"Pretence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... apparatus of false ideas and false teachers at its service—in the history of Modern Europe as well as of Greece and Rome. For no government of men depends solely upon force; without some corruption of literature and morals—some appeal to the imagination of the masses—some pretence to the favour of heaven—some element of good giving power to evil, tyranny, even for a short time, cannot be maintained. The Greek tyrants were not insensible to the importance of awakening in their cause a Pseudo-Hellenic feeling; they were proud of successes at the Olympic ...
— The Republic • Plato
... dispel that idea as absurd. Then he remembered, too, that it was not she who had sought this interview, but himself. No, she was no blackmailer. More probably she was a dreamer—one of those meddling sociologists who, under pretence of bettering the conditions of the working classes, stir up discontent and bitterness of feeling. As such; she might prove more to be feared than a mere blackmailer whom he could buy off with money. He knew he was not popular, but he was no worse than the other captains of industry. ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... neither Time to learn Religion, nor any Prospect of being able to subsist, if once the Duty of resting on that Day become Part of their Belief. And some, it may be feared, have been averse to their becoming Christians because after that, no Pretence will remain for not treating them like Men. When these Obstacles are added to the fondness they have for their old Heathenish Rites, and the strong Prejudices they must have against Teachers from among those, whom they serve ...
— The Education Of The Negro Prior To 1861 • Carter Godwin Woodson
... than Mr. Burke has ever done. A man so circumstanced often seems to undervalue, to vilify, almost to reprobate and disown, those that are out of danger. This is the voice of nature and truth, and not of inconsistency and false pretence. The danger of anything very dear to us removes, for the moment, every other affection from the mind. When Priam had his whole thoughts employed on the body of his Hector, he repels with indignation, and drives from him with a thousand reproaches, his surviving sons, who with an officious ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... the table was not a cheerful place, for the faces of the other two were haggard and drawn, and neither made more than a pretence of eating. Daily bulletins came from the other house as to Allison's condition, and Madame was in constant communication by telegraph with Colonel Kent. She kept him reassured as much as possible, and did not tell him of Allison's ineradicable ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... horse and arms of the knight himself. He wished to win them by himself, and would fain attack him first, if they would give him leave: and they willingly gave consent. Then he leaves them and rides ahead on a good and nimble steed. Erec saw him, but made pretence that he did not yet notice him. When Enide saw them, her heart jumped with fear and great dismay. "Alas!" said she, "I know not what to say or do; for my lord severely threatens me, and says that he will punish me, if I speak a word to him. But if my lord were dead now, ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... knew, and the dinners and garden parties became less frequent. I had found out, very soon after her return, that she was not happy—that this easy prosperous life was in some manner a burden to her. It was only in her husband's presence that she made any pretence of being pleased or interested in things. With him she was always the same—always deferential, affectionate, and attentive; while he, on his side, was the devoted slave of her every whim ...
— Milly Darrell and Other Tales • M. E. Braddon
... course, this may have been a marriage according to the truth of nature, and Rousseau was as free to choose his own rites as more sacramental performers, but it is clear from his own words about property that there was no pretence of a marriage in law. He and Theresa were on profoundly uncomfortable terms about this time,[150] and Rousseau is not the only person by many thousands who has deceived himself into thinking that some form of words between man and woman must magically transform ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... pulled away lustily, in the hopes of at length finding a slaver which they could make their lawful prize. At this time, however, the Sultan of Zanzibar issued licences to no inconsiderable number of vessels, on the pretence that they were engaged in bringing him negroes to work on his plantations; although, were his island ten times the size that it really is, he could not have employed one-tenth of the blacks carried off to ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... tinder-dry trees and pretending that the rain was on its heels. Now and again a spot of almost boiling water would fall on the dust with the flop of a frog, but all our weary world knew that was only pretence. It was a shade cooler in the press-room than the office, so I sat there, while the type ticked and clicked, and the night-jars hooted at the windows, and the all but naked compositors wiped the sweat from their foreheads and called for water. The thing that was keeping us back, whatever ...
— The Man Who Would Be King • Rudyard Kipling
... naming the heights for a haven, another clamouring for the beach, one answering with an oath, another, it may be, with a prayer; but no man keeping his wits or shaping a true course. What would have happened but for the holding fog and the sulphurous air we breathed, I make no pretence to say; but Nature stopped us at last, and, panting and exhausted, we came to a halt in the woods, and asked each other in the name of reason what we ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... its neighbourhood; it collects alms all over Syria, Anatolia, and the Greek islands, and by a Firmahn of the Porte, is declared to be free from all duties to the Pasha. Youssef Pasha of Damascus, however, made them pay forty thousand piastres, on the pretence that they had built a Khan for poor passengers without his permission. The prior, who is chosen by the brotherhood of the convent, is elected for life, and is under the immediate direction of the Patriarch of Damascus. Caravans generally stop at the Khan, while respectable travellers ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... (It is unanimously understood by the young ladies that he is lawfully entitled to this privilege, and that if Miss Twinkleton disputed it, she would be instantly taken up and transported.) When his ring at the gate- bell is expected, or takes place, every young lady who can, under any pretence, look out of window, looks out of window; while every young lady who is 'practising,' practises out of time; and the French class becomes so demoralised that the mark goes round as briskly as the bottle at a convivial party in the ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... she were afraid of each other. He knew, and she knew, that she was dying. But they kept up a pretence of cheerfulness. Every morning, when he got up, he went into ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... accept gage of battle with this natural foe to liberty and shall, if necessary, spend the whole force of the nation to check and nullify its pretensions and its power. We are glad, now that we see the facts with no veil of false pretence about them, to fight thus for the ultimate peace of the world and for the liberation of its peoples, the German peoples included, for the rights of nations great and small, and the privilege of men everywhere to choose their way ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... three sonnets, the first of which had for its object to excite a good-natured laugh at the spirit of doleful egotism and at the recurrence of favourite phrases, with the double defect of being at once trite and licentious. The second was on low creeping language and thoughts under the pretence of simplicity. The third, the phrases of which were borrowed entirely from my own poems, on the indiscriminate use of elaborate and swelling language and imagery. . . . So general at the time and so ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the person that applies for this subsidy? As to the Elector of Bavaria, I leave him out of the question. It is the Emperor of Germany. Is there anything in his conduct and character to incline us to listen to him? I think not, and for these two reasons. First, he applied once on a false pretence, and secondly, he failed in performing his stipulated engagement. What was his false pretence? He said he could not open the campaign without the pecuniary assistance of this country; and yet he did do so, and displayed ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... that no book which has been given to the library on condition of being kept perpetually chained therein shall, by virtue of this statute, be on any pretence removed from it, except only ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... always be glad to see him. Then he talked with Mrs. Westley, who was very pleasant to Cornelia while the banter with Charmian went on, and proposed to show his pictures; he fancied that was what he had got them there, for; but he would make a decent pretence of the ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... these frothy paragraphs. Cambyses, Xerxes, Artaxerxes, Darius, are thrown in to make the gruel of rhetoric "thick and slab." The whole epistle ends in a long-drawn peroration of invective against "that excrement in human shape," who had had the ill-luck, by pretence to scholarship, by big gains from the Papal treasury, by something in his manners alien from the easy-going customs of the Roman Court, to rouse the ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... morning we again urged Michel to go a-hunting that he might if possible leave us some provision, tomorrow being the day appointed for his quitting us, but he showed great unwillingness to go out and lingered about the fire under the pretence of cleaning his gun. After we had read the morning service I went about noon to gather some tripe de roche, leaving Mr. Hood sitting before the tent at the fireside arguing with Michel; Hepburn was employed cutting down a tree at a short distance ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... dream; in consequence of which he raised the siege, imagining this to be the will of the god, ordered the inhabitants to sacrifice to Ammon, and himself made preparations for proceeding at once to Libya to propitiate the god. Most persons, however, imagined that this was a mere pretence, but that really he feared the Ephors, and was unable to endure the harsh discipline of life at Sparta, and therefore wished to travel abroad, just as a horse longs for liberty when he has been brought back out of wide pastures to his stable and his accustomed work. As to the ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... known, and its hot-houses. Madge wanted to speak to Clara, but it was difficult to find a private opportunity. When they were in the garden, however, she managed to take Clara unobserved down one of the twisted paths, under pretence of admiring an ancient ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... vizier had represented to him, flew into the greater passion: "Where is that impostor, that wicked wretch," said he, "that I may have his head taken off immediately?" "Sir," replied the grand vizier, "it is some days since he came to take his leave of your majesty, on pretence of hunting; he ought to be sent for, to know what is become of his palace, since he cannot be ignorant of what has been transacted." "That is too great an indulgence," replied the sultan: "command a detachment ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... that his pretence of going was a lie!" muttered Percival. "Of course, he never intended ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... brought to decay by breaking of the bankrupt. I do not deny but that the navy of the land is in part maintained by their traffic, and so are the high prices of wares kept up, now they have gotten the only sale of things upon pretence of better furtherance of the commonwealth into their own hands: whereas in times past, when the strange bottoms were suffered to come in, we had sugar for fourpence the pound, that now at the writing of this ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... an heiress if she were ten times prettier. He will never have an escutcheon of pretence like the one on the old soup tureen that the Lady of Eschalott broke, and Jane was so sorry for because it was the last of ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... forced to go to school if he did not like it, he was silly enough to be pleased, and gave them in return his playthings and his money; nay, he would even take sugar, cakes, fruit, and sweetmeats from his mother's store-room to bestow on these ill-chosen friends; and their false pretence of love for him made him quite careless of gaining the real love of ...
— The Bad Family and Other Stories • Mrs. Fenwick
... god, the crime is to forbear: For some, tho' few, there are large-minded men, Who watch unseen the labours of the pen; Who know the muse's worth, and therefore court, Their deeds her theme, their beauty her support; Who serve, unask'd, the least pretence to wit; My sole excuse, alas! for having writ. Argyll true wit is studious to restore; And Dorset smiles, if Phoebus smil'd before; Pembroke in years the long-lov'd arts admires, And Henrietta like a muse inspires. But, ah! not inspiration can obtain That fame, which poets languish for in vain. ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... impalement, the heralds on second thoughts erased it. They substituted in their sketch the arms of an Arden family living at Alvanley in the distant county of Cheshire. With that stock there was no pretence that Robert Arden of Wilmcote was lineally connected; but the bearers of the Alvanley coat were unlikely to learn of its suggested impalement with the Shakespeare shield, and the heralds were less liable ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... all about the early career of Montresor, and his misfortunes. Cazeneau was the evil cause of all; and Florian was bitter and unsparing in his denunciations of this man's villany. He took care to remind them that Mimi, though the wife of Claude, was still held by him under the pretence that she was his ward, and that Cazeneau, being the creature of the defunct ministry of the late Fleury, could not be kept long in his present office by the hostile ministry which had succeeded. He also assured them that the Montresors ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille
... the day's pleasure done. When darkness has fallen over meadow and mountain the kitchen of the house on the Moss is alive with bright faces. The young women of Wythburn have brought their spinning-wheels, and they sit together and make some pretence to spin. The young men are outside. The old folks are in ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... pretence of cleaning a palette. "You'd hardly care to venture out in the street after that. You'd be hooted; stoned, perhaps. It's bad enough already. The reason you hired me was to prevent unpleasant experiences. But if every paper in town got after ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... blot out a view now so distasteful to him. Shortly, on the Auberive side, along the winding Aubette, feeble lights became visible, as if inviting the young man to profit by their guidance. He arose, took the path indicated, and went to supper, or rather, to a pretence of supper, in the same inn where he had breakfasted with Julien, whence the latter had gone on his mission to Reine. This remembrance alone would have sufficed to destroy ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... people, have endeavored to represent the Middle Ages as particularly "moral," and animated with a veritable worship for woman. The period of the Minnesangers—from the twelfth to the fourteenth century—contributed in giving a color to the pretence. The knightly "Minnedienst" (service of love) which the French, Italian and German knights first became acquainted with among the Moriscos of Spain, is cited as evidence concerning the high degree of respect in which woman was held at that time. ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... sort of preparation had been made for any possible examination of the remains to any good purpose. They were laid out anyhow, as the phrase is, on a little marble bench in the chapel. Those who remember the place will not need to be told how perfect a sham any pretence of examination must have been under such circumstances. When this pretence had been gone through, the bones were cast back again into the marble sarcophagus by the workman, "like"—as one eye-witness of the scene describes it—"the bones of dogs." And when the same person looked ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... but an atom of sense, He ne'er would have woman from Paradise driven, But instead of his Houris a flimsy pretence, With woman alone, he ...
— Fugitive Pieces • George Gordon Noel Byron
... Beaconsfield, now striding from fire-place to window with hands clasped under his coat tails, anon pausing to fling out an arm with some familiar accustomed gesture in a House of Commons that knows him no more, towards a Front Bench peopled by shades. In fine the pretence is Cicero writing to Atticus, but the style is ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... Lancelot made no pretence of eating breakfast; he had it removed, and then fished out his comic opera. But nothing would flow from his pen; he went over to the window, and stood thoughtfully drumming on the panes with it, and gazing at the ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... prowling about the circus with the links clanking and chinking in their wake. Lying stark on the pavement were the bodies of some eight men, dead and uneaten; and though the cave-tigers stopped their prowlings now and again to nuzzle these, and beat them about with playful paw-blows, they made no pretence at commencing a meal. It was clear that this cruel sport had grown common to them, and they knew there were other victims yet to be added ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... better of it, my dear. I do not scruple to advise you, because I am older than you, and have experience of the world." This, I think, taken in the ordinary sense of the words, was a boast on the part of Lady Lufton, for which but little true pretence existed. Lady Lufton's experience of the world at large was not perhaps extensive. Nevertheless she knew what one woman might offer to another, and what one woman might receive from another. "You would be better over with me, my dear, than you could be elsewhere. You will not misunderstand me if ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... and the small, sharp, triangular beech-nuts lay scattered thickly on the ground. With one of these in his fingers, Sam approached the colt, stroked and patted, and seemed apparently busy in soothing his agitation. On pretence of adjusting the saddle, he adroitly slipped under it the sharp little nut, in such a manner that the least weight brought upon the saddle would annoy the nervous sensibilities of the animal, without leaving ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... fancies'; tells him before divers gentlemen that 'a blind man might find it by the marks which Keymis himself had set down under his hand': that 'his case of losing so many men in the woods' was a mere pretence: after Walter was slain, he knew that Keymis had no care of any man's surviving. 'You have undone me, wounded my credit with the King past recovery. As you have followed your own advice, and not mine, you must satisfy his Majesty. It shall be glad if you can ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... Clark) and their Great Father at Detroit (General Cass). He would not suffer their words to fall to the ground and be buried. I stood up to renew them. It was by peace and not war that they could alone flourish. Their boundaries were all plainly established by that treaty, and there was no sound pretence why one tribe should pass over on the lands of another. If he did pass, there was no reason at all why he should carry a hatchet in his hand or a war eagle's feather in ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... born either three hundred and eleven days after intercourse (from January 30th to December 8th), or one hundred and fifty days (from July 11th to December 8th), could be the son of Lord Gardner. As there was no pretence that there was a premature birth, the child having been well developed when born, the conception must have dated from January 30th. The medical question was therefore narrowed down to this: Was ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... renewal of an old respect; his humanity, his instinct for essentials, his cool detection of pretence and cant, however finely disguised, and his English with its frank love for the embodying noun and the active verb, make reading very like the clear, hard, bright, vigorous weather of the downs when the wind is up-Channel. It is bracing. But I discovered another notebook, ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... peculiarly subtle expression haunts the lower part, sensual and incredulous, like that of a man tasting good Bordeaux with half a fancy it has been somewhat too long uncorked. From under the pendulous eye-lids of old age the eyes look out with a half-youthful half-frosty twinkle. Hands, with no pretence to distinction, are folded on the judge's stomach. So sympathetically is the character conceived by the portrait-painter, that it is hardly possible to avoid some movement of sympathy on the part of the spectator. And sympathy is a thing to be encouraged, apart from humane considerations, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the Sunday "morning work" had been dispatched, she pulled little Susy away from the house, under the pretence of taking a "swing" in the popular abomination of that name, suspended between two of the trees in the back-yard. Seated side by side on the board seat between the ropes, and with their arms clasping each other's waists, the two girls fell ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... they know or ought to know that the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments have as effectually blotted the word "white" out of all United States treaties and naturalization laws, as out of all the State and Territorial constitutions and statutes. Their pretence that the Chinaman may not become a citizen of the United States, precisely the same as an African, German or Irishman, is matched only by their denial of citizenship to the women of the entire nation. Under the old regime it was the negro with whom we had to make common cause ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... was to get canoes; and in this they were obliged not to stick so much upon the honesty of it, but to trespass upon their friendly savages, and to borrow two large canoes, or periaguas, on pretence of going out a-fishing, or for pleasure. In these they came away the next morning. It seems they wanted no time to get themselves ready; for they had neither clothes nor provisions, nor anything in the world but what they had on them, and ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... dazzled and agitated by this sudden change of fortune, anxious about her brother, now lying at the point of death, and, above all, troubled and grieved at her separation from her lover—so she could only make a pretence of dining, and played languidly with the ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... one side, and took up a tool and a bit of leather with a pretence of working, hoping to be out of sight, and yet to be able to look at the little white-beavered fairy, for whom my fancy was in no way abated. But her keen-eyed sister saw me still, and her next remark ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... the most part, rash and sudden in the execution of their resolves, the lady keeper that evening gave Isabella poison in a conserve which she pressed her to take, under the pretence that it was good for the sinking and oppression of the heart which she complained of. A short while after Isabella had swallowed it her throat and tongue began to swell, her lips turned black, her ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... common Chinese into convulsions; and their warriors shew but few symptoms of bravery. The Chinese may certainly be considered among the most timid people on the face of the earth; they seem to possess neither personal courage, nor the least pretence of mind in dangers or difficulties; consequences that are derived probably from the influence of the moral over the physical character. Yet there is perhaps no country where acts of suicide occur more frequently than in China, among the women as well as the men: such acts ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... it was not so much a case of unsatisfied yearning for motherhood, as that she wanted to hold her own with the other charwomen who were represented in the trenches. So she assumed the relationship of an anonymous marraine towards a certain unknown namesake in the Black Watch, and made boastful pretence of having ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 18, 1917 • Various
... Ruin, 'nodding to its fall!' Thus WOMAN makes her entrance and her exit; Not least an actress, when she least suspects it. Yet Nature oft peeps out and mars the plot, Each lesson lost, each poor pretence forgot; Full oft, with energy that scorns controul, At once lights up the features of the soul; Unlocks each thought chain'd by coward Art, And to full day the latent passions start! —And she, whose first, best wish is your applause, Herself exemplifies the truth she draws. Born on the stage—thro' ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... since it is a habit, it follows that irreligion, neglect to practise what we believe will destroy that habit. People who neglect their duty often complain that they have no taste for religion, cannot get interested, find no consolation therein. This justifies further neglect. They make a pretence to seek the cause. The cause is lack of faith; the fires of God's grace are burning low in their souls. They will soon go out unless they are furnished with fuel in the shape of good, solid, practical religion. That is their only salvation. Ignorance, supplemented by lack of prayer ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... from New England.[76] And, in 1644, the general court passed an ordinance declaring "that what person soever shall by word, writing, or action, endeavour to disturb our peace directly or indirectly by drawing a party under pretence that he is for the King of England, and such as join with him against the Parliament, shall be accounted as an offender of a high nature against this commonwealth, and to be proceeded with either capitally or otherwise, according to ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... conference at Brussels to consider the possibility of setting the exploration and settlement of Africa upon an international basis. Its result was the formation of an International African Association, with branches in all the principal countries. But from the first the branches dropped all serious pretence of international action. They became (so far as they exercised any influence) purely national organisations for the purpose of acquiring the maximum amount of territory for their own states. And the central body, after attempting a few unsuccessful ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... excited apprehensions of the young girl, who made her acknowledgments in a not unbecoming style, he ventured to ask a few questions as to the condition of the old lady and of herself; but, finding from the answers that the subject was not an agreeable one, and having no pretence for further delay, he prepared to depart. He inquired, however, his proper route to the Chestatee river, and thus obtained a solution of the difficulty which beset him in the choice of roads at ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... pride held him back, but the third being Sunday, he went over in the afternoon with the pretence of a message from his grandmother. As the day was mild the great doors were standing open, and from the drive he saw Mrs. Ambler sitting midway of the hall, with her Bible in her hand and her class of little negroes at her feet. ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... could not be irksome to her. If she did not talk and put herself forward, express a partiality for this, an aversion to that, she had no partialities or aversions, and it was useless to consult her tastes. He made no pretence of comprehending women, or comparing them with men. They were a different, probably a very inferior, order of existence. A wife could not be her husband's companion, much less his confidante, much less his stay. His wife, after a year or two, was of no great importance ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... without much pretence at military smartness, the escorting party scrambled into their saddles and the cavalcade moved forward through the north gate and up the Palace Road. By noon at the latest they should return, and preparations immediately began for the feast that was to be given in honor of the long-absent warriors ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... you are to play Napoleon, and you are sincere and determined to be Napoleon, Napoleon will not permit you to be any one but Napoleon, or Richard III. Richard III., or Nero Nero, and so on. He would be a poor, miserable pretence of an actor who in the representation of any historical personage were otherwise than firmly convinced, after getting into the man's skin (which means the exhaustive study of all that was ever known about him), that he is living that ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... attired in quiet dress, surely in honor of the occasion, which courtesy I greatly appreciated. Permission being granted, I invoked a blessing. The meal was served in courses, and we were waited upon by the Japanese page. I ate very sparingly, in fact, made only a pretence of eating, for God's message lay so heavily on my heart that I had to deliver it. They listened with rapt attention, and all but one shed tears. How stolid she appeared to be! yet she was possibly the one many months later most ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... a woman endowed with the greatest prudence and foresight of any one I ever knew, apprehensive of evil consequences from this affair, and fearing a dissension betwixt her two sons, advised my brother to fall upon some pretence for sending Bussi away from Court. In this advice I joined her, and, through our united counsel and request, my brother was prevailed upon to give his consent. I had every reason to suppose that Le Guast would take advantage ...
— Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, Complete • Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre
... thing valuable. These men, in their thirst for plunder, out-ran their discretion, as it appears; for they 323 proceeded to examine the ladies in the Horem, putting their base hands on their persons, under the pretence of discovering if they had concealed their jewels and gold. This outrage roused the Prince's indignation and he lost no time in absenting himself for ever from his father's dominions, for this insult on his dignity.—"If my father," said the Prince, ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... the Indians who make a pretence to feed their dogs in winter never think of doing so in summer. The result is that, as they have to steal, hunt, or starve, they become adepts in one or the other. Everything that is eatable, and many things apparently uneatable, are devoured by them. ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... expressions subtly various, I spent my days, studying them all, and finding (here has been nature's consolation to me) relief from my own thoughts in an investigation of the mind of others. The portentous pretence on which we were engaged needed perhaps a god to laugh at it, but the smaller points were within the sphere of human ridicule; with them there was no danger of amusement suffering a sudden death, and a swift resurrection in ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... man consider that if the world knew all that of him which he knows of himself; if they saw what vanity and what passions govern his inside, and what secret tempers sully and corrupt his best actions; and he would have no more pretence to be honoured and admired for his goodness and wisdom than a rotten and distempered body is to be loved and admired for its beauty and comeliness. And, perhaps, there are very few people in the world who would not rather choose to die than to have all their secret follies, the ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... comment, having no pretence either to justice or discrimination, on the works of Ellis and Acton Bell. The critic did not know that those writers had passed from time and life. I have read no review since either of my sisters died which I could have wished them to read—none even which did not render the thought ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... law of gardening. No garden should ever tell a lie. No garden should ever put on any false pretence. No garden should ever break a promise. To the present reader these proclamations may seem very trite; it may seem very trite to say that if anything in or of a garden is meant for adornment, it must adorn; but we have to say such things to many who do ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... precisely on the spot she had left a few hours before. It was set down in the log-book that the wind was not sufficiently favorable to allow the ship to pass out safely through the narrow entrance to the bay. But all on board were well aware that this was merely a pretence on the part of the captain, who, for some reason or other, wished to stop longer ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... pursed in, not knowing whether we were to have a good haul with a hundred or a hundred and fifty dollars apiece at the end of it, or whether we would have our work for nothing. All hands kept up the pretence of joking, of course, but everybody was anxious enough. It was more than the money—it was fisherman's pride. Were we to get into New York and have it telegraphed on to Gloucester for everybody that knew us to read and talk about—landing the first ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly
... consider that," said Skatterly; "we asked them to get out for a moment, on the pretence that the car had stuck, and then we dashed off full speed ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... missionaries, but, as the Reverend Father Schalkinsky naively confesses, "the inhabitants fled them like the plague." They interviewed, however, the so-called chiefs of the new religions, who listened to them with gravity and made some pretence of being convinced by the purveyors ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... villages about, and we had noticed two canoes passing backwards and forwards with rather more haste than we deemed usual or necessary. We had good cause to be suspicious; it is not customary for people (at least, between Ujiji and Zanzibar) to be about visiting and saluting after dark, under any pretence; it is not permitted to persons to prowl about camp after dark without being shot at; and this going backward and forward, this ostentatious exuberance of joy at the arrival of a small party of Wangwana, which in many parts of Urundi would be regarded as a very common event, was altogether very suspicious. ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... flotilla. The matter was postponed in the expectation that the vessels would go over to the Allies spontaneously as a result of the Venizelist movement, and on this expectation being disappointed they were, as we have seen, sequestered under the pretence of security for the Allied armada. Another excuse was needed for their appropriation; and it came in the nick of time: two Greek steamers at that moment struck mines, presumably sown by an enemy submarine, in the Gulf of Athens. With the promptitude that comes of practice, ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... look thoughtful for a moment longer, then with a resumption of her former manner—the pretence of an earnestness much deeper than the real—"Will you take me painting with you?" she said. "If it will convince you that I mean it, I'll give up my hopes of seeing that SUMPTUOUS Mr. Saffren and go back to Quesnay now, before he comes home. He's been out ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... the secret now. A sheet of old newspaper wrapped round a parcel—just a little chance like that—had given the secret to her. And she had to go down to tea and pretend that there was nothing the matter. The pretence was bravely made, ...
— The Railway Children • E. Nesbit
... news: Niagara is no noisier. By stealth Our eyes dart scrutinizing snakes. She's glad I'm happy, says her quivering under-lip. 'And are not you?' 'How can I be?' 'Take ship! For happiness is somewhere to be had.' 'Nowhere for me!' Her voice is barely heard. I am not melted, and make no pretence. With commonplace I freeze her, tongue and sense. Niagara ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the strength of their doctrine of "probable opinions," which is the fount and origin of all these irregularities. You may learn of this from themselves, for they take no pains to hide it, except that they cover their human and political prudence with the pretence of a divine and Christian prudence. They act as if the faith and the tradition which maintains it were not for ever invariable at all times and in all places, and as if nothing more were required, in order to remove the stains of guilt, than to ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... but thinks it rather unreasonable. He satirises too the heads of the rustic aristocracy; the brutal squire who bullies his nephew the clergyman for preaching against his vices, and corrupts the whole neighbourhood; or the speculative banker who cheats old maids under pretence of looking after their investments. If the squire does not generally appear in Crabbe in the familiar dramatic character of a rural Lovelace, it is chiefly because Crabbe has no great belief in the general purity of the inferior ranks of rural life. ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... dangers which have been represented as likely to arise from any errour in the prosecution of this great affair, I cannot but declare my opinion, that no delay ought to be admitted, and that not even the specious pretence of more exact inquiries, and minute considerations, ought to retard our proceedings for ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... for the present. There were a great many flower-beds, very prettily laid out; and at the end of a wide path stood a pleasant little summer-house, half-buried in vines. We established ourselves there, from whence we could view the whole garden; and with a pretence of looking again at the flowers, I soon made my escape, and returned to the house. A wide glass-door opened from the back room into the garden, and carefully closing this, I approached the table and attempted to open the drawers. I tried the first one,—it was locked; the second,—and met with ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... George I., should be secured by some of their party in the country. The princess was, at this time, with Lord Harrington, in the county of Warwick, not very distant from Catesby's house. It was arranged, therefore, that the Roman Catholics of that neighbourhood should assemble, under the pretence of a hunting-match upon Dunsmore Heath, and that the princess should be seized during the confusion that would be consequent on the ...
— Guy Fawkes - or A Complete History Of The Gunpowder Treason, A.D. 1605 • Thomas Lathbury
... to. And the ride on her fast light-stepping little mare, alone and unattended, through the fresh-smelling leafy lanes into unexplored country, seemed just what she wanted at the moment. The mare made some small delicate pretence of being roadshy, not the staring dolt-like kind of nervousness that shows itself in an irritating hanging-back as each conspicuous wayside object presents itself, but the nerve-flutter of an imaginative animal that merely results ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... now for the laity to drive conviction home upon the clergy, and prove to them that pretence has its penalty, and to bring to the mourners' bench that trinity of offenders, somewhat ironically designated as the Three Learned Professions, and mankind will be well out upon the broad highway, the towering domes of the Ideal City ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... are determined by vibrations, in communicating vibrations they in effect communicate matter, according to the view put forward in the last chapter of my book Luck or Cunning, then we can better understand it. I have nothing, however, to do with Mr. Darwin's theory of pangenesis beyond avoiding the pretence that I understand either the theory itself or what Professor Weismann says about it; all I am concerned with is Professor Weismann's admission, made immediately afterwards, that the somatic cells may, and perhaps sometimes do, impart ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... defence of Chad in the presence of the family, that the General and Mrs. Dean took the matter in hand. It was a childish thing, of course; a girlish whim. It was right that they should be kind to the boy—for Major Buford's sake, if not for his own; but they could not have even the pretence of more than a friendly intimacy between the two, and so Margaret was told the truth. Immediately, when Chad next saw her, her honest eyes sadly told him that she knew the truth, and Chad gave up then. Thereafter he disappeared from sports and from his kind every way, except ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... of him. Aug. 14th, Mr. Sowthwell cam againe. Aug. 24th, vidi divinam aquam demonstratione magnifici domini et amici mei incomparabilis D. Ed. Kelei ante meridiem tertia hora. Aug. 27th, John Basset (so namyng himself) otherwise truely named Edward Whitlok, under pretence of going to Budweiss to buy cullors and so to return agayn, did convey himselfe from my servyce of teaching Arthur grammer. Sept. 3rd, my lord and lady cam to Trebon. Sept. 12th, spes confirmata. Sept. 15th, the Lord Chamberlain cam to Trebona, and went away on the 17th. The rancor and dissimulation ...
— The Private Diary of Dr. John Dee - And the Catalog of His Library of Manuscripts • John Dee
... which is sometimes designated De Utililate Scientiarum, treats of the four offendicula, or causes of error. These are, authority, custom, the opinion of the unskilled many, and the concealment of real ignorance with pretence of knowledge. The last error is the most dangerous, and is, in a sense, the cause of all the others. The offendicula have sometimes been looked upon as an anticipation of Francis Bacon's Idola, but the two classifications ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... and Constantinople were alone excepted from the jurisdiction of the Praetorian praefects. The immense size of the city, and the experience of the tardy, ineffectual operation of the laws, had furnished the policy of Augustus with a specious pretence for introducing a new magistrate, who alone could restrain a servile and turbulent populace by the strong arm of arbitrary power. [103] Valerius Messalla was appointed the first praefect of Rome, that his reputation might countenance so invidious a measure; ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... by-paths of the intellect, which he had so long accustomed himself to explore. But how would every successive age rejoice in so secure a habitation for its reformers, and especially for each best and wisest man that happened to be then alive! He seeks to burn up our whole system of society, under pretence of purifying it from its abuses! Away with him into the Tunnel, and let him begin by setting the Thames on ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... the frontier settlements, just at that moment, been threatened with more than usual peril; and to have deserted his post at such a time would have given his accusers real grounds for the charges, which heretofore had been but a mere pretence. Before the immediate danger was past that kept him at his post, many of his warmest and most influential friends, residing in different parts of the province, had written to him, earnestly entreating ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... are they? Then throw the lubbers overboard!" And this was actually done. Without the slightest pretence to ceremony or reverence of any kind, without so much as a single prayer to consecrate their dismissal to their final resting-place in the bosom of the deep, without even pausing to sew up the poor fellows in their hammocks, ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... altogether. The officers succeeded in forming a line across a road running to the westward, which I believed, from my knowledge of the map, to be the Ashcake road. When I reached this forming line I hesitated. I thought at first that I ought to make no pretence of joining it; that prudence commanded me to keep far from it. Then the thought came to me that these disorganized battalions ware forming in any shape they could now take—men belonging to different companies, and even to different ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... in the power of the unscrupulous couple who pretended to be his parents, his life had been miserable enough. They had never intended to take him back to the mill, and, since they came to London and he was quite at their mercy, they had made no pretence of kindness. That they kept him constantly at work could hardly be counted an evil, for his working hours were the only ones with happiness in them, except when he dreamed of home. Not the cold pavement chilling him through his ragged clothes, not the strange staring ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... said, rising with a hollow pretence of caressing her tears away. "You are nervous, and upset by the tragedy. Try to ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... not embroider her ideal better on a plain ground than on one with a brilliant pattern already worked in its texture. But as the very essence of genius is truthfulness, contact with realities, (which are always ideas behind shows of form or language,) nothing is so contemptible as falsehood and pretence in its eyes. Now it is not easy to find a perfectly true woman, and it is very hard to find a perfectly true man. And a woman of genius, who has the sagacity to choose such a one as her companion, shows more of the divine gift in so doing than ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... presently in a quieter voice, "or of how my late friend and neighbour, Sir John—may God rest his soul—came to his end. Yet it is of him, or rather of his, that we must speak. It seems that you have stolen his daughter, a woman under age, and by pretence of a false marriage, as I fear, brought her to shame—a crime even fouler than ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... way of gradual induction, then I think it will be clear that all opinions must be held on the most provisional tenure. A vast number of problems will need to be worked out before any can be said to be established with a pretence to finality. And the course which the inductive process is taking supplies one of the chief 'grounds of hope' to those who wish to hold that middle position of which I have been speaking. The extreme theories which from time ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... Somersetshire trained bands, were even now coming down the valley from the London Road, as every one since I went up to town, grandly entitled the lane to the moors. There was one good point about these men, that having no discipline at all, they made pretence to none whatever. Nay, rather they ridiculed the thing, as below men of any spirit. On the other hand, Master Stickles's troopers looked down on these native fellows from a height which I hope they may never tumble, for it would break the necks ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... a second arm-chair, which there was there in the verandah, and looked as carefully as he dared to do at his friend. There could be no mistake as to the restless gleam of that eye. And then the affected air of ease, and the would-be cynicism, and the pretence of false motives, all told the same story. "They used to tell us," said Stanbury, "that idleness is the root ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... determined that his title shall be acknowledged. If any tribe shall refuse to recognize the authority of the French, by bowing down to the laced chapeau of Mowanna, let them abide the consequences of their obstinacy. Under cover of a similar pretence, have the outrages and massacres at Tahiti the beautiful, the queen of the South Seas, ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... an action at law, or, at least, to the expense of sending me to town, in a chaise and four, at a reasonable hour of the day; and all for so paltry an advantage as that of preventing my paying a trifling sum to a rival proprietor—and on the preposterous pretence, too, of sending me off at five ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 471, Saturday, January 15, 1831 • Various
... week before us. I'll send you a doctor who'll suit us,—you understand? and later in the evening I'll bring you six poppy-heads. In the state he's in, you see, a decoction of poppy-heads will send him into a sound sleep. I'll send you a cot-bed on pretence of your sleeping in the room with him. We'll move him from one bed to the other, and when we've found the money there won't be any difficulty in carrying it off. But we ought to know who the people are who live in ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... prayers at the Howard Mission, on Sunday last, but it is understood that he is not to be lionized, because the missionaries are not willing to pay him a high enough rental for his hall. As for the general movement carried on in Water street, under the false pretence that these men have voluntarily, and from purely religious motives, offered their saloons for public worship, and have, themselves, determined to reform, very little more need be said. The daily prayer- meetings are nothing more than assemblages of religious people from among the ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... for the benefit of Belgium than in the best interests of Great Britain; but the Queen was equal to these emergencies; she expressed her dissent from the King's suggestions in considerate and affectionate terms, with her gratitude for his advice, but made no pretence of following it. ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... Devon. Nor did he deem it wise to declare his intention till he made sure that the maiden was to his liking. He, therefore, spoke of his purpose to Earl Athelwold, his favorite, whom he bade to pay a visit, on some pretence, to Earl Olgar of Devonshire, to see his renowned daughter, and to bring to the court a certain ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... as a child fresh from the nursery should have had the instinct to foresee, but the young man on the edge of life never dreamed. What motives or emotions drove his masters on their various paths he made no pretence of guessing; even at that age he preferred to admit his dislike for guessing motives; he knew only his own infantile ignorance, before which he stood amazed, and his innocent good-faith, always matter of simple-minded surprise. Critics ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... men, the balance to his advantage being due probably to the British efforts to keep the Basutos from attacking the Free State. Thus the Boers have been able to overrun their western and southern borders in force sufficient to make a pretence of occupying a large extent of territory in which only the important posts specially prepared by the British for defence continue to hold out. Of these posts, however, Mafeking and Kimberley are as yet the only ones that have been attacked ...
— Lessons of the War • Spenser Wilkinson
... from the maid in the ladies' room just how to get to the end of the town in which was situated the Camel King's house, she waited for a desirable opportunity, and slipped out of the hotel on the pretence of looking at the stars, knowing that her unwitting hosts would think she had simply gone ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... service rare Could I descant, if need there were, My firmer claim to bind. But rest I most my high pretence On that my genial influence, Which made the body's indolence ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... to the Royal clemency on that ground, or on any ground, for there was not the smallest pretence for saying it was not a deliberate cold-blooded murder. And ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... to this point Dolly had been making mere pretence. She honestly loved the young seaman, and meant to tell him so plainly before he left the garden, but at this last question the merriment he had failed to see in her eyes gave place to an angry sparkle, and ...
— Foster's Letter Of Marque - A Tale Of Old Sydney - 1901 • Louis Becke
... imagine that M. Descartes can have been quite seriously of this opinion, although he had adherents who found this easy to believe, and would in all simplicity follow him where he only made pretence to go. It was apparently one of his tricks, one of his philosophic feints: he prepared for himself some loophole, as when for instance he discovered a trick for denying the movement of the earth, while he was a Copernican in the strictest sense. I suspect that he had ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... ever-rushing Time that here doth blow: O visionary world, condition strange, Where naught abiding is but only Change, 285 Where the deep-bolted stars themselves still shift and range! Shall we to more continuance make pretence? Renown builds tombs; a life-estate is Wit; And, bit by bit, The cunning years steal all from us but woe: 290 Leaves are we, whose decays no harvest sow. But, when we vanish hence, Shall they lie ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... was manifestly unconstitutional, as probably are the present so-called national banks. The United States Bank was a private or particular corporation, and the present national banks are only corporations of the same sort, though organized under a general law. The pretence that they are established to supply a national currency, does not save their constitutionality, for the convention has not given the General government the power nor imposed on it the duty of furnishing a national ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... stood on? something handy, useful, comfortable, and withal good-looking?—What do you do? you get a foraging cap. Every man looks well in a foraging cap; it harmonizes with every body's face: it makes the old look young, and the young look smart: it is, without pretence, plain in detail, and yet elegant in outline: it has no straight lines in it, and yet its curves are in contrast with those of the head; they run in opposite directions: and the shade of the cap, if it has one, emulates the decisiveness of the nose, and gives character ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... II. had forgotten the Affronts offer'd to the Duke of York, and I suppose had a Mind to make a second Tryal of French Hospitality, and whether they would be more obliging to him in his old Age, than they had been in his Youth. Neither is this plausible Pretence of defending a Prince injur'd upon the Score of Religion, very consistent with their Conduct, in regard of the Turk. To maintain a Catholick Prince at St. Germains, and support the Enemy of Christianity at Constantinople with great ...
— Memoirs of Major Alexander Ramkins (1718) • Daniel Defoe
... at her with an unaffected surprise, which went far to console her, and assured her that he was perfectly well; and that, moreover, he was so fond of indulgence that she would be sure to hear of it, if ever he could find a pretence for ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... who had served during the war; and Pierre Bedard, Esquire, Judge for the District of Three Rivers, was impeached by Mr. C. R. Ogden. Mr. Ogden accused Bedard of prostituting his judicial authority to the gratification of personal malice; of tyranny; of imposing fines upon his enemies on pretence of punishing contempts of Courts; of uttering expressions derogatory to the other judges of the Court in which he sat; of having accused the barristers of Three Rivers frequently of high breaches of moral and professional ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... trio had not much appetite for their suppers, but they made pretence of eating, and saw that their captor was watching them all the time, sipping his neat rum and nibbling a little of the hard biscuit, which he softened a little at times by dipping ...
— King o' the Beach - A Tropic Tale • George Manville Fenn
... conduct and pretences of Darrell and others obliged the clergy to enact the following canon (No. 73): "That no minister or ministers, without license and direction of the bishop, under his hand and seal obtained, attempt, upon any pretence whatsoever, either of possession or obsession, by fasting and prayer, to cast 'out any devil or devils, under pain of the imputation of imposture, or cozenage, and deposition from the ministry." This penalty at the present day not many of the ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... simplicity and ignorance. Against these, if judgment has been exercised according to the laws of the church, and conformably to the laws of this realm, we be without blame. If we have been too remiss and slack, we shall gladly do our duty from henceforth. If any man hath been, under pretence of this [crime], particularly offended, it were pity to suffer any man to be wronged; and thus it ought to be, and otherwise we cannot answer, no man's special case being declared in ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... others of the Privy Council. His despatch and answer were with great expedition and great countenance and favour of the King. The Articles are sent to the Ambassador with orders also for the money to be paid to me by him, for the enterprise to proceed with all diligence. The pretence is that my powers should join with the Duke of Alva's powers, which he doth secretly provide in Flanders, as well as with powers which will come with the Duke of Medina Celi out of Spain, and to invade this realm and set up the Queen of Scots. They have practised ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... himself through the valley of the shadow of temptation, and feared no evil because of the Madonna vision in his soul, even the Madonnas preferred Lancelot and Tristram to Galahad. It wasn't an easy world for a man who wanted to keep faith with himself. It was a pinchbeck world, of pretence and pull,—that world that lies drowned out there. And yet I believe it was infinitely better than the lost Atlantis, better than the deluged planet of Noah, nobler and finer than the best civilization of which we have any trace. I never despaired of it, and ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith
... sorely disappointed. Instead of giving a creed to Christendom, he received back his confession in a form which at first he could not sign at all. There was some ground for his complaint that, under pretence of inserting the single word of one essence, which our wise and godly Emperor so admirably explained, the bishops had in effect drawn up a composition of their own. It was a venerable document of stainless orthodoxy, and they had ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... song of birds, And the children's early words, And a loving woman's voice, low and sweet, John Brown; And I hate a false pretence, And the want of common sense, And arrogance, and fawning, and deceit, John Brown; I love the meadow flowers, And the brier in the bowers, And I love an open face without guile, John Brown; And I hate a selfish knave, And ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... contrived that when the council was so divided that the consent of two-thirds could not be obtained, the question should be reserved for the determination of the three electors, an artifice by which, under the modest pretence of providing against dissension, they invested themselves with the sovereign authority. By additional enactments it was provided that no foreigner, though he might go or come, or reside peaceably, should be employed under the government; that past offences should be mutually forgiven; ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... find exactly the right expression. I am always trifling with the present moment. Feeling in me is retrospective. My refractory nature is slow to recognize the solemnity of the hour in which I actually stand. An ironical instinct, born of timidity, makes me pass lightly over what I have on pretence of waiting for some other thing at some other time. Fear of being carried away, and distrust of myself pursue me even in moments of emotion; by a sort of invincible pride, I can never persuade myself to say to any particular instant: "Stay! decide for me; be ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... face from me, half in mock anger. But, just as it is with children, so it was with Elliot, for indeed my dear was ever much of a child, wherefore her memory is now to me so tender. And as children make pretence to be in this humour or that for sport, and will affect to be frighted till they really fear and weep, so Elliot scarce knew how deep her own humour went, and whether she was acting like a player in a Mystery, or was in good earnest. And if she knew not rightly what her humour was, far less could ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... calamities to others. This arises less from an active cruelty than from a lack of imagination, an inability to suppose themselves in the places of others. I soon felt the uselessness of searching, in my own mind, for the motive of Mlle. d'Arency's desire, or pretence of desire, for the death of De Noyard. What had passed between them I could not guess. So, after the manner of youth, I gave up the question, satisfied with knowing that I had before me an interview with a charming woman, and willing ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... almost at her ease, and the old clergyman soon found lady Margaret so sensible and as well as courteous—prejudiced yet further in her favour, it must be confessed, by the pleasant pretence she made of claiming cousinship on the ground of the identity of her husband's title with his surname—that, ere he left the castle, liberal as he had believed himself, he was nevertheless astonished to find how much of friendship ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... careful model, but it was afterwards altered, nay, reduced to the vilest form, by those who most unworthily had charge of so great a fabric. For it comes to pass very often that one stumbles against certain men, said to be very learned, but for the most part ignorant, who, under pretence of understanding, set themselves arrogantly many times to try to play the architect and to superintend; and more often than not they spoil the arrangements and the models of those who, having spent their lives in the study and practice of building, can act with judgment in ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol 2, Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi • Giorgio Vasari
... brooded in my dolorous gloom On that my guiltless kinsman's doom. Not all in silence; no, I swore, Should Fortune bring me home once more, My vengeance should redress his fate, And speech engendered cankerous hate. Thence dates my fall: Ulysses thence Still scared me with some fresh pretence, With chance-dropt words the people fired, Sought means of hurt, intrigued, conspired. Nor did the glow of hatred cool, Till, wielding Calchas* as his tool— But why a tedious tale repeat, To stay you from your morsel sweet? If all are equal, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... of man, naturally he wished to make his friend, consented readily. In they went; and, by the merest accident, Mr. Mayor and the town council were then sitting. To them the insidious landlord communicated privately an account of his suspicions. He himself conducted my brother, under pretence of discovering the best station for picturesque purposes, to the particular box for prisoners at the bar. This was not suspected by the poor boy, not even when Mr. Mayor began to question him. He still thought it an accident, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... the man, who was really little more than a boy, lost his head; or perhaps he was infected by the spirit of nervousness which had gripped Toni earlier in the afternoon. At any rate, whatever the excuse, he made no pretence of showing the new-comers into the drawing-room, but opened the dining-room door and ushered them straight into the presence of his mistress; after which he closed the door and leaned against the wall, aghast ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... made a pretence of trying to get away, but quickly gave in, and turned her lips to the digger's hawk-like face, and kissed ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... this instinct of thinking for oneself throughout a people. "Government of the people by the people for the people" means nothing unless individuals keep their consciences unfettered and think freely. Accustom people to be nose-led and spoon-fed, and democracy is a mere pretence. The measure of democracy is the measure of the freedom and sense of individual responsibility in its humblest citizens. And democracy—I say it with solemnity—has ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... their prouision in her, came not into the Streights at all: neither did we see her since the day we were separated in the great snow, of which I spake before. For these causes, hauing not their house, nor yet prouision, they were disappointed of their pretence to tarie, and therefore laded their ships, and ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... doubt composed of the idle and deserted children who generally swarm in great cities, nurtured in vice and daring, and ready for any thing. The object of the monks seems to have been the atrocious one of inveigling them into slave-ships, on pretence of sending them to Syria, and selling them for slaves on the coast of Africa.[19] Great numbers of these poor victims were shipped at Marseilles; but the vessels, with the exception of two or three, were wrecked on the shores of Italy, and every soul perished. The ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... may ever arrogate to himself extraordinary gifts or supernatural perfection, or through vainglory give himself out to be a holy man; such, for instance, as to withdraw into solitary places on pretence of enjoying ecstasies like the Ariahs, and afterwards to presume to teach others the way to uncommon spiritual attainments. Sooner may the lofty palm-tree that has been cut down become green again, than an elect guilty ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... and ruinous, being not only a direct disobedience of his Majesty's commands, but destructive of the welfare of the colony in general, the governor in the most positive manner forbade all persons on any pretence whatsoever to distil spirituous liquors of any kind or quality, on pain of such steps being taken for their punishment as would effectually prevent a repetition of so dangerous an offence. The constables of the different districts, as well as all other ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... afterwards, I recognised that it was merely because, in spite of what was lying on her heart, she retained the habit of duty, and that it was the strength of that habit which enabled her to pursue her functions as of old. Her grief was too strong and too true to require any pretence of being unable to fulfil trivial tasks, nor would she have understood that any one could so pretend. Vanity is a sentiment so entirely at variance with genuine grief, yet a sentiment so inherent in human nature, that even the most poignant sorrow ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... proposal in her hand—to ask counsel and congratulations. Everybody saw through the discreet veil with which she flattered herself she concealed her exultation when others than the affianced twain were by—and while nobody was so unkind as to expose the thinness of the pretence, she was given to understand in many and gratifying ways that her masterpiece was considered, in the Aylett circle, a suitable crown to the achievements that had preceded it. Mabel was popular and beloved, ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... "I make no pretence to understand him, dear, any more than his poor father could. My dear brother was of headstrong order, and it did him no good to contradict him, and indeed it was dangerous to do so; but his nature was as simple as a child's almost, to any one accustomed to him. If he had not married that grand ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... lamentable end of the Franciscan missionaries did not deter others from making further attempts to follow their example. During the first 20 years of the 17th century, priests succeeded in entering Japan, under the pretence of trading, in spite of the extreme measures adopted to discover them and the precautions taken to uproot the new doctrine, which it was feared would become the forerunner of sedition. Indeed, many Japanese nobles professing Christianity had already taken up their residence in ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... I make any pretence to be infallible, you are quite mistaken,' he said, with slow solemnity—no one in disclaiming Papistry could have been more the Pope—'I leave that to your priests at St. Damian's, Dora. But there is an ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... he spoke that Solomon White came into the room. Boundary knew it was he before the door handle turned, before the hum of voices in the hall outside had ceased, but it was with a great pretence of ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... recalled with burning cheeks how his intense voice had stirred her; how his wishes had compelled her; she shivered pitifully as she remembered the warmth of his shoulder touching carelessly her own. If he had come to her honestly and asked her aid, she would have given it; but this underhand pretence at love! It was unworthy of him; and it was certainly most unworthy of her. What must he think of her? How he must be laughing at her—and hoping that his spell was working, so that he could get the coveted rifle and ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... creature of our time and century, is not the man who doubts Christ, or questions God—for Christ was patient with the doubter, and God answers, through the medium of science, every honest question—it is the man who pretends to believe and lives on the pretence, while his conduct gives the lie to his profession! That is why you—and why thousands of others like you, are beginning to look upon many of the clergy with contempt, and to treat their admonitions with indifference. That is why thousands ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... these words. I commend to you, dear brethren, the one simple, personal question, Have I submitted myself to that Teacher, and said to men and systems and preachers and books and magazines, and all the rest of the noisy and clamorous tongues that bewilder under pretence of enlightening this generation—have I said to them all, 'Hold your peace! and let me, in the silence of my waiting soul, hear the Teacher Himself speak to me. Speak, Lord! for Thy servant heareth. Teach me Thy way and lead me, for Thou art ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren |
