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Perfidious   Listen
adjective
Perfidious  adj.  
1.
Guilty of perfidy; violating good faith or vows; false to trust or confidence reposed; treacherous; faithless; as, a perfidious friend.
2.
Involving, or characterized by, perfidy. "Involved in this perfidious fraud."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Perfidious" Quotes from Famous Books



... those tortures which awaited him, he allowed, in an unguarded hour, the sentiments of nature to prevail over his resolution, and he agreed to subscribe the doctrines of the papal supremacy and of the real presence. The court, equally perfidious and cruel, were determined that this recantation should avail him nothing; and they sent orders that he should be required to acknowledge his errors in church before the whole people, and that he should thence be immediately carried to execution. Cranmer, whether that ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume

... always instructive and witty—when it was not inspired with mean hatred, which, too often, alas, was the case. Never, however, was there frank intimacy between us. Our temperaments did not allow that. He called me a sentimental idealist, and he was right; I called him a vain man, perfidious and artful, and I was right also."[2] This mutual dislike and even distrust subsisted ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter

... midst of this glorious and beneficent career, at the age of fifty-five (57?), Caesar, whose frank and fearless spirit disdained suspicion or precaution, was assassinated by a knot of rancorous, perfidious aristocrats, whom he had pardoned and promoted. Their purblind spite was powerless to avert the inevitable advent of monocracy. What they did effectually extinguish for more than a century, was the possibility of amnesty, conciliation, and mutual confidence. Careless as ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various

... wine—wine that I had from Xeres nine years ago, senors and offered, the shameless heretics, to take me to England, if I would turn Lutheran, and find me a wife, and make an honest man of me—ah! and then to demand fresh ransom for the priory and the fort—perfidious!" ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... down every barrier tending to check the flood sent forth from Manchester and Birmingham. In that way her hungry Proletariat has been fed. But the industrial supremacy of England is drawing to a close. The nations have discovered the perfidious fallacy of Free-Trade principles, and are now learning to manufacture for their own wants, instead of paying England enormous sums to manufacture for them. Very soon English goods will no longer find foreign markets, and how will ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... promised thee a sister tale Of man's perfidious cruelty; Come, then, and hear what cruel wrong ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown

... went out to this courageous fellow whose intrepidity of spirit he guessed at a glance. But the other was too deeply moved by emotion to notice the progress of these reflections. As soon as the door was closed upon them, he said, with the accent of a stage hero addressing the perfidious seducer, "M. de Gery, I am ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet

... resentment; but, after he deliberately considered the matter, he resolved that it was now the best way quietly to mount his horse, and to carry back with him to London a severe cold, instead of the soft wishes and tender desires he had brought from thence. He quitted this perfidious place with much greater expedition than he had arrived at it, though his mind was far from being occupied with such tender and agreeable ideas: however, when he thought himself at a sufficient distance to be out of danger of meeting Lord Chesterfield and his hounds, he ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton

... conceived projects for the public good around the humble, unostentatious stove, was nowhere! Youth could not too soon learn this bitter lesson. And in this case youth too, perhaps, was right in its conjectures, for this WAS, no doubt, the little game of the perfidious Bulger. We recalled the fact that his unhallowed appearance in camp was almost coincident with the arrival of the two families. We glanced at Briggs; to our amazement, for the first time he looked seriously concerned. But Mosby ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte

... without dissembling; you would then have sounded the death-knell of my hope; but my heart could have blamed fortune alone. But to see my love encouraged by a deceitful avowal on your part, is so treacherous and perfidious an action, that it cannot meet with too great a punishment; I can allow my resentment to do anything. No, no, after such an outrage, hope for nothing. I am no longer myself, ...
— Don Garcia of Navarre • Moliere

... hostile to each other, and the one of which is the prey of the other, can manage to live together. The fact is that mine got on wonderfully harmoniously together. The cats were good as gold to the rats, which had lost all fear of them. The felines were never perfidious, and the rats never had to mourn the loss of a single comrade. Don Pierrot of Navarre was uncommonly fond of them; he would lie down by their cage and spend hours watching them at play. When by chance the door ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier

... hitherto regarded him. He felt a strange alarm at the rival he had braved,—at the foe he had provoked. When, a little before his banquet, he had resumed his self-possession, it was with a fell and gloomy resolution that he brooded over the perfidious schemes he had previously formed. He felt as if the death of the mysterious Zanoni were necessary for the preservation of his own life; and if at an earlier period of their rivalry he had determined on the fate of Zanoni, the ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... proffer for the joys of one short night: "More and more rich I heap them, till her breast "Wavers, then loud exclaim,—Lo! here behold, "Adulteress! one unluckily disguis'd, "Unluckily betroth'd, thy lawful spouse! "Perfidious! by those eyes convinc'd I stand. "Nought she:—with silent shame o'ercome, she fled "The house deceitful, and her hated spouse. "With me offended, all the race of men "Detesting, on the mountain tops ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid

... Oceans. Her warriors were adventurous and brave; her soldiers inherited the gallantry of the followers of Charles V. She was the court of Europe, the acknowledged leader of chivalry. How rapid has been her decadence! As in the plenitude of her power she was ambitious, cruel, and perfidious, so has the measure which she meted to others been in turn accorded to herself. To-day there are none so humble as to ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou

... had declared that he would return within a year's time. A year passed, however, and no news of him had been received. Now the Clerk was a perfidious and wicked schemer, and one morning as he and Jeanne were in conversation he hinted that the year within which the Seigneur had promised to return was now gone by and that the war in which he had been engaged had come to an end. He made no secret of his passion for the ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence

... these lines has been questioned, and it must be admitted that the strain is somewhat too dolorous for the times. Stung as they were by the perfidious dealings of their own nobility, and the ruthless oppression of a neighbouring monarch, the Minstrels sought every opportunity of astirring the patriotic feelings of their countrymen, while they despised ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... we draw the sword again, it is the sword of judgment. Out there many call you the man of blood. I have laboured for you, have met them all in persuasion. I had prevailed. It is finished. Blood is upon us again, blood spilled for a perfidious king. The sword that we had put by for ever! My God, how I have feared it! Well, so be it. We go to the field again—but then, prepare you for the reckoning. It shall ...
— Oliver Cromwell • John Drinkwater

... a scene with my perfidious rascal of a nephew; in which the young reprobate showed an audacity and a spirit for which I was quite unprepared. When I taxed him with ingratitude, 'What do I owe you?' said he. 'I have toiled for you as no man ever did for another, ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray

... brother, and thy uncle, call'd Antonio,— I pray thee, mark me,—that a brother should Be so perfidious!—he whom, next thyself, Of all the world I loved, and to him put The manage of my state; as, at that time, 70 Through all the signories it was the first, And Prospero the prime duke, being so reputed In dignity, and for the liberal arts Without a parallel; those being all my study, ...
— The Tempest - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare

... spoken of her as "the delight of mankind," and said that antiquity would have dressed altars for her and she would "surely have been goddess of something." The most incomprehensible page in her history is her complaisance towards the persistent impertinences of this perfidious friend. The only solution of it seems to lie in the strength of family ties, and in her unwillingness to be on bad terms with one of her very few near relatives. Bussy-Rabutin was handsome, witty, brilliant, a bel esprit, a member of the Academie Francaise, and very much in love with his ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason

... the crafty commodore, the valuable cargo of the Maggie II was disposed of in Honolulu. During the period while the schooner lay at the dock discharging Captain Scraggs and McGuffey prudently remained in the cabin with the perfidious mate, in order that, should an investigation be undertaken later by the Treasury Department, no man might swear that the real Phineas Scraggs, filibuster, had been in Honolulu on a certain date. The Kanaka crew of the schooner Mr. Gibney managed to ship with an ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne

... of her race," cried the captain. "They always abuse other nations and cry out that they are betrayed when ill luck comes to them, instead of trying to help themselves, as we perfidious Englishmen do." ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson

... is 'as hardened a ruffian as Burr'; Calhoun is 'treacherous', and 'a thorough-paced political blackleg.' Adams 'in politics was an apostate, and in private life a pedagogue, and everything but amiable and honest', while his father, the ex-President, was 'a scamp.' Governor Yates is 'perfidious and weak.' Henry Wheaton's 'conduct is shamefully disgraceful, and he might be lashed naked round the world.' Chief Justice Ambrose Spencer is classed as a minus quantity, and his son John C., 'the political millstone of the West.' Peter B. Porter 'wears ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... energy led me to admire the exploits of my uncles, and filled me with a longing to share in them, the cold-blooded cruelty they perpetrated on returning from their expeditions, and the perfidious artifices by which they lured their dupes to the castle, in order to torture them to extort ransom, roused in me strange and painful emotions, which, now that I am speaking in all sincerity, it would be difficult for me to account for exactly. In the absence of all ordinary ...
— Mauprat • George Sand

... in plain words that we remain out of it. As the Democratic candidate, I favor going in. Let us analyze Senator Harding's plan of making a German-American peace, and then calling for a 'new relationship among nations,' assuming for the purpose of argument only, that the perfidious hand that dealt with Germany would possess the power or influence to draw twenty-nine nations away from a plan already at work, and induce them to retrace every step and make a new beginning. This would entail our appointing another ...
— The Progressive Democracy of James M. Cox • Charles E. Morris

... which commenced with the restoration of Charles II. to the throne of his ancestors in 1660, had continued for nearly twenty-three years, when Renwick entered on his ministry. Instead of the perfidious rulers in church and state being satiated with the number of the victims of their cruelty, their thirst for blood became more intense, as the time wore on; and when they found they could not crush the spirit of a free people, or extinguish the light of gospel truth, they had recourse ...
— The Life of James Renwick • Thomas Houston

... jury would find the rankest satire libellous.' Memoirs of the Reign of George III, iv. 167. Smollett in Humphrey Clinker (published in 1771) makes Mr. Bramble write, in his letter of June 2: 'The public papers are become the infamous vehicles of the most cruel and perfidious defamation; every rancorous knave—every desperate incendiary, that can afford to spend half-a-crown or three shillings, may skulk behind the press of a newsmonger, and have a stab at the first character in the kingdom, without running the least hazard of detection or punishment.' The ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... possessions. How likely, therefore, was it, having this object always in view, he should give in to the present wily stratagem, where such plausible motives for the abandonment of their hostile purpose were urged by the perfidious chiefs! From the few hasty hints already given him by his guide,—that kind being, who evidently sought to be the saviour of the devoted garrisons,—he had gathered that a deep and artful plan was to be submitted to the chiefs by their leader; but little did he imagine it was of the finished ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson

... little mention here. The perfidious friend of the Pilgrims,—perhaps originally true to them,—he sunk everything for hope of gain. He was treasurer of the Adventurers, one of their most active and intelligent men, but proved a rascal and a canting hypocrite. He was a "citizen ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames

... glances of her dark enthusiastic eye, when joined to her tenderness and boundless affection for himself—all caused his heart to quiver with deadly anguish through every fibre. This produced a transition to Flanagan—the contemplation of whose perfidious vengeance made him spring from his seat in a paroxysm of indignant but intense hatred, so utterly furious that the swelling tempest which it sent through his veins caused him to ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... morning we had news from Mr. Coventry, that Sir G. Downing (like a perfidious rogue, though the action is good and of service to the King, yet he cannot with a good conscience do it) hath taken Okey, Corbet, and Barkestead at Delfe, in Holland, and sent them home in the Blackmore. ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys

... speak, by the indignation that possessed me, at his perfidious words, his wholly artificial manner, which broke on me as suddenly and as glaringly on the eye as rouge will do on a woman's cheek in sunshine, which we have thought real bloom in shadow. I wondered then, how I ever could have been deceived. ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield

... thee well, perfidious maid! My soul,—its fondest hopes betrayed, Betrayed, perfidious girl, by thee,— Is now on wing for liberty. I fly to seek a kindlier sphere, Since thou hast ceased to ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child

... chasing some flies which were buzzing about a bunch of neglected or castaway flowers before the window. The pupils of Cuvier had stretched a net there to catch sparrows; one of the claws of the swallow was caught by the perfidious net. At the cry which this hair-brained swallow made, a score of his brethren flew to the rescue: but all their efforts were in vain; the desperate struggles which the prisoner made to free himself from the fatal trap only drew the ends tighter, and confined his foot more firmly. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various

... without any base appliances. In the work of secession and rebellion, the very officials and sworn guardians of our Government have been the foremost plotters. They have used their opportunities and their trusts for the most perfidious purposes. Nothing but perjury in the very highest places could have initiated secession and rebellion, and to this very moment they derive all their vigor in the council-chamber and on the field from forsworn ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various

... a craze possessing our newspaper press, that Russia was, or might be, brewing evil against India. We can all see the absurdity of such reveries when exemplified by our quicksilver neighbour France, bouncing for ever in her dreams about insults meditated from the perfidious England; but we are blind to the image which this French mirror reflects of our own attitude towards Russia. One hundred and fifty years ago, the incubus which lay heavy on the slumbers of England was the Pope; of whom Swift remarked, that constantly ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various

... where I ought, Since my misguided Hand so lately err'd. Oh Rage, dull senseless Rage, how blind and rude It makes us. Pardon, fair Creature, my unruly Passion, And only blame that Veil which hid that Face, Whose Innocence and Beauty had disarm'd it: I took you for the most perfidious Woman, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn

... me to be burnt, and said: "Why have you, a man, done this perfidious thing in my house?" His demons and peris collected ambar-wood and made a pile, and would have set me on it, when I remembered the word of life which the two peris I had rescued had breathed into my ear, and I asked ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang

... "Before have I permitted scoundrels to live, only to suffer and to have you suffer for my mercy. This time we shall make sure of one scoundrel—sure that he will never again harm us or another," and with a sudden wrench he twisted the neck of the perfidious mate until there was a sharp crack, and the man's body lay limp and motionless in the ape-man's grasp. With a gesture of disgust Tarzan tossed the corpse aside. Then he returned to the deck, followed by Jane ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... personally, but has changed his course on hearing that Jackson is on his way to Washington. If you should have any confidential friend among the members of Congress from your state, charge him to caution Jackson against the perfidious caresses with which he will be ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis

... Under such painful circumstances, the royal youth might not always be able to compose his behavior, or suppress his discontent; and we may be assured, that he was encompassed by a train of indiscreet or perfidious followers, who assiduously studied to inflame, and who were perhaps instructed to betray, the unguarded warmth of his resentment. An edict of Constantine, published about this time, manifestly indicates his real or affected suspicions, that a secret conspiracy had ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... suit I scorned, to listen to that of the perfidious being whose name I bear. I am a miserable victim. Life is unsupportable to me. Next spring, if my husband does not return, like the prodigal, remorseful and repentant, I shall become a missionary, and give my life for ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock

... The perfidious policy of VERGENNES, who, with a view of humbling the pride of England, assisted the subject in arms against his Sovereign, soon imported into his own nation the seeds of liberty, which it had helped to cultivate ...
— Historical Epochs of the French Revolution • H. Goudemetz

... offered in exchange for a group of God's creatures, with his divine image stamped upon them! At length the progress of the bargain came to what might be called a crisis. The Soudanese merchants jumped up suddenly, with shouts and curses, as if they had discovered a perfidious fraud, and rushed to the door, pulling their miserable slaves after them. I felt shocked at the sight, and my horror must have been depicted in my countenance. For Haj Ibrahim, who well knew I disapproved of this traffic, said to me angrily, "Why do you come here now?" I got ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... LEGENDRE. Perfidious traitor!—still afraid to bask In the full blaze of power, the rustling serpent Lurks in the thicket of the tyrant's greatness, Ever prepar'd to sting who shelters him. Each thought, each action in himself ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge

... security, and to procure adherents to the common cause; but this is all I contend for—that the politics of the old government actuate the new, and that they have not, in abolishing courts and royalty, abolished the perfidious system of endeavouring to benefit themselves, by creating distress and dissention among their neighbours.— Louvois supplied the Protestants in the Low Countries with money, while he persecuted them in France. The agents of the republic, more oeconomical, yet directed by the same ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady

... Campeador, by slaying the enemy's champion in single combat. In the quarrel between Sancho and his brother Alphonso, Rodrigo Diaz espoused the cause of the former, and it was he who suggested the perfidious stratagem by which Sancho eventually obtained the victory and possession of Leon. Sancho having been slain in 1072, while engaged in the siege of Zamora, Alphonso returned from exile and occupied the vacant throne. One of the most striking of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various

... martyred heroes who have shed their blood on the scaffold and in the field, in defense of their country and virtue, this is my hope: I wish that my memory and name may animate those who survive me, while I look down with complacency on the destruction of this perfidious Government, which upholds its dominion by blasphemy of the ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce

... her port in days gone by; past the steep cliffs beyond Boulogne; past the lovely beach of Wimereux, with its cottages nestled among the sand-hills, and its silted-up harbour, whence Napoleon the First had intended to issue forth and descend on perfidious Albion—but didn't; past cliffs, and bays, and villages further on, until they brought up off Cape Grisnez. Here the Frenchman let down his trawl, and fished up, among other curiosities of the deep, the ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne

... that beat no base retreat In youth's magnanimous years— Ignoble hold it, if discreet When interest tames to fears; Shall spirits that worship light Perfidious deem its sacred glow, Recant, and trudge where worldlings go, Conform and own ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville

... than of compassion. I gazed at her with equal earnestness, and she perhaps had no less difficulty in comprehending from my countenance what was passing in my heart. We neither spoke nor ate. At length I saw tears starting from her beauteous eyes—perfidious tears! 'Oh heavens!' I cried, 'my dearest Manon, why allow your sorrows to afflict you to this degree without imparting their cause to me?' She answered me only with sighs, which increased my misery. I arose trembling from my ...
— Manon Lescaut • Abbe Prevost

... many things attempted in this book is the encouragement of charity, and free and genial manners, and the exposure of humbug, of which there are various kinds, but of which the most perfidious, the most debasing, and the most cruel, is the ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... on the wall. He took it down, and moved a pace or two towards the door of the perfidious Stranger's room. He knew the gun was loaded. Some shadowy idea that it was just to shoot this man like a wild beast seized him, and dilated in his mind until it grew into a monstrous demon in complete possession of him, casting out all milder thoughts, ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens

... glories in the name of Goose; Such Geese at Rome from the perfidious Gaul Preserved the ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell

... innocence of her eyes lest it should turn to distrust and rejection. Had she refused to believe him, he knew not how he would have persisted in his villainy; for, even in concluding his story, it seemed to him that he must betray himself; so perfidious sounded to him the voice which he could hardly believe his own, and so slinking-knavish did he feel the posture of his body, the movements of his limbs. The distress which should have smitten him to the heart restored his baser courage. Again ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing

... duration of the Senate; and if I live to return to America, I will use all my endeavours to have them altered.(*) I also declare myself opposed to almost the whole of your administration; for I know it to have been deceitful, if not perfidious, as I shall shew in the course of this letter. But as to the point of consolidating the States into a Federal Government, it so happens, that the proposition for that purpose came originally from myself. I proposed ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... M. Maupas were soon enough understood by Louis Napoleon. He promoted him to high office; sheltered him from the censure of his superiors; and, when the coup d'etat was drawing nigh, called him to Paris, in the full and well-grounded confidence that, whatever the most perfidious ingenuity could contrive in turning the guardians of the law against the law itself, that M. Maupas, as Prefet of Police, might ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... Pope professed great distress and astonishment that an order that had so long enjoyed the respect and gratitude of the Church for its worthy deeds in defence of the faith should have fallen into grievous and perfidious apostasy. He then narrated the commendable zeal of the King of France in rooting out the secrets of these men's hidden wickedness, and gave particulars of some of their confessions of the crimes with which they had ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... "Son of perfidious Albion," said Savarin, gayly, "we feared you had deserted the French alliance. Welcome back to Paris, ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... him further as to the perfidious intent of those who were for equalizing property and partitioning the land, abolishing wealth and poverty and establishing a happy mediocrity for all. Misled by their specious maxims, he had originally approved their designs, ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France

... this Congress, this Senate, and this House of Representatives are debating the constitutionality and the expediency of seceding from the Union, and while the perfidious authors of this mischief are showering down denunciations upon a large portion of the patriotic men of this country, those brave men are coolly and calmly voting what you call revolution—aye, sir, doing better than that: arming to defend it. They appealed to ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... brave Tiger Lily were a dozen of her stoutest warriors, and they suddenly saw the perfidious pirates bearing down upon them. Fell from their eyes then the film through which they had looked at victory. No more would they torture at the stake. For them the happy hunting-grounds now. They ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie

... Harold, of a young lord who had despised and wounded his mother-country, from which he had almost been obliged to exile himself, in consequence of a series of eccentricities, faults, and—who knows?—of crimes, perhaps. Thus caught in a perfidious net, Lord ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... complete and intelligible account of the period preceding the Exile than from any other source; of Nahum, who, just before the fall of Jerusalem, uttered his oracle against Nineveh; of Obadiah, who, after the fall of the holy city, launched his thunderbolts against the perfidious Edomites because of their rejoicing over the fate of Jerusalem; of Ezekiel, the prophet of the Exile, who wrote among the captives by the rivers of Babylon; of Haggai and Zechariah, who came back with the returning ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden

... meets The queen of love, whom thus she greets (For Gods, we are by Homer told, Can in celestial language scold), "Perfidious Goddess! but in vain You formed this project in your brain, A project for thy talents fit, With much deceit, and little wit; Thou hast, as thou shalt quickly see, Deceived thyself instead of me; For how can heavenly wisdom prove An instrument to earthly love? Know'st ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift

... cautiously and unperceived, to a spot within arrow-shot of the place where the conference with the chiefs was held. Suddenly they discharged several arrows upon Tonti and Membre, which whizzed by, fortunately, without hitting them. The perfidious wretches then rushed forward, with gleaming knives. The chiefs interposed to save those who were under the sacred protection of ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott

... the scaffold and in the field in the defence of their country and of virtue, this is my hope—I wish that my memory and name may animate those who survive me, while I look down with complacency on the destruction of that perfidious government which upholds its domination by blasphemy of the Most High—which displays its power over man, as over the beasts of the forest—which sets man upon his brother, and lifts his hand, in the name of God, against the throat of his fellow who ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various

... be added sports, Jests, Gifts, and Presents; but not costly, such are yellow Apples, young stock-Doves, Milk, Flowers, and the like; all things must appear delightful and easy, nothing vitious and rough: A perfidious Pimp, a designing Jilt, a gripeing Usurer, a crafty factious Servant must have no room there, but every part must be full of the simplicity of the Golden-Age, and of that Candor which was then eminent: ...
— De Carmine Pastorali (1684) • Rene Rapin

... group for several photographs, and have ever since wished I had fixed up some arrangement for getting a copy. No doubt framed editions of this photograph are reposing on some Hun mantelpieces, showing clearly and unmistakably to admiring strafers how a group of perfidious English surrendered unconditionally on Christmas Day to the ...
— Bullets & Billets • Bruce Bairnsfather

... beneath the warmth of the bedclothes, until the moment when I suddenly fall asleep, as one would throw oneself into a pool of stagnant water in order to drown oneself. I do not feel coming over me, as I used to do formerly, this perfidious sleep which is close to me and watching me, which is going to seize me by the head, to close my eyes and ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various

... fitted for college and admitted to Harvard. Misfortunes culminated at the same moment. I did not remain. I was too ill for study, and suddenly the bottom of my perfidious purse dropped out. Bitter was my disappointment. But in another year I began a new career which brought me happiness, new opportunities, new friends and dividends from Utopian investments. Health and hope, my natural ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee

... daughter of Jephthah, the Gileadite, four days in a year." A more joyous ceremony, on the fourteenth and fifteenth days of the month Adar, reminded the faithful Hebrew of the triumph gained by his kindred over the cruel and perfidious Haman, who had intended to extirpate their whole race. Besides these, we find in the book of Zecharias the prophet an allusion to the "fast of the fourth month, and the fast of the fifth, and the fast of the seventh, and the fast of the tenth;" days of ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell

... fortune Made me not a pagan born, That I might, in my wild folly, Think he must have been some god, Such as he was, who in golden Shower wooed Danae, or as swan Leda loved, as bull, Europa. When I thought to lengthen out, Citing these perfidious stories, My discourse, I find already That I have succinctly told thee How my mother, being persuaded By the flatteries of love's homage, Was a fair as any fair, And unfortunate as all are. That ridiculous excuse Of a plighted husband's promise So misled her, that even yet ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca

... cruelties were to be set down to his namesake H. Monomachus. 21-23. perfidia plus quam Punica. 'This does not seem to have been anything worse than a consummate adroitness in laying traps for his enemies.' —Church and Brodribb. Cf. 'Perfidious Albion.' 23. nulla religio no scruples, i.e. no force binding (re ligare) or restraining ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce

... who only understand what is said before them by the movement of the lips and the expression of the faces. But it was enough for her to watch her son and Le Merquier to understand what harm one was doing to the other, what perfidious and poisoned meaning fell from this long discourse on the unfortunate man whom one might have believed asleep, except for the trembling of his strong shoulders and the clinching of his hands in his hair, while hiding his face. ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet

... longer bear their tyranny and oppression, but boldly threw off the yoke. We must, however, first tell you, papa, what became of the poor inhabitants of Gabii, who had fallen victims to their credulity, and to the confidence they placed in the perfidious Sextus. When they saw themselves thus totally at the mercy of the tyrant, they fell into the deepest despair, expecting to suffer the most cruel treatment. Their misfortunes were not, however, so great as their fears. Tarquin thought it most for his own interest, to act with some degree of humanity ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux

... never understand this until I journeyed myself from Oporto to Plymouth, when I lay for seven days upon my back, and could not have stirred had I seen the eagle of the regiment carried off before my eyes. It was in perfidious weather like this that Nelson took ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle

... atrocious meanness, she never indulged in any idle threats of revenge: it was sufficient that she knew, and would take suitable steps on the earliest occasion. Consequently when it appeared, from the artless conversation of the Guru at lunch that the perfidious Mrs Quantock had not even asked him whether he would like to go to Lucia's garden party or not (pending her own decision as to what she was meaning to do with him) Lucia received the information with the utmost good-humour, ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson

... gazed the mockery went out of her song and she sang of love alone. Such a love as women know who love one man forever and hold all his love in return, yet the words were the same as those of false Giuletta when she fled with the perfidious Dapertutto. ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge

... to Philemon." By what process? Did the apostle, a prisoner at Rome, seize upon the fugitive, and drag him before some heartless and perfidious "Judge," for authority to send him back to Colosse? Did he hurry his victim away from the presence of the fat and supple magistrate, to be driven under chains and the lash to the field of unrequited toil, whence he ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... put to death. The banker could not consent to live under the dishonour of a violated pledge; and, abstaining from food, died in twenty-one days, invoking the vengeance of the River Sarjoo, on the head of the perfidious Prince. In his last hours the banker was visited by one of the Rajah's wives, who was then pregnant, and implored him to desist from his purpose in mercy to the child in her womb; but she was told by the dying man, that ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman

... sod, mark reader, as you pass The carcase buried of a great jack-ass: Perfidious, smiling, fawning, cringing slave, Hell holds his spirit, and his flesh this grave. Corruption revels in a kindred soil: A carcase fatted on ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West

... my connexion, it is to be wished you would use discretion, even in the accounts that you give to the general Congress. Every thing that passes in your great assemblies is known, I cannot tell how, at the court of Great Britain. Some indiscreet or perfidious citizen sends an exact account of your proceedings to the palace of St James. In times of great exigency, Rome had a dictator; and in a state of danger the more the executive power is brought to a point, the more certain will be its effect, and there will be less ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various

... treaty had marked for reversion to Bulgaria. In consequence the relations between the governments and peoples of Servia and Bulgaria were dangerously strained. The Bulgarians denounced the Servians as perfidious and faithless and the Servians responded by excoriating the colossal greed and intolerance of the Bulgarians. The immemorial mutual hatred of the two Slav nations was stirred to its lowest depths, and it boiled and sputtered like a ...
— The Balkan Wars: 1912-1913 - Third Edition • Jacob Gould Schurman

... necessary than to show that the Spanish cause was just.' 'It was not enough,' said these enlightened monitors, 'it was not enough that the attack of France upon the Spanish nation was unprincipled, perfidious, and cruel—that the resistance of Spain was dictated by every principle, and sanctioned by every motive, honourable to human nature—that it made every English heart burn with a holy zeal to lend its assistance against ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones

... my ability of interpretation to reveal and transmit the most minute intentions of the author. To the English audience it seemed that I had really incarnated that perfidious but great character of Lady Macbeth, in a ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles

... Savoyards, and a strong party in Romand Switzerland was opposed to them. At this juncture, the German emperor, twice foresworn, deserted their ally the Archduke Sigismond, and the Bernois, alarmed for the safety of their city, hastily invoked the promised aid of Louis XI. No answer came from their perfidious ally and the Swiss Confederates, alone at last, were left to defend their own country and their freedom. Emperor and king alike were absent, all their machinations finished, and although on the memorable day of Morat, Savoy was pitted against its own cities, and the Confederates ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven

... can deceive a lover? Rumor bore the report to Dido, who, mad with grief, reproached Aeneas. "Perfidious one! didst thou think to escape from me? Does not our love restrain thee, and the thought that I shall surely die when thou art gone? I have sacrificed all to thee; now leave me not lonely in my ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb

... eyes turned to my face in all their melting, perfidious languor, I conquered my hatred of her by a strong effort, and stooped and kissed her. Had I yielded to my real impulses, I would have crushed her cruelly in my arms, and bruised her delicate flesh with the brutal ferocity of caresses born of bitterest loathing, not ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli

... this tree likewise puts forth perfidious arms to strangle the Sower; but cunningly he disentangles the ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus

... entertain a dread we can neither conquer nor conceal. It is therefore with the utmost distrust and alarm that we regard his late professions of attachment and love to the American people, fully recollecting that his invariable course has been, by perfidious offers of protection, by deceitful professions of friendship, to lull his intended victims into the fatal sleep of confidence and security, during which the chains of despotism are silently wound ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson

... Cato. Perfidious men! And will you thus dishonour Your past exploits, and sully all your wars? Why could not Cato fall Without your guilt! Behold, ungrateful men, Behold my bosom naked to your swords, And let the man that's injured strike the blow. Which of you all ...
— Cato - A Tragedy, in Five Acts • Joseph Addison

... sufficient guard against the use of them, for purposes favorable to the interests and views of the enemy, further provisions on that subject are highly important. Nor is it less so that penal enactments should be provided for cases of corrupt and perfidious intercourse with the enemy, not amounting to treason nor yet embraced ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Madison • James Madison

... attributes, and almost to give it a soul. I admired its frank, bold, honest character; its noble sincerity and perfect truth. Here was no specious, smiling surface, covering the dangerous sand-bar or perfidious rock; but a stream deep as it was broad, and bearing with honorable faith the bark that trusted to its waves. I gloried in its simple, quiet, majestic, epic flow; ever straight forward. Once, indeed, ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving

... caterpillars which pretend to be leaves or flowers for the sake of protection are those truly diabolical and perfidious Brazilian spiders which, as Mr. Bates observed, are brilliantly coloured with crimson and purple, but 'double themselves up at the base of leaf-stalks, so as to resemble flower buds, and thus deceive the ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen

... "Yes," continued the perfidious Marianne in a patronizing tone, as if she had not heard him, "she is certainly charming! A trifle—just ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie

... French had been constantly excited and encouraged, and religious fanaticism had inflamed many persons of consequence in the country. From the end of 1796 the Venetian Senate secretly continued its armaments, and the whole conduct of that Government announced intentions which have been called perfidious, but the only object of which was to defeat intentions still more perfidious. The Senate was the irreconcilable enemy of the French Republic. Excitement was carried to such a point that in many places the people complained that they were not permitted to ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... Charles, lured to the metropolis. He had received anonymous letters warning him of his danger. Many of his more prudent friends openly remonstrated against his placing himself in the power of the perfidious queen. Coligni, however, was strongly attached to Henry, and, in defiance of all these warnings, he resolved to attend his nuptials. "I confide," said he, "in the sacred word ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott

... Chaulnes paid another visit to the Chief President, who admitted, with much confusion, that he had changed his views, and that it was impossible to carry out what he had agreed to. After this we felt that to treat any longer with a man so perfidious would be time lost; and we determined, therefore, to put it out of his power to ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... a horse, nor a woman. For the king is fastidious, the horse prone to run away, and the woman is perfidious." ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup

... art and voluptuousness, a living gem of priceless value. Thereupon, realizing how weak he was, he wept, mourning over his lost freedom, his captive mind, his disordered soul, the devotion of his very flesh and blood to a weak, perfidious little creature. ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France

... heaven unanimously urge the request, and will confess the obligation; that riches, victory, and paradise will crown their pious enterprise; and that eternal damnation will be the penalty of their neglect, if they suffer his tomb, his temple, and his people to fall into the hands of the perfidious Lombards." ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton

... to delay that ruin which he knew it was beyond his power to avert—snatching, amid the bloody scenes around him, a moment for the indulgence of a father's pride and a husband's tenderness, from the perfidious paramour flying from the vengeance of the woman he ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various

... merit. His temper, which, though generous and affectionate, had always been irritable, had now been made almost savage by bodily infirmities and mental vexations. Conscious of great powers and great virtues, he found himself, in age and poverty, a mark for the hatred of a perfidious court and a deluded people. In Parliament his eloquence was out of date. A young generation, which knew him not, had filled the House. Whenever he rose to speak, his voice was drowned by the unseemly interruption of lads who were in their cradles when ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... signs are not wanting to show that our nation is designed by Providence as the instrument for the recovery of its rights, and for the chastisement of proud, perfidious Albion."[19] ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold

... cast one glance at her basket to see that the paper quite concealed that article of clothing which the perfidious laundry had found. (Probably the laundry knew where it was all the time, and—in a figurative sense, of ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson

... their name of "Kit-Cats" from prosaic mutton pies. 'Twould be horrible to think on this gastronomic derivation of the title were we not to remember, quite fortunately, that geese saved classic Rome. Why, therefore, should not the preservers of perfidious Albion suggest the aroma of ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins

... Nevertheless, the peaceable soul of the journeyman recoiled before thoughts of murder; he contented himself with appropriating the dagger, and bridling for himself the faster horse of the prince; and, ere Omar awoke to see himself despoiled of all his hopes, his perfidious companion was several miles ...
— The Oriental Story Book - A Collection of Tales • Wilhelm Hauff

... Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks In Vallombrosa, where th' Etrurian shades High over-arched embower; or scattered sedge Afloat, when with fierce winds Orion armed Hath vexed the Red-Sea coast, whose waves o'erthrew Busiris and his Memphian chivalry, While with perfidious hatred they pursued The sojourners of Goshen, who beheld From the safe shore their floating carcases And broken chariot-wheels. So thick bestrown, Abject and lost, lay these, covering the flood, Under amazement of their hideous change. ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton

... money upon failures than the successes of a century had cost, and supporting this profusion by schemes of finance, either hollow and delusive, like the Sinking Fund, or desperately regardless of the future, like the paper issues—if driving Ireland into rebellion by the perfidious recall of Lord Fitzwilliam, and reducing England to two of the most, fearful trials, that a nation, depending upon Credit and a navy, could encounter, the stoppage of her Bank and a mutiny in her fleet—if, finally, floundering on from effort to effort ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore

... He seems to reckon all these evils as matters fully determined on, and therefore falls into the last usual form of despair, by threatening the authors of these miseries with "lasting infamy, and the curses of posterity upon perfidious ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift

... who doe the crusades' musters tell, In wise that maketh myndes incredulous, And paynte how like Dan Neptune's sweeping swell The North bore down on the perfidious! Ne nigh so potent thatte as was with us; Where men, like locusts, darkened all the land, As marched they toward the place that's treacherous, And shippes, that eke did follow the command, Like forests, motion-got, doe walk ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various

... thought to have seen him in royal array Before his proud squadrons his banners display, And the voice of the people exulting to own Their sovereign assuming the purple and crown; But the time has gone by, my hope is despair,— One maiden perfidious has wrought all ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... now considered a burden, by disposing of the individual to some heartless trader. This is done unknown to the victim, and the news, when it reaches her, drives her almost frantic; she at once seeks her perfidious paramour, and finds to her dismay, that he has been gone some days on a tour to the provinces, and is, perhaps, a thousand miles off. Tears and protestations avail her nothing, the trader is inexorable, ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell



Words linked to "Perfidious" :   treacherous, unfaithful, perfidiousness, perfidy, punic



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