young and very ignorant; but John, perhaps, would endeavour to win me over by kindness, and make my lot less wretched. Above all, he might enlighten me as to my true position, by explaining that I was an outcast from ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... companionship was rather dull, and his younger sister, Seraphine, a big, vicious, and flighty girl of eighteen, who, as it happened, soon left the house amid a frightful scandal—an elopement with a certain Baron Lowicz, a genuine baron, but a swindler and forger, to whom it became necessary to marry her. She then received a dowry of 300,000 francs. Alexandre, after his father's death, made a money match with Constance, who brought him half a million francs, and Marianne then found herself still more a stranger, still more isolated beside ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... Jogesh and belaboured him sorely with their shoes. He did not retaliate, but consoled himself with the thought that he had done his duty, to God and society, by marrying his daughter, whatever fate might await him. After vowing to bring a suit against the swindler, Amarendra Babu and his uncle left the premises and did what they would have done much earlier had they not been in such a desperate hurry to marry the lad. They made inquiries as to Jogesh's position and soon discovered that he was a man of straw, ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... else), he solemnly assured me that he knew nothing about it! Now, after this, what confidence can we have in anything that this man will say or profess! I confess I am sadly mortified at my own credulousness. John I always considered as no better than a swindler, but James I put some trust and confidence in. You judged more accurately, for you always said that 'he was a damned cunning fellow!' Well, there is every appearance of your being right; but his cunning (as it never ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... formidable day of the 4th December, Louis Bonaparte did not perhaps quite know himself. Those who studied this curious Imperial animal did not believe him capable of such pure and simple ferocity. They saw in him an indescribable mongrel, applying the talents of a swindler to the dreams of an Empire, who, even when crowned, would be a thief, who would say of a parricide, What roguery! Incapable of gaining a footing on any height, even of infamy, always remaining half-way uphill, a little above petty rascals, ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... Chandler smilingly. "I don't suppose you'll ever come across even a common swindler, let alone anyone who's committed a murder—not one in a million does that. Why, even I have never had anything to do with a ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... a liar and a blackguard, and I believe him to be a swindler," said Sir Harry. Then Lady Elizabeth was mute, and ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... myself because the speculation threatened to fail—I reproach myself for losing my courage. I ran away like a swindler and a thief, because I could not face my best friend and tell him I had ruined him ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... about it. If you want to prevent your being shown up to your friend as an amiable young swindler, you can stop it by undertaking that you and your lot will do what I tell you. If not, it is your own look-out, ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... Jeffries," except that I have a faint impression of having recently noticed that name among my begging-letter correspondents, and of having associated it in my mind with a regular professional hand. Your caution has, I hope, disappointed this swindler. But my testimony is at your service if you should need it, and I would take any opportunity of bringing one of those vagabonds to punishment; for they are, one and all, the most heartless and worthless vagabonds on ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... Loring had so deeply loved was sister to the wife of this military castaway, this unprincipled gambler, swindler and thief, and he, Loring, had charged himself with a commission that might bring him once more face to face with her ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... They caught all of the men except that wretch, Pedro. The sheriff's taken them to Perilla for trial. He says they'll surely be convicted. Better yet, one of them has turned State's evidence and implicated a swindler named Draper, who was at the bottom ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... by the arguments between the editor and sub-editor, which they do not publish. This casualness is our English vice. It is at once casual and secret. Our public life is conducted privately. Hence it follows that if an English swindler wished to impress us, the last thing he would think of doing would be to put on a uniform. He would put on a polite slouching air and a careless, expensive suit of clothes; he would stroll up to the Mayor, be so awfully sorry ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton |
