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Impostor   Listen
noun
Impostor  n.  One who imposes upon others; a person who assumes a character or title not his own, for the purpose of deception; a pretender. "The fraudulent impostor foul."
Synonyms: Deceiver; cheat; rogue. See Deceiver.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Impostor" Quotes from Famous Books



... Joanna Southcot and Fanny Wright; not that the race commenced with the former, or has terminated with the latter; the records of history supply us with examples of "lying augurs," in every period previously to the career of the Impostor of Mecca, and our daily experience furnishes us with proofs that the tribe is by no means extinct. As in religion, so has it been, and still continues, in philosophy, and the whole circle of science: pretenders to excellence have started ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... before returning home. He seems to have come with several good introductions, especially to natives of high rank, and must be wealthy, as he is lavish in his expenditure. My husband, however, is not quite satisfied about him, and is making inquiries to ascertain whether or not he is an impostor. Numbers come to this country expecting to find a fine field for the exercise of their talents. They now and then, however, have to beat a precipitate retreat. I would not willingly have allowed my sweet friend, Edda, to dance with him, ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston

... here, impostor? So old, and yet so wicked,—Lie for gain? And gain so short as age ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden

... She, first of all, was gone with the Vision. An adventurer he had possibly been; but an adventurer of romance, carried high by his splendid faith, and regarding his marriage with the Princess but as a crowning of his romantic destiny. But now he beheld himself only as a base-born impostor. His Princess was gone from his life. ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke

... inclined to say more than once of late!" she answered. "I'm beginning to suspect that the man who calls himself Sir Gilbert Carstairs is not Sir Gilbert Carstairs at all! He's an impostor!" ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher

... proved successful, I could feel that part of the creating power was mine; for had I not trusted him? Let a man realize that there is some one who has faith in him, and the battle is half won. Even suppose he were to prove the recreant and the impostor predicted, the world would not be able to jeer at me; I could hug my wretched secret, and none would be the wiser. Decidedly, I was to be envied in the acquisition of this new interest. It would be almost ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant

... English houses, has not been blessed with a princely private fortune. Not far from Woodstock is Minster Lovel, near the village of Whitney. Some fragments of the house remain, and it has its tale of interest, like all these old houses. Lord Lovel was one of the supporters of the impostor Simnel against Henry VII., and his rebellion being defeated in the decisive battle at Stoke in Nottinghamshire, Lord Lovel escaped by unfrequented roads and arrived home at night. He was so disguised that he was only known by a single ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook

... friend, I told you from the first, that I would not believe in your vampyre; and I tell you now, that if one was to come and lay hold of me by the throat, as long as I could at all gasp for breath I would tell him he was a d——d impostor." ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest

... thinks, or thought some time ago," said Wickersham. "My dear girl, she can't dance at all. She is simply a disreputable young woman, who has been run out of her own town, as she ought to be run out of this, as an impostor, if nothing else." He turned to Mrs. Wentworth: "A man who brought such a woman to a place like this ought to be ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page

... and fire came into my heart. I pushed them from me on every side with the strength of a giant. And then I flung it on the canvas, crying I know not what,—not to them, but to Him. Shrink not from me, little sister, for I blasphemed. I called Him Impostor, Deceiver, Galilean; and still with all my might, with all the fury of my soul, I set Him there for every man to see, not knowing what I did. Everything faded from me but that Face; I saw it alone. The crowd came round me with shouts and threats to drag me ...
— The Little Pilgrim: Further Experiences. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant

... what wild chance at such unwonted hour I find you on this spot, admits not of inquiry now—but for this fair impostor, resign her to my care—with me her safety is at ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter

... was met by one who claimed to be a prophetess of Pele, and threatened her with the displeasure of the goddess, should she come into her domains on this hostile errand. She was told that she would certainly perish if she went to the crater. Kapiolani disregarded the impostor, and went on. Those ohelo berries which I spoke of in my last story were sacred to Pele, and no one dared to eat them unless they had first offered some to the goddess. But Kapiolani gathered and ate them. "She and her company of about eighty," said Mr. Bingham, "accompanied by a missionary, descended ...
— Scenes in the Hawaiian Islands and California • Mary Evarts Anderson

... trading outpost, had been killed and his goods despoiled by a reckless Redwood packer. The murderer had coolly said that he was only "serving out" the tool of a fraudulent imposture on the Government, and that he dared the arch-impostor himself, the so-called Minyo chief, to help himself. A wave of ungovernable fury surged up to the very tent-poles of Elijah's lodge and demanded vengeance. Elijah trembled and hesitated. In the thraldom of his selfish passion for Mrs. Dall he dared not contemplate a collision with her countrymen. ...
— A Drift from Redwood Camp • Bret Harte

... words, and perverted the sense of the prophets, and sowed difference and discord among the people; and the cherished vision, upon which the nation had lived and grown, fled like a dream. The Gallilean impostor planted himself upon the soil, and his roots of poison struck down, and his broad limbs shot, abroad, and half the nation was lost. Its unity was gone, its peace lost, its heart broken, its hope, though living still, yet obscured ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware

... "You!—you vile impostor! You beggar and vagabond! You do not possess an onza of gold," roared Garcia, bursting forth into a fit of vituperation. "Don't listen to him; don't heed him; it's a trick—a plan. I take possession. The money was to be ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn

... and confounded the vulgar. But he was not, it seems, so successful in his practice when out of London: not long before his death, he was committed by the Mayor of Shrewsbury to the common House of Correction in that town, as a vagrant and impostor. When or how he died does ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 473., Saturday, January 29, 1831 • Various

... opinion of me—and I have no right to complain of it in my own person—I should just like to ask you one question about another," said Mr. Drake: "Do you in your heart believe that Jesus Christ was an impostor?" ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald

... that you are what you claim to be. Mr. Bince has known from the start that you are incompetent and incapable of accomplishing the results father thinks you are accomplishing. Now that you know that I know you to be an impostor, what do you ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... on his knees, and his straw hat resting on the handkerchief, Baltic looked at his flushed host calmly and solemnly without moving a muscle, or even winking an eye. Brace did not know whether to treat the ex-sailor as a madman or as an impudent impostor. The ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume

... covering, has its more delicate needs, robbed of which it perishes more slowly and subtly but as surely as when frozen or starved. One of these subtle but absolute conditions of health is light. Without light the body of a blind man pines as pines a tree without light. Tell that to the impostor physical science deep in the crustaceonidunculae and ignorant of the A B C of man. Without light man's body perishes, with insufficient light it droops; and here in all these separate shambles is insufficient light, a defect in our system which co-operates with this individual ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade

... witticisms, one by one, calmly, critically, dispassionately. It was no good; we could not discover any salt in them. And as only a genuine gift of humour could have saved Uncle Thomas,—for he pretended to naught besides,—he was reluctantly writ down a hopeless impostor. ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame

... oath, 'I am your master, and you are my slave. Hesitate to obey me in any thing which I may desire you to do, and I will denounce you to Mr. Hedge as a vile adulteress and impostor, unworthy to become his wife, even if you had no husband living. Dare to refuse my slightest wish, and I will prevent your marriage under pain of being sent to the State Prison ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn

... How could it have been otherwise? And yet.... But what does that matter? I stood there before him, near enough to be touched and surely not looking like an impostor. All I know is, that he put out both his hands then to me, I may say flung them out at me, with the greatest readiness and warmth, and that I seized and pressed them, feeling that I was finding again a little of what I thought was lost to me for ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad

... at the thought, and shame, too, for having so misjudged her. 'If I had ever received it,' he said, 'I hope you will believe that you would have seen me before this; but I asked for news of you from that burly old impostor of a guard, and he—he gave me no intelligible message' (Mark remembered suddenly the official's extempore effort), 'and ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey

... limbs have ta'en from me The power to move," said he, "I have an arm At liberty for such employ." To whom Was answer'd: "When thou wentest to the fire, Thou hadst it not so ready at command, Then readier when it coin'd th' impostor gold." ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... effort of the will, old fellow—for I really could not stand that. It was glorious, delightful—that war-making in town; but there was a thorn in it. I was ashamed of myself. 'Tom Herbert you are not a soldier, you are an impostor,' I said; 'you are young, healthy, as good food for powder as anybody else, and yet here you are, safely laid away in a bomb-proof, while your friends are fighting. Wake, rouse yourself, my friend! The only way to regain the path of rectitude is to ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke

... began to flag it would degrade rapidly, until, in three days, a far fiercer hatred against Christ would have been moulded. For observe: into what state of mind would this marvel have been received? Into any good-will towards Christ, which previously had been defeated by the belief that He was an impostor in the sense that He pretended to a power of miracles which in fact He had not? By no means. The sense in which Christ had been an impostor for them was in assuming a commission, a spiritual embassy with appropriate ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... up to the pagoda. The second day of the feast I was making for the entrance with a couple of naval officers I had picked up at the Club, and my man, Moung Gway, following as close as he could keep in the crowd. Just as we were going up the steps, the old impostor challenged me, and, partly to show my friends what the game was like—for they were new to the country—I stopped and found a coin for him. He poured the usual dollop of ink into the boy's hand, and, by George, sir, next minute I was staring at the very thing I'd seen a score ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... answered Huanacocha, "my first and most serious charge against the young man who sits there, and whom we have for these many months past honoured and served as the re-incarnated Manco Capac, the father and founder of our nation, is that he is an impostor, with no right or title whatsoever to the service and reverence which ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood

... impose upon us, madam. And as for Mr. Cressy"—he fixed Harry with a look—"I could not accuse him of being an impostor since we have met in the sacred limits ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain

... He runs down none but those which he is certain are fera natura, mere natural animals, that belong to him that can catch them. He can do no feats without the co-operating assistance of the chouse, whose credulity commonly meets the impostor half-way, otherwise nothing is done; for all the craft is not in the catching (as the proverb says), but the better half at least in being catched. He is one that, like a bond without fraud, covin, and further delay, is void and of none effect, otherwise does stand and remain in ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... Grandison[31153]; until the very end, he keeps his mask, not only in public but also to himself and in his inmost conscience. The mask, indeed, has adhered to his skin; he can no longer distinguish one from the other; never did an impostor more carefully conceal intentions and acts under sophisms, and persuade himself that the mask was his face, and that in telling a lie, he told ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... been unable to conjecture what would be the nature of Lord Blandamer's answer. He had thought of many possibilities, of the impostor's flight, of lavish offers of hush-money, of passionate appeals for mercy, of scornful and indignant denial. But in all his imaginings he had never imagined this. Ever since he had sent his own letter, ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner

... know all three of us. We know you, Nacena—even to your tenderest secret; which has been revealed to us in the dialogue just held between yourself and Mam Shebotha. Every word of that we've heard, with the lies she's been telling you. And let me tell you, that of all the wicked impostor's promises, there's but one she could have kept—that to rid you of her you deem a rival. And she could only have done that by doing murder; which was what she meant by ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid

... dying Apostle, and its miraculous virtues soon obtained great fame. It was eventually set up over an altar in the Church of the Madonna, which was afterwards erected on the Great Mount, and there it still exists. A Brahman impostor professed to give an interpretation of the inscription as relating to the death of St. Thomas, etc., and this was long accepted. The cross seemed to have been long forgotten, when lately Mr. Burnell turned his attention to these and other like relics in Southern India. He has shown the inscription ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... Gibbon who said, "It may be expected that I should balance his faults and his virtues, that I should decide whether the title of enthusiast or impostor more properly belongs to that extraordinary man.... At the distance of twelve centuries, I darkly contemplate his shade ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks

... grasping at the fragments of the caliphate. At first he professed to rule only with the advice of a council formed of the nobles, but when his power became established he dispensed with this show of republican government, and then gave himself the appearance of a legitimate title by protecting an impostor who professed to be the caliph Hisham II. When Abd-ul-Qasim died in 1042 he had created a state which, though weak in itself, was strong as compared to the little powers about it. He had made his family the recognized leaders of the Mahommedans ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... that it would not do to stare at him. The instant she began to do so, he began to fidget, and turned his back to her. It had made her lose her temper for a moment, and declare aloud as her conviction that he was after all an impostor, and saw as well ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald

... Jesus Christ, and take their stand for or against Him? If you think well of Him, why not speak well of Him and range yourselves on His side? And if you think ill of Him, and believe Him to be an impostor, and that He did not die to save the world, why not lift up your voice and say you are against Him? It would be a happy day for Christianity if men would just take sides—if we could know positively who is really for Him and who ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser

... resumed his poetical employments. Besides various translations from the French and Italian, he had sketched a tragedy on the history of Perkin Warbeck, and finished two acts of one on that of a kindred but more fortunate impostor, Dimitri of Russia. His mind, it would appear, was also frequently engaged with more solemn and sublime ideas. The universe of human thought he had now explored and enjoyed; but he seems to have found no permanent contentment in any of its provinces. ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle

... Sydney Cove was for some time amused with an account of the existence and discovery of a gold mine; and the impostor had ingenuity enough to impose a fabricated tale on several of the officers for truth. He pretended to have found it at some distance down the harbour; and, offering to conduct an officer to the spot, a boat was provided; but immediately on landing, having previously ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins

... the early ages of the world, who sought to unite with the honours of the sage the mysterious reputation of the magician. Epimenides, numbered by some among the seven wise men, was revered throughout Greece as one whom a heavenlier genius animated and inspired. Devoted to poetry, this crafty impostor carried its prerogatives of fiction into actual life; and when he declared—in one of his verses, quoted by St. Paul in his Epistle to Titus—that "the Cretans were great liars," we have no reason to exempt the venerable accuser ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... it? You're as big a honourable gent now as ever you was; but, if you was to go to your cousin, sir, he'd call you a impostor." ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn

... you believe him, Rodd. He's a dilatory old impostor. I don't believe he means for me to go at all. By the way, did you have the men up and give them that ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn

... Halsey," she said. "Miss Innes, there are a great many things you will never understand, I am afraid. I am an impostor on your sympathy, because I—I stay here and let you lavish care on me, and all the time I know you are going to ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... the Corsicans, with whom Johnson loved to dine: Douglas, Bishop of Salisbury, who wrote against Hume and edited Clarendon; Savage, the poet of mysterious birth whose homeless life he sometimes shared and finally recorded: George Psalmanazar, the converted impostor, an even more mysterious person, whom Johnson reverenced and said he "sought after" more than any man: booksellers like Cave and Davies and the brothers Dilly: scholarly lawyers like Sir William Scott, afterwards ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey

... and regimen are the happy hunting ground of the quack and that sort of volunteer specialist, half-expert, half-impostor, who flourishes in the absence of worked out and definite knowledge. The general mass of the medical profession, equipped with a little experience and a muddled training, and preposterously impeded ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells

... been satisfactorily arranged, and every precaution had been taken to prevent the detection of Paul as an impostor, and engaged as he had been, Mascarin had no time to turn his attention to the marriage of Sabine and De Croisenois. The famous Limited Company, with the Marquis as chairman, had, too, to be started, the shares of which were ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau

... cultured man of science, the real M.D. of Cambridge University and owner of those other letters of attainment, was the drunken wastrel who had sunk low enough to serve as the impostor's ghost. If G. de Boursy-Williams, of all those lying capitals, were a member of the London Pharmaceutical Society and properly-qualified dentist, which perhaps might be the case, he certainly possessed no other claim upon the confidence of his fellow-creatures, sick or well. Yet ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... New-Yorker, male or female, is powerless against the charms of aristocracy. The "foreign nobleman" is welcomed everywhere, feted, petted, and allowed almost any privilege he chooses to claim—and he is far from being very modest in this respect; and by and by he is found out to be an impostor, probably the valet of some gentleman of rank in Europe. Then society holds up its hands in holy horror, and vows it always did suspect him. The men in society are weak enough in this respect; but the women are most frequently ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... have handed in my commission. I have nothing more to do with you or your schemes, whatever they may be. But I came here to find you and to tell you this one thing. Felicia says that you are her uncle, she scouts the idea of your being an impostor, she speaks of you as tenderly and affectionately as a girl well could. That is all very well. Yet, in the face of it, I am here to impress this upon you. I love your niece, Mr. Delora,—some day or other I mean to make her my wife,—and I will not have her dragged into anything which is ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... individuals—"a Person named Hopkins, who appeared in a Lieutenant's Uniform and committed many fraudulant Actions and Scandalous Abuses in raising Men," as he said, "for the Navy." Two months later another impostor of the same type appeared at Birmingham, where he scattered broadcast a leaflet, headed with the royal arms and couched in the following seductive terms: "Eleven Pounds for every Able Seaman, Five Pounds for every ordinary Seaman, ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson

... folk with clear memories, and I believe that he escaped detection in a miraculous way. His untitled country gentleman became a baronet, the injured heroine was similarly moved up on the social scale, and the noble effort came forth with a fresh name, while the knowing old impostor chuckled in his garret and pouched his pittance. I believe the funny soul has passed away; but really there are many very pretentious persons who do little more than vary his methods unconsciously. Poor James Grant delighted many a schoolboy, and perhaps his best work was never quite so ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman

... take it—having, as might appear, the much more attractive resource of regarding her visitant as a mere masquerading person, an impudent impostor. On the face of the matter moreover it wasn't fair to believe till one heard; and to hear in such a case was to hear Godfrey himself. Whatever she had tried to imagine about him she hadn't arrived at anything so belittling as an idiotic secret marriage with a dyed ...
— The Marriages • Henry James

... found the clothes, and, being a desperate character and in needy circumstances, had written the letter for purposes of extortion. Of this offence only was he found guilty, and condemned, as a vagrant and impostor, to a few months' imprisonment. By the American laws no severer punishment could be awarded. The one, however, was far from satisfying the public. There was something so infernal in the malignant sneer ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various

... escaped?" she asked eagerly. "No, there he is!" she pointed to Captain Rudstone. "Liar, thief, impostor!" she said, half-hysterically. "You are unmasked at last—and by a ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon

... turned out to be an impostor after all? Then Dunbar had better treat with him. The chain of evidence was pretty strong, but there might be ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan

... BUTTERMERE (3 syl.), Mary Robinson, who married John Hatfield, a heartless impostor executed for forgery at ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... of London."[31] No doubt the bishop may have been somewhat arbitrary. It was his privilege under the procedure of the high commission court, and he was dealing with one whom he deemed a very evident impostor. In fine, a verdict was rendered against the two clergymen. They were deposed from the ministry and put in close prison.[32] So great was the stir they had caused that in 1599 Samuel Harsnett, chaplain ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein

... you appear to extenuate some cases, and exaggerate others. Impostor, indeed!—M. Andrea Cavalcanti, or rather M. Benedetto, is nothing more nor less than ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... Judith's quivering palm. "Bruce is talking. Oh, isn't he dear, to say nice things of each of us. It's like commencement time, Ju, isn't it? All the good little girls get prizes, but I wish he wouldn't go back to that honorable mention of mine. I feel like an impostor." ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther

... exasperated beyond measure, putting out our tongues, crazy for the water that he had held to our mouths, the Governor arrived, dropped into a chair, hid his face in his hands, and, before we had time to speak to him, exclaimed: "Kill me, kill me! I am a miserable impostor. The combinazione has fallen through. Pechero! the combinazione has fallen through!" And he cried and sobbed, threw himself on his knees, tore out his hair by handfuls and rolled on the carpet; he called ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... to Phoebe that Randolf was no impostor, but warned her against assuming his consent. She suspected that Owen at least guessed the cause of these inquiries, and it kept her aloof from the Holt. When Miss Charlecote spoke of poor Owen's want of spirits, discretion told her that she was not the person to enliven him; and the consciousness ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... rope around the impostor's neck, and when the party left the castle they journeyed all through the kingdom of Auriel, and at every town or city they came to the reformed thief would cry ...
— The Enchanted Island of Yew • L. Frank Baum

... revealed by Ormuzd to Zoroaster. If more closely pressed, however, they would have to admit that they cannot understand one word of the sacred writings in which they profess to believe, nor could they give any reason why they believe Zoroaster to have been a true prophet, and not an impostor. 'As a body,' says Mr. Dadabhai Naoroji, 'the priests are not only ignorant of the duties and objects of their own profession, but are entirely uneducated, except that they are able to read and write, and that, also, often very imperfectly. ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller

... convince you that I am no impostor? I swear, by God who made, by Christ who redeemed me, and by His holy mother, the Blessed Virgin, that I am the Marchioness of Strozzi, the unhappy prisoner of yonder gloomy castle. It is impossible that you can be so cruel as to deliver me into the hands of its wicked lord! A woman that ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach

... and kissed them; fished from the platform and landed mud-cats that outweighed me—and so on, all the customary marvels. But not in the customary way. I was cautious at first, and watchful, being afraid the professor would discover that I was an impostor and drive me from the platform in disgrace; but as soon as I realized that I was not in danger, I set myself the task of terminating Hicks's usefulness as a subject, and ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain

... Himself looked upon as an impostor, a seditious person, a blasphemer, one possessed by the devil? Did they not even take up stones to cast at him? Yet, He cursed not those who cursed Him; but repaid their maledictions with blessings, possessing His ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus

... thought themselves highly fortunate in the presence of a Deputy who did no worse than harangue and put their pork in requisiton.—Unfortunately, however, before the repast of sausages could be prepared, a hue and cry reached the place, that this gracious Representant was an impostor! He was bereft of his dignities, conveyed to prison, and afterwards tried by the Tribunal Revolutionnaire at Paris; but his Counsel, by insisting on the mildness with which he had "borne his faculties," ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady

... made London laugh by his frantic attempts to prove that he was alive. Then appeared an elaborate "Vindication of Isaac Bickerstaff," which proved by the infallible stars that Partridge was dead, and that the astrologer now in his place was an impostor. This joke was copied twenty-five years later by Franklin in his Poor ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long

... direct dictation of the Deity; yet in England near forty years ago Orton had a huge army of devotees and incorrigible adherents, many of whom remained stubbornly unconvinced after their fat god had been proven an impostor and jailed as a perjurer, and to-day Mrs. Eddy's following is not only immense, but is daily augmenting in numbers and enthusiasm. Orton had many fine and educated minds among his adherents, Mrs. Eddy has had the ...
— Is Shakespeare Dead? - from my Autobiography • Mark Twain

... debts at the time Savage died. So much Dr. Johnson admits; but he forgets to mention the name of this long suffering friend. It was Pope. Meantime, let us not be supposed to believe the lying legend of Savage; he was doubtless no son of Lady Macclesfield's, but an impostor, who would not ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey

... this all very patiently, and went away with the air of a detected impostor, and soon got back safely to ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... my park!" he cried in a shrill falsetto, "or I'll send for the constable to turn you off. Bah! You came to steal. You're no nephew of mine; I disown you! You're a common cheat—a swindler—an impostor! Go!" ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby

... plan to divide my life amongst the various large cities of Europe, changing from time to time, and constantly endeavouring to seize again the thread that had escaped me, and if possible to discover and unmask the vile impostor who had destroyed my life's happiness. I may, perhaps, some day write down the various and strange adventures that I have met with during these researches, and in my wandering course of life. In this portfolio, however, I will put nothing but what relates to any further discoveries ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various

... know Richard is living, and that he has not killed him, and in that way he thinks to escape punishment, by proving that Peter also is living, and is himself. Do you see how it is? He has chosen to live here an impostor rather than to live in hiding as an outcast, and is trading on his likeness to his cousin to bear him out. I had hoped that it was all a detective's lie, got up for the purpose of getting hold of the reward money, but now I see it ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine

... plain and certain, we shall add a story of a notable impostor, or ventriloquist, from the testimony of Mr. Ady, which we have had confirmed from the mouth of some courtiers, that both saw and knew him, and is this:—It hath been (saith he) credibly reported, that there was a man in the court of King James his days, that ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... Mussulman creed pleased him well. He admired Mahomet as one of those rare beings, who, by individual genius and daring, have produced mighty and permanent alterations in the world. The General's assertion of his own belief in the inspiration of the Arab impostor, was often repeated in the sequel; and will ever be appreciated, as it was at the time by his own soldiery—whom indeed he had addressed but the day before in language sufficiently expressive of his ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart

... the greater share of truth? Surely wisdom; for pleasure is the veriest impostor in the world, and the perjuries of lovers ...
— Philebus • Plato

... can only be called "cultivated," from the fact that they do not know what true culture is, nor are they able to recognize it when they see it. They are like a person lacking in all artistic sense, who wishes to buy pictures—at the mercy of every impostor. ...
— Letters to a Daughter and A Little Sermon to School Girls • Helen Ekin Starrett

... frantic goose-notes and the cornets sounded as if made of anything other than silver. The commodious court room was, despite the outer inclemency of road and weather, packed with men and women who stood up and yelled a welcome that for the moment dazed the impostor; but he recovered his nerve and mischievousness instantly, and no actor ever fell into his part more completely than did he. The Judge was ponderous, but Jimmy went him one better. The Judge "threw a chest" when he had an audience, but Jimmy swelled ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton

... feeling and kindly impulse, not of abstract principles. They gave their cheerful alms to the mendicants, and spread a bounteous board for their neighbours. Fools that they were! How is it that they did not recognize the mendicant to be an impostor and a drone, or bethink them that the money with which they feasted their neighbour might have purchased a field? It was because they were warm-hearted, warm-blooded men, and not mere calculating machines. They were ...
— The Corporation of London: Its Rights and Privileges • William Ferneley Allen

... Pentecost, called upon the Jews to repent (Acts 2:14-40), he virtually called upon them to change their minds and their views regarding Christ. They had considered Christ to be a mere man, a blasphemer, an impostor. The events of the few preceding days had proven to them that He was none other than the righteous Son of God, their Saviour and the Saviour of the world. The result of their repentance or change of mind would be that they ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans

... published as modern, would have instantly found their proper place in company with Blackmore's Alfred and Wilkie's Epigoniad, were pronounced to be fifteen hundred years old, and were gravely classed with the Iliad. Writers of a very different order from the impostor who fabricated these forgeries," &c., &c. Our first objection to these criticisms is their undue strength and decidedness of language, which proclaims prejudice and animus on the part of the writer. Macaulay here speaks like a heated haranguer or Parliamentary partizan, ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, November 1875 • Various

... as if all that must have happened to some other man. He felt like a double of himself, taking over positions and prerogatives in which he was a complete impostor. ...
— The Great Gray Plague • Raymond F. Jones

... something odd about Sheridan. One day, at dinner, he was slightly praising that pert pretender and impostor, Lyttelton (the Parliamentary puppy, still alive, I believe). I took the liberty of differing from him; he turned round upon me, and said, 'Is that your real opinion?' I confirmed it. Then said he, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron

... creditable book clubs never employ soliciting agents, and rarely, if ever, offer their publications for sale outside of the membership. Any one, therefore, representing himself as an authorized agent of a book club may usually be branded as an impostor. Most book clubs print only such number of copies of each publication as are subscribed and paid for by members in advance, and the funds thus advanced are used to pay the cost ...
— Book-Lovers, Bibliomaniacs and Book Clubs • Henry H. Harper

... Roy, indignantly wiggling in the officer's strong grasp, "can't you see that this is all a mistake? If you hadn't grabbed me, I could have caught that impostor." ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham

... and then only he went in search of the American, but did not find him, and after a certain amount of search and enquiry he was walking along with overcast brow, thinking that there was some cause for the skipper's dislike to his host in prospective, and that the American was a bit of an impostor, when he came suddenly upon Sir Humphrey and his brother, followed by one of the men from the hotel carrying a portmanteau, and on their ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn

... male line of Cyrus had become extinct with the death of Cambyses. The usurpation of Gaumata and the accession of Darius had not quenched their faith in the existence of Smerdis: if the Magian were an impostor, it did not necessarily follow that Smerdis had been assassinated, and when a certain Vahyazdata rose up in the town of Tarava in the district of Yautiya, and announced himself as the younger son of Cyrus, they received him with enthusiastic acclamations. A preliminary success gained ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... great balls and open the breech, but only to be disappointed, finding as I did that the block was fast. Oh, Poole, how I did tug and strain at it, feeling all the while that I had been boasting and bragging to your father, and that after all I was only a poor miserable impostor who had been professing to know a great deal, when I was as ignorant as could be, and that I was being deservedly punished in that terrible failure that ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn

... but a fellow named Baker," he said. "I deported him from the Ellice Islands for sedition, bigamy, selling gin to the natives, suspected arson and receiving stolen goods. If he called himself a Deputy Commissioner he was a rank impostor, and had no more authority to annex this ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne

... possession of three hundred a-year as a bounty, for which I could make no return, was I own humiliating to my pride. It made the question continually recur—'Whether it did not give me the air of an impostor? A kind of swindler of sentiment? A pretender to superior virtue, for the purpose of gratifying vice?' It seemed at a blow to rob me of all independence; and leave me a manacled slave to the opinions, not only ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... a good deal of sternness, "if you were silly enough to hint to this fellow what you say you did, and he was impostor enough not to deny it on the spot in the most unequivocal terms, then he adds the character of a designing villain to that of a senseless fop. In the name of homely American common sense, can you not see, as plain as daylight, that he is no nearer akin to ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur

... it!—stuff and nonsense! You are crazy, child, to come to me with this trumped-up story! The man is an impostor. I will have the police to him. For heaven's sake don't let Magdalene ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey

... that you were not my father and mother, and that Rupert and Madge were not my brother and sister; but it would have been nobody's fault, and I am sure that you would all still have loved me. But to know that it has been a wicked fraud, that I have been an impostor palmed upon you, that there has been a plot and conspiracy to rob you, and that I have a mother who not only did this, but who could propose to me to go on deceiving you, and even to join in a fresh fraud and to swindle ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty

... it is act enough for you to know. If I am to be your wife, I will not enter your family as an impostor. I told you the truth about myself the other day when you questioned me, and I am bound to tell you ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon

... if you were anybody but my sister it isn't probable I should have quoted him to you. But if there is any statue on earth prettier or more graceful than you are in that dress at this moment, Edie, then the Venus of Milo ought immediately to be pulverised to ultimate atoms for a rank artistic impostor.' ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen

... sustentation of good morals and good-breeding, and for the prevention of quarrelling, or unseemly and abusive conversation, any person who should call or designate any other person in the said town by the name of thief, villain, rascal, rogue (schurke), cheat, charlatan, impostor, wretch, coward, sneak, suborner, slanderer, tattler, and sundry other titles of ill-repute, which I cannot recollect now, and could not render into English were I to recall them, should, upon complaint of the person aggrieved, and upon proof of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various

... As long as he remained alive his friends would never question his calculations, and the fiasco which was possible under any circumstances would then be assured. I had with me an Eastern drug, which I had bought from an Indian fakir once in Murzapoor. The man was an impostor, whose tricks did not impose on me. But the drug, however he came by it, was reliable. It was a poison which produced a mild form of cerebritis that dulled but did not deaden the mental powers. It acted almost identically whether administered sub-cutaneously ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie

... progress of the plague, the teachers of religion were in possession of great power; a power of good, if rightly directed, or of incalculable mischief, if fanaticism or intolerance guided their efforts. In the present instance, a worse feeling than either of these actuated the leader. He was an impostor in the most determined sense of the term. A man who had in early life lost, through the indulgence of vicious propensities, all sense of rectitude or self-esteem; and who, when ambition was awakened in him, gave himself up to its influence unbridled by any scruple. His father had been a methodist ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley

... but you must know; if only for the safety of your soul entangled in so deadly a snare... there is yet time, if you follow my advice. Listen: the man with whom you are living, who dares to call himself Martin Guerre, is a cheat, an impostor——" ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARTIN GUERRE • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... his sight, asked him the colors of several cloaks, worn by persons of his retinue. The man told them very readily. "You are a knave," cried the prince; "had you been born blind, you could not so soon have learned to distinguish colors;" and immediately ordered him to be set in the stocks as an impostor.[**] ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume

... from H.M.'s Consul-General in Egypt a written declaration to the effect that, should the Emperor allow the Europeans in chains to depart, no steps would be taken to punish the offence, he, the Abouna, would engage himself to obtain their liberation, and become their security. That impostor, who had never been in Abyssinia at all, gave such wonderful details that he completely imposed upon the Consul of Jeddah and the Consul-General. The fact that he pretended to have passed through Massowah ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc

... laying her in the arms of her mother. "And do not allow that man to come near her. He has behaved badly in not giving her up, on my demand, until we can inquire into this matter. It may be that this strange woman is a lunatic, or an impostor. We ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth

... recognition to cast at a brother because forsooth he has not been properly introduced to you, are not ye doubting your own God in your breasts, which acts not in fear of your fellow-men, but in trust of them? And, O ye who refuse to help a begging brother for fear lest he prove an impostor, are not ye likewise at bottom doubting the God within you which acts through pity to a brother, even though he do deceive? Turgenef fell short of the highest because he did not cast off the scepticism of his intellect. Are not ye, my ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin

... the Aldermen and the Mayor considered her an impostor, and did not think she was wise at all, and they wished her to take her Black Cat and move beyond the limits of the city. She sang it beautifully; it sounded like the very finest Italian ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various

... residue is possible. Finally, my task will be to show that Simon taught a system of Theosophy, which instead of deserving our condemnation should rather excite our admiration, and that, instead of being a common impostor and impious perverter of public morality, his method was in many respects of the same nature as the methods of the theosophical movement of to-day, and deserves the study and consideration of ...
— Simon Magus • George Robert Stow Mead

... great Prince of Conde; but the scruples infused into the king long induced him to hesitate ere he removed the interdict which prohibited its representation. Neither were these scruples yet removed. Permission was, indeed, given to represent the piece, but under the title of the "Impostor," and calling the principal person Panulphe, for it seems the name of Tartuffe was particularly offensive. The king, having left Paris for the army, the president of the parliament of Paris prohibited ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

... unhallowed air, but that this juggler Would think to charm my judgment, as mine eyes, Obtruding false rules pranked in reason's garb. I hate when vice can bolt her arguments 760 And virtue has no tongue to check her pride. Impostor! do not charge most innocent Nature, As if she would her children should be riotous With her abundance. She, good cateress, Means her provision only to the good, That live according to her sober laws, And holy dictate ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton

... secret of much of his greatness,—many of his errors. Like all men who are thus self-deluded by a vain but not inglorious superstition, united with, and coloured by, earthly ambition, it is impossible to say how far he was the visionary, and how far at times he dared to be the impostor. In the ceremonies of his pageants, in the ornaments of his person, were invariably introduced mystic and figurative emblems. In times of danger he publicly professed to have been cheered and directed by divine dreams; and on many occasions the prophetic ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... lost the bluntness and carelessness that had hitherto characterised it, and assumed an attention and a seriousness more in accordance with his high station and important responsibilities. He began to regard the stranger as no common renegade, no ordinary spy, no shallow impostor, who might be driven from his tent with disdain; but as a man important enough to be heard, and ambitious enough to be distrusted. Accordingly, he resumed the seat from which he had risen during the interview, and calmly desired his new ally to explain the condition, on the granting ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins

... of eventually clearing himself with them, too, and explaining how he had been forced away, had buoyed him up, and sustained him, under many of his recent trials; and now, the idea that they should have gone so far, and carried with them the belief that he was an impostor and a robber—a belief which might remain uncontradicted to his dying day—was almost ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens

... as she was leaving the car, that the place to start her new life was to start right, or quit right, with Dick. "A fraud," she repeated—"an impostor. There is no Maggie Cameron. I am born of no good family from the West. I have no money. I have always lived in New York—most of the time down on the East Side. I used to work in a Fifth Avenue millinery shop. Till three months ago I sold cigarettes in ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott

... when their breath's end was come about, And both could now and then just gasp 'impostor!' Holding their heads thrust menacingly out, As staggering cocks keep up their fighting posture, The stranger smiled and said, 'Beyond a doubt 'Tis fortunate, my friends, that you have lost your 150 United ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... the diplomatic cortege. He accordingly, with the utmost gravity, followed immediately behind the Ambassadors. He subsequently disappeared, and it was rumoured, among ill-natured people, that, far from being a mandarin, the fellow was a mere impostor. But nobody ever really discovered the nature of the comments that had been lurking behind the matchless impassivity of ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey

... Sam?" says he; "that infernal aunt of yours, at whose command you had the things, has written to the tradesmen to say that you are a swindler and impostor; that you give out that she ordered the goods; that she is ready to drop down dead, and to take her bible-oath she never did any such thing, and that they must look to you alone for payment. Not one of them would hear ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray

... was then six years old. He speaks no English, and an Indian interpreter who is with him is so scantily supplied with words that the information we have obtained is very unsatisfactory. But we have learned that the young man is trying to find his mother. Some of our neighbors regard him as an impostor. But he does not ask for money, and there is something in his frank physiognomy calculated to inspire confidence. We therefore believe his statement, and publish it, hoping it may be seen by some ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various

... Lychorida has often told me weeping. The king my father left me at Tharsus, till the cruel wife of Cleon sought to murder me. A crew of pirates came and rescued me, and brought me here to Metaline. But, good sir, why do you weep? It may be, you think me an impostor. But indeed, sir, I am the daughter to king Pericles, if good king Pericles be living." Then Pericles, terrified as it seemed at his own sudden joy, and doubtful if this could be real, loudly called for his attendants, who rejoiced at the sound of their ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... door to starving. So what must Ronald do, but run into a pawnbroker's—I shouldn't have thought he could ever have heard of such a place—and sell his coat, or something of the sort, and give the man (who was doubtless an impostor) all the money. Then he positively walked home in his shirt sleeves. I call it a most unchristian thing to do—and to walk straight into my very arms, too, as I was coming along ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen

... was curious to see the encounter between Rachel Curtis and her impostor, and every one who had contributed so much as a dozen stamps to the F. U. E. E. felt as if under a personal wrong and grievance, while many hoped to detect other elements of excitement, so that though all ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Ethiopians, he returned to Mauritania. Thence he went to Tiberia, and made preparations for another attempt to circumnavigate Africa, but whether he ever set out upon this voyage is not known; in fact some learned men are even inclined to consider Eudoxus an impostor. ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne

... out these Portuguese preachers. It was then manifest, that those religious idolaters, who at first had been so favourable to Xavier, now made open war against him. They decried him in all places, and publicly treated him as an impostor. Even so far they proceeded, that one day as he was preaching, in one of the public places of the city, a Bonza interrupted him in the midst of his discourse, and warned the people not to trust him; saying, "That it ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden

... characters! I trust thou art no impostor, and that thy revelation of blissful scenes of existence beyond death and the grave, is not one of the many impositions which time after time have been palmed on credulous mankind. I trust that in thee "shall all the families of the earth be blessed," by ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... found himself persistently thinking of the strange name, "Tantibba." "It is odd how that name haunts me," he thought. "I wish I could see it written: I haven't the least idea how it is spelled. I wonder if she is an impostor. Her garden didn't look like it." Presently he sauntered out: the morning stir was just beginning in the village. The child to whom he had spoken at "Tantibba's" gate, the night before, came up, driving ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous

... monopolists. He, too, says that "If an innovator should appear, holding out hope to those in despair, and curing disorders which the faculty have recorded as irremediable, he is at once, and without inquiry, denounced as an empiric and an impostor." He, too, cites the inevitable names of Galileo and Harvey, and refers to the feelings excited by the great discovery of Jenner. From the treatment of the great astronomer who was visited with the punishment of other heretics by the ecclesiastical ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... was about to write to you concerning the accusations which you have so long brought against me, wherein you call me impious, buffoon, rogue, impostor, calumniator, swindler, heretic, disguised Calvinist, one possessed of a legion of devils. I wish the world to know why you speak thus, for I should be sorry that anyone should think thus of me; and I had already made up my mind to complain publicly of your calumnies ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various

... "Thou hardened young impostor!" said the Prince, as soon as he saw the youth; "what becomes of thy boasted veracity now? it was Providence, was it, and the light of the moon, that discovered the lock of the trap-door to thee? Tell me, audacious boy, who thou art, and how long thou hast been acquainted with the ...
— The Castle of Otranto • Horace Walpole

... anything to your own advantage?" suggested Mr. Carless, with a keen glance which passed from one partner to the other. "You, as reputable practitioners of our profession, don't want to be mixed up with an impostor?" ...
— The Middle of Things • J. S. Fletcher

... to recount his adventures, he told them about a balloon, and that he had seen white people, who, by attaching a great ball to a canoe, as he described it, could rise in it up to the clouds, and travel through the heavens, the medicine, or mystery men of his tribe pronounced him to be an impostor; and the multitude vociferously declaring that he was too great a liar to live, a young warrior, in a paroxysm of anger, levelled a rifle and shot ...
— History, Manners, and Customs of the North American Indians • George Mogridge

... "I don't believe in you. There is a mystery here. You pretend you know me and yet you act as if you were afraid of me—just like a common bird who is made of nothing but feathers. I don't believe you are Tweetie at all. You are an Impostor!" ...
— My Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... immense wealth in gold and jewels, and also rich merchandise, which enable him to return to the city in the capacity of a merchant, which he had professed himself when he married the princess. The vazir, who had from the first believed him to be an arrant impostor, lays a plot with the King to worm out of him the secret of his wealth, and succeeds so well at a private supper, when Maruf is elevated with wine, that he obtains possession of the ring, summons the genie, and causes him to carry both the King and Maruf into a far distant desert. He then compels ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... told me weeping. The king, my father, left me at Tarsus, till the cruel wife of Cleon sought to murder me. A crew of pirates came and rescued me, and brought me here to Mitylene. But, good sir, why do you weep? It may be, you think me an impostor. But, indeed, sir, I am the daughter to king Pericles, if good king Pericles be living.' Then Pericles, terrified as he seemed at his own sudden joy, and doubtful if this could be real, loudly called for his attendants, who rejoiced at the sound ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb

... that say, 'We have tried it. It is all a sham and imagination. We have asked this Christ of yours to forgive us, and He has not. We have asked Him to cleanse us, and He has not. We have tried Him, and He is an impostor, and we will have no more to do with Him.' There are people, alas! who have gone back to their wallowing in the mire, but it was not because Christ had failed in His promises, but because they did not care to have them fulfilled any more. Jesus Christ does not promise that His salvation shall ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... thronged the dwellers: "Hath the chief the arrows sent?" "I am Chief; behold me; trust me. Lead me to your ruler's tent." "He hath not the shafts enchanted; Thus unarmed came never chief!" Bent a thousand bows around him: "Back or die, impostor, thief!" Angry, yet afraid to anger, Lest he lose those "Laughing-Eyes," He, obeying, vowed to conquer; Scorning to make vain replies, Went; and weary seemed the journey! All along the yellow plain Red as rose-leaves in the grasses Flushed his dusky ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell

... like a trumpet. Therefore, this doubt I am confiding is all the more dreary. Naturally, I feel it most keenly in the company of my fellows, each one of whom seems to carry the victorious badge of manhood, as though to cry shame upon me. They make me shrink into myself, make me feel that I am but an impostor in their midst. Indeed, in that sensitiveness of mine you have the starting-point of my unmanliness. Look at that noble fellow there. He is six-foot odd in his stockings, straight, stalwart, and confident. His face is broad and strong, ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne

... government of England. We have other testimony of these his pretensions, and that he carries them much farther than is here stated. We have too much confidence in the justice and wisdom of the British government, to believe they can approve of the proceedings of this incendiary and impostor, or countenance for a moment a person who takes the liberty of using their name for such a purpose; and I make the communication, merely that you may take that notice of the case which in your opinion ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... the impostor Thestorides from the island, Homer enjoyed considerable success as a teacher. In the town of Chios he established a school, where he taught the precepts of poetry. "To this day," says Chandler, "the most curious remain is that ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope

... Jonson and Shakespeare, and who was assassinated by a servant whose name he had omitted in his will. Milton lived for some time in a house in Holborn that opened at the back on Lincoln's Inn Fields. Fox Court leads us to the curious inquiry whether Savage, the poet, was a conscious or an unconscious impostor; and at the Blue Boar Inn Cromwell and Ireton discovered by stratagem the treacherous letter of King Charles to his queen, that rendered Cromwell for ever the King's enemy. These are only a few of the ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... hated worse to see me with Princess Flavia; yet I am persuaded that he tried to conceal both feelings, and, further, that he tried to persuade me that he believed I was verily the King. I did not know, of course; but, unless the King were an impostor, at once cleverer and more audacious than I (and I began to think something of myself in that role), Michael could not believe that. And, if he didn't, how he must have loathed paying me deference, and hearing my ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope

... lieutenant-colonel who had recently died, the other was her daughter. Both greeted Bertha and walked slowly on. Bertha thought that these two women would consider her a faithful widow who still grieved for her husband, and she seemed to herself to be an impostor, and ...
— Bertha Garlan • Arthur Schnitzler

... over to John and looking at him knowingly). Do you know what it is, Mr. Murray? Your brother's nothing short of an impostor. ...
— The Drone - A Play in Three Acts • Rutherford Mayne

... Jonas Billings, the livery-stable keeper, had said of him; while Burlingame, the pernicious lawyer of shady character, had remarked that he had the name of an impostor and the frame of a fop; but he wasn't sure, as a lawyer, that he'd seen all the papers in the case— which was tantamount to saying that the Orlando nut ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... that the marble goddesses, or whoever they were, at the base of Nelson's monument opposite, were regarding him with stony disdain and indignation; that the statue of Wellington knew him for an arrant impostor, and averted his head with cold contempt; and that the effigy of Lord Mayor Beckford on the right of the dais would come to life and denounce him ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey

... feast without effort here indeed, the budding entomologist might form a large collection of Hymenoptera, Diptera, Coleoptera, and Hemiptera from among the. visitors to a single field of goldenrod alone. Usually to be discovered among the throng are the velvety black Lytta or Cantharis, that impostor wasp-beetle, the black and yellow wavy-banded, red-legged locust-tree borer, and the painted Clytus, banded with yellow and sable, squeaking contentedly as he gnaws ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... and loved, was no more for ever; and that Florian Amidon had never seen her, never loved her, never wooed her until these past few days! Would she ever see him again? Could she regard him as anything else than an interloper and an impostor? His right to Brassfield's clothes and Brassfield's fortune might be as clear as Judge Blodgett said; but would not Elizabeth feel that as to her he had attempted the very deed of which he had first suspected himself—fraud and robbery? And her "perfect lover," whom Amidon habitually ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick

... little indignant at the man's insolence; but far more at having been duped by his public assumption of philanthropy. "The little pragmatical impostor!" he roared. "With what a sense o' relief th' animal flings off the mask of humanity when there is no easy eclat to be gained by putting't on." He sent the philanthropical Bite's revelation of his private self to Alfred, who returned it with this ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... that Squire Hathorne and myself have been grossly deceived by an unprincipled adventurer—but that proves nothing. Because Jannes and Jambres imitated with their sorceries the miracles of Moses, did it prove that Moses was an impostor? There was one Judas among the twelve apostles, but does that invalidate the credibility of the eleven others, who were not liars and cheats? It is the great and overwhelming burden of the testimony which decides in this as in all other disputed matters—not ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson

... by this time told the wicked Queen that Graciosa had come back, and was at supper with the King, and in she flew in a terrible fury. The poor old King quite trembled before her, and when she declared that Graciosa was not the Princess at all, but a wicked impostor, and that if the King did not give her up at once she would go back to her own castle and never see him again, he had not a word to say, and really seemed to believe that it was not Graciosa after all. So the Queen in great ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various

... daresay that my expanse of shirt front, and the flower in my buttonhole, made me conspicuous. I was a red-hot Liberal in those days, for no better reason, probably, than that my father held that form of creed, and I was quite persuaded that Kenealy was a paid impostor. So when, in that raucous voice of his, he said, "I love the working man," I answered from below with a cry of "Bunkum, doctor, bunkum." The doctor paused and looked at me, but said nothing at the moment By and by he flowed on: "When I go to the poll with ten thousand ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray

... obtaining them, call on us in their extremity, when the urgency of the occasion should allow us no time for inquiry, and the peremptory mandate of our obligation compel us to do a brother's duty to a base impostor. ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... the improvised prayer-room with this ironic sense of coming back to Judaism by the Christian prison door. But the service shook him terribly. He forgot even to be amused by the one successful impostor who had landed himself in an unforeseen deprivation of rations during the whole fast day. The passionate outcries of the old-fashioned Chazan, the solemn peals and tremolo notes of the cornet, which had once been merely aesthetic effects to the reputable ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill



Words linked to "Impostor" :   fake, cheat, shammer, pretender, faker, deceiver, ringer, name dropper, slicker, cheater, trickster



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