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Pitfall   /pˈɪtfˌɔl/   Listen
Pitfall

noun
1.
An unforeseen or unexpected or surprising difficulty.  Synonym: booby trap.
2.
A trap in the form of a concealed hole.  Synonym: pit.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Pitfall" Quotes from Famous Books



... some of the puzzles, especially in the Arithmetical and Algebraical category, are quite easy. Yet some of those examples that look the simplest should not be passed over without a little consideration, for now and again it will be found that there is some more or less subtle pitfall or trap into which the reader may be apt to fall. It is good exercise to cultivate the habit of being very wary over the exact wording of a puzzle. It teaches exactitude and caution. But some of the problems are very hard nuts indeed, and not unworthy ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney

... reason for escaping a pitfall, he had floundered in. "Like other men?" Northrup sneered at himself. No other man could be such a consummate fool, ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock

... counsel for the prosecution. In the exercise of those arts all our knowledge of human nature, all possible learning in the word will be needed to their very last syllable. It is not true that any one is qualified to wave the lamp that shall reveal the pitfall in the path of the over-confident disciple. He must be a wise physician who has to diagnose the sickness of the soul. He must be a lawyer learned in the law who has to explain the position of the rebel before his flouted Sovereign. He must have larger skill ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson

... Another pitfall, however, opens here. These contrasted doctrines may change roles. So long as by redemption we understand, in the mystic way, exaltation above finitude and existence, because all particularity is sin, to be redeemed is to abandon the Life of Reason; but redemption might mean extrication from untoward ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... more than this attitude of Meredith's. I knew his poetry pretty well, and knew how severe he was on every sensual weakness perhaps because it was his own pitfall. I knew too what a fighter he was at heart and how he loved the virile virtues; but I thought I knew the man, knew his tender kindliness of heart, the founts of pity in him, and I felt certain I could count on him for any office of human charity or generosity. ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris

... hunter accomplishes this by means of a pitfall, covered with branches and palm-leaves; at other times, he places himself in ambuscade, either before twilight or in the early morning, and shoots the unsuspecting animal as it approaches on ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid

... example of want of intelligence! You read the words, and never trouble about the connection. Who in their sane senses would ask you to compare a warrior king with old Miss Yonge? A little reflection would have saved you from the pitfall into which you have all fallen headlong. Five bad marks each! Now, then, for the next two. What have you got to ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... had taken her way amid the grime and corruption which Paganism had left there, and a perverted Christianity had made more noisome; walking saint-like through it all, with white, innocent feet; until, in some dark pitfall that lay right across her path, she had vanished out of sight. It was terrible to imagine what hideous outrage might have thrust her ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... is no time to dally; on every side I see a pitfall. Let every man look to himself. If I must play in my last ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch

... who do things. The world judges by outward appearances. If your heart is sick, if your courage is low, don't show it. Put up a stiff attitude and act with confidence and that attitude will carry you over many a pitfall and past many ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter

... position to account for his syncope by illness or the stifling atmosphere of the locality, he has none the less given rise to suspicion! He has lied incomparably, but he has counted without nature. Here is the pitfall! Again, a man off his guard, from an unwary disposition, may delight in mystifying another who suspects him, and may wantonly pretend to be the very criminal wanted by the authorities; in such a case, he will represent the person in question a little too closely, ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various

... savage, relentless, and bloodthirsty, the Dragon fly would be our choice. From the moment of its birth until its death, usually a twelve-month, it riots in bloodshed and carnage. Living beneath the waters perhaps eleven months of its life, in the larva and pupa states, it is literally a walking pitfall for luckless aquatic insects; but when transformed into a fly, ever on the wing in pursuit of its prey, it throws off all concealment, and reveals the more ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard

... who sold it may have wished that it should not be known that it might have been an heirloom in their family. Infinite are the possibilities, those only decide in such cases who have a personal motive for doing so; "la rage de conclure" (as Flaubert saw) is the pitfall of those who are vain ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore

... her gaze upon him, and he met it, smiling mysteriously. Under the sudden necessity of proving his statement, his thoughts centered upon the conclusion which had resulted from his suspicions—that Langford's visit to Dakota concerned Doubler. Equivocation would have taken him safely away from the pitfall into which his rash words had almost plunged him, but he felt that any evasion now would only bring scorn into the eyes which he wished to see alight with something else. Besides, here was an opportunity to speak a derogatory word about his enemy, and he ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer

... friend Harry, who was an habitual rider, and knew all the environs of Oldport pretty well, and was fonder of short cuts and going over grass than most American horsemen are, had not been altogether ignorant of the existence of the pitfall; it looked very much as if he had led Edwards, who was no particular friend of his, purposely into it: but if such was the case, he kept his own counsel. When the fallen man and mare had scrambled out of the hole, which they did before Benson ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... to marry you, you will have to make her feel that you care for her in herself.' It was her own pride that now steadied her pulses and steeled her nerves. She would be as fair to Gerald's case as though he were her brother; she would be too fair, perhaps. Here was the pitfall of her pride that she did not clearly see. Perhaps it was with a grim touch of retribution that she promised herself that since he could think of Althea Jakes, he most ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... detected, is the proper act of vindictive justice; but to prevent frauds, and make punishment unnecessary, is the great employment of legislative wisdom. To permit Intromission, and to punish fraud, is to make law no better than a pitfall. To tread upon the brink is safe; but to come a step further is destruction. But, surely, it is better to enclose the gulf, and hinder all access, than by encouraging us to advance a little, to entice us afterwards a little further, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... thinking of Doctor Bertie's 'only'," was the laughing contradiction; and Griswold was glad that the coming of the man with the trap saved him from the necessity of falling any farther into what might easily prove to be a dangerous pitfall. Later on, while he was mechanically lifting his hat in recognition of the many salutations acknowledged by his companion in their triumphal progress down Main Street, he was still thankful and still puzzling over the almost uncanny coincidence. It was not the ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde

... for herself and need be beholden to no one. She had no higher ambition for her; but this she had set her heart on, she should not become lazy, vain, helpless, like her cousins the Greenways. That was the pitfall from which she would strain every muscle to hold Lilac back. There were moments when she trembled for the bad influence of example at Orchards Farm. She knew Lilac's yielding affectionate nature and her great admiration for her cousins, and kept a watchful eye for the ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton

... hearts, have done good work, although they may die before they have the time to sign it. Every heart that has beat strong and cheerfully has left a hopeful impulse behind it in the world, and bettered the tradition of mankind. And even if death catch people, like an open pitfall, and in mid-career, laying out vast projects, and planning monstrous foundations, flushed with hope, and their mouths full of boastful language, they should be at once tripped up and silenced: is there not something brave and spirited in such a termination? and does ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... from the illusion later, when the binomial theorem, that light, crisp biscuit, was followed by heavier and less digestible fare. But, for the moment, I had no foretaste of the future difficulties, of the pitfall in which one becomes more and more entangled, the longer one persists in struggling. What a delightful afternoon that was, before my grate, amid my permutations and combinations! By the evening, I had nearly mastered my subject. When the bell rang, at seven, to ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre

... to themselves in writing is to convey no meaning at all. And here is a quite unsuspected pitfall into which they successively plunge headlong. For it is precisely in such cryptographies that mankind are prone to seek for and find a wonderful amount and variety of significance. Omne ignotum pro mirifico. How do ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... this would produce a certain sort of horror, that I do not remember to have seen effected in literature. Possibly the ancient emigrant might be supposed to have fallen into an ancient mine, down a precipice, into some pitfall; no, not so. Into a river; into a moat. As Middleton's pretensions to birth are not publicly known, there will be no reason why, at his sudden death, suspicion should fix on Eldredge as the murderer; and it shall be his object so to contrive his death ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... trivial matters, innocent of harm: Stroll in the open plain, you'll hear them talk Of fires, rocks, torrents, that obstruct their walk: Another, unlike these, but not more sane, Takes fires and torrents for the open plain: Let mother, sister, father, wife combined Cry 'There's a pitfall! there's a rock! pray mind!' They'll hear no more than drunken Fufius, he Who slept the part of queen Ilione, While Catienus, shouting in his ear, Roared like a ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace

... overcast, the darkness was profound, and one by one the regiments marched out in deepest silence, an array of phantoms stealing away into the bosom of the night. Every heart beat joyfully, however, as if they were escaping from some treacherous pitfall; already in imagination the troops beheld themselves under the walls of Paris, where their revenge ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola

... render us aid in our business of killing tigers. We want you to find out, for us, when a tiger was last seen near the village; where its lair is supposed to be; and whether, according to its situation, we should have the best chance of killing it by digging a pitfall, on the path by which it usually comes from the jungle; or by getting a kid and tying it up, to attract the tiger to a spot where we shall be stationed in ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty

... expression, was so "slow" as to perform a fatal surgical operation upon himself, in emulation of a juggling trick achieved by his arch enemy at breakfast-time; not even he fell half so readily into the snare prepared for him as the old lady into this artful pitfall. The fact of Tackleton having walked out; and furthermore, of two or three people having been talking together at a distance, for two minutes, leaving her to her own resources; was quite enough to have put her on her dignity, and the bewailment of that mysterious convulsion ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens

... child gets so rooted in her heart that"—But conscience and good sense interrupted this temporary thought, and made him see to what a horrible life of suspense he should condemn a human creature, and live a perpetual lie, and be always at the edge of some pitfall or other. ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade

... up for a debt of only twenty crowns, and that his desire to be at liberty was so great that if M. de Chateauneuf would pay that sum for him he would undertake to deliver the Queen of Scotland from her danger, by stabbing Elizabeth: to this proposal, M. de Trappes, who saw the pitfall laid for the French ambassador, was greatly astonished, and said that he was certain that M. de Chateauneuf would consider as very evil every enterprise having as its aim to threaten in any way the life of Queen Elizabeth or the peace of the realm; then, not desiring to hear more, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... she. "In my younger days I had no experience; I only thought of vengeance, and lately the weapons I forged myself have been turned against me. I dug a pitfall for my adversaries and ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau

... the ear; Delphic oracle; le dessous des cartes [Fr.], undercurrent. implication, logical implication; logical consequence; entailment. allusion, insinuation; innuendo &c 527; adumbration; something rotten in the state of Denmark [Hamlet]. snake in the grass &c (pitfall) 667; secret &c 533. darkness, invisibility, imperceptibility. V. be latent &c adj.; lurk, smolder, underlie, make no sign; escape observation, escape detection, escape recognition; lie hid &c 528. laugh in one's sleeve; keep ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... clergymen into the rowdiest and dirtiest of disbanded officers. I never fathomed the mystery of his military costume, but conjectured that a lurking sense of fitness had induced him to exchange his clerical garments for this habit of a sinner; nor can I tell precisely into what pitfall, not more of vice than terrible calamity, he had precipitated himself,—being more than satisfied to know that the outcasts of society can sink no lower than this poor, desecrated wretch ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... to undertake is well known to scholars, and may explain, though perhaps not excuse, the defects of my work. One who undertakes to express the thoughts of antiquity in modern idiom goes to his task with his eyes open, and has no right at every stumbling-block or pitfall to bemoan his unhappy fate. So also with the particular difficulties presented by the great founder of Latin style—his constant use of superlatives, his doubling and trebling of nearly synonymous terms, the endless shades of meaning in such common words as officium, ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... 'tis so; and evermore shall be, That year by year thy honors may increase, No shadow darken thy prosperity, Nor treach'rous pitfall mar thy way of peace. My loving eyes would always joy to see Thy path lie fair until ...
— Edward MacDowell • Elizabeth Fry Page

... heather—a good, honest plant, which hates anything secret. Our ponies didn't need the heather signal, though; they shied away from bogs as if by instinct, they knew the moor so well. If we had stumbled into a pitfall, our only hope would have been to lie quite flat, and crawl along the surface with the same motion that you make ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... effort, as Charley's information had indicated. It was a blind climb surrounded by every pitfall conceivable. The white men had recollections of a climb of lesser degree, in full daylight, on the far shore of the river. It had taken something like an hour of tremendous effort. The difficulties and danger of it had been incomparable with their present task. ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum

... the lively Lizzie, "is it that way your fancies are drifting? It was I whom you suspected of dangerous designs the other day, Miss Granger. Take care your papa doesn't fall into a deeper pitfall. I should like to see him marry again, if it were only to take down that great pink creature's insolence." Whereby it will be seen that Miss Granger was not quite so popular among her contemporaries as, in the serenity of her self-possessed ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon

... whirlwind go with him: I will you never fro thence tidings bring; Go you before, and show me the way, And as to follow you I will not say nay: For, by God's body, and you be in once, By the mass, I will shit[150] the door at once, And then ye be take in a pitfall. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley

... prepared to listen to a long recital. The extraordinary methods which Britz had pursued in the conduct of the investigation had puzzled and alarmed them. To the chief it had looked as if Britz were running around in a circle, hopelessly bewildered, mistrusting every palpable lead as a new pitfall. ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin

... edge, and the lookout in the tree exercised an extra caution, since his comrade below could no longer attain safety in a moment. But the work was done at last, that is, the work of digging, and there remained but the completion of the pitfall, a delicate though not a difficult matter. Across the pit, and very close together, were laid criss-crosses of slender branches, brought in armfuls from the forest; over these dry grass was spread, thinly but evenly, and over this again dust and dirt and more grass and twigs, all precautions ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo

... traitor to the emperor. Such a noble! Of such high talents! What is human greatness? I often said, this can't end happily. His might, his greatness, and this obscure power Are but a covered pitfall. The human being May not be trusted to self-government. The clear and written law, the deep-trod footmarks Of ancient custom, are all necessary To keep him in the road of faith and duty. The authority intrusted to this man Was unexampled ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... interference," rejoined Mrs. Bloundel. "From what a snare of the evil one—from what a pitfall ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth

... word, is a pitfall for Mysticism to avoid, not an error involved in its first principles. But we need not quarrel with those who have said that speculative Mysticism is the Christian form of Pantheism. For there is much truth in Amiel's dictum, that ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge

... it from without; or as an organism containing the law of its own development in itself, and working out its perfection merely by the fact of being what it is. Now, if we adopt the former, which we may style the theological view, we shall be in continual danger of tripping into the pitfall of some a priori conclusion—that bourne from which, it has been truly said, no ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde

... where one would have liked to linger, nay, to stay a week or a few days. But this wishing to stay a week at a picturesque place is often a dangerous pitfall, as the amiable Charles Collins has shown in his own quaint style. Has anyone, he asks, ever, 'on arriving at some place he has never visited before, taken a sudden fancy to it, committed himself to apartments for a month certain, gone on praising the locality and all that ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald

... where a tiger has been tracked. For some reason this animal, having once passed through a jungle, will ever after follow as nearly as possible his own foot-prints, and can thus easily be led into a pitfall of the character we have described. Having once got into this well he cannot possibly get out, and here he is permitted to become so nearly starved as to deprive him of all powers of resistance, in which condition he is secured. A little ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou

... that the woman in the gray cloak and poke bonnet may not come back to her recollection at the most critical time, and under the most awkward circumstances. In plain English, my dear girl, Mrs. Wragge is a pitfall under our feet at ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins

... easiest plan may seem to drag the captive from the pit by sheer strength, but as the hole is deep and has vertical sides, the elephants contrive a better way. They bring bits of timber, which they throw into the pitfall, the captive treads them down until he is elevated to a position whence he can escape from ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

... its real nominative or subject by several intervening words and in such cases one is liable to make the verb agree with the subject nearest to it. Here are a few examples showing that the leading writers now and then take a tumble into this pitfall: ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin

... he soon quitted the stream, hoping at least to get rid of the sight of himself; but he had scarcely gone twenty paces when he tumbled into a pitfall that was laid to catch bears; the bear-hunters, descending from some trees hard by, caught him, chained him, and only too delighted to get hold of such a curious-looking animal, led him along with them to the capital of his ...
— The Little Lame Prince - And: The Invisible Prince; Prince Cherry; The Prince With The Nose - The Frog-Prince; Clever Alice • Miss Mulock—Pseudonym of Maria Dinah Craik

... not counsel thee to beware? But thou wilt tumble into thine own pitfall. The trap is laid for thine ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... numbers. Interests ought to control, being checked and verified by ethical principles of approved validity. Slavery is an interest which is sure to break over all restraints and correctives. It therefore becomes mistress of folkways and dictates the life policy. It is a kind of pitfall for civilization. It seems to be self-evident and successful, but it contains a number of forms of evil which are sure to unfold. The Moslems have suffered from the curse of it, although in entirely other ways than the ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... came to reason soberly over the adventure, the conclusion seemed obvious that the pitfall had been a consequent upon the breaking out of one of the ancient springs, so that the water, in endeavoring to find an outlet, had finally undermined the whole roadway. The chasm, as he looked back upon it, extended dear across the street. Its depth was only conjectural, but the mass presented ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen

... Sir Percy's bantering mood did not quite fit in with his own elaborate plans, moreover the ex-ambassador feared a pitfall of some sort, and did not quite like to trust to this ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... ascribe a great deal too much potency to the grave," said Septimius, pausing involuntarily alone by the little hillock, whose contents he knew so well. "The grave seems to me a vile pitfall, put right in our pathway, and catching most of us,—all of us,—causing us to tumble in at the most inconvenient opportunities, so that all human life is a jest and a farce, just for the sake of this inopportune death; for I observe it never waits for us to accomplish anything: ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... and the rusty carriages had gone, together with many of the spectators; but Power lingered in the churchyard as if he were looking for some one. At length he entered the church, passing by the cavernous pitfall with descending steps which stood open outside the wall of the De Stancy aisle. Arrived within he scanned the few idlers of antiquarian tastes who had remained after the service to inspect the monuments; and beside a recumbent effigy—the ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy

... would then send a band of his warriors to lie in ambush for the raiding party, and, as the enemy would not suspect anything they would go blindly into the pitfall of death thus set for them. Thus the crow was the scout of this chief, whose reputation as a Wakan (Holy man) soon reached all of the different tribes. The Chief's warriors would intercept, ambush and annihilate every war ...
— Myths and Legends of the Sioux • Marie L. McLaughlin

... a bath!" he exclaimed ruefully, as he tried to get the snow from out of his collar and his coat-sleeves. "I—I didn't think of a pitfall like that!" ...
— The Rover Boys In The Mountains • Arthur M. Winfield

... made a thousand jokes at the poor Barnabite's expense, the point of which he never saw; his simplicity saved him from every pitfall. To drown the suspense that racked them and escape the torments of idleness, the prisoners played at draughts, cards and backgammon. No instrument of music was allowed. After supper they would sing, or recite verses. Voltaire's La Pucelle ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France

... through the trackless bush, painfully slow going over the stones and the fallen trunks, with many a pitfall concealed under the smooth moss. After an hour of this he finally came upon them all five standing dejectedly about in a narrow opening, as if ashamed of their escapade and perfectly willing to ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner

... Besides this, a great pitfall for Sergius lay in the fact of his extreme antipathy to his new Abbot, a cunning worldly man who was making a career for himself in the Church. Struggle with himself as he might, he could not master that feeling. He was submissive to the Abbot, but in the depths of his soul he ...
— Father Sergius • Leo Tolstoy

... before a walled city with the palm-trees hanging over; He was Captain of the Cygnet, and it sank before his eyes; The Englishmen ashore, they're taken in the pitfall, Good lack! they toil in galleys or ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston

... motionless stare of these four cruel, glistening black eyes! But he is now a "fish out of water," and is about as helpless, nature never having intended him to be seen outside of his burrow—at least, in this present form. There he dwells, setting his circular trap at the mouth of his pitfall, and waiting for the voluntary sacrifice of his insect neighbors to fill ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson

... in his voice surprised her, and she looked searchingly at him, wondering into what pitfall it ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... me he went a cropper about some woman or other, ten years ago," lisped a rosy young lieutenant who was spreading the golden revenues of a home brewery over the pitfall-dotted path of a ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage

... material he selects, is first to find out what the public wants, and next to supply it. This is reasonable in appearance. It would seem to be good commercially, and, as a policy, I should consider it good for art, which must consult the popular taste or lose its vitality. But a pitfall lies between this theory of editorial selection and its successful practice. The editor must really know what the public wants. If he does not, he becomes a dogmatic critic ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby

... itself, it is "white"; and the conclusions are directly at variance with the ideals that have been supposed to guide England and America. Incidentally the work speaks of the Negro and negroid population of Africa as "estimated at about 120,000,000." This low estimate has proved a common pitfall for writers. If we remember that Africa is three and a half times as large as the United States, and that while there are no cities as large as New York and Chicago, there are many centers of very dense ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley

... little knowing what a pitfall had been dug in his seemingly prosperous path, was still at Royston, enjoying the most intimate familiarity with the king, when the messenger returned. Deception was so much of an avowed principle with King James, and was so earnestly supported by him, as one of the functions and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various

... measure of poetic prose as rendered by Mr. Artman, one of the most renowned blind authors—"There is a world to which night brings no gloom, no sadness, no impediments; fills no yawning chasm and hides from the traveler no pitfall. It is the world of sound. Silence is its night, the only darkness of which the blind have any knowledge. In it every attribute of Nature has a voice; the beautiful, the grand, the sublime, have each a language, and to me, whose heart is ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms

... not under pretence of humility to slight and despise the graces which God has given us. To do so would be to throw ourselves over the precipice of ingratitude in order to avoid perishing in the pitfall of vanity, "Nothing," said he, "can so humble us before the mercy of God, as the multitude of his benefits; nothing can so abase us before the throne of His justice, as the countless number of our misdeeds. We need never fear that the good things God ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus

... only a mistaken interpretation: it is a clumsy pitfall in which novices allow themselves to be caught. Novices, did I say? The greatest experts themselves fall into the trap. One of our masters of entomology did me the honour to visit my laboratory. I was showing my collection of parasites. One of them, clad in black and ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre

... put to Mr. Marcy questions that held distant, hidden traps. But when she led him along the devious, unsuspicious path that conducted to the trap and then suddenly shot at him the question that should have plunged him into it, he very quietly and nimbly walked around the pitfall. Again and again she tried to involve him, but ever with the same result. He was abashed, ready to answer—and always elusive. At the end she had gained nothing from him, and for a minute stood looking silently ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott

... wall ahead of him which was imminent and indiscernible. It was like a great weight upon his shoulders and a pitfall at his feet. ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller

... for roots. His bolts, though capable of penetrating the more delicate skin of the deer, glanced off the thick hide of the pigs. He bethought him, therefore, after watching their runs, that he would make a pitfall in which some might be caught without difficulty. Finding the ground tolerably soft, he set to work immediately with a wooden spade, and dug a hole four feet square and the same in depth, which he covered over carefully with bushes and earth. His success was greater than he expected, for the very ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston

... moral pitfall is more potent in Hong Kong than in India or other Eastern lands possessing a sprinkling of Europeans. A newcomer's ears hear little but "chit." Every sentence uttered by friends, every proposal of obsequious native merchant, is freighted with ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield

... The contrary view taken of the matter by Ibsen's fellowcountryman, Bjornsen, appears to me to be so much more commonsense and humanizing. He holds that if we know that our ancestors drank and gambled to excess, or were violent-tempered or immoral, we can quite easily avoid the pitfall, knowing it to be there. Too readily wrongdoers are prepared to lay their failings at the door of ancestors, society, or some other blamable source, instead of attributing them, as they should do, to their ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence

... his predecessors, Fitzroy was not fairly supported by the authorities at Home. They supplied him with neither men nor money, and on them therefore the chief responsibility of the Colony's troubles rest. But a study of his two years of rule fails to reveal any pitfall in his pathway into which he did not ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves

... been manned, ready to row round by the cliff. One party had gone toward the Warren, another to Yellow Rock. All were filled with the keenest desire not only to aid their comrades, but to be revenged on those who had snared them into this cunningly-devised pitfall. But amid all this zeal arose the question, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various

... anything should happen to us before you come again?" Hansie inquired. "By what sign will you know that we have been taken and that Harmony is a pitfall instead of a refuge?" ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt

... that the only way to be safe is to do nothing wilfully wrong at all, for you never know how far downward one wilful sin may lead you. The devil is not simple enough to let you see the bottom of his pitfall: but it is so deep, nevertheless, that he who falls in, may never get ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... If he missed a Wednesday, or failed to write, she slipped out of the house at night and paced Central Park for hours, fighting her rebellious nerves with her pride and the strong independent will that she had believed would enable her to leap lightly over every pitfall in life. ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton

... well, considering that he had only been presented to the young lady ten minutes before. That was Dick's way; and when the young lady is attractive, it is a way that has many recommendations, only sometimes it leads to a pitfall—a cold answer, or ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope

... in considerable danger, and in still greater dread of capture, if not of assassination. His imagination, excited by endless tales of ambush and half-discovered conspiracies, saw armed soldiers behind every bush; a pitfall in every street. Had not the redoubtable Alva been nearly made a captive? Did not Louis of Nassau nearly entrap the Grand Commander? No doubt the Prince of Orange was desirous of accomplishing a feat by which he would be placed in regard to Philip on the vantage ground ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... to say to her," I cried in great heat, vexed and irritated beyond measure at her capricious temper. I should only be dragged into some pitfall, some snare, some dire unpleasantness. But what did I know of her real character? What of my first doubts and suspicions? She had by no means dispelled them. She had only bamboozled me by her insinuating ways, had drawn me on by her guileful cleverness to pity and promises to befriend her. ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths

... produced no notorious offenders against civil or military usage. He has arisen to the moral concept of high responsibility for the future of his race in the estimation of all mankind. There is no story of moral degeneracy which has yet come from abroad concerning him. Pitfall, temptation and opportunity for vice and crime have all been shunned in light of preparation for the higher service. The Negro has proven his power of moral restraint while guided by leadership ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller

... But often a fox may be seen jogging along in the full daylight. The very keenness of the animal seems sometimes to work his undoing. He knows well that the dogs cannot catch him so he jollies along just in front of them over his accustomed route where he knows every possible pitfall of the way. And the hunter waiting to leeward shoots him. Had the fox had fewer brains and simply bolted in a panic as soon as the dogs got on his trail he might have lived to bolt again the next time. Once in a while you find a panicky fox ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard

... find the delicatessen flourishing in France—one will not find it at all—and the fancy grocery, above mentioned, is another pitfall for the American housewife. She likes the sight of food done up in fancy containers, in glass, perhaps, and buys them, not realizing that she is paying a large price for perfectly unnecessary and totally unnourishing ...
— Twenty-four Little French Dinners and How to Cook and Serve Them • Cora Moore

... seizing me with one hand by the collar, and hauling, or rather lifting me back, as if I had been a poodle dog. "Why, you were as near as possible into a pitfall." ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne

... I was not absolutely sure that I had hit the mark, for in nature, like everything else, every law has its exceptions, and I might possibly have dug a pitfall for myself. On the other hand, if I were right, Esther would no doubt be convinced for the moment, but her belief would speedily disappear if she chanced to discover that the correspondence of moles on the human body was a necessary law of nature. In that case I could only anticipate ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... the cautious ventures, the length of time demanded to ascertain the fact, the precise terms of the forfeit, the provisoes for getting out of paying it at last, led to a long and inextricable discussion. Kirkpatrick's vanity, however, one night led him into a terrible pitfall. He recklessly ventured money on the fact that The Mourning Bride was written by Shakespeare; headlong he fell, and ruefully he partook of the bowl of punch for which he had to pay. As a rule his nightly outlay seldom ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... honestly considered a pitfall of destruction Alas! we must always have something to persecute Argument is exhausted and either action or compromise begins Beware of a truce even more than of a peace Could handle an argument as well as a sword God alone can protect us against those ...
— Quotations From John Lothrop Motley • David Widger

... valued all things from a miser's standpoint, could not understand that there might lurk in the Indian a tinge of sentiment. He was mistaken, and the mistake was a little pitfall placed ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn

... a fortunate escape, and yet it does not seem right that any enlightened government should set such a pitfall for honest men to stumble into. There certainly ought to be some compensation in such cases. The experience of history hitherto has been that, whereas painting and literature have nourished under all forms of government, sculpture has only ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns

... the paralogism of 'proving too much'; when a disputant is so eager to refute an opponent as to lay down, or imply, principles from which an easy inference destroys his own position. To appeal to a principle of greater sweep than the occasion requires may easily open the way to this pitfall: as if a man should urge that 'all men are liars,' as the premise of an argument designed to show that another's assertion is less credible than ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read

... its tenant that afternoon. Pansie, however, fled onward with outstretched arms, half in fear, half in fun, plying her round little legs with wonderful promptitude, as if to escape Time or Death, in the person of Grandsir Dolliver, and happily avoiding the ominous pitfall that lies in every person's path, till, hearing a groan from her pursuer, she looked over her shoulder, and saw that poor grandpapa had stumbled over one of the many hillocks. She then suddenly wrinkled up her little visage, and sent forth a full-breathed ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... where its masterful simplicity will be more impressive than in this colorful colonnade. It is a true addition to noteworthy American works of art and fully expresses the spirit of this courageous motherhood, tender but strong, adventurous but womanly, enduring but not humble. It has escaped every pitfall of mawkishness, stubbornly refused to descend to mere prettiness, and lived up to the noblest possibilities of its theme. The strong guiding hands, the firmly set feet, the clear, broad brow of the Mother and the uncompromisingly simple, sculpturally pure lines of ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry

... think deliberately, in order to shine in politics, literature, art, commerce or private life—that these men should all marry with the intention of being happy, of governing a wife, either by love or by force, and should all tumble into the same pitfall and should become foolish, after having enjoyed a certain happiness for a certain time,—this is certainly a problem whose solution is to be found rather in the unknown depths of the human soul, than in the quasi physical truths, on the basis of which we have hitherto attempted to explain some ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac

... character, and that it was an honest character. If that same tale had been told about a girl who was not straightforward it might have been a different thing. Be thankful for your head-mistress's trust in you, and always act up to the principles you have been taught; it will save you from many a pitfall or from the trouble a weak young lady like ...
— A City Schoolgirl - And Her Friends • May Baldwin

... hamper them; and I do believe they were more than once taken in them; but my tackle was not good, for I had no wire, and I always found them broken and my bait devoured. At length I resolved to try a pitfall; so I dug several large pits in the earth, in places where I had observed the goats used to feed, and over those pits I placed hurdles of my own making too, with a great weight upon them; and several ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe

... own self-respect, that you had no hand in this disgraceful business,' replied Maulevrier; and then turning to Lord Hartfield, he said, 'Hartfield, will you tell my sister who and what this man is? Will you make her understand what kind of pitfall she has escaped? Upon my soul, ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... naught. Blindly driven along in the darkness of evil, his own hand pulled down his palace of sin on his head. And even "French Charlie" was avenged by the murderer's self-executed sentence. "Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord; I will repay." The innocent and helpless have wandered past each dark pitfall dug by the wily Hardin, and enjoy their own. Pere Francois, with his eyes cast backward on his own life path, feels that he has not fought the good fight in vain. His gentle heart throbs in sympathy, filled with an infinite compassion for the lonely Natalie ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage

... Elliot, snarer of men's eyes and hearts, sharpening her wits and weapons for the fray; aye, even preparing her pitfall. Cunningly she made a bower of one end of the broad living-room at Greenvale with great sprays of apple blossoms from the orchard, ravishing untold spoilage of her mother and forerunner, Eve, for the bedecking of the quiet, ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... lethargy. In order to save the feelings of the family, a death from consumption is reported as bronchitis or pneumonia. The man is buried quietly. The premises are not disinfected, as they should be, and perhaps some unknowing victim moves into that germ-reeking atmosphere, as into a pitfall. Let me give an instance. A clergyman in a New York city told me of a death from consumption in his parish. The family had moved away, and the following week a young married couple with a six-months-old baby ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various

... to oblige the beholder, on looking at the portrait, to think wholly of the face in front of him, and nothing of the man who painted it. And it is my opinion that the artist who paints portraits in this way need have no fear of the pitfall of mannerism either in ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various

... practice to the most inscrutable of cryptograms. His true objective was the provision of a full, accurate, legible script for our noble but ill-dressed language; but he was led past that by his contempt for the popular Pitman system of Shorthand, which he called the Pitfall system. The triumph of Pitman was a triumph of business organization: there was a weekly paper to persuade you to learn Pitman: there were cheap textbooks and exercise books and transcripts of speeches for you to copy, and schools where experienced ...
— Pygmalion • George Bernard Shaw

... For over the pitfall the moon-dew is thawing, And, with never a body, two shadows stand sawing— The wraiths of two sawyers (step under and under), Who did a foul murder ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall

... steps was reached in safety, the candle being held low down, so as to guard against any pitfall or fresh flight of stairs in ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn

... according to the popular expression, was so 'slow' as to perform a fatal surgical operation upon himself, in emulation of a juggling-trick achieved by his arch- enemy at breakfast-time; not even he fell half so readily into the snare prepared for him, as the old lady did into this artful pitfall. The fact of Tackleton having walked out; and furthermore, of two or three people having been talking together at a distance, for two minutes, leaving her to her own resources; was quite enough to have put her on her dignity, and the bewailment of that mysterious ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens

... strove—each for himself, fortunately—to seize the caves. As they raged against each other no less desperately than against their human adversaries, the issue of the war was never in doubt. The Hillmen stood together solidly, fought with all their cunning of pitfall and ambuscade, and overwhelmed the mightiest by sheer weight of numbers. But again the victory was dearly bought. When the last of the monsters, sullen and amazed, withdrew to seek less difficult encounters, he left mourning and lamentation ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts

... distant houses—with their heads all the while insanely twisted back over their shoulders, and the glare of their eyes fixed frightfully on the swift-footed Mad Dominie, till souse over neck and ears, bubble and squeak, precipitated into traitorous pitfall, and in a moment ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson

... stayed eating his own thoughts at Cloom, when religion either falls away entirely from a boy or flares up into a sudden vitality. Ishmael's blood ran with too much of inherited aptitude for prayer for the former pitfall to ensnare him, but the latter yawned beside him now and he thrilled to its attractions. Sliding his stout, shiny shoe back and forth with the stiff attempt at elegance so deprecated by Mr. Eliot, he asked himself whether the Lord could really countenance ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse

... accounted rank heresy here. There is light abroad which must one day reach to the ends of the earth, and truly it sometimes seemeth to me that if the priests, the abbots, and the monks set their faces steadfastly against this light, they will fall into some terrible pitfall, but they will never quench the ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green

... impression—that what I saw was innocent and normal. Besides, I was thinking what I should say to Pavannes when I saw him—in what terms I should warn him of his peril, and cast his perfidy in his teeth. We had hurried along in this way—and in absolute silence, save when some obstacle or pitfall drew from us an exclamation—for about a quarter of a mile, when my companion, turning into a slightly wider street, slackened her speed, and indicated by a gesture that we had arrived. A lamp hung ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman

... pass now and go first," he whispered. "The passage is very narrow, and dark as dark. Thanks, Saint Simon," he continued, as he squeezed by him; and then, as if to himself, but loud enough for Francis to hear, "and then if there is any trap or pitfall in the way I shall be the sufferer, and they will hear me and escape. Ah," he continued to himself, "the way seems easy, and what did the lad say?—that it led after several turns to some stairs which descended to ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn

... to save Fort Frontenac. Wherever you could, you bungled; but you rode on the full tide of luck. And even when you tumbled in love with this girl—oh, you needn't deny it!— even when you walked straight into the pitfall that ninety-nine men in a hundred would have seen and avoided—your very folly pulled you out of the mess! You escaped, by her grace, having foiled two dispatches and possessed your self of knowledge that might have saved Amherst from wasting ten minutes ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... dark in this tunnel, and there was no space in which to attempt to kindle a light. Once the thought came into Gaston's head that if he were falling into a treacherous pitfall laid for him with diabolic ingenuity by his foes, nothing could well be better than to entrap him into such a place as this, where it would be almost impossible to go forward or back, and quite out of his power to strike a single blow for liberty ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green

... reclaimed by his honest Scotch bailiff or financier, and the vigilance of his father's executor, Mr. Mortimer. This "fashionable lover" promises marriage to a vulgar, malicious city minx named Lucinda Bridgemore, but is saved from this pitfall also.—Cumberland, The Fashionable ...
— 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.

... hallucination concerning the things about it. Truth, essential truth, is hidden. Always. Of course there must be a measure of truth in our working illusions, a working measure of truth, or the creature would smash itself up and end itself, but beyond that discretion of the fire and the pitfall lies a wide margin of error about which we may be deceived for years. So long as it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter. I don't know if I make ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells

... acquainted with our surroundings that we might be able fully to realize every snare and pitfall, we were taught to begin to walk alone. What weak, tottering, childish steps they were. How often our eyes would wander to the face of our guide, as if to implore his help. But he, knowing it was for our good, would simply encourage us instead of rendering the longed for assistance, and ...
— Silver Links • Various

... more tapirs in our pitfall; but being older than the first, they showed no inclination to become domesticated, so we were compelled to kill them, and to cut up and dry their flesh—which, though rather tough, was not otherwise unpalatable. Notwithstanding the quantity ...
— The Wanderers - Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco • W.H.G. Kingston

... false hearts speak fair To those they intend most mischief. [Reads.] 'Send Antonio to me; I want his head in a business.' A politic equivocation! He doth not want your counsel, but your head; That is, he cannot sleep till you be dead. And here 's another pitfall that 's strew'd o'er With roses; mark it, 'tis a cunning one: [Reads.] 'I stand engaged for your husband for several debts at Naples: let not that trouble him; I had rather have his heart than his money':— And ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster



Words linked to "Pitfall" :   pit, trap, difficulty



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