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More "Pretend" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the safer guardian for a delicate invalid because she loathed manly sports so entirely that she did not even pretend to like them, as most women, poor things, think themselves obliged to do. In her hands there was no danger that he would be tempted to excesses in golf. She was really afraid of all boats, but she was willing to go out with him in the sail-boat of a superannuated skipper, because to sit talking ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells
... hit upon was to pretend to turn bagman; and so Mercy would believe he was travelling all over England, when all the time he was quietly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... do not pretend in the few suggestions I have made in this chapter to have named a fraction of the points of interest that we did not visit—only the ones which appealed to me most when I had become more familiar with ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... chemists the possibility was recognized, as by Joseph Priestley (Directions for impregnating water with fixed air . . . to communicate the peculiar Spirit and Virtues of Pyrmont water, 1772), of imitating them artificially. Many of the ordinary aerated waters of commerce, however, do not pretend to reproduce any known natural water; they are merely beverages owing their popularity to their effervescing properties and the flavour imparted by a small quantity of some salt such as sodium bicarbonate or a little fruit syrup. Their manufacture ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... to check expenses, of which they could not pretend ignorance, the Prince had recourse to means for relieving himself from his embarrassments, which ultimately tended to increase them. It was attempted to raise a loan for him in foreign countries, a measure which he thought unconstitutional, and put a stop to; and, after ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... which you owe your father. For The contract you pretend with that base wretch, One bred of alms and foster'd with cold dishes, With scraps o' the court, it is no contract, none; And though it be allowed in meaner parties— Yet who than he more mean?—to knit their souls— On whom there is no ...
— Cymbeline • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]
... in public affairs act from a meer view of the good of their country, whatever they may pretend; and, tho' their actings bring real good to their country, yet men primarily considered that their own and their country's interest was united, and did not act from a ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... I felt firmly persuaded that the three of them were engrossed solely with the question of whether I should merely PASS the examination or whether I should pass it WELL, and that it was only swagger which made them pretend that they did not care either way, and behave as though they had not ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... my father's talk as we came, had been with a view to prepare me for what John Jamieson would say. I cannot pretend, however, to have understood the old man at the time, but his words have often come back to me since, and helped me through trials pretty severe, although, like the old man, I have never found any of them too ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... then, if you please, Towlinson,' said Miss Tox, 'that the lady's uncle is a magistrate, and that if he gives her any of his impertinence he will be punished terribly. You can pretend to say that, if you please, Towlinson, in a friendly way, and because you know it was done to another ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... can take my household gods to a more congenial setting, perhaps. Who can tell? With the summer coming on and the birds singing it would be useless for me to pretend to grieve any more. A joy lives always in my heart. Some day—not too soon, but ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... the right of power? We have seized upon the country, and shot down the inhabitants, until the survivors have found it expedient to submit to our rule. We have acted exactly as Julius Caesar did when he took possession of Britain. But Caesar was not so hypocritical as to pretend any moral right to possession. On what grounds can we possibly claim a right to the occupancy of the land? We are told, because civilized people are justified in extending themselves over uncivilized countries. According to this doctrine, were there a nation in the ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... 'that if a man only is baptized and partakes of the Lord's Supper, [he] is safe; and that I call those enthusiasts and bigots who insist upon further repentance and conversion.' Again he charges me with openly supporting the Roman doctrine of transubstantiation, and of forgiving sins like the papists pretend to do. Now I positively deny these charges as being true, and if Mr. Shober does not confront me and prove these charges by a legal testimony or testimonies, what can I otherwise, agreeably to the truth, call him but a calumniator, or one ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente
... also to explain the unusual trouble to which I have put you all—and, since your supper was not over, I fear I may even say annoyance. It has pleased M. Alain to make some threats of disputing my will, and to pretend that there are among your number certain estimable persons who may be trusted to swear as he shall direct them. It pleases me thus to put it out of his power and to stop the mouths of his false witnesses. I am infinitely obliged by your politeness, ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... time Mr. Fillmore uttered this idle charge, the state of things in the United States disproved it. Mr. Pierce, of New Hampshire, and Mr. Bright, of Indiana, both from free-States, are President and Vice-President, and the Union stands and will stand. You do not pretend that it ought to dissolve the Union, and the facts show that it won't; therefore the charge may ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... to be considered more than as a capriccio, or sport of the fancy, on which he has expended much labour to little purpose. It does not pretend to anything like correctness of design, or continuity of action. It is like a picture of Breughel's, where every thing is highly coloured, and every thing out of order. In the first part, called the Economy of Vegetation, ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... unusual," counselled the chief. "Go to bed, and pretend to sleep. Let them rob you, and when they come out we will take care of them ...
— Jerry's Reward • Evelyn Snead Barnett
... common to the dwellers in the counties bordering upon England, and to the "would-be genteel" of too many other parts of Wales, who, perfectly unconscious of the beauty of their own language, and ignorant of its literature, affect English manners and customs, and often pretend that English is more familiar to them than Welsh, a fatuous course of conduct which brings upon them only the sarcasm of the lower classes, and the contempt of ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... respect and attention, as you are listening. When you are my age, you'll command that perfect confidence which I command. Folks can't trust youth all the way; but you'll win to it; and believe me, in our business, there's no greater asset than the power to command absolute trust. You can't pretend to that power if you haven't got it. Human nature damn soon sees through you, if you're pretending what you don't command. But I'm playing straight across the board, Mark, as my custom is, and I know you are too sane and ambitious ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... to have a long time before him:—it is impossible to say how long that time seemed to him. Fortunately, from some accidental cause or other, he woke one morning and found himself ill; and, whether it was the fault of the doctor or himself I cannot pretend to say, but he never got well again. His ailments became chronic; he fell into a poor way. From that time life has assumed to him a new aspect. Always occupied with himself, he is never bored. He may be sick, sad, suffering, but ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... much disburthened the ship; not like Aesop's basket, by easing it of the provision, but by breaking our fasts; and that a man is more terrestrial and heavy when fasting than when he has eaten and drank, even as they pretend that he weighs more dead than living. However it is, you will grant they are in the right who take their morning's draught and breakfast before a long journey; then say that the horses will perform the better, and that a spur in the ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... it too bad!" exclaimed Jauncy. "Here have I been counting on you to make the ladies enjoy themselves—for I haven't your gift of entertaining conversation, and don't pretend to it—and you go and leave me in the lurch, and ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... "before discussing its weight permit me to enumerate some of the marvels which our ancestors have achieved in this respect. I don't mean to pretend that the science of gunnery has not advanced, but it is as well to bear in mind that during the middle ages they obtained results more surprising, I will venture to say, than ours. For instance, during the siege of Constantinople by ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... friend! Not in those points where he could never hope equality—wealth and station—the conventional distinctions to which, after all, a man of ordinary sense must sooner or later reconcile himself—but in that one respect wherein all, high and low, pretend to the same rights—rights which a man of moderate warmth of feeling can never willingly renounce—viz., a partner in a lot however obscure; a kind face by a hearth, no matter how mean it be! And his happier friend, ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... to consider this strange condition of affairs. "Whatever it is," he said to himself, "it's nothin' suddint, and it's bound to be chronic, and that'll skeer Thomas. I wish I hadn't asked him to come up here. The best thing for me to do will be to pretend that I have been sent to git somethin' at the store, and go straight back and keep ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... the possession of Mr. Arthur Ruck, comes a drawing signed by Behzad and reproduced on Plate II, c. On the genuineness of the signature I cannot pretend to an opinion, but there seem to be no solid grounds for disputing it. The work itself is characteristic enough. It is accomplished and tasteful; it is also thin in quality and the forms are indifferently co-ordinated. It is, in fact, a very pretty piece of illustration; it is not a profoundly ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... for idleness. An "idle stockinger" was there no very uncommon phrase, and the Degs were always classed under that head. Nothing could be more admirably adapted than this trade for building a plan of parish relief upon. The Degs did not pretend to be absolutely without work, or the parish authorities would soon have set them to some real labor,—a thing that they particularly recoiled from, having a very old adage in the family, that "hard work was enough to kill a man." The Degs ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... I do not see how it is possible to go further beyond the results of a limited human experience than those do who pretend to settle the origin and nature of sin, the final destiny of souls, and the whole plan of the causal spirit with regard to them. I think those who take your view, have not examined themselves, and do not know the ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... and laws of the United States, and of which Jefferson Davis, John Letcher, and William Smith were late the respective chiefs, are declared null and void. All persons who shall exercise, claim, pretend, or attempt to exercise any political, military, or civil power, authority, jurisdiction, or right by, through, or under Jefferson Davis, late of the city of Richmond, and his confederates, or under John Letcher or William Smith and their confederates, or under any pretended ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... knew this! You won't say a word, will you, Bob? Not for ever so long? You will pretend it was ever so long ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... Pardon that; and pardon, too, the self-consciousness that makes me beg not to be remembered as I seem to myself in the tale—a tiptoeing, peeping figure prowling by night after undue revelations, and using them—to the humiliation of souls cleaner than mine could ever pretend to be. ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... the strangest idea of what I can do for them," he laughed. It was his pose to pretend he was without authority. "They believe I've only to wave a wand, and get them anything they want. I thought I'd be safe from them on ...
— My Buried Treasure • Richard Harding Davis
... know? He has the devil's own tenacity, bold black eyes and a well-cut head, and a certain grace of limb and bearing nowise remarkable. But"—I waved my hand helplessly—"how can a sane man understand a woman's preference?—nay, Elsin, I do not even pretend to understand you. All I know is that our friendship began in an instant, opened to full sweetness like a flower overnight, and, like a flower, ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... authorized to punish him with the whip, with as many blows as the magnitude of the crime justified. He was frequently cautioned, upon the peril of his skin, to see that all the negroes were off to the field in the morning. 'Ocra,' said the overseer, one evening, to the driver, 'if any pretend to be sick, send me word—allow no lazy wench or fellow to skulk in the negro house.' Next morning, a few minutes after the departure of the hands to the field, Ocra was seen hastening to the house of the overseer. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... certainly was you, sir, who advised me to make more of the scene between Deborah and the old gentleman in the last act. As you know, it is now the great scene in the play. You will not pretend ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... Andalusia; to this effect he called a freed slave of his, to whom he had on different occasions intrusted important commands in his armies, and whose name was Tarik Ibn Zeyad Ibn Abdillah, a native of Hamdan, in Persia, although some pretend that he was not a freedman of Musa Ibn Nosseyr, but a free-born man of the tribe of Sadf, while others make him a mauli of Lahm. It is even asserted that some of his posterity, who lived in Andalusia, rejected with ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... seems once to have been more extensive, as on some parts of the bank farthest removed from the island there are little pinnacles of rock of the same nature as that of the high larger islands. I cannot pretend to form any precise notion how the foundation of so anomalous an island has been produced, but its whole history must be very different from that of the atolls of the Indian and Pacific oceans—though, ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... do," said Migwan. "You remember the story of the Calydonian Hunt in the mythology book? Well, we'll pretend ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... accidentally displaced; and one day the youngest of the children, while playing with the shoe-horn, stuck it into this knot-hole. Whether or not the aperture had been formed by the Boggart as a peep-hole to watch the motions of the family, I cannot pretend to say. Some thought it was, for it was called the Boggart's peep-hole; but others said that they had remembered it long before the shrill laugh of the Boggart was heard in the house. However this may have been, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... three gaze into the hole at once, for fear of alarming the recluse. Do you two pretend to read the Dominus in the breviary, while I thrust my nose into the aperture; the recluse knows me a little. I will give you warning when ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... "Let's pretend we lived then," she said, "and I am the miller's daughter of this dear little mill, and you are the bailiff's son who lives opposite, and you have come with your corn to be ground. Oh, and I shall make a bargain, ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... of a set of empirics, who, resorting every day to a public place, should extol the goodness of their remedies, and vend them as infallible, while they themselves were full of the infirmities, which they pretend to cure? Should we have much confidence in the recipes of these quacks, though they stun us with crying, "take our remedies, their effects are infallible; they cure every body; except us." What should we afterwards think, should those quacks spend their lives ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... one could utter a sentence of three words. Its appearance, and the effect it had produced upon the ships in whose neighborhood it passed, indicated that it bore an intense and tremendous charge of electricity. How it had become thus charged I cannot pretend to say. I simply record the fact. And this charge, it was evident, was opposite in polarity to that which the ships of the squadron bore. It therefore exerted an attractive influence upon them and thus ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss
... am well aware that to him, who makes but a casual study of any historic period, matters will appear fresh that to the master of it are well-worn inferences and generalizations, and while therefore I can pretend to offer only a shallow experience, I confess that on the points to which I have referred I received new light, and it prepared me for the overturning of the view of Cromwell which I had derived from the Puritanical instruction of my early days ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... is uttered so audibly that I ought to pretend not to hear it," Stepan Trofimovitch said neatly, "but I cannot believe that my insignificant presence is so indispensable at your fete to-morrow. ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... are limited to skiff, sniff, tiff and whiff. And what can you do with those? Students, I hope, will see what they can do. My own tentative solution is printed, by arrangement with the Editor, on another page (458). I do not pretend that it is perfect; in fact it seems to me to strike rather a vulgar note. At the same time it is copyright, and must not be set ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 9, 1920 • Various
... in the window, if you remember, all very much alike, and each one labelled in plain figures twenty marks. I don't pretend to speak German fluently, but I can generally make myself understood with a little effort, and gather the sense of what is said to me, provided they don't gabble. I went into the shop. A young girl came up ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... to one mystery more, the most awful of all, that of death—would any one pretend that our perception of justice, of goodness and beauty, or our intellectual, sentient power, our eagerness for all that draws near to the infinite, all-powerful, eternal, has dwindled since death ceased to be held the immense and exclusive ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... girl," he said, aloud. "At any rate, you wouldn't pretend. You'd gamble with your immortal soul, but you wouldn't sell it—not for three millions, not for a hundred times three millions. Or is it that you are all alike, you women? Isn't there one of you that can be absolutely true? Isn't there ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the measurements of Luschka, on p. 64, that the proportions of the female voicebox are materially different from those of the male, and I have also pointed out differences in shape noticeable to any observer. Now, although I do not pretend that I have by these facts and figures sufficiently accounted for the difference in the registers of the male and the female voice; yet these facts and figures are nevertheless greatly in my favour, and they are certainly ...
— The Mechanism of the Human Voice • Emil Behnke
... you say to the ten-cent magazines?" my friend retorted. "And do you pretend that the two-dollar drama ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... of Paris take your oath, That you elect no other King but him; Esteeme none Friends, but such as are his Friends, And none your Foes, but such as shall pretend Malicious practises against his State: This shall ye do, so helpe you righteous God. ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... but I have not found it easy to trace. In "The Book of Sindibad" (p. 83) it is apparently represented by a lacuna. In the Squire's Tale of Chaucer Canace's ring enables the wearer to understand bird-language, not merely to pretend as does the slave-boy ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... "It does not pretend to be an analysis of the individual, and it was not written with the intention of advocating or criticising his political policies. It was meant to be a simple, straightforward, yet complete biography of the most interesting personality of our day. Its aim is to present a life of action ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... "here she had the impudence to pretend not to know them. She takes up her glass—my Lady Di. herself couldn't have done it better, and squeezes up her ugly face this way, pretending to be near-sighted, though she can see as well as ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... faces, and hear them from the tone of their voices in conversation, yea, they feel them on their breasts, arms, and cheeks: but we, from the zeal of our love for your happiness, and at the same time for our own, pretend not to know them; and yet we govern them so prudently, that wherever the fancy, good pleasure, and will of our husbands lead, we follow by permitting and suffering it; only bending its direction when it is possible, ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... from the king of Portugal so to do. But though they boast thus of their strength yet really they are very weak; for they have but a few small arms and but little powder: they have no fort, nor magazine of arms; nor does the viceroy of Goa send them any now: for though they pretend to be under the king of Portugal they are a sort of lawless people, and are under no government. It was not long since the viceroy of Goa sent a ship hither, and a land-officer to remain here: but Captain More put him in irons, ...
— A Continuation of a Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier
... be pretty—indeed, we could not pretend to give even the outline of the conversation that followed. It was carried on in such broken and disjointed sentences, eyes and squeezes doing so much more work than words, that even a reporter would have had to draw largely upon his imagination for the substance. Suffice it to say that, though ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... Hoped we'd forgive him. He couldn't say that if he were as young as us he'd enlist like a shot, any more than he could say that if a woman jumped off Waterloo Bridge on a dark night he'd jump in after her. On the whole he thought it would be much easier to pretend he hadn't noticed. In fact that's very likely what he would do. But if someone, say the mother of the girl, pointed out the body to him, then he'd have to come to a decision. Well, he was in the position of that mother, he had come down to point out the body. ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, September 9, 1914 • Various
... say, Mrs. Bargrave, do not you think I am mightily impaired by my fits? No, says Mrs. Bargrave, I think you look as well as ever I knew you. After all this discourse, which the apparition put in much finer words than Mrs. Bargrave said she could pretend to, and as much more than she can remember, (for it cannot be thought, that an hour and three quarters' conversation could all be retained, though the main of it she thinks she does,) she said to ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... you, sir. There must be some, who, wanting a relish for refined pleasures, pretend to despise what they are ...
— She Stoops to Conquer - or, The Mistakes of a Night. A Comedy. • Oliver Goldsmith
... to her rescue. She was of the opposing camp. She could not, and would not, pretend. It was clear that war lay ahead, and her position must be that of ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... life of Jesus of Nazareth, which you believe the clearest revelation which God has allowed of Himself to earth. Finding any contradictions or obscurities, I will remember, as you say, that Scripture was not, and does not pretend to be, written visibly and actually by the finger of God, but by His inspiration conveyed through many human minds, and of course always bearing to a certain extent the impress of the mind through which it passes. Therefore, while the letter is sometimes apparently ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... to run down after we had put into Boston for market, and that we suspected was because the skipper found he could not keep away himself any longer. Things, we judged, were going pretty well with him in Gloucester. He did not pretend any longer now that he was not interested in Miss Foster, and from my cousin Nell I got occasional hints, most of which I confided to Clancy, who explained them as if they were ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly
... while if it be left at home, aqueous vapour is largely produced, and is soon deposited in the form of rain. No theory,' my friend continues, 'competent to explain this hygrometric law has been given (as far as I am aware) by Herschel, Dove, Glaisher, Tait, Buchan, or any other writer; nor do I pretend to supply the defect. I venture, however, to throw out the conjecture that it will be ultimately found to belong to the same class of natural laws as that agreeable to which a slice of toast always descends with ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... bailiffs; "do not be inhuman; grant me a last favor. I have not the courage to say farewell to my wife and children; it would break my heart. If they see you take me away they will run after me, and I would avoid that. I therefore beg of you to say aloud that you will return in three or four days, and pretend to go away; you can wait for me on the landing below; I will come to you in less than five minutes. That will spare me the pain of saying farewell. I will no longer resist, I promise you. I shall go stark mad; I ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... Gazette" tells us that we are lacking in understanding of the high seriousness of the war; that we use sporting expressions about it. "The Times," referring to this criticism, points out that, though we do not pretend, like the Germans, to make a religion of war, our sporting instinct at least enables us to recognise that to draw the sword on women and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 14, 1914 • Various
... have neither forgotten your commands, since such they were, nor disobeyed them. I was, last night, wakened from my sleep, as I lay in my own chamber, and accosted by the person whom I have mentioned—how she found access to the room I cannot pretend to say." ...
— Two Ghostly Mysteries - A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and The Murdered Cousin • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... effects of that early brilliancy. But the degree was not so great as to permanently injure you, especially if you see what is the matter, and guard against repeating the mistakes of your parents. I mean that you can now treat your own body and mind and nerves as you wish they had treated them. Pretend that you are your own little child, and deal with yourself tenderly and gently, making allowances for the early strain to which you were subjected. So few of us American women, with our alert minds, and our Puritanic consciences, have ...
— Study of Child Life • Marion Foster Washburne
... are very seldom in earnest like you are, Joan. They don't believe half they say, they pretend and make believe; they've got to do so, poor things, because the world they live in is all built up on ancient foundations of great festering lies. The lies are carefully coated over and disinfected as much ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... in prayer and defiance and thanksgiving—he was ever at hand, to cross-question, to insinuate, to surmise, to bluster, to interpret, to terrify, to perplex, to vociferate: surely, this paragon of learning and virtue must know more about the devil than any mere layman could pretend to know; and they must accept his assurance and guidance. "I stake my reputation," he shouted, "upon the truth of these accusations." And he pointedly prayed that the trial might "have a good issue." When ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... row, do not pretend you can. Say right out that you can't, and thus settle it, consoling yourself with the pleasant reflection that your confession entitles you to a seat by the side of the ladies and relieves you from the possibility of drowning ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... order of things. Although she shone in comedy with the brighter light, she could play serious roles with majesty and power, and feel, or pretend to feel, a trifle bored in so doing. "I hate to have a page dragging my train about," she used to cry, with a pout of the pretty mouth; "why don't they give Porter those parts? She can put on a better tragedy face than I can." Yet whatever might be the undoubted capabilities of Porter ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... I shall not pretend to justify all that was done by our boys, or even to acknowledge that "breaking away," under any circumstances, is justifiable; but I do say, that such a man as the principal of the Parkville Liberal Institute was not a fit person to instruct and discipline young men. He ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic
... of Catheron Royals," she said, "and a fine baby no doubt, as babies go. I don't pretend to be a judge. He is very bald and very flabby, and very fat just at present. Whom does he resemble? Not you, Victor. O, no doubt the distaff side of the house. What do you call him, nurse? Not christened yet? But of course ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... pretend to be very much in love with her. It's not my way, you know. But, some of these days, I shall ask her to have me, and I suppose it'll all go right. The governor has distinctly promised to allow me eight hundred a year off the estate, ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... Some Hawaiians pretend that there exists another sacerdotal race besides that of Paao, more ancient even than that, and whose priests belonged at the same time to a race of chiefs. It is the family of Maui, probably of Maui-hope, the last of the seven children of Hina,[8] the same who captured the sea-monster ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... do not even pretend to understand her. I see her every day; to-day I lunched with Mrs. Cardross, and Shiela was there, apparently perfectly well and entirely her former lovely self. Yet she has never yet spoken of you to me; and, I learn from Mrs. Cardross, never to anybody ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... blue, still I made up my mind that when it came to the worst I would get at least one or two of them while they were doing me up. I did not pretend to pay any attention to their conversation, yet at the same time I could understand all that was uttered by them. I learned that there were ten in the gang, and the other seven had gone that night to the settlement for the purpose ...
— Thirty-One Years on the Plains and In the Mountains • William F. Drannan
... companions, and one of them added: "So, it's at the father's request that you meet the Lady Barbara. Ah, Percy, Percy, can't you pretend affection, even if you have it not, for Lord Gordon's daughter and ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... of her, and that through fear she had taken shelter under our guns. The Captain wished a supply of wood and water; but I told him I knew him to be engaged in the slave trade, and that, though we did not pretend to attempt suppressing this trade, we would not aid it, and that I allowed him one hour, and one only, to get out of the reach of our guns. He was very punctual, and I believe ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... "I don't pretend to know what is the matter with you, and I don't much care!" he told Shepley. "If your hair wasn't gray, I'd take you out on the sidewalk and smash your ...
— The Brand of Silence - A Detective Story • Harrington Strong
... Queen had written:—"There are people who pretend that the Emperor, who was once a member of the Carbonari Club of Italy, and who is supposed to be condemned to death by the rules of that Secret Society for having violated his oath to them, has offered them to pardon Orsini, if they ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... seen above how long it took men to discover that they must not think of the mind as being a breath, or a flame, or a collection of material atoms? The men who erred in this way were abler than most of us can pretend to be, and they gave much thought to the matter. And when at last it came to be realized that mind must not thus be conceived as material, those who endeavored to conceive it as something else gave, after their best efforts, a very queer ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... rustling noise, which seems to proceed from the rubbing of the scales of its skin one against another. In this movement it bends its back, and appears higher on its legs than when at rest. We often heard this rattling of the scales very near us on the shore; but it is not true, as the Indians pretend, that, like the armadillo, the old crocodiles "can erect their scales, and every part of their armour." The motion of these animals is no doubt generally in a straight line, or rather like that of an arrow, supposing it to change ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... among all human contacts with unerring grace. He was never the teacher, always the comrade. It was his way to pretend that we knew far more than we did; so with perfect courtesy and gravity, he would ask our opinion on some matter of which we knew next to nothing; and we knew it was only his exquisiteness of good manners that impelled the habit; and we knew he knew the laughableness of it; yet we adored him for ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... very great, but so is your sense of compunction; and as far as suffering can expiate, surely you have done much to atone. My own knowledge of the character of the late Lord Hurdly was such that I cannot pretend to be greatly surprised at what you have told me concerning him. I regret to say it, but justice must be done to the living as well as to the dead. The present Lord Hurdly will prove, I trust and believe, an honor to the name. My intercourse with him has been comparatively limited, but no young ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... yir jurisdiction, I tell ye, Bailie, they'll mak' a fool o' ye afore they're done w' ye in face o' all Muirtown. There's a way o' managin' them, but peety ye if ye counter them. Noo, when they broke the glass in the Count's windows, if he didna pretend that he couldna identify them and paid the cost himself! He may be French, but he's long-headed, for him and the laddies are that friendly there's naething they woudna do for him. As ye value yir peace o' mind, Bailie, and yir poseetion in Muirtown, dinna ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... that nothing will be gained by anyone. That time was one of mirage, of delusion, of disease. I was in a condition, mentally and bodily, in which pranks could have been played upon me by any trickster. Such pranks were played. I know that now quite well. I do not pretend to be proficient in the modus operandi of the hankey- pankey man, but I know that he has a method, all the same,—one susceptible, too, of facile explanation. Go back to your friend, and tell him that I am not again ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... out the old silk bonnet, Iron a new shine on it. Just pretend your long-tailed coat does not seem queer, For we'll be all proper As a crossing "copper" When the Prince of ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... prepared me, as they have you, for this loss. I can be frank with you. Well, I would give my life to save Adam. What is a woman's independence in Paris? the freedom to let herself be taken in by ruined or dissipated men who pretend to love her. I pray to God to leave me this husband who is so kind, so obliging, so little fault-finding, and who is beginning to stand ...
— Paz - (La Fausse Maitresse) • Honore de Balzac
... Fools divide, before we come to see it; Making one part contain all happiness, The other misery, then unseen fight for't. Losing our certains for uncertainties; All Sects pretending to a Right of choyce; Yet none go willingly to take their part, For they all doubt what they pretend to know, And fear to mount, lest they should fall below: Be't as it will; my Actions shall be just, And for my future State I Heav'n will trust. Enter a Servant. Return'd already; what can ...
— The Fatal Jealousie (1673) • Henry Nevil Payne
... to the formation of a leisure class, which he conceived was regrettably lacking in our conditions. He had taste, he had reading, he had a pretty knowledge of the world from travel, he had observed manners, and it seemed to him that he might not immodestly pretend to supply, as far as one man went, ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... we just as well have dropped in to some town along the shore, and stacked up with heaps and heaps of good things? Seems to me, Giraffe, you've gone and wasted your talent on the wrong thing. What good is it ever agoing to do you, to pretend to tell what sort of weather we'll get next week, when it's only a guess after all? Better make a change, and predict famines and such things, so we can take the alarm, and ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter
... concluded this treaty with the Cherokees, the Governor resolved to return to Charlestown. But whether the Indians who put their mark to it understood the articles of agreement or not, we cannot pretend to affirm; one thing is certain, that few or none of the nation afterward paid the smallest regard to it. The treacherous act of confining their chiefs, against whom no charge could be brought, and who had travelled several hundred miles in order to obtain ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 2 • Alexander Hewatt
... many a time been engaged in stout conflict with them, and knew how hard it was even for mail clad knights to break through the close lines of Scottish spears. So high a respect had he for their valour, that he urged the king to pretend to retire suddenly beyond the camp, when the Scots, in spite of their leaders, would be sure to leave their ranks and flock into the camp to plunder, when they might be easily dispersed and cut to pieces. The king, however, refused ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... contingency still further Birchill forced Hill to join in writing a letter to Scotland Yard, acquainting them with the murder, and the fact that the body was lying in the empty house. Birchill's object in acting thus was a twofold one. He dared not trust Hill to pretend to discover the body the next day and give information to the police, for fear he should not be able to retain sufficient control of himself to convince the detectives that he was wholly ignorant of the crime, ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... adjoining to Hudson's Bay, and the trade carried on there; and to consider how those countries may be settled and improved, and the trade and fisheries there extended and increased; and also to inquire into the right the Company of Adventurers trading to Hudson's Bay pretend to have, by charter, to the property of lands, and exclusive trade to those countries;—have, pursuant to the order of the House, examined into the several matters to them referred, and find the particular state thereof to ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... you? You must surely recollect The letters Carlos sent me to St. Germains, With both courts' full consent. Whether that leave Extended to the portrait, or alone His hasty hope dictated such a step, I cannot now pretend to answer; but If even rash, it may at least be pardoned For thus much I may be his pledge—that then He never thought the gift was for his mother. [Observes the agitation of the KING. What moves you? ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... have succeeded in performing this service for the English reader we must not pretend to determine. We believe, however, that we have made an improved translation, and this without claiming any particular merit on our part, since we have had advantages which our predecessor had not. We have been aided by his labors; and, what is of still more importance, our work has been ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... ain't so brave as the quarter-deck, because it is; only it can't keep it up so long; it gets discouraged like, when 'tis a long job, specially when 'tis one of those waiting-an-doing-nothing jobs. We ain't bred up to it, and our fathers wasn't, and there's no good to be got out of trying to pretend 'tisn't so." ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... intensify yet more what he is thinking and saying: there was the true light, the real thing of light. They were bothered, in John's old age when he is writing, with false lights, make-pretend lights, that led people astray. Every generation seems to have been so bothered and confused. And even our own doesn't seem to have entirely escaped the subtle contagion. The ground is a ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... along Waterloo Road," was my next order. "Pretend you are looking for a fare; I will ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... i' th' right on 't not to see me," thought Adam. "It's no use meeting to say more hard words, and it's no use meeting to shake hands and say we're friends again. We're not friends, an' it's better not to pretend it. I know forgiveness is a man's duty, but, to my thinking, that can only mean as you're to give up all thoughts o' taking revenge: it can never mean as you're t' have your old feelings back again, for that's not possible. He's not the same man to me, and I can't feel the ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... pronounced with a very rich brogue, which caught the ears of Sir John. "Why, were you ever in Chester?" says he. "To be sure I was," said Pat, "wasn't I born there?" "How dare you," said Sir John Fielding, "with that brogue, which shows that you are an Irishman, pretend to have been born in Chester?" "I didn't say I was born there, sure; I only asked your honour whether I ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... he had no scientific understanding of them, why they played this way or that and translated the substance that made them so delicately and sometimes with such an adorable foolishness. He liked it better that way, liked to make out of them a game of surprises and pretend they were in good form and doing particularly well, or again far below their highest. And following his childishly enchanting game he began to feel rather abashed over what had brought him here. He was glad to have come. ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... pernicious to healthy national conditions of existence. We may draw two conclusions from these observations: first, that religions, except in the first fervor of their growth and forward progress, recognize the moral conventions of the society which they pretend to regulate: secondly, that it is well-nigh impossible for men of one century to sympathize with the ethics of a past and different epoch. We cannot comprehend the regicidal theories of the Jesuits, or the murderous intrigues of a Borghese Pontiff's Court, without admitting ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... dessert, Do worthily invite you to the place. For he that's so respectless in his courses, Oft sells his reputation vile and cheap. Let not your carriage and behaviour taste Of affectation, lest while you pretend To make a blaze of gentry to the world A little puff of scorn extinguish it, And you be left like an unsavoury snuff, Whose property is only to offend. Cousin, lay by such superficial forms, And entertain a perfect ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... dust did literally turn into lice, we do not know, and what is more, we need not know; if God chose that it should be so, so it would be. If you believe at all that God made the world, it is folly to pretend to set any bounds to his power. As a wise man has said, 'If you believe in any real God at all, you must believe that miracles can happen.' He makes you and me and millions of living things out of the dust of ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley
... to go to school. There isn't a girl there, who can pretend to have anything, that hasn't had some kind of a company this winter. I've been to them all, and I feel real mean,—sneaky. What's 'next year?' Mamma puts me off with that. Poh? Next year they'll all begin ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... ancient Roman ideas, desirous only of seeing her son develop into a new Germanicus, a second Drusus. Solely the necessity of helping Nero had led her to meddle with politics. But not in vain had Cato declaimed so loudly in Rome against women who pretend to govern states; not in vain had Augustus's domination been at least partly founded on the great antifeminist legend of Antony and Cleopatra, which represented the fall of the great Triumvir as the consequence of a woman's influence. The public, although willing to give all ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero
... how little safety there had been in topping instead of clearing it at a bound. Before I was well-seated again the captain was beside me. "Now for it, then," said I; and away we went. What might be the nature of his feelings I cannot pretend to state, but my own were a strange melange of wild, boyish enthusiasm, revenge, and recklessness. For my own neck I cared little,—nothing; and as I led the way by half a length, I muttered to myself, "Let him follow me fairly this day, and I ask ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... margin of one of those rivers which intersects and winds itself so beautifully majestic through a vast extent of territory of the United States is the present situation of your unworthy but constant and affectionate daughter. I pretend not to justify or even to palliate my clandestine elopement. In hopes of pacifying your mind, which I am sure must be afflicted beyond measure, I write you this scrawl. Conscious of not having thus abruptly ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... word about it. You'll see what will happen. Before him she will pretend to accept the part to show off. Halt will immediately begin to rehearse her and will make a fool of her before everyone. You will then take away her part and give it ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... boys themselves between lineage and wealth, political prestige and the quiet conservatism of lofty birth, were so arbitrary, so contradictory, so innately Russian, that the very masters, who, from Becker down, were German, did not pretend to understand the system, but blindly followed the lead of the scholars and their truculent head. And, to those who have had any experience at such hands, it is bitterly plain that of all merciless cruelty of civilized lands, that of boys under ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... 'Why do you pretend ignorance,' said she with her usual scream, when you must know that it was on your account that the Shah sent Zeenab out of this world—that her death led to the doctor having his beard plucked —that having his beard plucked brought on his disgrace—and his disgrace death? Therefore you are ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... or parent and present states; and these many links we could hardly ever expect to discover, owing to the imperfection of the geological record. Numerous existing doubtful forms could be named which are probably varieties; but who will pretend that in future ages so many fossil links will be discovered, that naturalists will be able to decide, on the common view, whether or not these doubtful forms are varieties? As long as most of the links between any two species are unknown, if any one link or intermediate variety be discovered, ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... truth his cutting of the knot was at this juncture exactly what appealed to me. I, too, was tired of vicarious casuistry, and the fascination of our enterprise, intensified by the discovery of that afternoon, had never been so strong in me. Not to be insincere, I cannot pretend that I viewed the situation with his single mind. My philosophy when I left London was of a very worldly sort, and no one can change his temperament in three weeks. I plainly said as much to Davies, and indeed took perverse satisfaction in stating with brutal emphasis ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... the Chetwynd Lyles thus moved to depart in a cloud of outraged propriety, followed by others who likewise thought it well to pretend to be shocked at the proceeding, Gervase, dizzy, breathless, and torn by such conflicting passions as he could never express, was in a condition more mad ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... music. But the moment a man begins to be anything deserving the name of an artist, all this teachable law has become a matter of course with him; and if, thenceforth, he boast himself anywise in the law, or pretend that he lives and works by it, it is a sure sign that he is merely tithing cummin, and that there is no true art nor religion in him. For the true artist has that inspiration in him which is above all law, or rather, which is continually ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... tailor to measure him, and send home his clothes, as for a schoolboy, would probably give offence. At length Mac-Morlan resolved to consult Miss Bertram, and request her interference. She assured him, that though she could not pretend to superintend a gentleman's wardrobe, nothing was more easy than to ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... know very well," Minnie went on teasingly, "though you pretend you forget. HE was there, don't you know. You must remember HIM, if you've forgotten all the rest of your previous life. You say you remember the appropriate emotions. Well, he was an emotion: at least, you thought so. It was ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... his face contracted into comical wrinkles; but his eyes were bright and always on the move, while, if Bruff were away from his side for five minutes, he would begin to chatter uneasily, and then howl till the dog returned, to take hold of his arm, and pretend to bite him, ending by lying down and watching ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... "On summer afternoons you can think of me, sitting out in the tree-house reading these. I shall pretend I'm a Fairy Princess. These are beautiful stories, I ...
— Marjorie at Seacote • Carolyn Wells
... was a variable quantity. Its counties had been laid out and named, but not organized. For judicial purposes they were attached to Wheeler County. Even the Rangers did not pretend to police this district. When they wanted a man they went ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... dream in your soul and a pair of breeches in your hold-all, and to see no possibility of "sporting" either, is the very refinement of hell. And your tortures will be unbearable if, at the same time, you have to hold your tongue about them and pretend that you are a genuine reporter and that all you want is copy and your utmost aim the ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... but at a venture, Supposing thou hast tick with Hunter,) Methinks I see a blackguard rout Attend thy coach, and hear them shout In approbation of thy tongue, Which (in their style) is purely hung. Now! now you carry all before you! Nor dares one Jacobite or Tory Pretend to answer one syl-lable, Except the matchless hero Abel.[5] What though her highness and her spouse, In Antwerp[6] keep a frugal house, Yet, not forgetful of a friend, They'll soon enable thee to spend, If to Macartney[7] thou wilt toast, And to his ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... nature to the uncertain chances of war and to fortune. The more meritorious and brave you are, so much the more do your country and all Italy desire to retain you as their protector. You cannot even yourself pretend to deny, that where Hannibal is, there is the head and principal stress of the war, for you profess, that your motive in crossing over into Africa is to draw Hannibal thither. Whether, therefore, here or there, it is with Hannibal that you will have to contend. Will you then, I pray, have more ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... explained it. You certainly did not excuse it or make it a whit less outrageous. You cannot pretend that you really imagine that an engaged girl is behaving with perfect correctness when she allows a man she has only just met to take her to supper at the Savoy, even if she did know him slightly years ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... of this essay, it would be absurd to pretend that anything of the nature of a last word can be said on the subject. The process of the early development of Greek society cannot be ascertained merely from the study of a few survivals in historic times. The comparative method must be carried much further than has been ...
— On The Structure of Greek Tribal Society: An Essay • Hugh E. Seebohm
... have not I from you the same respect, To which, for friendship past, you would pretend From me; and I should bear you in effect, If your hope stood more fair to gain its end? No less than you, to wed her I expect; And if your fortunes here my wealth transcend, As favoured of the king, as you, above You, am I happy in ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... with a hundred-per-cent. mark on all them words which you read in them medical journals you pick up from the doctor's desk in his private office when he excuses himself for a minute to answer the 'phone and which you put down so quick and pretend you 'ain't been reading when he comes back again, if you know what I mean. And furthermore, if these same big manufacturers was elected to the United States Senate to-morrow they could make a speech against doing away with ...
— Potash and Perlmutter Settle Things • Montague Glass
... contriving the impression that it was by his sole favor the concession was obtained. Two of them came promptly and waited at the foot of the steps, smirking and changing attitudes to draw attention to their rags. Chamu tossed the bread to them with expressions of disgust. If they had cared to pretend they were holy men he would have been respectful, in degree at least, but these were professionals so hardened that they dared ignore the religious apology, which implies throughout the length and breadth of India the right ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... "perhaps you are right. I don't pretend to know anything about this side of the business. To put the case to you plainly, we must clear forty thousand dollars on our beef this fall, for the mortgage alone—putting it in round numbers. We should ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... But on this occasion I more particularly observed two circular plates of brass and steel, which appeared the remains of very antique shields. They were borne with great reverence by two chiefs. The natives do not pretend to explain whence they came. They keep them apart, as something sacred. They are only produced on great occasions. I was told, too, that ears of green corn were brought in at a part of the ceremony to-day, which I missed, and that they were presented to a chief. He took them, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... I cannot pretend to write on geology; Taylor, Debenham, and Priestley are still drawing up reports on Antarctic physiography and glacial geology on our fossils collected, on the Barrier Movement, and the retreating ice of that Frozen Wonderland. Some day another ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... said Burton to his wife, "I cannot do, and that is, face congratulations, so, if you are agreeable, we will pretend that we have been married some months." Such matters, however, are not easy to conceal, and the news leaked out. "I am surprised," said his cousin, Dr. Edward J. Burton, to him a few days later, "to find that you are married." ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... by request of Mr. Kinnaird for the theatre. I did as well as I could; but where I have not my choice I pretend to answer for nothing. Mr. Hobhouse and myself are just returned from a journey of lakes and mountains. We have been to the Grindelwald, and the Jungfrau, and stood on the summit of the Wengen Alp; and seen torrents of nine hundred feet in fall, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... you do if you can't keep awake?" I asked. "You slip out quietly, go to your room ask a maid to call you after you have had forty winks, then you go back and pretend you are having a good time," ...
— The Log-Cabin Lady, An Anonymous Autobiography • Unknown
... candour, to keep me, in spite of all these confidences, steadily aware of her aversion. Her parting words were ingeniously honest. "I am sure," said she, "we all OUGHT to be very much obliged to you." I cannot pretend that she put me at my ease; but I had a certain respect for such a genuine dislike. A poor nature would have slipped, in the course of these familiarities, into a sort of worthless ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the other hand, has the orifice at the point of his square snout, the internal channel running in a slightly diagonal direction downwards, and back through the skull to the lungs. So when he spouts, the breath is projected forward diagonally, and, from some peculiarity which I do not pretend to explain, expends itself in a short, bushy tuft of vapour, very distinct from the tall vertical spout of the bowhead or ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... ill excites? What but thy malice mov'd thee to misdeem Of righteous Job, then cruelly to afflict him With all inflictions, but his patience won? The other service was thy chosen task, To be a lyer in four hundred mouths; For lying is thy sustenance, thy food. Yet thou pretend'st to truth; all Oracles 430 By thee are giv'n, and what confest more true Among the Nations? that hath been thy craft, By mixing somewhat true to vent more lyes. But what have been thy answers, what but dark Ambiguous and with double sense deluding, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... despair, The Greeks grew weary of the tedious war, And by Minerva's aid a fabric reared Which like a steed of monstrous height appeared. The sides were planked with pine: they feigned it made For their return, and this the vow they paid. Thus they pretend, but in the hollow side Selected numbers of their soldiers hide; With inward arms the dire machine they load, And iron bowels stuff the ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... below again, closed the hatch, and submerged. Tom took his time in bringing the jet pumps up to speed. "Wonder if we should pretend to proceed on course, or turn around and head for ...
— Tom Swift and The Visitor from Planet X • Victor Appleton
... the property and liberty of our fellow citizens. In the course of the present year one of our vessels, engaged in the pursuit of a trade which we have always enjoyed without molestation, has been captured by a band acting, as they pretend, under the authority of the Government of Buenos Ayres. I have therefore given orders for the dispatch of an armed vessel to join our squadron in those seas and aid in affording all lawful protection to our trade which shall be necessary, and shall without delay send ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Jackson • Andrew Jackson
... Egerton, "I am the last man to pretend to the right of standing between you and a single chance of fortune, or of aid to it. And whom did ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... in your pistols, which (if you remember) I was kind enough to load for both of us this morning. Secondly, as there is some one else who knows a passage, you must think it highly improbable I should saddle myself with a lunatic like you. Thirdly, these gentlemen (who need no longer pretend to be asleep) are those of my party, and will now proceed to gag and bind you to the mast; and when your men awaken (if they ever do awake after the drugs we have mingled in their liquor), I am sure they ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... smack of Drury Lane, hasn't it?" said Howard. "Strange that whenever we see anything beautiful in the way of a landscape we at once compare it with a stage 'set.' The fact of it is, my dear Stafford, we have become absolutely artificial; we pretend to admire Nature, but we are thinking of a theatre all the time; we throw up our eyes ecstatically when we hear a nightingale, but we much prefer a comic singer at the Tivoli. We talk sentiment, at feast, some of us, but we have ceased to feel it; we don't really ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... down into a mere apology for idleness. An "idle stockinger" was there no very uncommon phrase, and the Degs were always classed under that head. Nothing could be more admirably adapted than this trade for building a plan of parish relief upon. The Degs did not pretend to be absolutely without work, or the parish authorities would soon have set them to some real labor,—a thing that they particularly recoiled from, having a very old adage in the family, that "hard work was enough to kill a man." The Degs were seldom, ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... Priestley (Directions for impregnating water with fixed air . . . to communicate the peculiar Spirit and Virtues of Pyrmont water, 1772), of imitating them artificially. Many of the ordinary aerated waters of commerce, however, do not pretend to reproduce any known natural water; they are merely beverages owing their popularity to their effervescing properties and the flavour imparted by a small quantity of some salt such as sodium bicarbonate ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... succeeded in the superlative degree, and was so clean that my friends thought I should not need to retouch it. It is true that certain Germans and Frenchmen, who vaunt the possession of marvellous secrets, pretend that they can cast bronzes without retouching them; but this is really nonsense, because the bronze, when it has first been cast, ought to be worked over and beaten in with hammers and chisels, according to the manner of the ancients and also to that of the moderns—I mean such moderns ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... in order to make this appear with a better Face to the Town, it was agreed to complain of the Actors Salaries being too great, and accordingly a false Account was published of them in the daily Papers, by whom I will not say: Whether, or no, some particular Salaries were so, I will not pretend to determine; yet, in the whole, they did not amount to more than had been allowed for many Years, when the Theatre was under a frugal and exact Regulation; when the Managers punctually fulfilled, not only all Engagements to their Actors, but to every other Person ...
— The Case of Mrs. Clive • Catherine Clive
... they say to me. Well, so much the better! we shall not have to pay the costs of his political apprenticeship; he knows the affairs of the country; he knows parliamentary necessities; he is much nearer being a statesman than my friend Simon, who will not pretend to have made himself a Pitt or a Talleyrand in a little ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... accounts pretend that the immediate cause of rupture was a claim instituted by Huascar for the territory of Tumebamba, held by his brother as part of his patrimonial inheritance. It matters little what was the ostensible ground of collision ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... good stales[306]: now Guildford is mine own! [Aside.] Hubert, I charge you take an hundred horse, And follow unto Guildford castle-gates. The queen pretend you come to tend upon, Sent carefully from us: when you are in, Boldly demand the lady for her sons, For pledges of her husband's faith and hers: Whom when ye have, upon the castle seize, And keep it to our use, until we come. Meanwhile let me ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... finds itself compelled, precisely like Lenine, to pretend to be a peace-loving organization, loyally accepting constitutional democracy and opposed to violence. Are we to take it at its own word? Is it possible that a few pious phrases offered on occasion can deceive the American people as to the nature of a propaganda organization that is shouting ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... I seem cruel, Jim," she replied, "but my mind is quite made up. It's a week to-night since you asked me to be your wife. I love yer, I don't pretend to deny it; I've loved yer for many a month, and my heart leaped with joy when you said you loved me, and of course I meant to say 'yes.' But now everything is changed; I'm young, only seventeen, and whatever we do now means ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade
... Athenian philosopher.—In those 2000 years many facts have been dragged out of "the circle of the unknown and unused." Astronomy, geology, physiology, psychology—all except theology are belter understood. Men pretend they are searching after happiness, and where do they try to find it? Not here amongst the known, but in the possible hereafter amongst the unknowable. How do they try to find it? Not by the aid of the known, not by the light of facts, gathered in ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... his people to land for the purpose of washing their clothes, which they had before refused to do, and in short, were in a mood to grant any thing, provided we were willing to remain at this part of the island. They did not pretend that this was out of regard for us, and it was easy to see that they apprehended more trouble in managing us any where else than at this place. Amongst the arguments used by them to dissuade us from going to the other end of the island, they said it was inhabited by savages. ...
— Account of a Voyage of Discovery - to the West Coast of Corea, and the Great Loo-Choo Island • Captain Basil Hall
... the several constables within your ward, and strictly to charge them to put in execution the said laws, or to expect the penalty of forty shillings to be levyed upon their estates, for every vagrant that shal be found begging in their several precincts. And to the end the said constables may not pretend ignorance, what to do with the several persons which they shal find offending the said laws, these are further to require them, that al aged or impotent persons who are not fit to work, be passed from constable to constable to the parish where they dwel; and that ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 219, January 7, 1854 • Various
... that myself. I don't pretend to be an infallible judge of human nature, but mark my words, Austin has cared for my Sylvia since the first moment he ever set eyes on her. No man likes to feel that the woman he's in love with is doing everything for him and his family, and that he can't—as ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes
... among the Gallic and Spanish churches, who looked upon Rome as conspicuous and illustrious, though as no more than equal to themselves. At the Council of Carthage St. Cyprian said, "None of us ought to set himself up as a bishop of bishops, or pretend tyrannically to restrain his colleagues, because each bishop has a liberty and power to act as he thinks fit, and can no more be judged by another bishop than he can judge another. But we must all wait for the judgment of Jesus Christ, to whom alone belongs the power to set ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... Spencer! And yet you dare pretend now to retain an interest in me? Lieutenant Brant, you must be a most talented deceiver, or else the strangest person I ever met. Such a miracle ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... blame the first," said Afra; "but I do not pretend to have any patience with the last. I pity our poor faithless generals here, and dear Aimee, with her mind so perplexed, and her struggling heart; but I have no toleration for Leclerc and Rochambeau, and the whole train ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... not talk politics. What I say is very practical. How can Colonel Cochrane pretend to this priest that he is really interested in his religion when, in effect, there is no religion in the world to him outside some little church in which he has been born and bred? I will say this for the Colonel, that I do not believe he is at all a hypocrite, and I am sure that he could not ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... "Oh! I don't pretend to know much about starting a blaze in half a dozen styles, the way Giraffe's got it down pat," observed the other, smiling a little; "but if you pin me down to going at it the easiest way, with matches, and dead pine cones, why I'm there every time. And say, it does ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... great. He would blush a little and steal a glance at her bare arms, which were rather thin, as she drew them languidly around her flowing hair, and with her hands, clasped behind her head, lost herself in a dream, until they were numbed, and then she would let them fall. Christophe would pretend that he only saw these pleasant sights inadvertently as he happened to pass the window, and that they did not disturb him in his musical thoughts; but he liked it, and in the end he wasted as much time in watching Frau Sabine, as she did over her toilet. Not that she was ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... then goes off to hunt in some fashionable centre, like Melton Mowbray. In Leicestershire he would be regarded as a hunting man, while in his own district he is known as a vulpicide, for Reynard is seldom, if ever, found in his coverts. One has only to live in the country, and pretend indifference about fox-hunting, to see the tricks which some farmers perform in order to prevent people from riding over their land. I remember in the North Cheshire country a big covert, which was always considered a certain find, being drawn blank, much to the huntsman's surprise. ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... this? Because I loved you, senora—and you knew it! Ah! you can turn your face away now; you can pretend to misunderstand me, as you did a moment ago; you can part from me now like a mere acquaintance—but it was not always so! No, it was YOU who brought me here; your eyes that smiled into mine—and drove home ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... know how this is going to get itself said. But I can't stop it. That frightens me, rather; I've been used to ordering myself about or, at least, to feeling that I could. But that seems to be over. I don't pretend that I didn't foresee it, or rather that I didn't recognize it right at the beginning. What I did was to put ...
— August First • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews and Roy Irving Murray
... Madame Garvloit would insist that a young girl ought to have tact enough not to make this evident. Elizabeth, however, was not deficient in tact, but disliked putting a restraint upon her feelings; and it seemed to her on the whole unreasonable that a person should pretend that a thing was pleasant when in ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... floors tan or gray, if you want them to confess frankly that they're painted floors, or the shade of some wood if you want to pretend ...
— Ethel Morton at Rose House • Mabell S. C. Smith
... that you have a comely form, you despise your old comrades, the insects; and, whenever you happen to meet any of them, you pretend not to know them [literally, 'You make an I-don't-know face']. Now you want to have none but wealthy and exalted people for friends... Ah! You have forgotten the old times, ...
— Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things • Lafcadio Hearn
... with genius, as if a naphtha-lamp burnt within it: that Figure is Camille Desmoulins. A fellow of infinite shrewdness, wit, nay humour; one of the sprightliest clearest souls in all these millions. Thou poor Camille, say of thee what they may, it were but falsehood to pretend one did not almost love thee, thou headlong lightly-sparkling man! But the brawny, not yet furibund Figure, we say, is Jacques Danton; a name that shall be 'tolerably known in the Revolution.' He is President of the electoral Cordeliers District at Paris, or about to be it; and ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... sometimes very exciting. But I could see that though the actress was very handsome and mostly so unhappy as to draw tears from the spectators, there were people, especially some gentlemen, who were more interested in looking at the box where I sat with Mrs. Hambledon. Indeed, I could not pretend, when I found myself before my glass that night, that I was not amazingly prettier than that Mrs. Colebrook, about whose beauty ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... almost scot-free; she cannot be put in prison, or sentenced to hard labor—not she! A pity it is that Christ did not leave us some injunction as to what was to be done with such women—not the penitent Magdalenes, but the creatures whose mouths are full of lies even when they pretend to pray—they who would be capable of trying to tempt the priest who comes to receive their last confessions—they who would even act out a sham repentance on their deathbeds in order to look well. What can be done with devils such as these? Much has been said latterly of the wrongs ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... Tessie, "unless you count Mrs. Fizzenmeyer, the delicatessen lady; or Madame Tebeau, the little hairdresser; or the Schmitt girls, from the corner bakery. They pretend to take Auntie almost as serious as she takes herself. Lately, though, even that bunch has stopped. You can't blame 'em. It may be funny for once or twice. After that—well, it begins to get ghastly. Specially with the old girl askin' me continual to watch out the window and see if the Van ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... guesses—for I have no right to call them more—since the shades of reflection upon which they are based are scarcely of sufficient depth to be appreciable by my own intellect, and since I could not pretend to make them intelligible to the understanding of another. We will call them guesses then, and speak of them as such. If the Frenchman in question is indeed, as I suppose, innocent of this atrocity, this advertisement which I left last night, upon our return home, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... as among children. But when I compare the number of the children and young persons making up these three groups with the number of those to whom religious instruction has been quite useless, I feel justified in a certain scepticism. I do not pretend to assert that those who have received religious instruction have become more immoral than the others; but I am certainly entitled to contest the assertion that religious instruction induces a loftier sexual morality. Indeed, a further limitation is needed here, and ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... they had to be faced, were to Scott something of the nature of a grim farce in which, while he could not escape it himself, he was determined that she should take no part. He was not mourning for Isabel. He would not pretend to mourn. Her death was to him but as the opening wide of a prison-door to one who had long lain captive, pining for liberty. He would follow the poor worn body to its grave rather with thanksgiving than with grief. And realizing so well that this was his inevitable feeling, even as in a ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... the smaller smoking-room, where they were alone, Cornish explained the situation at greater length to Major White, who did not even pretend to understand it. ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... we can know about God," said Mrs. Maturin, "but it is enough." She had been thinking rapidly. "And now," she went on, "we shall have to consider what is to be done. I don't pretend that the future will be easy, but it will not be nearly as hard for you as it might have been, since I am your friend, and I do not intend to desert you. I'm sure you will not let it crush you. In the first place, you will have ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... and all the cavalry, by riding up almost to the very gates, drew out the enemy—which was just what he wanted—by a mode of battle of a disorderly and threatening nature. The same tactics on the part of the cavalry caused the flight, which it was necessary to pretend, to appear less surprising: and when, as the cavalry appeared undecided whether to make up its mind to fight or flee, the infantry also retreated—the enemy, pouring forth suddenly through the crowded gates, were drawn toward the place of ambuscade, in their ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... content in their own incredulity. The most authentic reports of these immense mineral resources have been used as authorities against their existence. The authors of these denials either have never read what they pretend to quote, or think no one else has. The Hon. T. Butler King, who was the first to reveal to an incredulous public the wonders of the California gold mines, has had the singular good fortune to be also among the first to publish correct and authentic information ...
— Memoir of the Proposed Territory of Arizona • Sylvester Mowry
... through the International Sunday-school lessons, and seemed to me to be submerged in the geography of Palestine and other tiresome details. For me, reading as I did, the whole of the New Testament was radiant with interest, a frankly human interest. There were many passages that I did not pretend to understand, sometimes because the English was obscure or archaic, and sometimes because my mind was not equal to it or my knowledge too small. Whatever may be the opinion of other people, mine is that the reading of the New ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... pause; but just then, I heard a shout at the top of the passage—on the other hand I felt that the tide was rushing in, and to stay where I was would be impossible. The perplexity of that quarter of an hour would satisfy me for my whole life. I pretend to no philosophy, and have never desired to die before my time. But it was absolutely not so much the dread of finishing my career, as of the manner in which it must be finished there, which made the desperate anxiety of a struggle which I would not undergo again ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... she said, turning to him, "you pretend sometimes to be jealous of Francisco Hammond; and there, you see, just when I have said I have lots of questions to ask him, and five minutes after my arrival here to greet him, he races away without a word, directly he hears that his man ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... penguin has a hard life: the Emperor penguin a horrible one. Why not kill off the unfit right away, before they have had time to breed, almost before they have had time to eat? Life is a stern business in any case: why pretend that it is anything else? Or that any but the best can survive at all? And in consequence, I challenge you to find a more jolly, happy, healthy lot of old gentlemen in the world. We must admire them: if only because they are so ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... when I think that I shall be separated from her, and yet crowns me with glory when I feel that she has loved me. If she must leave me, I have to bear it. What I shall do, where I shall go, whether I shall stand or fall, I do not pretend to say. A man does not know, himself, of what stuff he is made, till he has been tried. But whatever may be my lot, it cannot be altered by any care or custody now. She is my own, and I will not be separated from her. If she were dead, I should know that she was gone. She would have ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... Nell; she'll be down here pretty quick. Get some fish poles and strings and bend up some pins for hooks and we'll pretend to be fishing ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... caves, that they could hardly stand. So we hanged them, without judge or jury, and made them safe. But three are still at large, and I can hardly sleep in my bed for fear of them. I will read you a description of their persons, and the names they pretend to go by. Humphrey Higgins, aged seventy, lean, and would be a tall man, only bent double, has but one eye, and lost the use of his right arm: Memorandum, thought to be the man who shot Colonel Rainsborough at Doncaster.—William ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... English pantomime, and not much more interesting. Both appeal to the same undeveloped instincts, the English to a merely childish vulgarity, the French to a vulgarity which is more frankly vicious. Really I hardly know which is to be preferred. In England we pretend that fancy dress is all in the interests of morality; in France they make no such pretence, and, in dispensing with shoulder-straps, do but make their intentions a little clearer. Go to the Moulin-Rouge and you will see a still clearer object-lesson. The goods in the music-halls are ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... there is no position in society to which hope can point, to cheer him in his laborious path. If, indeed, he belong to one of our universities, there are some few chairs in his OWN Alma Mater to which he may at some distant day pretend; but these are not numerous; and whilst the salaries attached are seldom sufficient for the sole support of the individual, they are very rarely enough for that of a family. What then can he reply to the entreaties of his ...
— Decline of Science in England • Charles Babbage
... Bell," repeated Mr. Stokes. "Don't you see? Pretend to be Alfred Bell and go with me to your missis. I'll lend you a suit o' clothes and a fresh neck-tie, and there ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... side, what this really comes to is, that if you wish to prevent depressions occurring you must prevent booms taking the form they do. You must prevent prices rising so much, and so many constructional goods being made during the period of active trade; and I am not going to pretend that that is an easy thing to do. It's all very well to say that the bankers, through their control of the credit system, might endeavour to guide industry and keep it from straying out of the proper channels. But the bankers would have to know much more than they do about these matters, and, furthermore, ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various
... wine-glass with your tongue. This in notre monde is regarded as bad form. 'Notre Monde' is French, a language which you will have to learn. Its great use is in talking to English people when you don't want them to understand what you say. They pretend they do, for they are too vain to admit their ignorance. The wise man profits by the vanity of his fellow-creatures. If I were not wise after this manner, should I be here eating herrings in Tavistock Street, ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... is declared to be a government "of the people." All power, it is said, centers in the people. Our State constitutions also open with the words, "We, the people." Does any one pretend to say that men alone constitute races and peoples? When we say parents, do we not mean mothers as well as fathers? When we say children, do we not mean girls as well as boys? When we say people, do we not mean women as well as men? When the race shall spring, Minerva-like, from the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... some sugar with them,—as much sugar as you can get; tie them up in paper, or in a good thick grape-leaf; lay them on a bench, and sit down on them hard several times: then they are done. Some epicures pretend that they must be buried in the ground, and left there for a week; but this takes time, and reasonable children will find them quite good enough without. These particular rose-cakes were the best Lota ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... their clamour, forget that until their leases were obtained, they had no right in their lands at all, and that what they have got is through those very leases of which they complain; take away the leases, and they would have no rights remaining. Now, on what principle can honest men pretend that they have rights beyond the leases? On the supposition, even, that the bargains are hard, what have governors and legislators to do with thrusting themselves in between parties so situated, as special umpires? I should ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... of men, and turn the cold markets of the world into festival scenes of charity. If you know any mean person you may be sure that he has not read "A Christmas Carol," or that he read it long ago and has forgotten it. I know there are persons who pretend that the sentimentality of Dickens destroys their interest in him. I once took a course with an over-refined, imperfectly educated professor of literature, who advised me that in time I should outgrow my liking for Dickens. It was only his way of recommending ...
— The Guide to Reading - The Pocket University Volume XXIII • Edited by Dr. Lyman Abbott, Asa Don Dickenson, and Others
... gentleman smiled, and our Hibernian acknowledged that the Scotchman had fairly gained the victory. "My friends," added he, "as I cannot pretend to be 'convinced against my will,' I certainly am not 'of the same opinion still.' But stay—there are such things as practical bulls: did you never hear of the Irishman who ordered a painter to draw his picture, and to represent him ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... that morning had, for a wonder, come down to breakfast, good naturedly took off the bear. Whether or not his ascetic nature was somewhat mollified by the soft smiles and softer voice of the beautiful countess, I cannot pretend to say; but he certainly entered into a conversation with her, not much rougher than that of a less gifted individual might have been. They talked of literature, Lord Byron, converzaziones, and Lydia White. [Note: Written before the death ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... at morn the family was called Around the old man's dying bed; And oh! but I laughed to myself when I heard That the old man's spirit had fled. Mr. Carlton cried, and so did I pretend; Young mistress very nearly went mad; And the old parson's groans did the heavens fairly rend; But I tell ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... your accusation," she said; "but I want to know what man it was whom you pretend to have seen in the room with me, because there is always some proper man near me; there is nothing to be ashamed of in that. But this I will swear, that to no man have I given money and that by no man has my ...
— Grettir The Strong - Grettir's Saga • Unknown
... in three years. Their function was to express an opinion upon local matters when consulted by the Government: their enemies said that they were aristocratic and did harm, their partizans could not pretend that they did much good. In the bitterness of spirit with which, at a later time, the friends of liberty denounced the betrayal of the cause of freedom by the Prussian Court, a darker colour has perhaps ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... would in the first place have to shave off your moustachios, Gerald, and I fear that even after you had done so there would be nothing venerable in your appearance; and whatever the mission with which you might pretend to charge yourself, your chances of obtaining a private interview with the lady would ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... never misses. It seems in her blood to think that all priests are hypocrites. What a little boat to be in on a stormy sea, Bella! She appears to have no concern about it. Whether she adores Wilfrid or not I do not pretend to guess. She snubs him—a thing he would bear from nobody but her. I do believe he feels flattered by it. He is chiefly attentive to Miss Ford, whom I like and do not like, and like and do not like—but do like. She is utterly cold, and has ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... "You pretend that the man who called himself Grooten was not your friend. Yet you have been in communication with ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... making himself. Hoped we'd forgive him. He couldn't say that if he were as young as us he'd enlist like a shot, any more than he could say that if a woman jumped off Waterloo Bridge on a dark night he'd jump in after her. On the whole he thought it would be much easier to pretend he hadn't noticed. In fact that's very likely what he would do. But if someone, say the mother of the girl, pointed out the body to him, then he'd have to come to a decision. Well, he was in the position of that mother, ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, September 9, 1914 • Various
... to bring a tailor to measure him, and send home his clothes, as for a school-boy, would probably give offence. At length Mac-Morlan resolved to consult Miss Bertram, and request her interference. She assured him that, though she could not pretend to superintend a gentleman's wardrobe, nothing was more easy than to ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... "I can't pretend to manage the women, miss," said he; "you must speak to Mary;" and then, with a low ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... belonged to a Dutch soldier, who was killed in the revolution, at the spot where the dog then lay, and that ever since (a period of four years) the animal had taken up his quarters there, and invariably lain upon that spot. Whether my informant lied, and the dog did not, I cannot pretend to say; but if the story be true, it was a most remarkable specimen of fidelity and ugliness. And he was a sensible dog, moreover; instead of dying of grief and hunger, as some foolish dogs have done, he has always dedicated an hour every evening to ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... would like to pretend you think so," said Aunt Cynthia, aggravatingly. "But no woman ever does really think so, you know. I imagine that pretty Anne Shirley, who is visiting Ella Kimball, doesn't. I saw her and Dr. Irving out walking this afternoon, looking very well satisfied with ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... and that thou mayest not be deceived by that which is counterfeit, know it is as it comes from the hand of our Lord, without mixture, pure and clear as crystal. I know there are many mountebanks in the world, and every of them pretend they have this water to sell; but my advice is, that thou go directly to the throne thyself (Heb 4:16); or as thou art bidden come to the waters (Isa 55:1), and there thou shalt be sure to have that which is right and good, and that which will certainly make thee well, let thy ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... They were probably dead, and, socially, they had never been alive, since Society had never heard of them. It was quite possible, Mrs. Rushmore said, that his name was not his own, for she had met two or three celebrities who had deliberately taken names to which they did not pretend any legal claim, but which ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... is the reputed birthplace of the Conqueror. They even pretend to show you the room in which he was born. The existing castle, however, is of considerably later date. It is even doubtful, according to the best antiquaries, whether there were any stone castles at the date ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... to her liking. She expresses discontent only that she had not been left free to kill or spare the officers at her discretion. Personally Ralegh cannot be accounted amenable for the atrocity. He is not named in Grey's despatch to the Council. But it would be folly to pretend that he disapproved it. Hooker, his eulogist, claims it for him as an eminent distinction. He cordially sympathized with Grey's ideal of a Mahometan conquest ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... beak to the oil-gland. So again, when this same tumbler and the rock-pigeon were compared by the length of their wings, or by the extreme length of their bodies, the feet of the tumbler were likewise found to be too short in very nearly the same proportion. I am well aware that the measurements pretend to greater accuracy than is possible, but it was less trouble to write down the actual measurements given by the compasses in each case ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... did—though of course she pretended not to. Girls always pretend. But I did my duty as a parent. And I told her that if she got herself into any mess she mustn't ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... passengers whom I know, and who are friends of mine, the annoyance of needless questioning. There is one thing more I might do; there are also on board a few men who have crossed with me before, but who, I am convinced, are not the gentlemen of wealth and leisure they pretend to be. They may be only sharpers—or they may be something else. In front of the name of each of them ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... his appeals for a strong government his enemies would see, or pretend to see, personal ambitions, and Santander, of course, immediately exploited this feeling against him. But Bolivar, who had proved his disinterestedness when he might have had anything he desired, made no effort, at this time, when he was trying to rescue his country from grave ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... missing a great opportunity. He might have been the apostle of toleration in England, as Roger Williams had been in America. The moment was most favourable. Presbyterianism had got itself established, but could not pretend to represent the majority of the nation. It had been branded by Milton himself in the memorable line: "New Presbyter is but old Priest writ large." The Independents were for toleration, the Episcopalians had been for the time humbled by adversity, the best minds in the nation, ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... fallen back to this capital, where he was joined by the troops under general Werner, lately returned from Pomerania; but as their forces, after this junction, did not exceed sixteen thousand men, and the allies advancing against them amounted to forty thousand, they would not pretend to oppose the enemy in the open field, nor to defend a city of such extent, and so imperfectly fortified. Such an attempt would have only exposed their troops to ruin, without being able to save the capital, which, on the contrary, would have been the more severely handled, in consequence of their ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... Bruyere is defective as to Propriety of Style and Justness of Expression, I chuse to set down in the Words of one of his [V]Countrymen, a very judicious Writer, and a better Judge in this Matter than I pretend to be. ...
— A Critical Essay on Characteristic-Writings - From his translation of The Moral Characters of Theophrastus (1725) • Henry Gally
... for my Philippa to any other actress, and shall do so still, even if you will not, or cannot, throw more vigor into the lines that need it. I do not pretend to be as good a writer of plays as you are an actress [how naughty of him!], but I do pretend to be a great judge of acting in general. [He wasn't, although in particular details he was a brilliant critic and adviser.] And I know how my own lines and business ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... "It's very funny. He's mostly so quick. If I had the horns, Sister Elisabet would tie them there at the foot of the bed. And I could pretend I ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... enemy, encourage our friends, and promote the general and unanimous efforts of the whole community, than any other circumstance which could possibly happen. It is a truth, that the enemy does not even pretend to hope anything except from sowing discord among us, and it is but too true, that while the whigs of America are daily more firm and united in the cause of independence, there has been too little attention paid ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. XI • Various
... sleighing-party, under the buffalo robes in the bob-sled, he whispered, "You pretend to be a grown-up schoolteacher, but you're nothing but a kiddie." His arm ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... should pretend not to understand you," she answered, "but that is not my way. If I were not in the saddle, I would make you a courtesy. But seriously, I deserve your exception, for besides Rashleigh and the old priest, I am the only conversable being about ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... be doing an act of justice, and you will be performing an act of gratitude; and this is what I solicit from you; but I will not so far wrong those who are struggling manfully for their own independence as to pretend to entreat from you an act ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... foolish as to pretend that the people who come and play in the Casino of Lacville are all confirmed gamblers," he said, slowly. "We French take our pleasures lightly, Madame, and no doubt there is many an excellent Parisian bourgeois who comes ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... present conflict will be as nothing compared with a struggle between two highly-organised State socialisms, each of which knows that it must either colonise the territory of the other or starve. It is idle to pretend that such a necessity will never arise. Another century of increase in Europe like that of the nineteenth century would bring it very near. If this policy is adopted, we shall see all the principal States organising themselves with a perfection far greater than that of ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... sin against Obedience, which you owe your father. For The contract you pretend with that base wretch, One bred of alms and foster'd with cold dishes, With scraps o' the court, it is no contract, none; And though it be allowed in meaner parties— Yet who than he more mean?—to knit their souls— On whom there is no more dependency But brats and ...
— Cymbeline • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]
... circulation.". They feel certain there is no outlet, because at one time or another they virtually completed the survey of the coast line and listened to native testimony besides. How the phenomenon of sweet water is to be accounted for we do not pretend to say. The reader will see further on that Livingstone grapples with the difficulty which this Lake affords, and ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... and Pirithous, Nisus and Euryalus, or Damon and Pythias. But never mind about me now, and tell my sister how you were thinking of her, and longing for her, in that lonely chateau of yours; where, by the way, I made one of the best meals I ever had in my life, though you do pretend that starvation is the rule ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... old friend, Are we "lucky dogs," indeed? Are we all that we pretend In the jolly life we lead?— Bachelors, we must confess, Boast of "single blessedness" To the world, but not alone— Man's best ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley
... solid with the chill off. (R. 47.) The result is telling on all, but mainly on Oates, whose feet are in a wretched condition. One swelled up tremendously last night and he is very lame this morning. We started march on tea and pemmican as last night—we pretend to prefer the pemmican this way. Marched for 5 hours this morning over a slightly better surface covered with high moundy sastrugi. Sledge capsized twice; we pulled on foot, covering about 5 1/2 miles. We are two pony marches ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... "I do not pretend to understand the cause of her presence. But if you listen to my story you may know what to do." I paused an instant to get a grip on my thoughts. I need not tell all, confess my identity, or mention my personal relations with the daughter. "I am a soldier, ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... Even she, therefore, was not at all averse to letting him go on these State outings in which she need not always accompany him. They gave him something fresh to think about, and to her a time of leisure when she need not pretend to think about anything ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... circumstances of suspicion, and they amounted in his mind to certainty. It made him very sad, and he stopped to look at the boy from whom he had parted on such friendly terms so short a time before. Eric did not pretend to be asleep, but opened his eyes, and looked at the head-master. Very sorrowfully Dr. Rowlands shook his head, and went away. Eric ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... called Letters explains itself, though I do not pretend to say that it justifies its own existence. It claims nothing in its defence except the right of speech which I believe belongs to everybody outside a Trappist monastery. The part I have ventured, for shortness' sake, to call Life, may perhaps justify itself by the ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... don't pretend to be as good as some people are, but I really can't see any awful wickedness in anything that I've ...
— Tip Lewis and His Lamp • Pansy (aka Isabella Alden)
... whim about your duty, and your husband, and all that set of notions. And I know more. I know what it is to have a husband, and that you ought to be thankful that yours was gone before he could play the tyrant over you. You pretend to speak with authority because this cottage is yours, and your precious oil can, and your rotten old bedstead. But, besides that, I can teach you many things. You may be assured I can pay you for more oil than I shall ...
— The Billow and the Rock • Harriet Martineau
... said, in justification of the poet, that he presents a very interesting state of mind, sometimes found actually existing, and does not pretend to present a model of virtue?—that there are miseries which shut some hearts against religion, sensibilities which, being too severely tried, are disinclined, at least at certain stages of their suffering, to look to that source ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... is most significant, in view of the subsequent clumsily framed defense by German apologists, to note that the German Secretary of State, Herr von Jagow, and his superior, the German Chancellor, did not pretend to suggest that the invasion of Belgium was due to any overt ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... book does not pretend to give a connected account of our administration or politics, yet the subjects have been carefully arranged in such an order as would most naturally be followed in a course to which the work is intended to ...
— Government and Administration of the United States • Westel W. Willoughby and William F. Willoughby
... bank, aye, some of them have several hundred pounds. And yet they took the seed potatoes sent by England. Well, they wanted a change of seed, and they must do the same as their neighbours. It would not do to pretend to be any better off than the rest. They are compelled to do as the majority do in everything, or they would be boycotted at once. They cease work when a death occurs in the parish. If an infant three days old should give up the ghost, every man shoulders his spade ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... They do not pretend to merit. Neither are they written for the purpose of criticising the Military Academy or those in any ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... swear, lest Love shou'd take it ill That Honour shou'd pretend to give him Laws, And make an Oath more powerful than his Godhead. —Say that you will half a ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... he hath followed Urban, and neglected me his souereigne lord and maister. [Sidenote: The king renounceth the archbishop for his subiect.] And that he may doo it the more safelie, first of all I depriue him of the suertie and allegiance which he may pretend to haue of me within all my dominions, and from hencefoorth I will haue no affiance in him, nor take ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (2 of 12) - William Rufus • Raphael Holinshed
... take an exquisite, but quite rational, delight in the mere act of eating. I know that I ought to speak as though dinner were an ignoble institution; I know that the young lady who said, "Thanks—I rarely eat," represented a class who pretend to devote themselves to higher joys; but I decline to talk cant on any terms, and I say that the healthy, hearty hunger bestowed by the open sea is ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... student of the closing forty years of the last century, that crowds of thoughtful and moral people have slipped away from the churches, because the teachings they received there outraged their intelligence and shocked their moral sense. It is idle to pretend that the wide-spread agnosticism of this period had its root either in lack of morality or in deliberate crookedness of mind. Everyone who carefully studies the phenomena presented will admit that men of strong intellect have been driven out of Christianity ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... applies only to those Spirits who materialized especially for me. I do not pretend to answer for Spirits who came to other people. All that I am quite sure of is that all the Spirits who singled me out from the circle, and emerged from the Cabinet for my benefit, were not only abundantly ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... at the good fortune which his brother had met with, Cassim grew so jealous of Ali Baba that he passed almost the whole night without closing his eyes. The next morning before sunrise he went to him. "Ali Baba," said he, harshly, "you pretend to be poor and miserable and a beggar, and yet you measure your money"—here Cassim showed him the piece Of gold his wife had given him. "How many pieces," added he, "have you like this, that my wife found sticking to the bottom of ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... far better authority than I can pretend to be about it," Lady Harriet owned smilingly; "and really you've given me so much interesting information that I had nearly forgotten what I came to see you about. It's—well, I wanted ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... Ne flattez & n'amadoueez personne par belles paroles, car celui qui pretend d'en gagner un autre par les discours emmiellez, fait voir qu'il n'en a pas grande estime, & qu'il le tient pour peu sense & adroit, des qu'il le prend pour vn home que l'on peut ioueer en cette maniere: n'usez ...
— George Washington's Rules of Civility - Traced to their Sources and Restored by Moncure D. Conway • Moncure D. Conway
... as themselves. Smart clothing would be unnecessary also, and a hundred and one luxuries of a leisured life. I mentally drew up a list of things taboo, and regarded it with—let me be honest—lingering regret. I was quite, quite willing to deny myself, but it is folly to pretend that it didn't cost a pang. I like good clothes and dainty meals, and motor-cars, and space, and luxury, and people to wait upon me when I'm tired, and unlimited supplies of flowers, and fruit, and hot water, to say nothing of my own little ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... I do not pretend to have come up in my English, to that Life and Beauty of Erasmus in Latin, which as it is often inimitable in the English Language, so it is also a Task fit to be undertaken by none but an English Erasmus himself, i.e. one that had the same Felicity of Expression ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... but inimitable Jack, whose pranks had often made me laugh against my will, as I watched him from a distance, but with whom I had never made the least acquaintance. Whether from fear or presence of mind I do not pretend to say, but I remained perfectly still, and in a minute or two Jack put his head forward and stared me in the face, uttering a sort of croak; he then descended on to my knees, examined my hands as if he were counting my fingers, tried to take ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... more ridiculous than the virtuous indignation of our bourgeois at the community of women which, they pretend, is to be openly and officially established by the Communists. The Communists have no need to introduce community of women; it has existed almost from ...
— Manifesto of the Communist Party • Karl Marx
... Mr. Newton could not doubt George Liddell's story. He could not go back from his own involuntary recognition, nor could I pretend to doubt what I believe ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... of the Negro. If we are to understand the conditions on which his progress depends, we must pay some attention to economic geography. That this will result in a recognition of the need for shaping plans and methods according to local needs is obvious. The present thesis does not pretend to be a completed study, much less an attempt to solve the Negro problem. It is written in the hope of calling attention to some of the results of this geographic location as illustrated in the situation of the Negro farmer in various parts ...
— The Negro Farmer • Carl Kelsey
... rather be plundered by an enemy than by fellows who pretend to come hither as friends. If Frederick would march in here, I would open my house free to all comers, and would not grudge the last drop of wine in ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... before it comes ill as a State. [Cheers.] Mr. Lincoln knew that I had given that answer over and over again. He heard me argue the Nebraska bill on that principle all over the State, in 1854, and '55, and '56, and he has now no excuse to pretend to have any doubt upon that subject. Whatever the Supreme Court may hereafter decide as on the abstract question of whether slavery may go in under the Constitution or not, the people of a territory have ...
— Speeches of the Honorable Jefferson Davis 1858 • Hon. Jefferson Davis
... spoke. I did not pretend to unfold the scheme. I did not attempt any rhetoric. But I did not make any apologies. I told them simply of the dangers of lee-shores. I told them when they were most dangerous,— when seamen came upon them unawares. I explained to them that, though the costly chronometer, ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... really willing to wait, but I knew if I didn't pretend to be I should never get it out ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Trench tells us. You have gradually shuffled them off upon us; and worse yet, when you wish to describe in two words a pompous, prosing, dull-witted man, you call him an old woman. This is not just. Old women always have some imagination; and their gossip does not pretend to be the highest wisdom, which makes ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... travellers," said the old aunt; "they always pretend to know everything. One of them, doubtless, when reading the well-known name of Monsieur de Bergenheim upon the wrapper, sketched the animal in question. These gentlemen of industry usually have a rather good education! But this is giving the affair more importance ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... that they would have to get a new tent to hold him; and that was the reason why they didn't take him. Archy Hawkins said: "How long did you have to wait on the front steps, Pony, dear?" But after that he was pretty good to him, and said he reckoned they had better not any of them pretend that Pony had not tried to run off if they had not been up ...
— The Flight of Pony Baker - A Boy's Town Story • W. D. Howells
... enabled him to endure these hardships so long. And, though the negro is the loser, the white man is not often the gainer, from this false plantation and mercantile system. The incidental risk may not be so large as the planter and merchant pretend, but the condition of the people is an evidence that the extortion they practice yields no better profit in the long run than would be gained by competition in fair prices on a cash system; and in leading ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... at all, I do not pretend to divine. The Divine Maker of all knows best, and what He does is its own justification—satisfying the wellnigh insatiable cry of the universe for universal justice. They are the saurians of humanity; and it is remarkable that the idea of 'progressive development'—if I may be pardoned for ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... of fossil fishes, which I have learned to know, tell me that species do not pass insensibly one into another, but that they appear and disappear unexpectedly, without direct relations with their precursors; for I think no one will seriously pretend that the numerous types of Cycloids and Ctenoids, almost all of which are contemporaneous with one an other, have descended from the Placoids and Ganoids. As well might one affirm that the Mammalia, ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... salvation of his party and its leader comes before Ireland. He means well by her: but he doesn't mean it so much as all that. Still he's the only one of them who doesn't pretend to look on me as a black sheep. He too has to work with his material. That's politics. The Nonconformist conscience means votes—so it decides him: just as the priests decide me.... They would decide him in any case, I mean. And ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman
... abuse them is hard to see. Were society put upon its oath, we should be surprised to find how many people in high places have not read 'All's Well that Ends Well,' or 'Timon of Athens;' but they don't go about saying these plays are unintelligible. Like wise folk, they pretend to have read them, and say nothing. In Browning's case they are spared the hypocrisy. No one need pretend to have read 'A Soul's Tragedy;' and it seems, therefore, inexcusable for anyone to assert that one of the plainest, most pointed, and piquant bits of writing in the language is unintelligible. ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... well to pretend to love me as you do. Ah! If you loved as I love, Mary! But, when my breast is tortured by the perusal of such a letter as yours, Falkland, Falkland, madam, becomes my part in "The Rivals," and I ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... house, where they were both so very well known, by having Juba's dress and his guards: as if one of the marshals of France could pass for the duke of Bavaria, at noonday, at Versailles, by having his dress and liveries. But how does Syphax pretend to help Sempronius to young Juba's dress? Does he serve him in a double capacity, as general and master of his wardrobe? But why Juba's guards? For the devil of any guards has Juba appeared with yet. Well! though this is a mighty politick invention, yet, methinks, ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... 'was as fond of London as Dr. Johnson; always maintaining that it was the only place in England where a pleasant society might be found.' Prior's Malone p. 433. Gibbon wrote to Holroyd Misc. Works, ii 126:—'Never pretend to allure me by painting in odious colours the dust of London. I love the dust, and whenever I move into the Weald it is to visit you and my Lady, and not your trees.' Burke, on the other hand, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... of course," explained Betty. "Now don't pretend you've forgotten and made another engagement. I just heard Georgia Ames telling you that she couldn't go walking because of ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... household of Paulina Durski's father. Paulina was ten years of age, and I was appointed as her governess and companion. From that day to this, I have never left her. As much as I am capable of loving any one, I love her. But my mind has been embittered by the miseries of my girlhood, and I do not pretend to be capable of much ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... white people I must have dropped; and then Roxy and Virgie, sold to some temporary rich man, would have been above me, slaves as they would continue! How false, how fatal, both slavery and proud riches to the republicans we pretend to be! Compelled 'to see' at last, I shall not close my ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... your exit from the moral world, and by numberless acts both of passionate and deliberate injustice engraved an "here lieth" on your deceased honor, it must be mere affectation in you to pretend concern at the humors or opinions of mankind respecting you. What remains of you may expire at any time. The sooner the better. For he who survives his reputation, lives out of despite of himself, like a man listening to his ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... wrapping all this in a piece of canvass, I began to think of making another raft; but while I was preparing this, I found the sky over-cast, and the wind began to rise, and in a quarter of an hour it blew a fresh gale from the shore. It presently occurred to me, that it was in vain to pretend to make a raft with the wind off shore; and that it was my business to be gone before the tide of flood began, or otherwise I might not be able to reach the shore at all. Accordingly I let myself down into the water, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe
... doors open by wooden latches, raised by means of small bits of packthread—I imagine, the same primitive order of fastening celebrated in the touching chronicle of Red Riding Hood; how they shut I will not pretend to describe, as the shutting of a door is a process of extremely rare occurrence throughout the whole Southern country. The third room, a chamber with sloping ceiling, immediately over our sitting-room and under the roof, is appropriated to the nurse and my two babies. Of the closets, one is Mr. ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... now has forty-one committees, with a small army of messengers and clerks, one-half of whom, without exaggeration, are literally without employment. I shall not pretend to specify the committees of this body which have not one single bill, resolution, or proposition of any sort pending before them, and have not had for months. But, Mr. President, out of all committees without business, and habitually without business, in ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... press it any farther. They must settle these things for themselves, but what was the matter with them all this morning was more than he could pretend ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... Strait was one of the most important articles of my instructions which had been executed only in part; and although I could not pretend to make any regular survey in the Porpoise, it was yet desirable to pass again through the strait, and lay down as many more of its dangers as circumstances would admit; and this being represented to governor King, the following paragraph was ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... hope to acquire such knowledge. In 1872 Nathusius wrote:[72] "Das Gesetz der Vererbung ist noch nicht erkannt; der Apfel ist noch nicht vom Baum der Erkenntniss gefallen, welcher, der Sage nach, Newton auf den rechten Weg zur Ergruendung der Gravitationsgesetze fuehrte." We cannot pretend that the words are not still true, but in Mendelian analysis the seeds of that apple-tree at last ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... one of our good gray men of letters was among his children, awaiting dinner and his wife. Her footsteps sounded on the stairs. "Quick, children!" he exclaimed. "Here's mother. Let's hide under the table and when she comes in we'll rush out on all-fours and pretend we're bears." The maneuver was executed with spirit. At the preconcerted signal, out they all waddled and galumphed with horrid grunts—only to find something unfamiliar about mother's skirt, and, glancing up, to discover that it hung upon ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... to appear distant, not so real, mixed, turbid, even frivolous. And was Henderson a vanishing part of this pageant? Was his figure less distinct as the days went by? It could not be affirmed. Love is such a little juggler, and likes, now and again, to pretend to be so reasonable and judicious. There were no more letters. If there had been a letter now and then, on any excuse, the nexus would have been more distinct: nothing feeds the flame exactly like a letter; it has ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... movement of the aristocracy, and, for the most part, it was aristocratic opposition that it encountered. What it did was to make for ever impossible the thought of reunion with Rome and the theory that the throne could be established on any other basis than the consent of Parliament. For no one could pretend that William of Orange ruled by Divine Right. The scrupulous shrank from proclaiming the deposition of James; and the fiction that he had abdicated was not calculated to deceive even the warmest of William's adherents. An unconstitutional ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... the evening of our arrival at Headquarters, and, of course, the monk was full of one of those fantastic tales which succeeded so well with many, either the ignorant or credulous, or those to whose personal advantage it was to pretend to believe him. ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... have passed since houses were haunted in Egypt, and have left some sane, educated, and methodical men to meet the same annoyances as the ancient Egyptians did, by the same measures. We do not pretend to discover, without examination, the causes of the sounds and sights which baffle trained and not superstitious investigators. But we do say that similar occurrences, in a kraal or an Eskimo hut, in a wigwam, in a cave, or under a gunyeh, would ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... think it adds to your intellect to pretend independence of all emotion. But, do you know, I think feeling, instead of being a weakness, is often more clever than wisdom? At any rate, what you are doing now is proof sufficient that you feel, and perhaps ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... to say, "There is nothing, prima facie, in the miraculous accounts in question, to repel a properly taught or religiously disposed mind." What is the matter with this statement? My assailant does not pretend to say what the matter is, and he cannot; but he expresses a rude, unmeaning astonishment. Next, I stated what evidence there is for the miracles of which I was speaking; what is the harm of that? He ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... Luis. "You cannot pretend that the man with the ebony walking-stick, the man who followed Inspector Verot to the Cafe du Pont-Neuf and ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... the least explain the system any more than the discovery of the resiliency of the spring of the watch explains the watch itself. So far from dispensing with "the activities of a guiding power," Newton's law is positively clamant for a final explanation, since it does not tell us, nor does it pretend to tell us, how the "law" came into existence, still less how the planets came to be there, or how they happen to be in a state of motion at all. Writers of this kind never seem to have grasped the significance of such simple matters ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... away out of the goblet, solacing themselves with Sherry, but tasting it warily before bestowing their final confidence. Their taste in wines, however, did not seem so exquisite, and certainly was not so various, as that to which many Americans pretend. This foppery of an intimate acquaintance with rare vintage: does not suit a sensible Englishman, as he is very much in earnest about his wines, and adopts one or two as his life-long friends, seldom exchanging them for any Delilahs of a moment, and reaping the reward of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... major," replied Barbicane, "before discussing its weight permit me to enumerate some of the marvels which our ancestors have achieved in this respect. I don't mean to pretend that the science of gunnery has not advanced, but it is as well to bear in mind that during the middle ages they obtained results more surprising, I will venture to say, than ours. For instance, during the siege of Constantinople by Mahomet II., in 1453, ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... a good Pagan is an admirable person. But he is not a Christian, for his hopes and fears, his preferences and dislikes, his standards of success and failure, are different from those of Christians. The Church will not pretend that he is, or endeavour to make its own Faith acceptable to him by diluting the distinctive ethical attributes of Christianity till they become inoffensive, at the ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... start; pretend to give me alms and take this ring which your husband sends. He is alive and well but a prisoner. I am his friend and will take a written message to him. Should his friends seek to find his place of confinement he will be murdered. ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... leaving his customer half shaved, {108} to take an observation with his astrolabe, to ascertain if he were operating in a lucky hour. By his astrolabe, therefore, the barber could find the time of day; this, however, I confess I could not pretend to find with the astrolabe in question. Ring dials, as I am informed, are in demand to go out to India, where they are in use among surveyors and military men; and, no doubt, such instruments as the astrolabe above-mentioned, which, though pretty ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 67, February 8, 1851 • Various
... dictates of a good conscience, or prospect of serving the public, will not go very far under the present dispositions of mankind. This was amply verified last sessions of Parliament, upon occasion of the money bill, the merits of which I shall not pretend to examine. 'Tis enough that, upon the first news of its transmission hither, in the form it afterwards appeared, the members, upon discourse with their friends, seemed unanimous against it, I mean those of both parties, except a few, who were looked ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... agreed Uncle Wiggily. "Well, pretend that I am a policeman, and I'll take you home. Where do ...
— Uncle Wiggily's Travels • Howard R. Garis
... disagreeable? One would suppose that people set down on this little globe would seek places on it most agreeable to themselves. It must be that they are much more content with the climate and country upon which they happen, by the accident of their birth, than they pretend to be. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... tropics heat often causes sheep to lose their fleeces, and on the other hand wet and cold act as a direct stimulus to the growth of hair; it is, however, possible that these changes may merely be an exaggeration of the regular yearly change of coat; and who will pretend to decide how far this yearly change, or the thick fur of arctic animals, or as I may add their white colour, is due to the direct action of a severe climate, and how far to the preservation of the best protected individuals during a long ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... best advice we can give is to say that the whole of the cartilage must be manipulated both with the foot on and off the ground. What the reason may be we do not pretend to say, but it is a well-known fact that in many instances the cartilage, with the foot bearing weight, is so rigid as to at once convey the impression that ossification has commenced or is even far advanced. ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... had wandered into forbidden territory again—Big Brother Sven's ham shack. The glowing bottles here were an irresistible lure, and he liked to pretend that he knew all there was to know about the mysteries ...
— Poppa Needs Shorts • Leigh Richmond
... all your heart was in your voice and your eyes. That moment has come back to me a thousand times since; has been with me in the thick of battle, singing through my ears as the bullets whistled past. 'I love you now, and from the first moment you ever looked at me.' It is no use to pretend you did not mean those words then. I know in my heart you did. You were bound in some way, no doubt, and fancied you had no right to say them. The announcement of your engagement suggested that. But you are free now, or you would not be here, ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... slipped it out so softly, the first thing they knew about it was the wheel of that side was down. T' other fellow's at work now, but he makes more noise about it. When the linchpin comes out on his side, there'll be a jerk, I tell you! Some think it will spoil the old cart, and they pretend to say that there are valuable things in it which may get hurt. Hope not,—hope not. But this is the great Macadamizing place,—always cracking ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... talent, and to moral sense. The leveling only affects the rights of the citizen; and not the man as a whole. You do not create the living being; you do not fashion the living clay, as God did in the Bible; you make regulations. Individual worth, on which some pretend to rely, is relative and unstable, and no one is a judge of it. In a well-organized entirety, it cultivates and improves itself automatically. But that magnificent anarchy cannot, at the inception of the human Charter, take the place of the ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... the answer. "Yegg-men are supposed to be the toughest members of the tramp tribe. They're really burglars or safe-blowers, who pretend to be hoboes so they can prowl around country towns, looking up easy snaps about the banks and stores that ought to be good picking. And so you think these four men might belong to ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... the duke, "you pretend to have been thinking all night of my interests, and the result of so much meditation is to propose to ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas
... sigh spoke impatience. He swept behind him a stern and withering look towards the proud figure of Hilda, still seen through the glades, and said in a sinister voice: "Of kingly blood; but this witch of Woden hath no sons or kinsmen, I trust, who pretend to the ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... suppose is the matter with Gladys, Clara?' said Mina, the morning of the day they were to leave town. 'You who pretend to be a philosopher and a reader of character ought to be able to ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... "You needn't pretend you don't hear me, Ed Flynn," called out the girl. Her cheap finery was in full force that morning, not a lock of her brown hair was unstudied in its arrangement, and she was as conscious of her pose ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... of colour had receded from her face. There was a frightened, hunted expression in her blue eyes, and the Senator felt a sudden thrill of concern, of pity. What did it all mean? Why should this poor girl—she looked even younger than his daughter—pretend that she had come here accompanied, if, after all, she had ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... menagerie and all, that could come any way near to this. After all, this town might have looked well enough when it was all bran-new and painted up. It might have looked so then; but, by thunder! it looks any thing but that now. What makes me mad is to see every traveller pretend to get into raptures about it now. Raptures be hanged! I ask you, as a sensible man, is there any thing here equal to any town of ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... brother the credit of making peace. This is not at all probable when it is considered the prejudice my brother's affairs in Flanders sustained by the war. But envy and malice are self-deceivers, and pretend to discover what no one else can perceive. On this frail foundation the King raised an altar of hatred, on which he swore never to cease till he had accomplished my brother's ruin and mine. He had never forgiven me for the attachment I had discovered for my brother's interest during the time ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... is probable that not nearly all of these are of a pure breed. Their manner of life is the same with that of the other poor inhabitants, and they are all Christians; but it is said that they yet retain some strange superstitious ceremonies, and that they pretend to hold communication with the devil in certain caves. Formerly, every one convicted of this offence was sent to the Inquisition at Lima. Many of the inhabitants who are not included in the eleven thousand with Indian surnames, cannot be distinguished by their appearance ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... for one who has suffered in the same way, and without the possibility of release?" She paused, laying her hand on his arm with a smile of deprecating irony. "It is not because you are not rich. At such times the crudest way is the shortest, and I don't pretend to deny that I know I am asking you a trifle. You Americans, when you want a thing, always pay ten times what it is worth, and I am giving you the wonderful chance to get what you most want ...
— Madame de Treymes • Edith Wharton
... with civilized and friendly men and women like ourselves, courage shows itself chiefly by refusing to surrender our convictions of what is true and right just because other people will like us better if we pretend to think as they do; and by enduring without flinching the rubs and bumps and bruises which this close contact with our fellows ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... 'mainspring of life' (that's just what Mrs. Van Alstyne said about it the other day); and then to have to hitch on so ourselves, knowing just as well what ought to be as she does,—it's too bad. It's double dealing. I'd rather not know, or pretend any better. I ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... generally bad things. In the abstract they are always so; but about the abstract there is no dispute. Every one dislikes or professes to dislike shams, hypocrisies, phantoms,—by whatever tiresomely reiterated epithet he may be pleased to address things that are not what they pretend to be. Diogenes's toil with the lantern alone distinguished the cynic Greek, in admiration of an honest man. Similarly the genuine zeal of his successor appears in painstaking search; his discrimination in the detection, his eloquence in his handling of humbugs. Occasional ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... why she did not complain to the officers. She answered! "Helas, Monsieur, c'est inutile; on donne toujours la meme reponse: 'Nichts verstehn,'" for it appears when these complaints are made the Prussian officers pretend ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... During the day you must hide under the couch, and I shall pretend to be ill, and keep in bed, or in the cabin. When we reach Ch'i-Chow, I will give you a little money, and you must escape in the confusion of the disembarkation. You shall rejoin your parents, and we will arrange for our marriage. If, by any chance, my parents were to refuse, ...
— Eastern Shame Girl • Charles Georges Souli
... Now pretend that you are a jeweller selling gold and diamonds. Imagine now that you go to your shop and find thieves there. What would you ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... sight ruther be girl-struck than always ravin' and rippin' against females. And all because some woman way back in Methusalem's time had sense enough to heave you over. At least, that's what everybody cal'lates must be the reason. You pretend to be a woman-hater. All round this part of the Cape you've took pains to get up that kind of ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... that the apparent absence of motive is the most inexplicable feature in the case for the prosecution. You will, of course, have fresh in your minds the evidence of the servant on this point.' (The jury found it quite hopeless to even pretend that they had anything of the sort.) 'I refer to her statement, which I will read to you presently'—(visible depression in the jury-box and throughout the court)—'that deceased promised the prisoner ...
— The Queen Against Owen • Allen Upward
... did refuse it, and I am sure, my lord, although you pretend surprise, that you would have acted as I did. I was not already so rich in good works as not to keep the memory of Devil's Cliff pure and without stain. It was a costly luxury, perhaps, but I had been James of Monmouth ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... into two classes, seems to indicate a mixture of divine inspiration with human invention, and finally escapes under a cloud. In the second edition, published in 1780, some progress has been made. The author states the sacred theory, and declares: "There are some divines who pretend that Hebrew was the language in which God talked with Adam in paradise, and that the saints will make use of it in heaven in those praises which they will eternally offer to the Almighty. These doctors seem to ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... Dismiss'd it; but illustrious Hector warn'd, Crouched low, and, overflying him, it pierced The soil beyond, whence Pallas plucking it 320 Unseen, restored it to Achilles' hand, And Hector to his godlike foe replied. Godlike Achilles! thou hast err'd, nor know'st At all my doom from Jove, as thou pretend'st, But seek'st, by subtlety and wind of words, 325 All empty sounds, to rob me of my might. Yet stand I firm. Think not to pierce my back. Behold my bosom! if the Gods permit, Meet me advancing, and transpierce me there. Meantime avoid my glittering spear, but oh 330 May'st thou receive it ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... Mr. Pertell. "He wouldn't even pretend to take some false papers to carry out a film idea. Said he'd been in enough trouble over being ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope
... act was ill advised, and that the cavalry should not have been despatched without the support of infantry. Critics are not always or necessarily right. Indeed, we may venture to say that they are often wrong! We do not pretend to judge, but, be this as it may, the cavalry was ordered to destroy the village of Handoub about fifteen miles inland on the caravan route to Berber, and to blow up ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... the first masters, the property of private persons. Every one of them, no doubt, was worth studying for a long, long time; and I suppose I may have given, on an average, a minute to each. What an absurdity it would seem, to pretend to read two or three hundred poems, of all degrees between an epic and a ballad, in an hour or two! And a picture is a poem, only requiring the greater study to be felt and comprehended; because the spectator must necessarily do much for himself towards that end. I saw many beautiful things,—among ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... vain flattery to pretend that this Work on Clothes entirely contents us; that it is not, like all works of genius, like the very sun, which, though the highest published creation, or work of genius, has nevertheless black spots and troubled nebulosities amid ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... they pretend to be," he said. "There's grub, an' grub. An' what kind of grub is it that a man ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... I did feel, even then, that there was a fallacy somewhere. And that, however much human beings with youthful hearts and answering eyes may pretend they are brother and sister, there is something deep within them that moves the Previous Question—as we are used to say in the Eden Valley Debating Parliament, which Mr. Oglethorpe and my father have organized on the model of that ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... derived from the Father, and not to be the Unoriginated—No doubt! yet, after all, could I seriously think that morally and spiritually I was either better or worse for this discovery? I could not pretend that I was. ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... magnifying glass! Between ourselves, Arkins, could you venture to pretend that your bays are not still ice-locked in this month of August, which is the February of ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... to the highest as well as the lowest, should I omit on this Occasion to remind those who are entrusted by their Country, with the Government of these populous Cities, how much the Welfare of the People depends upon the faithful Execution of the Law. I pretend not to accuse them particularly of Neglect, a general Neglect of this Kind is one of the worst Symptoms of the Time; every Man is left to do what is right in his own Eyes, one would think there was no King in Israel. Could ...
— A Letter from the Lord Bishop of London, to the Clergy and People of London and Westminster; On Occasion of the Late Earthquakes • Thomas Sherlock
... not." Once or twice she had tried to impose her own ideas of what was right and fitting upon the young man, and had failed. Why should she pretend to ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... "Then we must pretend we can. Oh, you don't understand! So much depends upon a proper appearance. Everything depends upon ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... though, that even that was how Mr. Constantine used the word," replied Flora, with more of discernment than she commonly showed, "though I will not pretend to you, Ellen, that I do not recognise the sense in which you refer to it. To be candid, I don't think I know what he did mean, but he seemed to me to be paying a vast deal of attention to the matter, which surprised me in ...
— The White Riband - A Young Female's Folly • Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse
... rocks of grey sandstone (like that which overlies coal) and the Rovuma in the distance. Didi is the name of a village whose headsman, Chombokea, is said to be a doctor; all the headmen pretend or are really doctors; however one, Fundindomba, came after me for medicine ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... profound knowledge of the laws, they speak of Trebatius,[185] and Cascellius, and Alfenus, and of the laws of the Aurunci and Sicani, which have long become obsolete, and have been buried ages ago with the mother of Evander. And if you should pretend to have deliberately murdered your mother, they will promise you that there are many cases recorded in abstruse works which will secure your acquittal, if you are rich enough to pay ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... contributions from a few warm-hearted and staunch abolitionists abroad, to aid the great work of abolishing Slavery. In reference to the Philadelphia Vigilance Committee, we are safe in saying, that, except from a few sources, no direct aid came. How true this was of other stations, we do not pretend to know or speak, but in the directions above alluded to, we feel that the cause was placed under lasting obligations. The Webbs of Dublin, and the Misses Wighams, of Scotland, representatives of the Edinburgh Ladies' Emancipation Society, were constantly in correspondence with ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... a little boy in his young mother's arms. Oh, sweet dream! The old man with his furrowed forehead and beautiful white head and all the heavy years rolled back! More than once he has asked me if he may play till bedtime, and I have stroked his wrinkled hands and told him 'Yes,' for I pretend to be his mother, who ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... for a good cigar," he replied. "Neither Airlie nor you need pretend to be polite, Bee, and say you hope I will not leave you." He quitted the drawing room, and went to his own room, where a box of cigars awaited him. He selected one, and went out into the garden to enjoy it. Was it chance that led him to the path by the shrubbery? ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... all other occasions, that these unsophisticated people preferred their native viands to our European delicacies. They appeared much interested with the three European females we had on board; but, whether they had sufficient taste to prefer them to their native beauties, I shall not pretend to determine. After remaining two hours on board, they took their leave, and returned ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... temptation to spend money. One will have fine furniture and live in a high-rented house; another will have wines and a box at the opera; a third must give dinners and music-parties:—all good things in their way, but not to be indulged in if they cannot be paid for. Is it not a shabby thing to pretend to give dinners, if the real parties who provide them are the butcher, the poulterer, and the wine-merchant, whom you are in debt ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... man has his impressions! I have given you mine—they pretend to be nothing more. I hope they have n't ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... highly irregular; we must pretend ignorance and be patient. They're laying bets on the outcome. You must do your best, Lord Virzal; you don't want your supporters to ...
— Last Enemy • Henry Beam Piper
... I am not surprised they will suspect something. They will ask questions, and if I tell them the truth they won't believe me—no one would believe me! It will be terrible"—and she kept repeating to herself:—"I must pretend I don't know. I must pretend I don't know. When they open the curtains I must go up to him quite naturally—and then I must scream." ... She had an idea that the scream would be ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... tradition's mighty charm. Scarce grew thy lurking dread the less, Till she, the ancient Minstreless, With fervid voice and kindling eye, And withered arms waving on high, Sung forth these words in eldritch shriek, While tears stood on thy nut-brown cheek: "Na, we are nane o' the lads o' France, Nor e'er pretend to be; We be three lads of fair Scotland, ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... "People did not pretend to own many of them. In the first place they cost too much; and in the next place one could not have them lying about because the nails in their sides scratched the tables. Nor could they be arranged side by side on a shelf, as we arrange books ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... that a woman oght to serue her husband as vnto God: affirming that in no thing hath woman equall power with man, sauing that nether of both haue power ouer their owne bodies. By whiche he wold plainlie conclude, that a woman oght neuer to pretend nor thirst for that power and authoritie which is due to man. For so he doth explane him selfe in an other place[44], affirming that woman oght to be repressed and brideled be times, if she aspire to any dominion: alledging that dangerous and perillous it is to suffre her ...
— The First Blast of the Trumpet against the monstrous regiment - of Women • John Knox
... of the Bosniacs, by setting himself up as a little Christian potentate. As a necessary consequence, he was obliged to fly for his life, and his house was burned to the ground. The Vassoevitch clan have from time immemorial occupied certain mountains near Novibazar, and pretend, or pretended, to complete independence of the Porte, like ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... has to be thought of!" Eliza nodded sagely. "But is she not looking sweeter than ever to-day? Do not pretend you have not noticed it, Mr. Lovegrove. There's no deceiving ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... talk politics. What I say is very practical. How can Colonel Cochrane pretend to this priest that he is really interested in his religion when, in effect, there is no religion in the world to him outside some little church in which he has been born and bred? I will say this for the Colonel, that I do not believe he is at all a hypocrite, and I am sure that he could not ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... "It's plain enough what you have to do. Go to your room, go to bed and go' to sleep, stay asleep, keep your mouth shut, say nothing, pretend you woke me at midnight, pretend you had nothing to do with the fire going out, pretend you know nothing about it, keep your face straight, keep mum, leave ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... Upon catching sight of her, Alresca's face broke into an exquisite, sad smile. Then he gave his valet a glance, and the valet crept from the room. I, as in professional duty bound, remained. The most I could do was to retire as far from the couch, and pretend to busy myself with the rolling up ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... idea brought in its train a thousand reflections, which had no other effect than to torment me, and throw me again into the state of despair in which I had passed the morning. It occurred to me, more than once, to write to my father; and to pretend a new reformation, in order to obtain some pecuniary assistance from him; but I could not forget that, notwithstanding all his natural love and affection for me, he had shut me up for six months in a confined room for my first transgression; ...
— Manon Lescaut • Abbe Prevost
... course, that in bringing out the fact that there was national chauvinism in Russia and that this found its excuse in the unstable equilibrium of Europe, I am making no attack on Russian policy. I do not pretend to know whether these elements of opinion actually influenced the policy of the Government. But they certainly influenced German fears, and without a knowledge of them it is impossible to understand German policy. The reader must bear in mind this source of friction along with ...
— The European Anarchy • G. Lowes Dickinson
... wry faces and pretend not to be listening; the people are interested and drop pennies into the old woman's bank. The women are moved to tears and wipe their ...
— Lucky Pehr • August Strindberg
... river, and we having immediately returned to it, both armies at present occupy their former positions. Whether, after the severe losses he has sustained, he is preparing to return to his shipping, or to make still mightier efforts to attain his first object, I do not pretend to determine. It becomes me to act as though the latter were his intention. One thing, however, seems certain, that if he still calculates on effecting what he has hitherto been unable to accomplish, ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... which she had taken from out of the very mouth of a goat. "The hoary winter and hoary I have lived out our time, and we are departing together. I shall make way for you young people, and give you your turn, as he is giving way to spring; and let nobody pretend to be sorry for it. Who pretends to be sorry when winter ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... the French coast; and that the country is bringing in picke-axes, and shovells, and wheel-barrows into Callice; that there are 6000 men armed with head, back, and breast, (Frenchmen) ready to go on board the Dutch fleet, and will be followed by 1200 more. That they pretend they are to come to Dover; and that thereupon the Governor of Dover Castle is getting the victuallers' provision out of the town into the Castle to secure it. But I do think this is a ridiculous conceit; but a little time ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... that, madam," answered Bucklaw, "I only pretend to be a plain, good-humoured young fellow, as I said before, who will willingly make you happy if you will permit him, and show him how to do so." Having said this, he saluted her with more emotion than was consistent with his usual train ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... their actions. Because they use grand compliments, Europeans think they are never sincere, but the compliments are not meant to deceive, they only profess to be forms. Why do the English talk of the beautiful sentiment of the Bible and pretend to feel it so much, and when they come and see the same life ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... exemplar indicated, in the Prefatory Note. in the case of a few pieces extant in two or more versions of debatable authority the alternative text or texts will be found at the [end] of the [relevant work]; but it may be said once for all that this does not pretend to be a variorum edition, in the proper sense of the term—the textual apparatus does not claim to be exhaustive. Thus I have not thought it necessary to cumber the footnotes with every minute grammatical correction introduced ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... Abby," whose business it was to sit behind the parlor door whenever the young ladies had gentlemen callers, and how reassuring was the sound of her deep snores. Another story goes that the young bloods of Georgetown used to gather on the opposite corner where there was a pump and pretend to be getting a drink of water, while they were really serenading the hidden charmers, and that sometimes billet-doux and sweetmeats were drawn up in baskets unbeknownst to the "powers ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... as she sat at her own hearth, quite alone, engaged as we have represented her. What she may have been meditating on we cannot pretend to ascertain; but after some time, she looked sharply into the "backstone," or hob, with an air of anxiety and alarm. By and by she suspended her knitting, and listened with much earnestness, leaning her right ear over to the hob, from whence the sounds to which she ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton
... your running thus from your lawful guardian, and committing yourself to a brace of raw-boned gallow-glasses that ye scarce know the names of, and for all we know, are bringing us into worse plight than ever they pretend to save us from? Ochone? glad I shall be to see ye safe under O'Neill's roof; for since the day I had charge of ye, I never knew a moment's peace. Are ye not ashamed, hussy? Had ye not lesson enough among the low 'prentices, that ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... value, but people that rise by money— especially if their gains are sudden—never have. And that's the kind of people that form our nobility; there's no use pretending that we haven't a nobility; we might as well pretend we haven't first-class cars in the presence of a vestibuled Pullman. Those girls had no more doubt of their right to be there than if they had been duchesses: we thought it was very nice of Miss Vance to come and ask us, but they didn't; they ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... which it labours is the secret of its extraordinary potency. Nothing intervenes between the musical work of art and the fibres of the sentient being it immediately thrills. We do not seek to say what music means. We feel the music. And if a man should pretend that the music has not passed beyond his ears, has communicated nothing but a musical delight, he simply tells us that he has not felt music. The ancients on this point were wiser than some moderns when, without pretending to assign an intellectual significance to music, they held it for ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... clearly perceives the very great blessing which every one of these raptures always brings. No one will believe this who has not had experience of it, and so they do not believe the poor soul: they saw it lately so wicked, and now they see it pretend to things of so high an order; for it is not satisfied with serving our Lord in the common way,—it must do so forthwith in the highest way it can. They consider this a temptation and a folly; yet they would ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... me back all that they really owe me, all that the money would now be worth, it would come to nearly a hundred thousand pounds. After that, what is a man to say when he is asked to compromise? As far as I can see, there is not a shadow of doubt about it. Mr Slow does not pretend that there is a doubt. How they can fail to see the justice of it ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... not necessary for a man to be ignorant, or to pretend that he is ignorant, of what he can do. We hear a great deal about the unconsciousness of genius. There is a partial truth in it; and possibly the highest examples of power and success, in any department of mental or intellectual ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... "The giant twins will pretend to go off on a hunting trip to-morrow morning," said the circus man one night, "but they won't come back. They'll wait for us at ...
— Tom Swift in Captivity • Victor Appleton
... conditions of life have changed, the cosmopolitan public, so far from being confined to a handful of scholars and merchants, extends down to and is largely made up of that terrible modern production, "the man in the street." It is quite ridiculous to pretend that because an Erasmus or a Casaubon could carry on literary controversies, with amazing fluency and hard-hitting, in Ciceronian Latin, therefore "the bald-headed man at the back of the omnibus" can give up ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... brothers and sisters, husbands and wives; the readiness to cast coarse insinuations on them, is more discreditable to our hearts than it is creditable to our morals. It implies the belief that they cannot be attached as spirits without becoming entangled as animals. It is absurd to pretend that the multiplication of virtuous friendships between the sexes would foster licentiousness. Their flourishes best in their absence. Their lifeelement, esteem, is death to licentiousness. A holy thought, ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... Her eyes opened wide in childish wonder—and suddenly closed again in childish terror, when her good friend the servant passed Mrs. Westerfield's door on the way downstairs. "If mamma bounces out on us," she whispered, "pretend we don't see her." The nice warm room received them in safety. Under no stress of circumstances had Mrs. Westerfield ever been known to dress herself in a hurry. A good half-hour more had passed before the house door was heard to bang—and ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... they do not satisfy the law, altho outwardly they live according to its precepts. They pretend to obey it in works, altho in mind they hate it; they pretend themselves righteous, but they remain sinners. These are like unto those of Cain's progeny, and hypocrites; whose hands are compelled to do good, but their ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various
... such as prevail among individuals, are not entirely suspended among political societies. All princes pretend a regard to the rights of other princes; and some, no doubt, without hypocrisy. Alliances and treaties are every day made between independent states, which would only be so much waste of parchment, if they were not found by experience to have SOME influence and authority. ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... appear, do their work in our brains and leave their permanent impress with us. Occultists further assure us that they are recorded in the eternal archives. It is said that there are the Akashic Records, in some subtle way which we cannot pretend to understand, imprinted in the ether. "This primary substance is of exquisite fineness and is so sensitive that the slightest vibration... registers an indelible impression upon it."[7] If this be so, then here is the story of all that has ever been, ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... I passed on. Anna had ceased even to pretend to look friendly upon me, and I did not feel much alarm as to her power for or against my ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... of what I can do for them," he laughed. It was his pose to pretend he was without authority. "They believe I've only to wave a wand, and get them anything they want. I thought I'd be safe from them on ...
— My Buried Treasure • Richard Harding Davis
... vibrating break of contempt. Hilary had always hated the Robinsons, who now had it practically all. Hilary looked pale and tired; he had been settling his dead uncle's affairs for the last week. The Margerisons' uncle had not been a lovable man; Hilary could not pretend that he had loved him. Peter had, as far as he had been permitted to do so; Peter found it possible to be attached to most of the people he came across; he was a person of catholic sympathies and gregarious instincts. Even when he ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... in it!" the sergeant laughed bitterly. "A bold stroke that of Jane Humphreys. And how did she pretend to recognize you as her ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... "do not be inhuman; grant me a last favor. I have not the courage to say farewell to my wife and children; it would break my heart. If they see you take me away they will run after me, and I would avoid that. I therefore beg of you to say aloud that you will return in three or four days, and pretend to go away; you can wait for me on the landing below; I will come to you in less than five minutes. That will spare me the pain of saying farewell. I will no longer resist, I promise you. I shall go stark mad; I ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... she exclaimed, realising fully now the enormities he had committed. She appeared to hesitate a moment. Then she flung down her Apocalypse suddenly. "Put him on a scarlet horse," she cried, "pretend he's ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... deceive these simple natives," he said, "and for our own safety we can't pretend to make rain, and fail. As soon as we have a chance we'll ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle • Victor Appleton
... "Just pretend we're talking," Scotty said. "Don't look around. I'm trying to spot our friend over your shoulder." After a moment he shook his head. "No sign. Wonder if he ...
— The Wailing Octopus • Harold Leland Goodwin
... So closely are physical and mental health related, so complex the reactions of a disordered nervous system on bodily health, or the effect on the mind of physical weakness, that the wisest doctors do not pretend to say this illness is either wholly mental or physical. They do know that some violation of the laws of right living, some neglect to follow natural impulses, is chiefly responsible for the long list of ills that afflict ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... love with easeful death. The word that causes a shudder when it is spoken in a drawing-room gives a sombre and satisfying pleasure when we dwell upon it in our hours of solitude. Sometimes the poets are palpably guilty of hypocrisy, for they pretend to crave for the passage into the shades. That is unreal and unhealthy; the wise man neither longs for death nor dreads it, and the fool who begs for extinction before the Omnipotent has willed that it should come is a mere silly blasphemer. But, though the men who put ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... has taken over a thousand people to write this excursion, and we are, so far, the last. And not by any means do we pretend because of that to be the best of them; rather, because of that, perhaps, we cannot be the best. We should have done much better—if we could. Oh, this has been written by Greeks and Romans and Mediaeval Italians and Frenchmen and Englishmen, and it has been played thousands ...
— The Harlequinade - An Excursion • Dion Clayton Calthrop and Granville Barker
... knows an Oriental. Perhaps I'm prejudiced because I used to live in California, but I never trust a Japanese fully. His sense of right and wrong is so different from mine. Horikawa is a quiet little fellow whose thought processes I don't pretend to understand." ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... very proper thing to say, but there was a ring of conventional, commonplace piety about it, which struck unpleasantly on Christ's ear. He answers the speaker with that strange story of the great feast that nobody would come to, as if He had said, 'You pretend to think that it is a blessed thing to eat bread in the Kingdom of God, Why! You will not eat bread when it is ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... be read just as it is, not as it may pretend to be. It is not what we pretend to be, but what we really are, that will go down in the memory of others. Those who read our lives have a way of reading between the lines. We should strive not so ...
— How to Live a Holy Life • C. E. Orr
... in the form of rain. No theory,' my friend continues, 'competent to explain this hygrometric law has been given (as far as I am aware) by Herschel, Dove, Glaisher, Tait, Buchan, or any other writer; nor do I pretend to supply the defect. I venture, however, to throw out the conjecture that it will be ultimately found to belong to the same class of natural laws as that agreeable to which a slice of toast always descends ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... would make lines of moral and patriotic cleavage along lines of vocation or calling. I want no votes of those who pretend that the good Americans should vote in one box and the bad Americans in another box. I want the votes of those of all castes and cults who believe in prosperity [loud cheers], and I want the votes of those who believe in ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... never given men the privilege of wronging other men by making a payment. That is one of the calumnies set afloat by infidels who pretend that Catholics worship images. You can, however, show penitence, sincerity and gratitude by giving. Any one can see that this is quite a different thing ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... of the King continues to be such as I described it yesterday; and Warren told Pitt yesterday, that the physicians could now have no hesitation in pronouncing that the actual disorder was that of lunacy; that no man could pretend to say, that this was, or was not incurable; that he saw no immediate symptoms of recovery; that the King might never recover; or, on the other hand, that he might recover at any one moment. With this sort of information we shall probably ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... very striking in the following language, taken from his pamphlet "The Rights of the Colonies," if we consider how soon after there occurred the two great crises in the world's affairs, the American and French revolutions. "I pretend neither to the spirit of prophecy, nor to any uncommon skill in predicting a crisis; much less to tell when it begins to be nascent, or is fairly midwived into the world. But I should say the world was at the eve of the highest scene of earthly power and grandeur, that has ever ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... 1783, as still in full force. I do not give you the trouble of this discussion, to save myself the trouble of the negotiation. I should have no objections to this part: but it is to avoid the impropriety of meddling in a matter wherein I am unauthorized to act, and where any thing I should pretend to conclude with the court of Denmark, might have the appearance of a deception on them. Should it be in my power to render any service in it, I shall do it with cheerfulness; but I repeat, that I think you are ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... I don't pretend he's my ideal, but he's more concerned about my future than he is about anybody else's. If I'm ready to leave with him on that twelve-o'clock train for Boston to-morrow, where he's going to be put in the clerical corps at Camp Usonis, we'll be married there to-morrow ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... brig in chase of her, and that through fear she had taken shelter under our guns. The Captain wished a supply of wood and water; but I told him I knew him to be engaged in the slave trade, and that, though we did not pretend to attempt suppressing this trade, we would not aid it, and that I allowed him one hour, and one only, to get out of the reach of our guns. He was very punctual, and I believe before ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... which the Trackless pointed, not a little surprised me, for I could not imagine how any human being could pretend to be minutely certain of such a fact, under the circumstances in which we were placed. So it was, however; and so it proved in the end. In the mean time, Traverse proceeded to carry out his ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... attention!" he said low. "We are being watched. If I must go back with you, pretend to arrest me. Slip the ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... the beautiful Babe-bi-bobu, "the cream tart of delight," more splendidly dressed than before, again entered the hall of audience, and found to her surprise, that there remained out of the many thousands of young rayahs, not fifty who could pretend to the honour of her hand and throne. Among them, no longer dressed as a musician, but robed in the costume of his high caste, stood the conscious and proud Acota; and, although his jewels might not have vied with those worn by others who stood by him, ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... vain for a coquette to pretend to religion; its practice involves hypocrisy, falsehood, and deception—everything that is mean—everything that is debasing. In short, as it is bottomed on selfishness and pride, where it has once possessed the mind, it will only yield ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... dress is a question which is, by no means, above the consideration of old and elderly women. There are some who never can imagine themselves old. Whether it is owing to the eternal youth of their mind and spirits, or to their vanity, we do not pretend to say; but one thing is certain that again and again have we been both amused and disgusted by the way in which old women dress themselves. A lady with whom we were acquainted used to dress in blue or white gauze or tarlatan, ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... of the population in 1805, it had risen to 1 in 340 in 1849; and Dr. Kyle, of Xenia, Ohio, asserted that abortions occurred most frequently among those who are known as the better class; among church members, and those generally who pretend to be the most polite, virtuous, moral and religious. And, without mincing matters at all, this eminent physician boldly declares that "a venal press, a demoralized clergy, and the prevalence of medical charlatanism, ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... the object of which is to make the reader easily acquainted with the actual defect of the language in this particular, does not pretend to be complete or scientific; and in the identification of doubtful words the clue was dictated by brevity. s., v., and adj. mean substantive, verb, and adjective. The sections were made to aid ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... zealous in that form of the Christian faith. It appeared to me—I do not say it is, but it appeared to me, and appears to me still—that Protestantism is an uncritical belief in the decisions of the Church down to a date which I do not pretend to fix exactly, and an equally uncritical scepticism, a scepticism of the most unreceptive kind, with regard to all opinions professed and all events said to have taken place in the more recent centuries of ecclesiastical history. The Church of Rome, on the other hand, seemed nearer in temper to ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... deserve no crutches (let not a staff be used by them, but on them), pity it is the weary should be denied the benefit thereof, and industrious scholars prohibited the accommodation of an index, most used by those who most pretend to contemn it." ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... nonsense," Sam thought, "he only pretend dat as excuse; any one can see de creature as quiet as lamb; don't he let his master sit on ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... force, and, as for origin, do people ever repeat pleasant facts about a neighbour's pedigree? I believe that his family is every bit as good as ours. His second name is de Hausee. No one can pretend that we are even so good as a genuine de Hausee. We may make ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... used such severities and cruelties at Villa Real as to oblige me to retaliate. I am willing to spare a town if under your protection. I know that you cannot pretend to defend it with the horse you have, which will be so much more useful in another place if joined with the troops of Arcos to obstruct my passing the plains of Valencia. I am confident that you will soon quit Murviedro, which I can as little prevent ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... inhabited by white men, who used iron instruments. In 1658, Sir Erland the Priest had in his possession a chart, even then thought ancient, of "The Land of the White Men, or Hibernia Major, situated opposite Vinland the Good," and Gaelic philologists pretend to trace a remarkable affinity between many of the American-Indian dialects and ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... Christianity. We are only concerned with it here in its character of an economic system, and all we have attempted to show is that, as an economic system, it finds no support in the teaching of the scholastic writers. We do not pretend to suggest which of these two systems is more likely to bring salvation to the modern world; we simply wish to emphasise that they are two systems, and not one. One's inability to distinguish between Christ and Barabbas should not lead one to conclude that they are really ...
— An Essay on Mediaeval Economic Teaching • George O'Brien
... hands are white," he murmured, and suddenly she felt a velvety kiss on her left hand. Ermentrude did not pretend to follow the words of her aunt and Madame Keroulan as they stopped before a bed of June roses. Nor did she remember how she reached the pair. The one vivid reality of her life was the cruel act of her idol. She ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... thinking, even while the tiger was carrying him. He made up his mind at once. He must pretend to be dead. So he did not move or make the least bit of sound. Even then he did not see how he could escape, as the tiger would soon start eating him! But ...
— The Wonders of the Jungle, Book Two • Prince Sarath Ghosh
... before there had been time for that Administration to declare, much less (p. 196) to carry out, any policy or even any measure. The opposition was therefore not one of principle; it was not dislike of anything done or to be done; it did not pretend to have a purpose of saving the people from blunders or of offering them greater advantages. It was simply an opposition, or more properly an hostility, to the President and his Cabinet, and was conducted by persons who wished in as short a time as possible themselves ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... are human animals however much we may pretend to the contrary. In the rest of the animal world the fact of the mating season is frankly acknowledged. It has never been recognized among humankind within the period of written history. Is it possible that ...
— Women As Sex Vendors - or, Why Women Are Conservative (Being a View of the Economic - Status of Woman) • R. B. Tobias
... not his own—with requests for information about the Griffin and the falchion, and the precise nature of the Tilbury in which Frank Fairlegh rode—all points of paramount interest which he was bursting to understand. Clearly it would not do to pretend to ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... retain the Anglo-Saxon word to designate the ALMIGHTY; signifying good, to do good, doing good, and to benefit; terms such as our classic borrowings cannot pretend to. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... have a bias it's in favour of the rector. I don't pretend to understand the merits of voluntary versus board schools; but, as you say, a clergyman is always right—most probably Mr. Curzon's is the better cause, and most certainly he is the ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford
... ardent Imperialist will not pretend to say that he knows his road out of rome or Mexico, or even Madagascar. For small intrigue, short speeches to deputations, and mock stag-hunts, he has not his superior anywhere. And now, here we are in Genoa, at the Hotel Feder, where poor O'Connell died, and ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... Bawn, "this—this—is—I am quite unprepared for—I mean—to hear that such noble and generous conduct to my father should end in this. But it cannot be. Nay, I will not pretend to misunderstand you. After the service you have rendered to him and to myself, it would be uncandid in me and unworthy of you to conceal the distress which your ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... me it is—fellows on board who pretend to know everything. But I suspect that to be a mere ruse to get me ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... hard to please," he said, "who would not be enticed to eat by such a display of good victuals. Tea for me, before everything!—How am I to pretend to swallow the stuff?" he murmured, rather than muttered, to himself.—"But," he went on aloud, "didn't ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... life, painted at Ecouen the picture of an old peasant-woman hauling her husband home in a hand-cart dead drunk; but, for all that, the French are emphatically a sober people, either constitutionally or from climatic or other reasons: I do not pretend to say which. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... lecturing tours are lucrative in the extreme. On one occasion I spent eight days in the north lecturing daily, with three lectures on the two Sundays, and made a deficit of 11s. on the journey! I do not pretend that such a thing would happen now, but I fancy that every Freethought lecturer could tell of a similar experience in the early ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... I am not the master. It's not what I would have. I have stood between your father and mother for a number of years. I don't pretend to stand between your ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... in the world. Of these we know how huge and splendid were the halls, with their coloured marbles, their mosaic floors, their colossal masterpieces of statuary, their elaborate arrangements of baths—cold, tepid, hot and dry-sweating—their conversation-rooms and reading-rooms. But we cannot pretend to say how far the Agrippan and Neronian baths of the year 64 corresponded in magnificence to these. We shall be safer in simply assuming that, since the baths of Pompeii were in full swing in the year in question, Home must have possessed ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... marriage—if they remain immovably and rationally convinced that their marriage is not a real marriage—they should be released. And this because it is not moral but immoral, not Christian, but unChristian, to pretend that a marriage is real and ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden
... Beatrix, "and you bring me this commission! He has left me, and you haven't dared to avenge me! You, that pretend to be the champion of our house, have let me suffer this insult! Where is Castlewood? I will go to ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... that foolery of dress about them! Remove that wig and beard." The red blood rushed up to the cheeks and forehead of poor Will Forsythe, and showed itself through the yellow dye of his skin, as he was obliged to submit to this indignity; and he mentally exclaimed: "If ever I pretend again to be any thing I am not, may my head come off too!" "You appear in this case, Mr. Warren," said the Mayor. "Let me hear what can be urged against these men, and produce your witnesses." "I find that I have very little to say on the subject, your Honor. It is true, I can prove that ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... stranger answered, with a curious air of drawing in his horns. I wondered whether he had just been going to pretend he knew Sir Charles, or whether perchance he was on the point of saying something highly uncomplimentary, and was glad to ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... side light of Buddhism to be the case in Brahmanic circles, namely, that even in Buddha's day while Brahm[a] is the god of the thinkers Indra is the god of the people (together with Vishnu and Civa, if the texts are as old as they pretend to be).] ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... father to take her away, her mother would have to be told. Mary was resolved that no matter what happened to her, her mother must be spared all anxiety. She would try to bear it. Marjorie should never know how deeply she was wounded. She would pretend that all was ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... many, in which the present writer has had an opportunity of comparing the manuscript of his departed friend with the actual traditions which are current amongst the families whose fortunes they pretend to illustrate, he has uniformly found that whatever of supernatural occurred in the story, so far from having been exaggerated by him, had been rather softened down, and, wherever it ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume III. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... perfectly well that Mrs. Colston's intimacy is desired, and that's the way she chose to behave. Mrs. Bellamy was the last person I should have wished to see here this afternoon; an uneducated woman, a woman whom we could not pretend to know if we moved in Mrs. Colston's circle; and what we have done was all done for my child's benefit. She, I presume, would prefer decent society ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... "I cannot pretend to have thought upon the subject." If her ladyship threw a greater severity into her manner than the occasion seemed to call for, it was not merely because she disapproved of her beautiful daughter's want of retenue, or questionable style, or doubtful taste, or defective breeding. You must bear ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... We will pretend that John was a doctor. No, that's too professional. He was a civil engineer. That's professional enough and more commercial. It combines Technique and Business, which are the two big elements in the ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... he said in a low tone to his mother, "this door hasn't got one. You must just pretend to give it ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton
... desires, annoyed by the censures of the public, annoyed by the hints which he had received from Barillon, afraid of losing character, afraid of losing office, repaired to the royal closet. He was determined to keep his place, if it could be kept by any villany but one. He would pretend to be shaken in his religious opinions, and to be half a convert: he would promise to give strenuous support to that policy which he had hitherto opposed: but, if he were driven to extremity, he would refuse to change his religion. He began, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Pidgen, you must remember our lives have followed such different courses. I can only give you my point of view. I don't myself care greatly for romances—fairy tales and so on. It seems to me that for a grown-up man.... However, I don't pretend to be a literary fellow; I have other work, other duties, picturesque, ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... of you, and out will come a cork and a pin, and behold the creature impaled. For that is how men love beetles. He has a thousand pinned down at home—beetles, butterflies, and so forth. When I go near the rubbish with my duster he trembles like an aspen. I pretend to be going to clean them, but it is only to see the face he makes, for even a domestic must laugh now and then—or die. But I never do clean them, for after all he is more stupid than wicked, poor man: I have not therefore the sad courage ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... said Macquart, "don't pretend to be stupid. You may very well look at us. Here is a gentleman, a grandson of yours, who has come from Paris expressly ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... eight months, and twenty days then following, for and under the yearly rent of fifty pounds reserved thereupon; the moiety of which said lease and premisses, by mean assignment from the said Thomas Woodford, was lawfully settled in the said Lordinge Barry, as he did pretend, together with the moiety of diverse play-books, apparel, and other furnitures and necessaries used and employed in and about the said messuage and the Children of the Revels,[526] there being, in making and setting forth plays, shows, ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... to pretend to fear what we do not?" he objected. "Do the spirits of the water actually rise up and tell you that we must keep to the shore? I do not believe it, although my grandmother says so until my ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... her engagements, and pretend to no more from her than her friendship; but, as to myself, will love her in whatever manner I please: to shew you my prudence, however, I intend to dance with the handsomest unmarried Frenchwoman here on Thursday, ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... whole train in the deepest gloom. Tremaine spoke for the group when he said it was all up with Jimmy Grayson, and the others did not have the heart even to pretend to a different belief. With a Plummer defection on one side and a Goodnight falling away on the other, there was no hope left for a party which even with these wings faithful had only a ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... temporal prosperity and adversity—which is hardly true at all. Catholic truth, in itself the same, can only be received according to the recipient's capacity and sensitiveness. What one age or country is alive to, another may be dead to; nor can we pretend that here all is progress and no regress, unless we are prepared to say that in no respect have we anything to learn from the past. The Ignatian meditation on the "Kingdom of Christ" evoked heroic response in an age impregnated with the sentiments ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... other part to explain what of its nature can never be anything but dream and confusion. I do not know moreover whether in striving at a better connection of certain parts, one would not run the risk of detracting from the only merit to which so singular a production can pretend: that of giving a tolerably precise idea of the manner (genre) which it can merely indicate. This unpretending opening, this stir of passion, which first increases, and then gradually subsides, these transports of the soul, ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... may argue and moralists pretend, a lie like that of Sir Henry Lee for saving his prince from the hands of Cromwell (vide Woodstock), or like that of the goldsmith's son, even when he was dying, for saving the prince Chevalier from the hands of his would-be captors, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... and corrupt nations cannot be governed like the virtuous peoples of antiquity. For one man nowadays who would sacrifice everything for the public welfare, there are thousands who take no thought of anything except their own interests, pleasures, and vanity. Now to pretend to regenerate a people off-hand would be madness. The workman's genius is shown by his knowing how to make use of the materials under his hand, and that is the secret of the restoration of all the forms of the monarchy, of the return ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... No one will pretend that this ideal exists at all in the haute politique of this country. Our national claim to political incorruptibility is actually based on exactly the opposite argument; it is based on the theory that wealthy men ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... have I seen more criminal than the crimes Condemning wine, because some people will be drunk Confession enervates reproach and disarms slander Confidence in another man's virtue Conscience makes us betray, accuse, and fight against ourselves Conscience, which we pretend to be derived from nature Consent, and complacency in giving a man's self up to melancholy Consoles himself upon the utility and eternity of his writings Content: more easily found in want than in abundance Counterfeit condolings ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Michel De Montaigne • Michel De Montaigne
... "O coglione! you pretend to be a soldier, and you fear death! Every business has its duties, and we have ours in making our fortune. By attaching ourselves to kings, the source of all temporal power which protects, elevates, and enriches families, we are forced to give them as devoted a love as that which ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... of familiar life, but also, with surprising vehemence, his hatred of generals who give blundering orders from comfortable billets in the rear, or of munitioners in England who keep optimistic in spite of bad news from the Front. He does not pretend to be quite fair in his criticisms, for obviously the higher command had to keep out of the firing-line and somebody had to work—and hard too—to supply the torrent of munitions demanded. Sir PHILIP admits all that, but ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 5, 1920 • Various
... blacks, and win victory by every or any means? Mr. Lincoln has had more difficult and complicated elements to deal with. He has the enemy not only in the field, but by myriads at home, among those who pretend to urge on the war. He has them 'spying and lying' every where—promoting cabals in favor of a General, and exciting opposition, in order to eventually crush him—urging Southern rights and amnesties—deluding and confounding every thing. No wonder, after all, that the London Times, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... to work them no harm. Then, if I were to fall in with your humour, would you let them go in safety?—I mean my father and the Senor Brome and my cousin Betty, whom, if you were as honest as you pretend to be, you should ask to bide with you as your wife, ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... she was going into the country, and she was ransomed at great cost. But their most insulting behaviour was in the following fashion. Whenever a man who was taken called out that he was a Roman and mentioned his name, they would pretend to be terror-struck and to be alarmed, and would strike their thighs and fall down at his knees praying him to pardon them; and their captive would believe all this to be real, seeing that they were humble and suppliant. ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... able to purchase some clothing and boots from the Tibetans. The pigtail that I needed in order to pass for a Tibetan I could make with the silky hair of my yaks. I would pretend to be deaf and dumb, as I could not speak the Tibetan language perfectly enough to pass for ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor
... crater, and at a given word we proposed to rush the place. But the enemy was too quick for us, and after the briefest scrimmage, and the exchanging* of a harmless shot or two, we found ourselves in possession of the tomb, and were able to pretend that we were ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... to deny the majesty of this conception, or its capacity to yield religious comfort to a most respectable class of minds. But from the human point of view, no one can pretend that it doesn't suffer from the faults of remoteness and abstractness. It is eminently a product of what I have ventured to call the rationalistic temper. It disdains empiricism's needs. It substitutes a pallid outline ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... shuffled them off upon us; and worse yet, when you wish to describe in two words a pompous, prosing, dull-witted man, you call him an old woman. This is not just. Old women always have some imagination; and their gossip does not pretend to be the highest wisdom, which makes a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... respect in her the noble human being, but to see in her only the instrument of sensual desire—is carried so far among men that they will allow it to force into the background considerations among themselves, which they otherwise pretend to rank ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... fairly beaten. Sir Francis Varney was by far too long-headed and witty for him. After now in vain endeavouring to find something to say, the old man buttoned up his coat in a great passion, and looking fiercely at Varney, he said,—"I don't pretend to a gift of the gab. D—n me, it ain't one of my peculiarities; but though you may talk me down, ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... Amnon confessed his passion, that he was in love with a sister of his, who had the same father with himself. So Jenadab suggested to him by what method and contrivance he might obtain his desires; for he persuaded him to pretend sickness, and bade him, when his father should come to him, to beg of him that his sister might come and minister to him; for if that were done, he should be better, and should quickly recover from ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... we want our little girl ever to make her own living, but her father and I believe in a girl being prepared, even if she never has to use it. That's why we are having her take the commercial course. We don't pretend to be swells, but at least we plan to do as well for ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... been in command of this department only a month, and can, therefore, not pretend to have as perfect a knowledge of the condition of affairs, and the sentiments of the people of Georgia, as I may have after longer experience. But observations so far made lead me to the ...
— Report on the Condition of the South • Carl Schurz
... not even pretend to be a State,' said Lord Montacute; 'they do not even profess to support anything; on the contrary, the essence of their philosophy is, that nothing is to be established, and everything is to be ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... commanded; a regiment consisting of 100 men. Thus they were encamped by regiments, and in the mere fact of common quarters there was this advantage, Cyrus thought, for the coming struggle, that the men saw they were all treated alike, and therefore no one could pretend that he was slighted, and no one sink to the confession that he was a worse man than his neighbours when it came to facing the foe. Moreover the life in common would help the men to know each other, and it is only by such knowledge, as a rule, that a common conscience is engendered; ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... by bringing the talk abruptly back to where she had begun it. "But you did give in to her! You pretend you didn't because you are ashamed. She just looked you down. I wouldn't let anybody look me down; I wouldn't give in ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... The planting trees of liberty seems to have damped the spirit of freedom; and since there has been a decree for wearing the national colours, they are more the marks of obedience than proofs of affection.—I cannot pretend to decide whether the leaders of the people find their followers less warm than they were, and think it necessary to stimulate them by these shows, or whether the shows themselves, by too frequent repetition, have rendered the people indifferent about the objects of them.—Perhaps both ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... pointed out that it is an old lure of vice to pretend that it alone deals with manliness and reality, and he complains that it is always difficult to convince youth that the higher planes of life contain anything but chilly sentiments. He contends that young people are therefore prone ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams
... The cunning creature! This was her trick to entice him from his home!—And just as the poor boy was beginning to repent too! She knew her trade! She would fall in with his better mood and pretend goodness! She would help him to do what he ought! She would be his teacher in righteousness! Deep, deep she was—beyond anything he had dreamed possible! No doubt the fellow was just as bad as she, ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... think, in the evidence previously given, that many Shetland people are pretty well off, and have accounts in the bank, although they don't look as if they were worth anything, and pretend that they have nothing, being afraid to let it be known that they have money; and a story has been told of a man begging hard to borrow money with which to buy a cow, and going to his minister for the ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... that there is a God who will smite him hip and thigh; for vengeance is mine, and those that believe in me. But here, singularly enough, the inferior maxillaries gave out, and her jaw dropped. (I noticed that her giddy daughter of eighty-five was sitting near her; but I do not pretend to connect this fact with the arrested flow of personal disclosure.) Howbeit, when she recovered her speech again, it appeared that she ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... made a great error in this experiment. My hope was that love would be counselor to us both; that the law of mutual forbearance would have rule. But we are both too impulsive, too self-willed, too undisciplined. I do not pretend to throw all the blame on Irene. We are as flint and steel. But she has taken the responsibility of separation, and I am left without alternative. May God lighten the burden of pain her heart will have to bear in the ordeal through which she ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur
... little winged archer, now no more As heretofore, Thou maist pretend within my breast to bide, No more, Since cruell Death of dearest LYNDAMORE Hath me depriv'd, I bid adieu to love, and ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... who, on the one hand, pretend to speak in the name of sociological science and of the natural laws of evolution, declare themselves politically, on the other hand, as revolutionists. Now, evidently science has nothing to do with their political action. Although they take pains to say ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... want to go if you think it would be horrid of me; but I thought we might pretend it was the execution of Mary Queen of Scots, and find it ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... Take away that reason, and he would be incapable of understanding anything; and in this case it would be just as consistent to read even the book called the Bible to a horse as to a man. How then is it that those people pretend to ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... and their marvellous subordinates, Hamburger the hunchback Jew, and his head of the Asiatic Department, Westmann, I do not wonder that two stupid men, the vain Gortschakof and the drill-sergeant de Giers, were able successively to pretend to rule the Foreign Office without the policy ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... between the lover and the husband! When Mr. Pilkington courted her, he was not more enamoured of her person, than her poetry, he shewed her verses to every body in the enthusiasm of admiration: but now he was become a husband, it was a kind of treason for a wife to pretend to literary accomplishments. ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... them with an English pamphlet, what do we but censure them for a giddy, vicious, and ungrounded people; in such a sick and weak state of faith and discretion, as to be able to take nothing down but through the pipe of a licenser? That this is care or love of them, we cannot pretend, whenas, in those popish places where the laity are most hated and despised, the same strictness is used over them. Wisdom we cannot call it, because it stops but one breach of licence, nor that neither: whenas those corruptions, which it seeks ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... absurd imitation of something he can never hope to attain. The effort resembles the attempts of a group of amateurs to present a Boucicault comedy, while 'in front' the world laughs at them, not with them. It is a dangerous experiment to pretend to be anything other than what you are. It means loss of dignity, for you are merely absurd when you attempt to play a part which by birth and training and temperament you are nowise fitted to play. You become a target ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... they couer their greedy and ambicious pretenses, with that veile of pietie. But sure I am, that there is no kingdome or commonwealth in all Europe, but if they be reformed, they then inuade it for religion sake: if it bee, as they terme Catholique, they pretend title; as if the Kings of Castile were the naturall heires of all the world: and so betweene both, no kingdome is vnsought. Where they dare not with their owne forces to inuade, they basely entertaine the traitours and vagabonds ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... this same passage. It is the simplicity, says the New Version, which is toward Christ. What gives straightforwardness is not the condition in which we are, but the ideal toward which we are heading. What simplifies life is to say something like this: "I do not pretend to know all about religion, or duty, or Christ, but I do propose to live along the line of life which I will call toward Christ. I propose to think less of what I may live by, and more of what I may live toward." When a man makes this decision he has not indeed {221} ...
— Mornings in the College Chapel - Short Addresses to Young Men on Personal Religion • Francis Greenwood Peabody
... come prepared to the very dissimilar subjects he proposed? When he resolved to write the history of Charles V., he confesses to Dr. Birch: "I never had access to any copious libraries, and do not pretend to any extensive knowledge of authors; but I have made a list of such as I thought most essential to the subject, and have put them down as I found them mentioned in any book I happened to read. Your erudition and knowledge of hooks is infinitely superior to mine, ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... of a slit throat makes the same shuddersome sound exactly. The general took no notice whatever of that, for wise men of the West understand the East's attempts to scandalize them. It is the everlasting amusement of Yasmini, and a thousand others, to pretend that the English are even more blood careless than themselves, just as it is their practise to build ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... with it only last night; let him alone, he'll come round. He's too proud to change, that's all. Preach to him, entreat him, worry him, try to turn him, work at the bit, whip him, and he will turn restive, start aside, or run away; but let him have his head, pretend not to look, seem indifferent to the whole matter, and he will quietly sit down in the midst of your images there. Callista has an easy task; she'll bribe him to do what he ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... how it would be. Now you'll waken your mamma, just after she's gone to sleep so quietly. Miss Margaret my dear, I've had to keep it down this many a week; and though I don't pretend I can love her as you do, yet I loved her better than any other man, woman, or child—no one but Master Frederick ever came near her in my mind. Ever since Lady Beresford's maid first took me in to see her dressed out ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... youth perceives a certain jealousy of him. They pretend that all has been said and done. They awe him with their great names. He has to learn, that, though Jew and Greek have spoken, nevertheless he must reiterate and interpret to his own people and generation. Perchance in the process something new will likewise be added. Many things ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... perform all kinds of amusing tricks; and their antics when playing together or with children are very laughable. They have been taught to execute difficult parts in theatrical displays; among other things, to ring bells, pretend to fall dead when shot at, beat the drum, and go through the manual exercise of ...
— Harper's Young People, December 2, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... not a fable. The thing actually occurred, although marvellous enough and almost incredible. I have perhaps carried the forethought of this owl too far, for I do not pretend to establish in animals a line of reasoning; but in this style of literature a ...
— The Original Fables of La Fontaine - Rendered into English Prose by Fredk. Colin Tilney • Jean de la Fontaine
... perfect final expression, the sacrament of love. Do not imagine that this is not needed, this effort, and this power, by every human being who desires to be human in his love, and not something less than human. And to those to whom the need comes in its sternest form, I will not pretend for a moment that it is not hard. Nay, I will prophesy to you that if you do so choose to serve the world, it will to all of you sometimes seem too hard. With Christ, with St. Francis, your human nature will sometimes assert itself. "The ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden
... mademoiselle; we do not pretend to be invincible, but I think there will be some tough ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... the Senator, "the proprietor of the Hacienda del Venado? I have heard of her—her dowry should be a million if report speaks true; but what folly it would be for me to pretend—" ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... to me that God gives us this affection that we may learn to do to others as we would do to these. I cannot pretend to care for many with whom I come into contact as much as I do for the few. But I can pray for them, and the feeling will more or less come in time. Just try to pray for some one person committed to your charge—say for half an hour or an hour—and you will begin really ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson
... man, jeering at me, told me the truth. He has gone with her, and every moment you waste he is speeding from you. More, to make himself doubly secure, men will come here at midnight asking for Mr. Crosby. They will pretend to come from Mistress Lanison, and then capture him. A hasty trial, and then ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... becomes vast and complicated. Have the wives, and mothers, and sisters of New York less vital interest in them, less practical knowledge of them and their proper treatment, than the husbands and fathers? No man is so insane as to pretend it. Is there then any natural incapacity in women to understand politics? It is not asserted. Are they lacking in the necessary intelligence? But the moment that you erect a standard of intelligence ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... needest not pretend that thou hast any knowledge of inconstancy. From that particular failing of mankind I'll ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... New Testament. Its advocates, he alleges, quoted in its defence the words of our Saviour—"Suffer the little children to come unto me and forbid them not." [476:2] And how does Tertullian meet this argument? Does he venture to say that it is contradicted by any other Scripture testimony? Does he pretend to assert that the appearance of parents, as sponsors for their children, is an ecclesiastical innovation? Had this acute and learned controversialist been prepared to encounter infant baptism on such grounds, he would not have neglected his opportunity. But, instead ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... don't know much," repeated the old lady, forcibly. "That Mr. Collingsby needn't put on airs, and pretend he don't know me. I know'd him the moment that conductor-man spoke his name. He ain't no better'n I am. My son's ...
— Desk and Debit - or, The Catastrophes of a Clerk • Oliver Optic
... said he did, for himself, look upon all slave-holding as contrary to the Gospel and the New Dispensation. The Israelites had a special warrant for holding the heathen in servitude; but he had never heard any one pretend that he had that authority for enslaving Indians ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... till his year was up. He was to have his holiday during the last fortnight in August, and when he went away he would tell Herbert Carter that he had no intention of returning. But though Philip could force himself to go to the office every day he could not even pretend to show any interest in the work. His mind was occupied with the future. After the middle of July there was nothing much to do and he escaped a good deal by pretending he had to go to lectures for his first examination. The time he got in this ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... d'Israeli are chiefly interesting in their relation to the character of their illustrious author. As works of art they are faulty in construction, exaggerated in description, and unnatural in effect. "Vivian Gray" and "Lothair" cannot pretend to be truthful studies of English life, nor would their author, probably, have represented them as such. But so much of the great statesman's power was instilled into his novels that they have a certain interest even for those who are most alive to their ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... but it did not disconcert him. He was glad to see a clear line being drawn, which made it impossible for any but the practised hypocrites to hang out false colours and pretend to be what they were not. It was half the battle to the Captain to know exactly who were friends and who ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... think they have a good deal to do with it, anyhow," I retorted. "It's all very well to pretend to despise wealth, but it's generally a case of sour grapes. I will own up honestly that I'd love to ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... said they, "to assemble all the warriors of our nation, for these men are well armed. In the mean time let us pretend friendship, and not provoke an attack until we are strong enough to be ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... I, a solitary student, pretend not to much knowledge of the world, but am unwilling to think it so generally corrupt, as that a scheme for the detection of incontinence should bring any danger upon its inventor. My friend has indeed told me that all the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... France, and Holland, but I have told you enough for you to understand what a task he had undertaken. When he was abroad he was sometimes entreated to attend private patients, so widely had his fame spread; and though he did not pretend to be a doctor, he never refused to give any help that was possible, and it was through this kindness that he lost his life. Once, during a visit to Constantinople, he received a message from a man high ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... might be addressing the president of the Associated Charities. Oh, dear, it is such a piece of work to write to one's father! Carrie never has half the fuss; but then I don't suppose I would either if Dad was like Mr. Carson—or Tom. That's it. I will just pretend I am writing to Tom; I can say anything to ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... you say that in French," said Lucile, her eyes merry. "If they did try to put us out, we could just pretend we didn't understand." ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... They are insulting to you, and insulting to common-sense. It's a kindness to let him know how they would strike the public. I don't pretend to be more than the ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... lot of honest money and marry some nice girl and have horses and dogs and a bully home and kids. Look here, as Wayward says, you're not the devilish sort you pretend to be. You're too young for one thing. I never knew you to do a ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... whispered; 'come to my house and I will give you the thousand dollars. You must pretend ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... houses for the priests. The Dutch envoys used to stay here when they were brought through the country, like prisoners, to pay their annual tribute for being allowed to trade with Japan. They were subjected to all kinds of indignities, and used to be made to dance and sing, pretend to be drunk, and play all sorts of pranks, for the amusement of the whole court as well as for the Mikado and the empress, ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... disguise nor reservation:—I do think that this is a time when the administration of the Government ought to be in the ablest and fittest hands; I do not think the hands in which it is now placed answer to that description. I do not pretend to conceal in what quarter I think that fitness most eminently resides; I do not subscribe to the doctrines which have been advanced, that, in times like the present, the fitness of individuals for their political situation is no part of the ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... then," Molly called after her. "Let's hide it, girls, and pretend when she comes back that we've eaten it ...
— Three Little Cousins • Amy E. Blanchard
... Whatever he might say or pretend, Peg knew that he loved her, and she gripped her hands beneath the cover of the rug. What a fool Faith was! What a blind little fool, that she could laugh and be merry with a man like Digby when this king amongst men was waiting for ...
— The Beggar Man • Ruby Mildred Ayres
... of these official data, how is it possible for the Jewish press to pretend that a connexion between Jews and Bolshevism is a malicious invention of the "anti-Semites"? That all Jews are not Bolsheviks and that all Bolsheviks are not Jews is of course obvious; but that Jews are playing a preponderating part in Bolshevism ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... was even laughable to see some young men going about the streets, with long walking-sticks, leaning forward like men bent with age. As soon as the maraboot calls, not a person was to be seen in the streets; all commence, as soon as he pronounces "Allah Akber!" All pretend to keep it, and if they do not, they take care that no one shall know it; but from the wry faces and pharasaical shows, the rigidity may be called in question. None of the European party kept the fast, except for a day now and then; for all travellers, after the first day, are ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... The spirit that does not cause us to live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world, is not the Spirit of Christ. I am more and more convinced that Satan has much to do in these wild movements.... Many among us, who pretend to be wholly sanctified, are following the traditions of men, and apparently are as ignorant of truth as others who make no such pretensions."(646) "The spirit of error will lead us from the truth; and ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... I pretend not, my lords, to be always in the right, I claim no other merit than that of meaning well; and when I am convinced, after proper examination, that I am engaged on the side of truth, I will trample on that insolence that shall command ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... she's going to take a school near Sioux Falls," he answered crossly. "I'm tired of these teachers that pretend to the little schools away off nowhere that they're ready to take them, when all the while they've got their eyes peeled for a school near town. So I've proposed to the committee that we get some one about here to ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... who was carrying on an intrigue with Mrs. Raikes, his silence was perfectly comprehensible. But, when I discovered that it was known all over the village that it was John who was attracted by the farmer's pretty wife, his silence bore quite a different interpretation. It was nonsense to pretend that he was afraid of the scandal, as no possible scandal could attach to him. This attitude of his gave me furiously to think, and I was slowly forced to the conclusion that Alfred Inglethorp wanted to be arrested. ...
— The Mysterious Affair at Styles • Agatha Christie
... himself again on the street, he began to curse mentally, looking at the swelling balconies of the rococo mansion. Rattlesnake! How she rejoiced at his marriage! When it had become a fact she would pretend indignation and scandal before her coterie; perhaps she would get sick so that all the islanders would sympathize with her, and yet, her joy would be great, the joy of a vengeance nourished for many years, on seeing a Febrer, the son of the man she hated, submerged in what she considered ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Monsieur de St. Gre was saying to me. "The letter came to her the day after you were taken ill. It was from the Baron von Seckenbruck, at whose house the Vicomte died. She took it very calmly, for Helene is not a woman to pretend. How much better, after all, if she had married her Englishman for love! And she is much troubled now because, as she declares, she is dependent upon my bounty. That is my happiness, my consolation," the good man added simply, "and her father, the Marquis, was kind to ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... though he did it all of a piece, so that his shoulders moved as well as his legs. The habit was shown as he lunged forward to grip Jenny's hand. When he spoke he shouted, and he addressed Pa as a boy might have done who was not quite completely at his ease, but who thought it necessary to pretend that he ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... from his clasp, and she began to tremble again. "Oh, if you only believe...if you're not sure...don't pretend to be!" ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... a soul be so wicked as to pretend that it has these locutions, which would be a great sin, and say that it hears divine words when it hears nothing of the kind, it cannot possibly fail to see clearly that itself arranges the words, and utters them to itself. That seems to me altogether impossible ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... got to pretend to be pretty stupid, if we are caught. You mustn't act as if you knew too much. Don't let the Germans see how you really feel about them. Pretend to be terribly frightened, even if ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Trail • George Durston
... Our work does not pretend to say the last word on the Jew in America. It says only the word which describes his obvious present impress on the country. When that impress is changed, the report of it can be changed. For the present, ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... gone half a dozen paces when Madame darted like a tigress after him, seized him by the cuff, and making him turn round again, said, trembling with passion as she did so, "The respect you pretend to have is more insulting than the insult itself. Insult me, if you please, but ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... you are so upset. I don't pretend that my scheme is an ideal one, and if you all object to it I shall not ...
— Uncle Vanya • Anton Checkov
... weighed one hundred and seventy pounds, without the thoracic or pelvic viscera, and measured four feet four inches round the chest. This writer describes so minutely and graphically the onslaught of the Gorilla—though he does not for a moment pretend to have witnessed the scene—that I am tempted to give this part of his paper in full, ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... do know what I mean, too; you needn't pretend you don't. Why did you ask me if I had been in that room, and why do you act ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... of a close and practical alliance with the British, but that his subjects did not share his feelings towards us. They were 'rude, uneducated, and suspicious.' He hoped that in time they might become more disposed to be friendly, but at present he could not pretend to rely upon them. He then disclosed the real reason for his ready response to the Viceroy's invitation by saying that he would gratefully receive the assistance of the British Government in the shape of money, arms, and ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... the camp. Then she called her dog to her—a little curly dog. She said to the dog: “Now listen. To-morrow when we are ready to start I will call you to come to me, but you must pay no attention to what I say. Run off and pretend to be chasing squirrels. I will try to catch you, and if I do so I will pretend to whip you; but do not follow me. Stay behind, and when the camp has passed out of sight, chew off the strings that bind those children. When you have ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... blood a few times, he began to spit out with the blood, one after another, the things he had in his mouth, at the sight of which all the attendants would join in a chorus of grunts of astonishment, and the doctor would pretend to be very much nauseated. In most ordinary cases two or three ...
— Indians of the Yosemite Valley and Vicinity - Their History, Customs and Traditions • Galen Clark
... Holland, "don't pretend you don't know me; I will not have my uncle spoken of in a disrespectful manner ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... once she remembered trying to box her own ears for having cheated herself in a game of croquet she was playing against herself, for this curious child was very fond of pretending to be two people. "But it's no use now," thought poor Alice, "to pretend to be two people! Why, there's hardly enough of me left to make ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... Imperialist will not pretend to say that he knows his road out of rome or Mexico, or even Madagascar. For small intrigue, short speeches to deputations, and mock stag-hunts, he has not his superior anywhere. And now, here we are in Genoa, at the Hotel Feder, where poor ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... "You girls shouldn't also pretend to be artful flatterers to cajole me!" nurse Li added; "do you imagine that I'm not aware of the dismissal, the other day, of Hsi Hsueeh, on account of a cup of tea? and as it's clear enough that I've incurred blame, I'll come by and by and ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... not wish, nor do I pretend, that the encomenderos should die of hunger, or that your Lordship should lack the means to fulfil your obligations; but I do maintain that we should have such care for what is right for the Spaniards as not to sicken more souls, or cause the gospel ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, V7, 1588-1591 • Emma Helen Blair
... and, as to Mr. Howship, in a work of his on Indigestion, he makes no scruple to talk with admiration of a certain ulcer which he had seen, and which he styles "a beautiful ulcer." Now will any man pretend, that, abstractedly considered, a thief could appear to Aristotle a perfect character, or that Mr. Howship could be enamored of an ulcer? Aristotle, it is well known, was himself so very moral a character, that, not content with writing his Nichomachean Ethics, ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... why trouble about him?" Sally replied in her usually defiant manner. "You always take good care to trouble about my men. You tried all you could to get Jimmy away from me, yet you pretend to father that ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... beautiful: more than any other of the older colleges in Oxford, she has suffered from the "restorations" of the 70's and 80's. It is a favourite jest to pretend to confuse her with the Great Western Railway Station, which never fails to bring a flush to a Balliol cheek. But whatever the merciless hand of the architect has done to turn her into a jumble of sham Gothic spikes and corners, no ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... paces. Ask him what he knows. Process (I fear) incidentally reveals to him what I know. Hear him at lunch explaining to HERBIE (with whom he has made friends again) that I am "not bad at sums, but a shocking duffer at Latin." Pretend not to ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, September 6, 1890 • Various
... headed straight for perdition. We've had enough calamity bowlers. You've got the way out. The plain people. The hope of the nation. And, by God, you love your country, and not for what you can get out of it. That's a thing a fellow's got to have inside him. He can't pretend it ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the fact, in an instant, when he has intruded on those who love, or those who hate, at some acme of their passion that puts them into a sphere of their own, where no other spirit can pretend to stand on equal ground with them. I was confused,—affected even with a species of terror,—and wished myself away. The intenseness of their feelings gave them the exclusive property of the soil and atmosphere, and left me no right ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... schoolfellow's book-box (wondering whether he should ever see his own), to while away with a story-book the listless interval before bed-time, under the niggard light of a smoking lamp, or a candle flickering in the draught. What exactly he felt or thought, however, we do not pretend to know. We only know that there was not one of them but felt proud to be out campaigning with his school, and would have counted "ten years of peaceful life" not more than worth his share in that ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine
... that legend of the unpopularity of all great artists which has grown to astonishing proportions. Accepting this legend, and believing that all great artists are misunderstood, the artist has come to cherish a scorn of the public for which he works and to pretend a greater scorn than he feels. He cannot believe himself great unless he is misunderstood, and he hugs his unpopularity to himself as a sign of genius and arrives at that sublime affectation which answers praise of his work with an exclamation of dismay: "Is ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... advance, I am very well assured, that no well-bred Men would vent them before Strangers in so shocking a Manner as they do. No Mortal ever saw such Disputants before; they always begin with swaggering and boasting of what they'll prove; and in every Argument they pretend to maintain, they are laid upon their Backs, and constantly beaten to Pieces, till they have not a Word more to say; and when this has been repeated above half a Score times, they still retain the same Arrogance and ...
— A Letter to Dion • Bernard Mandeville
... You are not easily turned from your purpose, and I like that spirit well. But hear my counsel. While you are in this city speak no Arabic and pretend to understand none. Also drink nothing but water, which is good here, for the lord Sinan sets strange wines before his guests, that, if they pass the lips, produce visions and a kind of waking madness ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... of money is spent in order to produce a gorgeous spectacle, common-sense demands that the result should be to the taste of a vast number of people, otherwise the management must lose money. It would be idle to pretend that there are very many playgoers who possess fine taste, consequently the money must be lavished in order to delight people with a more or less uncultivated taste. No doubt a great deal of money may be spent on quiet details, and sometimes ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... time victims to those same qualities in a stranger which had enabled their own father to seize the throne. Cyrus, the great founder of the Persian empire, first the subject and afterward the dethroner of the Median Astyages, corresponds to their general description, as far, at least, as we can pretend to know his history. For in truth even the conquests of Cyrus, after he became ruler of Media, are very imperfectly known, while the facts which preceded his rise up to that sovereignty cannot be said to be known at all: we have to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... animation, may sustain magnitude of body, not only with a slight skeleton, but with none at all; and society of a cold-blooded or bloodless kind follows the analogy. But these low grades of social organization, having some show of congruity with the blank levels of Russia, can pretend to none with the continent we inhabit. Yet some species of arbitrament between man and man is sure to establish itself; if it live not, as a part of freedom, in the bosom of each, then does it inevitably build itself into a Fate over their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... which I believe to be that of the Future, both in the West and in the East. I do not pretend to sympathize with it; but my perception of it gives a peculiar piquancy to my own position. I rejoice that I was born at the end of an epoch; that I stand as it were at the summit, just before the plunge into the valley below; and looking back, survey and summarize in a glance the ages that are ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... now as the result of experience that if it came to a struggle he would be worsted in the end if it took all day. It would certainly be less irksome, and more gracious, to get the thing behind you. To jump, and to pretend you liked it, was the generous and the politic thing to do. Moreover, it was all in the direction of home and bran-mash; while there was Banjo golly-woshing through the mud close behind him. And Lollypop ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... Robin Hood, "and such an one as is a credit to English yeomanrie. Now let us have a merry jest with him. We will forth as though we were common thieves and pretend to rob him of his honest gains. Then will we take him into the forest and give him a feast such as his stomach never held in all his life before. We will flood his throat with good canary and send him home ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... them words which you read in them medical journals you pick up from the doctor's desk in his private office when he excuses himself for a minute to answer the 'phone and which you put down so quick and pretend you 'ain't been reading when he comes back again, if you know what I mean. And furthermore, if these same big manufacturers was elected to the United States Senate to-morrow they could make a speech against doing away with child labor in words of six syllables, y'understand, ...
— Potash and Perlmutter Settle Things • Montague Glass
... rub!" interposed Vernon; "how can a poor fellow with my small pittance pretend to aspire to the hand of one with such splendid expectations? My poverty, as I've long foreseen, must mar my every hope, even if every other obstacle could ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... disease. How often have you yourself been witness of my paleness and my sufferings! I know very well that you speak only in irony: it is your favourite figure of speech, but I hope that time will cicatrize these wounds of my spirit, and that Augustine, whom I pretend to love, will furnish me with a defence against a Laura who does ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... moment he tried to pretend to himself that his interest was purely an art-interest. It was Sargent's brush-work that he was admiring. Then he smiled, as much to the portrait as to himself. "Princess Czarina Bolsheviki," he murmured, "were you really looking ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... is seriously thinking of a Council here. But I do not see how it is to meet in the midst of such dissension between princes and lands. The whole of Lower Germany is astonishingly infected with Anabaptists: in Upper Germany they pretend not to notice them. They are pouring in here in droves; some are on their way to Italy. The Emperor is besieging Goletta; in my opinion there is more danger ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... always pretend, but the youngest little idiot knows it isn't true. It's men who count. It makes me laugh when I think of them—and of you. You know nothing about them and they know everything about you. A clever man can do anything he pleases with ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... suspicion! He has lied incomparably, but he has counted without nature. Here is the pitfall! Again, a man off his guard, from an unwary disposition, may delight in mystifying another who suspects him, and may wantonly pretend to be the very criminal wanted by the authorities; in such a case, he will represent the person in question a little too closely, he will place his foot a little too naturally. Here we have another token. For the nonce his interlocutor may be duped; but, being ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... they did at ours, though I don't pretend to be as clever as some. I said to myself, as this car of the Duke's is new, and he doesn't drive it himself, chances are he's never had a motor before, and wouldn't have a garage in Madrid, though ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... city, it seems, pretend much weakness and squeamishness of stomacke, which they say is so great that they are not able to continue in church while the mass is briefly hurried over, much lesse while a solemn high mass is sung and a sermon preached, unles they drinke a cup of hot chocolatte and eat a bit ...
— The Food of the Gods - A Popular Account of Cocoa • Brandon Head
... said very distinctly. "I've got a tip for you. Pretend that you want to make something like the gadget that stops winds and warms places. You know ...
— Long Ago, Far Away • William Fitzgerald Jenkins AKA Murray Leinster
... hedges and every flower in the path, kept bringing them back to his mother's face with a dreamy upward gaze. 'I will try, mother, I really will. I will keep my hands tight in my pockets, and my feet close together; I will pretend I'm going to be shot by a file of soldiers, and then I really think that will help me not to fidget. I promise you ...
— Teddy's Button • Amy Le Feuvre
... had understood what it meant. To Clarissa the thing was as certain as though she already heard the words spoken. With Patience even there was no doubt. Sir Thomas, though he had told nothing, did not pretend that the truth was to be hidden. He looked at his younger daughter sorrowfully, and laid his hand upon her head caressingly. With her there was no longer the possibility of retaining any secret, hardly the remembrance ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... cousin, as you hope for comfort in your hour of fear, aid me now. Dudley has returned, and is secreted somewhere about the grounds. It is a fraud. They all pretend to me that he is gone away in the Seamew; and he or they had his name published as one of the passengers. Madame de la Rougierre has appeared! She is here, and my uncle insists on making her my close companion. I am at my wits' ends. I cannot ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... probably written and acted late in 1610 or early in 1611"; "Cupid's Revenge" "was acted the Sunday following New Year's 1612; 'A King and No King' in December, 1611." These are the only two of the six of which the date of acting is given. Nowhere does Professor Thorndike pretend to give any date whatever when "Philaster" was acted; the only question discussed is as to the year of authorship, and that is left uncertain. The statement that "Winter's Tale" and "The Tempest" were "not acted until after 'Philaster'" is utterly without warrant or authority. If Shakspere is ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... been treated. We have had a great deal of sham glory, and sham courage, and sham strength. I say, let us get rid of all these shams, and fall back upon realities, the character of which is to be guided by unostentatiousness, to pretend nothing, not to thrust claims and unconstitutional claims for ascendancy and otherwise in the teeth of your neighbour, but to maintain your right and to respect the rights of others as much as your own. So much, then, for the great issue that is still before ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... say that it is useless to seek to delve in the unknowable or to kick against the pricks. It is as if one should say to a man whose leg has had to be amputated that it does not help him at all to think about it. And we all lack something; only some of us feel the lack and others do not. Or they pretend not to feel the lack, and ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... it is—fellows on board who pretend to know everything. But I suspect that to be a mere ruse to get me to stay ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... freighters to bring those castings over and we'd no end of trouble to get the stringers fixed—the stream was strong and we had to build a pier in it. Not long ago, I'd have considered anybody who did this kind of thing without compulsion mad, but in some mysterious way it grows on you. I don't pretend to explain it, but it won't be with unmixed delight that I'll ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... him the scroll, and all waited in silence whilst Robin deciphered it. Carfax snapped his teeth together in vexation at this unexpected turn. "He cannot read the parchment. Is it likely?" he cried. "He will but pretend to read it, and make lies with which to confound me. 'Tis writ in most scholarly Latin, ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... are people who believe in this, busy themselves over peace congresses, read addresses, and write books. And governments, we may be quite sure, express their sympathy and make a show of encouraging them. In the same way they pretend to support temperance societies, while they are living principally on the drunkenness of the people; and pretend to encourage education, when their whole strength is based on ignorance; and to support constitutional freedom, when their strength rests on the absence of freedom; ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... MAMMA,—If we pretend that this note comes to you from papa at the Palais, and that he wants us both to dine with his friend because proposals have been renewed—then the cousin will go, and we can carry out our plan of ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... This does not pretend to be an actual transcription of the conversation between Mr. Chambers and his visitor. I asked Mr. Chambers recently if he recalled this interview. He said at this date he did not distinctly recollect ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... to do," said Sally, when appealed to, as she took the seaman's rough hand and fondled it; "just try to invent stories, and tell them to us as if you was readin' a book. You might even turn Carteret upside down and pretend that ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... presume that you discouraged the negroes from following you because you had not the means of supporting them, and feared they might seriously embarrass your march. But there are others, and among them some in high authority, who think or pretend to think otherwise, and they are decidedly disposed to make ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... made some 'tention to," Viola sometimes said shyly. She was not afraid, and she would stay with me hour-long, as if she loved to be loved. She was like a little come-a-purpose spirit, to let one pretend. ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... Indian surnames, but it is probable that not nearly all of these are of a pure breed. Their manner of life is the same with that of the other poor inhabitants, and they are all Christians; but it is said that they yet retain some strange superstitious ceremonies, and that they pretend to hold communication with the devil in certain caves. Formerly, every one convicted of this offence was sent to the Inquisition at Lima. Many of the inhabitants who are not included in the eleven thousand with Indian surnames, cannot be distinguished ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... want to 'top and rest bullocks and make fire for breakfast, Boss. I say he go on till we get to laager. Say he won't, and Joeboy make um. Boss Val put little 'volver pistol away and unsling gun; pretend ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... end of their resources, they set up as saints and work miracles, one displaying the cloak of St. Vincent, another the handwriting of St. Bernardino, a third the bridle of Capistrano's donkey.' Others 'bring with them confederates who pretend to be blind or afflicted with some mortal disease, and after touching the hem of the monk's cowl, or the relics which he carries, are healed before the eyes of the multitude. All then shout "Misericordia," the bells are rung, ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... Remember every word I say. There is a law as old as Germany that if any woman sit for a single instant in the great ducal chair before she hath been absolutely crowned in presence of the people, SHE SHALL DIE! So heed my words. Pretend humility. Pronounce your judgments from the Premier's chair, which stands at the foot of the throne. Do this until you are crowned and safe. It is not likely that your sex will ever be discovered; but still it is the part of wisdom to make all things as safe as may be ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... had been an aspirant for the hand of the Admiral's sister, and had been somewhat contemptuously rejected. Horn, a bold, vehement, and not very good-tempered personage, had long kept no terms with Granvelle, and did not pretend a friendship which he had never felt. Granvelle had just written to instruct the King that Horn was opposed bitterly to that measure which was nearest the King's heart—the new bishoprics. He had been using strong language, according to the Cardinal, in opposition to the scheme, while still ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Turning furiously on Grace, her eyes flashing, she exclaimed: "Yes, there is one girl who would tell anything, and that girl is you! You pretend to be honorable and high-principled, but you are nothing but a hypocrite and a sneak. I would not trust you as far as I could see you. I have no doubt Miss Crosby obtained her information about this affair to-day from you, and that everyone in school will hear it ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower
... Street, and she had grown very fond of it. She had taken it about with her, and sat it in the gutter, with its back against the kerb, while she played in the mud. She used to have long talks with it, but then she had to make the answers herself, and only to pretend the dolly made them. For, of course, Mary knew well enough that dolls can't speak—at least they can't speak in the world she had ...
— The Bountiful Lady - or, How Mary was changed from a very Miserable Little Girl - to a very Happy One • Thomas Cobb
... cruel, Jim," she replied, "but my mind is quite made up. It's a week to-night since you asked me to be your wife. I love yer, I don't pretend to deny it; I've loved yer for many a month, and my heart leaped with joy when you said you loved me, and of course I meant to say 'yes.' But now everything is changed; I'm young, only seventeen, and ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade
... can say I ever refused to help a friend out of a difficulty when he was worth helping. But when you ask me to go beyond that, I tell you frankly I dont see it. I never did see it, even when I was only a boy, and had to pretend to take in all the ideas the Governor fed me up with. I didnt see it; and I ...
— Misalliance • George Bernard Shaw
... of them not to care whether I go home or not," Polly told herself, as she undressed for bed. "They might at least pretend they don't want me to go! I always supposed that the one girl in a mining camp would be dazzlingly popular—but this doesn't look much like it. And yet—he likes me, I know he does! He liked my bringing the car back; I saw it in his eyes, if he did ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... years had passed since that evening in June when she had stood in that spot and looked down on the crowd of young men and women? She dared not count, but there was the grandson of that Robert Bucknor, standing in the great hall and trying hard to pretend to be interested in what a beautiful girl was saying to him. The beautiful girl was the one who had made the remark about a fancy dress ball. The grandson of Robert Bucknor had not heard her say it nor had ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... Sir Robert said to the princess: "Pray, madam, let this farce be played; the archbishop will act it very well. You may bid him be as short as you will. It will do the Queen no hurt, no more than any good; and it will satisfy all the wise and good fools who will call us atheists if we don't pretend to be as great fools ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... the manner in which the electric matter makes a muscle contract, I do not pretend to have any conjecture worth mentioning. I only imagine that whatever can make the muscular fibres recede from one another farther than the parts of which they consist, ...
— Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air • Joseph Priestley
... played pretend, and make-believe, games, and they had much fun this way. Now they turned one chair on the side, and put another in front. The turned-over chair was to be the wagon, and the other chair, standing on its four legs, was the horse. Bunny got some string for reins, and the stick the washerwoman ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue at Camp Rest-A-While • Laura Lee Hope
... have been there to hand: also, if you remember, there was talk at the time of the King of Naples proving troublesome. There, too, in case of a campaign on the frontier, the money lying ready to hand at Grenoble could prove very useful. But of course I cannot possibly pretend to give you all the reasons which actuated M. de Talleyrand when he caused five and twenty millions of stolen money to be conveyed secretly to Grenoble rather than to Paris. His ways are more tortuous than any mere army-surgeon can possibly hope to gauge. ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... now behold ingloriously lying in that neglected corner, I once knew in a flourishing state in a forest; it was full of sap, full of leaves, and full of boughs: but now in vain does the busy art of man pretend to vie with nature, by tying that withered bundle of twigs to its sapless trunk. It is now at best but the reverse of what it was, a tree turned upside down, the branches on the earth, and the root in the air. It is now handled by every dirty wench, condemned to do her drudgery, ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... crimes,—thus inducing all parties to separate in a kind of good humor, as if they had nothing more than a verbal dispute to settle, or a slight quarrel over a table to compromise. All this may now be done at the expense of the persons whose cause we pretend to espouse. We may all part, my Lords, with the most perfect complacency and entire good humor towards one another, while nations, whole suffering nations, are left to beat the empty air with cries of misery and anguish, and to cast forth to an offended heaven ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... justified. See here. Take my case first. I'm in the Customs Department, and it is part of my job to investigate suspicious import trades. Am I not justified in trying to find out if smuggling is going on? Of course I am. Besides, Merriman, I can't pretend not to know that if I brought such a thing to light I should be a made man. Mind you, we're not out to do these people any harm, only to make sure they're not harming us. Isn't ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... Angel mollified me in no little measure; and, aided by the water with which he diluted my Port more than once, I at length regained sufficient temper to listen to his very extraordinary discourse. I cannot pretend to recount all that he told me, but I gleaned from what he said that he was the genius who presided over the contretemps of mankind, and whose business it was to bring about the odd accidents which are continually astonishing the skeptic. Once or twice, upon my ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... fancy and repugnant to the civilised Greeks who found themselves in possession of the myth. Beyond this, and beyond the inference that the Cronus myth was first evolved by people to whom it seemed quite natural, that is, by savages, we do not pretend to go in ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... Weinberg and Scully, respectively. Grace tried both doors in succession, asking for Mrs. Weinberg at the one, and for Mrs. Scully at the other. In each case the woman who appeared bore no resemblance to the one she sought, and she was obliged to pretend that she had made a mistake. The doors were at once closed ...
— The Film of Fear • Arnold Fredericks
... everywhere. This is not the time for a formal disquisition on the indications by which a true friend may be distinguished from a false: all that is in place now is to give you a hint. Your exalted character has compelled many to pretend to be your friends while really jealous of you. Wherefore remember the saying of Epicharmus, "the muscle and bone of wisdom is to believe nothing rashly." Again, when you have got the feelings of your friends in a sound state, ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... reputation, in the hope of profiting by his treachery. I do not attempt to deny, however, that Clarissa was imprudent. We have to consider her youth, and that natural love of admiration which tempts women to jeopardise their happiness and character even for the sake of an idle flirtation. I do not pretend that my daughter is faultless; but I would stake my life upon her purity. At the same time I quite agree with you, Granger, that under existing circumstances, a separation—a perfectly amicable separation, my daughter of course retaining the society of her child—would ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... In the end I managed to stop it with a handkerchief and a stick. I would suggest the elimination of all tourniquets, and the substitution of the humble pocket-handkerchief. It, at least, does not pretend to be what it is not. Between shock and loss of blood our soldier was pretty bad, and we did not lose much time in transferring him to our car on a stretcher. The Croix Rouge dressing-station was more than a mile farther on, ...
— A Surgeon in Belgium • Henry Sessions Souttar
... the difference between that and having a gang of thieves about him?—for every one that takes money out of his cash without his leave, and without letting him know it, is so far a thief to him: and he can never pretend to balance his cash, nor, indeed, know any thing of his affairs, that does not know which ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... having its base in the river and its summit crowned with a rough chevelure of brambles and large creeping plants. The lower part of this rock is intersected by holes, through which the water rushes, tumbles, and whirls. The peasants pretend that the river near the rock cannot be fathomed, and that this particular spot is inhabited by fairies, nymphs, syrens, and other amiable ladies of this description, who have superb voices, and sing from the interior of their grottos ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... have nothing to talk about but Harry, Harry, Harry, I am going! I am very fond of Harry, but I don't pretend to be blind to Harry's faults. Remember how many disagreeable hours he has given us lately. And I must say that I think he was very ungrateful about the hundred and eighty pounds I gave him. He never wrote me a line ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... the name given in the indictment by the evidence of your fellow-prisoner," observed the judge; "your real name we cannot pretend to know. It is sufficient that you answer to the question of whether you, the prisoner, are guilty or ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... colony, and such a limited experience as mine was, could not have enabled me—no matter what my faculty of observation, which is but moderate—to convey any adequate idea of the magnitude of the colony or its resources. To pretend to write an account of Victoria and Victorian life from the little I saw, were as absurd as it would be for a native-born Victorian, sixteen years old, to come over to England, live two years in a small country town, and then write a book of his travels, headed ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... of vain flattery to pretend that this Work on Clothes entirely contents us; that it is not, like all works of genius, like the very Sun, which, though the highest published creation, or work of genius, has nevertheless black spots and troubled nebulosities amid its effulgence,—a mixture of insight, inspiration, with ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... sound exactly. The general took no notice whatever of that, for wise men of the West understand the East's attempts to scandalize them. It is the everlasting amusement of Yasmini, and a thousand others, to pretend that the English are even more blood careless than themselves, just as it is their practise to build confidently ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... put them on the new elevation." And then he went away, saying, "Good evening, Lady Valmond." I could have cried, Mamma, I felt so small and paltry. He is a great big splendid creature and I wish I had not been so silly as to pretend in the beginning. Octavia thinks him delightful. He never appeared for two days—then he came up as if nothing had happened; only he looks at my hat or my chin or my feet now and never into my ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... in the ship-building, and in the little oysters which the harbor yields; but whether we did take an interest or not has passed out of memory. A small, unpicturesque, wooden town, in the languor of a provincial summer; why should we pretend an interest in it which we did not feel? It did not disturb our reposeful frame of mind, nor much interfere with ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... wheel, conservatism went to the dogs, and bounties were offered for enlistment at the various navy-yards, while commissions were made out as fast as they could be signed, and given to any applicant who could even pretend to a knowledge of yachts. And Surgeon George Metcalf, with the rank of junior lieutenant, was ordered to the torpedo-boat above mentioned, and with him as executive officer a young graduate of the academy, Ensign Smith, who with the enthusiasm ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... be very pleasant to describe the tea-table; but the truth is, it did not pretend to offer a plethoric banquet to the guests. The Widow had not visited at the mansion-houses for nothing, and she had learned there that an overloaded tea-table may do well enough for farm-hands when they come in at evening from their work and sit down unwashed ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... Ernest Naville. Father Hecker said that the antipathy of Protestants for the Church arose from the fact that they imagined that Catholicity reduced all religion to obedience to external authority. Protestants, on the other hand, pretend to place all religion in the interior life, directly generated in souls by the Holy Spirit, and it is for this reason that Catholicity impresses them as a tyrannical usurpation and a stupid formalism. In this they are deceived, as a close acquaintance with Catholics and with such writings ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... he is, except that he isn't my sort," Mr. Flint retorted, intent upon the subject which had kindled his anger earlier in the day. "I don't pretend to understand him. He could probably have been counsel for the road if he had behaved decently. Instead, he starts in with suits against us. He's ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... conjecture, it can barely be understood why Bracciolini should make a mystery about this visit. "If I undertake a journey to Hungary," he says, "it will be unknown to everybody but a few, and down the throats of these I shall cram all sorts of speeches, since I will pretend that I have come from here," that is, from England. "Si in Hungariam proficiscar, erit ignotum omnibus, praeter paucos; quin simulabo me huc venturum, et istos pascam verbis." (Ep. I. 18). This intention to keep the journey to Hungary ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... and claimed the benefit of the law. Now here all the learned agree, that the sick man is not within the reason of the law; for the reason of making it was, to give encouragement to such as should venture their lives to save the vessel: but this is a merit, which he could never pretend to, who neither staid in the ship upon that account, nor contributed any ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... ways by the international marriage goes merrily on. At the present moment we can claim not less than twenty-five peeresses of transatlantic birth, while we don't pretend to keep anything like an exact record of the ever-increasing acquisitions, from American sources, to our gentry class; but, for all that, the present big average of American women who come across the ocean to conduct a successful siege of London no longer regard the English husband as a sort of necessary ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... be thought of!" Eliza nodded sagely. "But is she not looking sweeter than ever to-day? Do not pretend you have not noticed it, Mr. Lovegrove. There's no deceiving me! I ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... hold and went to the table by the window, on which the parcels lay, whistling in as careless a manner as a boy bursting with excitement could do. First of all he stood on one leg, then on the other, and looked knowingly at me out of the corner of his eye. He was too honest to pretend that he thought the parcel was for some other boy, since there was no other. When the excitement became more than he could bear, he sang in a sing-song voice, "I see ...
— The Professional Aunt • Mary C.E. Wemyss
... Rebecca's counsels altogether, her venerable but frisky old grandmother—Madam Nature—it was to be feared, might have profited by the occasion to giggle and whistle her own advice in her ear, and been indifferently well obeyed. I really don't pretend to say—maybe there was nothing, or next to nothing in it; or if there was, Miss Gertrude herself might not quite know. And if she did suspect she liked him, ever so little, she had no one but Lilias Walsingham to tell; and I don't know that young ladies are always quite candid ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... but won't you pretend you do for a little while, long enough to come with me for a little walk—or else to talk ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... teasing; of graceful Arna who dressed so daintily, talked so cleverly, and had been to college. Arna was going to send Peggy to college, too—it was so good of Arna! But for all Peggy's admiration for Arna, it was Mabel, the eldest sister, who was the more approachable. Mabel did not pretend even to as much learning as Peggy had herself; she was happy-go-lucky and sweet-tempered. Then her husband was a great jolly fellow, with whom it was impossible to be shy, and the babies—there never were such cunning babies, Peggy thought. Just here her niece gave ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... various columns we get a general impression of how things are going. The army seems to be adopting very severe measures to try and end the campaign out of hand, and the papers at home are loudly calling for such measures, I see, and justifying them. Nevertheless, it is childish to pretend that it is a crime in the Boers to continue fighting, or that they have done anything to disentitle them to the usages of civilised warfare. The various columns that are now marching about the country are carrying on the work of destruction pretty indiscriminately, and we have ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... your letter to Gen. Huger of the 6th inst. and am surprised that Col. Baker or Capt. Snipes should pretend that they had my directions for crossing the Santee. I beg you will encourage the militia and engage them to continue their exertions.—If the supplies expected from the northward arrive in season, we shall be able ...
— A Sketch of the Life of Brig. Gen. Francis Marion • William Dobein James
... inequality in love. Give and take must balance. One must be one's natural self or the whole business is an indecent trick, a vile use of life! To use inferiors in love one must needs talk down to them, interpret oneself in their insufficient phrases, pretend, sentimentalize. And it is clear that unless oneself is to be lost, one must be content to leave alone all those people that one can reach only by sentimentalizing. But Amanda—and yet somehow I love ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... our pride, but our industrious wills, would have made us wish not to be so;—but to be entitled to a happier lot: for this would have grieved us the more, for the sake of you, my dear child, and your unhappy brother's children: for it is well known, that, though we pretend not to boast of our family, and indeed have no reason, yet none of us were ever sunk so low as I was: to be sure, partly by my own fault; for, had it been for your poor aged mother's sake only, I ought not to have ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... Savile? Do you think I'm pleased? Is it my fault the Cambridgeshire's run on Wednesday? Do be just to me! Do I make the racing engagements? You can't pretend that I can alter the rules of Newmarket because papa chooses to give a lot ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... bi-partisan. They use both parties. They are the invisible government behind our visible government. Democratic and Republican bosses alike are brother officers of this hidden power. No matter how fiercely they pretend to fight one another before election, they work together after election. And, acting so, this political conspiracy is able to delay, mutilate or defeat sound and needed laws for the people's welfare and the prosperity of honest business ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... boy—no longer a boy, however, but nearly twenty, and looking fully his age. How proud his aunts were to march him up the town, and hear every body's congratulations on his good looks and polished manners! It was the old story—old as the hills! I do not pretend to invent any thing new. Women, especially maiden aunts, will repeat the tale till the end of time, so long as they have youths belonging to them on whom to expend their natural tendency to clinging fondness, ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... deviation before the 22nd January of the Vincennes, in a northerly direction, that the English explorers ascertained the existence of land. Not until he reached Sydney did Wilkes, hearing that D'Urville had discovered land on the 19th January, pretend to have seen it ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... necessary in this case. I haven't the slightest hope of making this incident a foundation for another; I haven't the least idea that I shall ever see you again. But for me to pretend an imbecile indifference to you or to the situation would be a more absurd example of self-consciousness than even you have charged ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... idle to pretend that all our problems in this whole field of prices will solve themselves by mere Federal ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... indeed loved her in the dark, with an access of passion which he had never shown before and could drop apparently as fitfully as he won to it, and also with a fulness of satisfaction to himself which she did not pretend to understand. It was James and no other, simply because any other was unthinkable. Such things were not done. Jimmy Urquhart—and what other could she imagine it?—was out of the question. She had finally brushed him out as a girl flecks the mirror ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... because they have an extremely unhappy ending. The collection was gathered as a test of the public interest, in order to remove if possible what the editor believed to be a false editorial policy. It is interesting to examine these stories, and to pretend that one is an editor. The experiment has been extremely successful and has produced at least one story by an American author ("The Abigail Sheriff Memorial" by Vincent O'Sullivan) and one story by an English author ("Old Fags" by Stacy Aumonier), ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... commercial travellers," said the old aunt; "they always pretend to know everything. One of them, doubtless, when reading the well-known name of Monsieur de Bergenheim upon the wrapper, sketched the animal in question. These gentlemen of industry usually have a rather good education! But this ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... madam. I am ready to treat you as well as you treat me. I won't pretend that I like your guardianship, as I fear that we ...
— Frank and Fearless - or The Fortunes of Jasper Kent • Horatio Alger Jr.
... that truth requires us to state, that Snorro had not quite reached the age of reciprocal attachment—at least in regard to men. Of course we do not pretend to know anything about the mysterious feelings which he was reported to entertain towards his mother and nurse! All we can say is, that up to this point in his history the affections of that first-born of Vinland appeared to centre chiefly ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... manifestly usurps what belongs to God. It is for this reason that certain men are called divines: wherefore Isidore says (Etym. viii, 9): "They are called divines, as though they were full of God. For they pretend to be filled with the Godhead, and by a deceitful fraud they forecast ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... the siliceous concretions called Tabashir. Conti also describes the practice in Java of inserting such amulets under the skin. The Malays of Sumatra, too, have great faith in the efficacy of certain "stones, which they pretend are extracted from reptiles, birds, animals, etc., in preventing them from being wounded." (See Mission to Ava, p. 208; Cathay, 94; Conti, p. 32; Proc. As. Soc. Beng. 1868, p. 116; Andarson's Mission to Sumatra, ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... the one which alone can make a poet, in the proper sense of the word, great. Neither pathos nor humor nor fancy nor invention will suffice for that: no poet is great as a poet whom no one could ever pretend to recognize as sublime. Sublimity is the test of imagination as distinguished from invention or from fancy: and the first English poet whose powers can be called sublime ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
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