"Humbug" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... him with loud shouts, by the eager uproar of which—now near, now in the centre, now on the outskirts of the division, and now sweeping back towards us in a great volume of sound—we could trace his progress through the ranks. If he is a coward, or a traitor, or a humbug, or anything less than a brave, true, and able man, that mass of intelligent soldiers, whose lives and honor he had in charge, were utterly deceived, and so was this present writer; for they believed in him, and so did I; and had I stood in the ranks, should have shouted with the lustiest ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... really sick," explained the boy; "and there's no humbug about his ailment, either. I heard the doctor tell my mother that it was partly due to a lack of substantial food for years. You see, the woman herself was ill for a long time, and her husband worked himself to skin and bone trying to provide for her. Then she got over ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson
... been known to behave like a wolf to his own species. Scratch his master and you will find the caveman. But the scratch must be a sharp one: I am thickly veneered. Outwardly, I am as gentle as you, gentle reader. And one reason for our delight in fire is that there is no humbug about flames: they are frankly, primaevally savage. But this is not, I am glad to say, the sole reason. We have a sense of good and evil. I do not pretend that it carries us very far. It is but the tooth-brush and nail-scissors ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... all sciences; when truth fails them and they are at fault, they fill up the hiatus with supposition; which is, as you term it, humbug." ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... intellectual power. But alas, in spite of all this, when I had read that speech I thought with a heavy heart that there was one more thing that I had to add to the list of the specially English things, such as kippers and cricket; I had to add the specially English kind of humbug. In France things are attacked and defended for what they are. The Catholic Church is attacked because it is Catholic, and defended because it is Catholic. The Republic is defended because it is Republican, and attacked because it is Republican. But here is the ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... not discouraged as you are, and the present government pleases me, because it has no principle, no metaphysics, no humbug. I express myself very badly. Moreover you deserve a different response, ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... pause, he proceeded: "But I hear it is very much the same thing with you. I have often longed to go to America, just for the sake of that social emancipation which it has seemed to promise. But they tell me that in your big cities a good deal of the same humbug prevails." I assured him that he was fatally right; but I did not proceed to say, as I might have done, that our "aristocracy" rarely patronizes first nights at theatres, holding most ladies, and gentlemen connected with the stage in a position somewhere between their scullions ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... it of his? I'm not going to stand his impudence, as I'll precious soon let him know. A likely story! He didn't buy me body and soul for his paltry salary, though he seems to think it. The old humbug in a cassock! It's a great deal of preaching and very little practice ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... admission," he cried. "What more do you want? The fellow is a self-confessed humbug. We have only to return home and report him as the brazen imposter that ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to her. "Don't you go getting caught by that sweep who runs their chapel up in London. He's a humbug if ever there was one—you mark my words. I know a thing or two. He's done your aunts a lot of harm, and he'll have his dirty fingers on you ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... did not instigate Ravaillac, their doctrine of regicide inspired him. They can creep into any kingdom, any institution, any household, because they readily accept any terms and subscribe to any conditions in the certainty that by the adroit use of flattery, humbug, falsehood, and corruption, they will soon become masters of the situation. In France they are the real Morbus Gallicus. In Italy they are the soul of ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... that this thought came to Mr. Ford it seemed to him more repugnant. First, that he should have blamed Tavia without investigating the matter himself; next that he should have allowed a man like Squire Sanders to "humbug" him. ...
— Dorothy Dale • Margaret Penrose
... transported last year, and took the prize for Devons at the Great Mesopotamian Agricultural with a brindled bull. We remember his weeping at the wedding-breakfast over the loss of his eldest treasure, and wonder if he was an arrant humbug, or only a foolish, fond old man, inclining morosely toward the former opinion. We don't seem to care much about Sir Roland de Vaux, the celebrated geologist, whom we shall have the privilege of meeting this evening. What are strata to us, when our thoughts ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... placed another tub of water in the room at two or three o'clock, or else taken all of the ice out of the first one, the process of freezing and giving out heat would have gone on rapidly again, and none of the plants would have suffered. I have heard people say that putting water in a cellar was all a humbug—that the water froze and the vegetables also. Of course the vegetables froze after the water congealed, or the cellar may have been so defective that both froze at the same time. The latent heat given out by a small amount of freezing water cannot counteract ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... rule circumstances," said Jack dryly, sitting down in his own room, and taking up Carlyle. "What an amount of humbug is talked in this world,—yes, ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... my boy, is it?' said Joe. 'What! are you glad to have me, old chappie? No humbug about yer, are ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... been delighted. But he shunned Dudley. Partly because he was afraid of compromising his own respectability, and partly because he had sense enough to see that Dudley's honest eyes looked through him, and saw what a humbug he was. ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... Carlton, would you really have the Negroes enjoy the same rights with ourselves?" "I would, most certainly. Look at our great Declaration of Independence; look even at the constitution of our own Connecticut, and see what is said in these about liberty." "I regard all this talk about rights as mere humbug. The Bible is older than the Declaration of Independence, and there I take my stand. The Bible furnishes to us the armour of proof, weapons of heavenly temper and mould, whereby we can maintain our ground against all ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... and standing in the middle of it was—a figure. Both place and figure ought to have been somewhere else by rights. Judy's surprise, however, was quite momentary; swift, bird-like understanding followed it. Place was a sham and humbug really; already, without leaving the schoolroom carpet, she and Tim had been to the Metropolis and even to the East. This was merely another of these things she didn't know she knew; she understood another thing ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... of others, and they highly approve its sentiments. They, with you, are fully of the opinion that it is high time to take a firm stand against the no-government doctrine. They are far from regarding it merely as a humbug." John A. Collins, the Anti-slavery agent referred to, founded a community at Skaneateles, N. Y., based upon the following dictums: A disbelief in any special revelation of God to Man, in any form of worship, in any special regard for ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... am a humbug?" said Florence. A look came into her eyes which he could not quite fathom. It was a hungry look. They lit up for a moment, then faded, then an expression of resolve crept round ...
— The Time of Roses • L. T. Meade
... words and with a certain amount of youthful eloquence. As for Eva, she was simply intent on preserving the lees of her father's life, and had been heard to express an opinion that the college was "all humbug," and that people ought to be allowed to live as long as it pleased God to let them. Of course she had with her the elderly ladies of the community, and among them my own wife as the foremost. Mrs Neverbend had never made herself prominent before in any public question; but on this she seemed ...
— The Fixed Period • Anthony Trollope
... Candor!' said Abel. 'It's your own proposal, Hollins. Suppose it's evil to swear: isn't it better I should express it, and be done with it, than keep it bottled up, to ferment in my mind? Oh, you're a precious, consistent old humbug, you are!' ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... in possessing an 'ideal' is that, lodging in you as it does, it insists upon the interior being furnished by your personal satisfaction, and not by the blindness or stupidity of the outer world. Thus, in one direction, an ideal precludes humbug. The ladies might desire to cloak facts, but they had no pleasure in deception. They had the feminine power of extinguishing things disagreeable, so long as nature or the fates did them no violence. When these forces sent ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... you are, either. I liked the way you stood up to that poor faggot of hereditary superstitions and prejudices who was trying to frighten you into being as big a humbug as himself. He'll never get over it. I daresay he'll make things very unpleasant for you in his charming Christian way. How old are ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... and penalty; the phantasms and fatuities, and ten-years' corn-law debatings, that shall walk the earth at noonday, must needs be numerous! The universe being intrinsically a perhaps, being too probably an 'infinite humbug,' why should any minor humbug astonish us? It is all according to the order of nature; and phantasms riding with huge clatter along the streets, from end to end of our existence, astonish nobody. Enchanted St Ives' workhouses ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... or of attempting to bamboozle the public into buying what neither he nor the public really cares for. If he does his best he may feel that he is as fairly earning his livelihood as his fellow workmen, the blacksmith and the stonecutter, and is as little dependent as they upon either charity or humbug. The best that government has done for art in France is the commissioning of the great decorative paintings of Baudry and Puvis. In this country, also, governments, national, State, or municipal, are patronizing art in the best possible way, and in making buildings splendid for the people are ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... to run. And the healthier the world becomes, the more they are compelled to live by imposture and the less by that really helpful activity of which all doctors get enough to preserve them from utter corruption. For even the most hardened humbug who ever prescribed ether tonics to ladies whose need for tonics is of precisely the same character as the need of poorer women for a glass of gin, has to help a mother through child-bearing often enough to feel that he is ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... Braid [609] duly honoured and think that perhaps a word might be said of 'Electro-biology,' a term ridiculous as 'suggestion' and more so. But Professor Yankee Stone certainly produced all the phenomena you allude to by concentrating the patient's sight upon his 'Electro-magnetic disc'—a humbug of copper and zinc, united, too. It was a sore trial to Dr. Elliotson, who having been persecuted for many years wished to make trial in his turn of a little persecuting—a disposition ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... swept the Northern States in 1857 De Bow's Review, the leading financial journal of the South, declared: "The wealth of the South is permanent and real, that of the North fugitive and fictitious. Events now transpiring expose the fiction, as humbug after humbug explodes[655]." On March 4, 1858, Senator Hammond of South Carolina, asked in a speech, "What would happen if no cotton was furnished for three years? I will not stop to depict what everyone ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... procession, said nothing. Irma alone remained gay, thinking it all very funny. And, with a caressing gesture, she leant against the shoulder of the derided painter, and whispered softly in his ear: 'Don't fret, my boy. It's all humbug, ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... parson. His decent reticence is branded as hypocrisy, his circumlocutions are roundly called lies, and his silence is vilified as treachery. And on the strength of peccadillos, reprehensible in an author, but excusable in a son, the Anglo-Saxon race is accused of prudishness, humbug, pretentiousness, deceit, cunning, and bad cooking. Personally I think it was rash of Mr. Strickland, in refuting the account which had gained belief of a certain "unpleasantness" between his father and mother, to state that Charles Strickland in a letter written from Paris had described ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... course that beats you. It's Cossar I What can you hope to do now? What good is it to do anything now? You will breathe it in the dust of every street. What is there to fight for more? Rules of war, indeed! And now Caterham wants to humbug me to help him bargain. Good heavens, man! Why should I come to your exploded windbag? He has played his game ... murdered and ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... them, and he said he would like to. I asked him then to please discourage all cheering, noise, or any sort of confusion; that we had had enough of it before Bull Run to ruin any set of men, and that what we needed were cool, thoughtful, hard-fighting soldiers—no more hurrahing, no more humbug. He took my remarks in the most perfect good-nature. Before we had reached the first camp, I heard the drum beating the "assembly," saw the men running for their tents, and in a few minutes the regiment was in line, arms presented, and ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... both are too well known to require announcement. How incongruous become the associations as we proceed; old Pere la Chaise cheek by jowl with the American Presidents; Cagliostro, who died before the word his career incarnated had become indispensable to the English tongue—the apotheosis of humbug; Marmontel, dear to our novitiate as royal leaders; and near to the original Pamela; Chateaubriand's ancestor the Marshal; Bisson going below to ignite the magazine, rather than "give up the ship;" and the battered war dog, with ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... of Mr. Wilbur. Homers, democratic ones, plums left for. Hotels, big ones, humbugs. House, a strange one described. Howell, James, Esq., story told by, letters of, commended. Huldah, her bonnet. Human rights out of order on the floor of Congress. Humbug, ascription of praise to, generally believed in. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... "You humbug!" said Clover, while Katy seized Rose and pulled her into the room. "There, sit on the bed, you ridiculous goose, and put on my gray cloak. How can you be so absurd as to say you won't? You know we want you, and you know ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... bending the violet eyes of hers upon a piece of Moorish silk, let me clear my mind of humbug. I am no sentimentalist in this matter. I am not certain, yet, that "my lady" of to-day is the sole repository of every virtue; neither am I dogmatic about "necessary vice," the "irreducible minimum," and such-like large viewpoints. I have, indeed, nursed a theory that our floating population ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... sort.' Am I a humbug, an impostor, an adventuress, a puppet and play-actress? Or is it that I have forfeited my right, my rank of gentlewoman, my position in ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... Jacobin of my own? Haven't you one, too? But mine is a different problem from that white-haired humbug of yours. He is a genuine article. There must be plenty like him about. He has scores to settle with half a dozen people, he says, and he clamours for revolutions to ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... right too, pap but if yo' can't make me tote dese clothes home, don't bring de mess up. Yo'se abstifically a humbug. ...
— Three Plays - Lawing and Jawing; Forty Yards; Woofing • Zora Neale Hurston
... Earl of Durham, that this stern patriot, this rigid moralist, this unbending censor, the Right Honourable Joseph Chamberlain, flaunts his Radical and levelling doctrines before the astonished democrats of Newcastle. 'Vanity of Vanities,' saith the preacher, 'all is vanity.' 'Humbug of Humbugs,' says the Radical, ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... all humbug, by any means; and now he asked permission to visit Union City to make public confession of the murder. But Carter had left Collins in jail at St. Louis, and saw no reason to delay the arrest of that scoundrel in order to gratify the wishes of a confessed murderer. So he proceeded ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall
... revelation. But I don't have any faith in modern spiritual seansys. They seem to me,—and I would say it in a polite, courtous way, for I wouldn't hurt your feelin's for the world,—all mixed up with modern greed and humbug." ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... younger man blankly, "what a ridiculous old humbug it is! And how he used to frighten me in the old days with his confounded cavalry bluster! I rather think I will look him up: and I'll dine with him three times a week if he likes. Meanwhile, it's time for me to go and ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... hedonist. The latter school, the C[a]rv[a]kas, the so-called disciples of Brihaspati, have, indeed, a philosophy without religion. They simply say that the gods do not exist, the priests are hypocrites; the Vedas, humbug; and the only thing worth living for, in view of the fact that there are no gods, no heaven, and no soul, is pleasure: 'While life remains let a man live happily; let him not go without butter (literally ghee) even though he run into debt,' etc.[1] Of sterner stuff was ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... Mrs. Palmer had a full share of both these manly excellences, and practiced them in thoroughly feminine fashion. She was essentially true, hating humbug in all its disguises.... Her love of plainness and distaste for affectation were forms of veracity. But in narrative of hers one got much besides plain realities. These had their significance heightened by her eager emotion, and their picturesqueness by her happy artistry.... Of course the warmth ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... sorry for Ralph. It seemed to her he was talking as a blind and had little heart in what he said. "I don't know what's the matter with you," she observed to him once; "but I suspect you're a great humbug." ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... their professor. They took the head of one beetle, the body of another of a totally different species, the wings of a third, the legs of a fourth. These members they carefully pasted together. Then they asked the professor what kind of bug the creature was. He answered promptly, "A humbug." Just such a monstrosity is trouble—especially future trouble. Some things about it are real, but the whole combined menace is only an illusion, not a thing which actually exists at all. Face the trouble itself; give ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... Uncle Nathan rather sharply, to discover any mischief which might lurk in his expression. Perceiving that he looked perfectly sincere, and was innocent of any intention to quiz him, he merely uttered, in the most contemptuous tone, the single word "Humbug!" ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... catchee no havee,' I think we may leave these two last out of consideration. Under ordinary circumstances, I should have barred jumping on the chest of a man who is afflicted with blindness; but as this particular individual has seen fit to humbug me to the top of his bent, I shall waive that scruple. Senor Taltavull, I'm with you in this to anything short ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... "Oh, humbug," said Mr. Stacy; "that is putting it too strong, Harriet—as if I couldn't pay money or ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... myself. There is not one gleam of light in all the sad landscape, and the abyss seems waiting at my feet to swallow me up with everything that I cherish. It is no use saying to this demon of the darkness that I know he is a humbug, a mere Dismal Jemmy of the brain, who sits there croaking like a night owl or a tenth-rate journalist. My Dismal Jemmy is not to be exorcised by argument. He can only be driven out by a little ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... various epithets, which they apply to him; The Dear, dear Man! The Life-enjoying Man! The All-sided One! The Representative of Poetry upon earth! The Many-sided Master-Mind of Germany! His enemies rush into the other extreme, and hurl at him the fierce names of Old Humbug! and Old Heathen! ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... religious and anti-slavery cant, and merely wanted a little of the teetotal nonsense to be a perfect specimen of humbug. ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... humbug,' said Wylder. 'It's not real. I showed it to Platten and Foyle. It's some sort of glass. But I would not part with it. I got a fancy into my head that luck would come with it, and maybe that glass stuff was the thing that had the virtue in it. Now ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... returned, "don't you be a humbug. This is a perfectly plain case, and you are going in for a very risky affair with your eyes open. You shall not ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the days when my mind misgives me whether the pictorial art be not a humbug, and when the minute accuracy of a fly in a Dutch picture of fruit and flowers seems to me something more reliable than the master-touches of Raphael. The gallery was considerably thronged, and many of the visitors appeared to be from the country, ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... indeed. Come, Belle, make up your mind, and let us be off to America; and leave priests, humbug, learning, ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... easy to humbug those who are so eager to be humbugged as people are in this world of humbug—We show ourselves ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... fellow, rot! You think he's going, to guess that snake's riddles. Rot! Stuff and nonsense! Humbug! Get ...
— Turandot, Princess of China - A Chinoiserie in Three Acts • Karl Gustav Vollmoeller
... When pressed on these matters it seemed to them sufficient to say that they "thought they were good ideas." This engendered much vexation amongst the Australian officers, more especially as the Brigadier very often did not see his way clear to withstand the innovations. The immediate result was to humbug officers and men and negative many of the sound lessons ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... plausible tale with a view to tricking the people into entrusting them with power. The only possible way by which politicians as a class can be improved is the political and psychological education of the people, so that they may learn to detect a humbug. In England men have reached the point of suspecting a good speaker, but if a man speaks badly they think he must be honest. Unfortunately, virtue is not so widely diffused ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... "Humbug, man!" said Dick; "you're working yourself into a state of nervous excitement. Why, what the devil do you make of all that nonsense about a mysterious agent which would signal ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... your experience must have taught you that witchcraft is all humbug (imfeketu), and that before the English rule, the witch-doctor was simply the instrument of the chief for suppressing people who became ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... You are rushing into the fiery furnace, my good fellow, and you haven't the loins to run out again. There's a thousand francs; just let me take it in hand and manage the affair.' Very good! The banker then convokes the traders: 'My friends, let us go to work: write a prospectus! Down with humbug!' On that they get out the hunting-horns and shout and clamor,—'One hundred thousand francs for five sous! or five sous for a hundred thousand francs! gold mines! coal mines!' In short, all the clap-trap of commerce. We ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... picked it up, and turned it over to look at the title, at sight of which she said, with a little laugh, 'What a humbug you are, mother! You know you've never read a single ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... humbly thankful, are perhaps a little too apt to celebrate their joy in the face of the afflicted ones who have it not; and the afflicted ones only follow a general law in protesting that it is a very worthless thing, if not a complete humbug." This spirit of exclusiveness on the one side and of irascibility on the other may be greatly deplored, but who is there among us, I wonder, wholly innocent of blame? Mr. Saintsbury himself confesses to a silent chuckle of delight when he thinks of the dimly veiled censoriousness with which Peacock's ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... the villagers thought it had "burst," others that it had "burned out." Betsy said: "Whatever it was, it was a humbug;" and the wisest man in Whitefield could neither tell whence it came nor whither it went. One thing, however, was certain: Farmer Lathem said that never, since his orchard began to bear, had he gathered such a crop of apples as he did, despite ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... Anaheim who were enamored by the Misses Bimpa were skeptical of this, and affirmed that it was a "humbug," but this question will be settled in the evening. Meanwhile, the commotion around the circus is increasing each moment. From among the long, low wooden buildings surrounding the canvas circus there comes the roar of the lions and elephant; the parrots, fastened to rings hanging to the huts, ...
— Sielanka: An Idyll • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... part," said Sylvie, "a man tried to humbug me at the market wanting to know if I had seen him put on his shirt. Such bosh! There," she cried, interrupting herself, "that's a quarter to ten striking at the Val-de-Grace, and ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... should have heard the stuff he told me; the way in which he vouched for the truth of it all too, solemnly staking the lives of his children on his veracity! I stared at him in amazement, not knowing what to make of it: one moment I thought he must be out of his mind; the next I concluded he had been a humbug all along, an ape in a lion's skin. Oh, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... On my knees and fowl I fall: For greater grace and better gravy call. Vive l'Humbug!—that's to say, God bless ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... decoying the simple, the ignorant, well-intentioned, but deceived neighbours, to add their signatures to cases of which they know nothing, and of which the details are a series of bombast, falsehood, ignorance, and humbug. There are many of the cases which I have related to which I could have obtained the signatures of clergymen, Members of Parliament, magistrates, and other persons high in rank and station in life, without saying ...
— Observations on the Causes, Symptoms, and Nature of Scrofula or King's Evil, Scurvy, and Cancer • John Kent
... unknown man—too old to be able to refute the charge of senility were any one disposed to question the value of my statements—could announce to the world my great discovery a thousand times a day, and very properly the world would decline to believe in me. The world would cry humbug, and I should have been unable, had I failed to find you, to convince the world that I was not a humbug. With the discovery of your eye, all that is changed. I shall have an ally in you, and that is valuable for the reason ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... almost laughed in her face, and the black diamond eyes twinkled furiously as they turned away to hide their scornful amusement—so strong was the nun's conviction that the new benefactress was a humbug. The Princess looked at the names quite calmly after she had written them—Sister Saint Paul, Sister Giovanna, and Sister Marius—and asked whether she had seen any of them during her visit. But the Mother Superior answered that ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... that in the least," said Vernon with some heat. "I meant that if I hadn't met her she would have gone on being bored, and so should I. Don't think me a humbug, Miss Desmond. I am more sorry than I can say that I should have been the means of causing ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... and caution. In very truth a delightful bundle of paradox. Quick-witted and impatient, she had yet infinite toleration for the simpleton, and could on occasion suffer fools with a gladness quite unshared by her much gentler daughter or her husband. But the snob, the sycophant, and, above all, the humbug met with short shrift at her hands, and the insincere person hated her heartily. She spoke her mind with the utmost freedom on every possible occasion, and as she had plenty of brains and considerable shrewdness her remarks ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... him to a fresh effort, and he cried: "It's no good your trying to humbug me—none at all. I've got evidence—plenty of evidence! And I'm going to act on it, too. I'm going to hound you out of the Army and that jade of a wife of mine out of decent society. Do you think, because I don't spend four or five months every year ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... humbug yourself. You like her. You care for her very much. You are thrilling at this very moment with the remembrance of her lips to-night. Think of what life will be with her—life full of all that is sweet and fair—love and riches, and leisure for the highest ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... SCROOGE. Bah! Humbug! (He works at ledger. Finally drops his head on his arms and sleeps. The light of his candle goes out. Note: Scrooge might blow it out unseen ...
— The White Christmas and other Merry Christmas Plays • Walter Ben Hare
... Moundbuilder immortal, would be perpetuated. But the cherished hopes of Mr. Moundbuilder in this respect will never be realized, for the day is not far distant when earthly mortals will be able to reason and then he will be recognized simply as a vain-glorious old humbug. ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... Servants of ev'ry degree, In livery or out of it, listen to me! See what comes of lying!—don't join in the league To humbug your master or ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... everyone concerned. Frankly, the Green family exasperate me," declared Mrs. Fielding. "I can put up with Jack. He's such a smart, good-looking boy, and he can drive like the devil. But I've no use for the other two, and never shall have. I think Green's a humbug. Is he going to join your picnic-party on ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... mark out the really excellent boys. Ti'a is the man who has just been fined half his wages; he is a beautiful old man, the living image of 'Fighting Gladiator,' my favourite statue - but a dreadful humbug. I think we keep him on a little on account of his looks. This sign o marks those who have been two years or upwards in the family. I note all my old boys have the cross of honour, except Misifolo; well, poor dog, he does his best, I suppose. You should see him scour. It is a ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... were a monk and alone, possibly; but living in the world!—And then who but the Saints would prefer death to the smallest sin? Why then humbug Him ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... of Bulgaria is not a genuine thing; and he represents the whole part played by Prussia in these ancient disputes. That part is the very reverse of genuine; it is a piece of ludicrous and transparent humbug. If Prussia had any religion, it would be a northern perversion of Protestantism utterly distant from and indifferent to the controversies of Slavonic Catholics. But Prussia has no religion. For her there is no God; and Ferdinand is ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... be, in spite of toil or of fatigue, That humbug of all humbugs, the staid, inveterate "dig." Poem before Iadma of ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... is commonly supposed to be: it is hard work—harder than any but a growing boy can understand; it requires attention, and you are not strong enough to attend to your bodily growth, and to your lessons too. Besides, Latin and Greek are great humbug; the more people know of them the more odious they generally are; the nice people whom you delight in either never knew any at all or forgot what they had learned as soon as they could; they never turned to the classics after they were ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... himself had been the chief managing editor, tenor, Jack-of-all-trades, canard-seller, camarillist, politician, premier-Paris, fait-Paris, detache-attache, pamphleteer, translator, critic, euphuist, bravo, incense-bearer, guerillero, angler, humbug, and even, what was more serious, the banker of a paper of which he was the only, unique, and perpetual gendelettre, and which, so admirably written, cleverly conducted, and signed with so great a name, did not ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... delegates of the Georgia Convention. When I said that I hoped the day would soon come in which school-houses would be as numerous in Georgia as in Massachusetts, one of them answered: "Well, I hope it'll never come,—popular education is all a d—n humbug in my judgment"; whereunto the other responded, "That's my opinion, too." These are exceptional cases, I am aware, but they truly index the situation of thousands of persons. It is this general ignorance, and this general ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... humbug!" exclaimed Valero in utter indignation, "and may I ask if you have a tooth left ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... to it. I think she was quite right. There were several wicked Witches who caused a lot of trouble; but now they are all out of business and only the great Sorceress, Glinda the Good, is permitted to practice her arts, which never harm anybody. The Wizard of Oz, who used to be a humbug and knew no magic at all, has been taking lessons of Glinda, and I'm told he is getting to be a pretty good Wizard; but he is merely the assistant of the great Sorceress. I've the right to make a servant girl for my wife, you ...
— The Patchwork Girl of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... the whole project a humbug, and refusing to have anything to do with it, equipped himself with club and cutlass, and started off on a solitary excursion towards the south-easterly part of the island, which we had not yet explored. He returned in the afternoon with a glowing account ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... Oz was announced, and a dried-up, little, old man, clothed all in black, entered the drawing-room. His face was cheery and his eyes twinkling with humor, so Polly and Button-Bright were not at all afraid of the wonderful personage whose fame as a humbug magician had spread throughout the world. After greeting Dorothy with much affection, he stood modestly behind Ozma's throne and listened to the lively prattle ...
— The Road to Oz • L. Frank Baum
... true, but out of it hardly rises above the conceptions of a boarding-school Miss in her teens. She appears to us a kind of strong-minded old maid, but with her strong-mindedness greatly modified by the presumption as well as the sentimentality of romantic humbug. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... do who has stood grape-shot. Then they circulated reports about his having got drunk on different occasions, and having been caught drinking in secret; and some believed them, being of the same mind with the distiller, who asserted it to be mere humbug that any man could live without whiskey, and that wherever the croaking cold water society men did not drink in the daytime, they made up for it by drinking at night. These evil reports, however, fell dead after a little, and nobody ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... said in her severe way, "She is a virtuous woman, a youth like you should not utter ignorant jokes about women, especially about the humbler classes, to whom good reputation is everything." I began to see plainer than ever, that I could humbug mother ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... love with a man who didn't care a straw for me, and that I'm dying of love for him? And this is said to me by my own sister, who imagines that...that...that she's sympathizing with me!...I don't want these condolences and humbug!" ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... Newman, "if the old man turns out a humbug, you may do what you please. I wash my hands of the matter. For the girl herself, you may be at rest. I don't know what harm she may do to me, but I certainly can't hurt her. It seems to me," said Newman, "that you are very well matched. You are ...
— The American • Henry James
... Maybe some day I'll suddenly discover that He does exist. In that case, Mr. Savva, I thank you, but I'd rather not. Why should I? I live a nice, quiet existence. Of course, it's all a humbug, an imposition. But what business is it of mine? The people want to believe—let them. It wasn't I who ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... pretend to anything are the reverse of that which they pretend to. A man who sets up for a saint is sure to be a sinner, and a man who boasts that he is a sinner is sure to have some feeble, maudlin, sniveling bit of saintship about him which is enough to make him a humbug.—Bulwer-Lytton. ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... which Tommy Atkins is unanimous. Whether he lives up to them or not (and to expect him unflinchingly to live up to them in season and out of season is about as sensible as to expect him perpetually to live up to the photographs and anecdotes), we may take them as his ideal. He dislikes humbug: he tries to be polite. Could one sketch a sounder scaffolding on which to build all the odd divergencies—crankinesses and heroisms, stupidities and engagingnesses—which may go to make the edifice of an average decent soul's material, mental and ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... looks to de moment, and not beyond. Il boit. De German, he looks to de end. Er sauft. De Englishman, he sits down fresh and intends to get fuddled; but he is a hypocrite. He does not say de truth to hisself nor to nobody, he says, I will get fresh, when he means de odder ding. Big humbug. You understand?" ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... he learned to work. When he departed he carried away with him a list of his family, with his own name printed by his own hand at the bottom. I should add that he was plainly much of a humorist, and not a little of a humbug. He told us, for instance, that he was a person of exact sobriety; such being the obligation of his high estate: the commons might be sots, but the chief could not stoop so low. And not many days after he was to be observed in a state of smiling and lop-sided imbecility, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... admissible to be on the friendly terms on which I consider myself with you, and yet to be on such unfriendly ones that we should live close to each other and never meet!!!!![1] You write "tout a vous." Oh! you humbug! said I. No! no! it is really too bad. I should like to thank you 9000 times for all your efforts on my behalf, and to reproach you 20,000 that you came and went as you did. So all is a delusion! friendship, kingdom, empire; all is only a vapor which every breeze wafts into a ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826, Volume 1 of 2 • Lady Wallace
... passed indifferently well. An Englishman rarely suffers from ennui, and then only in his own country, when required to conform to what he calls "the humbug of society"; and the two officers, with their similar tastes, ideas, and dispositions, got on together admirably. It is not to be questioned that they were deeply affected by a sense of regret for their lost comrades, and astounded beyond measure ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... "economy." I don't know that he had ever taken up political science seriously, or that he had any preference for one kind or form of government over another. I repeat,—his radicalism was that of a humorist. He despised big-wigs, and pomp of all sorts, and, above all, humbug and formalism. But his radicalism was important as a sign that our institutions are ceasing to be picturesque; of which, if you consider his nature, you will see that his radicalism was a sign. And he did service to his cause. Not an abuse, whether from ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... inside her bar; the truth was, the good widow was perfectly well aware that her snug little free-hold and thriving little trade were quite as great objects of attraction as her delectable self, and acting on the same principle as that old humbug 'Elizabeth,' insanely called 'the good Queen Bess,' viz: the balancing opposite interests, she drew custom to her house and grist to her mill, without troubling herself as to selection from her numerous admirers, which, besides displeasing the others, would place another in authority ...
— Edward Barnett; a Neglected Child of South Carolina, Who Rose to Be a Peer of Great Britain,—and the Stormy Life of His Grandfather, Captain Williams • Tobias Aconite
... ludicrous. Indeed, my mother was amused—she had no Manx blood in her—but my father accepted U.T.'s assurance with the utmost confidence. His chivalrous nature, more deeply tinged than hers with Celtic tenderness, or the very finest kind of Celtic make-believe (Anglice—humbug; oh those English!), had no difficulty in accepting U.T.'s "passionately." Passion in U.T.! Well, to us it was a splendid joke. I sometimes wonder whether the vicar, too, at times, had lucid intervals of the bare, naked reality. He had a fine ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... not speak. He saw the light burning from his windows as he looked up from below. He was regretful and angry. At Terrapin's room he drank much raw brandy and sang a song. He even called the astute Terrapin a humbug, and toward midnight grew quarrelsome. They escorted him to his hotel door; the light was still burning in his room. He was sober and repentant when he had ascended the long stairs, though he counterfeited profound drunkenness ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... infected him. He had long since passed the stage in which women were a mystery to him: he had long since realized that unless a man's passions intervene, there is nothing more mysterious about women than about men. It was all humbug—all this mummery about intuitions and unerring perception and inscrutability. Women are all alike—all human—all susceptible to sheer, blatant flattery. The only difference in women is in the particular brand of flattery to which, as ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... linsey-woolsey, can only deal with a fraction of the life of man, talk goes fancy free and may call a spade a spade. It cannot, even if it would, become merely aesthetic or merely classical like literature. A jest intervenes, the solemn humbug is dissolved in laughter, and speech runs forth out of the contemporary groove into the open fields of nature, cheery and cheering, like schoolboys out of school. And it is in talk alone that we can learn our period and ourselves. In short, the first duty of a man is to speak; that ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... you like this. I'm not going to let you slip a second time. I was awake about it all last night. I don't care where you are, what your people are, nor very much whether you've kept quite clear of this medium humbug. I don't. You will in future. Anyhow. I've had a day and night to think it over. I had to come and try to find you. It's you. I've never forgotten you. Never. I'm not going to be sent back ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... relief to see the Abbe mount the pulpit stairs, portly but lightfooted, his black clerical surtout buttoned closely up to his chin, his round cleanshaven face wearing a pious but suggestive smile, his eyes twinkling with latent satire, and his whole aspect expressing, "Welcome excellent humbugs! I, a humbug myself, will proceed to expound Humbug!" His sermons were generally satires on religion,— satires delicately veiled, and full of the double-entendres so dear to the hearts of Parisians,—and their delight in him arose chiefly from never quite knowing what he meant to imply, or to enforce. Not ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... now and then broke forth; such as odious, horrid, detestable, shocking, HUMBUG. This last new-coined expression, which is only to be found in the nonsensical vocabulary, sounds absurd and disagreeable, whenever it is pronounced; but from the mouth of a lady it is, "shocking, ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... triennial, instead of septennial Parliaments; but not one word of any alteration in the suffrage;—not one of this faction was then bold or honest enough to support the Burdettite faction, even in their humbug of householder suffrage; and the consequence was, that the Burdettites, or little shopkeeper faction, made a great parade about how much further they were disposed to go than the Waithmanite, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... been pained by hearing the words 'humbug,' 'great advertizing establishment,' etc., applied to the New York Fair, as well as to fairs in general. Now, nothing could be more unjust than the first term; and as to the latter, we have only to say that, if human nature were perfect, fairs would be unnecessary, and a ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... your latest biographer; and one scarcely marvels at the inveteracy of their malice. It was not individual vanity alone, but the whole literary class that you assailed. "As a literary people," you wrote, "we are one vast perambulating humbug." After that declaration of war you died, and left your reputation to the vanities yet writhing beneath your scorn. They are writhing and writing still. He who knows them need not linger over the attacks and defences of your personal character; he will ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... my man! Do you think that this is a performance in a booth, and that I am to be taken in by all the humbug of the professional mesmerist? Do as I tell ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... 'You dear old humbug,' she cried, cutting short the sentence that neither of them quite understood, 'I believe you've known ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... Things as They Ought to Be is a humbug. There is but one God, and He is the God of Things ...
— 21 • Frank Crane
... shredded biscuit from beside the day's accumulations of papers upon his heaped-up desk. He laid upon himself the burden of labor, examining and cross-examining men for hours upon a single point of essential fact—quick to detect fraud and intolerant of humbug,— but infinitely patient with those who were merely dull, evading no drudgery, and, above all, never evading the dear pains of building-up ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... Allen a hero or a humbug? a patriot or a pretender? Ask Vermont and she cries "Nulli secundus!" Ask New York and ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... said the professor. "There's no imposition there. The Arabs would have nothing to find out, and their suspicions would be allayed at once. Then, too, you could humbug them grandly with a few of your modern doctors' tools—one of those double-barrelled stethoscopes, for ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... resided Charles Incledon, the rival of his neighbour Braham, whose singing he was wont to designate as "Italianised humbug;" declaring that no one but himself, Charles Incledon, knew how to sing a British ballad: and it must be admitted, that "The Storm" and "Black-eyed Susan," as sung by Incledon, produced a deep impression on the public mind. He was a native of Cornwall, and the ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... dozen hands. Well, afterwhile they stopped the fuss, An' some one kindly parted us. All beat an' cuffed an' clawed an' scratched, An' needin' both our faces patched, Each started hum a different way; An' what o' Liza, do you say, Why, Liza—little humbug—dern her, Why, she 'd gone home ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... fool! Do as I tell you. It isn't a lie—only a piece of conventional humbug which everybody understands. There, please!" His tone of entreaty was more disagreeable to her than his roughness. All the pride and rigidity of her Puritan temperament was up in arms against the indefinable something which it had long ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... may perhaps be more liable to go sour, but I am far from considering sour milk an unwholesome food; whole nations have no other food and are none the worse, and all the array of absorbents seems to me mere humbug. There are constitutions which do not thrive on milk, others can take it without absorbents. People are afraid of the milk separating or curdling; that is absurd, for we know that milk always curdles in the stomach. This is how it becomes sufficiently solid to nourish ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... turning into domestic beings, would be a failure, a trouble, an interruption, a desecration, and a bore; to get married merely to go on as they were at present, would, in the eyes of Alfieri, have been a profanation of the poetry of their situation, a perfectly unnecessary piece of humbug. ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... sympathies, and at the same time turning it into a wild, wonderful, remote, fairy-land region, where all sorts of poetical things may take place without the slightest difficulty. Of course Shakespeare would not have done thus, but that he saw quite through the grand critical humbug which makes the proper effect of a work of art depend upon our belief in the actual occurrence of the thing represented. But your "critic grave and cool," I suppose, is one who, like Wordsworth's "model of ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... pleasure and edification, particularly as it seems to us to be strongly contrasted with an appearance, in all the other chimneys, of an indefinable something, only to be expressed by the interesting word "humbug." Fig. 7 a is a chimney of Cumberland, and the north of Lancashire. It is, as may be seen at a glance, only applicable at the extremity of the roof, and requires a bent flue. It is built of unhewn stones, in the same manner as the Westmoreland cottages; ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... they were called, they almost missed being married altogether. Bibi-the-Smoker having disappeared. Boche discovered him outside smoking his pipe. Well! They were a nice lot inside there to humbug people about like that, just because one hadn't yellow kid gloves to shove under their noses! And the various formalities—the reading of the Code, the different questions to be put, the signing of all the documents—were ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... collecting materials for new bows and arrows, whips, boats, guns, and four-in-hand harness, against the return of Ulysses. Little did they dream that the hero, once back from Troy and all its onsets, would scornfully condemn their clumsy but laborious armoury as rot and humbug and only fit for kids! This, with many another like awakening, was mercifully hidden from them. Could the veil have been lifted, and the girls permitted to see Edward as he would appear a short three months hence, ragged of attire and lawless of tongue, a ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... you after, then. Seriously, what are you going to those barbarous islands for—putting friendship and all such regards out of the question? Wheat takes you there,—without humbug? You must excuse me—but you are a very extraordinary person to look ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... humbug, he was not nearly so dismayed as one might expect. For that matter, neither was Jacqueline. She inquired of Driscoll how he knew more about stage lines than the natives themselves. Because the natives themselves ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... society wagged their wise heads, and cast mingled glances of pity, wonder, ridicule or disdain upon the poor deluded victim of the "latest humbug." Even the select circles heard of it as a report finally reached the daily paper, which appeared with a glaring head and ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... among the people of Southern Khorassan is to offer one's food in turn to everybody present and say, "Bis-millah," before commencing to eat it yourself. Although a ridiculous piece of humbug, it is generally my custom to fall in with the peculiar ways of the country, and for days past have invariably offered my food to scores of people whom I knew beforehand would not take it. The lack of courtesy at this hamlet in exacting payment in advance would seem naturally to preclude ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... any of that professional humbug, Pepps," rejoined her ladyship. "You doctors know a common disorder as soon as you see it, only you think it looks wise not to ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... along the river-banks. Even the mayor of the city was present in his carriage among the expectant crowd. The clock struck the hour of noon, but the little Delaware skiff was nowhere to be seen; and, as the sun declined from the zenith, the people gradually dispersed, muttering, "Another humbug!" ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... nothing of your constitution, while I can soon set you on your feet again. I am sick of the Institute and of Moron-val, and never wish to see either more." Thereupon the doctor launched forth in a philippic against the school which supported him. Moronval was a thorough humbug, he never paid anybody, and every one was giving him up; the affair of Madou had done him great injury; and finally Dr. Hirsch went so far as to compliment Jack on ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... forgetfulness, and Plato has the added glory of that acquired beauty, that bust of the Indian Bacchus which is now indissolubly mingled with his tradition. They have passed into the world of the ideal, and every humbug takes his freedoms with their names. But Machiavelli, more recent and less popular, is still all human and earthly, a fallen brother—and at the same time that nobly dressed and nobly ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... deferential to your little whims; will unhesitatingly accept your report of your own sensations and your hypotheses as to their cause; and, Esmeralda, when once your eyes behold that model man, be content, and go and take lessons of another, for either he is a pretentious humbug, careless of everything except his fees, or he ...
— In the Riding-School; Chats With Esmeralda • Theo. Stephenson Browne
... we know who was selling us to the Tuxedo people, we can protect ourselves hereafter," declared Mr. Wheatcroft. "And in spite of your trying to humbug me into believing you guilty, Major, I'm willing to let your son ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews
... in the subject abroad is also now fairly developing. The discovery was at first looked upon as a humbug, but this view is giving way before the facts presented in the local papers. The leading journals of the country have sent special correspondents to write up the subject. The New York Tribune and Herald, Harper's Weekly, the Springfield Republican and other papers, ...
— The American Goliah • Anon.
... bit of a humbug with it. I thought so, and the doctor endorses my ideas. He likes being ill and nursed and petted with the best food, so as to keep out of the hard work. I don't like the fellow a bit. There, you've talked enough now, ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... Repeal," 'Twas merely to teach them the "Right about wheel," By the word of command from the Saxon to run, As your leader would fly from a bailiff or dun; In short, since a miss is as good as a mile, Swear the whole was a humbug for ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... whether I ever get to know anything—but I want to work out something in figures—something that hasn't got to do with human beings. I don't want people particularly. In some ways, Henry, I'm a humbug—I mean, I'm not what you all take me for. I'm not domestic, or very practical or sensible, really. And if I could calculate things, and use a telescope, and have to work out figures, and know to a fraction where I was wrong, I should be perfectly happy, and I believe ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... intimate friend of mine, and used to dine with me regularly every Sunday in Edinburgh. He was a Lake poet, a profound metaphysician, and one of the most virtuous men that ever lived. As a metaphysician, Dugald Stewart was a humbug to him. Brown had real talents for the thing. You must recognize, in reading Brown, many of those arguments with which I have so often reduced you to silence in metaphysical discussions. Your discovery of Brown is amusing. Go on! ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell |
