"Disingenuous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... when Mr. Wilson points out this fact, why does he not add that he was the only man in that trust who supported me, and that the President of the trust ardently supported Mr. Wilson himself? It is disingenuous to endeavor to conceal these facts, and to mislead ordinary citizens about them. Under the administrations of both Mr. Taft and Mr. Wilson, Mr. Perkins has been singled out for special attack, obviously not ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... had understood Clifford to say that he was going to see his cousin. Privately, he reflected that if Lizzie Acton had had no news of his son, Clifford must have gone to Boston for the evening: an unnatural course of a summer night, especially when accompanied with disingenuous representations. ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... vote in Massachusetts was unfair and misleading; the epithets applied to the "Moderate" or loyal party were offensive and unjust; and the statements of Palfrey, respecting the acts of the King immediately following the vacation of the Charter, are very disingenuous, ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... one of your fellow Senators, and in the very similar words of another—both uttered on the floor of the Senate—"if the abolitionists come to the South, the South will hang them." Pardon the remark, that it seems very disingenuous in you to draw conclusions unfavorable to the sincerity of the abolitionists from premises so notoriously false, as are those which imply, that it is entirely at their own option, whether the abolitionists shall have their "societies and movements" in the ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... and unmanly attempts the defendant has made to evade his obligations; his disingenuous defences; his insulting innuendoes; after the deplorable exhibition he has made of himself in that box; and especially after the sombre picture he himself has painted of the domestic future he has to offer; after all this, I ask you, gentlemen, is it likely, is it possible, is ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... limited by his matter, lest he should grow whimsical, and by the parts of it which he understands best, lest he should grow obscure. But these parts he must develop fully, and he has no right to omit anything that may serve the purpose of truth, whether it please or not. As it would be disingenuous to sacrifice truth to popularity, so it is trifling to appeal to the reason and experience of mankind, as every philosophical writer does, or must be understood to do, and then to talk, like Plato and his ancient and modern disciples, to the imagination only. There is no ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke
... man, meekly, "I see;" which was disingenuous. He silently debated whether this meant a species of letter of recommendation, but ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... with Steele to echo him, used to depreciate Dryden, whom Pope and Congreve defended against them[194]. There is no reason to doubt, that he suffered too much pain from the prevalence of Pope's poetical reputation; nor is it without strong reason suspected, that by some disingenuous acts he endeavoured to obstruct it; Pope was not the only man whom he insidiously injured, though the only man of whom he could ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... yours, 'So Near and Yet So Far,' has worried me to an extent I am ashamed of. To my 'judgment' that article is disingenuous. It is not so much that you jumped on that poor soul with hob-nailed shoes, but that you formulated the 'jump' quite as the husband might have done. That is, if she would repent and change her course, she would soon find that he was ...
— Happiness and Marriage • Elizabeth (Jones) Towne
... are, through sheer goodness of heart, wickedly disingenuous. For the basis of their argument is that nearly any one who gives his mind to it can achieve success. This is, to put it briefly, untrue. The very central idea of success is separation from the multitude of plain men; it is perhaps the only idea common to ...
— Mental Efficiency - And Other Hints to Men and Women • Arnold Bennett
... a disingenuous thing to ask for advice, when you mean assistance; and it will be a just punishment if you get that which you ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... at last let himself go deepened his sense of the sympathy and the understanding that had always existed between him and Lois. He hated fuss; and his other sisters were tiresomely fussy and maddeningly disingenuous. In half an hour Lois had learned all she cared to know of the family history. She merely dipped into the bin, brought up a handful of wheat, blew away the chaff, eyed the remaining kernels with a sophisticated eye, and tossed them ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... if, in forming friendships, virtue could concur with pleasure; but the greatest part of human gratifications approach so nearly to vice, that few who make the delight of others their rule of conduct, can avoid disingenuous compliances; yet certainly he that suffers himself to be driven or allured from virtue, mistakes his own interest, since he gains succour by means, for which his friend, if ever he becomes wise, must scorn him, and for which at ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... that this connection might not suit well with the King's plans respecting the Duke of Richmond. He accordingly prevailed on the lady to consent to a private marriage. All came out. Charles thought the conduct of Wycherley both disrespectful and disingenuous. Other causes probably assisted to alienate the sovereign from the subject who had lately been so highly favored. Buckingham was now in opposition, and had been committed to the Tower; not, as Mr. Leigh Hunt supposes, on a charge of treason, but by an order of the House of Lords for some ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... address was delivered by the Rev. Wm. Ryerson, in which he gave particular directions to the Methodists as subjects under the civil constitution, as members of the Church of Christ, as parents, as children, as individuals. He animadverted on the groundless and disingenuous aspersions that had been thrown out through the press against Methodism, on account of the suspected loyalty of its constitutional principles. He warmly insisted on a vigorous observance, support, and respect for the ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... yet afterwards he turned Papist in the reign of King James II. in order to be that King's Printer; and it was at that time he used to relate this story; so that little credit is due to his testimony. It is almost impossible to believe Milton capable of such disingenuous meanness, to serve so bad a purpose, and there is as little reason for fixing it upon him, as he had to traduce the King for profaning the duty of prayer, with the polluted trash of romances; for in the best books of devotion, there are not many finer prayers, and the King might ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... your pardon!' pleaded she; 'I may be mistaken—perhaps I was mistaken.' But she accompanied the words with a sly glance of derision directed to me from the corner of her disingenuous eye. ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... only the disingenuous propaganda in favour of legalized abortion would cease, and if only those who carried it on refrained from dinning into the ears of an uninformed gallery of women the alleged safety and harmlessness of abortion carried out under the best hospital conditions, there would ...
— Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the Various Aspects of the Problem of Abortion in New Zealand • David G. McMillan
... is a disingenuous answer, that you know well. It is not the aspect of the old Hall that has charms for you. But I feel, only from your conduct, more than ever convinced, that some plot is going on, having the accomplishment of ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... Nairne Papers is a letter sent on this occasion by Middleton to Macarthy, who was then serving in Germany. Middleton tries to soothe Macarthy and to induce Macarthy to soothe others. Nothing more disingenuous was ever written by a Minister of State. "The King," says the Secretary, "promises in the foresaid Declaration to restore the Settlement, but at the same time, declares that he will recompense all those who may suffer by it by giving them equivalents." Now James ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... not be attacked by name or on purely personal grounds; and an appearance of impartiality was commonly assumed. But in the courts much greater play was allowed to feeling; and the arguments were often much more disingenuous, not only because the personal interests at stake made the speaker more unscrupulous, but also, perhaps, because the juries ordinarily included a larger proportion of the poorer, the idler, and the less- educated citizens than the Assembly. ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes
... that this book's miraculous stupidities were studied and disingenuous; but no one can read the volume carefully through and keep that opinion. It was written in serious good faith and deep earnestness, by an honest and upright idiot who believed he knew something of the English language, and could impart his knowledge to others. The amplest proof ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... to the other with a somewhat disingenuous eye. "I don't say I altogether accept it myself; that's why I kept it to the end," he explained. "But we must balance the possibilities against the improbabilities, never losing sight of the one incontestable fact that the boy has undoubtedly disappeared. And here's ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... called Eustache Dauger, and his secret can only be connected with Marsilly. It may have been something about Arlington's negotiations through Marsilly, as compromising Charles II. Arlington's explanations to the Foreign Committee were certainly incomplete and disingenuous. He, if not Charles, was more deeply engaged with Marsilly than he ventured to report. But Marsilly himself avowed that he did not know why he was to ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... Tholomyes; "distrust her. Woe to him who yields himself to the unstable heart of woman! Woman is perfidious and disingenuous. She detests the serpent from professional jealousy. The serpent is the ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... Mr. Harvey formulated with equal clarity what the voters of 1920 had in their minds. That is a rash thing to do, and, if you simply assume that all who voted your ticket voted as you did, then it is a disingenuous thing to do. The count shows that sixteen millions voted Republican, and nine millions Democratic. They voted, says Mr. Harvey, for and against the League of Nations, and in support of this claim, ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... of understanding, so much as a little common honesty. "There is indeed no surer mark of a false and hollow heart, than a disposition thus to quibble away the clear injunctions of duty and conscience[81]:" It is the wretched resource of a disingenuous mind, endeavouring to escape from convictions before which it cannot stand, and to evade obligations which it ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... about our national waste of inventive talent, our mean standard of intellectual attainment, our disingenuous criticism, and the consequent failure to distinguish men of the quality needed to carry on the modern type of war. Almost universally we have the wrong men in our places of responsibility and the right men in no place at all, almost universally we have poorly qualified, hesitating, and resentful ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... of retaining fee. From what little I have seen of her, she impresses me as a charming girl wholly without experience of a world which, though not altogether wicked, is nevertheless callous and self-seeking. Among other drawbacks, she embarked on a fantastic project with a most disingenuous belief in the good faith of a Frenchman. Now, I admire France as a nation, but where women are concerned, I distrust Frenchmen as a race, and I suspect—mind you, I am merely guessing—but I repeat that I suspect the honesty of Monsieur ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... arguments; still it is not mine. Charlatanism was too important a part for such a man to play, and sincerity too insignificant a one. I would rather think Fourier ignorant (which is generally admitted) than disingenuous. As for his disciples, before they can formulate any opinion of their own, they must declare once for all, unequivocally and with no mental reservation, whether they mean to maintain property or not, and what they mean by their famous ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... Stephens, R.M.T. Hunter, and John A. Campbell, as informal commissioners, and directed them, "in conformity with the letter of Mr. Lincoln," to go to Washington and informally confer "for the purpose of securing peace to the two countries." This was disingenuous, and so obviously so that it was also foolish; for no conference about "two countries" was "in conformity" with the letter of Mr. Lincoln. By reason of the difficulty created by this silly trick the commissioners were delayed ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... "Why, a disingenuous answer. You know you appeared agitated. You know you were agitated. You know you had a camp-stool, and that you intended to sit down here and drink your coffee. All at once you changed your mind, and that change was coincident with the appearance on deck of the ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr
... an indignity from the intermeddling of this second Intendant of the Jardin. In his budget of expenses[28] sent to the Minister of the Interior, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre took occasion to refer to Lamarck in a disingenuous and blundering way, which may have both amused and ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... "in ordering Gen. Sedgwick forward at the time named, was to relieve me from the position in which I found myself at Chancellorsville on the night of the 2d of May." This statement is not only characteristic of Hooker's illogical method, but disingenuous to the degree of mockery. For this position, it will be remembered, was a strongly intrenched line, held by eighty thousand men, well armed and equipped, having in their front less than half their number of Confederates. In view of Hooker's above-quoted ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... Which testimony has a double value; first, as corroborating the probability of Pope's statement viewed in the light of a fact; and, secondly, as corroborating that same statement viewed in the light of a current story, true or false, and not as a disingenuous fiction put forward by ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... account of a typical prosecution, arbitrary, unintelligent and disingenuous, is to be found in Sumner and Indecency, by Frank Harris, in Pearson's Magazine for ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... was suffering awful privations. Marx himself has noted more than one instance of individual idealism triumphing over material interests and class environment, and, by a perversity that is astonishing, and not wholly disingenuous, some of his critics, notably Ludwig Slonimski,[81] have used these instances as arguments against his theory, claiming that they disprove it! We are to understand the materialistic theory, then, as teaching, not that history ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... other possessed a perfectly legitimate sphere of action in which the methods proper to that sphere were imperative and final. The scientist accepted the fact that Religion had a right to speak in matters that lay beyond scientific data; the theologian no longer denounced as fraudulent or disingenuous the claims of the scientist to exercise powers that were at last found to be natural. Neither needed to establish his own position by attacking that of his partner, and the two accordingly, without prejudice or passion, ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... which the upshot left him gasping so piteously on the ground selected for their tournament—not even then did the author of Hypatia display such a daring and immedicable capacity of misrepresentation based on misconception as when this most ingenuously disingenuous of all controversialists avowed himself "aware of no canons of internal criticism which would enable us to decide as boldly as Mr. Gifford does that all the indecency is Dekker's and all the poetry Massinger's." ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... to return. So, on all these considerations, Horace decided that silence was his only possible policy, and, though some moralists may condemn his conduct as disingenuous and wanting in true moral courage, I venture to doubt whether any reader, however independent, straightforward, and indifferent to notoriety and ridicule, would have behaved otherwise in Ventimore's extremely ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... divine commandment, and in consequence forfeited the bliss of primeval paradise, he was seduced by his fair partner, who had already listened to the wily suggestions of the serpent; but Abraham, so far from being tempted by his wife, appears to have been the sole contriver of this disingenuous artifice, and employed all his influence to induce her to transgress. In following him from his original residence into Canaan, and subsequently to Egypt, she obeyed the dictates of affection and of religion; but when she suffered herself to be persuaded into a deceitful action, ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... the only true friends to Britain in Canada. Matters of patronage Metcalfe had determined, as far as possible, to free from party dictation; and so he and his ministers naturally fell out on the most obvious issue which their mutual differences could have raised. There was nothing disingenuous in the popular party claiming that the patronage question stood in this case for the broader issue. Indeed Metcalfe's own statement that "he objected to the {174} exclusive distribution of patronage with ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... Eloise to Abelard is the only exception I can think of, to the general spirit of the foregoing remarks; and I should be disingenuous not to acknowledge that it is an exception. The foundation is in the letters themselves of Abelard and Eloise, which are quite as impressive, but still in a different way. It is fine as a poem: it is finer as ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... of defensive preparation advanced by the statesmen, Prussian and others, in apology for competitive armaments is a diplomatic subterfuge,—there are indications that such has commonly been the case; but even if it commonly is visibly disingenuous, the need of making such a plea to cover more sinister designs is itself an evidence that an avowedly predatory enterprise no longer meets with the requisite popular approval. Even if an exception to this rule be admitted in the recent attitude of the German ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... of thinking openly in the sight of God, enabled him to see the adventure of Lady Sunderbund without illusion and without shame. He saw himself at once honest and disingenuous, divided between two aims. He had no doubt now of the path he had to pursue. A stronger man of permanently clear aims might possibly turn Lady Sunderbund into a useful opportunity, oblige her to provide the rostrum he needed; but for himself, he knew he had neither the needed strength ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... Francis's mind revolted from imitating the plebeian duplicity of his wily predecessor, Louis the Eleventh—a king who enjoyed the undesirable reputation of never having made a promise which he intended in good faith to keep. The memory of the disingenuous manner in which Louis, by winking at the opposition of the Parliament of Paris, had suffered the revocation of the Pragmatic Sanction to fail, in spite of his own solemn engagements to carry it into ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... in these days, when machinery—that "Star called Wormwood"—dominates the world, to fall into a state of hard and flippant cynicism, or into a yet more hopeless and weary irony. The unintelligent cheerfulness of the crowd so sickens one; the disingenuous sophistry of its hired preachers fills one with such blank depression that it seems sometimes as though the only mood worthy of normal intelligence were the mood of callous indifference ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... the religion of Jesus. The greatest part of these fictitious writings undoubtedly flowed from the fertile invention of the Gnostic sects, though it cannot be affirmed that even true Christians were entirely innocent and irreproachable in this matter" (Ibid, p. 55). "This disingenuous and vicious method of surprising their adversaries by artifice, and striking them down, as it were, by lies and fiction, produced, among other disagreeable effects, a great number of books, which were falsely attributed to certain great men, in order to give these ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... privacy? But then—ah! how fatally, if not fortunately, that "but then" often comes in to seal our fate—"fix our flints," as backwoodsmen are fond of putting it!—but then, was not the opportunity unsought—quite accidental? Would it not be utterly absurd, as well as disingenuous, to pass her and pretend not to see her, with his botanical box full of her own ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... Mr. Pewtap," he said, "I am human, and it would be disingenuous for me to pretend that I am not pleased by the fact that my name has been mentioned in connection with the bishopric. I can conscientiously affirm, however, that the good of the church is more dear to me than ambition. ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... of mine, disingenuous as it was, was successful. Before Doubleday could get back to his desk and take up the thread of his conversation where he left it, Mr Merrett entered the office. He walked straight up to Jack's desk, and said, heartily, "Well, ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... women are disingenuous in regard to these irregularities of conduct was forced upon me some years ago in a conversation with Kendall Brown, who, for all his eccentricities, is a ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... how the acquaintance between him and Felice began and progressed, the young woman herself could. But this is guesswork. Felice being a woman, and part Spanish at that, was vastly more self-conscious, more disingenuous, than the man, the Anglo-Saxon. Also she had that fearlessness that very pretty women have. In her more refined and city-bred sisters this fearlessness would be called poise, or, at the ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... you. At present I have not leisure to make verses, nor anything approaching to a fondness for the exercise. In the ignorant present time, who can answer for the future man? "At lovers' perjuries Jove laughs,"—and poets have sometimes a disingenuous way of forswearing their occupation. This, though, is not my case. The tender cast of soul, sombred with melancholy and subsiding recollections, is favorable to the Sonnet ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... look squarely at these dream forms that mocked the social order in which she lived, never admit she listened to the soft whisperings in her ear. But Manning seemed more and more clearly indicated as a refuge, as security. Certain simple purposes emerged from the disingenuous muddle of her feelings and desires. Seeing Capes from day to day made a bright eventfulness that hampered her in the course she had resolved to follow. She vanished from the laboratory for a week, a week of ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... consequence in the country by the newspapers, and he was ruined by his timidity. If he had admitted that he was an owner of stock in the Credit Mobilier Company, not much could have been made against him. His denials and explanations, which were either false or disingenuous, and his final admission of a fact which implied that he had been in the receipt of a quarterly payment from a post- office contractor, completed his ruin. There was a time when the country over-estimated ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... she was really conscious. "How false and treacherous," exclaimed she, "are your reasonings! Among the virtuous inhabitants of the plain, every one seeks to influence another by motives which are of weight with himself, and utters the sentiments of his own heart. Where have you learned the disingenuous and faithless arts you employ? To what purpose have you cultivated them, and whose good opinion do you flatter yourself they will obtain for you? False, perfidious Roderic! the more I see of you, the more I fear ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... possibility slowly. "You see, only to-day I told that man Stocks that Merkland would not resign, and that I was sick of party politics and would not interfere with his chances. The poor beggar is desperately keen, and if I stood now he would think me disingenuous." ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... after speaking, knowing that she had been slightly disingenuous. Fan understood from her face more than from her words what ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... This was disingenuous, and she felt humiliated by her subterfuge. Anything but a sudden decision was asked of her. Before leaving Chelsea she had 'foreseen this moment, and had made preparations for the possibility of never returning to ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... wishes of his family, Peace had refrained from seeing Sue Thompson. This was at some sacrifice, for he wished very much to see her and to the last, though he knew that she had betrayed him, sent her affectionate and forgiving messages. These were transmitted to Sue by Mr. Brion. This disingenuous gentleman was a fellow-applicant with Sue to the Treasury for pecuniary recognition of his efforts in bringing about the identification of Peace, and furnishing the police with information as to the ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... speculations, but simply to enable you, as educated men who understand the meaning of plain and straightforward English on any subject, to follow the twistings and turnings of an extraordinarily sinuous and disingenuous intellect, and intelligently to decide a question which needs here to be settled clearly in your own minds: could any competent professor of philosophy, undertaking to give, as a fair critic, a truthful account to the public of the contents of my book, read that passage, and then, omitting ...
— A Public Appeal for Redress to the Corporation and Overseers of Harvard University - Professor Royce's Libel • Francis Ellingwood Abbot
... disingenuous protests hold us back. We know that any inequality which may exist between town and country in the early days of the Revolution will be transitory and of a nature that will right itself from day to day; for the village will not fail to improve its dwellings ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... thought I, that human nature can rejoice in its disgrace, and take pleasure in seeing its own figure turned into ridicule, and distorted into forms that raise horror and aversion? There is something disingenuous and immoral in the being able to bear such a sight. Men of elegant and noble minds are shocked at the seeing characters of persons who deserve esteem for their virtue, knowledge, or services to their country, placed in wrong lights, and by misrepresentations ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... patients thus operated on "were sorely in need of relief." What, he asks, would his critics have had them do? "Sit idly by, and let these poor fellows suffer torments, because if we tried various drugs we were 'experimenting' on human beings?" Is not this a little disingenuous, in view of the very careful distinctions made by his critic concerning the experiments performed for the relief of suffering men? Assuredly, there was no objection to these; it was regarding the "deliberate course of experiments," the "series of experiments" made upon "MEN IN VERY ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... number, and especially Sullivan. He speaks, however, in high terms of Henry and Small; and both of these, in their letters referred to above, paint the conduct of the French and Indians in very dark colors, throwing the blame on them. Legrace is certainly disingenuous in suppressing all mention of the wrongs done to the Americans. For Filson's career and death in the woods, see the excellent Life of Filson, by Durrett, in the Filson ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... answering this direct question. He had not seen anything which would lead him to suppose that Miss Adela Chatfield was a disingenuous and designing young woman, but she was certainly Peeping Peter's daughter, and the old man, having failed to get anything out of Copplestone himself, might possibly have sent her to see what she could accomplish. He ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... them disappoint us; like the ghost of Hamlet's father, they come in a "questionable shape." Thus, for instance, in his sketch of William Penn, the historian takes issue with the world on his character, and labors through many pages of disingenuous innuendoes and distortion of facts to transform the saint of history ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... This reply is disingenuous. According to our investigation, Ciganowic, by order of the police prefect in Belgrade, left three days after the outrage for Ribari, after it had become known that Ciganowic had participated in the outrage. In the first place, it is therefore incorrect that Ciganowic left the Serbian ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... one another, the American leaders seem to have had the greatest difficulty in bringing up their people to a declaration of total independence. But the Court Gazette accomplished what the abettors of independence had attempted in vain. When that disingenuous compilation and strange medley of railing and flattery was adduced as a proof of the united sentiments of the people of Great Britain, there was a great change throughout all America. The tide of popular affection, which had still set towards ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... former and avoid the latter. And directly one has got to this critical pose towards things, just as one ceases to be content with things anyhow and to want them precisely somehow, one begins to realize just how intractable, confused and disingenuous are human affairs. Mr. Brumley had made himself see and had made her see how inevitable these big wholesale ways of doing things, these organizations and close social co-operations, have become unless there is to be a social disintegration and set back, and he had also brought himself and her ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... to keep from smiling: he was so ingenuously disingenuous. There was less to smile at in his really nervous anxiety to get me away. I lay there reading him like a book: it was not my health that concerned him, of course: was it my safety? I told him he little knew how ill I was—an inglorious speech that came hard, though not by any means untrue. "Move ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... unconsciously hoped than believed, came so unexpectedly, felt her mind momentarily bewildered; and she scarcely knew whether to weep or to rejoice. Still she was the first to speak; since Eau-douce could utter naught that would be disingenuous, or that ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... gentleman leaning upon me, and very heavily, I very civilly requested him to remove his hand, for which he pulled me by the nose. I would not resent it in so public a place, because I was unwilling to create a disturbance: but have since reflected upon it as a thing that is unmanly and disingenuous, renders the nose-puller odious, and makes the person pulled by the nose look little and contemptible. This grievance I humbly request you will endeavour to redress. I am, ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... really intelligent opposition to them. I can, however, understand a partial and silly application of them. It is most important that our good-class families should be endowed, but the whole tendency of the timid and disingenuous progressivism of our time, which is all mixed up with ideas of charity and aggressive benevolence to the poor, would be to apply this—as that Fabian tract I mention does—only to the poor mother. To endow poor and bad-class motherhood and leave other people ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... have been disingenuous and unjust to me, by wresting and forcing my meaning in the preface to another book, as if I condemned and exposed all learning, though they knew I declared that I greatly honoured and esteemed all men of superiour literature and erudition; and that I only undervalued ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... the laity unless the laity muzzled them. He held that the reformers had been calumniated, that their services were in danger of being forgotten, and that the modern attempt to ignore the Reformation was not only unhistorical, but disingenuous. He wrote partly to rehabilitate them, and partly to prove that Henry VIII. had conferred great benefits upon England by his repudiation of Papal authority. He took, as he considered it his duty to take, the side of individual ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... imagination? The old loyalists and royalists who had become the Federalists under Hamilton, who were now the Whigs with the same banking scheme, the same old tariff, the same old hatred of democratic government, the same hypocrisy, the same disingenuous and devious policies. There was but one American party, one pure-blooded party, good for the East and the West, friendly to every just thing that the East desired, understanding the West; that was the Democratic party! It stood ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... I would give you a term of ten years) from the practice of the law, unless you should plunge into that practice with the most unqualified disregard to all that rectitude demands, would be to act the cowardly disingenuous hypocrite; and entirely to forget the first and ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... Mr. Hunter was earnest, persuasive and often eloquent. He possessed, in a remarkable degree, a talent for refined sarcasm, and knew how to use most effectively its piercing shafts against the idle objections, or disingenuous cavils of all triflers with the great truths of religion. In his advanced years the infirmities of old age greatly contracted the extent of his useful labors without impairing the vigor of his mental powers or the fervency and faithfulness of his preaching. He died, with Christian ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... dogmatists is that they are not content to feel and express but must needs invent an intellectual concept to stand target for their emotion. From the nature of their emotions they infer an object the existence of which they find themselves obliged to prove by an elaborately disingenuous metaphysic. The consequence is inevitable; religion comes to mean, not the feeling of an emotion, but adherence to a creed. Instead of being a matter of emotional conviction it becomes a matter of intellectual ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... your Colonies. I pity your situation, and therefore I excuse the little aberrations from truth which your letter contains. At the same time it is possible that you may have been misinformed. For I will not suppose that your letter was intended to delude the people of these States. Such unmanly, disingenuous artifices have of late been exerted with so little effect, that prudence, if not probity, would prevent a repetition. To undeceive you, therefore, I take the liberty of assuring your Excellencies, from the very best intelligence, that what you call ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... cover a general indifference on the part of the Secretary of the Interior to the whole conservation movement. President Taft, however, completely exonerated Secretary Ballinger from blame and removed Glavis for "filing a disingenuous statement unjustly impeaching the official integrity of his superior officer." Later Pinchot was also dismissed from the service. The charges against Secretary Ballinger were investigated by a joint committee of Congress, a majority of which exonerated the accused Cabinet officer. Nevertheless ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... question, but I think none of them are conclusive, and upon the whole I have little doubt of its authenticity. I shall be much mortified if it proves a fiction, not on account of the importance of the letter, but the stain that a practice so disingenuous will bring upon America. When I first left America, such a fiction, with all its ingenuity, would have ruined the reputation of the author of it, if discovered, and I think that both he and the printer would have been ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... one of limited extent, it would be considered that they had no ulterior object, and that the limited measure, if conceded, should be taken in full of every thing to be expected from the Legislature. This would be disingenuous. It is the most fair and honest mode of dealing, on the part of those who are of opinion that the exigency of the case calls for a comprehensive measure, to declare at once what is the utmost extent of the objects they have ...
— The Baptist Magazine, Vol. 27, January, 1835 • Various
... Pomander, had been guilty of two ingenuities: first, he had written three or four letters, full of respectful admiration, to Mrs. Woffington, of whom he spoke slightingly to Vane; second, he had made a disingenuous purchase. ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... no matter how unflattering, is always far more agreeable to me than equivocation, or disingenuous-ness. Does my ward believe that it will conduce to her future happiness to leave my roof, and ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... always predominates. The benevolent disposition of Plutarch, and his noble and elevated character, have stamped themselves on all that he has written. A man cannot read these Lives without being the better for it: his detestation of all that is mean and disingenuous will be increased; his admiration of whatever is truthful and generous ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... and terrible example of justice took place towards the close of this month, which I record with regret, but which it would be disingenuous to suppress. Six marines, the flower of our battalion, were hanged by the public executioner, on the sentence of a criminal court, composed entirely of their own officers, for having at various times ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... orgies, and he (the host) ended by stating that he was happy to have made my acquaintance." Note the lame and colourless close of that sentence: he ended by stating. One always ends that way after bacchanalian orgies, though one does not always gloss over the escapade with such disingenuous ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... circumstances which I am persuaded will render this fresh instance of confidence incompatible with other measures which I had previously adopted, and from which seeing little prospect of disengaging myself, it would be disingenuous not to express a wish that some other character, on whom greater reliance can be had, may be substituted in my place, the probability of my non-attendance being too great to ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... spargere voces [Lat]; deceive &c 545. Adj. false, deceitful, mendacious, unveracious, fraudulent, dishonest, faithless, truthless, trothless; unfair, uncandid; hollow-hearted; evasive; uningenuous, disingenuous; hollow, sincere, Parthis mendacior; forsworn. artificial, contrived; canting; hypocritical, jesuitical, pharisaical; tartuffish; Machiavelian; double, double tongued, double faced, double handed, double minded, double ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... genuine witnesses to the truth of Christianity, the Polycarps, or the martyrs of Vienne. And indeed, if, after all, the view of the early progress of Christianity be melancholy and humiliating we must beware lest we charge the whole of this on the infidelity of the historian. It is idle, it is disingenuous, to deny or to dissemble the early depravations of Christianity, its gradual but rapid departure from its primitive simplicity and purity, still more, from its spirit of universal love. It may be no unsalutary lesson to the Christian world, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... something closely akin to what in reality lay behind it. His discovery might have been expected to hasten rather than retard the truth, and a first impulse in any man had made the facts instantly clear; but Clement rarely acted on impulse. His character was subtle, disingenuous, secretive. Safe in absolute possession, the discovery of Martin's attachment did not flutter him. He laughed in his mind; then he pictured Chris the wife of this man, reviewed the worldly improvement in her position such a union must effect, and laughed ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... following Monday he simply gave a half sigh, half grunt of disgust, and let the longed-for vacation go; for one of his pet theories was that the jury system was the chief bulwark of the Constitution, the cornerstone of liberty. Had he only been disingenuous enough he need never have served on any jury, for no lawyer for the defense hearing him enlarge on what he considered the duties of a juryman to be, would ever have allowed him in the box. But when other chaps on the panel presented their excuses to ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... of 1874. There was a growing impression of maladministration at Washington. The Credit Mobilier scandal—the easy acceptance by Congressmen of financial favors from the managers of the Union Pacific Railway, followed by disingenuous denials—had especially discredited the party in power. There had been a great financial reverse in 1873, such as is always charged in the popular mind against the ruling powers. The South had increased its Democratic vote. So from various causes, ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... when there is an abundance before them." It is certainly important that all women should understand this; and it is no more than fair that they should practise upon it, since men always treat them with disingenuous untruthfulness in this matter. Men may amuse themselves with a noisy, loud-laughing, loquacious girl; it is the quiet, subdued, modest, and seeming bashful deportment which is the one that stands the fairest chance of ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... of the Catholic Church is that it holds firmly to its dogmas, come what may. It was expected, however, that this Romeward Movement would arouse intense antipathy. "The arguments by which it was justified were considered, in many cases, disingenuous, ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... I leave this subject, I cannot but take notice how disingenuous our adversaries appear: All that is dull, insipid, languishing, and without sinews, in a poem, they call an imitation of nature: They only offend our most equitable judges, who think beyond them; and lively images and elocution ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... vanity was excessive. So far from "creating the new world," Canning had merely recognised the existence of states which had already won their own independence, and even so he was only following the example of the United States. It was not only extremely foolish, but altogether disingenuous, to maintain that the recognition of the South American republics had been resolved on as a counterpoise to French influence in Spain. The reasons which prompted this recognition were commercial, not political, and it had been ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... and Preserver of the universe, but that it is their right to render that worship in the mode most consistent with the dictates of their consciences. And then, a few lines further down, the article skips the great difficulty in a manner somewhat disingenuous, and declares that each and every society of Christians in the State shall have and enjoy the same and equal privileges. But it does not say whether a Jew shall be divested of those privileges, or, if he be divested, how that treatment of him is to be reconciled with the assurance that it ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... to speak of such trifles publicly, if the impudence of this "sketcher" had not forced me to a refutation of a disingenuous and gratuitously impertinent assertion; so meant to be, for what could it import to the reader to be told that the author "had repeatedly declined an introduction," even if it had been true, which, for the reasons I have above given, is scarcely ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... home, he said, the copy of what was really the translation of Turgot's Epic—Turgot was a Saxon monk of the tenth century—by Rowley the secular priest of the fifteenth. This was the second Battle of Hastings as printed in this book. Again this strange explanation, so laboured and so patently disingenuous, was accepted without comment though probably not believed. And if it appears matter for surprise that there should ever have been any controversy about the authorship of the Rowley writings, in view of the lad's admission that he had written three such signal pieces as ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... people who carry about Sir Thomas Browne in their pocket," retorted the disingenuous lady. "If I turned him out of my house, doctor, and anything happened to him, I should have to reckon with his people. He stays here. You'll kindly arrange for nurses. The red room, Wilkins,—no, the green—the one with the small oak bed. You can't nurse people ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... question still returns: Why do they seek amusement in sufferings which are unnecessary and avoidable? and till they honestly and thoroughly answer this question, they must be content to be looked upon as disingenuous reasoners, who are determined to retain a ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... and offensive, or as insulting and dishonest. One paper deemed its terms to be a series of studied insults added to a long inventory of injuries. Said another, Germany's mood is still that of a madman. A third comment on the note described it as "a disingenuous effort to have international petty larceny put on the same plane as international murder and visited with the same punishment." A fourth paper remarked: "If an American can read the note without his temples getting hot then his blood is poor or his understanding ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... the navy. That was before the United States entered the War. I do not know what he meant the speech for, but what it actually was, was a speech against preparedness. So was the speech made on the same occasion by Lemuel P. Padgett, chairman of the House Committee on Naval Affairs. It was a disingenuous speech, a speech to lull the country into confidence, a speech which, alone, should have been sufficient to prove Mr. Padgett's unfitness to serve on that committee. Mr. Daniels argued that "Germany's preparedness had not kept Germany out of war"; that seemed enough, but there was ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... have been permitted the high distinction of taking a pinch of snuff from it, while planning his Precieuses Ridicules, which, malgre his disingenuous disavowal of the satire being aimed at the Hotel Rambouillet, evidently found its subject there. I cannot look at the snuff-box without being reminded of the brilliant circle which its former mistress assembled around her, ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... and, ill at ease, and asking himself whether he was going to turn into a disingenuous cowardly cur, Vane gladly sought his chamber once more to sit down on the edge of his bed, and ponder over ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... his position, and his consciousness of it, suffice in themselves to make him interesting. But it is disingenuousness that makes him delightful. And the greatest of all delights that a law-court can give us is a disingenuous witness who is quick-minded, resourceful, thoroughly master of himself and his story, pitted against a counsel as well endowed as himself. The most vivid and precious of my memories is of a case in which a gentleman, now dead, was sued for breach of promise, ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... commissioner appointed by the State of Massachusetts that the agent of the Government acted throughout with the utmost fairness, and General Dearborn declares himself to be perfectly satisfied that were it not for the unremitted and disingenuous exertions of a certain number of white men who are actuated by their private interests, to induce the chiefs not to assent to the treaty, it would immediately have been approved by an immense majority—an opinion which he reiterated at ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... only stooped to explain—" He broke off, with a savage gesture. "Forgive me! What right have I to reproach or blame you? The whole fault was mine. Well, I believed you as disloyal and disingenuous as I had known you to be loyal and candid. And I went away. I went down into hell. You've at least the satisfaction of knowing that I paid for my distrust—paid for it to the last ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... his stay in England we have his Brutus (1730), an attack on kingcraft, and his Zaire (1732), a Parisian Othello, both based on Shakespeare. From this time onward he plunges into a supple and dexterous, if sometimes rather disingenuous, strife with a superior power. Throughout, the poet and man of taste struggles against the philosophic freethinker: he loves the surface impressions, perhaps the reflective illusions; "his sentiments are worth more than his ideas." The English ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... the facts against him he studiously weakens by doubts, surmises, and suggestions; a character sinks to the level of his notions by a single stroke; and from the arguments adverse to his purpose, he wrests the most violent inferences. All party writers must submit to practise such mean and disingenuous arts if they affect to disguise themselves under a cover of impartiality. Bayle, intent on collecting facts, was indifferent to their results; but Harris is more intent on the deductions than the facts. The truth is, Harris wrote to please his patron, the republican Hollis, who ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... known The lustrous lurements of their gorgeous zone, As in the field some skilful ranger sets The fraudful cordage of his specious nets, Places some fragrant viand in the snare, And captive takes the unsuspicious hare; So the bold strangers with superior will Lay their base plans with disingenuous skill, Ope their stored treasures and with art display Their worthless figments to the air of day, Roll their large lids, and with grave gestures laud Each tinsel trinket and each painted gaud; With mystic ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... this occasion, but told her he would by no means consent to her altering her conduct; she was upon the point of telling him, it was reported that the Duke de Nemours was in love with her, but she had not the power to name him; besides she thought it disingenuous to disguise the truth, and make use of pretences to a man who had so good an ...
— The Princess of Cleves • Madame de La Fayette
... confused or deliberately disingenuous, since he shifts his ground several times. On occasion he argues merely in the role of a moderate man who is shocked by the extravagances of the playwrights, and on other occasions as an ascetic to whom ...
— Essays on the Stage • Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet
... the Executive had to cope. How well he met, and how entirely he for the time overcame these enemies of the peace of the republic, we leave the historian to relate; but our retrospect would be incomplete and disingenuous, did we not accord the meed of praise justly due to high moral excellence and intellectual and administrative honesty and talent, as developed in the ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... from his delectable "Palace of Pleasure" the young might "learne how to avoyde the ruine, overthrow, inconvenience and displeasure, that lascivious desire and wanton evil doth bring to their suters and pursuers"—a disingenuous sop ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... with the same old sophistries, and proving that Pope must have been out of his mind when he declared that an honest man was the noblest work of God, seeing that nobler than the most honest man was the disingenuous government held up to eulogy; and I had gone tired, dispirited, out of conceit with myself to Lola for tea and consolation. I had not been the merriest company. I had spoken gloomily of the cosmos, and when Adolphus ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... is not like my wife," protested Ransom, hesitating to accuse the other of falsehood, yet evidently doubting him from the bottom of his heart. "Why deceive us both? She was never a disingenuous woman." ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... great example could not be quoted in favor of "coercion." It is not believed that Mr. Davis had the slightest authority for this aspersion upon the memory of Jackson. It seems rather to have been a disingenuous and unwarranted statement of the kind so plentifully used at the time for the purpose of "firing the ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... reading and meditation, a disposition to brood over their wrongs, and, when they had worked themselves up into hating their enemies, imagined that they were only hating the enemies of heaven. In the New Testament there was little indeed which, even when perverted by the most disingenuous exposition, could seem to countenance the indulgence of malevolent passions. But the Old Testament contained the history of a race selected by God to be witnesses of his unity and ministers of his vengeance, and specially commanded by him to do many things which, if done without his special command, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... was maintained only by men, large numbers of whom simultaneously took part in wholesale massacres of such non-combatants. The women were superior to such hypocrisy. They recognized the nature of modern war instantly and accurately, and advocated no disingenuous efforts ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... implies the existence of a universe maker, and that we may deduce from it some of His attributes, His power, His wisdom, His forethought for small wants, His providing of luxuries for His creatures. On the other hand, do not let us be disingenuous enough to shirk the mystery which lies in pain, in cruelty, in all which seems to be a slur upon His work. The best that we can say for them is to hope that they are not as bad as they seem, and possibly ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... smiled. It was a habit with him—that smile. The sensitiveness of his nervous system found a quick outlet, when he was nervous or excited, by a disingenuous smile. He proceeded to the shop directly underneath her window, observing it to be Ah Sih King's gold shop. The window was rich in glittering splendors from the Orient. He picked up from the sidewalk a crumpled ball of red paper ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... was doing better financially, but his letters to Marion had become less frequent and less frank in regard to his own circumstances and doings. There came a letter at last from Sir Galahad—a letter of eight pages of soul stress and sorrow, as he would have called it, and of disingenuous wriggling, as the world would call it—in which he explained as delicately as was possible under the circumstances that his love for Miss Willis had become the love of a brother for a sister, and that he was engaged ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... his fist and shouted defiance in the face of the nullifiers, while Mr. Clay smuggled a comfortable concession into their pockets. Jackson, notwithstanding his belligerent attitude, did all he could to help Clay and was well pleased with the result. Mr. Adams was not. He watched the disingenuous game with disgust. It is certain that if he had still been in the White House, the matter would have had a (p. 237) very different ending, bloodier, it may be, and more ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... conquered the American Indians and took their land to use it, in accordance with our higher destiny, for greater and nobler purposes than they could either conceive of or execute. It is better for the world that by a revolution (even a disingenuous one) we took Panama from incompetent Colombians and, by our intelligence, our courage and our vast resources, changed a fever-ridden strip of jungle into a waterway that now joins two oceans and will save untold billions for ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett
... inclined at present to change its policy but could make no promises for the future[798]. This appeared to Adams to be an assurance against any effort by Great Britain and has been interpreted as disingenuous on Russell's part. Certainly Adams' confidence was restored by the interview. But Russell was apparently unconvinced as yet that a suggestion of armistice would necessarily lead to the evil consequences prophesied by Lewis, or would, indeed, require ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... exhibits, would see in him only the family traitor, and he would go about the streets of his town the subject of their implacable denunciation, the community's obloquy, and Aurora's cold evasion. So much, should he sell. On the other hand, to decline to sell was to enter upon that disingenuous scheme of delays which would enable him to avail himself and his people of that favorable wind and tide of fortune which the Cession had brought. Thus the estates would be lost, if lost at all, only when the family could afford to lose them, and Honore Grandissime would ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... have become selfish and arrogant. Their respect for age has vanished, their behaviour to ladies is familiar and flippant, their style of conversation is slangy and disreputable, they are wanting in all proper reverence, they are pampered, luxurious, affected, foolish, and disingenuous; unworthy, in short, to be mentioned in the same breath with those who have preceded them, and have left to their degenerate successors a brilliant but unavailing example of youthful conduct. These diatribes may or may not be founded to some extent in truth. At the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Nov. 1, 1890 • Various
... what robs me of faith and courage. Art at a given moment is more powerful, may be, than nature; for in nature is no symphony of Beethoven, no picture of Ruysdel, no poem of Goethe, and only dull-witted pedants or disingenuous chatterers can yet maintain that art is the imitation of nature. But at the end of all, nature is inexorable; she has no need to hurry, and sooner or later she takes her own. Unconsciously and inflexibly obedient to laws, she knows not art, as she knows not freedom, as she knows not ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... Mrs. Ellison!" cries Amelia; "why do we ever blame those who are disingenuous in confessing their faults, when we are so often ashamed to own ourselves in the right? Some women now, in my situation, would be angry that you had not made confidantes of them; but I never desire to know more of the secrets of others than they are pleased to intrust ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... coloured race that rankles in the bosom of his "Englishmen in the West Indies," sufficiently proves the utter hypocrisy of his recommendation, that the freest opportunities should be offered to Blacks of the said exceptional order. The very wording of Mr. Froude's recommendation is disingenuous. It is one stone sped at two birds, and which, most naturally, has missed ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... Lavender confessed to himself that Sheila was either a miracle of ingenuousness or a thorough mistress of the art of assuming it. On the one hand, he considered it almost impossible for a woman to be so disingenuous; on the other hand, how could this girl have taught herself, in the solitude of a savage island, a species of histrionicism which women in London circles strove for years to acquire, and rarely acquired in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... laughed. "It will depend on the both of us—and the business in hand. Diplomats, you are well aware, are given to very disingenuous ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... multitude of locked souls with labels of smiling faces the sensitive nature feels itself mocked, and is soon distraught. It cannot suffer convention gladly for an ultimate good, but is chilled by this everlasting urbanity, which must, it fancies, be compact of irony and conceal a disingenuous soul. ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... bestowed upon India. But if we pay only half-hearted homage to it, and our own people, whether at home, or in other parts of the Empire, or in India itself, whether statesmen or soldiers, or administrators or merchants, succumb to the temptation of trying still to combine with it in practice a disingenuous survival of the old idea of domination of one race over another, after we have so solemnly repudiated it, we shall drift the more rapidly and disastrously on to the quicksands of racial strife and chronic disorder which, though they may fail to overthrow ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... statute relative hereto declared the presentation void, unless accepted. Nor is there in being any, but the law of sin and death within them, the law of itch after worldly gain, that obliges candidates to accept. How unmanly, how disingenuous, to blame the civil law with the present course of intrusions!—Since the resurrection of Christ, we think we may almost defy any to produce an instance of bloody squabbling, or like outrageous contention, in the choice of a pastor, where none but ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... strengthened; he put too high a value on his own opinions and was extremely stubborn. In dealing with men, he thought too much of what was due to himself and too little of what was due to others. As a lad he lacked frankness, and in later life was disingenuous and intriguing. When he was displeased his temper was sullen and resentful. He was always overcareful about money, and in old age this tendency developed into parsimony. His education was deficient; it had not been carried on steadily, and he had been allowed to indulge a constitutional ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... from the direction of public affairs, it may not only be a charitable but a true estimate of the motives which influenced him in his conduct towards Mr. Canning, to conclude that he was not guided in that transaction by the disingenuous rivalry usually imputed to him. His statement in Parliament of the determining circumstances of his conduct, coupled with his subsequent and almost immediate policy, may perhaps always leave this a painful and ambiguous passage in his career; but in passing ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... proportioned not so much to its own intrinsic force as to the general talent with which that journal is conducted, belongs to a class of sophisms by which the most hateful persecutions may easily be justified. To charge men with practical consequences which they themselves deny is disingenuous in controversy; it is atrocious in government. The doctrine of predestination, in the opinion of many people, tends to make those who hold it utterly immoral. And certainly it would seem that a man who believes his eternal destiny to be already irrevocably fixed is likely ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... disingenuous, hypocritical passion of love. It's always the most amusing thing in the world; but to see it trying to pass itself off in poor old Kenby as duty and humanity, and disinterested affection for Rose, was more than I could stand. I don't apologize for laughing; ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... you mean a wholesome dislike to the involving of a straightforward situation in a tangle of disingenuous sophistry, I ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... history. In 66 B.C. he was praetor, and was called upon to hear cases of extortion. In the same year he spoke on behalf of the proposal of Gaius Manilius to transfer the command against Mithradates from Lucullus to Pompey (de Lege Manilia), and delivered his clever but disingenuous defence of Aulus Cluentius (pro Cluentio). At this time he was a prospective candidate for the consulship, and was obliged by the hostility of the nobles towards "new men" to look for help wherever it was to be found. In 65 B.C. he even thought of defending Catiline on ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... cleverest trick is that, observing that freedom of speech, is both spoken of and reckoned as the peculiar and natural voice of friendship, while not speaking freely is considered unfriendly and disingenuous, he has not failed to imitate this trait of friendship also. But just as clever cooks infuse bitter sauces and sharp seasoning to prevent sweet things from cloying, so these flatterers do not use a genuine or serviceable freedom of speech, but merely a winking and tickling innuendo. ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... professors found there was really no law against the admission of women to that very liberal seat of learning. "To be sure, they never had admitted women, but none had formally applied." This, though somewhat disingenuous, was received in good faith, and soon tested by Miss Madeline Stockwell, who had completed half her course at Kalamazoo, and was persuaded by Mrs. Stone to make application at Ann Arbor. Mrs. Stone knew her to be a thorough scholar, as far ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... not discloses the very secret he is so anxious to keep. Every line of these letters indicates a tussle between a natural tendency to frank honesty and an unnatural and unworthy method of deception. Obviously, the recipient of this precious document would have her curiosity excited over the disingenuous tale of romance. She would ask herself first of all, "Why should my kinsman be so desirous to tell me that the orphan in whom he has so fond an interest is not without a fortune? and why should the responsibility of rearing ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... word "Reserve" was enough. It meant that the Tract-writers avowed the principle of keeping back part of the counsel of God. It meant, further, that the real spirit of the party was disclosed; its love of secret and crooked methods, its indifference to knowledge, its disingenuous professions, its deliberate concealments, its holding doctrines and its pursuit of aims which it dared not avow, its disciplina arcani, its conspiracies, its Jesuitical spirit. All this kind of abuse was flung plentifully on the party as the controversy became warm; and it mainly ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... wrote very plainly in explaining the situation to their superiors at home. To be sure, Gage was a trifle disingenuous in reviewing the past. While admitting that the recent trials at arms proved the rebels "not the despicable rabble too many have supposed them to be," he ignored his original boast concerning lions and lambs. In stating that in all previous wars the Americans had never showed so much ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... doctor," said she, "Colonel Dujardin has let fall the glass." While Jacintha was gone, she scolded Camille gently. "How could you be so unkind to the poor doctor who loves you so? Only think: to throw away his medicines! Look at the ashes; they are wet. Camille, are you, too, becoming disingenuous?" ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... will be misled into all manner of absurdities and errors. The statements of party politicians and party newspapers on most controversial subjects are prejudiced and inaccurate; but there is no subject upon which the professional misleaders of the people are so untrustworthy and so disingenuous as they are upon the subject of Socialism."[26] A leading Socialist organ complained: "Our opponents decline to deal with the fundamental principles of Socialism—its unanswerable indictment of the capitalist system, with all its concomitants of wage-slavery and slumdom; prostitution ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... had been full of whispers of scandalous doings in the business department, and the chorus of dissatisfaction with the artistic results of his directorate, which had begun in the first season, had been swelling steadily. Two seasons before he had put forth a disingenuous apology for his administration, comparing the cost and difficulties of producing opera in the preceding season with the cost and difficulties under Mr. Grau. The matter was one which affected the stockholders of his company only so far as the ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel |
