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Definition
to praise to achieve an end- She is blunt, uninterested in small talk, and irritated by blandishment.
- She neither languished nor blandished. No feminine lures were wasted on him.Jack London -- Adventure
- As thus he spake, each bird and beast behold Approaching two and two; these cowering low With blandishment; each bird stooped on his wing.John Milton -- Paradise Lost
- For when a heart insists on its destiny, resisting the general blandishment, then the agony is great; so too the danger.Joseph Campbell -- The Hero With a Thousand Faces
- Him Dido now with blandishment detains; But I suspect the town where Juno reigns.Virgil -- The Aeneid
- The expression with which the youth received this present was indescribable, He appeared to yield to the blandishment of her air, in opposition to a strong inward impulse to the contrary.James Fenimore Cooper -- The Pioneers
- She may do it by blandishment, like Rosalind, or by stratagem, like Mariana; but in every case the relation between the woman and the man is the same: she is the pursuer and contriver, he the pursued and disposed of.George Bernard Shaw -- Man And Superman
- Their condition of domiciliary comradeship put her, as the woman, to such disadvantage by its enforced intercourse, that he felt it unfair to her to exercise any pressure of blandishment which he might have honestly employed had she been better able to avoid him.Thomas Hardy -- Tess of the d'Urbervilles
- They would know that inconsistency in human decision can make nonsense of the bestplanned espionage approach; that cheats, liars and criminals may resist every blandishment while respectable gentlemen have been moved to appalling treasons by watery cabbage in a departmental canteen.John Le Carre -- The Spy Who Came In From The Cold
- So, through the rest of the walk, he claimed Adam's conversation for himself, and Hetty laid her small plots and imagined her little scenes of cunning blandishment, as she walked along by the hedgerows on honest Adam's arm, quite as well as if she had been an elegantly clad coquette alone in her boudoir.George Eliot -- Adam Bede
- See, brother Conrade, the peril of yielding to the first devices and blandishments of Satan!Sir Walter Scott -- Ivanhoe
- Where are grace, beauty, and blandishments, like those?Charles Dickens -- Nicholas Nickleby
- These blandishments have entirely won the family heart.Charles Dickens -- Bleak House
- But the day of Mr Mantalini's blandishments had departed.Charles Dickens -- Nicholas Nickleby
- Marius' blandishments, all saturated with fancy, were, so to speak, of azure hue.Victor Hugo -- Les Miserables
- I did not want to take it but she insisted: if I had known it was her last I would have resisted her blandishments.Kamala Markandaya -- Nectar in a Sieve
- The blandishments of Rome were not for me.Lew Wallace -- Ben Hur
- Under no circumstances must he lend himself to any additional blandishments or languishments in this field.Theodore Dreiser -- An American Tragedy
- Ever since she had yielded to his blandishments, she had counted the days and always had been able to congratulate herself that all was well.Theodore Dreiser -- An American Tragedy
- Had she given way to that man Richard's arguments, threats probably, I wouldn't trust him far, or to my half-serious blandishments and promises?Jean Rhys -- Wide Sargasso Sea