Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Mischievous   Listen
adjective
Mischievous  adj.  Causing mischief; harmful; hurtful; now often applied where the evil is done carelessly or in sport; as, a mischievous child. "Most mischievous foul sin." "This false, wily, doubling disposition is intolerably mischievous to society."
Synonyms: Harmful; hurtful; detrimental; noxious; pernicious; destructive.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Mischievous" Quotes from Famous Books



... Cyril; 'suppose I had been the death of your Swimming Rei, I should have been tried for the wilful murder of a prince of Little Egypt, the son of a Romany duke. Why, Helen of Troy was not half so mischievous a beauty as you.' ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton

... my whole existence, reappearing at its every crisis, and by some strange fate even when it was far from me, throwing its spell over my mind and fortunes till, because of it, I turned my skill and knowledge to the propagation of a lie, so mischievous in its results that had the world known me as I was it would have done wisely to deal by me as it deals ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard

... the resemblance is so great, that if we have all female Deerham in fits, I shall not wonder. It strikes me—it is the only solution I can come to—that some one is personating Frederick Massingbird for the purpose of a mischievous joke—though how they get up the resemblance is another thing. Let me advise you to see into ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood

... of Directors. Tranquillity was, however, for a time restored by this measure, though it did not continue long. In about three months an occasion occurred in which Mr. Francis gave some opposition to a measure proposed by Mr. Hastings, which brought on a duel, upon the mischievous effects of which your Committee have already ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... grew less frequent, and my cousin became at last quite calm. She told him that I had always spoken the truth—she little knew—and that she could not doubt my word, and that my father had become quite convinced it was the mischievous work of the dog that had brought about all this trouble; and then she made him feel how wrong it was to have accused me, instead of believing my word; so that, before she left the room, he had told her he was very very sorry for what he had said, and he hoped she ...
— The Story of the White-Rock Cove • Anonymous

... and our circle broke up. Sara and Felix departed and we watched them down the lane in the moonlight—Sara walking demurely in one runner track, and Felix stalking grimly along in the other. I fear the romantic beauty of that silver shining night was entirely thrown away on my mischievous brother. ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... young. Certain it is they are rocked on the deep from their birth, "cradled" in the sea, sleeping on their backs in the water, clasping the young in their arms like a human being, tossing up seaweed in play by the hour like mischievous monkeys, or crawling out on some safe, sea-girt rocklet, where they shake the water from their fur and make their toilet, stretching and arranging and rearranging hair like a cat. Only the fiercest gales ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut

... left the henyard gate ajar. If he had pushed it wide open things might have been different. But he didn't push it wide open. He left it only halfway open. By and by there happened along a mischievous little Night Breeze. There is nothing that a mischievous little Night Breeze enjoys more than making things move. This mischievous little Night Breeze found that that gate would swing, so it blew against that gate and blew and blew until suddenly, with a ...
— Bowser The Hound • Thornton W. Burgess

... bit more good than some other people—Miss Ruth, for example;" but I could see from his mischievous eyes that he was not thinking of Ruth. How well and handsome he was looking: he had grown broader, and there was an air of manliness about him—"my bonnie lad," as ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... was new. From morning to night he trotted after Sandy until one day the young Scotchman remarked with a mischievous smile: ...
— The Story of Wool • Sara Ware Bassett

... right." He regards all the race's actual experiences as the indispensable mechanism of Progress, and does not regret its mistakes and calamities. Many changes and revolutions, he observes, may seem to have had most mischievous effects; yet every change has brought some advantage, for it has been a new experience and therefore has been instructive. Man advances by committing errors. The history of science shows (as Fontenelle had ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury

... then prevailed, such as the extreme altruistic system of Mo Ti and the extreme egoistic system of Yang Chu; and it is urged—in my opinion with overwhelming force—that if the Tao-Te-Ching had existed in the days of Mencius, it must necessarily have been recognised and treated as a mischievous work, likely to alienate men's minds from the one perfect and ...
— China and the Chinese • Herbert Allen Giles

... of its almost inevitably mischievous concomitants, brings into play chiefly that part of the body which is already in comparative vigor, and which, besides, has little to do directly with the size, position, and vigor of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various

... The mischievous little minx was piqued at his refusal, and determined that he should drink it, or decline to do so at the peril of losing ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine

... that had taken place—enough to say, he had managed to escape before his time was out; but as no one informed against him, he was suffered to remain in peace, and manage a small farm in the next county, where he and his mother soon after retired, as he determined totally to forsake his old mischievous pranks. ...
— Ellen Duncan; And The Proctor's Daughter - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... hoping for a miracle of plainness she will be unpleasantly surprised," said the old woman, and her shrivelled face was as mischievous as a monkey's as she drew the key of Olive's room from her pocket. "I am going to take her some soup now, and you ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton

... It was enough. She had laughed; she was a lady humorously inclined, not to say mischievous. A comic-opera star would have sent her press agent round to see what advertising could be got out of the incident; a prima donna would have appealed to her primo tenore, for the same purpose. A gentlewoman, surely; moreover, she lived within the radius, the official radius of the Madison ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath

... had been turned out of the Territory; that Messrs. Snow & Mair had become hateful in the eyes of the half-breeds: yet he felt disposed to do little more than laugh at the whole affair. He had the assurance of his mischievous envoys that the matter was a mere temporary ebullition of feeling, and that his presence in the country would very soon calm the ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins

... lady did not see that part. We stifled the letter before she read so far. Has that mischievous devil told Mr. ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve

... That mischievous child had divined his intent, almost as soon as he himself had divined it. Nay, now—or, to be accurate, three minutes later—it is odds that she knew it more surely than he: for he walked towards the Railway Station—that ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... buried by the river, and every one felt much relieved; for the man never came back, thinking Jocko dead when he left him. But he had not lived in vain; for after this day of trial, mischievous Neddy behaved much better, and Aunt Jane could always calm his prankish spirit by saying, as her finger pointed to a little collar and chain hanging on ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott

... the noblest and most sympathetic soul in the world, has become malicious and mischievous; that she shouts and screams with joy when an accident happens before her eyes, when a maid breaks a glass or cuts her finger—I knew that long ago; but that she also takes things in the house and puts them ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various

... moreover, of the experience of the most spiritual-minded and saintly men that have lived on earth, we see in the claim of the advocates of human free will regarding the fulfilment of God's Law nothing but a vain boast, and a most mischievous attempt to be smarter than God. The theory of salvation by merit is the most disastrous risk that the human heart can take. Christ has mercifully warned men not to take this risk. If they will not hear Him, they will have to perish in ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau

... pretty generally confiscated, a thing to be expected; also we found several instances of pillaging in which especially desirable articles had been carried off. Wanton breakage was rare and not extensive, and in most cases appeared to have been more mischievous than malicious. It was probably due to a somewhat too liberal use of pillaged wine. In general, the worst charges against the Germans in France were that they had been exceedingly rude and boorish. There were, however, ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood

... preoccupied by the conversation he was carrying on, deposited it on the hearthrug. It was some time before he could be made to see that this was wrong; and he believed Mrs. Carlyle never ceased to think that he had a mischievous motive for doing it. ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... of Jehovah at his court temple, the rigid old Israelite indeed might naturally enough take offence (Exodus xx. 24-26), but the temple itself nevertheless ultimately acquired a great and positive importance for religion. It need not be denied that mischievous consequences of various kinds slipped in along with the good. The king, moreover, can hardly be blamed for his conduct in erecting in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem altars to deities of Ammon and Egypt. For those altars remained undisturbed until the time of ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen

... one of those little nags which the farmers in the neighborhood of Paris use so much, soon appeared, wearing a round hat with a broad brim, beneath which his wood-colored face, deeply wrinkled, appeared in shadow. His gray eyes, mischievous and lively, concealed in a measure the treachery of his nature. His skinny legs, covered with gaiters of white linen which came to the knee, hung rather than rested in the stirrups, seemingly held in place by the weight of his hob-nailed shoes. Above his jacket of blue cloth ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac

... been perfect in every point. Good! You naturally expect that a pony with such exceptionable ancestry will itself be without a flaw. But is it? No, often it is not. Too frequently you get bitter water from sweet, and thistles instead of grapes. Just look at that tricky, mischievous, ill-tempered, wall-eyed little rascal. Where did he get his evil cantrips and his wall-eye? I have known his ancestors for four generations back and they were all without a blemish." The minister made a note of this fact within the book and volume of his brain: it may ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes

... he ever made any money, a mischievous smile illumined his face. "Yes ma'am, you see I plowed durin' de day on old Marster's farm. Some of de white folks what didn't have many Niggers would ax old Marster to let us help on dey places. Us had to do dat wuk at night. On bright ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration

... cup of coffee without sugar. She then helped De la Haye and me, not forgetting to put plenty of sugar in our cups, and she poured out one for herself exactly like the one she handed to Dubois. It was much ado for me not to laugh, for my mischievous French-woman, who liked her coffee in the Parisian fashion, that is to say very sweet, was sipping the bitter beverage with an air of delight which compelled the director of the Mint to smile under the infliction. But the cunning hunchback was ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... a hesitating way, as if by no means certain of the fact. He is so vague about it, indeed, that "some one's" dark eyes take a mischievous gleam. ...
— A Little Rebel - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford

... mattere; My tale is of a cock, as ye may hear, That took his counsel of his wife, with sorrow, To walken in the yard upon the morrow That he had mette the dream, as I you told. Womane's counsels be full often cold;* *mischievous, unwise Womane's counsel brought us first to woe, And made Adam from Paradise to go, There as he was full merry and well at case. But, for I n'ot* to whom I might displease *know not If I counsel of women woulde blame, Pass over, for I said ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer

... middle counties. Then he wanted to know of the condition of the people since the collapse of the land boom. The farmer's humorous comment and sane views delighted the young editor. At the first opportunity Samson came to the business of his call—the mischievous lie regarding Harry's death which had appeared in The Democrat. Mr. Wentworth went to the proof room and found ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller

... out to him, extended across her palms. Vere refrained from touching the braid, surveying it where it lay. Being a mere bachelor, I had no idea of Phillida's emotions, until Vere's usual gravity broke in a mischievous, heart-warming smile into the ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram

... The mischievous doctor had thrown another glass into his cup: "Drink your water, and set us all a philosophical example ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... metals can be imported so long as we hold command of the seas. His armies will therefore die of inanition, or their operations will be thwarted for lack of munitions. This would indeed be joyful tidings were it true. If false, it is a mischievous delusion. ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon

... turned upon her heel, and went off, followed by all the mischievous imps of the village, some crying, "Madge, canst thou tell thy name yet?" some pulling the skirts of her dress, and all, to the best of their strength and ingenuity, exercising some new device or other to ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... commercial, and political organization, to the resisting of the exploitation of the mother country by inflowing masses of foreigners, are declared to be bad patriots, dead to the sentiment of the flag, dead to the call of the bugle, are silenced in fact by a fustian as senseless and mischievous as that which in some marvelous way the politician, hypnotized by the old formulae, has managed to make pass as "patriotism" ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor

... The same mischievous spirit plays many other pranks. Sometimes he cheats the ferrymen out of their toll; sometimes he disguises himself like the baker's lad, and calls at the houses to take the bread to the oven, and then carries it away to some ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane

... a child, there are about her many children; mischievous, shy, joyful little people, who lurk round the coppersmiths, or play in the old churches, or hide about the corridors of Palazzo Comunale. And so it is not surprising that the greatest treasures of Prato are either the work of children—the frescoes, for ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton

... which had broken through from some trestle, in a recent accident, and were waiting the offices of a wrecking-train. The poetry of the man-of-war still clings to the "three-decker out of the foam" of the past; it is too soon yet for it to have cast a mischievous halo about the modern battle-ship; and I looked at the New York and the Texas and the Brooklyn and the rest, and thought, "Ah, but for you, and our need of proving your dire efficiency, perhaps we could have got on with the wickedness of Spanish ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... better in a generation; but we are shackled, chained, blinded, by old false notions. The ideas of the past, the sentiments of the past, the attitude and prejudices of the past, are in our way; and among them none more universally mischievous than this great body of ideas and sentiments, prejudices and habits, which make up the offensive ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... expressly and judiciously forbidden by Thorfin. Yet one of them found means to steal a battle-ax, of which he immediately made a trial on one of his countrymen, whom he killed with one blow; on which a third person seized the mischievous weapon and threw it into the sea. During a stay of three years, Thorfin acquired a large stock of rich furs and other merchandize, with which he returned to Greenland; and at length removing to Iceland, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr

... colour to the meat that is boiled in it, and, when drank by strangers, never fails to occasion pains in the stomach and bowels; nay, sometimes produces dysenteries. In all appearance it is impregnated with nitre, if not with something more mischievous: we know that mundic, or pyrites, very often contains a proportion of arsenic, mixed with sulphur, vitriol, and mercury. Perhaps it partakes of the acid of some coal mine; for there are coal works in this district. There is a well of purging water within a quarter of a mile of the ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett

... old childish habits and sympathies, without being called on to more active and serious duties of life. I have not put away childish things, though a man. But, at the same time, this visionary inactivity is better than the mischievous activity of so many I see about me; not better than the useful and virtuous activity of a few others: John Allen ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald

... striking type of the Southerner, whom it was difficult to look at with a serious face, and whom no one with any sense of humour could really dislike, notwithstanding his immense vanity and his immeasurable impudence. He had a thick black beard, a long, sharp nose, dark eyes full of mischievous mirth, and cheeks the colour of red wine. He wore a stiff new blouse with a red collar—the badge of his office—and a straw hat like a beehive. The whole of the way to Beaulieu his tongue was not still a minute. He told me stories of his bravery and his love adventures ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker

... the opinion last delivered. It appears to me to be slanderous and calumnious to compare a Diamond Beetle to the filthy and mischievous animal libelled. By an Egyptian Louse I understand one which has been formed on the head of a native Egyptian—a race of men who, after degenerating for many centuries, have sunk at last into the abyss of depravity, in consequence of having been subjugated for a time by the French. ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay

... sleigh, tenderly squeezing Bluebell's hand, who fell to his share, but did not return with them. Indeed, he was walking soon in quite an opposite direction, by the side of a shrouded figure in a rose-coloured cloud, out of which laughed the mischievous eyes of the second ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston

... useful knowledge, and a practical acquaintance with men and things; or in the fine lady sense, as the mastery of airs, and graces, and drawing-room accomplishments; or in the moralist's sense, as the curbing of our mischievous propensities, and the energizing of our good ones—in every case, we are more of gentlemen than the Southerners. If the mere possession of wealth, and progress in the grosser and more material arts of civilization, have any thing to do with ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... their slender, stolid Indian good looks, except that they differed in size, nodded with the awkwardness of the male. Two babies stared solemnly. A little girl with a beautiful, oval face, large mischievous gray eyes behind long black lashes, a mischievously quirked mouth to match the eyes, and black hair banged straight, both front and behind, in almost mediaeval fashion, twirked a pair of brown bare legs all about us. Another ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White

... left with me," she said. "I have read it through again and again. I have always wondered, as everybody does, at your cleverness in things of this kind." A faintly mischievous smile flashed upon her face and was gone. "I thought it was splendid, Mr. Trent—I almost forgot that the story was my own, I was so interested. And I want to say now, while I have this in my hand, how much I thank you for your generous, chivalrous act ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley

... badly indeed in speaking about the ghost to Mrs. Molyneux's maid, who, of course, repeated it all directly and made Lucinda nervous. She is a most troublesome, mischievous ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer

... complexion, hair, and health, used often to come to fetch her father from the counting-house in the great chariot with its yoke of mules which carried them to their fine villa at La Marsu, in the vicinity of Tunis. This mischievous child with splendid bare shoulders, had dazzled the adventurer as he caught glimpses of her amid her luxurious surroundings, and, years afterward, when, having become rich and the favourite of the ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet

... monkeys in the jungle do—eat and sleep. Of course some of the younger ones play tricks once in a while. Monkeys are very mischievous and fond of playing tricks. That is what makes them so funny in the circus, and ...
— Mappo, the Merry Monkey • Richard Barnum

... not know me, you do not understand me," he cried, "or you are sorely mischievous. Do you call this a quarrel? Is there any want of help here? Do you suppose that I am in the world to give advice? Of all occupations which man can pursue, that is the most foolish. Every man must be his own counsellor, and do what he cannot let alone. If all go well, let him be happy, let him ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... screen of glass, talking with the coachman who had come to meet them. Freya, before disappearing, turned to give him a faint smile and then raised her gloved hand with a stiff forefinger, threatening him just as though he were a mischievous and bold child. ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... of these are the exact agent I want; nor have I found him yet. They at best can only act as auxiliaries. Laura indeed may be eminently useful; but the plotting, daring, mischievous, malignant yet subaltern imp incarnate, that should run, fly, dive, be visible and invisible, and plunge through frost or fire to execute my behests, ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft

... Confusion?— hah— dost not see something in my looks that frights thy guilty Soul, and makes thee wish to change that Shape of Woman for any humble Animal, or Devil? for those were safer for thee, and less mischievous. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn

... Standard, commenting on a letter which appeared in the Times shortly before on the same subject, and written in the same spirit of hostility to the Irish people, says it would be "indecent" at any time; at present it is "intolerably offensive" and "greatly mischievous." "That the Irish are not naturally an idle race," continues the Standard, "every man may satisfy himself in London streets, and in the streets of all our great towns, where nearly all the most toilsome work ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke

... baffled in their just expectations. If I love Lord Grenville and Lord Howick, it is because they love their country; if I abhor ... it is because I know there is but one man among them who is not laughing at the enormous folly and credulity of the country, and that he is an ignorant and mischievous bigot. As for the light and frivolous jester, of whom it is your misfortune to think so highly, learn, my dear Abraham, that this political Killigrew, just before the breaking up of the last administration, was in actual treaty with them for a place; and ...
— English Satires • Various

... for a while to discuss it, but we could devise no material explanation. I suggested the kobold—that mischievous invisible which is supposed to play pranks by carrying off such things as pencils, letters, and the like, and suddenly restoring them almost before one's eyes. Clemens, who, in spite of his material logic, was always a mystic at ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... had concluded he was conscious that Susy was by no means interested in these details, nor in the least affected by the passing allusion to her dead father and his relation to Clarence's misadventures. With her rounded chin in her hand, she was slowly examining his face, with a certain mischievous yet demure abstraction. "I tell you what, Clarence," she said, when he had finished, "you ought to make your cousin get you one of those sombreros, and a nice gold-braided serape. They'd just suit you. And then—then you ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte

... is the story of Lemminkainen (this personality suggested the Pau-puk-keewis of Longfellow)—the joyous, reckless, handsome, mischievous pleasure-lover,—always falling into trouble, because he will not follow his mother's advice, but always loved by her in spite of his follies. The mother of Lemminkainen is a more wonderful person than the mother of Kullervo. Her son has been murdered, thrown into a river—the deepest of all rivers, ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn

... across the room twirling his moustaches, and came up to the table where we sat, making a salutation with his hat in a very stately and polite manner, so that Hoskins himself felt obliged to bow; the glee-singers murmured among themselves, and that mischievous little wag, little Nadab the Improvisatore, began to mimic him, feeling his imaginary whiskers, after the manner of the stranger, and flapping about his pocket-handkerchief in the most ludicrous manner. Hoskins checked this sternly, looking towards Nadab, ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... him with an explosion and a cloud of yellow powder, suggesting the day pyrotechnics of the Chinese. The prickly-pear cactus encloses its buzzing visitor in a golden bower, from which he must emerge at the roof as dusty as a miller. The barberry, in similar vein, lays mischievous hold of the tongue of its sipping bee, and I fancy, in his early acquaintance, before he has learned its ways, gives him more of a welcome than he had bargained for. The evening primrose, with outstretched filaments, hangs a golden necklace ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson

... attend to your case, and get Clip," said Cora with a mischievous smile, "and I will ...
— The Motor Girls on a Tour • Margaret Penrose

... half-laughing answer, as she mentally reviewed the young gentlemen in question—her giddy, thoughtless Aphabell, her mischievous Tobias, her Esdras always out at elbows, her noisy, troublesome Noah, her rough Silvanus, whom no amount of "thwacking" seemed to polish, and her lazy, ease-loving Valentine. "Nay, come, I reckon I'll not make merchandise of any of 'em this bout. ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt

... flap of an enormous pocket of a soiled vest of embossed silk, heavily ornamented with tarnished silver lace, projected an instrument, which, from being seen in such martial company, might have been easily mistaken for some mischievous and unknown implement of war. Small as it was, this uncommon engine had excited the curiosity of most of the Europeans in the camp, though several of the provincials were seen to handle it, not only without fear, but with ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper

... starting home to his mother's house when the groups of his schoolmates, whispering and watching him with the mischievous and heartless eyes of children bent upon playing a nasty trick, gradually closed in around him and ended by surrounding him altogether. There he stood in their midst, surprised and embarrassed, not understanding what they were going to do with ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... disguise, she forgot her height and breadth and the dignity imposed thereby. And anyhow Berta Abbott was just as tall, if not of such stately proportions. So Robbie Belle with exulting zest in the frolic raced up-stairs and down with the mischievous band of freshmen. They skipped saucily around members of the faculty, chased appreciative juniors, frightened the smallest forms into scuttling flight, and gave their great performance of "There was an old woman ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz

... had to color it, you mean, don't you, grandma?" the mischievous Maggie would rejoin, looking up archly to her grandmother, who would call her a saucy child, and stroke still ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes

... 'The Duke of La Rochefoucauld seized to perfection the weak side of human nature; maybe he knew its strength too; and only contested the merit of so many splendid actions in order to unmask false wisdom. Whatever his design, the effect seems to me mischievous; his book, filled with delicate invective against hypocrisy, even to this day turns men away from virtue, by persuading them that it is never genuine.'[38] Or, as he put it elsewhere, without express personal reference: 'You must arouse in men the feeling of their prudence and strength, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 2 of 3) - Essay 1: Vauvenargues • John Morley

... I have never appreciated the name of "sloth bear" given to Ursus labiatus, as it is a creature that works hard for its food throughout the year, and being an inhabitant of the tropics, it never hybernates. This species is very active, and although it refuses flesh, it is one of the most mischievous of its kind, as it will frequently attack man without the slightest reason, but from sheer pugnacity. A full-grown male weighs from 280 to 300 lbs. The skin is exceedingly thick and heavy. The hair is long and coarse, with a bunch ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... account, and no persuasions of hers could induce him to reveal this important secret, which he chose to reserve as a rod in case she refused him some intercession with his father, or some other accommodation, rendered necessary by his mischievous habits. ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various

... there is always the resource of not putting the law in force, or of abolishing it. So he has his way, and if he has his way he is soon satisfied for the time; however, he falls into the habit of taking it oftener and oftener, and at last begins to create by his operations a confusion of which mischievous people can take advantage, and which at any rate, by troubling the common course [67] of business throughout the country, tends to cause distress, and so to increase the sort of anarchy and social disintegration which had previously commenced. And thus that profound sense ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold

... miles passed away very pleasantly. Molly's strong little hands were quite accustomed to the reins, and the men were free to talk, which, however, she found time to do as well. The two young people on the front seat stole occasional sidelong glances at each other. The clever, mischievous little girl of Christian's recollection was transformed by the kindly hand of time into a fascinating and capable young lady. The uncertain profile had grown clear and regular. The truant hair was somewhat more under control, ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman

... otherwise) of her poorer and busier neighbors. Mr. Carnegie had refused to accept the plea of her good heart in excuse of her bad practice, and had denounced her, in a moment of extreme irritation, as a presumptuous and mischievous woman; and Miss Wort had publicly rejoined that she would not call in Mr. Carnegie if she were at death's door, because who could expect a blessing on the remedies of a man who was not a professor of religion? The most cordial terms they affected was an armed neutrality. The doctor was ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr

... Luther heard, moreover, of corrupting influences still exercised by the Sacramentarians outside Switzerland. A letter reached him to that effect from some of his adherents at Venice, whose complaints of the mischievous results of the Sacramental controversy among their fellow-worshippers ascribed that controversy to the continued influence of Zwinglianism. In August 1543 he wrote to the Zurich printer Froschauer, who had presented him with a translation of the Bible ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin

... come!" continued the General, who took a mischievous delight in making trouble for the worthy Desvanneaux. "Every one knows quite well that you have by no ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... own. The child was so hidden in her wraps when Mom Beck led her up-stairs, that no one could tell how she looked. The boys had been curious to see her, ever since they had heard so many tales of her mischievous pranks. A few minutes later, when she appeared in the parlours, there was a buzz of admiration. Maybe it was not so much for the soft light hair, the star-like beauty of her big dark eyes, or the delicate colour in her cheeks that ...
— Two Little Knights of Kentucky • Annie Fellows Johnston

... handsome, good-humoured, firm face. He had had a good education, was clever and hearty and lion-like in his actions, but mild and quiet in disposition. Jack was a general favourite, and had a peculiar fondness for me. My other companion was Peterkin Gay. He was little, quick, funny, decidedly mischievous, and about fourteen years old. But Peterkin's mischief was almost always harmless, else he could not have been so much beloved ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne

... thought you might pull up here, and so I ran the whole way, knowing nobody was home but Jim,—and—and—I'm out of breath—and—that lets me out." And here Miggles caught her dripping oilskin hat from her head, with a mischievous swirl that scattered a shower of raindrops over us; attempted to put back her hair; dropped two hairpins in the attempt; laughed, and sat down beside Yuba Bill, with her hands crossed lightly ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte

... commoner forms of impurity to which I have referred, and which are so mischievous as stimulating immature functions, needing, as Acton over and over again insists, absolute quiet and rest for healthy development, Dr. Dukes, the head physician of one of our best known public schools, states: "The reason why it is so widespread an evil"—computed in 1886 at eighty ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins

... the late Dr. Arnold. Everybody who has had experience of school-life knows that the average boy spends a great deal of his time in cheating the masters, lying to the authorities, and playing every sort and kind of mischievous or disreputable prank that comes into his head. But it is better to have this fact testified to by a man who has been in a position to observe large numbers of boys over a very extended period. The accusation of exaggeration or hasty generalization ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst

... called for revenge. The authorities sent a few police to protect the place, but they were only a handful of men in the midst of a great and seething crowd of over eight thousand powerful diggers. For an hour or two the mob, though indulging in occasional banter, remained harmless. But a mischievous boy having thrown a stone, and broken the lamp in front of the hotel, the police made a movement as if they were about to seize the offender. This roused the diggers to anger, and in less than a minute every pane of glass was broken; the police were roughly jostled and cut by showers ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland

... them come in," said they, "they will wander about the streets a while, but they will soon get tired and go away; whereas, by opposing and thwarting them, we only make them the more violent and mischievous." ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... next morning by some noise in the room. Looking up, they saw the little fellow at the fireplace breaking an egg. He had built a fire, had got eggs from the kitchen, and was cooking his breakfast. The little girl was mischievous and cheery in spite of her bad plight, and nobody knew of the baby except Grayson and the doctor. Grayson would let nobody else in. As soon as it was well enough to be peevish and to cry, he took it back to its mother, who was still abed. A long, dark mountaineer was ...
— 'Hell fer Sartain' and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.

... said the mischievous ex-dyer, with a scrutinizing look which took in the style of man he ...
— The Illustrious Gaudissart • Honore de Balzac

... one of much anxiety to the whole party. The fiendish expression of some of these men's eyes shone horribly, and especially when they endeavoured to disguise it by treacherous smiles. I did not see the tall man nor the mischievous old one of last year; but there were here many disposed to act like them. One miserable-looking dirty aged man was brought forward, and particularly pointed out to me by the tribe. I accordingly showed him the ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell

... anything about 'oughts,' Milly, darling, you and I. God knows, we trust, and that helps many people who love God to be patient when they are in trouble or pain. But think if it had been poor mischievous little Tiza who had been hurt, how she would have fretted. And now very likely Becky will bear it beautifully, and so, without knowing it, she will be teaching Tiza to be patient, and it will do Tiza ...
— Milly and Olly • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... favored handful parasitic on the rest, they are smitten with the degeneracy which seems to be the inevitable biological penalty of complete parasitism, and corrupt culture and statecraft instead of contributing to them, their excessive leisure being as mischievous as the excessive toil of the laborers. Anyhow, the moral is clear. The two main problems of organized society, how to secure the subsistence of all its members, and how to prevent the theft of that subsistence by idlers, ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw

... and again this refrain was started, and sometimes a more mischievous boy or girl would take ...
— Everlasting Pearl - One of China's Women • Anna Magdalena Johannsen

... he doesn't notice me, but merely lends an ear to what you people have to say! You're no more than a low girl bought for a few taels and brought in here; and will it ever do that you should be up to your mischievous tricks in this room? But whether you like it or not, I'll drag you out from this, and give you to some mean fellow, and we'll see whether you will still behave like a very imp, and cajole ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... at work upon them. They received with great contentment the military salutes of the officers of their acquaintance, which they acknowledged with the courtesy of well-trained internes, slightly exaggerated by provoking smiles and mischievous glances which had formed no part of the lessons in politeness taught them by ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... United States. The anomaly of two allegiances, (of which that of the State comes nearest home to a man's feelings, and includes the altar and the hearth, while the General Government claims his devotion only to an airy mode of law, and has no symbol but a flag,) is exceedingly mischievous in this point of view; for it has converted crowds of honest people into traitors, who seem to themselves not merely innocent but patriotic, and who die for a bad cause with a quiet conscience as if it were the best. In the vast ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.

... admit me, invisibly and by stealth, into the same room as herself, was going to whisper from me into her ear; for that forbidden and unfriendly dining-room, where but a moment ago the ice itself—with burned nuts in it—and the finger-bowls seemed to me to be concealing pleasures that were mischievous and of a mortal sadness because Mamma was tasting of them and I was far away, had opened its doors to me and, like a ripe fruit which bursts through its skin, was going to pour out into my intoxicated heart the gushing sweetness of Mamma's attention while she was reading what I had ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... frightened all the same, for the rat had been such a very big rat, and had looked at her, as it darted past, with such wild, bright, mischievous eyes—brown eyes, of course—that she all but jumped ...
— The Adventures of A Brownie - As Told to My Child by Miss Mulock • Miss Mulock

... all a deception," he said, "a turn of his base, juggling artifice. He has procured access to those ladies upon some false pretence, and with some mischievous intention. It is well I have learned where they lodge. I will watch Marthon, and solicit an interview with them, were it but to place them on their guard. It is hard that I must use artifice and brook ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott

... it's the worst thing in the world to give a woman even an inkling that such a thing exists," said the mischievous Kate, with a total abandonment to consequences as she gave the artist ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson

... whether these birds were the same as our sparrows, which are so common everywhere, even in the busy streets London, and so mischievous in the country, eating the grain, and stealing the peas, and nipping off the young ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham

... expressed surprise at this I steered about in various directions to show her how easily it was done, and then some mischievous spirit, which. I myself must have imported into Mars, put it into my head to try and see how fast our little vessel could go. My idea was partly to satisfy my own curiosity and partly to treat Mona to as great a variety ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan

... again, Wulf," Edith said holding out her hand to him, "but now that I hear who you are I recognize you. Why, it is four years since I saw you, and you were then a mischievous little page. Harold has often spoken to me about you, and your adventures in Normandy and Wales. I did not expect to see you, Harold," she went on turning to the earl, "after what you told me in the letter you sent me yesterday, about the troubles in the north. ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty

... manner as to the staff. The more intimately it comes into contact with the troops, the more useful and valuable it becomes. The almost entire separation of the staff from the line, as now practised by us, and hitherto by the French, has proved mischievous, and the great retinues of staff-officers with which some of our earlier generals began the war were simply ridiculous. I don't believe in a chief of staff at all, and any general commanding an army, corps, or division, that has a staff-officer who ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... addresses of the letters were illegible. It was judged expedient, therefore, to publish as much of their contents as was decipherable, in the Indian papers—under the idea that those to whom they were addressed would recognize their own missives from the context; and a most absurdly-mischievous experiment it proved. Never was such a breach of confidence. All sorts of disagreeable secrets were made out by the gentle public of the presidency. Intimate friends learned how they laughed at, or hated one another; matrimonial ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various

... through little villages all asleep, and silent as the adjacent churchyards; and as we two tumbled into our cots at midnight we voted that we had spent "a fine day" in spite of the mischievous tendency of things "to ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith

... of propagation or enlargement used by commonwealths is that of Switzerland and Holland, equal leagues; this, though it be not otherwise mischievous, is useless to the world, and dangerous to themselves: useless to the world, for as the former governments were storks, these are blocks, have no sense of honor, or concern in the sufferings of others. But as the ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington

... minute, bringing my medicines with me, for he himself felt pain. That this second message was a forged one I had no doubt, for the boys had not been long enough gone; still, I packed up my medicines and went, leaving the onus, should any accident happen, upon the mischievous story-bearers. ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke

... to this society of prodigals, of which he became a brilliant ornament, ranking next to Bixiou, one of the most mischievous and untiring scoffing wits of his time. All through that winter Lucien's life was one long fit of intoxication, with intervals of easy work. He continued his series of sketches of contemporary life, and very occasionally made great efforts to write a ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... conjecture, soon concludes that he already possesses whatever toil and inquiry can confer. He then listens with eagerness to the wild objections which folly has raised against the common means of improvement; talks of the dark chaos of indigested knowledge; describes the mischievous effects of heterogeneous sciences fermenting in the mind; relates the blunders of lettered ignorance; expatiates on the heroick merit of those who deviate from prescription, or shake off authority; and gives vent to the inflations of his heart by declaring ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson

... and for what mischievous purposes the use of the Liturgy (though enjoined by the Laws of the Land, and those Laws never yet repealed) came, during the late unhappy confusions, to be discontinued, is too well known to the world, and we ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England

... charming no doubt, but which is not that of a child of her age. You know what I mean. It is something tender—intense—profound, too feminine. It may come to her some day, perhaps—but hitherto Jacqueline's expression has been generally that of a merry, mischievous child." ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... really their own. They would be very sure to oppose such a measure. Poor people, of course, welcomed a scheme which promised to give them farms for nothing. Tiberius even wished to use the public funds to stock the farms of his new peasantry. This would have been a mischievous act of ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER

... Nelson died. The cockpit was lit up while the party were inspecting the poop of the Victory, which bears the words of the great Admiral's last signal, "England expects every man to do his duty." In the cockpit, long associated with merry, mischievous sprites of "middies," there had been for many a year the representation of a funeral urn, with the sentence, "Here Nelson died." The visitors looked at the spot without speaking. There, on this very day in the fast-receding past, ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler

... through the chest, my Lord was for the moment affixed to the panelling at the extreme end of the apartment, where he writhed, much in the manner of a cockchafer which mischievous urchins have pinned to a card,—his mien and his gesticulations, however, being rather more suggestive of the torments of the damned, as they are so strikingly depicted by the Italian Dante. [Footnote: I allude, of course, to the famous Florentine, who excels no ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell

... was allowed to look shabby or be unornamental. The keeping a country in such beautiful order as Germany exhibits, has a wise practical side to it, too, for it keeps thousands of people in work and bread who would otherwise be idle and mischievous. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... the tide may prevent their resuming the very important stations assigned them; they are on no account to be supposed neglected, even should the Enemy surround them, for they may rely on support, and reflect that perhaps their gallant conduct may prevent the mischievous designs of the Enemy. Whatever plans may be adopted, the moment the Enemy touch our Coast, be it where it may, they are to be attacked by every man afloat and on shore: this must be perfectly understood. Never fear the event. The Flat Boats ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... convenient folks, as he remarked. The lessee was at liberty to make improvements; but if the unhappy man did so, little Molineux thought night and day of how he could dislodge him and relet the improved appartement on better terms. He watched and waited and spun the web of his mischievous legal proceedings. He knew all the tricks of Parisian legislation in the matter of leases. Factious and fond of scribbling, he wrote polite and specious letters to his tenants; but at the bottom of all his civil sentences could be seen, as in ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac

... hissing gibe of hereticos! But there was no attempt at violence except when some half-dozen boys began to throw stones. But the stringing of the Englishmen's bows, and the fitting of a few arrows to the strings, sent the mischievous young urchins to the right-about in double-quick time, and within a minute the landing had been accomplished and ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

... the Philippines that the strangers were gods. The white adventurers never found the palace of Cubanacan, whose gates were gold and whose robes were stiff with gems, but they found the soothing and mischievous plant that was eventually to create more wealth for them than the spoil of half a dozen such palaces. The Cuban word for this plant was cohiba. The word tobago, which we have turned into tobacco, was applied to a curious pipe used by the Antilleans, which had a double or Y-shaped ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner

... you read to me enough, I'll improve so that even you will enjoy talking to me," she returned, with a mischievous smile. "What did you ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed

... just got there a few days ago, but I turned around and came back to-day to scold you for getting your feet wet standing there in the wet grass. I knew you didn't know how to take care of yourself." There was a mischievous twinkle in his eyes. "Didn't I always take care of you ...
— Beth Woodburn • Maud Petitt

... appear to be. If anything, she saw him oftener than before, seemed to take a mischievous delight in being seen with him, in running to the Minot place on errands connected with the Harbor business, and in every way ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... still spurting, on the grass, and, followed by the man, walked around the yard, looking for Wango. But the mischievous monkey was not in sight, nor did he come when Bunny called, though Mr. Winkler's pet ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue Keeping Store • Laura Lee Hope

... paused a moment to think over this odd piece of information. Without sharing Sophy's belief as to the kind of use this mischievous-looking piece of property had been put to, it was certainly very odd that Dick should have such a thing at the bottom of his trunk. The Doctor remembered reading or hearing something about the lasso and the lariat and the bolas, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various

... the tossing the ship had gone through. "I wouldn't have believed it," he thought. And his table had been cleared, too; his rulers, his pencils, the inkstand—all the things that had their safe appointed places—they were gone, as if a mischievous hand had plucked them out one by one and flung them on the wet floor. The hurricane had broken in upon the orderly arrangements of his privacy. This had never happened before, and the feeling of dismay reached the very seat of his composure. And the ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad

... Isabella, under whom the germs of much of the subsequent legislation may be said to have been planted, this circumstance has brought undeserved discredit on the government of the latter. Undeserved, because laws, mischievous in their eventual operation, were not always so at the time for which they were originally devised; not to add, that what was intrinsically bad, has been aggravated ten fold under the blind legislation of their successors. [89] It is also true, that many of the most exceptionable laws sanctioned ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott

... but said nothing. The meaning of her look might have been thus translated; "If ever you find yourself within these walls again, I'll give you leave to be as impudent and affected and as mischievous as ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... other enterprises she was generous to a fault, always being ready to give away half her income—and yet not "to a fault," for her strong administrative and financial instinct restrained her from foolish or mischievous expenditure. All this work, of body and mind, was done in spite of fragile health and frequent suffering; yet she never seemed overburdened, or fussed, or flurried, and those who enjoyed her graceful hospitality ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell

... the same Spot Who'll buy Gods of love? The Misanthrope Different Threats Maiden Wishes Motives True Enjoyment The Farewell The Beautiful Night. Happiness and Vision Living Remembrance The Bliss of Absence To Luna The Wedding Night Mischievous Joy Apparent Death November Song To the Chosen One First Loss After Sensations Proximity of the Beloved One Presence To the Distant One By the River Farewell The Exchange Welcome and Farewell New Love, New Life To Belinda May Song With a painted Ribbon With a golden Necklace On the Lake From ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe

... forefinger travelled slowly round the coast-line until, coming to the extreme south-west corner, it stopped, and a mischievous ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs

... tenth birthday his life at Corfu came to an end, and Charles was brought home by his mother and sent to school at Taunton, where he stayed for five years. He is sure to have been liked by his schoolfellows, for he was a very lively, mischievous boy, constantly inventing some fresh prank, but never shirking the punishment it frequently brought. At Woolwich, which he entered as a cadet at fifteen, it was just the same. He was continually defying, in a good-humoured ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang

... Alberigo da Barbiano; nor did brigands cost Italy so much as the mercenary troops, which, after the Condottiere system had been developed, became a permanent drain upon the resources of the country. The raids of Tunisian and Algerian Corsairs were more seriously mischievous; since the whole sea-board from Nice to Reggio lay open to the ravages of such incarnate fiends as Barbarossa and Dragut, while the Adriatic was infested by Uscocchi, and the natives of the Regno not unfrequently turned pirates in emulation of ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... intrusion of the husband. It is there that, in an elegant dishabille, she receives the visits of her friends. It is secure against observation, or interruption of any kind whatever. It, in short, is the sacred palladium of female indiscretion. Much of this mischievous licence may, I think, be easily traced to the treatment of the younger and unmarried women. They are confined under a superintendance which is as rigorous, as the licence allowed to their mothers is unbounded. All ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison

... Raffles. Instead of deepening, his lines had vanished. He looked years younger, mischievous and merry and alert as I remembered him of old in the breathless crisis of some madcap escapade. He was holding up his finger; he was stealing to the window; he was peeping through the blind as though our side street were Scotland Yard itself; he was stealing back again, ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung

... neighbourhood was infested by a huge rogue elephant, whom none of these people could succeed in killing. He was not the only one, as many other rogues frequented the tank where he was usually seen, but he was by far the most mischievous. He would walk into fields at night and eat up the corn, and even into gardens and consume the vegetables; several times he had pulled down huts to get at corn stored within them, and once he had upset a cottage ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston

... been in the old days on the farm, when he had bullied her and made her the scapegoat for all the offences he could possibly load on her slim shoulders. One night in the woods, when Bessie, wrapped in a sheet and playing ghost, had frightened Jake and his mischievous friends away before they could terrify the Camp Fire Girls as they lay asleep, had taught Bessie that ...
— The Camp Fire Girls on the Farm - Or, Bessie King's New Chum • Jane L. Stewart

... on Saturday to get the King to consent to give the Royal assent on Thursday, the day before Good Friday. The Duke of Cumberland has been mischievous at Windsor. The King fancies he is in the situation of Louis XVI. That he shall run down by Liberalism. The Duke of Cumberland swears he will turn us out, let who will ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)

... charge, and so the battle began. Now they in the town had planted upon the tower over Ear-gate, two great guns, the one called Highmind, and the other Heady. Unto these two guns they trusted much; they were cast in the castle by Diabolus' founder, whose name was Mr. Puff-up; and mischievous pieces they were.[111] But so vigilant and watchful, when the captains saw them, were they, that though sometimes their shot would go by their ears with a whiz, yet they did them no harm. By these two guns ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... its being a sunken reef, lying twelve miles from the nearest land, and exactly in the course of vessels making for the firths of Forth and Tay. The legend further tells how that a Danish pirate, named Ralph the Rover, in a mischievous mood, cut the bell away, and that, years afterwards, he obtained his appropriate reward by being wrecked on the Bell Rock, when returning from a ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne

... Hudibras is more rich in wit and humour than the exposure of Sidrophel, and one of the best of Dryden's comedies is the Mock Astrologer. But it was reserved for Swift to produce the most amusing satire which has ever gibbeted these mischievous mountebanks. ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe

... Ameer Ali expresses the opinion that even to Eastern minds esoteric speculation presents a danger: "Sufism in the Moslem world, like to its counterpart in Christendom, has, in its practical effect, been productive of many mischievous results. In perfectly well-attuned minds mysticism takes the form of a noble type of idealistic philosophy; but the generality of mankind are more likely to unhinge their brains by busying themselves with the mysteries ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster

... should have exclaimed at the time! Lay the knout into every "raw" that can be found! For we are of opinion that Julian's duplicity is not yet adequately understood. But what was right as regarded the claims of the criminal, was not right as regarded the duties of his opponent. Even in this mischievous renegade, trampling with his orangoutang hoofs the holiest of truths, a Christian bishop ought still to have respected his sovereign, through the brief period that he was such, and to have commiserated his benighted brother, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... is extraordinarily outspoken, and it is charming to see her run after me to confess her childish faults: 'Mamma, I have pushed Celine; I slapped her once, but I'll not do it again.' The moment she has done anything mischievous, everyone must know. Yesterday, without meaning to do so, she tore off a small piece of wall paper; you would have been sorry for her—she wanted to tell her father immediately. When he came home four hours later, everyone else had forgotten about ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)

... woods: but if they are too much squeezed,—for when not prest for room and left in peace they will live on good terms with man and beast,—but when one elbows them too close, and into their very ribs, they grow pettish and mischievous: then come deaths, earthquakes, floods, conflagrations, landslips, and all the other things they bring to pass; or else you must put a stiff yoke on them, and then they will serve you indeed, but against the grain, and the more toll they have to pay to anybody, the worse friends are they ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck

... crawling over a nursery floor might so have laughed if playfully chased by its nurse. But this misshapen hulk of humanity did not possess even the wisdom of a child. He only laughed and crawled faster, looking back with an expression of mischievous cunning and extreme delight. ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris

... I done so? Have I not, on the contrary, from the very beginning told you I should take the first opportunity of disbelieving so absurd and mischievous a story? And have I lost a moment? Was it not the first word I said to Sally Nightingale before you came in, and without a soul in the room to hear? I only ask for justice. But if my son misrepresents me, what can I expect from others?" ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan

... man in the deck-chair made a sharp movement and spilt some cigar-ash on his coat. He sat up deliberately and brushed it off. Saltash watched him with mischievous eyes. ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell

... steward," shouted the mischievous third mate, whose love of fun could not be controled by fear of consequences; "he tried to stab the ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various



Words linked to "Mischievous" :   mischief, harmful, impish, mischievousness, wicked



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com