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Dishonest   Listen
verb
Dishonest  v. t.  To disgrace; to dishonor; as, to dishonest a maid. (Obs.) "I will no longer dishonest my house."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Dishonest" Quotes from Famous Books



... not that young American's case show very plainly that we ought to aim at always doing right? And is it not better to please a dear Christian old mother, or a dear Christian brother like Amos, than to be smiled upon by a dishonest master, or by such companions as Saunders or Gregson? You see, the young man acted with true moral courage when he braved the sneers and displeasure of his unscrupulous employer; and he found his reward in the approval ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson

... Wallace started out in life for himself. He let himself to a farmer for forty dollars for the first year, with the privilege of attending school eight weeks in the winter. It turns out that the first forty dollars he earned were the beginning of a large fortune, without a dishonest dollar in it, and that the eight weeks of schooling of that winter on the farm, was the beginning of a knowledge, gleaned here and there as opportunity offered, which fits him for prominent ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... loss of small articles from the counter, such as manicure sticks, and digestive tablets, and jujubes, and face cream and smokers' cachous, which never ought to be spread about there at all, because they are so easily conveyed by the dishonest customer into pocket or muff, can seriously upset the smiling side of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 28, 1914 • Various

... addresses of the convention was made by Mrs. Ellis Meredith of Denver—The Menace of Podunk—a clever satire showing that narrow partisanship and dishonest politics were to be found alike in New York and ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper

... not exist, or rather, there seldom exists, a criminal who is wholly criminal. Neither do we ever meet with a dishonest nature which is completely dishonest. It is possible for a man to cheat his master to his own advantage, or rake in for himself alone all the hay in the manger, but, even while laying up capital by actions more or less illicit, ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac

... dishonest air And gross behaviour, banished thence the fair. The bold buffoon, whene'er they tread the green, Their motion mimics, but with jest obscene; Loose language oft he utters; but ere long A bark in filmy net-work binds his tongue; Thus ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson

... state of our people. Naturally, this article of food would at once betray a decline in the virtues of its maker; butter must be a subject of the dairyman's honest pride, or there is no hope of its goodness. Begin to save your labour, to aim at dishonest profits, to feel disgust or contempt for your work—and the churn declares every one of these vices. They must be very prevalent, for it is getting to be a rare thing to eat English butter which is even tolerable. What! England dependent for dairy-produce upon France, Denmark, America? Had ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing

... opposition of the more subordinate musicians signifies nothing beyond this: "we cannot advance, we do not want others to advance, and we are annoyed to see them advance in spite of us." This is at least honest Philistinism; dishonest ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)

... D'Eon, and will certainly grow to hate Guerchy, concluding the latter can never forgive him. D'Eon, even by his own account, is as culpable as possible, mad with pride, insolent, abusive, ungrateful, and dishonest, in short, a complication of abominations, yet originally ill used by his court, afterwards too well; above all, he has great malice, and great parts to put the malice in play. Though there are even many bad puns in his book, a very uncommon fault in a ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole

... fellow—that I will, if I am only spared!' And so he creeps out, scarcely knowing whether he should make up his mind to beg, borrow, or steal, half muttering to himself, as he hops across the way, to visit some neighbor for a breakfast, 'I declare such infamous treatment is enough to make one dishonest, and never be industrious ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth

... defects were, however, superficial; he redeemed them by an exquisite kind-heartedness which a rigid moralist might call the indulgence natural to superiority. He looked a little like a fox, and he was thought to be very wily, but never false or dishonest. His wiliness was perspicacity; and consisted in foreseeing results and protecting himself and others from the traps set for them. He loved whist, a game known to the captain and the doctor, and which the abbe learned to play in a very ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac

... asked to wait. He seated himself with his face so directed that if an acquaintance should enter, he need not bow, and turned over the magazines one after the other. It hurt him like a direct personal injury to find these authors all alike so shallow, dishonest, giving the public not their thought or their experience, but ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall

... drove a roaring trade. Situated in the heart of a mountebank district, its patrons embraced all classes of society, from the American tourist with his quick eyes noting the vagaries of demi-mondaines, to the sharp-witted Parisian idler, on the alert for any easy and dishonest method of obtaining ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy

... observation, which constitutes good judgment, and teach them to think, and to apply thought easily to new forms of knowledge. Morally, the discipline of a good school tends directly to form the habits I mentioned above. The pupils are trained to steady industry and perseverance, to scorn dishonest work, and to control temper. The girls who leave school so trained, though they may know nothing of cooking or housekeeping, will become infinitely better cooks and housekeepers, as soon as they have a motive for doing so, than the uneducated woman, who has learned only the technical ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett

... says all office time belongs to him, and any one who wastes a moment of it, or is late, or leaves before the clock strikes, is a thief!" Bertie's voice fell to an awed whisper, and his ruddy cheeks grew quite pale at the bare idea of being thought dishonest, and yet he knew that Mr. Gregory would not spare him a bit more than any one else; and it was half-past two, and Bertie was due ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... because he fears the laws and the loss of reputation and thereby of honor or gain, and if that fear did not restrain him would defraud others whenever he could; although such a man's deeds outwardly appear honest, his thought and will are fraud; and because he is inwardly dishonest and fraudulent he has hell in himself. But he who acts honestly and refrains from fraud because it is against God and against the neighbor would have no wish to defraud another if he could; his thought and will are conscience, and he has heaven in himself. The deeds of these ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg

... before, and the particular inquiries he made concerning Paul Nichols and his money. Ben Haley had impressed him far from favorably, and the more he called to mind his appearance, the more he feared that he meditated some dishonest designs upon Paul. So the next morning, in order to satisfy his mind that all was right, he rowed across to the same place where he had landed Ben, and fastening his boat, went up to the farmhouse. He reached it just as Ben, having secured the old man, had gone back into the cellar to gather ...
— Brave and Bold • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... if public opinion, or the public conscience, was once roused. Let people laugh at Celtic monuments as much as they like, if they will only help to preserve their laughing-stocks from destruction. Let antiquarians be as skeptical as they like, if they will only prevent the dishonest withdrawal of the evidence against which their skepticism is directed. Are lake-dwellings in Switzerland, are flint-deposits in France, is kitchen-rubbish in Denmark, so very precious, and are the magnificent ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller

... some abstruse doctrine, form or ceremony, which has no direct reference, whatever, to their eternal interests, nor to their duty and obligations to their Creator, nor yet to their fellow creatures. Their motives and intentions are dishonest, their professions insincere and hypocritical, and it is not in the power of their bigoted and corrupt minds to comprehend, "whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward

... excise duty; to establish bonded warehouses for the storing of the tobacco imported into this country and meant to be exported again or sold here for home consumption; thus to encourage and facilitate the importation; to get rid of many of the dishonest practices which injured the fair dealer and defrauded the revenue; to put a stop to smuggling; to benefit at once the grower, the manufacturer, the consumer, and the revenue. We need not relate at great ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... learn, my friend Mendoza there came in, either while we fought, or afterwards, and understood—and so, as I suppose, in generous fear for my good name, lest it should be told that I had been killed in some dishonest brawl, or for a woman's sake—my friend Mendoza, in the madness of generosity, and because my love for his beautiful daughter might give the tale some colour, takes all the blame upon himself, owns himself murderer, loses his wits, and well-nigh loses his head, ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford

... cultivated and refined people of our society are not nowadays to be found among the very rich, as used formerly to be the rule. The rich are mostly coarse money grubbers, absorbed only, in increasing their hoard, generally by dishonest means, or else the degenerate heirs of such money grubbers, who, far from playing any prominent part in society, are mostly treated with ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy

... they looked, they had a small fortune in the furs which they had accumulated. This wealth had not escaped the notice of the thrifty skipper who brought them home, and he had robbed them. But the King not only compelled the dishonest sea-captain to disgorge his plunder, but aided {104} its owners with a pension in setting up ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson

... group distinctly before his mind, and the interests of all other groups thrown into the background. When I have read certain of these discussions I have thought that it must be quite disreputable to be respectable, quite dishonest to own property, quite unjust to go one's own way and earn one's own living, and that the only really admirable person was the good-for-nothing. The man who by his own effort raises himself above poverty appears, in these discussions, to be of ...
— What Social Classes Owe to Each Other • William Graham Sumner

... sent to a German University, and at the age of twenty-one had appeared in London, in a stockbroker's office, where he was soon known as an accomplished linguist, and as a very clever fellow,—precocious, not given to many pleasures, apt for work, but hardly trustworthy by employers, not as being dishonest, but as having a taste for being a master rather than a servant. Indeed his period of servitude was very short. It was not in his nature to be active on behalf of others. He was soon active for himself, and at one time it was supposed that he was making ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope

... is not an honest one," Lord Armley declared suddenly. "It is dishonest that good things may ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... be got to give a plain answer. It wasn't near enough, anyhow; not near. The evasion seemed to Anderson purposeless; the mere shifting and doubling that comes of long years of dishonest living. And again the question stabbed his consciousness—were his children justified in casting him ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... we encounter, every day, the apparent hypocrite. Yet many such men are not consciously dishonest. They are merely victims ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck

... Devajnanin, whispered in the King's ear: "How can a man possess such knowledge unattainable by men without having studied the books of magic? You may be certain that this is a specimen of the way he makes a dishonest livelihood, by having a secret intelligence with thieves. It will be much better to test him by some new artifice." Then the King of his own accord brought a covered pitcher into which he had thrown a frog, and said to Harisarman: "Brahman, if you can guess what there is in this pitcher, I ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various

... he, "I would rather go without dinner for a month than you should not have asked me, Bigot, to help you out of this scrape. What if you did lie to that fly-catching beggar at the Castle of St. Louis, who has not conscience to take a dishonest stiver from a cheating Albany Dutchman! Where was the harm in it? Better lie to him than tell the truth to La Pompadour about that girl! Egad! Madame Fish would serve you as the Iroquois served my fat clerk at Chouagen—make roast meat of you—if she knew it! Such ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... will let me carry this business through myself.' Is that plain speaking? He must have my assistance. He is assured that his wife will deal fairly by him; he knows that I shall leave his money to him and be content with my own. It is an unholy and dishonest compact, and he holds out threats of ruin to compel me to consent to it. He is buying my conscience, and the price is liberty to be Eugene's wife in all but name. 'I connive at your errors, and you allow me to commit crimes and ruin poor ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac

... was less intolerable than the privilege of monopolies, [8611] which checked the fair competition of industry, and, for the sake of a small and dishonest gain, imposed an arbitrary burden on the wants and luxury of the subject. "As soon" (I transcribe the Anecdotes) "as the exclusive sale of silk was usurped by the Imperial treasurer, a whole people, the manufacturers of Tyre and Berytus, was ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon

... herds and flocks. The flocks were committed to a shepherd who gave receipt for them and took them out to pasture. The Code fixed him a wage. He was responsible for all care, must restore ox for ox, sheep for sheep, must breed them satisfactorily. Any dishonest use of the flock had to be repaid ten-fold, but loss by disease or wild beasts fell on the owner. The shepherd made good all loss due to his neglect. If he let the flock feed on a field of corn he had to pay damages ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various

... She pondered again upon this strange man; asked herself why he had sought her out, why he had left her so soon and had since then been so frigidly aloof, even though he still carried her with him forward, virtually a prisoner. By all rights a thief, a dishonest man, ought not to be a gentleman; yet strive as she might, she could recall no single instance where the conduct of this man had been anything but that of a gentleman, delicate, kindly, brave, unselfish. Miss Lady could not understand. The shadows hung too black over all—the ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough

... words from outside, with a heart full of astonishment. "How can one wonder," she argued mentally, "if all those lewd and dishonest people, who have lived from olden times to the present, have devised such thorough artifices! But were they now to open and see me here, won't they feel ashamed. Moreover, the voice in which those remarks were uttered resembles very much that of Hung Erh, attached to Pao-yue's rooms, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... so charged with insidious meanings as to make him feel that even to understand her would savour of dishonest complicity. "What is it you have to tell me?" he cried with a ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James

... public interest, and if the Kwanns weren't public-spirited enough to do the work, they'd be made to—at about half what planters like Sanders are paying them now. But don't you realize that profit is sordid and dishonest and selfish? Not at all like drawing a salary-cum-expense-account from ...
— Oomphel in the Sky • Henry Beam Piper

... pastor of the Metropolitan Temple, the Rev. J. Wesley Hill. He was so ignorant that when he wished to prove that Socialism means free love, he quoted a writer by the name of "Herr Beeble"; he was so dishonest that he garbled the writings of this "Herr Beeble", making him say something quite different from what he had meant to say. I could name several clergymen of various denominations who have stooped to that device against the Socialists; including the Catholic Father Belford, who ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair

... freezing and thawing, especially after the buds have started in spring. On a northern slope the buds usually remain dormant until the danger of late frosts is over. I am quite sure, too, that the yellows is a disease due chiefly to careless or dishonest propagation. Pits and buds have been taken from infected trees, and thus the evil has been spread far and wide. There is as much to be gained in the careful and long-continued selection of fruits and vegetables as in the judicious breeding ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe

... is sadder in the whole tragedy, or comedy, than these pitiable efforts to hide the truth, to gloss it over with fables which nobody in his heart of hearts believes—at least in these days. Why not face the worst like men? If we can't help being unhappy we can help being dishonest and cowardly. Existence is a misfortune. Let us frankly confess that it is, and ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer

... anything or nothing, he told himself. The man might be going shopping to the village and the others giving him their commissions, or he might be an illicit dealer in curios trying to pick up some dishonest treasure. In native diggings those hangers ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley

... be content with it, that it is the mother of all crimes of brutality, corruption, and fear. If a man says to Shaw that he is born of poor but honest parents, Shaw tells him that the very word "but" shows that his parents were probably dishonest. In short, he maintains here what he had maintained elsewhere: that what the people at this moment require is not more patriotism or more art or more religion or more morality or more sociology, but simply more money. The evil is not ignorance or decadence or sin ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... nothing about that, but I know this—that I believe in him. I have lived more than three years with him; he is true and honorable; fantastically, chivalrously honorable" (her eyes were downcast and her cheeks burning). "He never did anything false or dishonest—" ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill

... a general warning to "look out," was originally used as a warning to the drinker to look at the score of p's and q's against him. We once heard of a landlord, however, whose first name was Daniel, and who was dishonest. When a customer got "half-seas over" and could not see straight, he used a piece of chalk with a nick cut in it, so that when he marked "one" on the door the chalk marked two; but he was soon found out, and lost most of his ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor

... one power. It will overcome everything. You have no friends except yourselves. That's what their only friends say to the working people, their friends who go to them and perish on the road to prison. Not so would dishonest people speak, not ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky

... to that, which if the Defendants are guilty of, is a gross fraud upon public and private property; and unless every species of depredation and robbery is to be regarded as a species of pleasantry, I think the name of hoax, which has been given to it, is very ill applied to a transaction of so dishonest and ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney

... the next day, and opened all his business to me, whether I would or not. But I gave him clearly to understand that he was not to be vexed with me, neither to regard me as in any way dishonest, if I should use for my own purpose, or for the benefit of my friends, any part of the knowledge and privity thus enforced upon me. To this he agreed quite readily; but upon the express provision that I should do nothing to thwart his schemes, neither unfold ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... Every one-sided transaction dishonest.—In fair exchange both parties are benefited. In unfair exchange one party profits by the other's loss. Any transaction in which either party fails to receive an equivalent for what he gives is a ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde

... mind, though it seemed without mercy to-night, would acquit him of that. If he had been seduced, it was by a voice in him, confused, it might be, but strong nevertheless, and not dishonest. He had thought that perhaps people could be more gently acquainted with their responsibilities, that in their hearts they wanted to correct their own mistakes. He had asked who appointed ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... the sort. But, dear boy, I don't love you less for not kissing you. All that is nonsense: you have to think only of learning, and to be truthful. Never tell a story: suffer anything rather than be dishonest." She was particularly impressive upon the silliness and wickedness of falsehood, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... hardly say, that throughout the chronicle there is a tolerable sprinkling of the marvellous. {487} I give you the following as a warning to all dishonest bell-founders. ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 30. Saturday, May 25, 1850 • Various

... United States into a league of friendship between confederate corporations. I speak to matters of fact. There is the Declaration of Independence, and there is the Constitution of the United States—let them speak for themselves. The grossly immoral and dishonest doctrine of despotic State sovereignty, the exclusive judge of its own obligations, and responsible to no power on earth or in heaven, for the violation of them, is not there. The Declaration says, it is not in me. The Constitution says, it ...
— Orations • John Quincy Adams

... as judge on the bench have in your pocket a written verdict, I fear, but for Aunt Eulie's I will give the reasons for my estimate. I regard her in the light of an honest jury. In the first place the term you used, 'square,' applies to him. I do not think he could be tempted to do a dishonest thing; and that, as the world goes, is certainly ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe

... misery to somebody or other. Offences accumulate till they become insupportable; and are then violently burst through, cleared off as by explosion. Dante's sublime Catholicism, incredible now in theory, and defaced still worse by faithless, doubting and dishonest practice, has to be torn asunder by a Luther; Shakspeare's noble feudalism, as beautiful as it once looked and was, has to end in a French Revolution. The accumulation of offences is, as we say, too literally exploded, blasted asunder volcanically; and there ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... very timely paper. The number of promoters we find in connection with any subject furnishes an index of the fundamental value of the original proposition. The number of dishonest people, the number of fakirs that are now promoting development schemes in connection with the pecan indicates that down at the bottom somewhere, there is a real gold mine. We will go ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Second Annual Meeting - Ithaca, New York, December 14 and 15, 1911 • Northern Nut Growers Association

... had to struggle would have sufficed to persuade many others; my heart has need of Christianity; the Gospel will ever be my moral law; the church has given me my education, and I love her. Could I but continue to style myself her son! I pass from her in spite of myself; I abhor the dishonest attacks levelled at her; I frankly confess that I have no complete substitute for her teaching; but I cannot disguise from myself the weak points which I believe that I have found in it and with regard ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan

... and not of words, looked at him and said nothing. He was perhaps noticing that the dishonest boy had grown into a dishonest man. Monastic religion is like a varnish, it only serves to bring out the true colour, and is powerless to alter it by more than a shade. Those who have lived in religious ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman

... symmetrical which were in reality subdivided and irregular. I grant it; but be it remembered, that in all things, ignorance is liable to be deceived, and has no right to accuse anything but itself as the source of the deception. The style and the words are dishonest, not which are liable to be misunderstood if subjected to no inquiry, but which are deliberately calculated to lead inquiry astray. There are perhaps no great or noble truths, from those of religion downwards, which present no mistakeable aspect to ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin

... would be of my opinion relative to Lord Melbourne. Indeed, dearest Uncle, nothing is to be done without a good heart and an honest mind; I have, alas! seen so much of bad hearts and dishonest and double minds, that I know how to value ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria

... was appointed by Charles VIII. Lieutenant-General in Lower Brittany. He was called by his countrymen the "Felon Prince;" and so detested was he and his race, that it passed into a proverb to say of a mean, treacherous, dishonest person, "Il mange a l'auge comme Rohan,"—"He eats at the manger (that is, the table of the King of France) like Rohan." "Un peu de jactance," therefore, justly observes Daru, in the proud motto of ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser

... but his special blessing. This we acknowledge. Judge then of the feelings with which we hear the motives and the doings of the Colonization Society traduced—and that too, by men too ignorant to know what that society has accomplished; too weak to look through its plans and intentions; or too dishonest to acknowledge either. But without pretending to any prophetic sagacity, we can certainly predict to that society the ultimate triumph of their hopes and labours; and disappointment and defeat to all who oppose them. Men may theorize and speculate about their plans in America. But there can ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various

... that he was committed to rather a dishonest part; he was pledged not to give a shock to her optimism. This might cost him, in the coming days, a good deal of dissimulation, but he was now saved from any further expenditure of ingenuity by certain warning sounds which admonished ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James

... cried Sally Carter. "Petitions and lobbyists, election clouds, fractious and dishonest legislatures, unprincipled bosses and the ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton

... incorrigibly lazy that no inducement that you can offer will tempt them to work; so eaten up by vice that virtue is abhorrent to them, and so inveterately dishonest that theft is to them a master passion. When a human being has reached that stage, there is only one course that can be rationally pursued. Sorrowfully, but remorselessly, it must be recognised that he has become lunatic, morally demented, incapable ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth

... as sentimental as the most sentimental reasons for believing in heaven. New South Wales is quite literally regarded as a place where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest; that is, a paradise for uncles who have turned dishonest and for nephews who are born tired. British Columbia is in strict sense a fairyland, it is a world where a magic and irrational luck is supposed to attend the youngest sons. This strange optimism about the ends of the earth is an English weakness; but to show that it is not ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton

... you were a dishonest woman—you wanted all you could get. Even if you were not actually dishonest they would see you would want it for your son. You might think it ought to be his—whether his father had married you or not. Most ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... In his speech he showed that during the time mentioned there had been no less than six hundred companies formed, requiring for the execution of their intended operations, a capital of many millions. He complained of the dishonest views with which many of these were set on foot; the knavery by which a fictitious value was given to shares which had cost nothing; and of the misery produced by this systematic swindling. He ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... that he might grant a Home Rule Bill, if the Irish leaders were men of different stamp. He said they were "clever men not overburdened with money," and admitted that a superior class would have been more trustworthy, but relied on the people. "If the first administrators of the law were dishonest, the people would replace them by others. The keystone of my political faith is trust in the people. The Irish are keen politicians, and may be ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... fear I shall do something dishonest. Ah! mother! do you think I can forget you and ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau

... self-observation, is pronounced a delusion. The immediate consciousness of freedom is a dream. Such a procedure, to say the least of it, is highly unphilosophical; to say the truth about it, it is obviously dishonest. Every fact of human nature, just as much as every fact of physical nature, must be accepted in all its integrity, or all must be alike rejected. The phenomena of mind can no more be disregarded than the phenomena of matter. Rational intuitions, necessary and universal beliefs, ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... other too early for that. And then she has not a shilling. I should think myself dishonest if I did not tell you that I could not afford to love any girl who hadn't money. A man ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope

... power. Sir John Berryl died that night. His daughters, who had lived in the highest style in London, were left totally unprovided for. His widow had mortgaged her jointure. Mr. Berryl had an estate now left to him, but without any income. He could not be so dishonest as to refuse to pay his father's just debts; he could not let his mother and sisters starve. The scene of distress to which Lord Colambre was witness in this family made a still greater impression upon him than had been made by the warning ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth

... which the words "according to good faith" are added, or even those words, "as ought to be done by one good man to another;" and above all, in all cases of arbitration respecting matrimonial rights, in which the words "juster and better" occur, the lawyers ought to be always ready. For they know what "dishonest fraud," or "good faith," or "just," or "good" mean. They are acquainted with the law between partners; they know what the man who has the management of the affairs of another is bound to do with respect to him whose affairs he manages; they have laid down rules to show what the man who has committed ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero

... would not let him rest, and in the thought that Bob might seek some lawyer and place the matter in his hands, which would mean a visit to the grocery store and the necessity of making embarrassing explanations, the dishonest guardian determined to go away for a few hours at least. No sooner had he made up his mind upon this course of action than he seized his hat, stole from his room, glided across the floor to the front door, listened a moment for the sound of voices, or ...
— Bob Chester's Grit - From Ranch to Riches • Frank V. Webster

... a moment's pause, "But I don't believe he's dishonest. He looked honest. He looked like a man from ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper

... to Mr. Kingsley's method of disputation, which I must criticise with much severity;—in his drift he does but follow the ordinary beat of controversy, but in his mode of arguing he is actually dishonest. ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman

... compulsion and less free the more correctly we connect the effects with the causes. If we examined simple actions and had a vast number of such actions under observation, our conception of their inevitability would be still greater. The dishonest conduct of the son of a dishonest father, the misconduct of a woman who had fallen into bad company, a drunkard's relapse into drunkenness, and so on are actions that seem to us less free the better we understand their cause. If the ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... solemn and all submerging order of the universe, is the very essence and climax of immorality and irreligiousness. To this assault on the morality of the belief in a future life, whether made in the devout tones of magnanimous sincerity, as by the sublime Schleiermacher, or with the dishonest trickiness of a vulgar declaimer for the rehabilitation of the senses, as by some who might be named, several fair replies may be made. In the first place, the objection begs the question, by assuming that the doctrine is a falsehood, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... heroes' eyes he drew, Still on the pair his sad look bent, And spoke these word in wild lament: "Ah for the mighty chiefs brought low By coward hand and stealthy blow! Brave pair who loved the open fight, Slain by that rover of the night. Dishonest is the victory won By Indrajit my brother's son. I on their might for aid relied, And in my cause they fought and died. Lost is the hope that soothed each pain: I live, but live no more to reign, While Lanka's lord, untouched by ill, ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... was money which God had commanded them to pay. They were to pay in proportion to the property they had. But some dishonest men used to conceal some of their property, so as not to have to pay so much; but this pharisee said he paid tithes of ...
— Caleb in the Country • Jacob Abbott

... words as signifying a sweeping condemnation of the European population of South Africa. On the contrary, there existed in that distant part of the world many men of great integrity, high principles and unsullied honour who would never, under any condition whatsoever, have lent themselves to mean or dishonest action; men who held up high their national flag, and who gave the natives a splendid example of all that an Englishman could do or perform when called upon to maintain the reputation of his Mother ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill

... length, depth and breadth of his perception of true, just, safe financial principles and his unconquerable loyalty to them. At a time when the enemies of an honest, stable currency are seeking to destroy it and to set up in its place a debased, unstable, dishonest currency, the country would accept this exponent of sound, wise finance and a reliable, steadfast currency with extraordinary satisfaction."—Philadelphia "Ledger ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... cried Roberts pettishly. "Be dishonest for once in a way. You might give us a bit of sunshine to freshen us up. Haven't we got enough to go through yet, with the captain fuming over our failure and being ready to bully us till ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn

... Dishonest bricklayers do not hesitate, when using for the face of a wall bricks of a quality superior to those used for the interior, to use "snapped headers," that is cutting the heading bricks in halves, one brick thus serving ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... opened and read the letter left at River Hall that morning. "This is from a man who has evidently not heard of Mr. Elmsdale's death, and who writes to say how much he regrets having been obliged to leave England without paying his I O U held by my client. To show that, though he may have seemed dishonest, he never meant to cheat Mr. Elmsdale, he encloses a draft on London for the principal and interest of the ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell

... essential for that special kind of labor. We may be able to reconstruct the conditions so completely that we would feel justified in predicting whether the individual can fulfill that technical task or not; and yet we may disregard entirely the question whether that man is honest or dishonest, whether he is pacific or quarrelsome; in short, whether his mental disposition makes him a desirable member of that industrial concern ...
— Psychology and Industrial Efficiency • Hugo Muensterberg

... "But, Padre," she resumed, "honesty—it is the very first thing that God requires of us. We have to be—we must be honest, for He is Truth. He cannot see or recognize error, you know. And so He cannot see you and help you if you are dishonest." ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... regain the bank the carriage, with Jarrett in it, was able to rejoin us. He was pallid, not from fear of the danger I had undergone, but at the idea that if I died the tour would come to an end. He said to me quite seriously, "If you had lost your life, Madame, you would have been dishonest, for you would have broken your contract of ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt

... not in his writings. Henceforth, he made it his regular habit of reciting his own poetry to his parents as if reading it from a book, or printed sheet of paper. The habit, though it was strictly a dishonest proceeding, proved to him not only a real source of pleasure, in hearing his praises from the lips of those he loved most, but it also served him as a fair critical school. Whenever he found his parents laugh at a sentence which he deemed very pathetic, he set ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin

... of a tobacco-pipe rammed together. On examination it was found that the hunchback, another miserable lad named Bean, was a chemist's assistant, who had written a letter to his father declaring that he "would never see him again, as he intended doing something which was not dishonest, ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler

... will the burthen of the rentier class, their call, tat is, for goods and services, be lightened. This expectation is very generally entertained, and I can see little reason against it. The intensely stupid or dishonest "labour" press, however, which in the interests of the common enemy misrepresents socialism and seeks to misguide labour in Great Britain, ignores these considerations, and positively holds out this prospect of rising prices as an alarming one to the more credulous and ignorant ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells

... perceived that Colonel Gilbert was honestly in love with her. But Mademoiselle Brun saw it. She was wondering—if this thing had come to Gilbert twenty years earlier—what manner of man it might have made of him. It was a good love. Mademoiselle saw that quite clearly. For a dishonest man may at any moment be tripped up by an honest passion. Which is one of those practical jokes of Fate that break ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman

... a time there were two brothers. The elder was an honest and good man, but he was very poor, while the younger, who was dishonest and stingy, had managed to pile up a large fortune. The name of the elder was Kane, and that of ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various

... are not at all our sort of folks," said John. "None of our set would ever think of visiting them, and it'll seem so odd to see them here. Follingsbee is a vulgar sharper, who has made his money out of our country by dishonest contracts during the war. I don't know much about his wife. Lillie says she is ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... or mistress. Every circumstance of their life is an affront to that just self-respect which even Americans allow is the right of every human being. With the rich, they are said to be sometimes indolent, dishonest, mendacious, and all that Plato long ago explained that slaves must be; but in the middle-class families they are mostly faithful, diligent, and reliable in a degree that would put to shame most men who hold positions of trust, and would leave many ladies whom they ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells

... did young Low resemble a pirate in his dishonest methods, but he also resembled one in his meanness and cruelty; if one of his victims was supposed by him to have hidden any of the treasures which his captor believed him to possess, Low would inflict upon him every form of punishment which the ingenuity ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton

... friendship by not returning it. He is a queer fellow,—good-hearted and all that, but full of illusions! always an imagination on fire! I will do him this justice,—he does not mean to deceive; but as he deceives himself about everything, he manages to behave like a dishonest man.' 'How much does he owe you?' I asked. 'Oh! a good many hundred francs. He's a basket with a hole in the bottom. Nobody knows where his money goes; perhaps he doesn't know himself.' 'Has he any resources?' 'Well, yes,' said Barillaud, laughing; 'just ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac

... attitude amazed and irritated her. She objected to her regular church-going, as dishonest. Was she not, for the sake of peace and quietness, professing that which she did not believe? And how was it that she was growing more into favour with the Jordans and Walkers and all the narrow, wooden-headed people? Surely ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... Archie didn't know his pockets had been searched while he was asleep, or his faith in human nature would have been more shaken than ever before. He had not suspected that the men in this lodging-house might be dishonest. ...
— The Adventures of a Boy Reporter • Harry Steele Morrison

... warn't necessary, and was unjust, even Linkern thought so, and had stirred up a lot of hate. And he said the Civil War had left things bad. It had killed off a lot of fine young men, and herded toughs into places like Petersburg and stirred up all kinds of hate and bad feelin's, and made people dishonest and tricky and careless and lazy—and we'd have to stand the consequences for years to come in politics and everything. And he said the way to avoid war was the same as a man would avoid fightin' or killin' another man—you could do it mostly by usin' ...
— Mitch Miller • Edgar Lee Masters

... art of dragging on an affair, and manoeuvring with and tiring out diplomatists; but it is not by pleasantries of this sort that a tottering tyranny can be propped up. Although he employs every subterfuge known to dishonest policy, I am not quite sure that he has even the craft ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About

... Mercy consists in wishing happiness to all. And simplicity is equanimity of heart.' The Yaksha asked,—'What enemy is invincible? What constitutes an incurable disease for man? What sort of a man is called honest and what dishonest?' Yudhishthira answered,—'Anger is an invincible enemy. Covetousness constitutes an incurable disease. He is honest that desires the weal of all creatures, and he is dishonest who is unmerciful.' The Yaksha asked,—'What, O king, is ignorance? ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... in every direction and by every route, this strange and heterogeneous mass of men, the representatives of every occupation, honest and dishonest, creditable and disgraceful; of every people under the sun, scattered through the gulches and ravines in the mountains, or grouped themselves at certain points in cities, towns and villages of canons or adobe. Perhaps never in the world's history did cities spring ...
— A Sketch of the Causes, Operations and Results of the San Francisco Vigilance Committee of 1856 • Stephen Palfrey Webb

... subordinates in check, if you can but keep a check upon yourself. So long as you resist gain, and pleasure, and all other temptations, as I am sure you do, I cannot fancy there will be any danger of your not being able to check a dishonest merchant or an extortionate collector. For even the Greeks, when they see you living thus, will look upon you as some hero from their old annals, or some supernatural being from heaven, come down ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins

... suspect they are dishonest or untruthful. Be very slow to accuse and suspect them of falsehood or theft. Tell them over and over again they are the best boys and girls in the world; that they are going to make the noblest of men and women; that they love honesty and truth. ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler

... an old shepherd named Battus, who was tending the flocks of Neleus, king of Pylos (father of Nestor). Hermes, frightened at being discovered, bribed him with the finest cow in the herd not to betray him, and Battus promised to keep the secret. But Hermes, astute as he was dishonest, determined to test the shepherd's integrity. Feigning to go away, he assumed the form of Admetus, and then returning to the spot offered the old man two of his best oxen if he would disclose the author of the theft. The ruse succeeded, ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens

... Martin Hallowell," he said. "We were not born to work together and it is clear that we have come to the parting of the ways. To-morrow we will make division of our holdings, for I tell you plainly that I will have no more to do with you and your dishonest schemes." ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs

... of money (depleted sadly by dishonest exchange) sagged heavily in a small leather bag which he carried in a carefully buttoned hip-pocket in his trousers. There it gave him comfort, as, the day after he had landed in New York, it chinked and thumped against him as he walked. There was so much ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey

... we are; but laws and their management have nothing to do with making people honest. Good laws won't make people honest, nor bad laws dishonest." ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope

... that men must be well paid (and they ought to be well paid) for the performance of honorable duty, can we think that men will be found to commit wicked, rapacious, and oppressive acts with fidelity and disinterestedness for the sole emolument of dishonest employers? No: they must have their full share of the prey, and the greater share, as they are the nearer and more necessary instruments of the general extortion. We must not, therefore, flatter ourselves, when Mr. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... of resources, thou wilt lead a life of mendicancy like a vulgar person? Thou art born in this race of kings. Having won by conquest the whole earth, wishest thou from folly to live in the woods after abandoning everything of virtue and profit? If thou retirest into the woods, in thy absence, dishonest men will destroy sacrifices. That sin will certainly pollute thee. King Nahusha, having done many wicked acts in a state of poverty, cried fie on that state and said that poverty is for recluses. Making no provision for the morrow is a practice that suits Rishis. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... party funds. There is no reason why an honest party should be ashamed of receiving large gifts for the public ends it serves, and every reason why it should be proud of receiving a multitude of small gifts. I very strongly hold that in politics, as in industry, the best safeguard against dishonest dealings, and the surest means of restoring confidence, is to be found in the policy of "Cards on the table." Is there any reason why we Liberals should not begin by boldly adopting, in our own case, this ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various

... "Dishonest!" Fitzgerald's face was purplish, from many memories of wrongs. "There was a guy named Burdock who owned this business before you. Y'know what happened ...
— The Ambulance Made Two Trips • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... Rude, truculent, and dishonest as Captain Morgan was, he seems to have had a wonderful power of persuading the wild buccaneers under him to submit everything to his judgment, and to rely entirely upon his word. In spite of the vast sum of money that he had very evidently made away with, recruits poured in upon him, until his band ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle

... Magazines, are written. The unworthy attempts in those and other such like pieces to separate Brother Marshman and me are truly contemptible. In plain English, they amount to thus much—'The Serampore Missionaries, Carey, Marshman, and Ward, have acted a dishonest part, alias are rogues. But we do not include Dr. Carey in the charge of dishonesty; he is an easy sort of a man, who will agree to anything for the sake of peace, or in other words, he is a fool. Mr. Ward, it is well known,' say they, 'was the tool of Dr. ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith

... and fined for depicting Louis Bonaparte in the act of shooting at the French Constitution as a target, Morigny, Minister of the Interior, declared in the Council that "a guardian of public power should never so violate the law, as otherwise he would be—" "A dishonest man," interposed President Napoleon. Such was the situation on the eve of December 2. As Victor Hugo put it, in the opening chapter of his "History of a Crime": "People had long suspected Louis Bonaparte; ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson

... all egotistical, Ruth Fielding felt confident that had any one of these scenario writers come into possession of her lost script, and been dishonest enough to use it, he would have turned out a ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson

... qualify for scenes in them. All honour to the artist who lives on bread and water in a garret rather than prostitute his art! but less honour to the man who lives on my bread, and adds somebody else's whisky to his water, rather than earn an honest living by dishonest books and plays. This was the question that split up the Bohemians of Murger. While the majority did odd jobs for the Philistines, to have the time for real art, the very poet consenting to write Alexandrines ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill

... to academical education, as it was then conducted, is, that men designed for orders in the church were permitted to act plays, "writhing and unboning their clergy limbs to all the antick and dishonest gestures of Trincalos[29], buffoons, and bawds, prostituting the shame of that ministry which they had, or were near having, to the eyes of courtiers and court ladies, their grooms ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson

... very calm, but I let him have it. I told him he was a mean sneak, and that either he was the biggest fool or the biggest rogue going, and that the mere fact of his cloth did not give him the right to do dishonest things with other people's property, though it did save him from the pounding he richly deserved. He tried to interrupt; indeed, he was tooting all the time like a fog-horn, but I did not take any notice, and I wound up by saying it ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley

... the conclusion of his account of the grand masque given by the four inns, "Thus these dreams past, and these pomps vanished." Scarcely had the frolic terminated when death laid a chill hand on the time-serving Noy, who in the consequences of his dishonest counsels left a cruel legacy to the master and the country whom he alike betrayed. A few more years—and John Finch, having lost the Great Seal, was an exile in a foreign land, destined to die in penury, ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson

... I said, the work of the harbour squad isn't ordinarily very remarkable. Harbour pirates aren't murderous as a rule any more. For the most part they are plain sneak thieves or bogus junk dealers who work with dishonest pier watchmen and crooked canal boat ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve

... the trouble of such a journey with so long a retinue of carriers, most of whom are dishonest, and only seek an opportunity to abscond upon ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker

... distinction of which this is only a special case, is the distinction of the I and not I, which belongs to the consciousness as the general faculty. He who denies the contrast between mind-knowing and matter-known is dishonest, for it is a fact of consciousness, and such can not be honestly denied. The facts given in consciousness itself can not be ...
— The Christian Foundation, April, 1880

... cannot conceive how any quarrel can possibly be judged. A contract may be made between two persons solely for material advantages on each side; but the moral advantage is still generally supposed to lie with the person who keeps the contract. Surely, it cannot be dishonest to be honest—even if honesty is the best policy. Imagine the most complex maze of indirect motives, and still the man who keeps faith for money cannot possibly be worse than the man who breaks faith ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various

... compelled me, and to state a general opinion as to the effect of music on character. It might have been more exciting to some readers, if I had started out with a hard and fast theory, and then discarded or warped everything contradictory to it, but it would have been a dishonest procedure for one who believes that musicians are neither saints of exaltation nor fiends of lawless ecstasy; but only ordinary clay ovens of fire and ashes like the rest of us. He who generalises is ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes

... the South African diamond-boom began. The original traveler—the dishonest one—now remembered that he had once seen a Boer teamster chocking his wagon-wheel on a steep grade with a diamond as large as a football, and he laid aside his occupations and started out to hunt for it, but not with the intention of cheating anybody out of $125 ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... it was, but in my new existence every one was kind to me; and I had spirits that made me welcome everywhere. I was a scamp—but a frolicsome scamp—and that is always a popular character. As yet I was not dishonest, but saw dishonesty round me, and it seemed a very pleasant, jolly mode of making money; and now I again fell into contact with the young heir. My college friend was as wild in London as he had been at Cambridge; but the boy-ruffian, though not then twenty ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... will imagine I am responsible for this misfortune and his alarm will grow with the days that pass. Finally, when his state of mind becomes desperate, you will give me his address and he will hear from me. I shall have no trouble, at that crisis, in bringing my dishonest partner to terms." ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum

... him some money, and send him ashore to buy provisions. If he is dishonest he will not ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn

... wholly different true and only way? Great statesmen upon whose knowledge and leadership the salvation of the nation depended, until the next election discovered them to be foolish puppets of a dishonest and corrupt party and put new leaders in their places to save the nation with a new brand of political salvation, the chief value of which was its newness? No indeed! Such as these were not the intellectual giants of the man's Yesterdays. The heights of knowledge in those ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright

... Vicegerent of the Almighty, the oracle of the All-wise, the umpire from whose decisions, in the disputes either of theologians or of kings, no Christian ought to appeal. The Italians were acquainted with all the follies of his youth, and with all the dishonest arts by which he had attained power. They knew how often he had employed the keys of the Church to release himself from the most sacred engagements, and its wealth to pamper his mistresses and nephews. The doctrines ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... agenst the lawe, With{e} sowne[9] dishonest for to do offence; Of old surfaytes abrayde nat thy felawe; 52 Toward thy sou{er}ayne alwey thyn aduertence; Play with{e} no knyf, take heede to my sentence; At mete and soupp{er} kepe the stille and soft; Eke to and fro meve nat thy foote ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various

... Abraham Lincoln could not have become so popular all over the world on account of his honest kindheartedness if he had not been loyal, obedient and loving toward those at home. Popularity, also, "begins at home." A mean, disagreeable, dishonest boy may become a king, because he was "to the manner born." But only a good, kind, honest man, considerate of others, can be elected President of ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple

... love! Yet heaven and my waking conscience are my witnesses, I never gave one working thought a vent, which might discover that I loved, nor ever must. No, let it prey upon my heart; for I would rather die, than seem once, barely seem, dishonest. Oh, should it once be known I love fair Cynthia, all this that I have done would look like rival's malice, false friendship to my lord, and base self-interest. Let me perish first, and from this hour avoid all sight and speech, and, if I can, all ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve

... rules. Pay like a man if your calculations prove faulty, but take care that they shall be as seldom faulty as possible. Never mind what you pay for information if it gives you a point the better of other men. Keep your agents honest if you can, but, if they happen to be dishonest under pressure of circumstances, take care at any rate that you are not found out." In short, the Ring is mainly made up of men who pay with scrupulous honesty when they lose, but who take uncommonly good care to reduce the chances of losing to a minimum. Are they in the wrong? ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman

... statesmen as the puissant Burke, the sagacious Pitt, the astute Palmerston, that ninety per cent, of the people—and it is so even in this glorious land of free schools and liberty—are relatively to the remaining ten per cent, either poor and dishonest, or poor and ignorant; and that none of the hundred per cent, goes into sackcloth and ashes when he gets something for nothing. I, sir, am—or I was until recently—a Jeffersonian Democrat. But our party made a great mistake a few ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake

... in different places; some people are afraid to tell the truth, so they lie; and some are afraid to be dishonest, so they are honest; I believe it depends ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad

... Marx and his friends themselves were unable to prove—although they never ceased repeating the allegations—that Bakounin was a spy of the Russian Government, that his life had been thrice spared through the influence of that Government, that he was treacherous and dishonest, and that his sole purpose was to disrupt and destroy the International Working Men's Association. Nor is it necessary to consider the charges made against Marx—some of them time has already taken care of—that he was domineering, malicious, and ambitious, ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter

... turn up your pretty nose, Mrs Potter; I would rather have bin born in Cornwall than any other county in England, if I'd had my choice. Howsever, that ain't possible now. Well, it seems that Mr Rudyerd is a remarkable sort of man. He came of poor an' dishonest parents, from whom he runned away in his young days, an' got employed by a Plymouth gentleman, who became a true father to him, and got him a good edication in readin', writin', an' mathematics. Ah, Tommy, my son, many a time have I ...
— The Story of the Rock • R.M. Ballantyne

... see, openly advised, or rather ordered, the tenants here to club their rents, or, in plain English, the money due to their landlord, with the deliberate intent to confiscate to their own use, or, in their own jargon, 'grab,' the money of any one of their number who, after going into this dishonest combination, might find it working badly and wish to get out of it. ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert

... about it, before such a thing could be settled. A house, in your street, with perpetual smoke coming through the slates of it, is not a pleasant house to be neighbor to! One honest interest the neighbors have, in an Election Crisis there, That the house do not get on fire, and kindle them. Dishonest interests, in the way of theft and otherwise, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... comes of over-crowding. When a man isn't allowed to be himself, he takes refuge in a mean imitation of those other men who appear to be better off. That was what sent me off to South America. I got into politics, and found that I was in danger of growing dishonest, of compromising, and toadying. In the wilderness, I found myself again.—Do you seriously believe that happiness can be obtained by ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing

... intensity of their enjoyment of quite commonplace delights—a face passed in the street, a sunset, a quiet hour of reflection, even a well-cooked meal—make up for the suffering of not wholly commonplace woes. I do not know whether even the joy of literary battle did not overweigh the pain of the dishonest wounds which he received from illiberal adversaries. I think that he had a happy life, and I am glad that he had. For he was in literature a great man. I am myself disposed to hold that, for all his accesses of hopelessly uncritical prejudice, he was the greatest critic that ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury

... paralysed my operations, and by their ill-disguised mercenary practices overthrew the Supreme Director, O'Higgins, was corrupt, though I have thought it beneath the dignity of historical narrative, more particularly to expose their dishonest practices, of which I was well apprised. I feel, however, that in making such a charge, some proof thereof is incumbent on me, I will therefore in conclusion simply adduce a solitary instance of those practices, so damning, that, unless supported by irrefutable testimony, I might well be deemed ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald

... for ye lovely arts of courtinge is ye purpose to marry. If ye do not expect to marry, positively ye must not court: flirting is ye dishonest arte. Courting is ye honest arte; if ye woman knows in ye woman her heart that she will not make ye man a good wife, let her not try to Cage ye man: let her keep ye cat or cage ye canary: that is ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen

... usually make the better showing, and may therefore be considered permissible in the case of those teams which, because of unfamiliarity with their opponents' methods, can take no chances. This plan of preparation is in no way harmful or dishonest, but lacks some of the more permanent advantages ...
— Elements of Debating • Leverett S. Lyon

... are quite right about some of our workers being dishonest sometimes. They are, Mr. Baxter, I have seen more than one, myself, exposed. But that is natural, is it not? Why, there have been bad Catholics, too, have there not? And, after all, we are only human; and there is a great temptation sometimes not to send people away disappointed. ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson

... no other way, by a loss of part of his business. My son-in-law[A], my son[B], and myself, were perhaps the chief marks for calumny and resentment. The first was twice elected a member of the Assembly, and as often put out by scrutinies conducted by the House, in the most flagrantly dishonest manner. Every attempt was made to deprive the second of his business, as a lawyer. With regard to myself, I was thrown into prison, without any semblance of justice, without any form of trial, but in the most ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society



Words linked to "Dishonest" :   fallacious, fraudulent, misleading, untrusty, crooked, dishonorable, blackguardly, thievish, double-dealing, deceitful, scoundrelly, double-faced, duplicitous, false, beguiling, ambidextrous, shoddy



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