"Humbug" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... she said; but the little white volcano almost laughed in her face, and the black diamond eyes twinkled furiously as they turned away to hide their scornful amusement—so strong was the nun's conviction that the new benefactress was a humbug. The Princess looked at the names quite calmly after she had written them—Sister Saint Paul, Sister Giovanna, and Sister Marius—and asked whether she had seen any of them during her visit. But the Mother Superior answered that ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... the matter of that, you snub me. Still, you know what I mean—there's none of that off-and-on humbug between us. If we grumble with one another we are united just the same: if we don't write when we are parted, we are just the same when we meet—there has been some rational reason for silence; but as for lovers and sweethearts, there ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... times, and winter comes, with black frost, and keen east wind, and there is no coal for the grate, and no clothes for the bed, and the thin bones are seen through the ragged clothes, does the rich man share his plenty with me, as he ought to do, if his religion wasn't a humbug? When I lie on my death-bed and Mary (bless her!) stands fretting, as I know she will fret," and here his voice faltered a little, "will a rich lady come and take her to her own home if need be, till she can look round, and see what best ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... people of Southern Khorassan is to offer one's food in turn to everybody present and say, "Bis-millah," before commencing to eat it yourself. Although a ridiculous piece of humbug, it is generally my custom to fall in with the peculiar ways of the country, and for days past have invariably offered my food to scores of people whom I knew beforehand would not take it. The lack of courtesy at this hamlet in exacting payment in advance would seem naturally to preclude ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... dinner, the evident remains of a party to which I didn't invite you, and yet I conceal my agony, I wear a merry smile; I say, "What! come to take pot-luck with us, Brown my boy! Betsy! put a knife and fork for Mr. Brown. Eat! Welcome! Fall to! It's my best!" I say that humbug which I am performing is beautiful self-denial—that hypocrisy is true virtue. Oh, if every man spoke his mind what an intolerable society ours ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... old humbug!" cried Uncle John, indignantly. "Why can't she go, when there's money and time to spare? Would you keep her here to cuddle and spoil a vigorous man like yourself, when she can run away and see the world and ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... we had guns and could fight from what happened on the yesterday, wished naturally enough for our assistance in the coming battle. As for the marvellous chief Rezu, or rather for his supernatural attributes and all the cock-and-bull story about an axe—well, it was humbug like the rest, and if she believed in it she must be more foolish than I took her to be—even if she were unhinged on certain points. For the rest, her information about myself and Umslopogaas doubtless had reached her from Zikali in some ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... "It is humbug. I am not in a humour now to stand picking my words. I have been infernally badly used—badly used ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... this occasion. At Reading the Marlborough of our tale made one of the safe investments of that day, he bought a Times and Punch; the latter full of steel-pen thrusts and woodcuts. Valor and beauty deigned to laugh at some inflamed humbug or other punctured by Punch. Now laughing together thaws our human ice; long before Swindon it was a talking match—at Swindon who so devoted as Captain Dolignan?—he handed them out—he souped them—he tough-chickened them—he brandied and cochinealed one, and he brandied ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... presume you have not heard "Blind Tom" play. If not, you never heard a better performer. Like most people, of course, I was inclined to regard this wonderful prodigy as a wonderful humbug; but I assure you, that so far from this being the case, or any thing like it, Tom is as genuine an artist, and possesses as much (and, for any thing I can tell, a great deal more) musical talent or power, either as regards the execution of the compositions of others or of his own, as either Thalberg, ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... a great many wrong and unmanly men about, then,' said Alaric. 'Look through the Houses of Parliament, and see how many men there have married for money; aye, and made excellent husbands afterwards. I'll tell you what it is, Charley, it is all humbug in you to pretend to be better than others; you are not a bit better;—mind, I do not say you are worse. We have none of us too much of this honesty of which we are so fond of prating. Where was your honesty when you ordered the coat for which you know you ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... produced some famous wine, that had been eleven years in bottle. We were unusually merry, and fell into toasts and speeches. I felt as if I had been his intimate friend for years, for he had not one atom of Levantine "humbug" in his composition. Poor fellow, little did he think, that in a few short weeks from this period his blood would flow as freely as the wine which he ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... echoed Titmouse, furiously—"I should think so? Much good they do me! Sir, you're a humbug!—an impostor! I'm a sight to be seen for the rest of my life! Look at me, ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... stop stealin' and—and raise some honest children." Mr. Killibrew threw back his head broke into loud, jelly-like laughter. "Why, don't you know, Peter, she's an old liar. If I gave her a hundred a week, she'd steal. And children! Why, the old humbug! She's too old; she's had her crop. And, besides all that, I don't mind what the old woman takes. It isn't much. She's a good old darky, faithful as a dog." He arose from his swivel-chair briskly and floated Peter out ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... for you have so many correspondents and are so punctual in reply that I fear the waste of precious time; but I am as pleased with your letter as an old dog- fancier when a terrier-pup catches his first rat—it is something to see my boy hunt out and hunt down that old humbug Oratory." ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... a terrible passion. "Cheated for once in my life! sold, if ever a fellow was! it's a regular trick that was played! They wanted to get rid of their beggar's brat, and palmed her off upon me, with that humbug story of the nabob of an uncle. I'll nabob her! And there's her ticket, which I was fool enough to pay for, and the carriage hire, and my trouble with this saucy thing, who holds her head up so high; if ever I am swindled again, ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... that there is no compensating pleasure in the burlesque itself. The tendency is earthward, coarse, vulgarizing. It spoils a whole world of fancy, and it keeps down the creation of comic subjects by supplying writers with an easy and certain success. Surely, there is folly and humbug enough living and lying in the open day to supply the satirist with material. Surely, these imitators of LUCIAN (unconscious imitators, no doubt, for many of them never read a line of his dialogues) ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... a little fool! Do as I tell you. It isn't a lie—only a piece of conventional humbug which everybody understands. There, please!" His tone of entreaty was more disagreeable to her than his roughness. All the pride and rigidity of her Puritan temperament was up in arms against the indefinable something which it had long ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... Thrale].' Piozzi Letters, ii. 141. Miss Burney, who was with the Thrales, writes:—'Dr. Johnson has written to Mrs. Thrale, without even mentioning the existence of this mob; perhaps, at this very moment, he thinks it "a humbug upon the nation," as George Bodens called the Parliament.' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, i. 401. When Johnson wrote, the mob had not risen to its height of violence. Mrs. Thrale in her answer, giving the date, 'Bath, 3 o'clock on Saturday morning, June 10, 1780,' asks, 'Oh! my dear ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... being imagined that she was a supernatural or miraculous being, even when those supernatural and miraculous powers were considered as coming direct to her from Heaven—in fact, to use a slang but expressive phrase, her utter freedom from humbug. This is one of the most marked features of her character, although not the most glorious or salient to those who are dazzled by ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... old family, and all such humbug! She was a noble, self-devoted creature; as much above the comprehension of the rest of the ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of Clerambault's pamphlet and brandished them as an act of treason. A personal letter would not have satisfied his virtuous indignation; he chose a loud "yellow journal," a laboratory of blackmail despised by a million Frenchmen, who nevertheless swallowed all its humbug ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... isn't Beer,—it's Candor!' said Abel. 'It's your own proposal, Hollins. Suppose it's evil to swear: isn't it better I should express it, and be done with it, than keep it bottled up, to ferment in my mind? Oh, you're a precious, consistent old humbug, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... papers this morning. In the Figaro an article from that old humbug Villemessant. He calls upon his fellow-citizens in Paris to resist to ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... college graduate, though doubtless he was as much of a humbug in recitations and examinations as he had always been since. Andrew's only reply to his assertion that he was a literary man was a rather severe and prolonged scrutiny of his oily locks, his dainty mustache, his breast-pin, his watch-seals, and finally his straps and his boots. For Andrew ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... there was not one lofty aspiration. These people, in their daily life were like squirrels in a cage, and because they moved, they thought they were progressing. In them scepticism had killed belief; religion, family, country, were, as they phrased it, all humbug. They had only one aim, one passion—to enjoy themselves. Their watchword was "pleasure." All those who did not perish of consumption ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... found you out. You are not a bit solemn, really, only you put on the airs of a sister of mercy. So you don't like Etta; you need not be afraid of telling me so; she is the greatest humbug in the world, only Giles is so foolish as to believe in her. I call her a humbug because she pretends to be what she is not; she is really a most prosaic sort of person, and she wants to make people believe that she is ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... evidence of faith, to follow Lil, regarding her as the very mainspring of the military movement, Lil followed Scraper. Mr. Herbert Spencer has shown that, in spite of the apparent unreasonableness of the fact, humbug and credulity are sworn companions. The savage mystery man, who knows what a humbug he himself is, is the first to yield allegiance and faith to the abler humbug, who has more tricks or bolder invention than he. So, Lil's groundless pretensions of a week ago did not seem in the least ...
— Schwartz: A History - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... comprehended; but tenderness, sympathy, sorrow, all the more generous sentiments, fled and concealed themselves when this large, rich, costly man came by. People who were brought much in contact with him became ashamed of having any feelings at all; his eye upon them seemed to convict them of humbug. Those eyes were very light grey, prominent, with a jeer in them which was a very powerful moral instrument. His own belief was that he could "spot" humbug wherever he saw it, and that nothing could escape him; and, I suppose, so much humbug is there in this world that ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... priest. They don't call themselves clergymen now. Well," and she drew herself up once more, "I, for one, wouldn't like to have his sins on my shoulders. I should think he ought to be haunted by as many victims as Napoleon Buonaparte. What with financial humbug, war taxes—the blunders of the Alabama business—the disgrace and bloodshed of the Transvaal affair and the Egyptian war—crowned by the undying and never to be forgotten shame of Gordon's sacrificed life, I wonder he can lay down his head at night and sleep. When he ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... going to lose you like this. I'm not going to let you slip a second time. I was awake about it all last night. I don't care where you are, what your people are, nor very much whether you've kept quite clear of this medium humbug. I don't. You will in future. Anyhow. I've had a day and night to think it over. I had to come and try to find you. It's you. I've never forgotten you. Never. I'm not going to be sent back ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... the public into buying what neither he nor the public really cares for. If he does his best he may feel that he is as fairly earning his livelihood as his fellow workmen, the blacksmith and the stonecutter, and is as little dependent as they upon either charity or humbug. The best that government has done for art in France is the commissioning of the great decorative paintings of Baudry and Puvis. In this country, also, governments, national, State, or municipal, ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... unhung. Sir Edmund is not at all ill-natured, and he can discuss people quite simply—not as if he wished to defend his own reputation for charity all the time. He won't allow that Adela Delaport Green is a humbug: he says she is simply a happy combination of extraordinary cleverness and stupidity, of simplicity and art. 'I believe she hardly ever has a consciously disingenuous moment,' he said to me last night. 'She likes ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... that you had better not call me a humbug!" cried Lord Lambeth. "I have only been in town three weeks; but you must have been hiding away; I ...
— An International Episode • Henry James
... naterally as a goslin' takes to a puddle; and when she first come to town she commenced a-beggin', and has kep' it up ever since. She used to tackle me the same as she does everybody else, askin' me to give somethin' to this, and to that, and to t'other pet humbug of her'n, but I never would do it; and when she found she could'nt worry me into it, like the rest of 'em, it set her very bitter against me; and I heard of her tellin' I'd treated her with rudeness, which I'd always treated her civilly, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... Seriously, what are you going to those barbarous islands for—putting friendship and all such regards out of the question? Wheat takes you there,—without humbug? You must excuse me—but you are a very extraordinary person to look ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... dressed as an Indian, and mounted on horseback; he proceeded to show how the wild buffalo is captured with a lasso, but unfortunately the yearlings would not run till the crowd gave a great shout, expressive at once of derision and delight at the harmless humbug. This shout started the young animals into a weak gallop and the lasso was duly thrown over the head of the largest calf. The crowd roared with laughter, listened to the balcony band, which was also furnished "free," and then started for New York, little dreaming who was the ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... anniversary of 1492, everything for the Chicago Exposition," said Willy. "A Viking ship is coming over from Norway. The last descendant of Christopher Columbus, a knock-kneed Spaniard, is to be passed around for show, a tremendous humbug, always an acceptable dish to the Americans. Ritter owes this big order to his monkey-like quickness. The building commission applied to various sculptors, and Ritter sent them sketches for all the statues before the other artists had ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... specimens with her, she went to Dover, and showed them to the ladies and gentlemen. At last one gentleman, a Mr. Ritson, who was rich, and fond of art, said to her, "Don't try to humbug me, little girl. Yon never did this work. Come in, and let me ...
— The Nursery, Number 164 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... of a humbug with it. I thought so, and the doctor endorses my ideas. He likes being ill and nursed and petted with the best food, so as to keep out of the hard work. I don't like the fellow a bit. There, you've talked enough now, so I'll ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... in the books now as a Protestant, or Church of England man; but I do not believe all that churchmen believe. I think there's a good deal of humbug about what is called Christianity altogether. I have tried several creeds, and there's none of them squares exactly ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... am I to do?" asked Pembury of Tom Senior one day; "I've not got a single contribution yet. There's you making out you're too busy, and Rick the same. It's all humbug, I know! What are you busy at I'd like to know? I ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... of "the People." Some such notion as this, more often implied than expressed, is very common, and it is inexpressibly dear to demagogues. It is the prolific root from which springs that luxuriant crop of humbug upon which political tricksters thrive as pigs fatten upon corn. In point of fact no such government, armed with a magic fund of its own, has ever existed upon the earth. No government has ever yet used any money for ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... the Yips, but for a frog to know as much as a person was quite remarkable, and the Frogman was shrewd enough to make the people believe he was far more wise than he really was. They never suspected he was a humbug, but listened to his words with great respect and did just what he advised ...
— The Lost Princess of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... unveracity of them by its corresponding misery and penalty; the phantasms and fatuities, and ten-years' corn-law debatings, that shall walk the earth at noonday, must needs be numerous! The universe being intrinsically a perhaps, being too probably an 'infinite humbug,' why should any minor humbug astonish us? It is all according to the order of nature; and phantasms riding with huge clatter along the streets, from end to end of our existence, astonish nobody. Enchanted St Ives' workhouses and Joe Manton ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... more than at the same period a Warrington would confess that he was a contributor to the leading journals of the day. The members were on the look-out for any indications of intellectual originality, academical or otherwise, and specially contemptuous of humbug, cant, and the qualities of the 'windbag' in general. To be elected, therefore, was virtually to receive a certificate from some of your cleverest contemporaries that they regarded you as likely to be in future an eminent ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... which we have both taken. With respect to the Finance plan, I feel convinced that it must end where it ought to have begun, in an appropriation of part of the Sinking Fund, and that this will be done with more or less disguise and humbug, but that no regard for consistency will be sufficient to prevent a measure ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... always a humbug," said Almayer, after a short silence, in an indulgent tone. "Always! I remember the old days. Some fellows used to say there was no one like you for smartness—but you never took me in. Not quite. I never quite believed ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... splendid fellow; I respect your courage, and I shall attend your lecture. Never mind what Mr. Farnaby and Regina say. Regina's poor little conventional soul is shaken, I dare say; you needn't expect to have my niece among your audience. But Farnaby is a humbug, as usual. He affects to be horrified; he talks big about breaking off the match. In his own self, he's bursting with curiosity to know how you will get through with it. I tell you this—he will sneak into ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... lad. You take a bit of good advice: be off back home—sharp! Don't stop in the town here, or you'll get picked up. There's a lot outside ready to be down upon you, and they'll humbug and promise everything till they've sucked every shilling you've got out of you and made you ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... address to Mugs by a Humbug. That's what it ought to be called. I was looking forward to having a good crack with you the night, but sure a newspaper man need never hope to have ten minutes to himself. I've given Miss Squibb orders to have a good warm supper ready for you. That's a thing the English ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... there a writer, however humble, who has not poured into his writing pot, with the ink, some wistful hopes or prayers for what may emerge from that dark source? Is there not some particular reverence due the ink-well, some form of propitiation to humbug the powers of evil and constraint that devil the journalist? Satan hovers near the ink-pot. Luther solved the matter by throwing the well itself at the apparition. That savors to me too much of homeopathy. If Satan ever puts his face over my desk, I shall hurl a volume of ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... Morality taught by the Rich to the Poor Emulation Caution against the Scoffers of "Humbug" Popular Wrath at Individual Imprudence Dum deflnat Amnis Self-Glorifiers Thought on Fortune Wit, and Truth Auto-theology Glorious Constitution Answer to the Popular Cant that Goodness in a Statesman is better than Ability Common-sense Love, and Writers on Love The Great ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... don't talk humbug. I'd like to see you following goodness when beauty is gone. I've known lots of plain old maids that were perfect saints and angels; and yet men crowded and jostled by them to get the pretty sinners. I dare ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the law adviser and the companion of Monsieur Besancon—Scipio says, "Too often for ole mass'r's good," and believes that the latter suffered much from his acquaintance: or, as Scipio phrases it, "Mass'r Gayarre humbug ole mass'r; he cheat 'im many an many ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... the old man turns out a humbug, you may do what you please. I wash my hands of the matter. For the girl herself, you may be at rest. I don't know what harm she may do to me, but I certainly can't hurt her. It seems to me," said Newman, "that you are ...
— The American • Henry James
... those are two fine girls, and they will have a million apiece. I want 'em to be sensible and marry Chicago men, but, they both go in for coronets and all that humbug." The laughing Major extricated himself from the social tentacles of the honest old boy, mentally deciding to play off Miss Genie ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... tiny diatoms made cities, and were far more astonishing animals than they. I thought that would silence them; but they just turned round, and informed me that my diatoms were plants, not animals,—so my story was all humbug. Then I was mad; and couldn't get over the fact that these little rascals had done what we, the kings of the sea, couldn't do. I wasn't content with being the biggest creature there: I wanted to be the most skilful also. I didn't remember that every thing has its own place and use, ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... sentimentality parade themselves on almost every page. For all his "Oh heavenses," "courageous little souls," and "ay de mis," he never once guessed the nature of his offence, never realized the beastliness of that moral and religious humbug which to himself seems always to have justified him in playing tyrant and vampire to ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... accident has thrown them out of their reckoning. Fright unsettles the judgment: the oppressive silence of the woods is a vacuum in which the mind goes astray. It's a hollow sham, this pantheism, I said; being "one with Nature" is all humbug: I should like to see somebody. Man, to be sure, is of very little account, and soon gets beyond his depth; but the society of the least human being is better than this gigantic indifference. The "rapture on the lonely shore" is agreeable only when you know you can ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... unlucky parson. His decent reticence is branded as hypocrisy, his circumlocutions are roundly called lies, and his silence is vilified as treachery. And on the strength of peccadillos, reprehensible in an author, but excusable in a son, the Anglo-Saxon race is accused of prudishness, humbug, pretentiousness, deceit, cunning, and bad cooking. Personally I think it was rash of Mr. Strickland, in refuting the account which had gained belief of a certain "unpleasantness" between his father and mother, to state that Charles ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... antiquarian, not of the lovable kind, but unscrupulous, pedantic, and vain, indulging an inordinate taste for collecting and hoarding books, perhaps to satisfy a craving for shreds and patches of knowledge, but more likely to earn a reputation as a great clerk.[1] For De Bury was something of a humbug; the Philobiblon, if it is his work, reaches the utmost limit of affectation ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... would not take a German, even if she was good. Besides, I don't want to be good any more—I am not a humbug—I have learned to be bad. Aren't you going to kees me, ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... he was not withheld, by any bashful sentimentalism, from recognising what he saw there and unsparingly putting it down upon the canvas. But where people cannot meet without some confusion and a good deal of involuntary humbug, and are occupied, for as long as they are together, with a very different vein of thought, there cannot be much room for intelligent study nor much result in the shape of genuine comprehension. Even women, who understand ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... he certainly possessed no other claim upon the confidence of his fellow-creatures, sick or well. Yet even before the Dop Doctor brought his great unhealed sorrow and his quenchless thirst to Gueldersdorp, the smug, plump, grey-haired, pink-faced, neatly-dressed little humbug possessed an enviable practice. ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... humor," he says, "instead of being quietly and humbly thankful, are perhaps a little too apt to celebrate their joy in the face of the afflicted ones who have it not; and the afflicted ones only follow a general law in protesting that it is a very worthless thing, if not a complete humbug." This spirit of exclusiveness on the one side and of irascibility on the other may be greatly deplored, but who is there among us, I wonder, wholly innocent of blame? Mr. Saintsbury himself confesses to a silent chuckle of delight when he thinks of the dimly veiled censoriousness ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... of 1848, the book was announced as about to appear shortly, under the title of Lavengro: An Autobiography, which was soon changed to Life: a Drama. The difficulty of writing a book which should have "no humbug in it," proved, as may well be supposed, immense, and would in any case be quite sufficient to account for the long period of gestation. His perplexities may have often been very near akin to those ascribed to the superstitious author in the ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... in Turkey. We discussed it endlessly. The attache used to dine with me, and we agreed that our respective countries were guilty. If the Powers wished, they could establish order easily. No Power wanted order. Each was seeking its own interests. Never has there been more hypocritical humbug talked by both great and small Powers than over Macedonia. They handed moral letters about law and order to the Turk with one hand, and with the other distributed revolutionary funds to effectually prevent the ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... "Humbug, man!" said Dick; "you're working yourself into a state of nervous excitement. Why, what the devil do you make of all that nonsense about a mysterious agent which would signal ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... pretense. And the thing is no worse in Naples than it is in London, the capital of the moral British race, only here we are perfectly frank, and make no effort to hide our little sins, while there, they cover them up carefully and make believe to be virtuous. It is the veriest humbug—the parable of Pharisee ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... out his name, what does he do but set his mark to ours o' t'other side; and we've wrote all about it to Sir Robert to explain to the Parliament, lest seeing Jacob's name both ways like, they should think 'twas he, poor fellow, that meant to humbug 'em. A pretty figure Mr. 'Dolphus 'll cut when the story comes to be told in the House of Commons! But that's not the worst. He took the petition to the workhouse, and meeting with little Fan Ropley, who had been taught to write ...
— Aunt Deborah • Mary Russell Mitford
... that of a clergyman of private means who came to this parish as a curate; but he had given up "taking duty," because, he said, "it was all humbug reading prayers, and all that." He drove a tandem,' and smoked all day instead; nevertheless, he was the object of much and earnest prayer. He also happened to be at church the day I preached about the clock; and declared likewise that I said there was a clock in hell. The sermon had evidently made ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... good, Mary," he said, wiping the perspiration from his forehead; "they're running like blazes to the south along through the furze. I suppose the devils took it that way to humbug your father, and then they'll turn for the bridge and run into Madore; and there's the end ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... amusement-loving public. There must be more robber declarations and full-blooded excited performances anxious for bloody fames, or the thing will be a failure. This pretense of fight won't do; there must be a regular shooting and dying for principle, or we shall pronounce your cheap show a humbug; and some of you at least know that no third rate "Punch and Judy" exhibition will be tolerated by the party in power in South Carolina. With this warning and introduction, we proceed to give an ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... filled with the masterpieces of ancient and modern art, as mere torture-chambers, whence nothing is brought away but backache, headache, weary feet and an agonizing confusion of ideas. Some of them avenge themselves by making fun of the whole matter: they tell you that there is a great deal of humbug about your great pictures and statues; that Raphael is nearly as much overrated as Shakespeare; that it is all nonsense for people to pretend to admire headless trunks and dingy canvases. To them I have nothing to say: they find consolation in their own cleverness. But a great many are left ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... rot! You think he's going, to guess that snake's riddles. Rot! Stuff and nonsense! Humbug! ...
— Turandot, Princess of China - A Chinoiserie in Three Acts • Karl Gustav Vollmoeller
... definition of a ghost is just the reverse of truth; it makes one consist of a soul without a body, while really a specter, an illusion, a humbug of the eyesight and the touch, is a human body not vitalized through and through with ...
— Starr King in California • William Day Simonds
... get started winding up around the tree. Tell me when the humbug business is over with," growled Jerry, beginning to circulate over the same track he had covered on the preceding day at ...
— The Outdoor Chums - The First Tour of the Rod, Gun and Camera Club • Captain Quincy Allen
... farcical. Richard groaned under it; he longed to leap forward and denounce the humbug. And the humbug himself? Do you fancy he was easier in his mind? I am sure, on the other hand, that he was acutely miserable; and he betrayed his sufferings by a perfectly silly and undignified access of temper, during which he broke his pipe in several pieces, threw his ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... nonsense about pure love, love free from law and restraint, love that scoffs at society and its customs, sufficient unto itself and despising public opinion, that was just bosh, the humbug of poets, musicians and dancers—a set of outcasts like that woman who was taking him away, cutting him off forever from all the ties that bound him to family ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... given over to robbery, to conquest, to vanity, to ignorance, to humbug, to the worship ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... that no man can fairly be asked to run. And the healthier the world becomes, the more they are compelled to live by imposture and the less by that really helpful activity of which all doctors get enough to preserve them from utter corruption. For even the most hardened humbug who ever prescribed ether tonics to ladies whose need for tonics is of precisely the same character as the need of poorer women for a glass of gin, has to help a mother through child-bearing often enough to feel that he is ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... side, and have retained one of the national tastes. But it was not in Ireland, nor in the streets of London, sitting upon a fruit-woman's barrow, that I learned the pleasures of smoking. It was in the East, with all its pretended romance, and real humbug, that I acquired what you consider an unfeminine accomplishment. I saw fat, turbaned men sitting cross-legged in every bazaar, dozing over their huge pipes, in a sort of dreamy helplessness; and I determined to fathom the mystery ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... by letting your counsel state that the instant you discovered the lost document you wished to throw no obstacle in the way of proving the marriage, and that the only thing to consider is, if the marriage be proved; if so, you will be the first to rejoice, &c. &c. You know all that sort of humbug as well as ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 5 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... humbug, Amanda. We are making love. Just as they did. And it has been—ripping. In Salona they made love tremendously. They did nothing else until the ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... can instruct one to read the human countenance correctly; and some special circumstance must have roused the suspicions of these four persons so much as to cause them to make these observations, and they were not as usual deceived by the humbug of this skilled actor, a past master in the art ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... improved Mexican. It is well to get seed frequently from a distance; but any extravagant prices are unwise. Improvement of cotton-seed is an important part of its most profitable culture. While much said about it by interested parties is doubtless mere humbug, yet there is great importance to be attached to improvement of seed. This is true of all agricultural products, and no less so of cotton than of others. Two things only are essential to constant improvement in cotton-seed—selection ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... bridge. But rather a million times submit to expense and inconvenience than hand the country over to a set of thieves who'd sell us to-morrow. We're not such fools as ye take us for. Don't we know these heroes? And when we see them and Gladstone and Morley and Humbug Harcourt with his seventeen chins, all rowling together in Abraham's bosom (as ye may say)—Harcourt licking Harrington's boots, when only yesterday Tim was spittin' in his eye—we say to ourselves 'Wait yet awhile, my Boys, ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... better than Carlyle that there is a world diameter between the South hiring a man for life, and by force holding him in slavery. But Carlyle for three years poured out such vapid humbug, cant and hypocrisy as this, and never once was sound in his thinking or fair in his ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... painting despises the ladies and gentlemen who treat those arts as fashionable accomplishments. An author was, according to him, a man who turned out books as a bricklayer turns out houses or a tailor coats. So long as he supplied a good article and got a fair price, he was a fool to grumble, and a humbug to affect loftier motives. ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... concerned. Frankly, the Green family exasperate me," declared Mrs. Fielding. "I can put up with Jack. He's such a smart, good-looking boy, and he can drive like the devil. But I've no use for the other two, and never shall have. I think Green's a humbug. Is he going to join your picnic-party on ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... the visiter—"as I was observing a little while ago, there are some very outre notions in that book of yours Monsieur Bon-Bon. What, for instance, do you mean by all that humbug about the soul? Pray, sir, what ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... King and his imperial nephew, in Homburg vor der Hoehe, which, as was to be expected, passed off in a satisfactory manner. It should, nevertheless, be recalled to mind that the King expressed himself very ironically on the subject of The Hague Conference, which, he asserted, was a humbug. And Sir Charles Hardinge, who entered into negotiations with Secretary of State von Tschirschky, also voiced the opinion that the conference should offer no opportunity for serious interference with England's ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... committed has given me quite the same delight. I stole then because I needed money. I rob now because I am a keen sportsman, and that is the particular sport I affect. Possibly you would not appreciate the pleasure of the game; you have not had the humbug of the world eaten out of your heart with live flame. Having wilfully exposed itself to me, and translated my respect for it into a magnificent hatred, society cannot reasonably expect to find me docile. ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... terrible difficulties. I've been waiting long enough. You must side with me actively, for your assistance is absolutely necessary to bring that mad girl to terms. I'm married to her. She's my wife. I must have control of this place at once; and I'll tolerate no farther opposition from her, or humbug from you. I've come now to tell you ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... them." John at once swore that he would fulfil all as soon as might be, and the bishop in his presence told the holy women, commended the prince to them, gave the blessing and carried off the royal humbug. He then had a long tale of John's good resolutions: he would be pious to God, kind to his subjects, and just to all; he would take Hugh for his father and guide, and wait upon him. He then shewed him a stone, ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... But I did not do it. I was not Prime Minister then. It was that old dotard, that played-out old humbug Lubin. He was ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... the mists of ages. They have achieved the apotheosis of individual forgetfulness, and Plato has the added glory of that acquired beauty, that bust of the Indian Bacchus which is now indissolubly mingled with his tradition. They have passed into the world of the ideal, and every humbug takes his freedoms with their names. But Machiavelli, more recent and less popular, is still all human and earthly, a fallen brother—and at the same time that nobly dressed and nobly ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... it was all humbug about Jinny being neurotic. He's neurotic himself and so he thinks everybody else is. He's got ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... sense of humbug," he said. "I don't know why they gave me this," he added, touching his cross, "unless it was that one of the party in the bungalow had a turn for glorifying whatever happened to himself. Plenty of more really gallant things happened every day, ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... near the flame did he run to burn the old woman that Mr. Egremont shouted to her that in spite of all that humbug, she was perfectly careless of the child, although if she had withheld him she would probably have been blamed for ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that the former showed a sad want of spirit in being disciplined into making those disclosures, which at first he seemed bent on withholding. Whether the priest honestly interpreted what he believed the divinity said to him, or whether he was not all the while guilty of a vile humbug, I shall not presume to decide. At any rate, whatever as coming from the god was imparted to those present seemed to be generally of a complimentary nature: a fact which illustrates the sagacity of Kolory, or else the timeserving disposition of this ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... took the prize for Devons at the Great Mesopotamian Agricultural with a brindled bull. We remember his weeping at the wedding-breakfast over the loss of his eldest treasure, and wonder if he was an arrant humbug, or only a foolish, fond old man, inclining morosely toward the former opinion. We don't seem to care much about Sir Roland de Vaux, the celebrated geologist, whom we shall have the privilege of meeting this ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... delay, asking questions of every one whom he for a moment saw standing quiet, and was likely to answer him. Harry Bevan told him a good deal, as did the other midshipmen, no one showing a disposition to humbug him, possibly on Jack's account, who would have found them out if they had. Before night Tom began to fancy that he really knew something about a ship, though it might be some time before he could consider himself ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... you wouldn't. Don't talk humbug, Mr. William Dawson. During the past two months you have pranced along the streets with your head in the clouds. And in your own home Mrs. Dawson and the little Dawsons—if there are any—have worshipped you as a god. There is nothing so flattering ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... who had lived and still lived on newspapers; who himself had been the chief managing editor, tenor, Jack-of-all-trades, canard-seller, camarillist, politician, premier-Paris, fait-Paris, detache-attache, pamphleteer, translator, critic, euphuist, bravo, incense-bearer, guerillero, angler, humbug, and even, what was more serious, the banker of a paper of which he was the only, unique, and perpetual gendelettre, and which, so admirably written, cleverly conducted, and signed with so great a name, ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... effectively work falsehood? Can they consequently be treated distinctively as the truth-builders? It is the INHERENT RELATION TO REALITY of a belief that gives us that specific TRUTH-satisfaction, compared with which all other satisfactions are the hollowest humbug. The satisfaction of KNOWING TRULY is thus the only one which the pragmatist ought to have considered. As a PSYCHOLOGICAL SENTIMENT, the anti-pragmatist gladly concedes it to him, but then only as a concomitant of ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... surveyor," at Salisbury. He talks homilies even in drunkenness, prates about the beauty of charity, and duty of forgiveness, but is altogether a canting humbug, and is ultimately so reduced in position that he becomes a "drunken, begging, squalid, letter-writing man," out at elbows, and almost shoeless. Pecksniff's specialty is the "sleek, smiling ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... of hypocrisy, in the knowledge that I, the dispenser of sacred things to the people, was myself the slave of a money-lending Jew, and you will easily see how my life could not be to me the reality which it must be, for any true and healthy action, to every man. In a word, I felt that I was humbug. As to my preaching, that could not have had much reality in it of any kind, for I had no experience yet of the relation of Christian Faith to Christian Action. In fact, I regarded them as separable—not merely as distinguishable, in the necessity which our human ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald
... put out his tongue at me in derision, I could not have felt more humiliated. I thought to myself—Serve me right for a sneaking humbug. . . . His eyes shone straight into my face, but I perceived it was not a mocking brightness. All at once he sprang into jerky agitation, like one of those flat wooden figures that are worked by a string. His arms ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... SLINKERS, is a polish'd, skarcastic writer. Folks in these parts will not soon forgit how he used up the "Eagle of Freedom," a family journal published at Snootville, near here. The controversy was about a plank road. "The road may be, as our cotemporary says, a humbug; but OUR aunt isn't bald-heded, and WE haven't got a one-eyed sister Sal! Wonder if the Editor of the "Eagle of Freedom" sees it?" This used up the "Eagle of Freedom" feller, because his aunt's head does present a skinn'd appearance, and his sister SARAH is very much one-eyed. ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 2 • Charles Farrar Browne
... you, Chang, my boy, is it?' said Joe. 'What! are you glad to have me, old chappie? No humbug about yer, are yer sure? ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... if Roger will be as witty after a few weeks teetotal diet?" he chuckled. "Mind you, Roger, you've got to play the game properly. No bringing a flask in your baggage or any humbug of ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... very words: 'Peter, this is what you need in the house.' And, sure enough, the very first time I carried her up those stairs over there, all my fine, cranky, crotchety bachelor notions flew out of my head. I knew then, in a flash, that all my knowledge and all my queer ideas of life were just humbug! I had missed the Child in the House. Yes,"—his voice dropped with a strain of soft regret,—"I had missed many children in the house. James, I was born in that little room up there. The room I sleep in. And one day, please God, Katje's children shall play in ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... knaves. And after making due allowance for those indescribable differences of taste which separate us from our fathers in every region of art—and even admitting, what is by no means sure, that sixty years ago rascality, snobbery, and humbug were more rampant in society than nowadays—we are still disposed to regret that a writer whose best work is superlatively good should have dwelt so persistently in his earlier stories upon the dreary and ignoble side of English life. From some passages ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... his pulpy hand, loaded with ostentatious rings, and grasping Dicker's recoiling fingers. "Harness up your little bill as quick as you can, and drive it like Jehu. Fastburg to be the only capital. Slowburg no claims at all, historical, geographical, or economic. The old arrangement a humbug; as inconvenient as a fifth wheel of a coach; costs the State thousands of greenbacks every year. Figure it all up statistically and dab it over with your shiniest rhetoric and make a big thing of it every way. That's what you've got to do; that's ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... my microscope, upon my parlor rug, With a very heavy quarto and a very lively bug; The true bug had been organized with only two antennae, But the humbug in the copperplate would have them ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... to Mrs. Thrale, without even mentioning the existence of this mob; perhaps at this very moment he thinks it "a humbug upon the nation," as ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... insincerity or fluent repetition of second-hand dogmas. But, in fact, this dislike of 'Lycidas,' and a good many instances of critical incapacity might be added, is merely a misapplication of a very sound principle. The hatred of cant and humbug and affectation of all vanity is a most salutary ingredient even in poetical criticism. Johnson, with his natural ignorance of that historical method, the exaltation of which threatens to become a part of our contemporary cant, made the pardonable blunder of supposing that what would ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... gleeful laugh like a child, and slipped her feet to the floor: "Oh, you cross Marta, you dear humbug!" she cried, "As if you wouldn't let the master walk over you and never complain! Go on with that wonderful muffler of his, and I will let him in myself. No, don't touch me! Let me go alone and ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... "Oh, humbug," said Mr. Stacy; "that is putting it too strong, Harriet—as if I couldn't pay money or not, just ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... 'Fugitive-Slave Law' is unconstitutional—is an outrage, and an imposition of which you will all soon be ashamed. It is a disgrace to your humanity and to your republicanism, and Mr. Webster should be hung for advocating it. He is a humbug or an ass—an ass, if he believes such an infamous law to be constitutional, and if he does not believe it, he is a humbug and a scoundrel ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... Scott, N. Colver, and a large number of others, and they highly approve its sentiments. They, with you, are fully of the opinion that it is high time to take a firm stand against the no-government doctrine. They are far from regarding it merely as a humbug." John A. Collins, the Anti-slavery agent referred to, founded a community at Skaneateles, N. Y., based upon the following dictums: A disbelief in any special revelation of God to Man, in any form of worship, in any special regard for the Sabbath, in any church, disbelief ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... take very little stock in saints, and she strikes me as a little of a humbug, your Cecilia; but I would like to know what the effect of the 'Old Curiosity Shop' would be on a full-blooded Indian squaw. Catherine, will you try to read it if I bring ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... impossible, and imposes veneration and credulity on all but the strongest minds. He is known in the medical world as B. B.; and the envy roused by his success in practice is softened by the conviction that he is, scientifically considered, a colossal humbug: the fact being that, though he knows just as much (and just as little) as his contemporaries, the qualifications that pass muster in common men reveal their weakness when hung on his ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • George Bernard Shaw
... in a passion, and I did not care. I only said, 'How dare you, Sir?' and I threw the piece of iron just to frighten him. Well, to be sure, the blackguard fell down like a bull, and I thought it was a humbug. I laughed and said, 'None of your gammon;' but he was dead. I think the thing must have struck something on the way, and so swerved against his head. I wished not to kill the fellow—I be damned ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... appear in history as simply the most shameful episode in the English annals. Thinking this, you will not consider my opinion good for anything, and therefore I need not inflict it upon you. Humbugs, however, will explode in the present state of the atmosphere, and the Austrian humbug, for instance, is at last, God be praised for it, exploding. John Bull, I suppose, will work himself into a fine fever about that; but he will think none the worse of the old ladies in Downing Street who ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... enquire his purposes. Here Brummell's knowledge of every body did him good service. The deputy on this occasion having once figured as the head of a veterinary hospital, or some such thing, but being then in the commissariat,—"Why, Vulcan!" exclaimed Brummell, "what a humbug you must be to come and lecture me on such a subject! You, who were for two years at hide-and-seek to save yourself from being shot by Sir T. S. for running off with one of his daughters." "Dear me," said the astonished friend, "you have touched ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... very good,' said Mark. He felt himself a humbug, for he could have leaped the stile with ease at that very moment. He had very little excuse for practising in this way on her womanly sympathy, except that he dreaded to lose her just yet, and found such a subtle intoxication in being tended like this by a girl from ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... yet—the objectionable character of his self-constituted judge being clear as the moon to the mind of the curate, was there not something in what he had said? This much remained undeniable at least, that when the very existence of the church was denounced as a humbug in the hearing of one who ate her bread, and was her pledged servant, his very honesty had kept that man from speaking a word in her behalf! Something must be wrong somewhere: was it in him or in the church? In him assuredly, whether in her or not. For had he not been unable to utter the ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... the natural world through the books or the eyes of others. All this talk about "babbling brooks" is a stereotyped humbug. Brooks never "babble." To babble is to be unintelligent and imperfect of tongue. But when the brooks speak, they utter lessons of beauty that the dullest ear can understand. We have wandered from the Androscoggin in Maine to the ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... hold of humbug in Japan that nobody in the whole household, including the students who respected nothing, ever allowed themselves the relief of smiling at the sacred hour of study, even when the master's ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... Don't you try to humbug me. I am ugly, and I know it! For, last winter, when I went down to the grocery to fetch Forty-nine—he'd gone down there to get medicine for his ager, Mr. John Logan—I heard a man say, 'She is ugly as a mud fence.' Oh, I went for him! I made the fur ...
— Shadows of Shasta • Joaquin Miller
... begin my chapter in this fashion, were it not for two trifling difficulties—one being that I should be a humbug, which it is not my ambition to be; the other, that Dick, too, would have been a humbug, which he certainly ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... clear-sighted criticism into the swollen and opaque mass of financial carrion that is exposed for sale in the market, are of the utmost benefit to the public. The bear is then a benefactor to the community, and when he pulls down and tears to pieces the rotten carcass of some gigantic humbug, strewing the highway with its remains, we cannot ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... was taken by Canon and Mrs. Thesiger to lunch or dinner or tea in the other Canons' houses, and was introduced to the Dean and the Archbishop. I attended the Cathedral services to an extent that provoked Viola to denounce me as a humbug. ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... sincere relief.) He lived at Torquay. (Oh, oh.) He had never been to London before, and was surprised to find it such a large place. (General silence.) He had been a pacifist—(Hear, hear)—but he now thought the GERMAN EMPEROR was a humbug. He wished it to be known that his attitude was now one of great 'umbleness. The war could go on as far as he was concerned. (Applause.) Although he had given up writing about Dartmoor he had that morning applied for the post of Military Member of the Invasion ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 23, 1914 • Various
... time, the united forces of the Camusot and Popinot families gained an easy victory in the world, for nobody undertook to defend the unfortunate Pons, that parasite, that curmudgeon, that skinflint, that smooth-faced humbug, on whom everybody heaped scorn; he was a viper cherished in the bosom of the family, he had not his match for spite, he was a dangerous mountebank whom nobody ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... mulled it very well; nor of how we sat talking, Fenn like an old, faithful, affectionate dependant, and I—well! I myself fallen into a mere admiration of so much impudence, that transcended words, and had very soon conquered animosity. I took a fancy to the man, he was so vast a humbug. I began to see a kind of beauty in him, his aplomb was so majestic. I never knew a rogue to cut so fat; his villainy was ample, like his belly, and I could scarce find it in my heart to hold him responsible for either. He was good enough to drop into the autobiographical; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... things, but chiefly to disappear or to make disappear. Thus, a deserter "skyugled," and sometimes he "skyugled" a coat or watch. Slanganderin' - Foolishly slandering. Slasher gaffs - Spurs for cocks, with cutting edges. Slibovitz - A Bohemian schnapps. Slumgoozlin' - Slum or sham guzzling, humbug. Slumgullion - A Mississippi term for a legislator. So mit,(Ger.) - Thus with. Solidaten,(Ger. Soldaten) - Soldiers. Sonntag,(Ger.) - Sunday. Soplin - A sapling, young tree. Sottelet,(Ger. Gesattelt) - Saddled. Sound upon the ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... said Mr. Bayard, "so pleasantly adjusted our business, suppose we smoke in confirmation of the adjustment. Also, if you will, please explain the humbug of Mr. Gywnn. Why are you, who are among the world's five wealthiest men, so anxious to pretend poverty and hide your ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... the laws, who is professedly only fighting to give us all Liberty, the birthright of every American, and who, nevertheless, has ground us down to a state where we would not reduce our negroes, who tortures and sneers at us, and rules us with an iron hand! Ah! Liberty! what a humbug! I would rather belong to England or France, than to the North! Bondage, woman that I am, I can never stand! Even now, the Northern papers, distributed among us, taunt us with our subjection and tell us "how coolly Butler will grind ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... boy, and warn him not to think of running away to sea. Still, I must even add my voice to the orthodox chorus, and affirm that warfare is bad, brutal, fraudful, a thing of meretricious gauds, a clay idol, fetish of humbug and havoc, whose feet are soaking in muddy gore and salt tears; yet in the privacy of my own study I might sadly admit that the Millennium is remote, that the Parliament of Nations exists but in the dreams of the poet, and that Longfellow's forecast of the days down through the dark future when the ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... It was awful humbug that the commandant reeled off to his silent audience—hypocrisy garbed in paternal phrases, and interlarded with buncombe about Germany's mission to bring happiness ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... laughed Joseph Emson; "what a young humbug you are, Dicky. Fancy you going back with me to the old dad, and us saying, 'Here we are, back again, like two bad shillings, father. We've spent all our money, and we're ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... comfortable where he was. And she! She had laughed at his jokes; they were not very clever jokes, they were not very new. She had probably read them herself months before in her own particular weekly journal. Yet the harmless humbug made him happy. I wonder if ten years hence she will laugh at such old humour, if ten years hence he will take such clumsy pains to put her cape about her. Experience shakes her head, and is amused at ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... "got up" by missionaries. It purports to be based on moral grounds, and he suspects everything that so purports. Not that he is not himself moved by moral considerations. Almost invariably he is. But he will never admit it for himself, and he deeply suspects it in others. The words "hypocrite," "humbug," "sentimentalist" spring readily to his lips. But let him work off his steam, sit quiet and wait, and you will find, often enough, that he has arrived at the same conclusion as the "sentimentalist"—only, of course, ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... snobbish—to talk of your great acquaintances in public! And as for Lady Risborough's answer—"I don't care twopence about the Duchess, Hugh! and I haven't seen Ewen for six years,"—it had been merely humbug, for she had obediently followed her husband, ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... run out again. There's a thousand francs; just let me take it in hand and manage the affair.' Very good! The banker then convokes the traders: 'My friends, let us go to work: write a prospectus! Down with humbug!' On that they get out the hunting-horns and shout and clamor,—'One hundred thousand francs for five sous! or five sous for a hundred thousand francs! gold mines! coal mines!' In short, all the clap-trap of commerce. We buy ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... to her. "Don't you go getting caught by that sweep who runs their chapel up in London. He's a humbug if ever there was one—you mark my words. I know a thing or two. He's done your aunts a lot of harm, and he'll have his dirty fingers on you if you ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... humbug, but I don't believe Peterkin did; he was so completely taken up with the thought of Margaret's escape, and so down-to-the-ground sure that he was doing a most necessary piece of business if she was to be saved from the witch's 'enchantering,' ...
— Peterkin • Mary Louisa Molesworth |
