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Intrigue   /ɪntrˈig/  /ˈɪntrig/   Listen
Intrigue

verb
(past & past part. intrigued; pres. part. intriguing)
1.
Cause to be interested or curious.  Synonym: fascinate.
2.
Form intrigues (for) in an underhand manner.  Synonyms: connive, scheme.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Intrigue" Quotes from Famous Books



... pass by the Delhi Gate at Lahore and do certain things by which means he would hear much to his advantage. He had no thought at the moment to do the particular things, but he was sufficiently curious to pass by the Delhi Gate. Some intrigue was on hand into which it was sought to lure him. He had not forgotten that his ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason

... this play, as in the Merchant of Venice, Midsummer Night's Dream, Much Ado about Nothing, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, Winters Tale, All's Well that Ends Well, Measure for Measure, and the Tempest, the plan of construction is as follows. There is one main intrigue carried out by the high comedy characters, and a secondary intrigue, or underplot, by the low comedy characters. The former is by no means purely comic, but admits the presentation of the noblest motives, the strongest passions, and ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... continual mixture of devotion and pleasure, a circle of the exercises of piety and dissipation, of momentary fervor and continuous irregularities. This religion connects Jesus Christ with the pomps of Satan. We there see sumptuous display, pride, ambition, intrigue, vengeance, envy, and libertinism all amalgamated with a religion whose maxims are austere. Pious casuists, interested for the great, approve this alliance, and give the lie to their own religion in order to derive advantage from circumstances ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach

... and tapered it off with three tigers. "Ah! that is what I like," resumed the major; "I always did like the music of the Democracy. It sounds as if it was the free offering of hearts innocent, and not given to retrieve." "Intrigue," whispered Don Fernando, correctively, as he stood close behind the major, evidently delighted at the good temper of those about him. "Exactly!" bowed the major, "intrigue was what I meant to say!" ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"

... regard has been shown by all parties in this affair: I say by all parties, because common justice compels me to declare that Mr. Dundas, instead of having impeded or frustrated the arrangement proposed for Hobart, or of having sacrificed him to any intrigue at the India House, has to my certain knowledge asserted Hobart's cause with the warmest zeal, used every means of representing it to the Company in the most advantageous light, and even entered into personal engagements for the benefit of Hobart far exceeding any demand which could ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham

... to be dreaded. The policy of the Koordi determined that he would overthrow the power of Quat Kare, and after having vainly laid snares for his capture, the old king fled from the governor of Fashoda as David fled from Saul and hid in the cave of Adullam. The Koordi was clever and cunning in intrigue; thus, he wrote to Djiaffer Pacha, the governor-general of the Soudan, and declared that Quat Kare the king of the Shillooks was DEAD; it was therefore necessary to elect the next heir, Jangy for whom he requested the firman of the Khedive. The firman of the ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker

... excellence, who took the blazing sun for his crest. The Fronde had been a time of pleasurable excitement to the high-spirited girl, whose mixed blood ran like quicksilver, and who delighted in danger and party strife, stratagem and intrigue. The story of her courage and gaiety of heart in the siege of Paris, she being then little more than a child, had reached the Flemish convent long after the acts recorded had been forgotten ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon

... in many respects, from his father and brother, holding in supreme dislike courts and courtiers, party warfare, political intrigue, and all the subtleties of Jesuitical diplomacy, neither having any inordinate relish for camps or campaigns, Sir Piers Rookwood yet displayed in early life one family propensity, viz., unremitting devotion to the sex. ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... intelligent statesman could doubt that New Orleans must be ours, nor any soldier question the need for defending it desperately against any foreign power. The story of the way in which Gen. James Wilkinson, by intrigue and trickery, some years later secured a partial relaxation of Spanish vigilance, can not be told here, though his plot had much to do ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot

... victory comes only to the tribe whose fire-tree has bloomed is implicitly believed, and impatiently the Moros await this announcement of the combat season. Paying no heed to their capital city, Manila, these merry little isles revel in intrigue, and there is no sport in Moroland that can compare with the combat. Tribes go forth to conquer and enslave others; the men look forward to it as an opportunity to prove their prowess; the women thrill at the possibility ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart

... whispered Betty, her eyes glowing. I suppose to an impressionable girl these things really are of absorbing interest. For myself, bongos intrigue me even less than pongos, while dongos frankly bore me. "When do you ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse

... were the currents of intrigue that made up a campaign in the great city; not to mention the hidden forces whose current no human could discern. Arthur went about exercising his talent for oratory in behalf of Birmingham, and found consolation in the sincere applause of humble men, and of boys subdued by ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith

... his nerves quivering with excitement at the news so long looked for, so sudden when it came. What were love and intrigue now? He thought about a thousand things but these in his rapid walk to his quarters: his past life and future chances—the fate which might be before him—the wife, the child perhaps, from whom unseen he might be about to part. Oh, how he wished that night's work undone! ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various

... partisan intrigue, in which he and the cause finally went down together, had not yet done their work. There were many murmurers at real, many growlers at supposed, errors; but no opposition party—truer to itself and its interests than to the cause—had ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon

... speak of Alfleri so much as a poet as a dramaturgus. I may be mistaken, and it is, perhaps, presumptuous in me to attempt to judge, but it has always appeared to me that Voltaire and Alfieri have managed dramatic effect and the intrigue and catastrophe of their tragedies better than any other authors. Shakespeare, God as he is in genius, is in this particular very deficient. Schiller, too, the greatest modern poetic genius perhaps and the Shakespeare ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye

... left-hand neighbor cuts them. The dealer must next "dress the board," that is, he must put counters into the pools, which are all marked differently. This is the way to dress the board: One counter to each ace, king, queen, jack, and game, two to matrimony (king and queen), two to intrigue (queen and jack), and six to the nine of diamonds, which is the Pope. On a proper board you will see these marked ...
— My Book of Indoor Games • Clarence Squareman

... dining-room to ourselves and to which we can ask our friends. The food is extremely good. Griscom and the Secretaries have all called and sent pots of flowers, and we are dining out every other night. In the day we shop and ride. But all day and all night we the correspondents plot and slave and intrigue over the places on the columns. I got mine on the second column all right but no one knows if it ever will move. So, naturally, I want to be on the first. The rows are so engrossing that I have not enjoyed the country ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis

... a mystery as a blundering bumblebee would through a spider's web. He was for leaving the web all intact till he knew who spun it and whom it was to catch. If it was Mr. Allen's work or Miss Edith's, it must stand; if not, he could play bumblebee with a vengeance, and carry off the gossamer of intrigue with one sweep. ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe

... aid let me ask in a difficult task, Mr. Punch, with the greatest submission; To win for my name a well-merited fame was always my ardent ambition, And clearly to-day the least difficult way is to send an appeal to the papers, To form an intrigue for creating a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 11, 1893 • Various

... accommodate him; that Russia's relations with Sweden, Poland, and Turkey were unsettled, and that it was beneath her station to interfere in a domestic rebellion which no foreign Power had recognized. This sudden change in Catherine's attitude, which without doubt was the result of court intrigue,[7] filled the English king with mortification and disappointment, and compelled him to seek assistance where he finally obtained it—in the petty states of ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston

... had little time or inclination left for any serious pursuit, since, to take a moment's repose or an hour's breathing space was to risk falling behind in the endless and aimless race. Strange as it may appear, the knowledge that they owed place and preferment more to chance or intrigue than to any personal merit or inherited right, instead of lessening the value of the prizes for which all were striving, seemed only to enhance them in the eyes of ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory

... He mentioned it in a very artful manner at council, where I was told that some of the wisest appeared at least, by their silence, to be of my opinion; but others, who were my secret enemies, could not forbear some expressions which, by a side-wind, reflected on me. And from this time began an intrigue between his majesty and a junto of ministers, maliciously bent against me, which broke out in less than two months, and had like to have ended in my utter destruction. Of so little weight are the greatest services to princes when put into the balance ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester

... which the war of 1878—the Schipka Pass, Plevna, the dazzling heroism of Skobeleff—has made memorable. In the triumph of this same principle lies the future hope of Spain. Spain has been exhausted by revolution after revolution, by Carlist intrigue, by the arrogance of successive dictators, and by the bloody reprisals of faction; she has lost the last of her great colonies; but to Alphonso XIII fate seems to reserve the task of completing again by mutual resignation ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb

... and miscellaneous writer, ed. at Oxf., became the friend of Carr, afterwards Earl of Rochester and Somerset, and fell a victim to a Court intrigue connected with the proposed marriage of Rochester and Lady Essex, being poisoned in the Tower with the connivance of the latter. He wrote a poem, A Wife, now a Widowe, and Characters (1614), short, witty descriptions of types of men. Some of those pub. along ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin

... itself. All the thousand minute refinements of an extensive and intimate association with the commanding and courtly minds of the age fitted him to cope more successfully with the spirit of subtle intrigue, the fox-like sagacity, the wolfish rapacity, the cruel lack of diplomatic honor, and the illimitable and terrible intolerance that distinguished in so wonderful a degree the historical era of Motley's choice. He came with all the zeal of a true lover of liberty, himself republican, ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various

... contribute to that restoration which the partisans of the Chevalier de St. George had not ceased to hope for. For this she was prepared to do all, to suffer all, to sacrifice all. But her loyalty, as it exceeded her brother's in fanaticism, excelled it also in purity. Accustomed to petty intrigue, and necessarily involved in a thousand paltry and selfish discussions, ambitious also by nature, his political faith was tinctured, at least, if not tainted, by the views of interest and advancement so easily combined with it; ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott

... Nevertheless she was positive, she was absolutely certain as a girl can be about such a thing, that he wanted and had long wanted her. He had waited because mingled with his man's desire for her there had been the other desire. He might have rushed at an intrigue. Such a man could have no real delicacies. He was too wise to rush at a marriage. And he must have had marriage in his mind almost ever since he had met her. He must have made inquiries, have found out all about her, and then laid his plans. Her looks had probably brought him for the first time ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens

... immigrants from northern India, as their women wear the Hindustani dress and they speak Hindi at home. At their weddings the bridal couple walk round the sacred post according to the northern custom. When a widow marries again the couple worship a sword before the ceremony. If a man is convicted of an intrigue with a low-caste woman, he has to submit to a symbolical purification by fire. A heap of juari-stalks is piled all round him and set alight, but as soon as the fire begins to burn he is permitted to escape from it. This rite is known as Agnikasht. The Londharis appear to be distinct from the ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell

... delights his auditors by imitations and descriptions of Indian ceremony, Egyptian dancing, Arab vehemence, Persian abuse, European vivacity, and Turkish insolence. With prodigious inventiveness, and a habit of perpetual intrigue, acquired in his travels, he might be called a "knowing" man, but for the truly Somali weakness of showing in his countenance all that passes through his mind. This people can hide nothing: the blank eye, the contracting brow, the opening nostril and the tremulous ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton

... my dear," Miss Sandus had improved the occasion to remark, "that you are not English; but the Italian in you comes out in your unconquerable passion for intrigue." ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland

... instinct to prompt him to public life? The mere suggestion was a sneer. It seemed to me, simply, that Stanley Lake was a lively, amusing, and even intelligent man, without any internal resource; vacant, peevish, with an unmeaning passion for corruption and intrigue, and the sort of egotism which ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... began to intrigue traitorously with Edward III.; after a truce, David led his whole force into England, where his rash chivalry caused his utter defeat at Neville's Cross, near Durham (October 17, 1346). He was taken, as was the Bishop of St Andrews; his ransom became the central question between ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang

... refused, until the Archbishop compelled them to yield. Disturbances then arose in Zambales, the responsibility of which was thrown on the Dominicans by their rival Order, and the Recoletos finally succeeded in regaining their old province by intrigue. ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... contains one of his maxims for men to live by? Many persons still live who knew him, and remember him, but can any of them repeat a saying of his which passes current on the lips of Americans? So much sound and fury, so much intrigue and sophistry, and self-seeking, and now the silence of an ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer

... way. Finding the way out of, or into difficulties was one of his strong points and one he especially delighted in, if it had a flavor of intrigue, and was to serve a friend. Since his mother's death in Paris, several years before, he had made his home in or about the city. He was without near relatives, but had quite a number of connections whose social standing was such that there were few ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan

... employing all their Influence to divide the people, partly by intimidating them for which purpose a fleet of Ships lies within gun Shot of the Town & the Capital Fort within three miles of it is garrisond by the Kings Troops, and partly by Arts & Intrigue; by flattering those who are pleasd with Flattery; forming Connections with them, introducing Levity Luxury & Indolence & assuring them that if they are quiet the Ministry will alter their Measures. I fear some of the Southern Colonies are taken with this Bait, for we see hardly anything ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams

... together they did that which caused a great calamity.' It was, therefore, indeed a crisis, and the chief blame is laid on Sayyid Muḥammad. [Footnote: TN, p. 94. 'He (i.e. Sayyid Muḥammad) commenced a secret intrigue, and fell to tempting Mirza Yaḥya, saying, "The fame of this sect hath risen high in the world; neither dread nor danger remaineth, nor is there any fear or need for caution before you."'] Ṣubḥ-i-Ezel is still a mere youth and easily imposed upon; the Sayyid ought to have known better than ...
— The Reconciliation of Races and Religions • Thomas Kelly Cheyne

... no light on the nature of the Wytulian (or Wettulyan) heresy (ch. xxvii. p. 227), but the Rajaratnacari insinuates that Wytulia was a Brahman who had "subverted by craft and intrigue the religion of Buddha" (ch. ii, p. 61). As it is stated in a further passage that the priests who were implicated were stripped of their habits, it is evident that the innovation had been introduced under the garb of Buddha.—Rajaratnacari, ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... that "while the men are at the wars, and until their return, the women and girls cease not day and night to dance, and neither lie down nor take food in their own houses. And although they are very voluptuously inclined, they would not for anything in the world have an intrigue with another man while their husband is at the war, believing firmly that if that happened, their husband would be either killed or wounded. They believe that by dancing they impart strength, courage, and good ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... whole city under the just wrath of the offended goddess. The celebration had been held in the house of Caesar, as praetor, under the presidency of his wife Pompeia; and it was said that the object of the young profligate was an intrigue with that lady. The circumstances are not favourable to the suspicion; but Caesar divorced her forthwith, with the often-quoted remark that "Caesar's wife must not be even suspected". For this crime—unpardonable even in that corrupt society, when ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins

... Royalty, grown impotent of toil, Let the grave sceptre slip his lazy hold; And, careless, saw his rule become the spoil Of a loose Female and her minion bold. But peace was on the cottage and the fold, From Court intrigue, from bickering faction far; Beneath the chestnut-tree Love's tale was told, And to the tinkling of the light guitar, Sweet stooped the western sun, sweet rose ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott

... cheerful cynicism and dry humour that is the speciality of Mr. MAX RITTENBERG. He has shown it again in Every Man His Price (METHUEN), but hardly, I think, to quite the same effect as formerly. My feeling about the book was that it started with a first-class idea for a plot of comedy and intrigue, but that the author, instead of being contented with this, wanted to give us a novel of character-development on the grand scale, and somewhat spoilt his work in the attempt. The earlier chapters could hardly have been better. There was a real snap in ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 11, 1914 • Various

... to study law. There he became a close friend of Collin d'Harleville. He became secretary to the duke of Uzes, and practised at the bar, but his attention was divided between his profession and literature. His plays are of the 18th century style, comedies of intrigue, but they rank with those of Collin d'Harleville among the best of the period next to those of Beaumarchais. Les Etourdis, his best comedy, was represented in 1788 and won for the author the praise of La Harpe. Andrieux hailed the beginning of the Revolution with delight ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... for Patiomkin to humbug Catherine as to the condition of Russia by conducting her through sham cities run up for the occasion by scenic artists; but in the little world of European court intrigue and dynastic diplomacy which was the only world she knew she was more than a match for him and for all the rest of her contemporaries. In such intrigue and diplomacy, however, there was no romance, no scientific political interest, nothing ...
— Great Catherine • George Bernard Shaw

... their monographs. And finally there was the posse of "two thousand American Historians" assembled by Mr. Creel to instruct the plain people in the new theory of American history, whereby the Revolution was represented as a lamentable row in an otherwise happy family, deliberately instigated by German intrigue—a posse which reached its greatest height of correct indignation in its approval of the celebrated Sisson documents, to the obscene delight of ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan

... the uncommunicated past that not till this has been gradually flaked from them do they emerge as figures in whom it is possible to take an intelligent interest. In the present instance this process is delayed for more than half the book. As for the intrigue, that concerns a group of cut-throat Europeans, who, having been ruinously involved in a South American revolution, are now further plunged into the plots of a scoundrelly African magnate and his conspiratorial gang. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 13, 1920 • Various

... centers about the efforts of Alphonso to redeem his beloved Isabella from, the harem of the Vizier Mustapha. Spaniards, Turks, keepers and inhabitants of the harem, and a "young lady disguis'd in the habit of an Eunuch," mingle in inextricable intrigue. Some of the worst absurdities and the most bathetic lines occur in the parts of the two lovers for which Mrs. Haywood disclaims responsibility, but even the best passages of the play add nothing to the credit of the ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher

... Windsor Castle had smiled upon him, and he had played to George IV and to Queen Victoria. The chance encounter with Lola was a fateful one for both of them. But, as it happened, the virtuoso rather welcomed the prospect of a fresh intrigue just then. Wearied of the romanticism of the phalanx of feminine admirers, who clustered about him like bees, he found this one, with her beauty and vivacious charm, to have a special appeal for him. He responded to it avidly. The two ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham

... that Kheyr-ed-Din was not; he was no bragger or boaster, and, whatever may have been his mental reservations in his interview with the Sultan, that which he stated he would do, that he did. And now the time had come when the grim old Sea-wolf had done with intrigue and the unaccustomed atmosphere of a Court and went back to his native ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey

... in a moment,' said Mr Chester; 'in a moment. Will you step aside with me one instant. You remember our little compact in reference to Ned, and your dear niece, Haredale? You remember the list of assistants in their innocent intrigue? You remember these two people being among them? My dear fellow, congratulate yourself, and me. I ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... was wholly impersonal: I have seen the same in the eyes of portrait-painters. The counts upon which whites have been deported are mainly four: cheating Tembinok', meddling overmuch with copra, which is the source of his wealth and one of the sinews of his power, 'peaking, and political intrigue. I felt guiltless upon all; but how to show it? I would not have taken copra in a gift: how to express that quality by my dinner-table bearing? The rest of the party shared my innocence and my embarrassment. They ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... kirtle to the minstrelsy: A virgin purest lipp'd, yet in the lore Of love deep learned to the red heart's core: Not one hour old, yet of sciential brain To unperplex bliss from its neighbour pain; Define their pettish limits, and estrange Their points of contact, and swift counterchange; Intrigue with the specious chaos, and dispart Its most ambiguous atoms with sure art; As though in Cupid's college she had spent Sweet days a lovely graduate, still unshent, And kept his rosy terms in ...
— Lamia • John Keats

... for two hours he unfolded to me a sort of panorama of Indian intrigue, including dozens of statements of sheer fact that not one person in a million would believe if set ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy

... strengthened by a view of the very unequal and indiscriminate allotments of the present life. Here the virtuous are often the objects of hatred and relentless persecution. Here the man of ambition and dark intrigue, circumvents and treads down his more honest rivals. Here Providence often afflicts even the most pious; while the licentious, and proud, and oppressive, are, perhaps, suffered to enjoy uninterrupted prosperity. Now we believe, assuredly, that "God is just;" and we ...
— The National Preacher, Vol. 2 No. 7 Dec. 1827 • Aaron W. Leland and Elihu W. Baldwin

... X, and decreed that in future, on the death of a pope, the cardinals should be shut up in conclave until they elected a successor; a wise regulation, which has since continued, enforcing a prompt decision, and preventing intrigue. ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving

... introducing allegorical characters into the prologue, and mythological into the play. Another piece belonging to this period is the Pentimento amoroso by Luigi Groto, which was printed as early as 1575. It is a wild tale of murder and intrigue, judgement and outrageous self-sacrifice, composed in sdrucciolo verse and speeches of monstrous length. Another piece, Gabriele Zinano's Caride, surreptitiously printed in 1582, and included in an authorized publication in 1590, has the peculiarity of placing the prologue ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... or where Clotilde had come aboard. She was to have come aboard at Paris at four o'clock the day before; and they, having no inkling of the true state of the case, but suspecting, I believe, some intrigue between the "dark lady" and her lovers, sympathetically promised implicit obedience. With Clotilde I was even more strenuous. Her story must agree with Gustave's: she had boarded the boat in Paris at four of the afternoon; ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon

... always reward them generously. He faithfully discharged the duties of his office, and was most honorably received by the queen on his return. But he was not of the stuff out of which courtiers are made. He was too honest, independent, and disinterested to gain wealth or power by intrigue or flattery; so, though the queen respected him, and often advised with him, he received neither gifts nor offices, but lived for several years in retirement, devoting himself to study ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood

... were not waged with designs of military conquest; they were mostly wars for a market. The great spiritual emancipation of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries figures in our history partly as an accident, partly as an intrigue, partly as a raid of nobles in search of spoil. It was hardly until the reformed doctrine became associated with analogous ideas and corresponding precepts in government, that people felt at home with it, and became really ...
— On Compromise • John Morley

... may even flatter myself, that they may be productive of some partial benefit, some occasional good; that they may now and then recur to moderate the fury of party spirit, to warn against the mischiefs of foreign intrigue, to guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism; this hope will be a full recompense for the solicitude for your welfare, by which they have ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck

... part of my stay at Malmaison, the First Consul always slept with his wife, like an ordinary citizen of the middle classes in Paris; and I heard no rumor of any intrigue in the chateau. The persons of this society, most of whom were young, and who were often very numerous, frequently took part in sports which recalled college days. In fact, one of the greatest diversions of the inhabitants of Malmaison was ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... almost feared that reconciliation would be indefinitely postponed by the relentless severity with which he would visit treason with death. But the Southern politicians, finding that further military resistance was hopeless, resorted at once to their old game of intrigue and management, and proved that, fresh as they were from the experience of violent methods, they had not forgotten their old art of manipulating Presidents. They adapted themselves with marvellous flexibility to the changed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various

... had walked some way with the slave, he left her, and went to his house, and began to think in earnest upon the amorous intrigue in which he found himself unhappily engaged. He considered, that the prince of Persia and Schemselnihar, notwithstanding their interest to conceal their correspondence, conducted themselves with so little discretion, that it could not be long a secret. He drew all the consequences from ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... priests whose soles he licks with his tongue, has had me inclosed for many months? Because he feared me! Aha! I was about to expose him to the noble don who is now dead! I was about to wed the Senorita who has disappeared. But to-morrow... I shall expose his intrigue to the Captain-General. You, Senor, shall be my witness! I extend my protection to you...." He crossed his arms and spoke with much deliberation. "Senor, this Irishman incommodes me, Don Vincente Salazar de Valdepenas y Forli...." He nodded his ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer

... monotheism, ancientism becomes more ancient, and the times and dynasties are multiplied. Spiritism is more clearly defined, and spirits become eternal; mythologic tales are codified, and sacred books are written; divination for the result of amorous intrigue has become the prophecy of immortality, and thaumaturgics is formulated as the omnipresent, the omnipotent, ...
— Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians • John Wesley Powell

... deference, verging on servility. And in M. de Valorsay's eyes this was a great consideration; for he was becoming more arrogant and more irascible in proportion as his right to be so diminished. Secretly disgusted with himself, and deeply humiliated by the shameful intrigue to which he had stooped, he took a secret satisfaction in crushing his accomplice with his imaginary superiority and lordly disdain. According as his humor was good or bad, he called him "my dear extortioner," "Mons. Fortunat," or "Master Twenty-per-cent." But though these sneers ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau

... of exactness on the declamation, a constitution very agreable, and a delightful voice. What you say of the comedy? Have her succeded? It was a drama; it was whistted to the third scene of the last act. Because that? It whant the vehicle, and the intrigue it was bad conducted. So that they won't waited even the upshot? No, it was divined. In the mean time them did diliver justice to the players which generaly have play very well. At the exception by a one's self, who had land very much hir's part. It want to have not any indulgence ...
— English as she is spoke - or, A jest in sober earnest • Jose da Fonseca

... not be so scrupulous, and that he would not stand on an equal footing with them, he replied: "That is not my fault. My business is to serve the public to the best of my abilities in the station assigned to me, and not to intrigue for my own advancement. I never, by the most distant hint to any one, expressed a wish for any public office, and I shall not now begin to ask for that which, of all others, ought to be most freely ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy

... acknowledge the children as legitimate, there was nothing to be done. The direct hope of seeing his sons Kings of Spain faded from the view of the French husband of the sister of Isabel II., but he never for one moment ceased to intrigue. Although loaded with benefits and kindness by the Queen, Montpensier took no small part in the revolution which drove her from the country. Topete, and Serrano—who had once been what the Spaniards called Pollo Real himself—were bound in honour to uphold ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street

... his treatment of plot and character in Othello. What, then, is this Adventures of Five Hours, compared with which Othello became in Pepys's eyes "a mean thing"? It is a trivial comedy of intrigue, adapted from the Spanish by one Sir Samuel Tuke. A choleric guardian arranges for his ward, who also happens to be his sister, to marry against her will a man whom she has never seen. Without her guardian's knowledge she, before the design goes further, ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee

... the threefold purpose of capturing the traitor Arnold, saving the life of the unfortunate Andre, and establishing the innocence of General Gates, who had been charged with complicity in Arnold's nefarious intrigue. His investigations secured the complete vindication of Gates; but, failing in his other attempts, he drifted with the Red Coats to North Carolina, where he deserted their ranks and rejoined the American forces ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head

... for a time by the Babylonians, Apparently he did not assume the title King of Persia until 546. Appreciating the great strength of Babylon, he did not at first attempt its capture, but began at once by intrigue to pave the way for its ultimate overthrow. In 545 he set out on a western campaign against Croesus, the king of Lydia, the ancient rival of Media. After a quick and energetic campaign, Sardis, the rich Lydian capital, was captured, and Cyrus ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent

... resume office reached Addington in the last days of December, than he opened negotiations with Pitt with a view to effecting this object. Pitt did not receive his overtures very warmly. He doubtless wished to be brought back because he was felt to be indispensable, without any appearance of intrigue. Time was in his favour, and he allowed the negotiations to proceed slowly. As the proposals took shape, it became clear that Addington did not wish to be openly superseded by Pitt, but preferred that they should serve together as secretaries of state under a third person; and Addington ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick

... less by the ties of kinship than those of convention. I suppose it was Jerry's helplessness that must have appealed to the mother in her, his youth, innocence and genuineness. Perhaps she was weary treading the mazes of deception and intrigue with which the girl Marcia surrounded herself. Jerry wasn't fair game. All that was good in her had revolted at the maiming of a ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs

... empires, and therefore of loyalty to sovereigns, has gone by. The history of nations is the history of intrigue, quarrelling, and bloodshed, and we are determined to put a stop to warfare for good and all. We hold in our hands the only power that can thwart the designs of the League and avert an era of tyranny and retrogression. That power ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith

... and quick to perceive O'Moy's charitable desire to leave her optimism undispelled. But he was no less quick to perceive the opportunities which the circumstances afforded him to further a certain deep intrigue ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini

... his Superior as in the view of all the brothers required that such a light should no more be hidden in an obscure province, but be set on a Roman candlestick, where it might give light to the faithful in all parts of the world. Thus two currents of worldly intrigue were uniting to push an unworldly man to a higher dignity than he either ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various

... royal cousin at the Tower, where the court exhibited a laxity of morals and a faculty for intrigue that were little to the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various

... exchanged for married men, with their wives and families. The difficulties of Major Pottinger's position will be readily perceived, when it is borne in mind that he had before him the most conclusive evidence of the late Envoy's ill-advised intrigue with Mahomed Akber Khan, in direct violation of that very treaty which was now once ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various

... of the kind of comedy "containing a vein of lively humour and witty dialogue which were afterwards displayed by Congreve and Farquhar"; has been called the "founder of the comedy of intrigue"; he was the author of three clever plays, entitled "Love in a Tub," "She Would if She Could," and ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... the usual fashion of old French alliances, but from disinterested motives, from the perception of the real suitability of tempers and characters. The women of this class in general, withdrawn from politics and political intrigue, were more domestic and ...
— Richard Lovell Edgeworth - A Selection From His Memoir • Richard Lovell Edgeworth

... counted the cost of faithfulness, and he soon had to pay it. The would-be friends threw off the mask, and, as they could not hinder by pretending to help, took a plainer way to stop progress. All the weapons that Eastern subtlety and intrigue could use were persistently employed to 'weaken the hands' of the builders, and the most potent of all methods, bribery to Persian officials, was freely used. The opponents triumphed, and the little community ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... will never ground arms! Her plea is for government without tyranny and religion without superstition, and as surely as suns rise and set her fight will be crowned with victory. Defeat is impossible, the more so because she fights not with force, still less with intrigue, but with the power of truth, the persuasions of reason, and the might of gentleness, seeking not to destroy her enemies, but to win them to the liberty of the truth ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton

... Hence the solemn caution, "Look not thou on the wine, when it giveth its color in the cup: at the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder: thine eyes shall behold strange women, and thy heart utter perverse things." Those who, by gaming or intrigue, rob others of their property, and those who allure "the simple" to ruin, it is said, fully understand its perverting influence. "Is it not a little one?" say they; and so the unwise are "caused to ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society

... Mr Culpepper, "and a strong one too. Captain Delmar is so high and mighty, that he would not have it thought that he could ever condescend to have an intrigue with one beneath him in rank and station, and he has sent her away on ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat

... says that Kalantar Mir-Abbas had an intrigue with the lady, and on receipt of her husband's letter from Meshed he forcibly removed her from Bunjar and compelled her to ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... maiden. Byzantium might be in decadence, her provinces falling away, her glory wasting; the follies of the court and emperors, the best manhood of the empire lost in cloisters and hermitages, the preference of the nobility for intrigue and diplomacy might be all working their deplorable results—nay, the results might be at hand! Still the passion of the people for fetes and holidays remained. Tastes are things of heredity. In nothing is a Byzantine ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace

... he danced like an angel. He informed her that was because, for once, he was dancing with an angel. She laughed and blushed. He flattered deliciously, and it cost him little; for he fell in love with her that night, deeper than he had ever been in his whole life of intrigue. He asked leave to call on her: she looked a little shy at that, and did not respond. He instantly withdrew his proposal, with an apology and a sigh that raised her pity. However, she was not a forward ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade

... position? Is it to be a people of Ishmaelites, who see in every stranger an enemy, who, having rejected good-will, shall have chosen to be those whose existence is an intrigue—a people accepting no ideas, and receiving no benefits? Will they be happy in their hatred? Will they progress? Will they be permitted ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair

... powers of intrigue, she smiled to herself, and dismissed Lester's cold face and unresponsive manner ...
— The Trader's Wife - 1901 • Louis Becke

... story to atone for these failures in two principal points. The incidents were inartificially huddled together. There was no part of the intrigue to which deep interest was found to apply; and the conclusion was brought about, not by incidents arising out of the story itself, but in consequence of public transactions, with which the narrative has little ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... finally conquered, 't will not be by defeat in the field, but by the dirty politics with which this nation is riddled, and which makes a man general because he comes from the right State, and knows how to wire-pull and intrigue. Faugh!" ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford

... tower, where I sit above the loud complaining of the human sea, I know many souls that toss and whirl and pass, but none there are that intrigue me more than the Souls ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois

... continual drain of its forces; so that a law was obliged to be made, for all bachelors to marry the widows of the soldiers who were slain. 6. Fu'rius Camil'lus was now created dictator, and to him was entrusted the sole power of managing the long protracted war. 7. Camil'lus, who, without intrigue or solicitation, had raised himself to the first eminence in the state, had been made one of the censors some time before, and was considered as the head of that office; he was afterwards made a military tribune, and had, in this ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith

... him: as a lad he goes down into the arena with others, and wins all the prizes to which he has a mind. A place in the senate is straightway offered to the young man. He takes his seat there; he speaks, when so minded, without party anger or intrigue, but not without party faith and a sort of heroic enthusiasm for his cause. Still he is poet and philosopher even more than orator. That he may have leisure and means to pursue his darling studies, he absents himself for a while, ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... this new governor, Denonville, was not a coward; but as Menard reflected, going back over his own fifteen years of frontier life, he knew that this policy of brute force would be sorely tested by the tact and intrigue of the Five Nations. His own part in the capture little disturbed him. He had obeyed orders. He had brought the band to the citadel at Quebec without losing a man (saving the poor devil who had strangled himself with his own thongs at ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin

... new hope, Under what favour'd skies think you to trace His footsteps? Who knows if the King, your father, Wishes the secret of his absence known? Perchance, while we are trembling for his life, The hero calmly plots some fresh intrigue, And only waits till ...
— Phaedra • Jean Baptiste Racine

... of a desire to have a hold upon the Duke," replied Wilton. "I found afterwards, your majesty, that their intention was to send the young lady to France, and I judged throughout that their design was to force the Duke into an intrigue which they found he ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James

... hostile groups, the one standing on the defensive against the warlike machinations of the other, and both groups bidding for the favor of those minor Powers whose traditions and current aspirations run to national (dynastic) aggrandizement by way of political intrigue. It would come to a more articulate and accentuated form of that balance of power that has latterly gone bankrupt in Europe, with the most corrupt and unreliable petty monarchies of eastern Europe vested with a casting vote; and it would also involve a system of competitive ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen

... could cross the sacred threshold of Almack's, was his fast friend. To each circle he carried that which each most prized. Whether the conversation turned upon government or science, the dry figures of finance, or the more genial topic of diplomatic intrigue, Mr. Gallatin was its easy master, and his words never ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens

... and delicate threads of intrigue, how frail they are, and how much depends upon every one of them, be it in the warp or the woof of a scheme! We have seen that in this case, one of them gave way under the rough handling of Sir Philip Hastings, and the whole fabric was in ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various



Words linked to "Intrigue" :   plot, grab, romance, seize, game, matter to, connive, interest, priestcraft, love affair, machination, secret plan



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