And Lee Sarason, forever making his careful lists, as patient at his desk as he was pleasure-hungry on the couch at midnight parties, was beguiling officials to consider him their real lord and the master of Corpoism.
Sinclair Lewis. It Can't Happen Here
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we had been imagining swarms of enemies, perverse and seductive, beguiling away from us, even making laugh at us, the woman whom we love.
Marcel Proust. In Search of Lost Time [volume 1] Swann’s Way
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They beguiled the time by backbiting and intriguing against each other in a foolish kind of way. There was an air of plotting about that station, but nothing came of it, of course.
Joseph Conrad. The Heart of Darkness
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she beguiled Hareton, who had perfectly recovered from his accident, to dig and arrange her little garden,
Emily Brontë. Wuthering Heights (1847)
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An. Alyface: Let all these matters passe, and we three sing a song,
So shall we pleasantly bothe the tyme beguile now,
And eke dispatche all our workes ere we can tell how.
Nicholas Udall. Roister Doister.
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then, having fetched a novel from the library, had flung herself in haughty listlessness on a sofa, and prepared to beguile, by the spell of fiction, the tedious hours of absence.
Charlotte Brontë. Jane Eyre (1847)
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At first with such discourse, and afterwards with conversation of a more general nature, did Mr. Wemmick and I beguile the time and the road, until he gave me to understand that we had arrived in the district of Walworth.