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More "Imposture" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the divine essence. But we must not confine ourselves to a superficial consideration and consequent rejection of these representations and the religious practices which follow upon them as being engendered by superstition, by error, or by imposture, or even by a simple piety, and so neglect their essential value. There is need to discover in these representations and in these practices their ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... the men to fight,—not to pray, but to fight. She promised no rescue by supernatural means, but only through natural forces. France was not to despond, but to take courage, and fight. There was no imposture about her, only zeal and good sense, to impress upon the country the necessity of bravery ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... his fraud, even with the credulous, if he had not forced himself to give colour to his story by acting the savage in men's eyes. But he must really, it was thought, be a savage who fed upon roots, herbs, and raw flesh. He made, however, so little by the imposture, that he at last confessed himself a cheat, and got his living as a well-conducted bookseller's hack for many years before his death, in 1763, aged 84. In 1711, when this jest was penned, he had not yet publicly eaten his own children, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... Sibyls, and the lying oracles of Heathenrie. Oblige me either to renounce my reason and the common principles which distinguish truth from error, or to admit the proof thou shalt allege, which proof, look thee, must be such as no imposture can lay claim to, otherwise it proves thy doctrine to be an imposture. If thy religion be true, there must be such a proof. For if the Being who gave this revelation which He requires all men to receive, have left ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... seems to be, that a belief in omens and prodigies was again become prevalent, as the people were evidently relapsing into pristine barbarity, ignorance being ever the proper soil for a harvest of imposture. ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... the pyramids, and enshrined whole generations of Egypt's embalmed population in richly adorned sepulchres of everlasting rock. Its substance of esoteric knowledge and faith, in its form of exoteric imposture and exhibition, gave it vitality and endurance long. In the vortex of change and decay it sank at last. And now it is only after its secrets have been buried for thirty centuries that the exploring genius of modern times has brought ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... I am unable to accept the invitation of the Committee of the Dialectical Society. . . . I take no interest in the subject. The only case of 'Spiritualism' I have ever had the opportunity of examining into for myself was as gross an imposture as ever came under my notice. But supposing these phenomena to be genuine—they do not interest me. If anybody would endow me with the faculty of listening to the chatter of old women and curates in the nearest provincial town, I should decline the privilege, ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... action to an improper length. Indeed, the patient may be gradually habituated to almost any stimulus, but at the expence of a paralytic stroke on an impaired constitution. Such are among the melancholy effects of imposture and credulity! "Were it possible," says a learned authority, "to collect all the cases of sacrifices to the mysterious infatuation, it is probable that their number would exceed the enormous havoc made by gunpowder or the sword." Another reputable ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... truthfulness of Drury's Madagascar. He adds the following curious particulars anent our subject:—"Robin Drury," he says, "among those who knew him (and he was known to many, being a porter at the East India House), had the character of a downright honest man, without any appearance of fraud or imposture. He was known to a friend of mine (now living), who frequently called upon him at his house in Lincoln's Inn Fields, which were not then enclosed. He tells me he has often seen him throw a javelin there, and strike a small mark at a surprising ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 196, July 30, 1853 • Various
... one fruitless search, the actual monument is said to have been discovered on a peak of the mountain in A.D. 1212, and a transcription was made, which may be seen reproduced as a curiosity in Legge's Classics, vol. iii. For several reasons, however, the whole affair must be regarded as a gross imposture. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... Aphrodite, and Hera). Here the patient is expected to sleep over night in the temple, and the god visits him in a dream, and reveals a course of treatment which will lead to recovery. Probably there is a good deal of sham and imposture about the process. The canny priests know more than they care to tell about how the patient is worked into an excitable, imaginative state; and of the very human means employed to produce a satisfactory and informing ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... opposite side, supposing their story true, spoke for them the strongest of all natural instincts—the pleading of the maternal heart, combated by no self-interest whatever. Surely if Lady Macclesfield had not been supported by indignation against an imposture, merely for her own ease and comfort, she would have pensioned Savage, or have procured him some place under Government—not difficult in those days for a person with her connections (however sunk as respected female society) to have obtained for an only son. In the sternness of ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... passing through the streets, accompanied by musicians playing on bagpipes, and by innumerable spectators attracted by curiosity, to which were added anxious parents and relations, who came to look after those among the misguided multitude who belonged to their respective families. Imposture and profligacy played their part in this city also, but the morbid delusion itself seems to have predominated. On this account religion could only bring provisional aid, and therefore the town council benevolently took an interest in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... towns beggary was an organised imposture, with a sort of government and police of its own. Each beggar had his beat, with orderly successions and promotions, as with other governments. There were battles to decide conflicting claims, ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... else. If George should be discovered by the king, Lilly could honestly disclaim knowing him. If affairs turned to our desire, the Doctor could lose nothing by his ignorance whether pretended or real. So I doubt not he thanked us for the imposture, ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... never so skilfully planned—when the eyes of deep wisdom rest on it, it becomes like a trivial show that we offer to very small children at nightfall: some magic-lantern performance, whose tawdry imposture a last gleam of sunshine lays bare. Can you conceive Jesus Christ—nay, any wise man you have happened to meet—in the midst of the unnatural gloom that overhung Elsinore? Is not every action of Hamlet induced by a fanatical impulse, which tells him that ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... (eagerly). Believe it not, sweet maid! believe it not, 130 Beloved woman! 'Twas a low imposture Framed ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... quoted. A feeling of deep disgust was the prevailing sentiment. Encamped in the enemy's country, from childhood conversant with the tortuous windings of Papal policy, and the windy hollowness of the popular cries, they stand amazed that Englishmen can be deceived by such obvious imposture, that they will listen to such self-convicted charlatans, that they will repose confidence in such ten-times-exposed deceivers. The history of the Home Rule movement will in future ages be quoted as the most ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... seems so improbable, that I must have time to consider. If you will call on me in a week, and produce your facts, I will give you my answer. I am not the man, sir, to wish to keep any one out of his true rights, but I will not yield, on the other hand, to imposture." ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 4 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... he were in London. These revelations were so alarming that they preferred not to believe them. Querelle must have invented this absurd story as a last resource for prolonging his life. To set at rest all doubt on this subject he must be convinced of the imposture. If it was true that he had accompanied the "brigands" from the sea to Paris, he could, on travelling over the route, show their different halting-places. If he could do this his life was ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... song is about the pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Thousands of Greeks, Armenians and Catholics go to Jerusalem every year to visit the "Holy Places," and get a certificate of the pardon of all their sins. The Greek Patriarch performs a lying imposture called the Holy Fire every year at Greek Easter, by lighting a candle with a match inside a dark room, and declaring that it is miraculously lighted by fire which comes forth from the tomb of Christ! So the poor Greek woman ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... wealth. Some of its priests purchased a maintenance by separating themselves from Rome, and by becoming the authors of a fresh schism. Some, rejoicing in the new license, flung away their sacred vestments, proclaimed that their whole life had been an imposture, insulted and persecuted the religion of which they had been ministers, and distinguished themselves, even in the Jacobin Club and the Commune of Paris, by the excess of their impudence and ferocity. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... waves roaring in the history of the nations reveals an abiding divine power. It leaves the self-will of man untouched, yet sets up a rampart against it. The explanation attempted three hundred and fifty years ago of an imposture or an usurpation is incompatible with the clearness of an idea which is carried out persistently through so many generations. Usurpations fall rapidly. But in this one case the divine words themselves contain the idea more clearly expressed than any ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... he himself, too, had sinned in this same matter of a will for this mere fleshly reproduction of a wretched old uncle whose very name he wished to forget! The boy's Christian name, even, was an imposture and an irony, for it implied hereditary force and brilliancy to which he plainly would never attain. The consolation of real sonship was always left him certainly; but he could not help groaning to himself, 'Why cannot a son be one's ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... son, having forged letters of credit Ind drawn money from several bankers, came to Florence, and was received as an Englishman of quality by Marquis Riccardi, who could not be convinced by Mr. Mann of the imposture till the adventurer ran away on foot to ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... true Piety and Religion, is a Player with a still greater Imputation of Guilt, in proportion to his depreciating a Character more sacred. Consider all the different Pursuits and Employments of Men, and you will find half their Actions tend to nothing else but Disguise and Imposture; and all that is done which proceeds not from a Man's very self, is the Action of a Player. For this Reason it is that I make so frequent mention of the Stage: It is, with me, a Matter of the highest Consideration what Parts are well or ill ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... Southern States from a soil and climate for which they only are adapted. Yet emancipation by removal is the theory of the Colonization Society, and in this point of view that Society must be characterized as a grand imposture. What must be the power of that delusion which can render intelligent and philanthropic men the victims of such a fallacy? If the whites, who hold the reins of government, could but be brought to exercise ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... the expression in Lindesay's narrative, "My mother has sent me," could only be used by St. John, the adopted son of the Virgin Mary. The whole story is so well attested, that we have only the choice between a miracle or an imposture. Mr. Pinkerton plausibly argues, from the caution against incontinence, that the Queen was privy to the scheme of those who had recourse to this expedient, to deter King ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... When the boys come into my yard for leave to gather horsechestnuts, I own I enter into Nature's game, and affect to grant the permission reluctantly, fearing that any moment they will find out the imposture of that showy chaff. But this tenderness is quite unnecessary; the enchantments are laid on very thick. Their young life is thatched with them. Bare and grim to tears is the lot of the children in the hovel I saw yesterday; yet not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... the anti-social conspirators, the Illuminati: most of them are knaves of abilities, who have usurped the easy direction of ignorance, or forced themselves as guides on weakness or folly, which bow to their charlatanism as if it was sublimity, and hail their sophistry and imposture as inspiration. ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... you to accept on my affirmation what you would hold to be incredible without the evidence of your own senses. Let me only say this, it was not so much what we saw or heard (in which you might fairly suppose that we were the dupes of our own excited fancy, or the victims of imposture in others) that drove us away, as it was an indefinable terror which seized both of us whenever we passed by the door of a certain unfurnished room, in which we neither saw nor heard anything. And ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... Cumberland, with seven men and three officers; but finding that she was unable to bear the voyage, he resolved to confide in the honor of the French, and present his passport at the Mauritius. There he was detained a prisoner six years; first charged with imposture, then treated as a spy; and when these imputations were refuted, he was accused of violating his passport. The French had found in his journal a wish dotted down to examine the state of that settlement, written when a stranger to the renewal of war. Some doubt seems to have been really entertained, ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... mythology; still later on, D.F. Strauss, when, in the days of our own youth, he placed the myth and the legend, with their unconscious origin and growth, not alone in opposition to the idea of Deity intervening to interrupt established order, but also to that of imposture and conscious fraud; Otfr. Mueller, when he proved that Greek mythology, far from containing moral abstractions or historical facts, is the involuntary personification of surrounding nature, subsequently developed ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... penal laws against swearing and blasphemy, why not as to rites and ceremonies of public worship? (39.) Devotion towards God is a virtue akin to gratitude to man; religion is a branch of morality. The Puritans' talk about grace is a mere imposture, (76) which extracts from Parker vehement language. What is there to make such a fuss about? he cries. Why cannot you come to Church? You are left free to think what you like. Your secret thoughts are your own, but ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... hero of my dreams, stood pure and lofty as of old—a thing it was not unworthy to love, to mourn, to die for. A letter in your handwriting had been shown to me, garbled and altered, as it seems—but I detected not the imposture—it was yourself, yourself alone, brought in false and horrible witness against yourself! And could you think that any other evidence, the words, the oaths of others, would have convicted you in my eyes? There you wronged me. But I deserved it—I had bound myself to secrecy—the ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... unnoticed man, without patron or friend to help me. Marian Halcombe is nothing now but my eldest sister, who provides for our household wants by the toil of her own hands. We two, in the estimation of others, are at once the dupes and the agents of a daring imposture. We are supposed to be the accomplices of mad Anne Catherick, who claims the name, the place, and the living personality of dead ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... no such thing as divination, or soothsaying, or prophesy, or fortune telling in this world. It is all coarse imposture, that can deceive only the weakest mortals. You know that, of course, Ryland. It follows, then, that this old woman could have had no knowledge of what was going to happen unless she was in league with conspirators who had planned to kidnap ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... assembly of grave doctors and theologians cautiously examined Joan's mission, and pronounced it undoubted and supernatural. She was sent to the parliament, then residing at Poictiers; and was interrogated before that assembly: the presidents, the counsellors, who came persuaded of her imposture, went away convinced of her inspiration. A ray of hope began to break through that despair in which the minds of all men were before enveloped. Heaven had now declared itself in favor of France, and had laid bare its outstretched arm to take vengeance ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... "if I told thee that I could initiate thee into the secrets of that magic which the philosophy of the whole existing world treats as a chimera, or imposture; if I promised to show thee how to command the beings of air and ocean, how to accumulate wealth more easily than a child can gather pebbles on the shore, to place in thy hands the essence of the herbs which prolong life from age to age, the mystery of that attraction by which to awe all ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... his character in a tale—the data of which is nearly a century back—will, perhaps, be overlooked, when it is considered of how much value, in the illustration of "wise saws," are "modern instances." Imposture and credulity are of all ages; and the Courtenays of the nineteenth are rivalled by the Tofts and Andres of the eighteenth century. The subjoined account of the soi-disant SIR WILLIAM COURTENAY is extracted from "An Essay on his Character, and Reflections on his ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Esquire. I saw that letter yesterday you had from home. Esquire indeed! It's sickening!—I am ready to have it out with him whenever he likes, and take the nigger after him when he's had his gruel. Go and tell him if you like. It's been dull enough in the place ever since that miserable imposture about the lost belt. You want something to rouse you up, and I'll give it you if you can bring those two fellows up to the scratch; but that you can't do. Look at them sneaking off like a street cur and an Indian jackal. Contemptible ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... whether the Person will live or die; {Bury the Serum.} and then one that waits at this Ceremony, takes the Blood away, (which remains in a Lump, in the middle of the Water) and buries it in the Ground, in a Place unknown to any one, but he that inters it. Now, I believe a great deal of Imposture in these Fellows; yet I never knew their Judgment fail, though I have seen them give their Opinion after this Manner, several times: Some affirm, that there is a smell of Brimstone in the Cabins, when they are Conjuring, which I cannot contradict. Which way it may come, I will not argue, ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... have been raised in Boston; but an influential merchant of that town, named Robert Calef, took the matter up in a different spirit, and also examined Margaret Rule, and satisfied himself that the whole was a delusion or imposture. Calef wrote a rational account of the events of these two years, 1692 and 1693, exposing the delusion, and controverting the opinions of the two Mathers on the subject of witchcraft, which was published ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... display a superior form of Christianity; it is to be an apostate. As Solovyof has impressively shown in his notable conversations on War and Christianity, pacificism under present conditions is that very sort of religious imposture with which is associated the ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw
... Counsellor of Police. The theory which Stanhope now advanced was, that Caspar was a journeyman tailor or glover, from some small village on the Austrian side of the river Salzach. The reasons which he assigns for his belief in the imposture are all derived from Caspar's supposed want of integrity and veracity. They impeach the character of Caspar living, and not of Caspar dead. Why, then, did Stanhope wait for his death before he proclaimed the imposture? Why did he remain his protector, and thus make ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... Sefton's object in seeking an encounter with me; that I gratified him because willing to undertake every hazard for her sake. Finally, I avowed my knowledge of all the disappointment her heart had experienced by Frank's inconstancy.' know you feel, to-night,' I said, 'that existence is an imposture—worse than the meanest jiggle. So do I. The only thing that can render it a reality is love. I intended to say to you, let us end it. For two years, I have borne the mask of a hypocrite that I might thus tell you of my idolatry, and say give me love or ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... no less than the remaining portion of the journal printed in the proceedings of the investigating committee, is itself strong circumstantial proof of the imposture underlying the whole transaction. Many sections of the completed constitution are not even mentioned in the journal; it does not contain the submission clause of the schedule, and the authenticity of the document rests upon the signature and the certificate of John ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... no longer give the same human reverence as before to one who has been seduced into vanity so egregious; and I feel assured a priori that such presumption must have entangled him into evasions and insincerities, which naturally end in crookedness of conscience and real imposture, however noble a man's commencement, and however unshrinking his sacrifices of ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... fun—and there were some very pleasant touches—was not so much the fun of a huge and preposterous joke, but rather the humour of character or incidental detail. The part of Lord Glandeville, who might have been made the most ridiculous butt of imposture, was treated quite solemnly. Indeed, our sympathies were provoked for a man whose finest instincts had been trifled with; who had been suffered to fall in love with the poet-soul of a girl only to find that she was the tool of a gang of rogues. One of them, Dick Gilder, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 8, 1914 • Various
... Inauspicatum dat iter oblatus lepus. And the ground of the conceit was probably no greater than this, that a fearful animal passing by us portended unto us something to be feared; as upon the like consideration the meeting of a fox presaged some future imposture." Such superstitions as these last must be the result of study; they are too recondite for natural or spontaneous growth. But when the attempt was once made to construct a science of predictions, any association, though ever so faint or remote, by which ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... its ceremonies. Their character was similar to that of the Persian Magi, and they are often confounded by the Greek historians. Like the priests in most other nations, they employed religion in subserviency to the ruling powers, and made use of imposture to serve the purposes of civil policy. Accordingly Diodorus Siculus relates (lib. ii., p. 31, compared with Daniel ii. 1, &c., Eccles. xliv. 3) that they pretended to predict future events by divination, to explain prodigies, interpret ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield
... woman, between joy and grief, were half hysterical. They talked to the toad-like mountebank in the most endearing tones, evidently believing it was their dead baby toddling before them. Two or three times the same horrible imposture was repeated. Bott never made his appearance without somebody recognizing him as a dear departed friend. The glimmering light, the unwholesome excitement, the servile credulity fixed by long habit, seemed to produce a sort of passing ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... suppress a laugh, it sounded so strangely. Corona herself turned pale, though she firmly believed the whole thing to be an imposture of ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... and the author I have referred to were probably both captivated into belief by some fatuitous realization of their horoscopic predictions. Nor can we altogether blame their credulity, when we see biology, table-turning, rapping, and all the family of imposture, taken up seriously in ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... slave, victim and torturer, bent Before one Power, to which supreme control Over their will by their own weakness lent, Made all its many names omnipotent; All symbols of things evil, all divine; 735 And hymns of blood or mockery, which rent The air from all its fanes, did intertwine Imposture's impious ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... by a French newspaper as une barbe de Charlemagne, a very polite pun, but hers was much fuller. It was soft as floss silk. After a while the capillary attraction ceased to draw, and Mr. Barnum thought of an admirable plan to revive it. He got somebody to prosecute him for false pretences and imposture, on the ground that Madame was a man. Then Mr. Barnum had, with the greatest unwillingness and many moral apologies, a medical examination; they might as sensibly have examined Vashishta's cow to find out if it was an Irish bull. Then came the attack on the impropriety of the whole thing, ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... would be a joke if my little Iron-Clad should end his career of imposture in that public institution, and sit once more under my excellent uncle! But I can't wish him any such misfortune. His mission to us was one of mercy. The place has been Paradise again, ever since ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... information. Pains have not been spared to represent them as impositions on the public. Let me tell you, Sir, that the creation of a navy, and a two years' war without taxing, are a very singular species of imposture. But be it so. For what end does Necker carry on this delusion? Is it to lower the estimation of the crown he serves, and to render his own administration contemptible? No! No! He is conscious that the sense of mankind is so clear and decided in favor of economy, and of the weight and value ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... condemn his wives to a complete seclusion. He did not venture to hope, nor did those in his confidence, that the truth would not one day be known, but he hoped to gain, without loss of time, sufficient popularity to prevent the revelation of the imposture from damaging his prospects. The seven great houses which he had dispossessed would, in such a case, refuse to rally round him, and it was doubtless to lessen their prestige that he extinguished their pyres; but the people did not trouble themselves as to the origin of their ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... one more point, it is time that the public should fully understand that the common method of supporting barefaced imposture at the present day, both in Europe and in this country, consists in trumping up "Dispensaries," "Colleges of Health," and other advertising charitable clap-traps, which use the poor as decoy-ducks for the rich, and the proprietors of which ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... wanting. On the other hand, the Protestants abhor the sacrifice of the mass as gross superstition. They think that the bread remains simply bread after the benediction as much as before; that for the priests to pretend that in breaking it they renew the sacrifice of Christ, is imposture; and that to bow before it in adoration and homage is ...
— Mary Queen of Scots, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... various arts, And likes particularly to produce Some new experiment to show his parts; This is the age of oddities let loose, Where different talents find their different marts; You 'd best begin with truth, and when you 've lost your Labour, there 's a sure market for imposture. ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... earl marshal of England (Lord Howard, of Effingham, acting deputy), were prepared, signed, and superscribed.—They were also provided with good general means of judging of the authenticity of cards for the different galleries; and even to be guarded against imposture, there was further authority to keep all the several parties in motion, till they arrived at their respective destinations. Thus, every arrangement was made to accomplish the great advantage of clear roads and facilities of approach; and the regulations adopted at those points, ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip
... occurred to me that the occult cause of his lady's separation from him, round which herself and her legal adviser have thrown such formidable mystery, may have been nothing more, after all, than some imposture of this kind, intended only to mystify and surprise, while it was taken in ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... are very wonderful, and my husband has taken some pains to ascertain whether there is any imposture, but without success. They profess to charm the Cobra de Capella and other snakes, which are excessively venomous, and abound in all the hotter parts of the country. It is said, indeed, that 12,000 natives are killed annually by bites from them. The snake-charmers do not previously ...
— Norman Vallery - How to Overcome Evil with Good • W.H.G. Kingston
... Browning accompanied that of his wife. He had, he said, to overcome a real repugnance in recalling the subject; he could hardly understand how another opinion was possible than that "the whole display of 'hands,' 'spirit utterances,' etc., was a cheat and imposture." It was all "melancholy stuff," which a grain of worldly wisdom would dispose of in a minute. "Mr Browning," the letter goes on, "has, however, abundant experience that the best and rarest of natures may begin by the ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... ambulatory automatist, who had strayed away, like the Rev. Mr. Bourne, from some place where nobody desired his return: rather his lifelong absence was an object of hope. The longer Kaspar lived, the more frequently was he detected in every sort of imposture that could make him notorious, or ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... that question has only one possible solution; and your enthusiast is a fine florid fellow, dominates things for a while and shakes the world out of a doze; but when once he is gone, an army of quiet and uninfluential people set to work to remind us of the other side and demolish the generous imposture. While Calvin is putting everybody exactly right in his INSTITUTES, and hot- headed Knox is thundering in the pulpit, Montaigne is already looking at the other side in his library in Perigord, and predicting that they will find as much to quarrel about in the Bible ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... different ways for that, of which I alone knew the real, secret, simple cause. They were all, without my intending it, my dupes. Yet when I felt that I had them in my power, I did not deceive them much, not much more than I deceived myself. I never was guilty of deliberate imposture. I went no farther than affectation and exaggeration, which it was in such circumstances scarcely possible for me to avoid; for I really often did not know the difference between my own feelings, and the descriptions I heard given of ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... his presence and aid indispensable. By dint of great practice, I acquired a pretty accurate imitation of this sound, and have practised it successfully. But the animals were quick to discover the imposture, and to punish ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... religion has furnished a similar puzzle to these investigators. There are those among them who assume that religion is an invention of crafty men who find it a means of obtaining ascendency over their fellows. That it is all imposture—the product of priestcraft—is the theory of some small philosophers. Such being the case, they expect that the progress of knowledge will cause ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden
... thus follows that his mother knew the sixty-five stanzas of the ballad by heart. Does any one believe that, as a woman of seventy-two, she learned the poem to back Hogg's hoax? That he wrote the poem, and caused her to learn it by rote, so as to corroborate his imposture? ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... CARRIED OUT.] —Thou, Volpone, By blood and rank a gentleman, canst not fall Under like censure; but our judgment on thee Is, that thy substance all be straight confiscate To the hospital of the Incurabili: And, since the most was gotten by imposture, By feigning lame, gout, palsy, and such diseases, Thou art to lie in prison, cramp'd with irons, Till thou be'st ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... prejudices of his hearers would prevent their ever accepting, and then asks triumphantly if these miracles, which are declared to have taken place in an enlightened age in the full glare of publicity, are palpably imposture, what credence can be attached to accounts of extraordinary occurrences of remote antiquity, and connected with an obscure corner of the globe? The 'argumentum ad judicium' would take miracles as a whole, and endeavour to sift the amount of truth which may lie in the accounts we have of ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock
... they put an apron before her eyes, and then one other person touched her hand, which produced the same effect as the touch of the witch did in the Court. Whereupon the gentlemen returned, openly protesting, that they did believe the whole transaction of this business was a mere imposture. This put the Court and all persons into a stand. But at length Mr. Pacy did declare, That possibly the maid might be deceived by a suspicion that the witch touched her when she did not. For he had observed divers times, that although they could ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various
... point for consideration is, that the Christianity preached by Christ and his apostles is a whole—a single system, which we must either take or leave—believe entirely, or entirely reject it as an imposture. There is no middle ground for you to occupy. It is all true, or all false. For instance, you can not take one of Paul's Epistles and say, "this is true," and take another of the same man's letters, containing the very same religion, and say, "this is false." If ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... que fut cette imposture, Louis ne put pas s'en defendre. Il resolut d'envoyer, au prince et au Kan convertis une ambassade pour les feliciter de leur bonheur et les engager a favoriser et a propager dans leurs etats la religion chretienne. ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt
... common-sense is offended by priestly hypocrisy and occult necromantic jugglery,—we, who perhaps in our innermost heart of hearts ardently desire to believe in a supreme Divinity and the grandly progressive Sublime Intention of the Universe, but who, discovering naught but ignoble Cant and Imposture everywhere, are incontinently thrown back on our own resources, . . hence it comes, I say, that we are satisfied to accept ourselves, each man in his own personality, as the Beginning and End of Existence, and to minister to that Absolute Self which after all concerns ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... Whistler's own sake, no less than for the protection of the purchaser, Sir Coutts Lindsay ought not to have admitted works into the gallery in which the ill-educated conceit of the artist so nearly approached the aspect of wilful imposture. I have seen, and heard, much of cockney impudence before now; but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... Arabic "'Ilm al-Mukashafah" the science by which Eastern adepts discover man's secret thoughts. Of late years it has appeared in England but with the same quackery and imposture which have ruined "Spiritualism" as ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... the monks have planted in their garden a bush similar to those which grow in Europe, and that by the most ridiculous imposture, they hesitate not to affirm that it is the same which Moses saw—the miraculous bush. The assertion is false, and the alleged fact a mere invention."—Geramb's Pilgrimage to Palestine, &c., ...
— Notes and Queries, 1850.12.21 - A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, - Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc. • Various
... his own preternatural performances as any other person; he is startled and affrighted at the phenomena which he produces. Nevertheless, when his spiritual powers fall short, he does his best to eke them out with imposture. This moral infirmity is a part of his nature, and I suggested that perhaps if he were of a firmer and healthier moral make, if his character were sufficiently sound and dense to be capable of steadfast principle, he would not have possessed the impressibility ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Bale-Corphew's cruel laugh broke from him. "He has not shrunk from lies—from imposture—from blasphemy. Is it likely he will shrink from his reward? Oh no! We will run no risks. The trap has closed. No one will gain access to him to-night until the hour of the Gathering has arrived. It will be my special—my sacred—duty to watch and guard." As he spoke his eyes ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... XII. Lovelace to Belford.— Once more is the charmer of his soul in her old lodgings. Brief account of the horrid imposture. Steels his heart by revengeful recollections. Her agonizing apprehensions. Temporary distraction. Is ready to fall into fits. But all her distress, all her prayers, her innocence, her virtue, cannot save her from ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... was the charm that lured us on board the "Balaklava," and now "nothing to do," was with us like the Bottle-Imp, an incubus, still crying out: "You may yet exchange me for a smaller coin, if such there be!" "Nothing to do," is an imposture. Something to do is the very life of life, the beginning and end of being. "Picton," said I, "one thing we must do, at ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... added a short Treatise on ... Transubstantiation (1676); The Obligation resulting from the Oath of Supremacy (1688); and England's Confusion (1659). Memoirs of Lord Anglesey were published by Sir P. Pett in 1693, but contain little biographical information and were repudiated as a mere imposture by Sir John Thompson (Lord Haversham), his son-in-law, in his preface to Lord Anglesey's State of the Government in 1694. The author however of the preface to The Rights of the Lords asserted (1702), while blaming their publication ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... orang betuah: and that hundreds of instances of the like nature, where the invulnerable man did not possess the smallest natural means of opposition, had come within their observation. An English officer, with more courage and humour than discretion, exposed one imposture of this kind. A man having boasted in his presence that he was endowed with this supernatural privilege, the officer took an opportunity of applying to his arm the point of a sword and drew the blood, to the no little diversion of ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... Christians, anathemas are hurled at their heads, and they are told that they are guilty of the heinous crime of schism—schism, in the sense they give it, a figment of sacerdotalism, priestcraft, and imposture. But does the crime of schism not exist? Ay, it does; but it is schism from the true Church of Christ, the Church of which He is the head corner-stone, the beautified in Heaven, the sanctified on earth; from God's people, who are with Him in glory, who are with us here below, ...
— The Last Look - A Tale of the Spanish Inquisition • W.H.G. Kingston
... Sarsefield said that he was married? Was Mrs. Lorimer so speedily forgotten by him, or was the narrative of Clithero the web of imposture ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... there is an ember left. Then comes the changeful fortune of war, defeat and imprisonment; and now we see the same poor human heart, its visions soiled and clouded, its courage beaten down, surrounded only by enemies and scoffers, beginning even to suspect itself of imposture and impiety. She who had felt as a saint, hears herself exorcised as a sorcerer; and, by and by, a crowd of men, churchmen and civilians, stand round in triumph to see her burnt and consumed as a thing unholy and impure, whose life had been, not, as she had deemed, a perpetual ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... the Lord Chief Justice, still a bit angry with the prisoner's counsel for the miserable imposture he had attempted upon ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... conclusions, (see Acosta, lib. 5, cap. 28,) are scouted by Garcilasso, as inventions of Indian converts, willing to please the imaginations of their Christian teachers. (Com. Real., Parte 1, lib. 2, cap. 5, 6; lib. 3, cap. 21.) Imposture, on the one hand, and credulity on the other, have furnished a plentiful harvest of absurdities, which has been diligently gathered in by the pious antiquary ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... chimney, and then sunk into the earth. Lord L. returned to his bed; but not to rest. His mind was harassed by the consideration of the extraordinary event which had occurred to him. Was it real?—was it the work of imagination?—was it the result of imposture?—It was all incomprehensible. He resolved in the morning not to mention the appearance till he should have well observed the manners and the countenances of the family: he was conscious that, if any deception ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 273, September 15, 1827 • Various
... victorious arms Left not a soul to breathe. Oh! they were fiends: But what was he who taught them that the God 155 Of nature and benevolence hath given A special sanction to the trade of blood? His name and theirs are fading, and the tales Of this barbarian nation, which imposture Recites till terror credits, are ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... and perpetual imposture, proved by the complete illusion of the sick woman, produced on Godefroid's mind the impression of an Alpine precipice down which two chamois hunters picked their way. The magnificent gold snuff-box enriched with diamonds with which the old man ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... against to-morrow for the Duke, and so home and to bed, with some pain,... having taken cold this morning in sitting too long bare-legged to pare my corns. My wife and I spent a good deal of this evening in reading "Du Bartas' Imposture" and other parts which my wife of late has taken up to read, and is very fine as anything ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... division of the continent, and had jotted down a memorandum of its appearance upon his chart. It looks like a sincere attempt to tell a bit of the truth. But speaking generally, the Terra Australis of the old cartographers was a gigantic antipodean imposture, a mere piece of map-makers' furniture, put in to fill up the gaping space at the south end of ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... For who imposture can endure, A constant harping on one tune, Serious endeavours to assure What everybody long has known; Ever to hear the same replies And overcome antipathies Which never have existed, e'en In little maidens of thirteen? And ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... old friend in your college days whom your father only knew by name and who is now too far off for the imposture ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... Doubtless you think me pitiably benighted, and possibly I might find more favor in your sight if I affected a prodigious amount of literary enthusiasm, and boundless admiration for scholarship and erudition; but that would prove too troublesome an imposture,—for I am ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... judicious coddling and terrorizing, her courage and spirit were kept alive to the very moment when she stood before Birmingham and his committee, heard her confession of imposture read, signed it with perfect sang-froid, and illustrated for the scandalized members her method of impersonation. So had Arthur worked upon her conceit that she took a real pride in displaying her costumes, and in explaining how skilfully she had led three lives ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... loyalty Had in your ears a meaning and a place Quite strange to mine. For my Rhode Island stock, Grown far afield, and long acclimated, Had dropped all meanings for the name of King, Of Church, of mother country. Such appeals Were like a tinsel fringe of superstition, Alien imposture. It was all ...
— The Treason and Death of Benedict Arnold - A Play for a Greek Theatre • John Jay Chapman
... had indeed the air of an experiment, to ascertain whether I were really a commander in the British navy; and had the invitation been accepted without explanation or a change of treatment, an inference might have been drawn that the charge of imposture was well founded; but in any case, having been grossly insulted both in my public and private character, I could not debase the situation I had the honour to hold by a tacit submission. When the aide-de-camp returned from carrying the above reply, he said that ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... prevent their being deceived by interested adventurers themselves, but enable them to instruct the people in their true interests, and rescue them from becoming the instruments, and finally the victims, of fraud and imposture.—The insult and oppression which the nobility frequently experience from those who have been promoted by the revolution, will, I trust, be a useful lesson in future to the great, who may be inclined to arrogate too much from adventitious distinctions, to forget that the earth we tread upon may ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... purpose. In the tale of Maruf the Cobbler, which concludes the Bulak and Calcutta printed texts of The Nights, we have an interesting version of Aladdin. The hero runs away from his shrewish wife and under false presences is married to a king's daughter. He confesses his imposture to the princess, who loves him dearly, and she urges him to flee from her father's vengeance and not to return until his death should leave the throne vacant, and having furnished him with money, he secretly quits the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... than is the darkness of hell. Wherefore it is well done in all orders of men, but especial in the order of prelates, to put a difference between children of light and children of the world, because great deceit ariseth in taking the one for the other. Great imposture cometh, when they that the common people take for the light, go about to take the sun and the light out of the world. But these be easily known, both by the diversity of minds, and also their armours. For whereas the children of light are thus minded, that they seek their ...
— Sermons on the Card and Other Discourses • Hugh Latimer
... have given a thousand reasons—they did then and they do now—why an indulgence should be believed in; when honesty and common sense could give but one reason for thinking otherwise. Cleverness and imposture get on excellently well together—imposture ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... and women may be subjects of sport; base egoism assuming the garb of religion deserves a lash that draws the blood. Is it no act of natural piety to defend the household against the designs of greedy and sensual imposture; no service to society to quicken the penetration of those who may be made the dupes of selfish craft? While Organ and his mother are besotted by the gross pretensions of the hypocrite, while the young people contend for the honest joy of life, the voice of philosophic ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... same instinctive genius for perjury as Jennet Device, to accuse the three persons above mentioned of having bewitched her; "so that," as the indictment runs, "by means thereof her body wasted and consumed." "The chief object," says Sir Walter Scott, "in this imposture, was doubtless the advantage and promotion of the Catholic cause, as the patient would have been in due time exorcised and the fiend dispossessed, by the same priest who had taught her to counterfeit the fits. Revenge against the women, who ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... the real author of the pretended miracle, on which she commenced an action against them for defamation of character. She brought the celebrated advocate Jules Favre from Paris to plead her cause, but the verdict was given in favour of the two priests. The "miracle" was an imposture! ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... maintains that if the Parliamentary representatives were chosen by a general vote, the Parnellite 80 would be cut down to 62; while the Unionists would number 44. He regards the Parnellite policy as "an organised imposture," and firmly believes that an Irish Parliament in Dublin would now mean civil war in Ireland. He had a visit here last week, he says, from an American Presbyterian minister, who came out to Ireland a month ago a "Home Ruler"; but, as the result of a trip through North-Western ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... Certainly no men ever had stronger incentives in the pursuit of truth than these savage sorcerers. To maintain at least a show of knowledge was absolutely necessary; a single mistake detected might cost them their life. This no doubt led them to practise imposture for the purpose of concealing their ignorance; but it also supplied them with the most powerful motive for substituting a real for a sham knowledge, since, if you would appear to know anything, by far the best way ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... They bear the torch while there is an ember left. Then comes the changeful fortune of war, defeat and imprisonment; and now we see the same poor human heart, its visions soiled and clouded, its courage beaten down, surrounded only by enemies and scoffers, beginning even to suspect itself of imposture and impiety. She who had felt as a saint, hears herself exorcised as a sorcerer; and, by and by, a crowd of men, churchmen and civilians, stand round in triumph to see her burnt and consumed as a thing unholy and impure, whose life had been, not, as she had deemed, a perpetual ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... all persons may keep this paper carefully by them to refresh their memories whenever they shall have further notice of Mr. Wood's half-pence or any other the like imposture. ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... all he was, better than any son could do. It had been my whole life, thinking of him and the Empire, while I brushed the Prince's clothes or combed his hair. Why should such tastes be given to a valet? Some one somewhere was to blame, dear Cure. I really did not conceive or plan imposture. I was only playing a comedian's part in front of the Louis Quinze, till I heard Parpon sing a verse of 'Vive Napoleon!' Then it all rushed on me, captured ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... procure a pardon for a thief that was to be hanged to-morrow. But the two brothers told him he was a coxcomb to seek pardons from a fellow who deserved to be hanged much better than his client, and discovered all the method of that imposture in the same form I delivered it a while ago, advising the solicitor to put his friend upon obtaining a pardon from the king. In the midst of all this platter and revolution in comes Peter with a file of dragoons at his heels, and gathering from all hands what was in the wind, ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... will confess, that I have sometimes employed my thoughts in examining the pretensions that are made to happiness, by the splendid and envied condition of life; and have not thought the hour unprofitably spent, when I have detected the imposture of counterfeit advantages, and found disquiet lurking under false appearances of ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... in his madness"—to support the deception during a long period. The anachronism of his character in a tale—the data of which is nearly a century back—will, perhaps, be overlooked, when it is considered of how much value, in the illustration of "wise saws," are "modern instances." Imposture and credulity are of all ages; and the Courtenays of the nineteenth are rivalled by the Tofts and Andres of the eighteenth century. The subjoined account of the soi-disant SIR WILLIAM COURTENAY is extracted from "An Essay on his Character, and Reflections ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... petty questionings which beset undecided men,—what wonder that persons not accustomed to sound analysis of evidence should be beguiled by these subtilest adaptations to their conditions, and hold dalliance with the feeble shades that imposture or enthusiasm vended about the towns? Historical personages—a nerveless mimicry of the conventional stage-representation of them—stalked the Colonel's parlor. Departed friends, Indians a discretion, local celebrities, Deacon Golly, who in the year '90 took the ten ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... an apron before her eyes, and then one other person touched her hand, which produced the same effect as the touch of the witch did in the Court. Whereupon the gentlemen returned, openly protesting, that they did believe the whole transaction of this business was a mere imposture. This put the Court and all persons into a stand. But at length Mr. Pacy did declare, That possibly the maid might be deceived by a suspicion that the witch touched her when she did not. For he had observed divers times, that although ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various
... characteristic. It was a free adaptation of an unreadable Latin treatise by a Dutchman, which in Fontenelle's skilful hands becomes a vehicle for applying Cartesian solvents to theological authority. The thesis is that the Greek oracles were a sacerdotal imposture, and not, as ecclesiastical tradition said, the work of evil spirits, who were stricken silent at the death of Jesus Christ. The effect was to discredit the authority of the early Fathers of the Church, ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... Ireland to any great pitch of enthusiasm for his policy. It was still sick, and weary, and despondent after the Fenian failure, and the revolutionary leaders were not prone to tolerate or countenance what they regarded as a Parliamentary imposture. A considerable body of the Irish landed class supported the Butt movement, because they had nothing to fear for their own interests from it. They were members of his Parliamentary Party, not to help him on his way, but rather with the object of ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... faith. Today, there are many Platos that hold to the same conviction. The freethinkers hold to the view of Xenophanes who denounced the public faith as an ancient blunder which had been converted by time into a national imposture. All religion is a delusion which transfers the motives and thoughts of men to those who are not men. No ecclesiastic has as yet offered a satisfactory answer as to why there has been a marvelous disappearance of the working of miracles, and why human actions alone ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... Player with a still greater Imputation of Guilt, in proportion to his depreciating a Character more sacred. Consider all the different Pursuits and Employments of Men, and you will find half their Actions tend to nothing else but Disguise and Imposture; and all that is done which proceeds not from a Man's very self, is the Action of a Player. For this Reason it is that I make so frequent mention of the Stage: It is, with me, a Matter of the highest Consideration what ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... could do its worst. I had the illusion that I had seen through it. Were these bleak and obdurate circumstances an imposture? They appeared to have me imprisoned helplessly in time and snow; yet I had seen them shaken, and by a mere thought. Did their appearance depend on the way we looked at them? Perhaps it was that. We are compelled by outside things to their mould, and are mortified; but occasionally they fail ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... son, it is evident, had their suspicions aroused; and both, as evidently, were men of courage, not to be blinded by superstitious panic. Is it a probable thing that they would destroy an old and valued family mansion, without having exhausted every conceivable expedient to detect imposture? ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... within the figure of a woman richly dressed seated in a chair of cedar and this was believed to be the mummy of the Augusta Galla Placidia. However, we hear nothing of it before the fourteenth century, and Dr. Ricci suggests that it may have been an imposture of about that time. It is possible, but perhaps unlikely, for the Augusta was not a saint, and what reason could men have in the thirteenth century, when the very meaning of the empire was about to be forgotten, ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... were correct, was the second mate wholly answerable for beginning his life again with the imposture he had practised? The contributor had either so fallen in love with the literary advantages of his forlorn deceiver that he would see no moral obliquity in him, or he had touched a subtler verity at last in pondering the affair. It seemed ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... valueless title to natural gifts, except so far as it may have been furbished up by a succession of wise intermarriages.... I cannot think of any claim to respect, put forward in modern days, that is so entirely an imposture as that made by a peer on the ground of descent, who has neither been nobly educated, nor has any eminent ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... honour, quality, or virtue. If some heretical persons and schismatical sectaries have at any time formerly been so arrayed and clothed (though many have imputed such a kind of dress to cosenage, cheat, imposture, and an affectation of tyranny upon credulous minds of the rude multitude), I will nevertheless not blame them for it, nor in that point judge rashly or sinistrously of them. Everyone overflowingly aboundeth in his own ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... that her stepdaughter's obtrusive womanhood should remain in obscurity a very much longer time, under pretence that Jacqueline was still a child. She was a child, at any rate! The portrait was a lie! an imposture! an affront! ...
— Jacqueline, v1 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... to the slight extent of the comfortable night's rest you so badly needed; but this morning I am prepared to put it to the touch. And let me begin by saying, that if circumstances would permit me to continue the paternal imposture, that would be quite enough for me; unluckily, I am known in my own country as an old bachelor; so that I cannot suddenly produce a widowed daughter, without considerable unpleasantness for us both. What I can do, however," and Steel bent further forward, ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... possessed of wisdom and observant of Kshatriya duties. O son of Gandhari, let this one addicted to gambling proceed against Arjuna in battle. This one, skilled in dice, wedded to deception, addicted to gambling, versed in cunning and imposture, this gambler conversant with the ways of deceiving, will vanquish the Pandavas in battle! With Karna in thy company, thou hadst often joyfully boasted, from folly and emptiness of understanding, in the hearing ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... most serviceable to his fortunes, was his hypocrisy; so much so, that South—a most acute observer of mankind, and who had been educated under the Commonwealth and Protectorate—in his sermon on "Worldly Wisdom," adduces Cromwell as an instance of "habitual dissimulation and imposture." Oliver, Mr. Macaulay tells us, modelled his army on the principle of composing it of men fearing God, and zealous for public liberty, and in the very next page he is forced to ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... grand age; a theatre, the temple of Melpomene; the reigning family, the august blood of our kings; a concert, a musical solemnity; the General Commandant of the province, the illustrious warrior, who, etc.; the pupils in the seminary, these tender levities; errors imputed to newspapers, the imposture which distills its venom through the columns of those organs; etc. The lawyer had, accordingly, begun with an explanation as to the theft of the apples,—an awkward matter couched in fine style; but Benigne Bossuet himself was obliged to allude to a chicken ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... friend to help me. Marian Halcombe is nothing now but my eldest sister, who provides for our household wants by the toil of her own hands. We two, in the estimation of others, are at once the dupes and the agents of a daring imposture. We are supposed to be the accomplices of mad Anne Catherick, who claims the name, the place, and the living personality of ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... of the doctrines you have enumerated are a part of Christianity, but are mere additions of imposture ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... Clavering uniformly opposed the conduct of Mr. Hastings to the end of his life. But Mr. Hastings showed more temper under much greater provocations. In disclaiming his agent, and in effect accusing him of an imposture the most deeply injurious to his character and fortune, and of the grossest forgery to support it, he was so very mild and indulgent as not to show any active resentment against his unfaithful ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... letter yesterday you had from home. Esquire indeed! It's sickening!—I am ready to have it out with him whenever he likes, and take the nigger after him when he's had his gruel. Go and tell him if you like. It's been dull enough in the place ever since that miserable imposture about the lost belt. You want something to rouse you up, and I'll give it you if you can bring those two fellows up to the scratch; but that you can't do. Look at them sneaking off like a street cur and an Indian jackal. Contemptible beasts! I only wish they would come back. ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... be the very life of Catholicism. From the Pope to the humblest priest who says Mass and hears confessions in an ugly little chapel in the shabbiest street of a country town, all are regarded as leagued in one wide-spreading imposture. Pius IX., for instance, it is imagined, knows the liquefaction of St. Januarius's blood to be a trick of the Neapolitan clergy; but he keeps up the falsehood for the sake of gain and power. In like manner, he has an extensive Roman laboratory ever at work for the manufacture of all the instruments ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... preposterous to be admitted. "She would hardly dare," said Miss Van Vluyck, "confess the imposture to ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... of Maruf the Cobbler, which concludes the Bulak and Calcutta printed texts of The Nights, we have an interesting version of Aladdin. The hero runs away from his shrewish wife and under false presences is married to a king's daughter. He confesses his imposture to the princess, who loves him dearly, and she urges him to flee from her father's vengeance and not to return until his death should leave the throne vacant, and having furnished him with money, he secretly quits the city at daybreak. After riding some distance, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... western division of the continent, and had jotted down a memorandum of its appearance upon his chart. It looks like a sincere attempt to tell a bit of the truth. But speaking generally, the Terra Australis of the old cartographers was a gigantic antipodean imposture, a mere piece of map-makers' furniture, put in to fill up the gaping space at the south ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... he was scanned. At length the hour for having all hands on deck arrived; when the other watch which Israel had first tried, reascending to the deck, and hearing the matter in discussion, they endorsed the charge of molestation and attempted imposture through the night, on the part of some person unknown, but who, likely enough, was the strange man now before them. In the end, the master-at-arms appeared with his bamboo, who, summarily collaring poor Israel, led him as a mysterious ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... sixty-five stanzas of the ballad by heart. Does any one believe that, as a woman of seventy-two, she learned the poem to back Hogg's hoax? That he wrote the poem, and caused her to learn it by rote, so as to corroborate his imposture? ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... He adds the following curious particulars anent our subject:—"Robin Drury," he says, "among those who knew him (and he was known to many, being a porter at the East India House), had the character of a downright honest man, without any appearance of fraud or imposture. He was known to a friend of mine (now living), who frequently called upon him at his house in Lincoln's Inn Fields, which were not then enclosed. He tells me he has often seen him throw a javelin there, and strike a small mark at a surprising distance. It ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 196, July 30, 1853 • Various
... finally, to carry the war into the enemy's camp, la Pigoreau should impugn the maternity of the countess, claiming the child as her own; and that the ladies should depose that the countess's accouchement was an imposture invented to cause it to be supposed that she had given birth to ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE COUNTESS DE SAINT-GERAN—1639 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... fraud, trick, hoax, finesse, imposition, imposture, swindle, humbug, bubble, wile, deception, stratagem, bunko, blind, thimblerigging; impostor, deceiver, quack, mountebank, thimblerigger, charlatan, empiric, trickster, swindler, blackleg, bamboozler, sharper; ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... described from a scientific point-of-view, nor has any philosophical explanation of them ever been advanced, but there is no question whatever of their existence, and of their being now regarded by the most advanced scientists as beyond the region of chicanery and imposture. Mr. W. J. Jenks, in a recent lecture on "The Protection of Electric Light Stations from Lightning," treats the subject very exhaustively, and shows that where the ability to locate electrical or magnetic attraction is vested in an individual the results are ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various
... this imposture were Titus Oates and Dr. Tonge. The first of these was son of a ribbon-weaver, who, catching the fanatical spirit of the Cromwellian period, had ranted as an Anabaptist preacher. Dissent, however, losing favour under the restoration, Oates, floating with the current of the times, ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... not to blow it at once into the air—the steeple, the perky weathercock—to James Stokes in particular, always eloquent in action, longing for heroic effort, and ready to pay its price, maddened now by the palpable imposture in front of him morning after morning, as he demonstrates conclusively to Uthwart, seduced at last from the clearer sense of duty and discipline, not by the demonstrated ease, but rather by the apparent difficulty of what Stokes proposes to do. They might have been deterred by recent ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... replied at length, "there is just one method of procedure in this case. The assassination of Susy d'Orsel, the question of this imposture, in fact all these mysterious points which have arisen cannot be cleared up ...
— A Royal Prisoner • Pierre Souvestre
... Wherefore it is well done in all orders of men, but especial in the order of prelates, to put a difference between children of light and children of the world, because great deceit ariseth in taking the one for the other. Great imposture cometh, when they that the common people take for the light, go about to take the sun and the light out of the world. But these be easily known, both by the diversity of minds, and also their armours. For whereas the children of light are thus minded, that they seek their adversaries' ...
— Sermons on the Card and Other Discourses • Hugh Latimer
... bit of information to himself and of no benefit to any one else. If George should be discovered by the king, Lilly could honestly disclaim knowing him. If affairs turned to our desire, the Doctor could lose nothing by his ignorance whether pretended or real. So I doubt not he thanked us for the imposture, if he discovered it. ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... advert very briefly to the Mohammedan imposture, though that is perhaps the most signal instance within all time, of a malignant delusion maintained directly and immediately by ignorance, by an absolute determination and even a fanatic zeal not to receive one new idea. Tenets involving ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... furnished a similar puzzle to these investigators. There are those among them who assume that religion is an invention of crafty men who find it a means of obtaining ascendency over their fellows. That it is all imposture—the product of priestcraft—is the theory of some small philosophers. Such being the case, they expect that the progress of knowledge will ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden
... of the 8th, under the above heading, 'A Correspondent' tries at some length to describe what he calls a most impudent imposture. I having lived at B—— for three months in the autumn of last year as butler to the house, I thought perhaps my experience of the ghost of B—— might be of interest to many of your readers, and as the story has now become public ...
— The Alleged Haunting of B—— House • Various
... capture of the city, as is said, in consequence of the place of his sepulchre having been revealed to one of his favourites in a dream; he immediately ordered an excavation to be made, and very soon, either by hazard or imposture, a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 279, October 20, 1827 • Various
... time "the Golden Shoemaker" persisted valiantly in his attempt to answer every letter he received. Miss Jemima's scornful disapproval was of no avail. In vain she declared her conviction that every other letter was an imposture or a hoax, and pointed out that, if people wanted their letters answered, they ought to enclose a stamp. Then, for the twentieth time, she repeated her suggestion that a secretary should be engaged. At first her brother waived this proposal aside; but at length it became imperative that help ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... hands in it (even as Noah by his faith and obedience is said to have condemned the antediluvian world; Heb. ix, 7.) And this their conduct and testimony the Spirit of God justifies, and records to their honor. These few of many that might be adduced, declare the impudence, as well as fallacy and imposture of Seceders in this matter, and also justify the principles which they maliciously nick-name the anti-government scheme; and that for no other reason, but because it establishes the ordinance of magistracy ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... magic and magicians of Asiatic origin. The probable sources of the former, and of the belief in them in certain ages and classes of men. Criteria by which mistaken and exaggerated facts may be distinguished from absolute falsehood and imposture. Lastly, the causes of the terror and interest which stories of ghosts and witches inspire, in early life at least, ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... to-day in the rebel States. They are all enfranchised by the Proclamation, for what says it? All the slaves of these States are declared now and forever free, and the executive power is pledged to the maintenance of their freedom. If it were not so it would be a national imposture, and I would no more be guilty of that piece of infamy than I would steal into your house at night and rob your pantry. But what have we to do with this Proclamation in the rebellious Slave States? It is a very simple thing: just simply recognise ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... time when the partition-wall between Jew and Gentile of the medical world is pretty thoroughly breached, if not thrown down, and quackery and imposture are tolerated as necessary evils, it is agreeable to meet with a real work of science, emanating from the labors of a regular physician, concerning the influences exerted by electricity on the human body, both in health ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... to the admiring comments of the new-comers. I think it should be added, in extenuation of what would otherwise seem a gross imposture, that his granddaughter was really ignorant of Crely's exact age—that he, being ever a gasconading fellow, was quite ready to personate that certain Joseph Crely whose name appears on the baptismal ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... resentment still in his looks, and showing her the billet, told her the contents of it, and from whom it came; but, instead of hearkening to him, she fell into a passion, and said, Son, it is all a calumny and imposture: Queen Haiatalnefous is a very discreet princess, and you are very bold to talk after this rate. The prince was enraged at his mother, to hear her speak so of him. You are both bad alike, said he and had it not been for the ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... coercion to act. It is not the act or the despotism of that power—it is the nature of things that compels. Shall we, dreading to become the blind instruments of power, yield ourselves the blinder dupes of mere sounds of imposture? Yet that word, that empty word, coercion, has given scope to an eloquence that, one would imagine, could not be tired and did ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... absence of genuine inspiration is supplied by the strong illusions of enthusiasm, and the mimic arts of imposture. If, in the time of Julian, these arts had been practised only by the pagan priests, for the support of an expiring cause, some indulgence might perhaps be allowed to the interest and habits of the sacerdotal character. But it may appear a subject ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... terrorizing, her courage and spirit were kept alive to the very moment when she stood before Birmingham and his committee, heard her confession of imposture read, signed it with perfect sang-froid, and illustrated for the scandalized members her method of impersonation. So had Arthur worked upon her conceit that she took a real pride in displaying her costumes, and in explaining how skilfully she had led three lives in that city. ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... doctors and theologians cautiously examined Joan's mission, and pronounced it undoubted and supernatural. She was sent to the parliament, then residing at Poictiers; and was interrogated before that assembly: the presidents, the counsellors, who came persuaded of her imposture, went away convinced of her inspiration. A ray of hope began to break through that despair in which the minds of all men were before enveloped. Heaven had now declared itself in favor of France, and had laid bare its outstretched arm to take vengeance on her invaders. Few could ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... that he was even conscious he had frequently imputed to the poet meanings which he never thought! Our critic's great object was to display his own learning! Warburton wrote for Warburton, and not for Shakspeare! and the literary imposture almost rivals the confessions of Lander ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... for the good of the greatest number. Execution of an actual lunatic now and then is not an evil to the community, nor, when rightly considered, to the lunatic himself. He is better off when dead, and society is profited by his removal. We are spared the cost of exposing imposture, the humiliation of acquitting the guilty, the peril of their freedom, the contagion of their ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... and to convince them that their senses were deceived, I told them they were wrong to suffer their fears to get the better of their reason; and that, if any of them had the courage to examine more closely into the affair, they would find the whole was nothing more than some imposture, or the effusion of a superstitious brain, or, at most, a trick played upon them by some wicked people on purpose to amuse themselves by sporting with their feelings. But I was much disappointed to find ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... convinced, he must have had very good evidence to convince him. We can imagine the Prior's gratitude to the young cardinal for that timely word when he saw himself in danger perhaps of being called to account for fostering and abetting an imposture. ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... most extraordinary interest; and what then would be the descriptions of the crowds who frequent such houses—the thousands and tens of thousands who exist in this country by what is called their wits—whose trade is imposture, and whose whole life one continued exercise of the intellects? The flash letter-writer and the crawling supplicant; the pretended tradesmen, who live luxuriously on the tales of others, and the real claimant of charity, whose honest shame will hardly allow him to beg for sufficient to ...
— Sinks of London Laid Open • Unknown
... contained in this work is not adapted for any particular country alone: the principle on which it is based is general. But as the rights of man are a new study in this world, and one needing protection from priestly imposture, and the insolence of oppressions too long established, I have thought it right to place this little work under your safeguard. When we reflect on the long and dense night in which France and all Europe have remained plunged by their governments and their priests, we ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... are reliable and competent, as well as contemporaneous. The old belief that their testimony was imposture is dead long ago; as, indeed, how could it live? It would be an anomaly, far greater than the Resurrection, to believe that these people, Mary, Peter, John, Paul, and all the rest of them, were conspirators in a lie, and that the fairest system of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... which, in a rigid sense, you do not want, may therefore be returned not only in public benefactions to the race, but in private kindnesses. Your wife, your children, your friends stand nearest to you, and should be helped the first. There at least there can be little imposture, for you know their necessities of your own knowledge. And consider, if all the world did as you did, and according to their means extended help in the circle of their affections, there would be no more crying want in ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Todd his original, as idle at least as he is curious, houses the forlorn fiction—and it enters into literary history! A French Chatterton picks up the obscure tale, and behold, astonishes the literary inquirers of the very country whence the imposture sprung! But the FOUR Italian verses, and the Sleeping Youth! Oh! Monsieur Vanderbourg! for that gentleman is the ostensible editor of Clotilde's poesies of the fifteenth century, some ingenious persons are unlucky in this world! Perhaps one day we may yet discover ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... namely, the acknowledgments of debts which will be paid, and of debts which will not. Documents, whether in whole or part, of bad debt, being to those of good debt as bad money to bullion, we put for the present these forms of imposture aside (as in analysing a metal we should wash it clear of dross), and then range, in their exact quantities, the true currency of the country on one side, and the store or property of the country on the other. We place gold, and all such substances, on the side of documents, as far as ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... could believe you were Louis XVII., but I frankly confess I cannot prevail on myself to believe it; be equally sincere, I entreat you, and renounce this singular fiction of yours." I had even prepared to introduce the subject with an edifying discourse upon the vanity of all imposture, even of such untruths as may appear in ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... bungled the cross-examination in many ways that they not only had not elicited what they might have done, but actually, by many questions, furnished information to the Claimant which enabled him to carry on his imposture.] ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... attempt to deny or palliate this imposture, but he made a fairly adequate reply to other counts of the indictment, and promised a judicial inquiry into the casualties enumerated by Mr. BILLING. The revelation that he himself has a son in the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 5, 1916 • Various
... imposture, Louis ne put pas s'en defendre. Il resolut d'envoyer, au prince et au Kan convertis une ambassade pour les feliciter de leur bonheur et les engager a favoriser et a propager dans leurs etats la religion chretienne. L'ambassadeur qu'il nomma fut un Frere-precheur nomme Andre Longjumeau ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt
... knowes As 'tis with vs, that square our guesse by showes: But most it is presumption in vs, when The help of heauen we count the act of men. Deare sir, to my endeauors giue consent, Of heauen, not me, make an experiment. I am not an Imposture, that proclaime My selfe against the leuill of mine aime, But know I thinke, and thinke I know most sure, My Art is not past power, nor ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... daisies, and in the autumn burned, like the borders of nearly all the streets in Charlesbridge, with the pallid azure flame of the succory. The neighborhood was in all things a frontier between city and country. The horse-cars, the type of such civilization— full of imposture, discomfort, and sublime possibility—as we yet possess, went by the head of our street, and might, perhaps, be available to one skilled in calculating the movements of comets; while two minutes' walk would take us into a wood so wild and thick ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... for; which was to continue the awe and reverence due to the character I was vested with, and, at the same time, to let my enemies see how much I was the delight and favourite of this town. This innocent imposture, which I have all along taken care to carry on, as it then was of some use, has since been of singular service to me, and by being mentioned in one of my papers, effectually recovered my egoity out of the hands of some gentlemen ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... may add, the uncommon effects of the Crystal, the appearance of Queen Mabb, and other strange and miraculous operations, which owe their origin to folly, curiosity, superstition, bigotry, and imposture. ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly
... generation to generation, fact has been added to fact, and law to law, the true method and order of the Universe being thereby more and more revealed. In doing this science has encountered and overthrown various forms of superstition and deceit, of credulity and imposture. But the world continually produces weak persons and wicked persons; and as long as they continue to exist side by side, as they do in this our day, very debasing beliefs will also continue to ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... amount just then, and asked her to call the next day. She departed, and the next morning was punctual to her engagement. Meanwhile, the banker had ascertained from the lady manager that the request made of him was an imposture. He was not in when his visitor called the second time, but his son met the lady, and, as he knew her, expressed his surprise at seeing her there. Overwhelmed with confusion, she took her departure, saying she would come back when the banker ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... this history, which the reader will perceive, as it advances, is altogether different in its nature, its agencies, and its aims from those tales of external terror, whether derived from ingenious imposture or supernatural mystery, that have given life to French melodrama or ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of France, with all its pomp and wealth. Some of its priests purchased a maintenance by separating themselves from Rome, and by becoming the authors of a fresh schism. Some, rejoicing in the new license, flung away their sacred vestments, proclaimed that their whole life had been an imposture, insulted and persecuted the religion of which they had been ministers, and distinguished themselves, even in the Jacobin Club and the Commune of Paris, by the excess of their impudence and ferocity. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... from beginning to end. Coming so close to the date of Dampier's voyage, it is worth noting that he does not allude to the book, and so probably, notwithstanding the little knowledge Englishmen then had of the southern continent, Dampier was shrewd enough to detect the imposture. ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery
... sympathy appeal to a great number of our other faculties, besides our mere sense of ridicule. The humorous writer professes to awaken and direct your love, your pity, your kindness; your scorn of untruth, pretension, imposture; your tenderness for the weak, the poor, the oppressed, the unhappy. To the best of his means and ability he comments on all the ordinary actions and ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... essence. But we must not confine ourselves to a superficial consideration and consequent rejection of these representations and the religious practices which follow upon them as being engendered by superstition, by error, or by imposture, or even by a simple piety, and so neglect their essential value. There is need to discover in these representations and in these practices ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... grievances produces a revulsion here; for if there are two things on earth that John Bull hates, they are an abstract proposition and the pope.' 'You need not be afraid, I think,' he told Lord Aberdeen (December 1, 1851), 'of Mazzinism from me, still less of Kossuth-ism, which means the other plus imposture, Lord Palmerston, and his nationalities.' But then in 1854 Manin came to England, and failed to persuade even Lord Palmerston that the unity of Italy was the only clue to her freedom.[252] The Russian war made it ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... evidences. His main proof is, as I have said, experimental. But a spiritual revelation of God without its physical counterpart, an Incarnation, is for him an impossibility, and a Christianity which has cut itself adrift from the Galilean ministry is in his eyes an imposture. In no other writer, I think, do we find so firm a grasp of the "psychophysical" view of life which we all feel to be the true one, if only we could put it in an ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... of thunder and the flashes of lightning at night from his palace on the banks of the lake at Alba Longa. He employed, probably, for this purpose some means similar to those resorted to for the same end in theatrical spectacles at the present day. The people, however were not deceived by this imposture, though they soon after fell into an error nearly as absurd as believing in this false thunder would have been; for, on an occasion which occurred not long afterward, probably that of a great storm accompanied with torrents ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... indications of a very different original, for they reveal a spirit of which no enlightened Christian can approve, and promulgate principles which would sanction the boldest assumptions of ecclesiastical despotism. In a work published by me many years ago, I have pointed out the marks of their imposture; and I have since seen no cause to change my views. Regarding all these letters as forgeries from beginning to end, I have endeavoured, in the following pages, to expose the fallacy of the arguments by which Dr. Lightfoot has ...
— The Ignatian Epistles Entirely Spurious • W. D. (William Dool) Killen
... to the character of Messiah, it is of no consequence whether, while he advanced those claims, he wrought such works as proved his intimacy with the God of truth. While he professed himself the Messiah, is it indifferent whether he was showing himself to be as being beyond delusion, and above imposture?—Let us make the case our own. Suppose that we were witnesses of the miraculous works of a personage of pretensions like our Lord's, should we think it necessary or reasonable to resort to long courses of argument, or indeed to any process of the understanding, ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... his home, and on his arrival there pretended to be a Maratha Brahman. He was duly accepted by the other Brahmans, who took food with him in his house and invited him to their own. After an interval of some months the imposture was discovered, and it is stated that this official was at a short subsequent period dismissed from Government service on a charge of bribery. The Vidurs are also considered to be clever at personation, and one or ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... fewer in number, have not been able to keep pace with the variations of the much more numerous imitated form; another reason may be the ever-increasing acuteness of the enemies, which have again and again detected the imposture and exterminated the feeble race before it has had time to become further modified. The result of this growing acuteness of enemies has been, that those mimics that now survive exhibit, as Mr. Bates well remarks, "a palpably intentional likeness that is perfectly staggering," ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... Transylvanian frontier, during the campaigns of the Prince of Coburg and Laudohn against the Turks. It was singular enough, that on this very evening, in arguing against some of my whims touching destinies and omens, he illustrated the facility of imposture on such points by an incident ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... that they have a high opinion of their own perspicuity, but a very unfavourable one generally of that of other men. They always believe that if they had been there they could have quickly discovered the imposture. Consequently, no precaution must be omitted; all safeguards must be employed, and it will be seen that the observers of Mrs Piper's phenomena have ...
— Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research • Michael Sage
... Indeed, the peculiar aptitude for medicine shown in these pages led to the traveller's adopting the destructive art of healing as a profession, and caused his unhappy end. The curious mixture of utter imposture and of genius for observation which a traveller can detect in Douville renders ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... and went out to smoke a pipe in front of the store. Various worries were pecking at him—the hint he had given Polly of their existence seemed to have let them fairly loose upon him. Of course he would be—he was—suspected of having connived at the imposture by which his suit was won—why else have put it in the hands of such a one as Ocock? John Turnham's soundless whistle of astonishment recurred to him, and flicked him. Imagine it! He, Richard Mahony, giving his sanction ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... nature, where the invulnerable man did not possess the smallest natural means of opposition, had come within their observation. An English officer, with more courage and humour than discretion, exposed one imposture of this kind. A man having boasted in his presence that he was endowed with this supernatural privilege, the officer took an opportunity of applying to his arm the point of a sword and drew the blood, to the no little diversion of the spectators, and mortification of the pretender to superior ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... of purpose, appealed to him, while that night her mere physical presence had an effect that was almost bewildering. For a moment he wondered vaguely how far a man might dare to go, with what fate had thrust upon him, and then with a little shiver saw once more the barrier of deceit and imposture. ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... of the merits of the showman's enterprise in modern times that he brings to a great city like London groups of interesting savages, without imposture and without ill-treatment, and enables us to see and talk with them almost as though we had travelled to their remote native forests. It would certainly be a successful and worthy enterprise on the part ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... I fear," reflected the young engineer. "A pretty bold and difficult imposture, I should think. Are his credentials false or stolen? But how to explain his motive? He doesn't like railroading, and the system and the vouchers he is at so much trouble to get and preserve make this business decidedly mysterious. If it ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... passage is as follows:—"For Mr. Whistler's own sake no less than for the protection of the purchaser, Sir Coutts Lindsey ought not to have admitted works into the gallery in which the ill-educated conceit of the artist so nearly approached the aspect of wilful imposture. I have seen and heard much of cockney impudence before now, but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask 200 guineas for flinging a pot of ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... into life when it must follow the curve of some more bold projection. And one proof that Swann was not mistaken when he believed in the real existence of this phrase, was that anyone with an ear at all delicate for music would at once have detected the imposture had Vinteuil, endowed with less power to see and to render its forms, sought to dissemble (by adding a line, here and there, of his own invention) the dimness of his vision or the feebleness of ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... the office of President, or any other position under the General Government, required an examination and certificate from the National College. The examinations were always public, and conducted in such a manner that imposture was impossible. Constituents could attend if they chose, and decide upon the qualifications of a favorite candidate. In all the public schools, politics—to a certain extent—formed part of the general education of every child. Beyond that, any one having ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... Again Bale-Corphew's cruel laugh broke from him. "He has not shrunk from lies—from imposture—from blasphemy. Is it likely he will shrink from his reward? Oh no! We will run no risks. The trap has closed. No one will gain access to him to-night until the hour of the Gathering has arrived. It will be my special—my sacred—duty to watch and guard." As he ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... recently discovered in northern India, is to be brought next week with great pomp and ceremony to the temple in Kandy, which already ranks in sacredness next to the great Shwe Dagon pagoda in Rangoon. A temple in Java is founded upon a single hair of Buddha's head. All this superstition and imposture dates back to a couple of centuries before Christ, and there is great reason to believe that the Roman Catholic worship of relics is only an appropriation of this form ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... that I must have time to consider. If you will call on me in a week, and produce your facts, I will give you my answer. I am not the man, sir, to wish to keep any one out of his true rights, but I will not yield, on the other hand, to imposture." ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 4 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... science of Northern mythology; still later on, D.F. Strauss, when, in the days of our own youth, he placed the myth and the legend, with their unconscious origin and growth, not alone in opposition to the idea of Deity intervening to interrupt established order, but also to that of imposture and conscious fraud; Otfr. Mueller, when he proved that Greek mythology, far from containing moral abstractions or historical facts, is the involuntary personification of surrounding nature, subsequently developed by imagination; ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... found, not in the Uffizi gallery or among the harmonies of Brahms, but among the plush sofas, rococo clocks and hand-painted oil-paintings of a third-rate auction room. All women, save the least intelligent, penetrate this imposture with sharp eyes. They know that the human body, except for a brief time in infancy, is not a beautiful thing, buta hideous thing. Their own bodies give them no delight; it is their constant effort to disguise and conceal them; they never expose ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... Mr. Piper told him, and, gathering confidence as he proceeded, related the conversation which had led up to his imposture. Mr. Cox listened in a dazed fashion, and as he concluded threw himself into a chair, and gave way to a terrible outburst ...
— Light Freights • W. W. Jacobs
... contrast with its real insignificance, the Treaty of Holy Alliance. Since the terrible events of 1812 the Czar's mind had taken a strongly religious tinge. His private life continued loose as before; his devotion was both very well satisfied with itself and a prey to mysticism and imposture in others; but, if alloyed with many weaknesses, it was at least sincere, and, like Alexander's other feelings, it naturally sought expression in forms which seemed theatrical to stronger natures. Alexander had rendered many ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... all her visits, was sometimes entertained, but oftener wearied. She was struck by the apparent talents and knowledge displayed in the various conversations she listened to, and it was long before she discovered, that the talents were for the most part those of imposture, and the knowledge nothing more than was necessary to assist them. But what deceived her most, was the air of constant gaiety and good spirits, displayed by every visitor, and which she supposed to arise from content as constant, and from benevolence as ready. ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... bedroom. The Revd. Howel said nothing more about grandchildren; often—with a finer sense—spoke to him not as though he were a son, but as a beloved daughter. At last he died in his sleep one night, holding David's hand, looking so ineffably happy that the impostor inwardly gloried in his imposture as in one of the best deeds of his ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... acquiesced, and it was not the act of one party. The thing had become inevitable when the prince was born. It was delayed until the issue was decided between the crown and the Church. The associates assured William that the Prince of Wales was an imposture, and that he must come, in order to secure his own birthright, as well as the liberties of England. William of Orange had not intrigued that the crown should pass to his wife before the time, and had given his uncle much good advice. For him it ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... make his presence and aid indispensable. By dint of great practice, I acquired a pretty accurate imitation of this sound, and have practised it successfully. But the animals were quick to discover the imposture, and to punish it by ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... but three possible answers! It was imposture; it was delusion; it was truth. The theory of imposture is out of court. 'Do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles?' Such a life as followed is altogether incongruous with the notion that the man who lived it was a deceiver. A fanatic he may have ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... irreducible elements of this world's life after millions of years of divine opportunity and twenty centuries of Christ. It is in the moral world like atoms or sub-atoms in the physical, primary, indestructible. And what it blazons to man is the ... imposture of all philosophy which does not see in such events the consummate factor of conscious experience. These facts invincibly prove religion a nullity. Man will not give religion two thousand centuries or twenty centuries more to try itself and waste human time; its time is up, its probation ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... less than the remaining portion of the journal printed in the proceedings of the investigating committee, is itself strong circumstantial proof of the imposture underlying the whole transaction. Many sections of the completed constitution are not even mentioned in the journal; it does not contain the submission clause of the schedule, and the authenticity of the document rests upon the signature and ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... scepticism—so considered—though it is much out of elbows and ragged about the skirts. If I am right, you will none of you be able to disbelieve much longer—a, new law, or a new development of law, is making way everywhere. We have heard much—more than I can tell you in a letter. Imposture is absolutely out of the question, to speak generally; and unless you explain the phenomena by 'a personality unconsciously projected' (which requires explanation of itself), you must admit the spirit ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... conditions with all advantage, and these Nations the most happy People upon the Earth, as it cannot be despaired but they will one day do, when by the goodness of Almighty God, they shall perfectly discern through the mist which you have cast upon their eyes, lest they should discover the Imposture ...
— An Apologie for the Royal Party (1659); and A Panegyric to Charles the Second (1661) • John Evelyn
... sentiment. Encamped in the enemy's country, from childhood conversant with the tortuous windings of Papal policy, and the windy hollowness of the popular cries, they stand amazed that Englishmen can be deceived by such obvious imposture, that they will listen to such self-convicted charlatans, that they will repose confidence in such ten-times-exposed deceivers. The history of the Home Rule movement will in future ages be quoted as the most extraordinary combination ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... Asclepius, but sometimes Apollo, Aphrodite, and Hera). Here the patient is expected to sleep over night in the temple, and the god visits him in a dream, and reveals a course of treatment which will lead to recovery. Probably there is a good deal of sham and imposture about the process. The canny priests know more than they care to tell about how the patient is worked into an excitable, imaginative state; and of the very human means employed to produce a satisfactory and informing dream.[] Nevertheless ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... not seem to me to be the issue. In my opinion the issue is: 'Have the Red Indian, the Tatar, the Highland seer, and the Boston medium (the least reputable of the menagerie) observed, and reasoned wildly from, and counterfeited, and darkened with imposture, certain genuine by-products of human faculty, which do not prima facie ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
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