"Dissembler" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his facts, that the enlightened reader often draws conclusions different from those which the author has been laboring to establish. While the history shows that, for genius and success, Frederick deserved to be called the Great, Carlyle cannot make us believe that he was not grasping, selfish, a dissembler, and ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... world withdraw thyself, And lov'st God more than gold or pelf? Thy crown, thy jewel, thy good name Is cover'd by the world with shame. For he who can't dissembler play, The world ...
— Paul Gerhardt's Spiritual Songs - Translated by John Kelly • Paul Gerhardt
... wolf said, "Infinite dissembler, how fain wouldst thou be freed of my servitude? Too well I understand thee, and know that if thou wert safe on thy feet thou wouldst forswear this submission; but know all the wealth in the world shall not buy out thy ransom, ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... whom I consider as my best friend, and keep every lodger at a proper distance." You will find hereafter that her favourite lodger, whom she visits daily, had left the house; so that she might easily make and keep this vow of extraordinary self-denial. Precious little dissembler! Yet her aunt, her best friend, says, "No, Sir, no; Sarah's no hypocrite!" which I was fool enough to believe; and yet my great and unpardonable offence is to have entertained passing doubts on this delicate point. I said, Whatever ...
— Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion • William Hazlitt
... induced George to leave the office early. The dissembler had reflected that if he called in a certain conventional tea-shop near Cambridge Circus at a certain hour he would probably meet Marguerite Haim. He knew that she had an appointment with one of her customers, a firm of bookbinders, that afternoon, ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... Bacon's Essay 'Of Simulation and Dissimulation,' where he says that 'dissimulation followeth many times upon secrecy by a necessity: so that he that will be secret must be a dissembler in some degree,' &c. ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... prodigal! if you loved my master, You would not tear his doublet so:—How's this! Two swelling breasts! a woman, and my rival! The stings of jealousy have given me courage, Which nature never gave me: Come on, thou vile dissembler of thy sex; Expect no mercy; either thou or I Must die upon this spot: ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... prosperity of their Protestant neighbours by knowing winks and nods, and by plain intimations that all Irish Protestants are secretly subsidised by England, that they have privileges, that they are favoured, petted, kept in pocket money. To affect to doubt this is to prove yourself a dissembler, an impostor, a black-hearted enemy of the people. Your Achil friend will drop the conversation in disgust, and by round-about ways will call you a liar. He is sure of his facts, as sure as he is that a sprinkling of holy water will cure rheumatism, will keep away ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... my skin for—piece of gold! Want my cloak? Take it!" And the dissembler rolled over, extending his arms. The jester grasped the garment by the sleeves and with some difficulty whipped ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... Mercia, who although he had maried Edgiua the kings daughter, was yet noted to be one of those which disclosed the secrets of the realme, and the determinations of the councell vnto the enimies. But he was such a craftie dissembler, so greatlie prouided of sleight to dissemble and cloake his falshood, that the king being too much abused by him, had him in singular fauour, whereas he vpon a malicious purpose studied dailie how to bring the realme into ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (7 of 8) - The Seventh Boke of the Historie of England • Raphael Holinshed
... showed him what manner of meat he had eaten, asking him how it liketh him. Harpagus made answer, though with an heavy heart, Quod regi placet, id mihi quoque placet; "Whatsoever pleaseth the king, that also pleaseth me." And here we have an ensample of a flatterer, or dissembler: for this Harpagus spake against his own heart and conscience. Surely, I fear me, there be a great many of flatterers in our time also, which will not be ashamed to speak against their own heart and consciences, like as this Harpagus did; which had, no doubt, ...
— Sermons on the Card and Other Discourses • Hugh Latimer
... strange compound of incongruous qualities—at once enthusiast and philosopher, statesman and intriguer, a model of chivalrous courage, and a profound dissembler. We cannot compass his character by adopting the wayward estimate given of him by Anthony a Wood, who tells us that his common nickname was Sir Humorous Vanity, and who dismisses him as "a hotchpotch of religion," "an inventor of whimseys in religion, and ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... that working Tools are to a poor Artificer. It was no small Entertainment to me, who knew his Circumstances, to see him, who had fasted two Days, attribute the Thinness they told him of to the Violence of some Gallantries he had lately been guilty of. The skilful Dissembler carried this on with the utmost Address; and if any suspected his Affairs were narrow, it was attributed to indulging himself in some fashionable Vice rather than an irreproachable Poverty, which saved his Credit with ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... quipped and larded, in my opinion. O my jolly dapper boy, thou hast given us a gudgeon; I hope to see thee Pope before I die. I think so, said he, myself; and then shall you be a puppy, and this gentle popinjay a perfect papelard, that is, dissembler. Well, well, said the harbinger. But, said Gargantua, guess how many stitches there are in my mother's smock. Sixteen, quoth the harbinger. You do not speak gospel, said Gargantua, for there is cent before, and cent behind, and you did not reckon them ill, considering ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... sufficiently to play the thorough-going dissembler when she meets her husband, and she keeps up the pretence when she declares to Bussy before the Court (III, ii, 138), "Y'are one I know not," and speaks of him vaguely in a later scene as "the man." So, too, when Montsurry first tells her of the suspicions ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... say not, unless he be an extremely accomplished dissembler. If it eased your mind, no doubt he would consent to your paying the rates ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... same way acquire, from a supposed necessity, an equally artificial mode of behaviour. Yet truth is not with impunity to be sported with, for the practised dissembler, at last, becomes the dupe of his own arts, loses that sagacity which has been justly termed common sense; namely, a quick perception of common truths: which are constantly received as such by the unsophisticated mind, though it might not have had sufficient energy to discover them itself, ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... of a dissembler, and I found it hard to meet her look, but I answered with all the assurance I could muster. 'I mean, madam, you are mistaken ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... "You poor dissembler!" he laughed. "You couldn't be dishonest if you wanted to the worst way in the world. Well, don't you worry; I'll take it up ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... been horrible to him, did not become even a pleasing kind of meditation. So is it—when Nature imposes an inevitable duty, she gives man the power of inventing a pleasing reason for his obedience; nay, so much of a self-dissembler is he, that he even cheats himself into the belief that his obedience is an act of his own will. In all which he at least proved the value of one of the arguments in favour of marriage; for trite it is to say, a bachelor bears to no one a love which reconciles ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... a most unscrupulous but a most unlucky dissembler. There never was a politician to whom so many frauds and falsehoods were brought home by undeniable evidence. He publicly recognized the Houses at Westminster as a legal Parliament, and at the same time made a private minute in council declaring the recognition null. He publicly ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... were right as to the event, but wrong as to the motives. Margery was a perfect little dissembler on some occasions, and one of them was when she wished to hide any sudden mortification that might bring her into ridicule. She had no sooner recovered from her first fit of discomfiture than pride bade her suffer anything rather than reveal her absurd ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... consummate dissembler should cheat both the rival kings? What if, when he found himself commander of the army and protector of the Parliament, he should proclaim Queen Anne? Was it not possible that the weary and harassed nation might ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... my opinion, is he that in Terence they name Gnatho, an ear-scratcher, a dissembler, a trencher-licker, one that talketh for his belly's sake, and is altogether a man-pleaser. This is a sin of mankind, whose intent is to get all they can though ...
— Selections from the Table Talk of Martin Luther • Martin Luther
... worse for making me the victim of it. You have applied to Roderick Duncan for some of his millions; and you two, together, have discovered in the incident a means of coercing me. Oh, it is plain enough. You are a poor dissembler in a matter of this kind, however excellent you may be in others. I see it all, now, as clearly as if you had expressed it in words. You have asked Roderick, by intimation, if not in actual words, to go to your assistance to the amount of so many ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman |
