want-of-confidence-trick

Updated: May 11, 2025

You remember how he would trust strangers, and if they fooled him he would say, 'It's better to be fooled than to be suspicious' that the confidence trick is the work of man, but the want-of-confidence-trick is the work of the devil." "I remember something of the sort now," said Mrs. Munt, rather tartly, for she longed to add, "It was lucky that your father married a wife with money."

E. M. (Edward Morgan) Forster - Howards End