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Dishonest   Listen
adjective
Dishonest  adj.  
1.
Dishonorable; shameful; indecent; unchaste; lewd. (Obs.) "Inglorious triumphs and dishonest scars." "Speak no foul or dishonest words before them (the women)."
2.
Dishonored; disgraced; disfigured. (Obs.) "Dishonest with lopped arms the youth appears, Spoiled of his nose and shortened of his ears."
3.
Wanting in honesty; void of integrity; faithless; disposed to cheat or defraud; not trustworthy; as, a dishonest man.
4.
Characterized by fraud; indicating a want of probity; knavish; fraudulent; unjust. "To get dishonest gain." "The dishonest profits of men in office."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Dishonest" Quotes from Famous Books



... to my passionate appeal reply with this one short phrase: "Your father will explain"? Did you think any other words than yours would satisfy me, or that I could believe even him when he accused you of a base and dishonest act? Much as I have always loved and revered my father, I find it impossible not to hope that in his wish to see me united to Philemon he has resorted to an unworthy subterfuge to separate us; therefore I give you our ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green

... There was a buzz "on 'change;" those losers by the smash were bitter in their denunciatory remarks, while those gaining by the transaction snickered in their sleeves and kept mum. Jenks heard all, and said nothing. He reasoned, that if the firm were smashed by imprudences, or through dishonest motives, they were getting "an elegant sufficiency" of public and private vituperation, without his aid. Though far from his thoughts of entering into such "lists," and inclined to hold on and see how things come out—Jenks, for the credit of common humanity, seldom recapitulated ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley

... was the man he had discharged like a dishonest servant; the man who had thrown what was (in Carlow's eyes) riches into his lap; the man who had made his paper, and who had made him, and saved him. Harkless wanted to see young Fisbee as he longed to see only one other ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington

... to tell his wife everything; it was dishonest to allow things to go on; one could never tell ...
— Married • August Strindberg

... a few words respecting my nature and my temperament, I premise that the most indulgent of my readers is not likely to be the most dishonest or the least ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... obliged in conscience to live peaceably and justly under the civil government;" provided, further, that no person antagonizing this confession, or refusing to profess the same, or convicted of unsober or dishonest conversation, should ever ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss

... She was provokingly crafty and cold, and she had a mean smile and a dishonest voice that often irritated me. She was ruddy-faced and bursting with health, taller than Mrs. Dienstog, yet too short for her great breadth of shoulder and the enormous bulk of her bust. I thought she looked absurdly dumpy. What I particularly ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan

... another person takes time, and it involves a fatiguing effort. I repeat that it is not easy. Nor is it invariably agreeable. You may, indeed, find it tedious, for example, to picture in vivid detail all the worries that have brought about your wife's exacerbation—negligent maid, dishonest tradesman, milk in a thunder storm, hypercritical husband, dirt in the wrong place—but, when you have faithfully done so, I absolutely defy you to speak to her in the same tone as you used to employ, and to cherish resentment ...
— The Feast of St. Friend • Arnold Bennett

... bill to prevent a man dripping with loyal gore from holding office, if he was honest and intelligent; whereas, one of his, Mr. PETERS'S staunchest supporters might be refused an office, if he had the misfortune to be dishonest and dull. The notion of making "capacity and integrity" a qualification for office-holding was unprecedented, and was preposterous. If things went on in this way, even members of Congress would be compelled to do something for their ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 8, May 21, 1870 • Various

... image, Penelope," she went on, "and I grieve to have it destroyed. But I grieve far more to think you should have tried to deceive me. Perhaps I can mend the mandarin, but I can't ever forget that you have been dishonest—nothing can mend that. I shall think of it whenever I see the image, and ...
— The Hawthorns - A Story about Children • Amy Walton

... He shoots off a whole column of aphorisms in a single evening. I should like to have a man with a note book always beside him to gather up his waste. No; you must not let me give you a false impression of the man's capacity. On the other hand, it would be dishonest to deny that I think him thoroughly unscrupulous, and full of very sinister traits. I am much mistaken, however, if he has not fine strata in his nature. He is capable of rising to heights as well as ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro

... to all motives. Men refrain from theft and other dishonest conduct from the dread of disgrace and punishment, because they see that "honesty is the best policy," and from a sense of justice and regard to the rights of property, or a sense of honor which makes a mean action impossible. By similar ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous

... whole is condemned in the person of a few; while a majority—the bulk of men—estimate themselves by their successes. One great man sheds glory on his race, while one villain is condemned alone. The popular judgment, that lawyers are insincere and dishonest, because they appear on both sides of a case, with equal zeal, when there can be but one right side, is not peculiar to the bar. It should be remembered that learned and pious divines take opposite sides of all ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle

... Pope's Bull," "A Cock and Bull Story," "Theatre Royal, Haymarket—John Bull" "To be Sold by Auction, the Bull Inn," "Abstract of the Act against Bull-baiting," and so on. In Libra Striking the Balance (same year), a dishonest tradesman has been detected in using false weights and measures. The beadle holds up a pair of scales, one of which weighs very much heavier than the other. The wretched culprit, conscious, all too late, that honesty would have proved "the ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt

... to-day are deciding that question. Shall it be a nation of invalids? This, also, the young people are deciding. Shall it be a nation filled with greed of gain, with a low standard of morals, with dishonest methods in business, or shall it be a nation wherein vigorous health is the rule, unflinching courage, absolute integrity and pure morality shall everywhere reign? What the young people of to-day are making of themselves ...
— Almost A Man • Mary Wood-Allen

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

... the long threatened rupture took place. Mitchell refers to the blacks of this region as the most unfavourable specimens of aborigine that he had yet seen, barbarously and implacably hostile, and shamelessly dishonest. On the morning of July 11th, two of the men were engaged at the river, and five of the bullock-drivers were collecting their cattle. One of the natives, nick-named King Peter by the men, tried to snatch a kettle from the hand of the man who was carrying it, and on this action being ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc

... for that is the punishment—that they are not innocent. The children of the proud are proud; the children of the cruel, cruel; and the children of the dishonest are dishonest, unto the third and fourth generation. Fight against it as they may, they cannot see the difference between right and wrong; they can only, by struggling, come nearer to the light. Do you call this unjust of God? Is it unjust that ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall

... the way you look at it? These people don't all seem to be dishonest men or charlatans. Some of them, I know, are honest." ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... drink and good counsel will amend; for, give the dry fool drink, then is the fool not dry: bid the dishonest man mend himself; if he mend, he is no longer dishonest; if he cannot, let the botcher mend him. Any thing that's mended is but patch'd; virtue that transgresses is but patch'd with sin; and sin that amends is ...
— Twelfth Night; or, What You Will • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]

... make up his mind to beg, borrow, or steal, half muttering to himself, as he hops across the way, to visit some neighbor for a breakfast, 'I declare such infamous treatment is enough to make one dishonest, and never be industrious and ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth

... into the hands of the lower orders, the offices under government have been chiefly filled up by their favourites, either being poor and needy men from their own class, or base and dishonest men, who have sacrificed their principles and consciences for place. I shall enter more fully into this subject hereafter; it is quite sufficient at present to say, that during Mr Adams' presidency, a Mr Benjamin Walker was a defaulter ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... not intended to admit that all the teachers of eternal punishment in the church have been honest. Some have been dishonest, in order, as they claimed, to do the more good. There was a class of ministers in the ancient church who had two sets of opinions, one set for the congregation, and another for the private circle. Dr. Edward Beecher mentions ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various

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

... narrow minds and dishonest natures, who pride themselves upon their Jesuitical cleverness in equivocation, in their serpent-wise shirking of the truth and getting out of moral backdoors, in order to hide their real opinions and evade the consequences of holding and openly professing them. Institutions ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon

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

... more than a match for 'em. Paul Bevan has told me oftentimes that honest men are, as a rule, ten times more plucky than dishonest ones. Well, you are one honest man, that's equal to ten; an' Buckie and I are two honest boys, equal, say, to five each, that's ten more, making twenty among three of us. Three times twenty's sixty, isn't it? so, surely that's more than enough ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne

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

... from souring, dishonest milk dealers often put into it such preservatives as soda, borax, and formaldehyde. There is no definite way of telling whether or not one of these has been used, except by a chemical analysis. However, if milk ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 2 - Volume 2: Milk, Butter and Cheese; Eggs; Vegetables • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences

... there might have been a great difficulty respecting the Colonel, for which neither her niece nor her sister-in-law could fairly be held to be responsible. It was perhaps the plainest characteristic of all the Stanburys that they were never wilfully dishonest. Ignorant, prejudiced, and passionate they might be. In her anger Miss Stanbury, of Exeter, could be almost malicious; and her niece at Nuncombe Putney was very like her aunt. Each could say most cruel things, most unjust things, when actuated by a mistaken ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope

... use in arguing the matter," replied Friend Hopper. "I have no cause whatever to suspect thee of any dishonest or dishonorable intentions; but there is on my mind an impression of danger, so powerful that I cannot conscientiously have any agency in inducing colored laborers ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child

... who dressed my foot had succeeded in remembering that the majority of men were neither cowards nor dishonest. He was considerate of me and of the orderlies under him. But alongside was a scowl. A poor fat bandsman with a lame foot was not excused from marching the next day. The orderly who had mislaid the iodine was scalped. The orderly who had charge of the ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French

... are the dragon's teeth of yore, in everything but sharpness; aidings and abettings of every bad inclination in the popular mind, and artful suppressions of all its good influences: such things as these, and in a word, Dishonest Faction in its most depraved and most unblushing form, stared out from every corner of ...
— Contributions to All The Year Round • Charles Dickens

... prejudice. The German losses were proof enough of our men's fighting skill and strength, and German prisoners and German letters confirmed all their claims. But we were dishonest in our reckoning from first to last, and the British public was hoodwinked about our losses. "Three of our machines are missing." "Six of our machines are missing." Yes, but what about the machines which crashed in No ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... very dishonest, but she felt so happy this morning that she loved the whole world, and of course Tom came in with the others. She looked very kindly at him, and he was so affected that a great lump came in his throat and he could ...
— Liza of Lambeth • W. Somerset Maugham

... changing of employes is not wholesome for any establishment, and the sudden discovery by a foreman that a man who has been employed for a year or more is 'no good' is often a reflection on the foreman, and more often still, is wholly untrue. All working men, unless they develop intemperate or dishonest habits, have desirable value in them, and the conserving and increasing of their value is a duty which should be assumed by ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth

... examples could not fail to have a deteriorating effect upon their untutored minds; and we find them accordingly losing their former regard for truth, honesty and fidelity; and becoming instead deceitful, dishonest and treacherous. Many of their ancient virtues however, are still practised ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers

... pleasing to God to persuade the youths to enter a monastery can no more be doubted than that this was for them the easiest way to get rid of their task. For Erasmus this pitiful business assumes the colour of a grossly selfish attempt to cloak dishonest administration; an altogether reprehensible abuse of power and authority. More than this: in later years it obscured for him the image of his own brother, with whom he had been on ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga

... excellent place for the location of it, and draw up a good plan, and make ample arrangements for the supply of funds, but if he does not know how to choose, or where to find good builders, his scheme will come to a miserable end. He may choose builders that are competent but dishonest, or they may be honest but incompetent, or they may be subject to some other radical defect; in either of which cases the house will be badly built, and the scheme will be ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott

... reward of his idiotic actions, on the basis of an inflated and dishonest report of the battle which was sent to the empress, Nassau received a valuable estate, the military order of St. George, and authority to hoist the flag of rear-admiral; other officers were also substantially ...
— Paul Jones • Hutchins Hapgood

... so difficult to live the life of heaven, as some believe, may be seen from this: when a matter presents itself to a man which he knows to be dishonest and unjust, but to which he inclines, it is only necessary for him to think that it ought not to be done because it is opposed to the Divine precepts. If a man accustoms himself to think so, and from so doing establishes a habit of so thinking, he is gradually conjoined ...
— The Gist of Swedenborg • Emanuel Swedenborg

... story, the decision by the court was valid but the cousin who won the case was a useless administrator of his fortune, and lost it all through bad advice and dishonest acquaintances. ...
— The Log House by the Lake - A Tale of Canada • William H. G. Kingston

... is nothing immodest in Letters and Syllables. Fornication and Adultery are modest Words: because they express an Evil Action as criminal, and so as to excite Horrour and Aversion: Whereas Words representing the Pleasure rather than the Sin, are for this Reason indecent and dishonest. Your Papers would be chargeable with something worse than Indelicacy, they would be Immoral, did you treat the detestable Sins of Uncleanness in the same manner as you rally an impertinent Self-love and an artful Glance; as ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... is, suitable to my manners, low and humble: philosophy plays the child, to my thinking, when it puts itself upon its Ergos to preach to us that 'tis a barbarous alliance to marry the divine with the earthly, the reasonable with the unreasonable, the severe with the indulgent, the honest with the dishonest. That pleasure is a brutish quality, unworthy to be tasted by a wise man; that the sole pleasure he extracts from the enjoyment of a fair young wife is a pleasure of his conscience to perform an action according to order, as to ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... overhanging oak, and another and still another; and he listened. There was in the air the ghostly perfume of summer; and he breathed. He was still young. Sorrow had aged his thought, not his blood; and he loved this woman with his whole being, dishonest though she might be. He carried the note to his lips. She would be here at four. What she had to tell him must be told here, not at the settlement. There was the woman and the caprice. Strange that she had written when early that morning it had been simple to speak. And the Indian who had ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath

... to have just and magnanimous husbands to say that they feel no interest in such reforms, and that they would willingly trust their property to the man to whom they give themselves; but they should remember that laws are not made for the restraint of the generous and just, but of the dishonest and base. The law which enables a married woman to hold her own property does not forbid her to give it to the man of her heart, if she so pleases; and it does protect many women who otherwise would be reduced to the extremest misery. I once knew an energetic milliner who had her shop ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... it would be displeased because of the reasons given, which would still influence them very decidedly. If the indemnity paid were very small, the former property owners and all honest citizens would be those especially offended. If the amount paid were large, dishonest Socialists would take offense. Therefore, no matter which plan of expropriation were adopted, the state would make a great number ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto

... emergencies, will never seek their resource from the confiscation of the estates of the church and poor. Sacrilege and proscription are not among the ways and means of our committee of supply. There is not one public man in this kingdom, of any party or description, who does not reprobate the dishonest, perfidious, and cruel confiscation which the national assembly have been compelled to make of that property which it was their first ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various

... not our purpose to trace, step by step, the progress of this young man in the work of ruining his father and disgracing himself by dishonest practices in business. Enough, that in the course of three years, the "enterprising young men," who made from the beginning such rapid strides toward fortune, found their course suddenly checked, and themselves involved in hopeless ...
— The Iron Rule - or, Tyranny in the Household • T. S. Arthur

... pent in never held such company before. Three "blasphemers," who had never injured man, woman or child, were travelling to gaol under a collective sentence of two years' imprisonment, for no other crime than honestly criticising a dishonest creed. We were going to spend weary days and months among the refuse of society. We were doomed to associate with the criminality which still curses civilisation, after eighteen centuries of the gospel of redemption. Posterity would condemn ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote

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

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

... predisposition. If the average sensual man of our civilization is noisy and undignified in his bearing, disposed to insult and despise those he believes to be his social inferiors, competitive and disobliging to his equals; abject, servile, and dishonest to those he regards as his betters; if his wife is a silly, shallow, gossiping spendthrift, unfit to rear the children she occasionally bears, perpetually snubbing social inferiors and perpetually cringing to social superiors, it is probable ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells

... all that in him lies, by incessant, patient work in our government, municipal or national, to bring about the day when it shall be taken as a matter of course that every public official is to execute a law honestly, and that no capacity in a public officer shall atone if he is personally dishonest. ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various

... expedient as disastrous as it was dishonest—a wholesale debasement of the coinage, which was continued into the following reign and was remedied only under Elizabeth. The first experiment was made as early as 1526; but it was the financial embarrassments of Henry's last years which brought about a debasement that ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... her adoring eyes off her newly-acquired husband long enough to answer: "It is lovely. Wonderful little people—so progressive and clean. It's too bad they are so dishonest; of course you must have lost a ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay

... Pai Utes were encamped, and we had a good opportunity to visit them and study their ways.[28] The Major was specially interested and made voluminous notes. They came to the village and our camp a great deal. While they were dirty, they were not more dishonest than white men, so far as I could learn. Their wickiups, about seven feet high, were merely a lot of cedar boughs, set around a three-quarter circle, forming a conical shelter, the opening towards the south. In front they had their ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh

... who thrust the suppliant Pompilia back upon the wolf, the Convent of Convertities, who took her in as a suffering saint, and after her death claimed her succession because she was of dishonest life, the unspeakable Abate and Canon, Guido's brothers,—it is these figures who have played the most sinister part, and the old Pope contemplates them with the "terror" of one who sees his fundamental assumptions shaken ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford

... get stolen by the train-sorters. Even sending half notes is not always a security, if the remitter does not take the precaution of waiting to hear of the safe arrival of the first half. The dishonest sorter having secured the first half, and having observed the post-mark and hand-writing, will be on the look-out for the other half, which he knows is likely to come along the same route in a day or so. The only chance of getting hold of the thief is by setting ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin

... was that rare builder, a man who can work with his hands and see all the time inside his soul the completed work. He could no more endure slipshod work or graceless lines in his building than the knight himself could do a cowardly or dishonest thing. David would have done his task faithfully in any case, but it rejoiced his soul to find that the knight and his lady would know not only that their village church was beautiful, ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey

... world than I could hope to do with the Fulchers, and, moreover, to live honestly, which I could never do along with them. So the next morning I left them: I was, as I said before, quite determined upon an honest livelihood, and I soon found one. He is a great fool who is ever dishonest in England. Any person who has any natural gift, and everybody has some natural gift, is sure of finding encouragement in this noble country of ours, provided he will but exhibit it. I had not walked more ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow

... is our life compared to a play? A. Because the dishonest do occupy the place of the honest, and the worst sort the room ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous

... stewards under him to look after the property of the diocese. This did not save him from going into details of management and supervising his agents. He heard the complaints, not only of his own tenants, but also of those who belonged to other estates and were victimized by dishonest bailiffs. Anyhow, we have a thousand signs to shew that no detail of country life was ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand

... the dishonest; the types of honest men and women who give full value in work and goods to all whom they deal with are of course more numerous. The industrial world revolves around those who resist temptation, who work faithfully, who give honest measure and seek no unfair advantage. But that business is no brotherhood ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson

... properly no signification. And he repeats this statement many times in the course of his volume, with comments, not at all flattering, thereon. It is well to be now and then reminded to how great a length perverse misquotation (for, strange as it appears, I do not believe that the writer is dishonest) can sometimes go. It is a warning to readers when they see an author accused, with volume and page referred to, and the apparent guarantee of inverted commas, of maintaining something more than commonly absurd, not to give implicit credence to the assertion without ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

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

... father's death until latterly when Laura by her efforts in Washington had been able to assist in this work. Clay was away on a long absence in some of the eastward islands when Laura's troubles began, trying (and almost in vain,) to arrange certain interests which had become disordered through a dishonest agent, and consequently he knew nothing of the murder till he returned and read his letters and papers. His natural impulse was to hurry to the States and save his sister if possible, for he loved her with a deep and abiding affection. His business was so crippled ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

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

... relative of mine is dishonest!" came a loud, harsh voice from the doorway of the library, and turning quickly Dave and Roger found themselves confronted by an old man, white with sudden rage, and brandishing a heavy ...
— Dave Porter in the Far North - or, The Pluck of an American Schoolboy • Edward Stratemeyer

... elaborated it into "If you do that, angels wont never love you." I remember a servant who used to tell me that if I were not good, by which she meant if I did not behave with a single eye to her personal convenience, the cock would come down the chimney. Less imaginative but equally dishonest people told me I should go to hell if I did not make myself agreeable to them. Bodily violence, provided it be the hasty expression of normal provoked resentment and not vicious cruelty, cannot harm a child as this sort of pious fraud harms it. There ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw

... one, whose memory is long enough to recall the tumultuous and discreditable scenes attendant on elections under the old system, will be inclined to deny that much that was flagrantly disgraceful as well as dishonest has been swept away by the reforming energy of our ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling

... all the others are bad. If you appoint fresh chiefs, they will do still worse. It is hard to correct your peevish humour; you fear those who love you and throw yourselves at the feet of those who betray you. There was a time when we had no assemblies, and then we all thought Agyrrhius a dishonest man;[663] now they are established, he who gets money thinks everything is as it should be, and he who does not, declares all who sell their votes to ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al

... little harshness or even sternness of authority on the other. In Europe, the footing on which service is placed in consequence of the corruptions of society, hardens the heart, destroys confidence, and embitters life. The deceit and venality of servants not absolutely dishonest, puts it out of one's power to love or trust them. And if, in hopes of having people attached to us, who will neither betray our confidence, nor corrupt our children, we are at pains to rear them from childhood, and give them a religious and moral education; after all our labour, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various

... hands of the mistress of the poorhouse, who was named Mrs. Bumble. It contained the dead mother's wedding-ring, and, as Mrs. Bumble was a dishonest woman, she hid both locket and ring, intending sometime to ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives

... bankruptcy. The Duke de Noailles, a man of accommodating principles, an accomplished courtier, and totally averse from giving himself any trouble or annoyance that ingenuity could escape from, opposed the project of St. Simon with all his influence. He represented the expedient as alike dishonest and ruinous. The regent was of the same opinion, and this desperate remedy fell ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... clothes, and many were in harvest at all events paid by the piece. At Crondal in Hampshire in 1248 a carter by the year received 4s., a herdsman 2s. 3d., a day a or dairymaid, 2s.[73] The change to money payments was beneficial to both parties; it stopped many of the dishonest practices of the lord's bailiff, apart from the fact that farming by officials was an expensive method. It meant, too, that religious festivals and bad weather would no longer diminish the lord's profits; on the other hand, the tenant could devote ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler

... of preferences—those on private and those on public grounds. The last are the only ones which the elector would like to avow. The best side of their character is that which people are anxious to show, even to those who are no better than themselves. People will give dishonest or mean votes from lucre, from malice, from pique, from personal rivalry, even from the interests or prejudices of class or sect, more readily in secret than in public. And cases exist—they may come to be more frequent—in which ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill

... mean I must declare that that man is not dishonest— that he has not wronged me? That I have not been injured and do not resent that injury?" interposed the woman, looking up with flashing eyes, a scarlet spot burning on either cheek. "Child, you don't know what ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

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

... Already he was treating this two hundred and fifty pounds as a windfall, and wondering in what most pleasant ways he could employ it!... But with what kind of fact could Julian be acquainted?... Had Julian been dishonest? Louis would have liked to think Julian dishonest, but he could not. Then ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett

... never knew of his being dishonest. And you know the old proverb: 'Wer lugt, der stiehlt auch'; 'show me a liar and I'll show you a thief.' His faults were always of a different sort. But you can see how I would naturally hesitate to correspond with him or ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon

... the country, stopping now at one farmer's house, and now at another's, where he always experienced a kind reception, because he was not only amusing and inoffensive, but capable of making himself useful as a messenger and drudge. He was never guilty of a dishonest act, nor ever known to commit a breach of trust; and as a quick messenger, his extraordinary speed of foot rendered him unrivalled. His great delight, however, was to attend sportsmen, to whom he was invaluable as a guide and director. Such was his wind and speed of foot that, aided by ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... of need. Now a man ringing trees five or six miles away from the beat on which he was stationed could not serve either of these purposes. Boscobel therefore had been fraudulently at work for his own dishonest purposes, and knew well that his employment was of that nature. All this was quite clear to Heathcote; and it was clear to him, also, that when he detected fraud he was bound to expose it. Had the man acknowledged his fault ...
— Harry Heathcote of Gangoil • Anthony Trollope

... "Jasper is dishonest at heart. He is ever trying to overreach in dealing, and expects every one in his employment to be as ...
— True Riches - Or, Wealth Without Wings • T.S. Arthur

... small children. In a little time after his commitment, he had friends who offered to pay ten shillings in the pound of what he owed, and to give security for paying the remainder in three years by instalments. The honest quaker did not charge the bankrupt with any dishonest practices, but he rejected the proposal with the most mortifying indifference, declaring that he did not want his money. The mother repaired to his house, and kneeling before him with her five lovely children, implored mercy with tears and exclamations. ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett

... have read a little, although I am a peasant; and you see that I express myself properly. I understand things. I have procured myself an education. Well, yes, to abstract a name and to place oneself under it is dishonest. Letters of the alphabet can be filched, like a purse or a watch. To be a false signature in flesh and blood, to be a living false key, to enter the house of honest people by picking their lock, never more to look straightforward, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... more dignified word socially, but may express greater moral degradation. Vend is used of the petty (as that which can be carried about in a wagon), and may suggest the pettily dishonest. "That man would his country." "We shall a million dollars' worth of goods." ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... Powers, save Turkey, who was then depressed in influence and resources by the adversities of the Russian invasion. The result was natural: a strong Power, unchecked by efficient rivals, pursued her stealthy policy of aggression against a very weak, but not dishonest, State; and finally seized upon the ridiculous pretext of some disturbances among the tribes bordering on Algeria to invade the territory of the Bey. In vain Mohammed Es-S[a]dik assured M. Roustan that order had been restored among the tribes; in vain ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole

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

... without injuring themselves, for when by their exertions they so far depreciate the value of money at home that it is sent abroad, many are thrown out of employ, and are not only disabled from paying their tribute, but are forced to betake to dishonest ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers

... addressed to some one else—a great showy heartless pantomime it rolls over him, beckoning with its nights and days and winds and faces—always beckoning, but to some one else. All that seems to be left to him in a universe is a kind of keeping up appearances in it—a looking as if he lived—a hurrying, dishonest trying to forget. He dare not sit down and think. He spends his strength in racing with himself to get away from himself, and those greatest days of all in human life—the days when men grow old, world-gentle, and still and deep before their God, are the days he dreads the most. He ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee

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

... a guard. No one will touch the Treasure without permission. We haven't had a dishonest person in the State for more than ...
— No Pets Allowed • M. A. Cummings

... your father was dishonest, Reff," returned Jack, as calmly as he could. "I was simply ...
— The Mystery at Putnam Hall - The School Chums' Strange Discovery • Arthur M. Winfield

... Potter; I would rather have bin born in Cornwall than any other county in England, if I'd had my choice. Howsever, that ain't possible now. Well, it seems that Mr Rudyerd is a remarkable sort of man. He came of poor an' dishonest parents, from whom he runned away in his young days, an' got employed by a Plymouth gentleman, who became a true father to him, and got him a good edication in readin', writin', an' mathematics. Ah, Tommy, my son, many a time have I had cause for to regret that nobody ...
— The Story of the Rock • R.M. Ballantyne

... long been felt by people who have given serious thought to the matter, that it was wrong to mix all the criminals together. It was thought that men who had been dishonest should not be put with men who had tried to kill, or were guilty of other awful crimes. Many people have thought that some difference in the class of ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 19, March 18, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

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

... to your suit, you dishonest knave!" he roared from the darkness; whereat Cicely sank back into her chair looking as though she would faint, and the strong Christopher staggered like a man pierced by an arrow. "First to take my girl and hug her before my very eyes, and then, when ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard

... of night drove me to take shelter in an inn which, like everything else here, is dedicated to St. Foy. The pilgrims' money had not made it pretentious, nor the people who kept it dishonest —changes which 'filthy lucre' is very apt to bring about in the holiest places. But the pilgrims who come to Conques are, for the most part, peasants who look well before they leap, and who so contrive matters as ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker

... and as soon as he heard what had happened, he desired the waiter to show him to the room where his servant was at supper. The dishonest servant, who was supping upon larks and claret, knew nothing of what was going on; but his knife and fork dropped from his hand, and he overturned a bumper of claret as he started up from the table, in great surprise and terror, when his master came in with a face ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth

... conduce to the constructive process. We condemn trading that is merely speculative, and in fact all trading and manufacture that is not a positive social service; we condemn living by gambling or by playing games for either stakes or pay. Much more do we condemn dishonest or fraudulent trading and every act of advertisement that is not punctiliously truthful. We must condemn too the taking of any income from the community that is neither earned nor conceded in the collective interest. But to this last point, and to certain issues arising out of it, I will return ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells

... somewhere "on a trip." Marre's office was not closed. A year ago Marre had taken in with him as partner a young lawyer by the name of Cleaver, who lacked only, through experience, the same degree of dishonest finesse and cunning possessed by Marre himself—a defect which Marre had doubtless counted on speedily rectifying under his own unholy tutelage! Cleaver was carrying on the business. To all inquiries Cleaver's replies ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

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

... between rightful concealment as concealment, and concealment for the purpose of deception. "There are things which men have a right to keep secret," he says, "and if a prurient curiosity prompts others officiously to pry into them, there is nothing criminal or dishonest in refusing to minister to such a spirit. Our silence or evasive answers may have the effect of misleading. That is not our fault, as it was not our design. Our purpose was simply to leave the inquirer as nearly as possible in the state of ignorance in which we ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull

... commerce, conquer her colonies, and blockade her ports; the object of the war could be attained only by victories on land. Politically the continental states were rotten; their rulers were selfish despots, each bent on extending his dominions by any means, however dishonest; for international morality had broken down before the bait offered by the weakness of Poland. What barrier could they oppose to the flood of French aggression, the outcome of the enthusiasm of a great people? When France forced ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt

... Rouen, and from the province. Saint-Ouen, who came after Saint-Romain, found the people clownish, superstitious, and idolatrous, in consequence of the negligence of some bishops, his predecessors. The inhabitants of the neighbouring country, were coarse, cruel and dishonest; morals and the sciences were cultivated only among the higher classes of society. We find in the preface to the life of Saint-Eloi by Saint-Ouen, that, even in the VIIth century, they read authors of whose ...
— Rouen, It's History and Monuments - A Guide to Strangers • Theodore Licquet

... same childish carelessness lighted up his jovial face, while the hero of Patay, with his coarse boots, his immense form enveloped in a somewhat shabby redingote, exhibited a face so contracted that one would have thought him devoured by remorse. A dishonest intendant, forced to expose his accounts to generous and confiding masters, could not have had a face more gloomy or more anxious. He had, moreover, put his one arm behind his back in a manner so formal that neither ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget

... you may take my word without an Oath, Were you as old as Time, and I were young and gay As April Flowers, which all are fond to gather; My Beauties all should wither in the Shade, E'er I'd be worn in a dishonest Bosom. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn

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

... in that," Gregory assented, smiling; "I'm afraid I was an infatuated creature, perhaps a dishonest one. I can't expect you to make allowances for ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... present Time is ours, and no body alive hath more. Why are the Laws levell'd at us? are we more dishonest than the rest of Mankind? What we win, Gentlemen, is our own by the Law of Arms, and the Right ...
— The Beggar's Opera - to which is prefixed the Musick to each Song • John Gay

... place them beyond the pale of moral and intellectual tolerance. "Sound" and "honest" they write above their creed. They pose as consecrated guardians of public honor and private property. We are depicted as dishonest and imbecile, repudiators of national and individual obligations, communists or anarchists bearing the torch and axe. This specialty is Mr. Cleveland's long suit. Little wonder that his school should place him at its head. His preeminence in the field where self-admiration ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various

... the political arena. Where is the advocate of any measure that does not suffer sneers, ridicule, contempt, and all that tends to depreciate character in public estimation? Where is the partisan that is not attacked, as either weak in intellect, or dishonest in principle, or selfish in motives? And where is the man who is linked with any political party, that dares to stand up fearlessly and defend what is good in opposers, and reprove what is wrong ...
— An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism - With reference to the duty of American females • Catharine E. Beecher

... reverse, according as the god of chance has treated him to one spectacle or the other. As well try to generalize on the human race-as is a certain ecclesiastical habit-that all men are vile or noble, dishonest or ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White

... course of your interview with a prospective employer he should mispronounce a word, you would be undiplomatic to emphasize the correct pronunciation in speaking that word yourself. It is not dishonest, but truly polite to reply "My ad'dress is"—instead of pronouncing the word correctly. Do not suggest by over-emphasis of right speech that you wish to pose as one who is conscious of his superiority, ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins

... enthusiasm for the discharge of duties than for the assertion of rights. It belonged to the positive basis of her character to identify herself more with what people wished to do themselves than with what they thought somebody else ought to do for them. Her indignation was vehement enough against dishonest or malicious oppression, but the instinct to make allowance for the other side made her a bad hater in politics, and there may easily have been some personal sympathy in her description of Deronda's difficulty about the choice of a career. She was not ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke

... prefixing of dis, in, or un: as, honest, dishonest; consistent, inconsistent; wise, unwise. These express a negation of the quality ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... been always a bad man of business, and after his wife's death he got into the hands of a scheming and dishonest attorney named Glossin, who in the end craftily succeeded in making himself rich at the expense of ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten

... attended to the toilets, answered the bells, etc. He finally became so offensive that I forbade him my room, and he revenged himself by paltry thefts. There were two other servants, a woman with a baby, and a shrewd, dishonest mulatto man, who was the steward and carver. This fellow secreted provender in the kitchen and sold it stealthily to hungry soldiers. A public house so mismanaged I had nowhere met. Sometimes we could get no breakfast till noon, and finally the price of dinner ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend

... in political affairs[33]; but in that pursuit many circumstances were unfavorable to me; for, instead of modesty, temperance, and integrity[34], there prevailed shamelessness, corruption, and rapacity. And although my mind, inexperienced in dishonest practices, detested these vices, yet, in the midst of so great corruption, my tender age was insnared and infected[35] by ambition; and, though I shrunk from the vicious principles of those around me, yet the same eagerness for honors, the same obloquy ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust

... descriptions rather than definite instructions. The book is printed in two kinds of type, a fact due probably to its being printed from two presses at once. Danter got into trouble later on with other books from his dishonest ways. The second poor quarto, Henry V, printed in 1600, was less than half as long as the Folio text, and was probably carelessly copied by an ignorant person at a performance of the play. The third, the Merry Wives of Windsor, was pirated through the publisher ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken

... to corrupt you therewith, to bribe you to make him once more lord and master of the state? How shall I, who dealt justice upon him, justly suffer death at your hands? For to be worsted in arms implies injury certainly, but of the body only: the defeated man is not proved to be dishonest by his loss of victory. But he who is corrupted by filthy lucre, contrary to the standard of what is best, (7) is at once injured and ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon

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

... said Fenton, musing, and as if in a kind of soliloquy; "you are a good fellow, no doubt of it—that is, if you have no lurking, dishonest design in all this. Let me see. Why, now, it is a long time since I have had the enormous sum of five shillings in my possession, much less the amount of the national debt, which I presume must be pretty close upon five pounds; and in honest bank notes, too. One, two, three—ha!—eh! eh!—oh yes," ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Florida, Alabama and Mississippi. This act, as well as several State laws, failed because the settlers did not know enough about tree planting. The laws also were not effective because they did not prevent dishonest practices. ...
— The School Book of Forestry • Charles Lathrop Pack

... looked at him sharply. He could not tell whether our hero was aware of his dishonest intentions or not, but as Tom must still have money, which he wanted to secure, he thought it best to ignore ...
— The Young Adventurer - or Tom's Trip Across the Plains • Horatio Alger

... Flannigan, and in this manner secured for herself as well as for the dame a means of livelihood for the next few days, Hester started off for Paradise Row. It was a fact that there was not a more dishonest nor evil-minded old woman in Liverpool than this same Mrs. Flannigan; but Hester was firmly convinced that she would be true to her word, and not rob her of a farthing, and this proved to ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade

... deformed, tortuous, sinuous, winding, flexuous, curved, curvilinear, spiral, labyrinthial; distorted, awry, askew, wry; dishonest, fraudulent, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... which brought him in 18,000 roubles a year, and by his own exertions the post of a senator. He considered himself not only un homme tres comme il faut, but also a man of knightly honour. By honour he understood not accepting secret bribes from private persons. But he did not consider it dishonest to beg money for payment of fares and all sorts of travelling expenses from the Crown, and to do anything the Government might require of him in return. To ruin hundreds of innocent people, to cause them to be imprisoned, to be exiled ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy

... INTO YOUR DOORS. This lecture alone is worth the price of the book. It is not that they do any harm in one case out of a thousand, Heaven forbid! but they mean harm. They look on our Susannas with unholy dishonest eyes. Hearken to two of the grinning rogues chattering together as they clink over the asphalte of the Boulevard with lacquered boots, and plastered hair, and waxed moustaches, and turned-down shirt-collars, and ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray

... and herself, and examined into their condition. The old people thought he was very good to say so much about their hard fare, and so he was; but if they could have heard what he said afterward to his dishonest agents, when he went home to his palace, they might have been surprised to know what an important thing a piece of hard ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various

... honest? I give you my word of honor (privately) I am not. For seven years I have suppressed a book which my conscience tells me I ought to publish. I hold it a duty to publish it. There are other difficult duties which I am equal to, but I am not equal to that one. Yes, even I am dishonest. Not in many ways, but in some. Forty-one, I think it is. We are certainly all honest in one or several ways—every man in the world—though I have a reason to think I am the only one whose blacklist runs so light. Sometimes I feel lonely enough ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... engaging in a lawsuit, warns you of enemies who are poisoning public opinion against you. If you know that the suit is dishonest on your part, you will seek to dispossess true owners ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller

... such exquisite contrivance and precision in mechanical and commercial matters, it might have been anticipated that the bad system of London cabs could not long survive. All dishonest businesses write their own doom. Those only thrive which sincerely seek the good of the public. Accordingly, it is not surprising, at a time when one-and-a-half per cent. is a fact in banking, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various

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

... him. Then the whole affair may come to nothing and the race be declared off. There are stories about injurious herbs that have been given in pinole or water, and actually made some racers sick. It may even happen that some dishonest fellow will pay to the best runner of one party a cow if he lets the other party win. But, as a rule, everything goes on straightforwardly. No one will, however, wonder that there are six watchmen appointed by each side to guard the runners ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz

... dishonest," he pointed out. "He had no right to use that money and he ought to have taken the pocket-book to the police-station. If he had done so—that is to say, if he had waited there for the police, if he had been seen to hold out that pocket-book, to have discussed ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... the reproaches of incurable laziness and unthriftiness that have been cast upon it, he wishes it to be understood that he speaks only for the freeholders, who have homes of their own, which they have an inducement to improve and beautify, and who have land of their own which no dishonest motive prompts them to neglect, and for the estate laborers whose condition most nearly resembles theirs. If the blacks on many plantations are little disposed to adorn homes from which they may be ejected at any time; if they are discouraged from the minor industries essential to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... He is not a bad fellow, as they go. To be sure he does not rise any too well to new responsibilities, but he will grow into it. It is better an honest infatuation with the daughter of a gentleman than a dishonest one with an Indian maid. And you know our officers, Father. God knows, they are all bad enough; and yet ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin

... Dyer said he was a man of the most mischievous, uncharitable, and malignant disposition. Sir Joshua Reynolds observed to me that Hawkins, though he assumed great outward sanctity, was not only mean and grovelling in dispostion, but absolutely dishonest. He never lived in any real intimacy with Dr. Johnson, who never opened his heart to him, or had in fact any accurate knowledge of his character.' Prior's Malone, pp. 425-7. See ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... Nothing is sadder in the whole tragedy, or comedy, than these pitiable efforts to hide the truth, to gloss it over with fables which nobody in his heart of hearts believes—at least in these days. Why not face the worst like men? If we can't help being unhappy we can help being dishonest and cowardly. Existence is a misfortune. Let us frankly confess that it is, and make the best ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer

... reform. You are perfectly delightful as you are, and I know no man who is worthy of you. That's a woman's opinion; one who knows you well, and there is nothing dishonest about the opinion, either, in spite of your ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr

... They are more horrified than ever. 'You have not a spark of patriotism! To serve a foreign power! How dreadful! And as for the Russians, they are all heretics.' Perhaps they are. I will try diplomacy. 'What? Sacrifice your convictions? Become the blind instrument of a scheming, dishonest ministry? It is unworthy of a Saracinesca!' I will think no more about it. Let me be a lawyer and enter public life. 'A lawyer indeed! Will you wrangle in public with notaries' sons, defend murderers and burglars, and take fees like the old men who write letters for the peasants under a, green ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford

... the brief period so affectionately described in all literalness as the Arcadian Age. Men drank and gambled and enjoyed themselves in the rough manner of mining camps; but they were hardly ever drunken and in no instance dishonest. In all literalness the miners kept their gold-dust in tin cans and similar receptacles, on shelves, unguarded in tents or open cabins. Even quarrels and disorder were practically unknown. The communities were individualistic in the extreme, and yet, with the Anglo-Saxon ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White

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

... the nobles and priests but ordinary citizens, lawyers, architects, physicians, jewellers, stationers, printers, upholsterers and other artisans, each name being given in full with the professions, addresses and one of the following qualifications, "hypocrite (tartufe), immoral, dishonest, bankrupt, informer, usurer, cheat," not to mention others that I cannot write down. It must be noted that this slanderous list may become a proscriptive list, and that in every town and village in France similar lists are constantly drawn up and circulated by the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... threatenings it broke in a furious article in the Edinburgh, by Dr. Arnold, on the "Oxford Malignants"; and the Tract-writers and their friends became, what they long continued to be, the most unpopular and suspected body of men in the Church, whom everybody was at liberty to insult, both as dishonest and absurd, of whom nothing was too cruel to say, nothing too ridiculous to believe. It is only equitable to take into account the unprepared state of the public mind, the surprise and novelty of even the commonest things when put in a new light, the prejudices which the ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church

... day I do not feel certain in my own mind whether the publisher was dishonest or not. It would be quite natural that a book on heraldry should have a very small sale, but on the other hand it is inconceivable that more than four hundred copies of a book should have been simply lost. [Footnote: There is a third possibility: the sale may ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al

... personal, household, and plantation expenses: by which means he could tell at a glance whether he were on the making or losing order, and readily detect whether any of whom he had dealings were given to careless or dishonest practices. So superior was the quality of every thing produced on his estate, and so widely known did he become for his honesty and uprightness in all business transactions, that, in time, a box of tobacco or a barrel of flour marked "George Washington, Mount Vernon, Va.," would be received ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady

... still. Mr. Cleaver and his circle were profoundly shocked. To them Catholicism meant Roman Catholicism, or, as they called it, Popery. If a man were not a Protestant, he had no business to remain in the United Church of England and Ireland. If he did remain in it, he was not merely mistaken, but dishonest, and sophistry could not purge him from the moral stain of treachery to the institution of which he was an officer. Froude's sense of chivalry was aroused, and he warmly defended Newman, whom he knew ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul

... sentimental as the most sentimental reasons for believing in heaven. New South Wales is quite literally regarded as a place where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest; that is, a paradise for uncles who have turned dishonest and for nephews who are born tired. British Columbia is in strict sense a fairyland, it is a world where a magic and irrational luck is supposed to attend the youngest sons. This strange optimism about the ends of the earth is an English ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton

... house near Carlisle these two nights past, and drove away my three good milk cows, forbye stealing three coverlets from my bed. And I crave that I get my own again, and that justice may be meted out to the dishonest varlets." ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson

... ignored by all right-minded men. We had no conception of the quality of politics, nor how "interests" came into such affairs; we believed men were swayed by purely intellectual convictions and were either right or wrong, honest or dishonest (in which case they deserved to be shot), good or bad. We knew nothing of mental inertia, and could imagine the opinion of a whole nation changed by one lucid and convincing exposition. We were capable of the most incongruous transfers from the scroll of history to our own times, we could ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells

... now a bachelor past fifty, bearish and uncouth in his appearance, and ungracious in his deportment. Secluded in his chambers, poring over the dry technicalities of his profession, he had divided the moral world into two parts—honest and dishonest, lawful and unlawful. All other feelings and affections, if he had them, were buried, and had never been raised to the surface. At the time we speak of, he continued his laborious, yet lucrative, profession, toiling in his harness like a horse in a mill, ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat



Words linked to "Dishonest" :   blackguardly, double-dealing, fraudulent, ambidextrous, corrupt, two-faced, roguish, untrustworthy, double-faced, insincere, crooked, picaresque, deceptive, untrusty, dishonorable, rascally, bribable, shoddy, venal, false, purchasable, scoundrelly, fallacious, double-tongued, duplicitous, misleading, thieving, corruptible, Janus-faced, honest, dishonourable, beguiling, thievish



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