"Wheedling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... continued the wheedling and designing Mr. Leary, "that as soon as we reach the station house I can make satisfactory atonement to you for my behaviour just now and can explain everything to your superiors in charge ...
— The Life of the Party • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... hearth-rug. But he did not sleep. He would watch the wings of flame gilding the dark throat of the chimney, and his mind seemed drawn upward on that rush of light, up into the pure chill air where the moon was riding among sluggish thick floes of cloud. In the darkness he heard chiming voices, wheedling and tantalizing. One night he was walking on his little verandah. Between rafts of silver-edged clouds were channels of ocean-blue sky, inconceivably deep and transparent. The air was serene, with a faint ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... were walking slowly toward the stable. "Bless me!" cried Madge, "where am I going with no better protection than a sunshade? I'm always a little off when a horse like that is at hand. I say, Graydon," she added, in a wheedling tone, "mount and put him through his paces. I can't resist the fun, no matter what ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... at twelve, will you, ma?" called Jerry, in his most wheedling voice. His mother only laughed, but Jerry felt sure she would. Besides, there was his dollar ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island • Gordon Stuart
... facts. But when we remember that not a word is said throughout the volume of Jasper's antecedents, who he was, and where he came from; when we remember that but for his nephew he was a lonely man; when we see that he was both criminal and artist; when we observe his own wheedling propensity, his false and fulsome protestations of affection, his slyness, his subtlety, his heartlessness, his tenacity; and when, above all, we know that the opium vice is HEREDITARY, and that a YOUNG man would not be addicted to it unless born with the craving; {5} then, ...
— The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot • Andrew Lang
... and then at last end by selling the precious tusk to some one for even less than the first merchant had offered. Their love of dawdling in the transaction arises from the self- importance conferred on them by their being the object of the wheedling and coaxing of eager merchants, a feeling to which even the love ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... they were to expect a deluge. Until that appeared they should find in the atone their best adviser and protector, and if they would pray to it, giving a deaf ear to the wood-devils, it would cure them of illness, gray hair, and age. After a time came the monkey out of the woods, beguiling and wheedling, while at every chance, with a monkey's love of mischief, he worked at the stone, trying to dislodge it from the mouth of the cave. At last he succeeded, and out poured the flood. An old woman ran to a palm that touched the sky with ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... a wheedling tone, "we're coming out here to visit Lizzie's place some day, ain't we? You promised ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... a bit beyond the head of the town, near Gallows-hall toll. The cat should be let out of the pock by my declaring, that Nanse, the goodwife, had also a finger in the pie—as, do what ye like, women will make their points good—she having overcome me in her wheedling way, by telling me, that it was curious I had no ambition to speel the ladder of gentility, and hold up my chin in imitation of ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... me help in your charities, auntie," he said in a wheedling tone; then, tossing back his head suddenly, "But this is different, of course; only just think, Aunt Felicie, how the ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... conceit! They grow powerful while looking at us. They are like those little wood creatures which can take the hue of the tree on which they rest, so that for a long time we do not perceive them. They sit beside us by hundreds when we fancy we are alone; and change their colors and their wheedling tones to suit our inclinations, while they pour into our ears deceitful whisperings that the world is all wrong, and we are all right,—the vile flatterers! They paint all our surroundings with dark colors, make all our pictures Mater Dolorosas or St. ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... Hawkesbury, almost in his old wheedling tone, "I shall be away for three or four days. I'll get you to keep the petty-cash accounts till I return. I won't leave the regular book out, as I have not time to balance it. You can enter anything on a separate paper, which I will copy in when I return. There is L3 ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... the door behind her, and approached her son with all the wheedling and supplication servilities that fear and interest can impart to the words and attitudes of the born slave. She stopped a yard from her boy and made two or three admiring exclamations over his manly stature and general handsomeness, and Tom put an arm under his ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... shake their curls And hug the dirtiest babies in the camp. They will return to the moving pillar of smoke, The whitest toothed, the merriest laughers known, The blackest haired of all the tribes of men. What trap can hold such cats? The Romany Has crossed such delicate palms with lead or gold, Wheedling in sun and rain, through perilous years, All coins now look alike. The palm is all. Our greasy pack of cards is still the book Most read of men. The heart's librarians, We tell all lovers what they want to know. So, out of the famed Chicago Library, Out of the great Chicago ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... off and shoot theirselves through the feet when they go totin' guns around," the fellow said, speaking in the wheedling, ingratiating way that one addresses an irresponsible child or a man in alcoholic paresis. The others appeared to find a subtle humor in their comrade's mode of handling a granger. Morgan grinned with them as if he ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... but the pedlar had a wheedling eye and a genteel demeanour, and Mary hesitated. She called the cook, a stout, middle-aged person, who came to the door to see what was up. The pedlar rapidly showed the best items of his collection, which he had selected with great care in a ...
— Kathleen • Christopher Morley
... II to entertain seriously this idea of disarmament, and that would be for Bismarck to oppose it. Truly, there is something extremely pleasant in this duel between the two ex-accomplices! Bismarck terrorising socialism, William coaxing and wheedling it, for no other tangible purpose than to act in opposition to him whose power ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... offices roved Greaseabloom, by Ceppi's virgins, bright of their oils. Nannetti's father hawked those things about, wheedling at doors as I. Religion pays. Must see him for that par. Eat first. I want. Not yet. At four, she said. Time ever passing. Clockhands turning. On. Where eat? The Clarence, Dolphin. On. For Raoul. Eat. If I net five guineas with those ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... Barclay knew wheedling would not move Brownwell. He was of the mulish temperament. So Barclay stretched out in his chair, locked his hands back of his head, and looked at the ceiling through his eyelashes. After a silence he addressed the cobwebs above him: "Supposing the case. Would a letter from me to ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... up, sonny! Yo' Uncle Bob is ready fo' to strike out home," he said. The child roused with a start and stared into the strange bearded face that was bent toward him. "It's yo' Uncle Bob," continued Yancy in a wheedling tone. "Are you the little nevvy what will help him to hook up that old blind mule of hisn? Here, give us the ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... amusing herself by caricaturing the manners of a class of women who are even greedier but more wheedling and mealy-mouthed than the Malay woman, and who put a gloss of the best motives on the trade they ply. Asie affected to have lost all her illusions, five lovers, and some children, and to have submitted to be robbed by everybody in spite of her experience. ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... came to hear it, unless the lieutenant here sent a report to him. But I ask you to believe me, Frances"—Nola put her hand on Frances' arm in her old wheedling, stroking way—"when I tell you I hadn't anything to do with it. In spite of what I said last night, I hadn't. I was wild and foolish last night, dear; I'm sorry for all ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... your impudence, Andy Churchill," said Mrs. Hepsibah Fields to herself, as she laid her smooth loaves of bread-dough into their tins and proceeded energetically to scrape the board. "You always did have a way with you, wheedling folks into doing what they didn't want to just to please you. Now I've got to go meddling in other people's business and getting snubbed, most likely, just because you're trying to combine ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond
... white beads that glistened like jewels in the sun, and from them hung a gorgeous filigree cross. "Didst thou ever see a sweeter thing than this?" said he; "and look, here is a comb that even the silversmith would swear was pure silver all the way through." Then, in a soft, wheedling voice, "Canst thou not let me in, my little bird? Sure there are other lasses besides thyself who would like to trade with a poor peddler who has travelled all the way from Gruenstadt just to please ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... hapless commander agreed to terms of capitulation, whereby his troops were to march out and lay down their arms in six days' time, if an Austro-Russian army able to raise the siege did not come on the scene. These conditions were afterwards altered by the captor, who, wheedling his captive with a few bland words, persuaded him to surrender on the 20th on condition that Ney and his corps remained before Ulm until the 25th. This was Mack's last offence against his country and his profession; his assent to this wily compromise at once ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... character—a most unfortunate choice in this moral day. The audience were as scandalised as if you were to introduce such a personage to their private tea-tables. Besides, her action in the play was gross—wheedling an old man into marriage. But the mortal blunder of the play was that which, oddly enough, H. took pride in, and exultingly told me of the night before it came out, that there were no less than eleven principal characters in it, and I believe he meant of the men only, for the play-bill ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... before—I guessed that his somewhat professional interest in Belle Treherne had developed into a very personal thing. And with that thought came also the conception of what a powerful antagonist he would be. For it improves some men to wear glasses; and Clovelly had a delightful, wheedling tongue. It was allusive, contradictory (a thing pleasing to women), respectful yet playful, bold yet reverential. Many a time I have longed for Clovelly's tongue. Unfortunately for me, I learned some ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... by more people and read by more, and the improvement in the times being of a stable and permanent character their circulation will be free from the rise and fall with which they are now only to well acquainted, and the cheap-John business into which so many have gone, in the last few years, wheedling the ten cents and the dollars out of the child-like poor for worthless truck, can be thrown into the waste basket with the last offer of money for a Wall Street editorial. It is a mistake, by the way, to think we are a nation of readers. ...
— Confiscation, An Outline • William Greenwood
... Boteler's ranch. With the most careful economy, it could last but two or three days longer. I saw the necessity of placing myself and imaginary companions upon allowance. The conflict which ensued with the stomach, when I announced this resolution, required great firmness to carry through. I tried wheedling and coaxing and promising; failing in these, I threatened to part company with a comrade so unreasonable, and he made ...
— Thirty-Seven Days of Peril - from Scribner's Monthly Vol III Nov. 1871 • Truman Everts
... not unnatural turn of fate, we, and our plans and combinations, are sent flying before the wind. We may be as wise as Louis Philippe, that many-counselled Ulysses whom the respectable world admired so; and after years of patient scheming, and prodigies of skill, after coaxing, wheedling, doubling, bullying, wisdom, behold yet stronger powers interpose: and schemes, and ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... their places, stating that its editor was in its composing-room. Other, if not all other city papers, did likewise, and there was a rush of women to the printing offices; but ninety out of a hundred had not passed that stage of development in which women live by wheedling men. Those who wheedled most winningly got the places, and the result in less than two months was such a mess of scandal, as drove them, like whipped curs, back to their kennels; but the editor of the Visiter took a good look at each of the hundred applicants, and from them selected three, who ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... for a king. No other could have such bright brown eyes beneath heavy sandy brows, such red, red cheeks, and so long and silver-white a beard which the sun could still betray into confession of its youthful ruddiness. What if he did have, too, a brogue so soft, so wheedling that men had long called him ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... make thee, friend Bull, the upper or the under?" Bull reddened, but said naught. Said Ralph: "Or where shall I sell thee, that I may make the best penny out of my good luck and valiancy?" Bull looked chopfallen: "Nay," said he in a wheedling voice, "thou wilt not sell me, thou? For I deem that thou wilt be a good master to me: and," he broke into sudden heat hereat, "if I have another master I shall ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... lamb. She is not to teach, but to spend the winter sewing on her clothes and bedding, and Father told her he would give her the necessary money. She said so. And I suspect he will. He always favoured her because she was so pretty, and she can come closer to wheedling him than any of the rest of us ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... indeed, did he become in wheedling these favors from his friends and from those with whom he traded, that he devoted the major portion of each day to feeding and left himself little time to attend to his business affairs. Moreover, he grew unpleasantly fat. His face was red and bloated with much wine drinking. He was ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... tell me," said a downtrodden wife of one of Maclin's men, "that she turned her husband out of doors after wheedling him out of all he should have had from his father, unless she meant to leave the door open for another! A woman only acts as she ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... sure, I have no talent for; and without flattering and wheedling you'll never have conjugal obedience. Don't you remember ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... I lie to my friend? Am I a man? Am I a christian? There is that wife you mentioned, a delicate little wheedling devil, with such an appearance of simplicity; and with that, she does so undermine, so fool her conceited husband, that he ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... held the threads of many enterprises, became a sort of clearing-house for East Side troubles. He kept free certain hours during which, sitting for all the world like a judge, he listened to private affairs, and sympathizing, scolding, wheedling, and even bullying, he gave advice, gave money, found work, brought about reconciliations, and turned hundreds of erring feet into the straight and narrow path. He preached, and very eloquently, the gospel of common-sense. For every crisis in people's lives, ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... stated, sat during her hours of work behind a ground-glass screen, unseen and unseeing. To her the patrons of the establishment were mere disembodied voices—wheedling voices, pathetic voices, voices that protested, voices that hectored, voices that whined, moaned, broke, appealed to the saints, and in various other ways endeavoured to instil into M. Gandinot more spacious and princely ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... and speaking under the hood, 'if ye have been hardly served, 'twas to make ye the second lady in Scotland. Take care of her—him, young laddie,' he added, turning on Malcolm: ''tis best so; and mind' (he spoke in the same wheedling tone of self-excuse), 'if ye tell the tale down south, nae ill hath been dune till her, and where could she have been mair fitly than beneath her kinsman's roof? I'd not let her go, but that young blude is ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the Crag? So it was from him you heard it?—the pitiful, wheedling rascal! That is his gratitude, I suppose, for my being with his wife last week!—I shall know where to find him. But the receiver in the like is no better than the stealer," she resumed, indignantly; "and ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... me, I know," he said, in his wheedling Irish way, and she saw at once that, whatever his inner feelings, he had no intention of wearing his ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... pards," he said in the gruff, wheedling tones of the professional tramp, "can't you do something for a chap that's down on ...
— Klondike Nuggets - and How Two Boys Secured Them • E. S. Ellis
... Benjamin," his father groaned. "I hate parting with hard-earned money for exorbitant bills and these long journeys. Couldn't it be done without it, Ben?" he inquired, in a wheedling tone. "There's piles of money gone already in expenses. Piles ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... spoke to him in a soft, wheedling tone. Then he held up a scrap of meat, and caught the eager attention of the little beast; after which he tossed it to him. It vanished like a flash. The dog even wagged his tail, as if to let the man know ...
— Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines - The German Spy's Secret • Charles Amory Beach
... tell the beautiful lady, the fortunate lady, the discerning lady,' answered she, in a fawning, wheedling tone. 'How should a poor old ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... crowds, and to which, on one occasion, the majority of the Council condescended to repair. His house was an office for the purpose of receiving charges against the Governor-General. It was said that, partly by threats, and partly by wheedling, the villainous Brahmin had induced many of the wealthiest men of the province to send in complaints. But he was playing a perilous game. It was not safe to drive to despair a man of such resources and of such determination ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... upon her eagerly. "Bless yore purty sweet face! You won't let 'em git the ole man. That's right. Take me along with you to see my darter." He put a wheedling hand ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... purchasers, together with an even larger number of the merely curious, streamed in at the gate and overran the premises. At noon the auctioneer mounted his perch, gathered the crowd round him, and soon had the sale in full swing, catching head-bobs, or wheedling and insisting with, when persuasion could do no more, his monotonous parrot-cry of: ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... in which she made the query was never anything but disarming; it was quite childishly wheedling and innocently eager, he thought. But reiterated from day to day it wore on his nerves after a while. Added to the something he sometimes thought he caught glimmering in her tip-tilted eyes, it made him ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... their opinions aside. If they applaud, we are pleased: if they shake their quick pens, and fly off with a hiss, we resign their favors and put on all the fortitude we can muster. I would rather have the lowest man's good word than his bad one, to be sure; but as for coaxing a compliment, or wheedling him into good-humor, or stopping his angry mouth with a good dinner, or accepting his contributions for a certain Magazine, for fear of his barking or snapping elsewhere—allons donc! These shall not be our acts. Bow-wow, Cerberus! Here shall be no sop for thee, ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Spearman, O Sea-warrior, let not his heart be downcast. Who wotteth but that these two desires, the desire of his heart, and the desire of a heart for him, may not be one and the same desire, so that he shall be fully satisfied?" As she spoke she looked sidelong at Hallblithe, with shy and wheedling eyes; and he wondered at her word, and a new hope sprang up in his heart that he was presently to be brought face to face with the Hostage, and that this was that love, sweeter than their love, which abode in him, and his heart became lighter, and ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris
... Mr. Wellesly," he began, and the Irish accent was rich and strong in his coaxing, wheedling tones, "sure, now, you don't want to be killin' yourself, after you've held out this far. Just you-all do as we say and we'll bring you through all right. Sure, and you shall be after havin' all the water you want, but you must take it on the outside ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... the decision that Javert was just bluffing. Later developments proved me right. He knew nothing about it. Even the German Secret Service is not omniscient. Getting no results then from these wheedling tactics Javert shifted back to his bullying and essayed once more to browbeat me into a confession. Calling to his aid two officers who had been but casual onlookers they began volleying charges ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... The future Member for Manchester chanced in a lucky hour to find in his "Book of Useful Knowledge" the tradition that the aloe flowers only once in a hundred years. He instantly saw his opportunity, and accosting the maid with winning air and wheedling accent, asked insinuatingly, "Dunn, have you often ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... you wheedling Irishman! Yes, you may dine if you like. The Gerrards are coming for bridge, and you'll be odd man out. There will be no one ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... down beside her. "Look here," he said, in a wheedling tone, "if I were really your big brother, I wouldn't let you go. Can't you let me order you around a little, just as if ...
— Judy • Temple Bailey
... keerful," she repeated, in a half wheedling, half chuckling voice. "Maaster Roger es the ouldest and the biggest, and the strongest; but Maaster Wilfred ev got ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... cajoles; he is no match for her. She confesses to having been pleased at my lord's flattery, but he had not touched "even the tips of her fingers." If her fault deserves it, he may beat her if he wants to, but then let there be peace between them. The artful minx! Her wheedling is irresistible. ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... her absurd pretensions. The fact is, she had been maid-servant to the Queen when her Majesty was only Princess, and her husband had been head footman; but after his death or DISAPPEARANCE, of which you shall hear presently, this Mrs. Gruffanuff, by flattering, toadying, and wheedling her royal mistress, became a favorite with the Queen (who was rather a weak woman), and her Majesty gave her a title, and made her nursery governess to ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... hair with an imprecation which I am confident was a "damn!" Then again, no man can turn on a more irresistibly ingratiating smile when he is getting the better of the other fellow than Mr. Lloyd George, and he has mastered a dodge of at such moments sinking his voice to a wheedling pitch calculated to coax the most suspicious and recalcitrant of listeners into reluctant concurrence. M. Mantoux would reproduce that smile to admiration, and his tones when translating Mr. Lloyd George's seductive blandishments into French were ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... you last night? I watched at the gate; I went down early, I stayed down late. Were you snug at home, I should like to know, Or were you in the coppice wheedling Kate? ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... wouldn't injure me, Captain," remarked Quilt, in a wheedling tone, while he felt about for his sword; "you're far too brave to strike a ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... any future—as far as you are concerned. It's a 'once for all' transaction. Well, what do you estimate your future at? he asks. . . The fellow more listless than ever—nearly asleep.—I believe the skunk was really too lazy to care. Small cheating at cards, wheedling or bullying his living out of some woman or other, was more his style. Cloete swears at him in whispers something awful. All this in the saloon bar of the Horse Shoe, Tottenham Court Road. Finally they ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... by naked eye, Wheedling, coaxing, courting, wooing, Death weds all to their undoing And the myth ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... said Lancaster, in a wheedling tone. He could scarcely see the animal, for the eastern window was snowed shut. The bull made no move. Presently, the old man shoved the single bar aside and hopped forward a step or two, his gaze fixed on the ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... who possesses great power of wheedling. It evidently alludes to the idea of the fascinating power of serpents by ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... again he played the blind force of male compulsion against the woman's secret weakness to yield. Not that it was Daylight's way abjectly to beg and entreat. On the contrary, he was masterful in whatever he did, but he had a trick of whimsical wheedling that Dede found harder to resist than the pleas of a suppliant lover. It was not a happy scene in its outcome, for Dede, in the throes of her own desire, desperate with weakness and at the same time with her better judgment hating her weakness ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... darlint, what's the use of batin' around the bush? Ye know that a cat niver looked at crame as oi look on ye," said Barney, in a wheedling tone, and trying the tactics ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... lady!" she began to Aveline in a half-bold, half-wheedling voice. "Cross the poor gipsy's hand with a shilling and she'll read the ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... gratis," the man answered, "and in the same spirit I'll give you a warning: don't attempt the impossible, whatever happens. A woman like her yonder might succeed in wheedling ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... to talk to mother; I won't take no for an answer," and he threw himself down beside her again. "Come, dear Midget, hold up your right hand and promise me now, before I let you go," he pleaded in his wheedling way that made him so lovable to his intimates, catching her two hands in his and ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... mother's son as Minnie was her mother's daughter. Restless, dissatisfied, empty-headed, he was the despair of his father. He drove the farm horses as if they were racers, lashing them up hill and down dale. He was forever lounging off to the village or wheedling his mother for money to take him to Commercial. It was before the day of the ubiquitous automobile. Given one of those present adjuncts to farm life, John would have ended his career much earlier. As it was, they found him lying ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... offer me more rewards! It was fun wheedling things from you at first; but bribes have been getting on my nerves lately. The ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... smiled warmly, and when he spoke his voice was almost wheedling. "Listen, Alan, we've been planning this thing for months. I put down seven thousand to clear your brother, just so I'd be sure of getting your cooperation. I tell you there's no danger. I didn't mean to threaten you—but ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... gratified, yet not so much so as to suppress his consciousness of his own mental superiority over the young soldier; "I believe in my heart nobody ever spoke half so much good of him before, except perhaps the sergeant of his company, when was wheedling a Highland recruit to enlist with him. He is a good lad notwithstanding, although he be not quite the hero your lordship supposes him, and although my commendations rather attest the kindness than the vivacity of his character. ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... have to!" retorted Rimrock but he moved up closer and there was a wheedling turn to his voice. "Just two thousand dollars, Lon—that's all I ask of you—and I'll give you a share in my mine. Didn't I come to you first, when I discovered the Gunsight, and give you the very best claim? And ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... adulation, gloze; blandishment, blandiloquence^; cajolery; fawning, wheedling &c v.; captation^, coquetry, obsequiousness, sycophancy, flunkeyism^, toadeating^, tuft- hunting; snobbishness. incense, honeyed words, flummery; bunkum, buncombe; blarney, placebo, butter; soft soap, soft sawder^; rose water. voice of the charmer, mouth honor; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... valued the moment they were divulged. Their little teasing hands, so destructive and lovable, had commenced the debacle of every human greatness. Throughout the ages, their coaxing, pleading voices could be heard wheedling men's hearts to the same purpose. "Tell me, I pray thee, wherein thy great strength lieth, and wherein thou mightest be bound to afflict thee." The strength of men had eternally roused their resentment, whether ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... inferior beings, with the old acknowledgment that "the devil is an ass." A head like the head of Dante, shown up by coloured lights, and against chromolithographic backgrounds, while all the diabolic intelligence is set to work on the cheap triumph of wheedling a widow and screwing Rhenish and Tokay with a gimlet out of an inn table: it is partly Goethe's fault, and partly the fault of Wills, and partly the lowering trick of the stage. Mephistopheles is not really among Irving's great parts, but it is among his picturesque parts. With his restless ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... wooden houses and churches, all surrounded by palisades. On the fair ground were to be seen Indians tricked out in their savage finery; coureurs de bois in equally gorgeous apparel; black-robed priests and busy merchants from all the towns, intent on wheedling the Indians and bush rangers out of their ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... was too wary to be caught. "Later on," I would reply to him; "when I have made my way, when I am stronger to withstand your wheedling. Then I will go with you, if you are still in existence, my sentimental little friend. We will dream again the old impractical, foolish dreams—and ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... sense of deadly scheming going on all around him, on all sides, in the dark. Nothing more calculated to shake the best of nerve. Finally, one night, Cornelius himself, with a great apparatus of alarm and secrecy, unfolded in solemn wheedling tones a little plan wherein for one hundred dollars—or even for eighty; let's say eighty—he, Cornelius, would procure a trustworthy man to smuggle Jim out of the river, all safe. There was nothing else for it now—if Jim cared a pin for his life. What's eighty dollars? A trifle. An insignificant ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... Riderhood. 'Who'd have thought it, from the looks on it! WOULD you be so kind as write your name upon it, learned governor?' (In a wheedling tone.) ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... enough to fell so vigorous a man, even with the capstan bar which we found lying near by. Nor could he have jerked and broken the amberline. Mrs. Johns I eliminated for the same reason, of course. I could imagine her getting the key by subtlety, wheedling the impressionable young ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... looked, he was ware of two coming towards him with pick and mattock on their shoulders. Swiftly they came, and soon they were at his side, fawning on him, and speaking in soft, wheedling voices. Their faces were eager and servile, their ...
— The Silver Crown - Another Book of Fables • Laura E. Richards
... good wheedling," he grumbled. "I'm not going to wait for anything. We've come to take you home, and the quicker you pack up and get ready ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... on His Majesty's Declaration for Liberty of Conscience," to warn the Nonconformists of the great mistake into which some were falling. "Was ever anything," he asked afterwards, "more absurd than this conduct of King James and his party, in wheedling the Dissenters; giving them liberty of conscience by his own arbitrary dispensing authority, and his expecting they should be content with their religious liberty at the price of the Constitution?" In the letter itself he pointed out that "the king's suspending of laws strikes ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... lose, said the Comtesse. The Cure of St. Marie is much coveted, and we have competitors in earnest. There is firstly the Abbe Matou, who is supported by all the fraternity of the Sacred Heart; he is young, active, wheedling and honey-tongued. He is the man I should choose myself, if I did not know you. He has had certainly a funny little story formerly with some communicants, but that is passed and gone, and as, after all, he is an intelligent ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... ten o'clock, I put on a wheedling smile and says to Miss Willella: 'Now, if there's anything I do like better than the sight of a red steer on green grass it's the taste of a nice hot pancake smothered ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... indeed, was entertainment for any man or woman or child. In this ancient market for the sale of discarded things, a lonely person could pass away the dull hours very agreeably. The auctioneers, wheedling and joking and bullying, could be trusted to amuse any reasonable man for a while, and when their entertainment was exhausted there were the stalls to visit and explore. He stood to listen to a loud-voiced man who was selling ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... Frank went on encouraging and wheedling his flock to pay up his dues, until he had gone through his entire congregation, when I left the chapel, highly amused at the characteristic ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... such lying lamentations to hide thy most heavy guilt? Wantoning like a harlot, thou hast entered a wicked and abominable state of wedlock, embracing with incestuous bosom thy husband's slayer, and wheedling with filthy lures of blandishment him who had slain the father of thy son. This, forsooth, is the way that the mares couple with the vanquishers of their mates; for brute beasts are naturally incited to pair indiscriminately; and it would ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... me he denounced," Elspeth insisted, "but young lassies that leads men astray wi' their abominable wheedling ways." ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... these occasions he told me with a touch of pleasantry that it was really shameful for me to have bought a farm, and, after the lapse of so many weeks, not yet to have left my business for three days in the hands of my workpeople, so as to have come to look at it. His wheedling words and ways induced me to set off, in a bad hour for my welfare, on a visit to him. Sbietta received me in his own house with such attentions and such honours as a duke might covet. His wife caressed me even more than he did; and these excellent relations continued between us ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... wish they were not your uncles!" cried Francois II. "I particularly dislike the cardinal; and when he puts on his wheedling air and his submissive manner and says to me, bowing: 'Sire, the honor of the crown and the faith of your fathers forbid your Majesty to—this and that,' I am sure he is working only for his ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... pretence, etc.: 'Under the mask of friendly intentions and with the plausible language of wheedling courtesy, I insinuate myself into the unsuspecting ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... at the same time reasonable in my terms, Mr. Jawkins? I will squeeze your hand for sixpence." She laughed charmingly. Go to London she must and would, but she hoped to accomplish her purpose by wheedling and to avoid ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... it that, immediately after leaving her, I wrote her perhaps one of the strongest and most violent letters that ever came from my pen, and since that time I never once returned to her house. I was better received by Father Castel; but, in the midst of his Jesuitical wheedling I perceived him faithfully to follow one of the great maxims of his society, which is to sacrifice the weak to the powerful. The strong conviction I felt of the justice of my cause, and my natural ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... that there had been a hole in the door, for I had a great desire to see Billy Coad, of whom I had heard Cap'n Jack speak so often. I heard his voice, however. It was softer even than Cap'n Jack's, and was of a wheedling tone, as though he wanted to get ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... requested Ernest to keep my past a secret. However, I was not displeased that he had been unable to do so. If a man of his inexperience, and in the zenith of his first overwhelming passion, had been able to keep such a secret in the teeth of his love's wheedling, he would have proved himself of the stuff to make an ambassadorial diplomat, but not of the calibre to be the affectionate, domesticated husband, having no interests of which his wife might ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... slave bargained to sell to an ironmaster the general's anchor from out of his own galley: when discovered, he was commended for his enterprising spirit, and told he was fit to be a slave, since he knew how to gain his living. This slave-dealer had a genius for wheedling the truth out of captives; he was so civil and sympathizing when a new prize was caught, so ready with his "Count" and "my lord" to plain gentlemen, and his "your Eminence" to simple clergymen, that they soon confided in him, ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... on that little stool. I think she must have had a kind of notion that it was a coaxing, wheedling little stool. ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... 'Tis Woman that seduces all Mankind, By her we first were taught the wheedling Arts: Her very Eyes can cheat; when most she's kind, She tricks us of our Money with our Hearts. For her, like Wolves by Night we roam for Prey, And practise ev'ry Fraud to bribe her Charms; For Suits of Love, like Law, ...
— The Beggar's Opera - to which is prefixed the Musick to each Song • John Gay
... redcoats at the steamer's side. Then you shall see a fine, squeaking, shrieking drove of pigs embarking by the same conveyance, and insinuated into the steamer by all sorts of coaxing, threatening, and wheedling. Seamen are singing and yeehoing on board; grimy colliers smoking at the liquor-shops along the quay; and as for the bridge-there is a crowd of idlers on that, you may be sure, sprawling over the balustrade for ever and ever, with long ragged coats, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... when I was made aware that he was not the writer of the offensive passages. You know, if there was such a thing, I would not deny it. I mentioned it openly at the time to you, and you will remember why and where I destroyed it; and no power nor wheedling on earth should have made, or could make, me (if I recollected them) give a copy after that, unless I was well assured that Mr. Croker was really the author of that which you assured ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... suspect that before long they'll come wheedling about in the hope that I'll let up on them or be ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... herself—and how would that help to bring back the stolen pocketbook, taken perhaps by the proprietor himself? She recalled that as she hurried through the office from the dining-room he had a queer shifting expression, gave her a wheedling, cringing good morning not at all in keeping with the character he had shown the night before. The slovenly girl came to do the room; Susan sent her away, sat by the window gazing out over the river and downstream. He would soon be here; the thought ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... any more. I bought five or six pounds' worth of Broussa silks for the womankind, in the bazaar at Constantinople, and the rich Armenian who sold them begged for three-halfpence to pay his boat to Galata. There is something naif and amusing in this exhibition of cheatery—this simple cringing and wheedling, and passion for twopence-halfpenny. It was pleasant to give a millionaire beggar an alms, and laugh in his face and say, "There, Dives, there's a penny for you: be happy, you poor old swindling scoundrel, as far as a penny goes." I used to watch these Jews on shore, and making ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... glaring cross-roads, and get down to make fun with the notorious Cocardon, the most ungainly and ill-bred dog of all the ungainly and ill-bred dogs of Barbizon, or clamber about the sandy banks. And meanwhile the Doctor, with sun umbrella, wide Panama, and patriarchal beard, is busy wheedling and (for aught the rest of us know) bribing the too facile sentry. His speech is smooth and dulcet, his manner dignified and insinuating. It is not for nothing that the Doctor has voyaged all the world over, and speaks all languages from French to Patagonian. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... free soup that winter, when work was slack, as a means, of course, of advertising its own "charity." Of all forms of indiscriminate almsgiving, that is the most offensive and most worthless, and they knew it, or they would not have sent me a wheedling invitation to come and inspect their "relief work," offering to have a carriage take me around. I sent word back that I should certainly look into the soup, but that I should go on foot to it. Roosevelt and I made ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... her to look at him in wonder; instead of the stern rebuke she expected, his voice was almost wheedling. "I cannot very well take Mrs. Brewster to a cafe at this hour without ...
— The Red Seal • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... year after his arrival La Bougival was the only servant in the house; on her discretion he knew he could count, and he disguised his real purposes by the all-powerful open reason of a necessary economy. To the great satisfaction of his heirs he became a miser. Without fawning or wheedling, solely by the influence of her devotion and solicitude, La Bougival, who was forty-three years old at the time this tale begins, was the housekeeper of the doctor and his protegee, the pivot on which the whole house turned, in short, ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... the fight that note of immediacy which had gone with the passing of Miss Anthony's leadership. She called a halt on further pleading, wheedling, proving, praying. It was as if she had bidden women stand erect, with confidence in themselves and in their own judgments, and compelled them to be self-respecting enough to dare to put their freedom first, ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... Pete watched their wheedling, fawning, and whisking of the tail, and then he said, "Chut! What's there so wonderful about a woman going by herself to Liverpool when she's got somebody waiting at the stage ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... to mention," I asked, "whether he succeeded in wheedling five thousand dollars out of ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... me almost wheedling. I could have laughed at the villain. It was all so transparent. He no more mistook me for Handy Solomon than he felt any real enmity for that person. But being angry, and perhaps a little scared, I beat him to his quarters with a ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... fat man, much wider than he was long, round and shiny as a ball of butter, with a face beaming like an apple, a little mouth that always smiled, and a voice small and wheedling like that of ...
— The Adventures of Pinocchio • C. Collodi—Pseudonym of Carlo Lorenzini
... who had two wives; like many Brahmans he lived by begging and was very clever at wheedling money out of people. One day the fancy took him to go to the market place dressed only in a small loin cloth such as the poorest labourers wear and see how people treated him. So he set out but on the road and in the market place and in the village no one salaamed to him or made way to ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... have been a score of will-o'-the-wisps, who just upset the sentry-box and towed it across the harbour while I was sitting quiet, not dreaming of what was happening, and only just looking up at the stars shining brightly above me," said Pat in a wheedling tone. ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... meet him. He had his moments of gloom, like most of his countrymen, for he never lost his native "hall mark," and retained to the last that sort of wheedling tone which is common in the South of Ireland. Yet he had none of that good-natured insincerity, to which a particular class of Irish are given. He was thoroughly sincere and genuine, and ready to support his words ...
— John Forster • Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald
... stammered Lebedeff, "if... if you please, prince, tell you something on the subject which would interest you, I am sure." He spoke in wheedling tones, and ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... the low tones of her voice were carrying and it was presently made clear to them that gayety was afoot for the evening, a sort of gayety they two had never known, would never know ... little tables with shaded candles, lights, music, subtle, wheedling music, hovering head-waiters ... the newest play ... then more little tables, more wheedling, coaxing music, more hovering head-waiters, dancing.... The boarding-house keeper told herself, comfortably, that it would never do for her, and pushed a tolerant curiosity ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... hours of mirth; For all this wit is given us from our birth. Heaven gave to woman the peculiar grace 160 To spin, to weep, and cully human race. By this nice conduct and this prudent course, By murmuring, wheedling, stratagem, and force, I still prevail'd, and would be in the right, Or curtain lectures made a restless night. If once my husband's arm was o'er my side, 'What! so familiar with your spouse?' I cried: I levied first a tax upon his need; Then let him—'twas a nicety indeed! Let ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... the doctor, as he found Geraldine on the landing-place outside her mother's room, and spoke to her in a voice that to her reluctant ears, as well as to those of Sister Constance, who followed him, sounded all the more vulgar because it was low, wheedling, and confidential; 'you are always about the house, you know everything—what accident has your ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... be nursed," he said. She stood ten minutes cajoling him, wheedling, coaxing, threatening. No, he would not return to his corner and work out his punishment, even though the punisher was eagerly offering to reduce the duration of it to "exactly three minutes, Max darling,—see, by this pretty little watch, and then we can all ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... time her wheedling voice, with an exaggerated childish lisp, sounded in the silence of the studio. She was jealous of painting, the cruel mistress, exacting and repugnant, who seemed to drive her poor baby mad. One of these days, master, the studio would catch on fire together with all its pictures. She ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... blatant Officer, the wheedling Politician, and the lack-beard Dervish, are feasted by the personages and functionaries of Damascus. The Vali, the Mufti, Abdallah Pasha,—he who owns more than two score villages and has more than five thousand ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... was not at home to any visitor at that hour. Chesnel, feeling that every moment was precious, sat down in the hall, wrote a few lines, and succeeded in sending them to the lady by dint of wheedling, fascinating, bribing, and commanding the most insolent and inaccessible servants in the world. The Duchess was still in bed; but, to the great astonishment of her household, the old man in black knee-breeches, ribbed stockings, and shoes with ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... settled into the chair next to little Kathleen. His hard, impassive face wore a softer expression than was usually to be observed there, and his voice, ordinarily brusque and domineering, became ludicrously soft and wheedling. ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... loves law, whereas a woman naturally hates it and never sees a law without casting about for some way of dodging it. Laws, universals, general propositions—her instinct with all of them is to get off by wheedling the judge. So, if you want a test for a masculine poet, examine first whether or no he understands the Universe as a ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... tell us the facts of his case." And she answered, "O my papa, I know how I will make proof of him." Then she went away and after supper her husband came in to her, according to his wont, whereupon Princess Dunya rose to him and took him under the armpit and wheedled him with winsomest wheedling (and all-sufficient[FN54] are woman's wiles whenas she would aught of men); and she ceased not to caress him and beguile him with speech sweeter than the honey till she stole his reason; and when ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... his grace's country cart for hire. He was a sad dog, for, in the course of a quarter of an hour he ran up a score upon the strength of an alleged promise on our parts to pay all expenses, and succeeded in wheedling another zwanziger in advance out of our cashier, the military Lubecker. This piece of money, however, on being proffered in payment of a last half-pint of beer, was instantly confiscated by the ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... the affair had ceased to thrill me; I wished to hear no more about the money or the thief. He stayed a long while, wheedling and remonstrating, depicting his own subtlety in glowing terms; but in the end departed with despairing shrugs and backward glances, hoping that ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... unhappy girl! Is it really from His Majesty, whom God preserve?' I said contemptuously, 'Of course.' He looked at me with great pity in his eyes, sighed deeply, and took the little tin from my hand. I suppose he imagined me in my abandoned way wheedling the necessary cash out of the King for the purchase of that snuff. You can't imagine how simple he is. Nothing was easier than to deceive him; but don't imagine I deceived him from the vainglory of a mere sinner. I lied to the dear man, simply because I couldn't bear ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... fright; he had been asleep under a hawthorn in the glen on a hot July day; and waking saw the cat close to him, watching him intently with yellow eyes, as though it were about to spring upon him; but seeing him awake, it came wheedling and fondling him as often before; but he could not forget the look in its eyes, ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson |
