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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



... was a foreigner, and almost friendless—unlucky, indeed, in the choice of the few friends I possessed. Chief of them was the Marquis de Beauvais, concerning whom I soon made two discoveries—that he was in the thick of an intrigue against the republic I served, and its First Consul, and that he was in love with Marie de ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various

... 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 ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey

... bit, tenderly questioning her, his face blazing with righteous wrath, and darkening with his wider knowledge as she told on to the end, and showed him plainly the black heart of the villain who had dared so diabolical a conspiracy; and the inhumanity of the woman who had helped in the intrigue against her own sister,—nay even instigated it. His feelings were too deep for utterance. He was shaken to the depths. His new comprehension of Kate's character was confirmed at the worst. Marcia could only guess his deep feelings ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz

... 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 ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois

... the harvest of the young man's excursion, in the shape of first-hand records of war and government—of intrigue and of sedition, followed by stern retributive chastisement—from that famous soldier, autocratic ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... to consult with the commander in chief three men who died hated and scorned by their countrymen. The first was Horatio Gates, a vainglorious man, given to intrigue and treachery. Next came tall and slovenly Charles Lee of Virginia, a restless adventurer, who, by his cowardice in the battle of Monmouth, stirred even Washington to anger. Then there was a young man for whom Washington had a peculiar liking on account of his great personal bravery, who afterward ...
— Hero Stories from American History - For Elementary Schools • Albert F. Blaisdell

... The post to which he was assigned was that of attendant in the Vote Office, so that his days (and a great part of his nights) were spent in the two little rooms which open off the Members' Lobby, that buzzing centre of parliamentary gossip, activity and intrigue. Half a dozen steps only separated him from the door of the Chamber itself, and that door he was always privileged to pass and listen to the debates, standing by the entrance outside the magical strip of matting which indicates the bar of the House. From this point of vantage ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn

... as the Boy Sabreur in Egypt. Even then it was said that no woman could resist him, and no man stand up against him. He went out with young de Beauharnais, Boney's step-son, and ran him through the body; and he carried on an intrigue with ... but there! there!... When he was First Consul, Boney decorated him before the Army, and disgraced him within the year. They said the little Corporal began to be jealous: the men worshipped Fitz.... Anyway I know it'll be the regret ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant

... frequent visits, and they readily accepted invitations to dinner from any one; yet both were extremely moderate in eating and drinking; and both refrained from amorous connection with Spanish women, on the principle that to intrigue with the wives or daughters of their countrymen was both prejudicial and dishonourable to their neighbours. Almagro was the most continent in regard to the Peruvian women, as we know of no affairs of his gallantry in that country, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr

... Osborne, whose hand and heart were still free after various incomplete love affairs, felt a great attachment for this lady, and it is believed inspired one in her bosom. Miss Wirt was the confidante of this intrigue. I know not whether she used to leave the room where the master and his pupil were painting, in order to give them an opportunity for exchanging those vows and sentiments which cannot be uttered advantageously in the presence of a third party; ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... folly, as has been previously[39] set forth by me, upon seeing the city captured, fell into a fit of apoplexy and died suddenly, though he had neither been ill before nor suffered any harm from anyone. But Asclepiodotus, who was engaged in this intrigue with him, came before Belisarius with those of the notables who survived. And Stephanus mocked and reviled him with these words: "See, O basest of all men, what evils you have brought to your fatherland, by selling the safety of the citizens for ...
— Procopius - History of the Wars, Books V. and VI. • Procopius

... full share of severe animadversion, but the portrait is undeniably vigorous and alive. Here is a specimen: "It was the fashion to say that Mr. Pitt was insolent, impetuous, romantic, a despiser of money, intrigue and patronage, ignorant of the characters of men, and one who disregarded consequences. Nothing could be less just than the whole of this, which may be judged by the leading features of his life, without relying on any private testimony. He certainly ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various

... shattered remnants of the First, the nobles of the Imperium had come slowly to realize that the empire was not to be judged by the examples of its predecessor. The First Empire had conquered most of the known universe by political intrigue and sheer military strength; it had fallen because that same propensity for political intrigue had gained over every other strength of the Empire, and the various branches and sectors of the First Empire had begun to use ...
— Despoilers of the Golden Empire • Gordon Randall Garrett

... district is now so admirably supplied with local newspapers, that I trust in all time to come the people of England will drink of purer streams nearer home, and not of those streams which are muddled by party feeling and political intrigue, and by many motives that tend to anything rather than the enlightenment and advantage of the people. It is said,—that very paper has said over and over again,—'Why this war? Why not separate peaceably? Why ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright

... he had perceived at the moment of Margaret's entrance the fact that her gaiety also was assumed. Serious business had dictated her visit, and he wondered the more to note how deeply this odor, real or fancied, seemed to intrigue her. ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer

... my faculties of sense and rhetoric,' says Bill. 'What I wanted you to do is to go to Washington and dig out this appointment for me. I haven't no ideas of cultivation and intrigue. I'm a plain citizen and I need the job. I've killed seven men,' says Bill; 'I've got nine children; I've been a good Republican ever since the first of May; I can't read nor write, and I see no reason why I ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry

... measures has, of course, his sturdy friends, his foes as sturdy. He has, without doubt, an iron will. He is, without doubt, a good fighter—a wise counselor. Approached by fraud he presents a front of granite; he cuts through intrigue with sudden, forceful blows. It is true that the sharp bargainer, the overreaching buyer he worsts and puts to confusion and loss without mercy. But, no less, candor and honor meet with frankness and generous dealing. He is as loyal to a friend as to a purpose. ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 2, Issue 3, December, 1884 • Various

... of some previous notes of my sketching escapades[1] to believe this. It is almost too wonderful that a chronicler of travels in desperate need of some comic relief to save his book from dulness would be so lucky as to pick up such excellent copy as Brown, without previous intrigue. Nevertheless I do solemnly state that I had not the slightest idea where Brown was doing his bit in the war. I had last heard of him in France in the Naval Division. That we should both have travelled half across the world ...
— A Dweller in Mesopotamia - Being the Adventures of an Official Artist in the Garden of Eden • Donald Maxwell

... as soon as I arrived I was in the thick of an intrigue. You read Madame Drozdov's letter, of course. What could be clearer? What did I find? That fool Praskovya herself—she always was a fool—looked at me as much as to ask why I'd come. You can fancy ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... a few minutes early and to smuggle him off before an introduction would be necessary. If they arrived punctually or late, the General might be already on the pavement—— Tabs bit his lip. He hated petty intrigue. He demanded a man's code of honor from the woman he adored and made no feeble excuses for feminine dishonesty. This was the worst disappointment she ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson

... the friends he ever had, and he made the wrath of his enemies to praise him. This was not by cunning or intrigue in the low acceptation of the term, but by far-seeing reason and discernment. He always told only enough of his plans and purposes to induce the belief that he had communicated all; yet he reserved enough ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure

... fruitless endeavours to arrest the growth of the new Mahratta power, to which Shivaji had not unsuccessfully attempted to rally the spiritual forces of disaffected Hinduism. In the incapable hands of Aurungzeb's successors, whilst the Delhi palace became a hotbed of squalid and often sanguinary intrigue, disintegration proceeded with startling rapidity. Revolt followed revolt within, and the era of external invasions was reopened. Nadir Shah swept down from Persia and, after two months' carnage and plunder, carried off from ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol

... First in 1382 one Lopez, a captain of Seville sailing to Gallicia, was driven by a tempest to Grand Canary, and lived among the natives seven years till he and his men were denounced for writing home and inviting rescue. To stop this intrigue they, the "thirteen Christian brothers" whose testament reached Bethencourt twelve years later, were all massacred. News of this and of the voyage of a Spaniard named Becarra to the same islands at ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley

... the Age The Nine wild Sisters seen run mad with Rage, Debaucht to Savages, till his keen Pen Brought their long banisht Reason back again, Driven by his Satyres into Natures Fence, And lasht the idle Rovers into Sense. Nay, his sly Muse, in Style Prophetick, wrot The whole Intrigue of Israels Ethnick Plot; Form'd strange Battalions, in stupendious-wise, Whole Camps in Masquerade, and Armies in disguise. Amiel, whose generous Gallantry, whilst Fame Shall have a Tongue, shall never want a Name. Who, whilst his Pomp ...
— Anti-Achitophel (1682) - Three Verse Replies to Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden • Elkanah Settle et al.

... thou, said she, my daughter come again? Then what the man had done she told, and said, He these six measures full of barley laid Upon me, for said he, This I bestow, Lest to thy mother thou should'st empty go. Then, said she, sit still daughter, till thou see What the event of this intrigue will be; For till the man this day hath made an end, No satisfaction ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... thereby, another cutter was bought and equipped completely in the port of Dunkirk. Cunningham and his crew were set at liberty, and with some address and intrigue he got again to sea from the same port, in a swift sailing cutter, mounting fourteen six pounders and twenty two swivels, with one hundred and six men. His first adventure greatly raised insurance on the northern trade, even the packet boats from Dover to Calais were for some ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various

... the future. Do not stay in Washington. Halleck is better qualified than you are to stand the buffets of intrigue and policy. Come out West; take to yourself the whole Mississippi Valley; let us make it dead-sure, and I tell you the Atlantic slope and Pacific shores will follow its destiny as sure as the limbs of ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... charter from good Queen Anne, their company being the youngest of all the guilds. They encourage the production of a female weapon, which is often used with much effect in the warfare of courtly fashion and intrigue. The Farriers were incorporated by the Merry Monarch, in order to prevent unexpert and unskilful persons destroying horses by bad shoeing, and have extended their good work to the present day by devising an admirable system of examination and national registration of ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various

... was merged in shadow, and no longer the picture she remembered; but when the sun shone, all the rows quickened with amorous intrigue, and the little lady held out her striped skirt (she had lost none of her bland delight), and the gentleman who advanced to meet her bowed with the mock humility of yore, and the beautiful perspectives of the colonnade floated into the hush of the ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore

... neighbour. Luck and stubbornness and the incalculable counted for much; it was half the battle not to know you were beaten, and it is so still. Even to-day, a great nation, it seems, may still make its army the plaything of its gentlefolk, abandon important military appointments to feminine intrigue, and trust cheerfully to the homesickness and essential modesty of its influential people, and the simpler patriotism of its colonial dependencies when it comes at last to the bloody and wearisome business of "muddling through." But these days of the happy-go-lucky optimist ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... 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 ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift

... horseman. Providence spared him for the present. Mr. Richard rode his horse quietly round to the stable, put him up, and proceeded towards the house. He got to his bed without disturbing the family, but could not sleep. The idea had fully taken possession of his mind that a deep intrigue was going on which would end by bringing Elsie and the schoolmaster into relations fatal to all his own hopes. With that ingenuity which always accompanies jealousy, he tortured every circumstance of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various

... up for sale,) and lastly, the hawkers of religions, moral, and political wisdom, all cry out at once, without tumult or confusion, yet so as to be heard in these days through the remotest corners of these islands.... If a peculiarly bloody murder has been tried, or if some domestic intrigue has produced a complicated love story, however offensive in its details, you will find our reading crowd stationary in that quarter, to enjoy the tragic stimulants of terror and pity. We have also a modest ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 363, Saturday, March 28, 1829 • Various

... unable to effect. Had I, at the time, been aware of the influence and latent power of the Portuguese party in the empire, nothing would have induced me to accept the command of the Brazilian navy; for to contend with faction is more dangerous than to engage an enemy, and a contest of intrigue is foreign to ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald

... statute book do you find now a single important law fathered by him? What book 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 ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer

... tell Monica what had come to his knowledge, it should have been done with the sternest calm, with dignity capable of shaming her guilt. As it was, he had spoilt his chances in every direction. Perhaps Monica understood this; he had begun to esteem her a mistress in craft and intrigue. ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing

... as possessing a rather dull intellect, and as being, partly for that reason, a "safe" man for the presidential office, Napoleon soon proved his capacity for intrigue and for cajoling the people. By intervening in behalf of Pope Pius IX, whom revolutionists had driven from Rome, he gained the support of the clergy. Napoleon's troops restored Pius IX (1850) to the papal throne. The President's aims at supremacy were approved ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne

... authorship. The Bulletins of the "Grande Armee" told a daily tale of romance, to which the brains of a Parisian scribbler could find no rival, and men with the sound of falling thrones echoing in their ears, forgot the whispers of low intrigue and commonplace corruption. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various

... gradually coming to terms of dangerous familiarity with bad methods. This advice will be especially needful if things that have little or no claim to be called literature at all—the newspapers, the monthly magazine, and the last new tale of intrigue or adventure—fill a large measure, if not the whole, of the time given to reading. Nor are those who are sincerely anxious to have the best thought in the best language quite free from danger if they give too much attention to the contemporary authors, even though these seem to think ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer

... it, had ventured to pat her on the shoulder. He had, ostensibly, come in to borrow a safety-pin of her. And the occasion of her boxing Maisie's ears, had, after it was over, riveted in her mind the idea that there was no intrigue between Edward and Mrs Maidan. She imagined that, from henceforward, all that she had to do was to keep him well supplied with money and his mind amused with pretty girls. She was convinced that he was coming back to her. For that month she no longer repelled his timid advances ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford

... at it again by the cold light of day and that night he appealed to Mrs. Hardesty. She was a woman herself, and wise in the ways of jealousy, intrigue and love. A single word from her and this impenetrable mystery might be cleared up like mist before the sun. And she ought to help him because it was through her, indirectly, that all this trouble had occurred. Until her arrival there had never been a moment when he had seriously worried ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge

... crisis of two years ago. Germany knew from her experience of the conference in London which settled the Balkan crisis that she could count upon our good will for peace in any conference of the powers. We had sought no diplomatic triumph in the Balkan Conference; we did not give ourselves to any intrigue; we pursued impartially and honorably the end of peace, and we were ready last July to ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... perhaps account for Brian's obstinate concealment of his movements on the fatal night. He had admitted an appointment with a woman. He was a handsome young fellow, and probably his morals were no better than those of his fellows. There was perhaps some intrigue with a married woman. He had perchance been with her on that night, and it was to shield her that he ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume

... daughters of a great magnate, and how the magnate had retaliated by turning the woman's husband out of his high office. That was often the way in the business world; the struggles were supposed to be affairs of men, but oftener than not the moving power was a woman's intrigue. You would see a great upheaval in Wall Street, and it would be two of the big men quarrelling over a mistress; you would see some man rush suddenly into a high office—and that would be because his wife had ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair

... to 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 amiable. ...
— Richard Lovell Edgeworth - A Selection From His Memoir • Richard Lovell Edgeworth

... Larue the author comes near making his failure. There is a little too much of her,—it is as if the wily enchantress had cast her glamour upon the author himself,—and there is too much anxiety that the nature of her intrigue with Carter shall not be misunderstood. Nevertheless, she bears that stamp of verity which marks all Mr. De Forrest's creations, and which commends to our forbearance rather more of the highly colored and strongly-flavored parlance of the camps ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various

... He had conceived a plan for a coalition between Bohemia, Poland, Austria, and Hungary to present a solid rampart against the Turks, and strong enough to dictate to emperor and pope. He was ready for intrigue with any power and had approached Louis XI. and Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary, before turning to Charles ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam

... is here ignorant of the source of Tallien's predilection for Spain, and we may suppose the intrigue at this time far advanced. Probably the charms of his wife (the daughter of Mons. Cabarrus, a French speculator, formerly much encouraged by the Spanish government, afterwards disgraced and imprisoned, but now liberated) might ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady

... the protection which such a constitution affords, especially if it had been tested, for a period of eighty years, by all the inward strain of domestic evils, and all the outward pressure of invasion; by the influence of foreign envy, of intrigue, of hostility; by the debasing power of disloyalty, the incompetency of rulers, and the general degeneracy of human nature; I say, in view of all these untoward influences, the government which could still retain its majesty and power, still ...
— Government and Rebellion • E. E. Adams

... different type of Jew was represented by the Scribes and Pharisees. They believed implicitly that the law of Moses and the tradition of the elders had a divine sanction, and that to live in accordance with it, not to take part in political intrigue, was the way of Life. Their main object was to interpret the Law in such a way as to make it possible to follow, and to extend its explanation so as to cover every possible problem in practical life. They were opposed to ...
— Landmarks in the History of Early Christianity • Kirsopp Lake

... discomfiture or miscarriage will serve to put him in the saddle. If we are 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

... palace. "It was impossible," says an English gentleman, "to overrate the gracious influence of the empress's presence. The occasion, great as it was, would have lost its romance if she had not been there. She it was who raised the spirit of chivalry, subdued the spirit of strife, enmity, and intrigue among rival men, and over commerce, science, and avarice spread the ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer

... deadly foe. We have not met on terms of speech for many years; our servants fight at chance encounters on the road. It is but five years since I held the post of Governor which he now occupies. When, by means of calumny and foul intrigue against me at Stamboul, he managed to supplant me, I swore a solemn oath that I would never recognise the Government nor seek its sanction so long as he remained its representative. And now the Consul bids me have recourse ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall

... edition of Marot's works, originated the theory that the numerous poems composed by Marot in honour of Margaret supply proofs of an amorous intrigue between the pair. Other authorities have endorsed this view; but M. Le Roux de Lincy asserts that in the pieces referred to, and others in which Marot incidentally speaks of Margaret, he can find no trace either of the fancy ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre

... modern and well-bred girls seem to write the same curly kind of hand somehow—and then Sargent's address in embossed blue letters on the back. And I couldn't have suspected him of carrying on an intrigue with Mrs. Piper!" and Oliver was forced to smile at her tinkle of laughter. Then ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet

... illustrate the irrational and incongruous origin of many folkways. In civilized history also we know that customs have owed their origin to "historical accident,"—the vanity of a princess, the deformity of a king, the whim of a democracy, the love intrigue of a statesman or prelate. By the institutions of another age it may be provided that no one of these things can affect decisions, acts, or interests, but then the power to decide the ways may have passed to clubs, trades unions, trusts, ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... him; he had been an able fellow in his younger days, and a gallant one, too, for he had a large scar over his eyebrow caused by the stroke of a cutlass from another negro while the Daddy was engaged in an intrigue. ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton

... advantage. I joined his miserable army, which, in numbers, barely exceeded that of the rebels, strongly stockaded. I joined them at the outset of their campaign; and in a few days (ten days) witnessed such scenes of cowardice, treachery, intrigue, and lukewarmness among his followers, such a determination not to take advice or to pursue any active measures, that I left them and returned to my vessel. The Chinese I do not include in this representation; they ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel

... into his political confidence. So Paul became familiar with the Lobby of the House of Commons and with the subjects before the Committees on which Colonel Winwood sat, and with the delicate arts of wire-pulling and intrigue, which appeared to him a monstrously fine diversion. There was also the matter of Colonel Winwood's speeches, which the methodical warrior wrote out laboriously beforehand and learned by heart. They were sound, weighty pronouncements, to which the House listened with respect; but they lacked ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke

... yacht, and has stayed here ever since. I wish he would write a book on the changes of life he has seen; about the court life of the Empire, and his semi-official yachting tour, and of his long residence with Thebaw and his queens, of the intrigue and ceremonies in their golden palaces, the thrilling episodes of which he was witness, and of the many changes of fortune he ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch

... Bass Rock, and set free again, September 23rd, as secretly as I was first arrested—does that sound like law to you? or does it sound like justice? or does it not sound honestly like a piece of some low, dirty intrigue, of which the very folk that meddle ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... they are and make the best of them. To mourn over the miseries of others, the poverty of the poor, their hardships in jails, prisons, asylums, the horrors of war, cruelty, and brutality in every form, all this would be mere sentimentalizing. To protest against the intrigue, bribery, and corruption of public life, to desire that her sons might follow some business that did not involve lying, cheating, and a hard, grinding selfishness, would be arrant nonsense. In this way man has been moulding woman to his ideas by direct ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... while the English, conceiving the honour of their country connected with the quarrel, of which various reports had gone about, considered the natives of other countries jealous of the fame of England and her King, and disposed to undermine it by the meanest arts of intrigue. Many and various were the rumours spread upon the occasion, and there was one which averred that the Queen and her ladies had been much alarmed by the tumult, and that ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott

... and you betrayed him. So he went under. He grew blind down here. I have not grown blind. I see as I saw. I move as I did in a world of ... of the pictures of men. They despair. I hear groans ... well, they are the groans of the dead to me. This to you, down near it, is a mass of tortuous intrigue; vile in its pettiest detail. But come further off; stand beside me, and what does it look like? It is a mighty engine of disintegration. It has crushed out a whole fabric, a whole plane of society. It has done that. I guided it. I had to have ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad

... son—observe his sorry plight! And Barrus, that poor beggar there! Say, are not these a sight, To warn a man from squandering his patrimonial means?' When counselling me to keep from vile amours with common queans; 'Sectanus, ape him not!' he'd say; or, urging to forswear Intrigue with matrons, when I might taste lawful joys elsewhere; 'Trebonius' fame is blurred since he was in the manner caught. The reasons why this should be shunned, and why that should be sought, The sages ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin

... succeed at all costs, enlisted Rizzio in his interests, unconscious that he had no need of this support; and as, on her side, Mary, who had fallen in love with him at first sight, fearing some new intrigue of Elizabeth's, hastened on this union so far as the proprieties permitted, the affair moved forward with wonderful rapidity; and in the midst of public rejoicing, with the approbation of the nobility, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... Ian Watson has created a fascinating novel that explores the UFO phenomenon, a novel that will endlessly intrigue and envelop the ...
— Lone Star Planet • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire

... persuaded her to go away with him. ... I wonder—" And Owen began to think if he should go to Ayrdale Mansions himself to find out. But if she had not gone away with Ulick, and if he should meet her in the street, how embarrassing it would be! Of what should he speak to her? Of the intrigue she had been carrying on with Ulick Dean? Should he pretend that he knew nothing of it? She would be ashamed of this renewal of her affection for Ulick, though she had not gone away with him; and if she had not gone, it would be only on account of Monsignor. He sat ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore

... Alfieri announced his intention of marrying the lady as soon as she was free; but, to his horror, she confessed to him one day, what was already known to the public through the newspapers, although he was ignorant of it, that before she knew him she had been engaged in an intrigue with a groom of her husband! Despite this discovery, it was some time before his affection for her abated; but at length, on her announcing her determination to enter a convent in France, he quitted her at Rochester, and left this ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... for he was disgustingly wiry and long of limb. That was how I saw his physical advantages. But, apart from this matter of physical superiority, he was no match for me. In the subtler qualities of intrigue I was his master; and he, never probably having observed himself as a hero of romance, had to yield to my proficiency in the art of producing a desired impression. It was in his capacity as an old campaigner, a knowing dog, ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson

... power. The old diplomatists and politicians, the "bourgeois," as they are now called, are all in opposition. Most of the educated and cultured and rich are out of office and power. They pursue the same old course of Balkan intrigue, communicating their opinions to you in stage-whispers, but intrigue merely ends in intrigue and does not lead to action. The old regime and old politics naturally find allies in the press which, having been so ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham

... diversified by sudden changes which intrigue me greatly. All over London I like to fancy little conversations of this ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 4, 1919. • Various

... future generations. ... The first step to the casting off of slavery is the risk taken to become free. The first step to victory is to know your own strength. ... Citizens! I expect all from your zeal, that you will with your whole hearts join the holy league which neither foreign intrigue nor the desire for rule, but only the love of freedom, has created. Whoso is not with us is against us. ... I have sworn to the nation that. I will use the power entrusted to me for the private oppression of none, but I ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner

... with debt. He is about to lose his position. It is all because he is degraded—because he feels he is entangled in an intrigue with a woman he is ashamed to love—a woman he has struggled in vain to ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... unmarried of both sexes to meet one another with comparative freedom, and to establish relations of friendship, which may subsequently ripen into love, unhampered by any such morbidly exciting atmosphere of intrigue and suggestion on the part of relatives and friends. But the new freedom of social intercourse, if it is not in its turn to prove disastrous, demands on the part of the young of both sexes a higher standard both of responsibility and self- control, and of knowledge ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson

... Tanqueray, and that to introduce her in the flesh would be merely to lead the interest of the audience into a blind alley, and to break the back of his action. Again, in His House in Order it may seem that the intrigue between Maurewarde and the immaculate Annabel, with its tragic conclusion, would have made a stirring introductory act. But to have presented such an act would have been to destroy the unity of the play, which centres in the character of Nina. Annabel is "another story"; and to have told, or rather ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer

... story is divided into two parts, one dealing with Lady Jane Grey, and the other with Mary Tudor as Queen, introducing other notable characters of the era. Throughout the story holds the interest of the reader in the midst of intrigue and conspiracy, extending considerably over a ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston

... The intrigue of this piece (which is mainly founded upon an incident borrowed from the "Country Wife" of Wycherley) is constructed and managed with considerable adroitness, having just material enough to be wound out into three acts, without being ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore

... to confess—I've loved you honestly! Did you think I'd been carrying on some nasty sneaking intrigue with a friend's wife—did you think I was that sort of a fellow—the sort of a fellow North is? Do you take me ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester

... of good family, whose appearance and manners she liked, but whose cold nature, selfishness, and narrow ambition, never rising above a prefecture and a good marriage, repelled her. At a word from his family, who were alarmed lest he should be killed for an intrigue, the Vicomte had already deserted a woman he had loved in the town where he ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac

... retired to Shikarpoor, which the Ameers of Sinde ceded to him; where, in place of conducting himself with prudence, he was so addicted to low intrigue with those about him, that his enemies availed themselves of this propensity to effect his ruin, and drove him from Shikarpoor, when, crossing the Indus, he fled through the desert by Juydalmeer, and returned to Loodiana. ...
— Campaign of the Indus • T.W.E. Holdsworth

... some puppet adventurer king set up between the Hohenzollerns and the Tsardom, does not promise much happiness for the Poles or much security for the peace of the world. An entirely independent Poland will be a feverish field of international intrigue—intrigue to which the fatal Polish temperament lends itself all too readily; it may be a battlefield again within five-and-twenty years. I think, if I were a patriotic Pole, I should determine to be a Slav at any cost, and make the ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells

... goat of Mendes gave precocious signs of infantile debauchery, recalling the cities of the plain, with a dissolute granddam. This vile hypocrite, bronzed with infamy, is the white bull mentioned in the Apocalypse. A worshipper of the Scarlet Woman, intrigue is the very breath of his nostrils. The stake faggots and the caldron of boiling oil ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... should know, and all these late changes have come as a complete surprise to me; for what news I do obtain is, more often than not, false. Unfortunately, truth is a virtue almost unknown among the Mahrattas. They have a perfect genius for intrigue, and consider it perfectly justifiable to deceive not only ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty

... Anstice hastily. "That would be a fatal mistake. A woman who is clever enough to carry on an intrigue of this kind without incurring suspicion is sufficiently clever to answer any direct questioning satisfactorily. No. If Tochatti is the culprit—mind you I only say if—she must be caught with guile, made to commit herself somehow, or be taken red-handed in the act——" He broke off ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes

... of intrigue and an uprising of the Scotch Presbyterians against the English Puritan. In August of the year 1648 after the three-days' battle of Preston Pans, Cromwell made an end to this second civil war, and took Edinburgh. Meanwhile his soldiers, tired of further talk and wasted hours of religious debate, ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon

... World. He spent seven years and one month among the islands and on the coasts of the hemisphere now called after the ship-chandler who helped to outfit his later expeditions. For the greater part of that time he was under the constant burden of knowing that venomous intrigue and misrepresentation were doing their deadly work at home while he did what he believed was his Heaven-imposed duty on ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various

... disguises, apparently waiting for a private signal to slip into the house. Then there was the tinkling of a guitar at night, and a lantern shifted from place to place in the balcony. I imagined another intrigue like that of Almaviva, but was again disconcerted in all my suppositions. The supposed lover turned out to be the husband of the lady, and a noted contrabandista; and all his mysterious signs and movements had doubtless ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner

... disinclination to one another's society, not unnaturally engendered by uncongenial and unamiable dispositions, had for a time given place to actual hostility, while the two young men were at Oxford. In some intrigue, Marston discovered in his cousin a too-successful rival; the consequence was, a bitter and furious quarrel, which, but for the prompt and peremptory interference of friends, Marston would undoubtedly have pushed ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... nearer the shadow of the Great War. It brought us to our fourteenth year, at which period Doe's mysterious intrigue with Freedham still awaited solution, and my Armageddon with Fillet still languished in a ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond

... Louis the Sixteenth was not the first cause of the evil by which he suffered. He came to it, as to a sort of inheritance, by the false politics of his immediate predecessor. This system of dark and perplexed intrigue had come to its perfection before he came to the throne: and even then the Revolution strongly ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury

... Iglesias touch the key to the riddle, and fully measure the public danger, the private strain and stress which had surrounded his childhood and early youth. For his father, a man of far from ignoble nature, but of narrow outlook and undying hatreds, was deeply involved in revolutionary intrigue of the most advanced type—a victim of that false passion of humanity which takes its rise not in honest desire for the welfare of mankind, but in blind rebellion against all forms of authority. His self-confidence was colossal; all rule being abominable ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet

... in 1667. In comparing him with Shakespeare we find the same difference as existed between the old and new comedy in Greece. Political characters have disappeared together with hostility and combats on the stage, while amorous intrigue is largely developed. There is at the same time considerable sprightliness in the dialogue, and the tricks, deceptions and misadventures of lovers fill the pages with much that is ingenious and amusing. In the "Gentleman ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... turbulence of the Ineffable, nor to have heard the thrilling bleakness of the winds of Eternity, when they pine, and long, and whimper, and when they vociferate and blaspheme, and when they expostulate and intrigue and implore, and when they despair and die, which ear of man should never hear. For they mean to eat me up, I know, these Titanic darknesses: and soon like a whiff I shall pass away, and leave the world to them.' So till next morning I lay mumping, with shivers and cowerings: ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel

... was now seldom given in the relentless warfare which the selfish interests were ever waging against the people, but it was intrigue, the promise of place and power, and the ever effectual appeal ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House

... its heels. Bread we suppose to be given amply; the cry for circuses will be the louder, and if the life of our descendants be such as we have conceived, there are two beloved pleasures on which they will be likely to fall back: the pleasures of intrigue ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Cavil, jealousy and 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 yet been organized on a basis strong ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon

... thing wander and frisk about over his heavy hunting boots like a tiny red mouse. What could he do? Answer the glance and the pressure, of course. Ay, but what about the consequences? A loving intrigue in the East is a terrible matter! With his romantic southern nature, the honest Tarasconian saw himself already falling into the grip of the eunuchs, to be decapitated, or better—we mean, worse—than that, sewn up in a leather ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet

... this low way of intrigue, when he shall consider that he has a footboy or an apprentice for his rival, and that he is seldom or never admitted, but when they have been his tasters; and the fool of fortune, though he comes at the latter end of the feast, yet pays ...
— Everybody's Business is Nobody's Business • Daniel Defoe

... legend attaches to the shiwan, a little yellow insect which preys upon cucumbers. The shiwan is said to have been once a physician, who, being detected in an amorous intrigue, had to fly for his life; but as he went his foot caught in a cucumber vine, so that he fell and was overtaken and killed, and his ghost became an insect, the destroyer of cucumber vines. In the zoological mythology and plant mythology of Japan ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn

... remarks gave me less pleasure. He detected the identity of the King with the wandering knight, Fitz-James, when he winds his bugle to summon his attendants. He was probably thinking of the lively, but somewhat licentious, old ballad, in which the denouement of a royal intrigue takes ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... former sprightliness, acquainted her with all had passed between herself and count de Bellfleur; which, tho' the other was no stranger to, she seemed astonished at, and could not help telling her, that she feared the consequence of an intrigue of that nature would one day be fatal to her peace. Yet, said Melanthe, where one loves, and is beloved, it is hard to deny oneself a certain happiness for the dread of an imaginary ill.—In fine, my dear Louisa, ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood

... who was slashing the air with a cane, the top of which, made of gold, glittered in the sunshine. The first man might have cut off a head with his own hand, but the second was capable of entangling innocence, virtue, and beauty in the nets of calumny and intrigue, and then poisoning them or drowning them. The rubicund stranger would have comforted his victim with a jest; the other was incapable of a smile. The first was forty-five years old, and he loved, undoubtedly, both women and good cheer. Such men have passions which ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac

... of yours; the soft endearments which have passed between that lady and you are no secret to me. I cannot tell whether I have the honour to be known by your gallant lordship in this piece of gallantry; but henceforth, be kind enough to break off an intrigue, which a husband may not approve of; and consider that ...
— Sganarelle - or The Self-Deceived Husband • Moliere

... his friend's side cannot be appreciated in the light of those legal and constitutional debates which the misfortunes of the seventeenth century have made so much of in more recent history. To convict St. Thomas of illegality and clerical intrigue, when he set the law of the Church against that of the State, is about as adequate as to convict St. Francis of bad heraldry when he said he was the brother of the sun and moon. There may have been ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton

... atmosphere, the suspension points and the seasonal epidemics of such words as "gripping," "virile," "intrigue," "gesture," etc. ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher

... its whole authority from the selfish interest of the borough-mongers but from the great outside current of patriotic sentiment and aspiration. But public opinion was not yet powerful enough to support the great minister without an alliance with the master of the small arts of intrigue. The general sentiments of discontent which had been raised by Walpole was therefore beginning to widen and deepen and to take a different form. The root of the evil, as people began to feel, was not in the individual Walpole but ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen

... that the new President has little experience, and is suspicious. He thinks we shall intrigue to tie his hands, and he means to tie ours in advance. I don't know him personally, but those who do, and who are fair judges, say that, though rather narrow and obstinate, he is honest enough, and will come round. I have no doubt I could settle it all with him in an hour's talk, ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams

... he mean to say that Hermes had watched, only that Agamemnon should perish at the hands of a woman and be the victim of a criminal intrigue? ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al

... indolent, never showing the iron determination which he had about all things. This apparent indifference, which enabled him to abet a popular sedition for the purpose of strengthening the authority of a prince with as much ability as he would have bestowed upon a court intrigue, had a certain grace. People never distrust calmness and uniformity of manner, especially in France, where we are accustomed to a great deal of movement and stir about the ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac

... losing her income, her estates, and her very chemise at faro. She showed much kindness to Monsieur de Boulingrin, lending herself to an intercourse for which she had no temperamental inclination, but which she thought suitable to her rank, and useful to her interests. Their intrigue was conducted with an art which revealed their good taste, and the elegance of the prevailing morality; the connection was openly avowed, and thereby stripped of all base hypocrisy; but it was at the same ...
— The Story Of The Duchess Of Cicogne And Of Monsieur De Boulingrin - 1920 • Anatole France

... said to be a graver: its materials lie deeper, and are spread wider. History treats, for the most part, of the cumbrous and unwieldy masses of things, the empty cases in which the affairs of the world are packed, under the heads of intrigue or war, in different states, and from century to century: but there is no thought or feeling that can have entered into the mind of man, which he would be eager to communicate to others, or which they would ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... the very age in which the composer flourished. To me, personally, the fact that Laurence Sterne did not undertake a version, has caused much regret. The master who delineated Tristram Shandy's father and the intrigue between the Widow Wadman and Uncle Toby would have drawn Trimalchio and his ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter

... forthwith declared that his kingdom should not continue. [Footnote: 1 Samuel xiii.] After this the relations between them went from bad to worse, and it was not long before the priest began to intrigue with David, whom he presently anointed. [Footnote: Idem, xvi.] The end of it was that Saul was defeated in battle, as Samuel's ghost foretold, for not obeying "the voice of the Lord;" and after a struggle between the houses of Saul and David, all the elders of Israel went to Hebron, where David ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams

... threatening the republic than the English people now arose as a single man to defend their island-realm against the revengeful and ambitious project of Spain. The imminent danger served to unite all classes, the gentry and the yeomanry, Protestants and Catholics. The latter might intrigue to set a Mary Stuart on the English throne, but they were not ready to betray their land into the hands ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... before the council three humbler sorcerers, Margery Jourdemain, John Virley, a cleric, and John Ashwell, a friar of the Order of the Holy Cross. It would be hard to say whether the three were in any way connected with political intrigue. It is possible that they were suspected of sorcery against the sovereign. They were all, however, dismissed on giving security.[9] It was only a few years after this instance of conciliar jurisdiction that a ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein

... him with all her heart, as Marian loved John, and when she loses him, not because she has done a single unworthy thing herself, but because he is so rubber spined that he will let another woman successfully intrigue him, a lot of comfort she is going to get from the love of ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter

... mistress' opened a new chapter in Southampton's career, and life's tempests began in earnest. Either to free himself from his mistress's toils, or to divert attention from his intrigue, he in 1596 withdrew from Court and sought sterner occupation. Despite his mistress's lamentations, which the Court gossips duly chronicled, he played a part with his friend Essex in the military and naval expedition to Cadiz in 1596, and in ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee

... be sure); and she had what the world just now has come to regard as the monarchical vice of autocracy. In her reign science and literature flourished, though without much aid from her, and the English court buzzed with intrigue and politics. But speak the name Queen Anne aloud, and then tell me the picture you get. Is it a picture of the lady or her period? Is it a picture of Pope and Dryden sitting in a London coffee-house? No, it is not—that is, unless you are a very learned, or a very ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton

... certificate—a pompous document asserting that he had not suffered from roseola or kindred ailments in the holidays—and for a long time Rickie sat with it before him, spread open upon his desk. He did not quite like the job. It suggested intrigue, and he had come to Sawston not to intrigue but to labour. Doubtless Herbert was right, and Mr. Jackson and Mrs. Orr were wrong. But why could they not have it out among themselves? Then he thought, "I am a coward, and that's why I'm raising these objections," called the boy up to him, and it did ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster

... voluminous bundle of papers when his wife, clad in a diaphanous wrap, came into his sitting room. They had a palatial suite at the Rhin. The affairs of Poland were not prospering as he had hoped, and these papers required his supreme attention—there was German intrigue going on somewhere underneath. He longed for Harietta's sympathy which she had been so prodigal in bestowing before she had secured her divorce from that brute of a Teutonic husband, whom she hated so much. Now she ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn

... (born Vorontzoff, 1743-1810) was a brilliantly educated woman, with a pronounced taste for political intrigue, who had a great share in the conspiracy which disposed of Peter III., and placed Katherine II. on the throne. Katherine richly rewarded the Princess, but preserved her own independence and supremacy, which offended ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood

... was the court of Charles the Second. Whitehall, when he dwelt there, was the focus of political intrigue and of fashionable gaiety. Half the jobbing and half the flirting of the metropolis went on under his roof. Whoever could make himself agreeable to the prince, or could secure the good offices of the mistress, might hope to rise in the world without rendering any service ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... such things can be put down, I hold they should be put down; and that the Conspiracy Bill is the smallest and lightest step that can be taken towards the putting down. For the rest, the great Derby intrigue, as shown in its acts, and as resulting in its State papers, nothing in history, it seems to me, was ever so ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning



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



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