"Overreach" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... King's daughter shall not overreach us;' and, loading his gun, he shot so cleverly, that he shot away the horse's skull from under the runner's head, without its hurting him. Then the runner awoke, jumped up, and saw that his pitcher was empty and ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... and Charles Kean is to-night playing for his last night. If it had been the 'rig'lar' drama I should have gone, but I was afraid Sir Giles Overreach might upset me, so I stayed away. My quarters are excellent, and the head-waiter is such a waiter! Knowles (not Sheridan Knowles, but Knowles of the Cheetham Hill Road[28]) is an ass to him. This sounds bold, but truth is stranger than fiction. By-the-by, not the least comical thing that has ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... is the sub-almoner of history, Queen Mab's register, one whom, by the same figure that a north country pedlar is a merchantman, you may style an author. It is like overreach of language, when every thin tinder-cloaked quack must be called a doctor; when a clumsy cobbler usurps the attribute of our English peers, and is vamped a translator. List him a writer and you smother Geoffrey in swabber-slops; ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... inn was delicate and courteous to a degree, and at every point attempting to overreach her guests, who, as regularly as she attacked, ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... men, big and powerful as they were, became physically worn out. . . . Finally came the Iron Age, in which enfeebled mankind had to toil for bread with their hands, and, bent on gain, did their best to overreach each other. Dike, or Astraea, the goddess of justice and good faith, modesty and truth, turned her back on such scenes, and retired to Olympus, while Zeus determined to destroy the human race by a great flood. The whole of ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... 55 deg. in midwinter in a house built high above ground would be too parching and unsteady for the good of the mushrooms; besides, a second shelf is inconvenient enough, and when it comes to a third or a fourth the inconvenience would be too great, and overreach any advantage hoped for in economy of space. An unheated mushroom house must be regarded as a shed, and treated similarly, as described in ...
— Mushrooms: how to grow them - a practical treatise on mushroom culture for profit and pleasure • William Falconer
... shrank from such heart-piercing revelations of human passion. Persons who had schooled themselves to control their emotion till they had scarcely any emotion left to control, were repelled rather than attracted by Kean's relentless anatomy of all the strongest feeling of our nature. In Sir Giles Overreach, a character almost devoid of poetry, Kean's acting displayed with such powerful and relentless truth the depths of a cruel, avaricious man, baffled in all his vilest schemes, that the effect he produced was absolutely awful. As ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... Sea bubble did not destroy the rage for speculation, although it taught many useful truths—that national prosperity is not advanced by stockjobbing; that financiers, however great their genius, generally overreach themselves; that great dividends are connected with great risk; that circumstances beyond human control will defeat the best-laid plan; that it is better to repose upon the operation of the ordinary laws of trade; and that nothing but strict integrity and industry will succeed in the end. From the ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... our next place of call was Barracouta harbour. It was here, if I am rightly informed, that a French naval officer shot himself, because he had allowed the Russian squadron to overreach him. It was during the Crimean war, the English and French squadrons had hunted the station all over to come up with the Russians, but though they often sighted the enemy, they never succeeded in engaging them. From China to Japan, from Japan to Corea, and away in Siberian ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... of the hind foot strikes and injures the heel or quarter of the forefoot the horse is said to overreach. It rarely happens except when the animal is going fast; hence is most common in trotting and running horses. In trotters the accident generally happens when the animal breaks from a trot to a run. The outside heels and quarters are most liable ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... the seed time, so the reaping, Shame on us who overreach, While our eyes yet smart with weeping, Hearts so all our own to teach, Better they and we lay sleeping where the ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... any rate they agreed with me. Nay, they had eyes, mouths, legs, if not arms, and feet, so there was much in which we were both of a mind, but surely they must be mistaken in arming themselves so very heavily. Any creature on getting what the turtle aimed at would overreach itself and be landed not in safety but annihilation. It should have no communion with the outside world at all, for death could creep in wherever the creature could creep out; and it must creep out somewhere if it was to hook ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... smooth tongue, and an easy conscience are worth more in our business than any other qualities. With these you may do as you list. They tell far better than all the 'one-price' and fair-dealing professions, in which people have little faith. In fact, the mass will overreach if they can, and therefore regard ...
— True Riches - Or, Wealth Without Wings • T.S. Arthur
... peculation and monopoly. Mitchell, one of the grasping patentees who had purchased of the favourite the power of robbing the nation, was fined and imprisoned for life. Mompesson, the original, it is said, of Massinger's Overreach, was outlawed and deprived of his ill-gotten wealth. Even Sir Edward Villiers, the brother of Buckingham, found it convenient to leave England. A greater name is to be added to the ignominious list. By this Parliament was brought to justice ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... are often made a prey of and cheated by the unprincipled settlers, who think it no crime to overreach a red-skin. One anecdote will fully illustrate this fact. A young squaw, who was near becoming a mother, stopped at a Smith-town settler's house to rest herself. The woman of the house, who was Irish, was peeling for dinner ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... and estate; command me within the compass of your authority on earth, and I will obey you. Put if you command me as to belief, and order me to put away books, I will not obey, for then you become a tyrant and overreach yourself, and command where you have neither right nor power.' If your goods are taken and your disobedience is punished, you are blessed, and you may thank God that you are worthy to suffer for God's Word. When a prince is in the wrong, his subjects are not under obligations to follow him, ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... hind feet, because the rabbit overreaches each time; the hind feet track ahead of the front feet; the faster he goes, the farther ahead those hind feet get; and what would happen if he multiplied his speed by ten I really cannot imagine. This overreach of the hind feet takes place in ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... for money used otherwise than for its material ends. A dollar never meant anything to him except its equivalent in the filling of a need. Generosity and the impulse of giving were in his blood, yet it had gone hard several times with people who had tried to overreach him even to a trifling extent. But now he submitted without a word to losing ten dollars through cashing Arthur Carroll's worthless check. He himself was rather bewildered at his tame submission. One thing was certain, although it seemed paradoxical; ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... his countrymen. He possessed, also, a rare perception of human character, together with an iron memory which never lost a face, a place, or an event, once seen or known. He read the minds even the faces of men, like printed books. No man could overreach him, excepting only those to whom he gave his heart. He might be mistaken where he had confided, never where he had been distrustful or indifferent. He was deceived by Renneberg, by his brother-in-law Van den Berg, by the Duke of Anjou. Had it been ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... of the country believes the old thread-bare lie that Negro men rape white women. If Southern white men are not careful, they will overreach themselves and public sentiment will have a reaction; a conclusion will then be reached which will be very damaging to the moral reputation ...
— Southern Horrors - Lynch Law in All Its Phases • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... friction and no motive for any indirection, such accounting is child's work compared with the adjustment of dealings between the mutually suspicious private capitalists, who divided among themselves the field of business in your day, and sat up nights devising tricks to deceive, defeat, and overreach one another." ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... paying debt by service as a matter of course, and deserving neither rest, nor gratitude, nor commendation. One really sometimes feels inclined to regret that Abud or somebody else was not more relentless—to pray for a Sir Giles Overreach or a Shylock among the creditors. For such a one, by his apparently malevolent but really beneficent grasping, would have in effect liberated the bondsman, who, as it was, was compelled to toil at a hopeless task to his dying day, and to hasten that ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... of course, is writing in the light of later knowledge, and even, setting that aside, I am very far from agreeing with his psychological deduction. Just as a shy man will so overreach himself in his efforts to dissemble his shyness as to assume an air of positive arrogance, so might a pure lady who had succumbed as Miss Armytage pretended, upon finding herself forced to such self-accusation, bear herself with a boldness which was no ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... cruisers sold even the royal arms and ammunition, which had been entrusted to them, whence much passed into the hands of the Moros. The alcaldes were said to influence the commanders of the cruisers, and the latter to overreach the alcaldes; but both usually made common cause. La Perouse also relates (ii., p. 357), that the alcaldes bought a very large number of persons who had been made slaves by the pirates (in the Philippines); so that the latter were not usually brought to ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... the streets of his metropolis. They are very poorly furnished and nasty, far below similar conveyances in any continental city with which we are acquainted. Greater fault still is to be found with the drivers, a large proportion of whom are so prone to overreach, that it is hardly possible to settle for their fares without a squabble. Our experience leads us to say, that at an average a stranger pays 30 per cent. above the proper sum, besides having his temper in almost every instance ruffled to some extent by the sense of having ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various
... a strange new name, By paths unseen to reach the goal of fame; Thro courts and camps he teaches how to wind, To mine whole states and overreach mankind. Train'd in his school, a bold and artful race Range o'er the world, and every sect embrace, All creeds and powers and policies explore, New seats of science raise on every shore; Till their wide empire gains a wondrous birth, Built in all empires o'er this ancient earth. ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... stepmother to Tom Allworth. Sir Giles Overreach thought she would marry his nephew Wellborn, but ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... cab, was driven to the station. He was fortunate in securing a train to New York without having to wait more than five minutes, and late that night the Chester boys and the others of their party were in full possession of the details of the air-ship in which Luther Barr meant to overreach them if it lay ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... pollution and fairly rooted in good order and legality. (6) It was a design worth the venture: if they succeeded they would become the saviours of their country; if not—why, in the effort to grasp the fairest flower of happiness, they would but overreach, and find instead ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... glowed and glittered and flamed in gorgeous apparel, until she seemed to fairly overreach all the innocent young flowery beauties of the spring with one rich trill of colour, like a high note of a bird above a wide chorus of others. Mistress Mary that morning wore a tabby petticoat of a crimson colour, and a crimson satin bodice shining over her arms and shoulders like ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... from the primitive scenes and events of his solitary existence. He was, in many things, as simple as a child: as credulous, as unsophisticated. Yet the utmost cunning of the wily savage—all the strategy of Indian warfare—was not sufficient to deceive or overreach him! Though one might have expected that his life of ceaseless watchfulness would make him skeptical and suspicious, his confidence was given heartily, without reservation, and often most imprudently. If he gave his trust at all, you might ply him, by the hour, with the most improbable ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... in 1857, he played Sir Giles Overreach, in Massinger's "A New Way to Pay Old Debts," and the profound impression he made in it confirmed him in his purpose to devote himself to tragic acting. The story of an actor's life is seldom eventful, and Mr. Booth's history, after his first assured success, is ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... be to espouse the cause of the Allies, since they obviously have more to offer her than their rivals. But the somewhat equivocal attitude of her statesmen has been determined not merely by an astute desire to win the spoils of war without making the necessary sacrifice—a policy which is apt to overreach itself—but also by a very pardonable anxiety as to the attitude of Bulgaria and Turkey. Roumania has hitherto been the foremost upholder of the Treaty of Bucarest, and it is only in the event of drastic territorial ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... to how I get a horse; but we differ from each other in this, that if you were in my place you would take the horse without giving an equivalent. Now I am a man of mercy, and if you will ask a fair price you shall have it. But mark me! Do not overreach yourself and kill the goose that is about ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... mate could be ignorant of the cause of it. I was taken down to the forecastle, however, and heard not a word about being sent back. In truth, as Ben had already informed me in his mutterings, the skipper was rather pleased than otherwise, at being able to overreach King Dingo, and as he had found me useful to himself he had no desire to let me go. It was only the large profit he expected by the exchange that had tempted him to part with me; but so long as he ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... bargains for buying and selling of Goods and Merchandizes; from whence they seldom come before they have spent a large reckoning, and lost more then three of their five sences; thinking themselves no less rich then they are wise; and ly then very subtlely upon the catch to overreach another in a good and advantagious bargain; by which means they themselves are somtimes catcht by the nose with a mouldly old sort of unknown commodity, that they may walk home with, by weeping cross; and next morning there they stand and look as if they had suckt their Dam through a hurdle, ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... should be ready to risk his professional reputation upon it, when he is convinced beyond doubt that the man is being unfairly assailed, or that due process is not being followed. Both higher authority and civil authority occasionally overreach; an officer stands as a shield protecting his men against unfair treatment from any quarter. But it is decidedly not his duty to attempt to cheat law or thwart justice for the sake of his men simply because ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... with Woodburn's, undertook, at first, to wheedle the young man into a sale, or rather an exchange of his valuable farm for another, or wild lands, at false valuations and of doubtful titles. But, finding himself wholly mistaken in the character of the person whom he thus endeavored to overreach, and consequently failing in his attempt, he next began to think of the quibbles of the law, as the means of accomplishing his purpose. And having discovered some slight irregularity in Woodburn's deed, to begin upon, he then resorted to a trick quite fashionable ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... remarkable counterfeit. You would not know it from a good one. Only an expert can tell the difference. But all these crooks overreach themselves. Clever as they are, they usually leave some mark which betrays them. For example, in printing this bill which bears the head of Lincoln, they have spelled his first name 'Abrahem'—in other words, the engraver made an 'e' when it ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... to be always sucking them in; and the sun had burnt him, not a wholesome red or brown, but dirty yellow. He had bright dark eyes, which he kept half closed; only peeping out of the corners, and even then with a glance that seemed to say, 'Now you won't overreach me; you want to, but you won't.' His arms rested carelessly on his knees as he leant forward; in the palm of his left hand, as English rustics have their slice of cheese, he had a cake of tobacco; in his right ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... of Mongol character, namely, the treachery and craft with which they attempt to overreach one another in war, may be illustrated by a short saga told by Ssanang Setzen, and probably relating to this period of Temudjin's career. It is curious how circumstantial many of these traditions are. "At that time," he says, "Buke Chilger of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... the ladies, of the story of Fra Puccio, the queen with a commanding air bade Elisa follow on. She, rather tartly than otherwise, not out of malice, but of old habit, began to speak thus, "Many folk, knowing much, imagine that others know nothing, and so ofttimes, what while they think to overreach others, find, after the event, that they themselves have been outwitted of them; wherefore I hold his folly great who setteth himself without occasion to test the strength of another's wit. But, for that maybe all are not of my opinion, it pleaseth me, whilst following on the given ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... at once—want of honesty. The Greek was not to be depended on; if it suited him, he would lie, betray, overreach, change sides, and think it no sin. He was the sharpest of men. Sharp practice, in our modern sense of the word, was the very element in which he floated. Any scholar knows it. In the grand times of Marathon and Salamis, down to the disastrous times of the Peloponnesian war and the thirty ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... council and turned his wisdom to folly; for Kapchack has been so cunning for so many, many years, and all his family have been so cunning, and all his councillors, that now I do believe (only I do not meddle with politics) that this extreme cunning is too clever, and that they will overreach themselves. However, we shall see what is said at ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... the day that first he meddled with Robin Hood, for all men laughed at him and many ballads were sung by folk throughout the country, of how the Sheriff went to shear and came home shorn to the very quick. For thus men sometimes overreach themselves through greed ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... enough nowadays that capital fattens on labour, naturally, instinctively, without much sense of wrong-doing, and has so fattened since the days when Laban tried to overreach Jacob. What we are not so often told is that the poor man not less instinctively looks upon the gen'leman as legitimate sport. 'An 'orrible lie' between two poor people is fair play from a poor man to a wealthier, just as, for ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... trace the whole art in all the nice management of its shades, its qualities, and its more complicated parts, from invective to puff, and from inuendo to prevarication! we may admire the scrupulous correction of a lie which they had told, by another which they are telling! and triple lying to overreach their opponents. Royalists and Parliamentarians were alike; for, to tell one great truth, "the father of lies" is of ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... so eager is he for gain. He will not steal, nor commit murder, nor break any one of the commandments so far as the laws of the state recognize these divine laws to be laws of common society. But, in his heart, and in act, so far as the law cannot reach him, he violates them daily. He will overreach you in a bargain, and think it all right. If your business comes in contact with his, he will use every means in his power to break you down, even to the extent of secretly attacking your credit. He will lend his money on usury, and when he has none ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... only reply that I do not believe that the horticulturist can sell his small fruits anywhere in the ordinary markets of the world at so high a price as to the Robin, provided that he uses proper diligence that the little huckster doesn't overreach him in the bargain." ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... how this grotesque but wonderful actor—a mountebank sometimes and sometimes a living truth—would play at home after driving us all mad in America, I went to see him in Sir Giles Overreach. He played with more spirit, more of settled purpose, than with us, being more in earnest, I think, and better supported. There is one absurdity in the play, which was made particularly offensive by Oxberry's exaggeration. The dinner is kept waiting, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... name, and his cheek crimsoned. The man whom he most hated in this world; the wretch who, by his possession of some compromising secret, was forcing Sabine into a detested marriage; the villain whom he, M. de Breulh, and Madame de Bois Arden had sworn to overreach, was within a few paces of him, and that now he should see him face to face. Their eyes would meet, and he would hear the tones of the scoundrel's voice. His rage and agitation were so intense that it was with the utmost difficulty that he concealed it. Luckily ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau |
