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Forsooth   Listen
adverb
Forsooth  adv.  In truth; in fact; certainly; very well; formerly used as an expression of deference or respect, especially to woman; now used ironically or contemptuously. "A fit man, forsooth, to govern a realm!" "Our old English word forsooth has been changed for the French madam."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Forsooth" Quotes from Famous Books



... knowledge of this passage, Master, or ignorance of everything else, that made certain of the common steadfast dunces of our days speak of thee as if thou hadst been a starveling, neglected poetaster, jealous forsooth of Maitre Francoys Rabelais? See how ignorantly M. Fleury writes, who teaches French literature withal to them of Muscovy, and hath indited a Life of Rabelais. "Rabelais etait revetu d'un emploi honorable; Ronsard etait ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang

... wished to delude me up unknown steps to the battlements and up to other battlements on the top of the church tower—it was raining heavily, and the gray clouds lying on the house tops, you could hardly have seen across two streets—to see the view forsooth; then he volunteered to set the bells ringing in my honor, but I declined. He then told me of the bells—it was new to me; it may not be new to others. They were—well—taken without leave from Italy. The Italian who cast them pilgrimed over the world in search of them. Sailing up the ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall

... decline is due, we believe, more than anything else, to an ignoring of the Holy Spirit as the supreme inspirer of preaching. We wish to see a great orator in the pulpit, forgetting that the least expounder of the word, when filled with the Holy Ghost, is greater than he. We want the gospel, forsooth; but in the strenuous demand that it be set forth according to the "spirit of the age" we ignore the supremacy of the "Spirit of God." And the method of discourse soon tells upon the matter. We cannot very long have the truth in the pulpit ...
— The Ministry of the Spirit • A. J. Gordon

... night. Ah, ha! my little plan can't possibly fail now. And to-morrow, my pretty Egyptian kitten, your little velvet paw will be fast in a trap set by the poor despised eunuch, who was not allowed, forsooth, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... what the dogs said, 'Why did you not give us our food? No sooner did we come near than you drove us away, and the stick was always within reach when you were eating, because, forsooth, we were not able to talk. Now we will use our teeth and eat you,' said the ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton

... survival, utterly incongruous with the fundamental principles of our conception of the Christian Church. And yet here it is, devastating our churches to-day, and making hundreds of good people perfectly comfortable, in an unscriptural and unchristian indolence, because, forsooth, it is the minister's business to preach the Gospel. I know that there is not nearly as much of that indolence as there used to be. Thank God for that. There are far more among our congregations than in former ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... of old; and he had an eye to them only as outward signs of a spiritual grace, and means to it. "Ceremonies indeed!" said he once; "do you think they are a mere matter of silken robes and jade omaments? Music forsooth! Can music be a mere thing of drums and bells?"—Or of harps, lutes, dulcimers, sackbuts, psalteries, and all kinds of instruments, he might have added; all of which, together with all rites, postures, pacings, and offerings, were nothing to him unless channels through which the divine ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... thy belly shall be satisfied; thy back will be clothed thereby. Let him receive thine heart, that thine house may flourish and thine honour—if thou wish it to flourish—thereby. He shall extend thee a kindly hand. Further, he shall implant the love of thee in the bodies of thy friends. Forsooth, it is a soul ...
— The Instruction of Ptah-Hotep and the Instruction of Ke'Gemni - The Oldest Books in the World • Battiscombe G. Gunn

... both on earth and in heaven; for I say to you that earth and heaven are not two but one; and this one is that which ye know, and are each one of you a part of, to wit, the Holy Church, and in each one of you dwelleth the life of the Church, unless ye slay it. Forsooth, brethren, will ye murder the Church any one of you, and go forth a wandering man and lonely, even as Cain did who slew his brother? Ah, my brothers, what an evil doom is this, to be an outcast from ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris

... upon the writer because he assisted in robbing this churchman of his horses. For him there was no choice; and if he is chargeable with moral depravity, it must be elsewhere,—forsooth, in joining with one who made war unprovided with a military chest sufficient to cover expenses. However, this is no matter, one way or the other. The private character of the relator, Samuel Absalom, is not before the reader; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various

... I am forgotten, forsooth, because I do not bathe myself in tears; because I keep my head cool and preserve my strength. Was it not Passerose, after all, who got you out of that terrible ...
— Old French Fairy Tales • Comtesse de Segur

... drearily, then in a moment turned shrew again. "He never knew what people were saying?" she cried. "You little fool, do you suppose he cared? 'Twas you that played your cards all wrong with your Governor's ball last night!—setting up for a lady, forsooth!—bringing all the town about your ears! You might have known that he would never have taken you there in his senses. At Fair View things went very well. He was entertained,—and I meant to see that no harm came of it,—and Darden got his support in ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston

... buildings and man's dwellings are but toys. I thought of that when I rowed across the river Phasis, and drank coffee at Poti on the site of Colchis. That Black Sea and that river were the same which Jason sailed with his heroes; and the Golden Fleece, those children's toy, has now, forsooth, become ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham

... stalwart men who fronted one another, stripped to trousers and shoes, there was not so much to choose. Woodhull perhaps had the better of it by a few pounds in weight, and forsooth looked less slouchy out of his clothes than in them. His was the long and sinewy type of muscle. He was in ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough

... the Yankee threat to suppress the Cigarette? Ten dollars tax per thousand—as the French would say, par mille— Is the scheme proposed, forsooth, to protect the Yankee youth From poisons just discovered in his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, May 21, 1892 • Various

... you live on the produce of the theft, and the bribe for the assassination! That is the broad fact—that is the practical meaning of your foreign loans, and of most large interest of money; and then you quarrel with Bishop Colenso, forsooth, as if he denied the Bible, and you believed it! though, wretches as you are, every deliberate act of your lives is a new defiance of its primary orders; and as if, for most of the rich men of England at this moment, it were not indeed to be desired, as the best thing at least ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... and he said that in the interests of peace and holy charity he would agree on a compromise. He had forsooth to keep his vow and let the lady stop, but she had two outstretched arms and there was always abundance of family washing on hand in the daytime at all events. The clergy of all denominations agreed that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 21st, 1920 • Various

... own hands," he said to himself. "The daughter is governed entirely by the mother, whom she adores. And she must appear to act from her own free will and for her own pleasure, in order to obtain the consent of her father, who, forsooth, will sacrifice his own family ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth

... her heart; but instead of sighing, pining, and twanging her guitar to love-sick ditties, she would fly into so violent a rage at her own folly that nothing might quell the disturbance until fairly worn out by its own vehemency. No one suspected the truth—yes, one forsooth—gentle reader, canst thou guess? It was no less a personage than our one-shouldered friend Timothy Dodge! How the cunning rogue had contrived to get at the secret is more than we dare tell. Sure enough he had it; and as certain too that ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... her soldiers and seamen, They are worthy forsooth of their hire. If the father won praise from all free men, Shall the sons not exult in their sire? Let money make sunny And power make proud their lives, And feed them and breed them ...
— A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... the primitive Rome, and to transform a people which has exhibited in language, polity, and religion, a pure and national development such as few have equalled, into a confused aggregate of Etruscan and Sabine, Hellenic and, forsooth! even Pelasgian fragments. ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... his disease at the height, hee hath at that instant taken Tobacco, and afterward his disease taking the naturall course of declining, and consequently the patient of recouering his health, O then the Tobacco forsooth, was the worker of that miracle. Beside that, it is a thing well knowen to all Physicians, that the apprehension and conceit of the patient hath by wakening and vniting the vitall spirits, and so strengthening nature, a great power and vertue, to cure diuers diseases. ...
— A Counter-Blaste to Tobacco • King James I.

... "Will they, forsooth?" he exclaimed, striking his fist on the table. "The time has passed for that. I'll tell you what, sir, they'll fight it out till every drop of honest blood is spilt in the country. It was the supercilious, boasting airs of your lords and aristocrats who came out among the military ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston

... made sure provision? Are the heavens to blaze with the fires of the last day, thunders to roll as if earth were shaken to her centre, the entrails of dumb beasts to utter forth terrific prophecy of great and impending wo, because, forsooth, the people of Rome are by no means patterns of purity—because, perchance, within the temples themselves, an immorality may have been purposed, or perpetrated—because, even the priests themselves have not been, or are not, white and spotless as ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware

... "Nay, forsooth," cried the pedlar, clapping his hands upon the shoulders of the nobleman. "And thou wilt forget thy debts it behoves ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday

... people do not think as Bishops Gardiner and Bonner, or, forsooth, as the Queen's majesty herself, or perchance there might be as many burnings and hangings in fair England as there have been in the Netherlands. We cannot stop the tide altogether, but we can help to quell its ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston

... have the cross carved on them, without knowing by whom; they are excited by the earth which draws the crucifix in its fruit called Nicefo." Yet all these things are of little force to move the hearts of those Gentiles who scoffingly cry, "When we are sick, forsooth, the wood of this cross will cure us!" Another father, resolving to denounce certain heathen practices, placed on the Feast of Purification an image of the Virgin in relievo upon the altar, and "with ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... die, one and all, than do aught but adore the incomparable beauty of their strange Goddess. Others again, held that two wizards, leaders of certain slaves of a strange race, wanderers from the desert, settled in Tanis, whom they called the Apura, caused all these sorrows by art-magic. As if, forsooth, said the pilot, those barbarian slaves were more powerful than all the priests of Egypt. But for his part, the pilot knew nothing, only that if the Divine Hathor were angry with the people of Tanis it was hard that she must plague all the land ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang

... every moment watched and calculated, here at the mouth of the Hudson, in sight of the colossal statue of Liberty, we are kept waiting under a broiling sun on a beautiful day for an unconscionable time whilst forsooth the health officer or his subordinate is enjoying his lunch. Fancy 1,700 foreigners being kept waiting because a paid official—paid by the shipowners of England—wishes ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss

... makes a place for himself by hard work, beginning at the bottom. If, on the other hand, circumstances are such that he can secure an education, then he passes by business, manufacturing, transportation, finance; he must forsooth become a doctor, a lawyer, a preacher, an editor, or an engineer. The question of vocation is thus, all too often, decided by the incident of education and ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb

... When through the shrubs with footsteps light To the castle I am stealing. In the garden waves the linden-tree, I climb to its green bower, And from the leafy canopy My song soars to the tower: "Young Werner is the happiest youth In the German Empire dwelling, But who bewitched him thus, forsooth, In words he won't be telling. Hurrah! is all that he will say, How lovely is the month of May, Dear love, I ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel

... "Forsooth, and if it please your Majesty," said De Vaux, "I hear consultations have been held among the royal leaders for some ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott

... forsooth, only in very minor matters that Evelyn profited by the royal favour or by his courtiership. In April, 1666, Charles informed him that he must now be sworn for a Justice of the Peace, ('the office in the world I had most industriously avoided, in regard of the perpetual trouble thereoff ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn

... king; Sindolt was cupbearer, a chosen knight; Hunolt served as chamberlain; well they wot how to fill these lofty stations. Of the forces of the court and its far-reaching might, of the high worship (18) and of the chivalry these lords did ply with joy throughout their life, of this forsooth none might relate to you ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown

... thou seen his Bacchus, or his battle-fresco? Knowest thou the later work of Raffaello? And what sayest thou to our Fra Lippo Lippi? A Christian monk he, forsooth! What sayest thou to Giorgione of Venice and his pupils, to this efflorescence of loveliness, to our statuaries and our builders, to our goldsmiths and musicians? Ah, we have rediscovered the secret of Greece. It is Homer that we love, it is Plato, it is the noble simplicity ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... the Macedonians, and by your fear of this Pyrrhus, who used formerly to dance attendance on one of Alexander's bodyguards,[42] and who has now wandered hither not so much in order to assist the Greeks in Italy as to escape from his enemies at home, and promises to be our friend and protector forsooth, when the army he commands did not suffice to keep for him the least portion of that Macedonia which he once acquired. Do not imagine that you will get rid of this man by making a treaty with him. Rather you will encourage other Greek princes to invade ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long

... fast, my sons," said the Father; "tarry a bit, I have more to say to thee. Prayers and provender, thou knowst—I'll come anon. So, sir, didst say yonder beggarly Flemings haggle at thy price for thy Southdown fleeces. Weight of dirt forsooth! Do not we wash the sheep in the Poolhole stream, the purest water ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... years, as the serious one thing needful, By the barbarian will of the rigid and ignorant Spaniard. Curious work, meantime, re-entering society: how we Walk a livelong day, great Heaven, and watch our shadows! What our shadows seem, forsooth, we will ourselves be. Do I look like that? you think me ...
— Amours de Voyage • Arthur Hugh Clough

... evening. "What he will want is a lodging where he can have frequent sight and speech of you. How I dread him! How I resent his sharing of you with us! I don't know why I use the word 'sharing,' forsooth! There is nothing half so fair and just in his majesty's greedy mind. Well, it's the way of the world; only it is odd, with the universe of women to choose from, that he must needs take you. Strathdee seems the most desirable place for him, if he has a macintosh and rubber boots. Inchcaldy ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... possible during my father's death and funeral," he thought, "and now half choking himself, forsooth, because his fortune's made, and he must leave his relations. I trust and hope, with all my heart, that Dorothea is not at the bottom of this! I supposed his nerves to ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow

... King Agamemnon: "What is thy quarrel with me? Why blamest thou me if thou couldst not rule thy wife? And now to win back this woman, because forsooth she is fair, thou castest aside both reason and honor. And I, if I had an ill purpose and now have changed it for that which is wiser, dost thou charge me with folly? Let them that sware the oath to Tyndareus ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various

... pee-chid-aby, pee-chid-aby, on wavy lines of flight, upon the last days of August, just ere taking wing for warmer climes; the imitative cat-birds that built in the alders along the road across the meadow, whose nests the boys held it lawful to destroy because, forsooth, "they sucked other birds' eggs," a false accusation rendered plausible, perhaps, from their disagreeable feline squalls, and not wholly ingenuous imitations of the songs of the thrush, the veery and ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens

... the discussion of it, art, politics, literature, philosophy, and religion. It is a well-known fact that this humbugging comedian had written the Ring of the Nibelungs before he absorbed the Schopenhauerian doctrines, and then altered the entire scheme so as to imbue—forsooth!—his music with pessimism. ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker

... mind, forsooth, would deign To stoop so low to hearken to my lore, Then wouldst thou with trim lovers not disdeign To adorn the outside, set the best before. Nor rub nor wrinkle would thy verses spoil Thy rymes should run as glib and ...
— Democritus Platonissans • Henry More

... basket! Thou hast as much grace as the holy bull of Shiv. He has taken the best of a basket of onions already, this morn; and forsooth, I must fill thy bowl. He ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling

... republic with the sanctions of religion. We ought to be strangers to fear. What do you mean by interposing the veto? says he, what are all these sanctions of religion which you are talking about? Those, forsooth, on which the safety of the republic depends. We are neglecting those things, and thinking them too old-fashioned and foolish. The forum will be surrounded, every entrance of it will be blocked up, armed men will be placed in garrison, as it were, at many ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero

... The trunk we were at was half filled with all sorts of cunning devices for kitchen use, intended for the mistress's pantry of that commodious station home of past ignorant imagination. A mistress's pantry forsooth, in a land where houses are superfluous and luxuries barred, and at a homestead where the mistress had long ceased to be anything but the little missus—something to rule or educate or take care of, according to the nature ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn

... Edwards. "What do you mean by this. If you do not instantly go, I will arrest you myself. See my daughter, forsooth! Get out of here, fellow!" and he made a threatening step forward, and then fell back again, for though Perez' attitude of appeal was unchanged, he looked terribly ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy

... open than a great basilica like Trinity Church. At least, you are not pained with sympathy for homelessness in the case of a man so richly endowed. To be so pained would be like shivering on behalf of the sun, because, forsooth, the sun had nothing to make him warm and bright. Phillips Brooks in Trinity Church is like the sun in its sphere. Still, and were it not impertinent, I could even wish for Phillips Brooks an every-day home, such as would be worthy ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller

... some lesser criminal to his weary tread-mill, struggling with no hope but not to fall! Make a home, lad, for the woman who loves you; gather one or two friends about you; work, think, and play, that will bring you happiness. Shun this roaring gingerbread fair that calls itself, forsooth, the 'World of art and letters.' Let its clowns and its contortionists fight among themselves for the plaudits and the halfpence of the mob. Let it be with its shouting and its surging, its blare and its cheap flare. Come away, the summer's night is just ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome

... sight dismayed him greatly, as he never had seen such a sight before. Incontinently he demanded of those who were with him what thing that was? and then they told him it was a dead man. "How, then," quoth the king's son, "do all men die?" "Yea, forsooth," said they. Whereupon the young gentleman said never a word, but rode on right pensively. And after he had ridden a good way he fell in with a very aged man who could no longer walk, and had not a tooth in his head, having ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... this my anger overflowed like water in a boiling pot. "What!" I cried, "when all is settled and the predicant has ridden for two days to do the thing, is the marriage to be put off because forsooth this little black idiot declares that she sees things on bits of glass in a bowl, and because you, Jan, who ought to know better, take the lie from her lips and make it your own? I say that I am mistress here and that I will not allow ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard

... the free choice of a foreign servant is a horrible enormity, forsooth, PROVIDED you begin the violence after he has come among you. But if you commit the first act, on the other side of the line; if you begin the outrage by buying him from a third person against his ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... carry this any farther, or to say a word in defence of the doctrine which Mrs. Dudevant has found "incomplete";—here, at least, is not the place for discussing its merits, any more than Mrs. Sand's book was the place for exposing, forsooth, its errors: our business is only with the day and the new novels, and the clever or silly people who write them. Oh! if they but knew their places, and would keep to them, and drop their absurd philosophical jargon! ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... happy the host of the kinsmen In game and in glee, until one night began, A fiend out of hell-pit, the framing of evil, And Grendel forsooth the grim guest was hight, The mighty mark-strider the holder of moorland, The fen ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck

... example of the exception to the rule. Excluded, I became the last of my race. I was the last candy in the box—just as full of sugar as those that had been devoured, but condemned to rattle in solitude because, forsooth, chocolate creams are preferred to gum-drops. Chilled by a want of sympathetic appreciation while mingling with my fellows, I had gradually withdrawn to the scholarly cloisters of our fifth-story apartment, adjacent to the tin roof, which so fascinated the summer sun, and far above the ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent

... beneath which his stepson was crouching, and said angrily: 'It's a dog's life now-a-days. On one's legs day and night, always in danger, and never a kreuzer[1] by way of reward. All for the fatherland, forsooth, say the patriots! I am my own fatherland, and I keep my patriotism in my purse. Ever since the fat citizens and journeymen took to cutting about the streets with their pop-guns, they are all grown such big men that if one ...
— The Young Carpenters of Freiberg - A Tale of the Thirty Years' War • Anonymous

... she, "we must never wish for the impossible. Had it been God's will that such a tie should unite us in this life, would He, forsooth, have imposed these burdens upon me which make me incapable of being else than a helpless child? Do not forget that what we call Fate, Circumstance, Relations, in life, is in reality only the work of Providence. To resist it is to resist God himself, and were it not so ...
— Memories • Max Muller

... of all sorts of wicked enterprises; and that befalls us, which Thucydides said of the civil wars of his time, that, in favour of public vices, they gave them new and more plausible names for their excuse, sweetening and disguising their true titles; which must be done, forsooth, to reform our ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... heterodox stuff ought to be hanged," says Barnabas. "Sir," said he, turning to Adams, "this fellow's writings (I know not whether you have seen them) are levelled at the clergy. He would reduce us to the example of the primitive ages, forsooth! and would insinuate to the people that a clergyman ought to be always preaching and praying. He pretends to understand the Scripture literally; and would make mankind believe that the poverty and low estate which was recommended to the Church in its infancy, and was only temporary ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding

... and half a page more. Terry arrived and brought with him a Mr. Bruce, from Persia, with an introduction, forsooth, from Mr. Blackwood. I will move a quo warranto against this species of introduction; and the good gentleman is to be here, he informs me, for two days. He is a dark, foreign-looking man, of small stature, and rather blunt manners, which may ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... hammers' leaving; {37a} and that flier-afar had fallen to ground hushed by its hurt, its hoard all near, no longer lusty aloft to whirl at midnight, making its merriment seen, proud of its prizes: prone it sank by the handiwork of the hero-king. Forsooth among folk but few achieve, — though sturdy and strong, as stories tell me, and never so daring in deed of valor, — the perilous breath of a poison-foe to brave, and to rush on the ring-board hall, whenever his watch the warden ...
— Beowulf • Anonymous

... never sound any thing to the depth. Was it not thou that scoff'dst the Organon, And said it was a heape of vanities? He that will be a flat decotamest, And seen in nothing but Epitomies: Is in your judgment thought a learned man. And he forsooth must goe and preach in Germany: Excepting against Doctors actions, And ipse dixi with this quidditie, Argumentum testimonis est in arte partialis. To contradict which, I say Ramus shall dye: How answere you that? your nego argumentum Cannot serve, ...
— Massacre at Paris • Christopher Marlowe

... snouting swine! Saw you not yon crowd of whimpering idiots flying helter-skelter like chaff before the wind, weeping, wailing, and bemoaning their miserable little sins, scattering dust on their addled pates, and howling on their gods for mercy,—all forsooth! because for once in their unobserving lives they behold the river red instead of green! Ay me! 'tis a thing to laugh at, this crass, and brutish ignorance of the multitude,—no teaching will ever cleanse ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... whining youth, Forsooth! Go, weep and wail, Sigh and grow pale, Weave melancholy rhymes On the old times, Whose joys like shadowy ghosts appear,— But leave me to my beer! Gold is dross, Love is loss; So, if I gulp my sorrows down, Or see them drown In foamy draughts of old nut-brown, Then do I wear ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various

... thus ere thus she did expect, Fell on her humble knees, and did her fearful hands erect: She blushed out beauty, whilst the tears did wash her pleasing face, And begged pardon, meriting no less of common grace. 'So far, forsooth, as in me lay, I did,' quoth she, 'withstand; But what may not so great a king by means or force command?' 'And dar'st thou, minion,' quoth the queen, 'thus article to me?' . . . . . . . . . . With that she dashed her on the lips, so dyed double red: Hard was the heart that gave ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 232, April 8, 1854 • Various

... and it proved to be the sheriff, or some fellow of that persuasion. He came to make it warm for us because, forsooth, we showed without a license. And this, mind you, in what we regard as a free country. Ye gods! Well, be that as it may, you can readily see we were in a bad box, and how to get out of it was the perplexing problem that ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville

... to Friedel, not in a lower tone probably):—"'the Kammergerichts-Tribunal confirms the same. That is highly unjust; and such Sentence is altogether contrary to his Majesty's landsfatherly intentions:—my name [you give it, "In the King's Name," forsooth] cruelly abused!'" ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... bondage. "It pleaseth us well," said they, "to have a king, for he is a man even as we are, from whom we may ask and obtain what we will, be it right or wrong, who can have a favour and do kindness, can be angry or have compassion, whereas laws are deaf and not to be turned by prayers, being better forsooth for the poor than for ...
— Stories From Livy • Alfred Church

... look came into Maggie's face. She threw back her head and glanced full at Aneta. "I go with you," she said, "just because you ask me, forsooth! You forget yourself, Queen Aneta. I also am a ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade

... old knave is right. Accursed be the day when the genius of invention thrilled your sublime brain! A grand discovery you have made, forsooth! What have I gained from it? Grand illusions, grand discomfitures! What hath it availed me that I passed whole nights discussing with you breech-loaders, screw-plates, tumbrels, sockets, bridges, ovoid balls, and spring-locks? ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez

... ages of outrage, misery, and slaughter—of the countless hecatombs that Mammon is hereby absolved from having directly exacted, since the sufficing expiatory outcome of it all has been only "marks of courtesy and good breeding"! Marks that are displayed, forsooth, by the survivors of the ghastly experiences or by [154] their descendants! And yet, granting the appreciable ethical value of the hat-touching, the smirking and curtseyings of those Blacks to persons whom they had ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas

... Prussian king's birthday; on which my uncle would get drunk: as indeed on any other occasion. Most of the low fellows enlisted with myself were, of course, Papists (the English army was filled with such, out of that never-failing country of ours), and these, forsooth, were fighting the battles of Protestantism with Frederick; who was belabouring the Protestant Swedes and the Protestant Saxons, as well as the Russians of the Greek Church, and the Papist troops of the Emperor and the King of France. It was against these latter that ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray

... deliberate folly and madness of fighting under such circumstances? But our time was come. We were at variance within ourselves: Irish intriguers and French politics were too predominant in our councils. These gentlemen, forsooth, considered themselves as to be but prisoners of war, whilst every other individual were fighting with halters round their necks. General appearances upon the field of battle were much against us. No line was as yet formed; the men were standing ...
— The Jacobite Rebellions (1689-1746) - (Bell's Scottish History Source Books.) • James Pringle Thomson

... learned that the passes were threatened, when in August the consul Publius Scipio returned without his army from Massilia to Italy, and perhaps even then they gave little heed to the matter, because, forsooth, the foolhardy attempt would be frustrated by the Alps alone. Thus at the decisive hour and on the decisive spot there was not even a Roman outpost. Hannibal had full time to rest his army, to capture after a ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... collected a vast quantity of useless trash, and had it thrown into the pond behind the house. Well, when he cleared the decks next time, if he did not miss the old broken crockery, all of which, he said, he meant to mend with white lead on rainy days; while the broken bottles, forsooth, he had saved to put on the top of the brick wall, to hinder the little boys from climbing over to steal the apples! Oh, dear, dear, dear! there was no end to his bawling, and swearing, and calling me hard names, while he had the ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie

... "little friend," the artless consciousness in which tormented genius may find an escape from its complexities; and instead, she had dramatized their relation, exaggerated her own part in it, presumed, forsooth, to share the front of the stage with him, instead of being content to ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton

... properly. But I had to do every stroke of the actual work myself. The women merely helped me by holding the various parts in place while I bored the holes or drove the nails; and Julius positively refused to lend the slightest assistance, because, forsooth, he had not been consulted during the preparation of the plans! He would sit smoking cigarettes and fishing, and watch, unmoved, his mother and sister, to say nothing of the two stewardesses, straining themselves ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood

... a man is Cap'en Cuttle,' said Mrs MacStinger, with a sharp stress on the first syllable of the Captain's name, 'to take on for—and to lose sleep for—and to faint along of—and to think dead forsooth—and to go up and down the blessed town like a madwoman, asking questions after! Oh, a pretty sort of a man! Ha ha ha ha! He's worth all that trouble and distress of mind, and much more. That's nothing, bless you! Ha ha ha ha! Cap'en Cuttle,' said Mrs MacStinger, with severe ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... incomparable labours and perils? Certainly nought else but that for his great merit immortality might be given him of all folk.... Why moved and stirred Phalerius the King Ptolemy oft and diligently to read books? Forsooth for no other cause but that those things are found written in books that the friends dare not show to the prince[46]." This is of course far from being the full-blown euphuism of Lyly or Pettie, yet we cannot but agree with Mr Lee, when he declares that "the parallelism of the ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson

... poverty is the most fertile source of population, and that in every neglected and ill-regulated state of society, they invariably reproduce each other; but the landlords kept the people poor, and now they are surprised, forsooth, at their poverty and the existence of a ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... act now, immediately among ourselves, in Russia, at this moment, when our foes have already attacked us, are killing our people, and threatening us; what should be the action," I shall be asked, "of a Russian soldier, officer, general, Tsar, private individual? Are we, forsooth, to allow our enemies to ruin our possessions, to seize the productions of our labors, to carry away prisoners, or kill our men? What are we to do now that this ...
— "Bethink Yourselves" • Leo Tolstoy

... grasses and the growth of the ground. So Iskandar sent a man to summon their King, but he refused to come, saying, "I have no need of him." Thereupon Iskandar went to him and said, "How is it with you and what manner of men are ye?; for I see with you forsooth naught of gold or silver, nor find I with you aught of the weals of the world." Answered the King, "None hath his fill of the weals of the world." Iskandar then asked "Why do you dig your graves before your house-doors?"; ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... though unique. If he summed up these others, he sized up himself to her, and by what judgment he taught her to judge them she would judge him when the time came. If he taught her to turn from Kent or Height she would turn from him, when she knew him entirely, as she surely would soon. And, forsooth, how would he prove to her that he was a better man than the copper-headed tango lizard, Height, though he knew himself to be? And who was this girl, anyway, to come out of a little back-woods town where the standards of life were so narrow that all ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess

... meet again," ran Betty's thoughts. "'Betty,' forsooth! How dare he use my name so freely! What would Mrs. Seymour have thought had she heard him, and how could I possibly have explained with any air of truth unless I told her the whole story—which I would ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln

... without a king, laws without a legislator, a machine without a master. An Atheist is a public enemy. He would not only destroy the state but wreck society. He would render life not worth the living. He would rob us of our garden roses and fill our hands with artificial flowers. And why? Because, forsooth, he finds that some articles of religious faith are impossible fables. He sits down with a microscope to examine the tables of the law for tracks of the finger of him whose sentences are astral fire. He finds a foolish contradiction in ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... dollars, and pull down the great fabric of a rich man's fortune? Thy power I now invoke, thou little minister of vengeance; for I hate the aristocrat who expressed his regret at my escape, because, forsooth! my services were valuable to him!—and now, as the flames of fire consume his worldly possessions, so may the flames of eternal torment ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn

... breakfast in bed; I hate cellar-swagger and scurry. Entertainment indeed! We're as lumpish as lead When we're not on the whirl or the worry. But turn out to-morrow, my BLOGGS? No, not me, Though I know what your "little hints" signify. Your "dear DICK" forsooth! Such a noodle as he The title of "duffer" would dignify You've given up hope about him, and so now You would have us "make room." Not precisely! Till the Tenth, when we're due at Dunclacket, somehow "The Doldrums" will do pretty nicely. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 5, 1891 • Various

... perdy^, in all conscience, upon oath; be assured &c (belief) 484; yes &c (assent) 488; I'll warrant, I'll warrant you, I'll engage, I'll answer for it, I'll be bound, I'll venture to say, I'll take my oath; in fact, forsooth, joking apart; so help me God; not to mince the matter. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... her veil, drained and shaking, the woman crosses the antechamber. Empress! Empress! Foolish splendour, perished to dust. Ashes of roses, ashes of youth. Empress forsooth! ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell

... make him the Sieur Le Blanc. He is going to live in the castle and grind us under his feet. But"—and the old man shook his head scornfully—"I don't think his life at the castle will be a long one! A rascally lawyer to be our master, forsooth!" ...
— For The Admiral • W.J. Marx

... bread, forsooth! Thou talkest of dainties indeed! Thou wilt get nothing better than ...
— Dramatic Reader for Lower Grades • Florence Holbrook

... goods," said the Knight; "God hath shapen such an end,— But my children and my wife, Till God it may amend!" "In what manner," said ROBIN, "Hast thou lost thy riches?" "For my great folly," he said, "And for my kindness! I had a son, forsooth, ROBIN! That should have been my heir: When he was twenty winters old, In field would joust full fair. He slew a Knight of Lancashire And a Squire bold. For to save him in his right My goods be set and sold, My lands be set to wed, ROBIN! Until a certain ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various

... husband pulled him out of the mud by the ears," growled Marfa Timofeevna, the needles moving quicker than ever under her fingers. "He looks so humble," she began anew after a time. "His head is quite grey, and yet he never opens his mouth but to lie or to slander. And, forsooth, he is a councillor of state! Ah, well, to be sure, he is a ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

... could hear the veins throbbing under his ear impetuously. Once or twice as he rode on in the declining afternoon he muttered to himself. Now it was: "My Lord Rippingdale, indeed!" or "Not even for a King!" or "Sir John Enderby, forsooth! Sir John Enderby, forsooth!" Once again he spoke, reining in his horse beside a tall cross at four corners, near Stickford by the East Fen. Taking off ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... Story indeed! fit for no body but the Devil to put into any Man's Head; But so it is, B being put in mind, forsooth, that he is a Man of Honour, starts back and must act the honourable Part; so he lets A get up, put on his Clothes and take his Sword; then they fight, and B is kill'd for his Honour; whereas had the Laws of God, of Nature and of Reason taken Place, the Adulterer and the Adulteress ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe

... had you skill In speech—(which I have not)—to make your will Quite clear to such an one, and say, "Just this Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss, Or there exceed the mark"—and if she let Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse, —E'en then would be some stooping; and I choose Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt, Whene'er I passed her; but who passed without Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands; Then all ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry

... acknowledge quite so fast I fail of all your manhood's lofty tastes Enumerated so complacently, On the mere ground that you forsooth can find In this particular life I choose to lead No fit provision for them. Can you not? Say you, my fault is I address myself To grosser estimators than should judge? And that's no way of holding up the soul, 370 ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning

... drosse, and the grosse felycitie of fooles, was taken notwithstanding a little after verie fairely coining monie in his cell: so fares it vp and down with our cinicall reformed forraine Churches, they will disgest no grapes of great Bishoprikes forsooth, because they cannot tell how to come by them, they must shape their cotes good men according to their cloth, and doe as they may, not as they woulde, yet they must giue vs leaue heere in England that are their honest neighbours, if wee haue more cloth than they, to ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash

... fanatical, expression, was a strong movement at Alexandria in Philo's day. Preparatory to the spread of Christianity, numerous sects sprang up there which purported to follow a spiritual Judaism wherein the law was abrogated because, forsooth, its symbolism was understood! In the extreme allegorists, whom Philo attacks for their shallowness, one may discern the prototypes of the Cainites, Ophites, Melchizedecians, and the rest of the heretical parties ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich

... Woman's helplessness, forsooth! On the contrary, woman is the best equipped fighting machine that ever went to battle. And she is this, not from any sufferance on the part of man, not from any consideration on his part toward her "weakness," but merely because ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne

... Lincoln, which have all the weight of a political axiom: "No man can be safely trusted to govern other men without their consent." The contention that a class who constitute half the population of a State shall be entirely unrepresented in its councils, because, forsooth, their will there expressed may affect the government of another class of the same general population, is as repugnant to justice and human rights as was the institution of slavery itself. Such a condition of affairs has not the melodramatic and soul-stirring incidents ...
— Frederick Douglass - A Biography • Charles Waddell Chesnutt

... the awful accusation of "free-lover" hurled at the young woman who has, what the world calls, "sinned," because, forsooth, she pays the price of her deviation from social standards (when discovered) by ostracism, and not infrequently by a broken heart, or by sinking further into the depths of bondage; and so here again it is evident that there is no freedom for whatever ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad

... wage as a cog in a meaningless machine is no condition upon which to found civilization. That is a new kind of revolt—more dangerous to capitalism than the demand for higher wages. You can not treat the syndicalists like cattle because forsooth they have ceased to be cattle. "The damned wantlessness of the poor," about which Oscar Wilde complained, the cry for a little more fodder, gives way to an insistence upon the chance ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann

... are a present from my first Adorable;—on the knowledge of which I discarded him.—No, no, Mr. Morgan; you are not a jewel of yourself neither.—Lady Darcey would have wore quite a morning dishabille, if the vain old Gentleman had not requested the contrary:—so forsooth, to humour him, we must be all ...
— Barford Abbey • Susannah Minific Gunning

... that all these debts will fall back on your shoulders. Oh! curses on the go-between who made me marry your mother! I lived so happily in the country, a commonplace, everyday life, but a good and easy one—had not a trouble, not a care, was rich in bees, in sheep and in olives. Then forsooth I must marry the niece of Megacles, the son of Megacles; I belonged to the country, she was from the town; she was a haughty, extravagant woman, a true Coesyra.[476] On the nuptial day, when I lay beside ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al

... fact of his teaching a negro school should be no bar. Think, for example, of people admiring David Livingstone, and then turning up their noses at a teacher, not because he is bad, or ignorant, or ill-bred, nor yet even because he is a negro, but, forsooth, because he teaches a negro school! There is a very large intimation of 'sham' in this distinction without a difference. It is utterly absurd. May it not also be sinful?" We commend this problem to the good Christian people among whom our ...
— The American Missionary—Volume 39, No. 02, February, 1885 • Various

... showed, and then only to one or two of his fellow- students. Possibly he wrote only to prove to himself that he could do that also, for he never doubted his faculty in any direction. When he went to Edinburgh—to learn theology, forsooth!—he was already an accomplished mathematician, and a yet better classic, with some predilections for science, and a very small knowledge of the same: his books showed for the theology, and for the science, an occasional ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald

... removed his conscientious objections to matrimony, he could not condescend to marry for love, but must, forsooth, choose his wife in obedience to considerations of compassion and mercy. Loving her younger sister, he paid his addresses to Jane, because he shrunk from the injustice of putting the junior above the older of the two girls. "Sir Thomas having determined, by the advice and direction ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson

... even the best, have resisted the world as we ought to have done. Our faces have not been like flints; we have been afraid of men's words, and dismayed at their looks, and we have yielded to them at times against our better judgment. We have fancied, forsooth, the world could do us some harm while we kept to the commandments of God. Let us search our consciences; let us look back on our past lives. Let us try to purify and cleanse our hearts in God's sight. ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII (of 8) • John Henry Newman

... deceived," quoth he. "For the most part all princes have more delights in warlike matters and feats of chivalry than in the good feats of peace." Then he speaking of England, "Have you been in our country, sir?" quoth I. "Yea, forsooth," quoth he, "and there was I much bound and beholden to John Norton, at that time cardinal, archbishop, and Lord Chancellor, in whose counsel ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various

... was vaguely conscious, and perhaps slightly resentful, of this compelling quality in his new-found crony. Oft-times it had quelled him for an instant during some stubbornly contested argument, though he raged at himself just as often for yielding to it, as if, forsooth, he were one of those patient, animal-like, Chinese coolies of whose courage and endurance Curtis spoke so admiringly. Yet he was drawn to the man, and clung to ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy

... of your own ideals, your own little code framed and moulded with your own hands. What do you know of sin or of purity, you, who have held yourself aloof from the world with a sort of delicate care, as though you, forsooth, were too precious a thing to be soiled with the dust of human passion and human love! That is where you are all wrong. That is where you make your great mistake. You have judged without experience. You speak of a soul which may be stained with sin; you have no more knowledge ...
— Berenice • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... having nothing very particular to do, he strolled in the direction of her lodging, and saw Gibbie go into the house. Having seen him in, he was next seized with the desire to see him out again; having lain in wait for him as a beneficent brownie, he must now watch him as a profligate baronet forsooth! To haunt the low street until he should issue was a dreary prospect—in the east wind of a March night, which some giant up above seemed sowing with great handfuls of rain-seed; but having made up his mind, he stood his ground. ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald

... Darrell does not choose to marry and have sons of his own, he has no right to load a poor boy with benefits, and say: 'There is but one way to prove your gratitude; remember my ancestors, and be miserable for the rest of your days!' Darrell, forsooth, intends to leave to Lionel the transmission of the old Darrell name; and the old Darrell name must not be tarnished by the marriage on which Lionel has unluckily set his heart! I respect the old name; but it is not like the House of Vipont—a British Institution. And if some democratical ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... what he was doing he replied, gravely, 'For the last six months I've been making a study of the parasites in the abdomen of the flea!'" Here Clarke's sneering laugh broke out. "Yet that man despised me—called me a fool—because I, forsooth, was intent on the laws which govern the return of the dead." His laugh died, he became very earnest and very sincere. "Now, men of science, all we ask of you is to apply your precision of handling to subjects a little more worth ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland

... and as they have not a grain of fact to found their fictions upon, they fabricate pure inventions. Judge Erle must, I think, have made up his story expressly for a hoax; the other fib is amazing—so circumstantial! called on the author, forsooth! Where did he live, I wonder? In what purlieu of Cockayne? Here I must stop, lest if I run on further I should fill another ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter

... and double-winded idiot!—dost thou, whom for thine iniquities it has pleased heaven to accurse with a two-fold respimtion—dost thou, I say, presume to address me in the familiar language of an old acquaintance?—'I lie,' forsooth! and 'hold my tongue,' to be sure!—pretty conversation indeed, to a gentleman with a single breath!—all this, too, when I have it in my power to relieve the calamity under which thou dost so justly suffer—to curtail the superfluities ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... with clergymen—excellent thing for the character. We light our cigars from a capital little match-stand modelled out of a golf-ball, and the next instant "Lika Joko" is juggling with three or four balls. A clever juggler, forsooth. And the battledore and shuttlecock? Excellent exercise. After a long spell of work, the battledore is seized and the shuttlecock bounces up to the glass roof. It went through the other day, hence play has been postponed ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... true foresight. They called him a far-seeing man. How did he get that name? Well, he made a fortune. He managed to make use of the ebb and flow of the market, and never once got stranded. He was shrewd and did some good guessing, and now, forsooth, they say he is 'very far-seeing.' But he has not opened his Bible for years, and the fountains of sympathy are dried up in his soul. He can see as far into the money column as most men, but the financial vista is not very satisfying for those who see ...
— The Threshold Grace • Percy C. Ainsworth

... solicit your presumptious suites; You duety may, and shame too, lay aside; Disturbe my privacie, and I forsooth Must be afeard even to be ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various

... May, In a morn by break of day, With a troop of damsels playing Forth I rode, forsooth, a-maying, When anon by a woodside, Where as May was in his pride, I espied, ...
— Pastoral Poems by Nicholas Breton, - Selected Poetry by George Wither, and - Pastoral Poetry by William Browne (of Tavistock) • Nicholas Breton, George Wither, William Browne (of Tavistock)

... pavements; of the crowds in the passenger cars, elevators, lobbies, one wonders little where they are going. Answering advertisements, forsooth. Vertebrate brothers of the codfish. But these others! Ah, one stands on the curb with the vanilla phosphate playing havoc with one's blood and ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht

... away down to the very last grain. The poor man was exceeding wrath thereat, and said, "Come what will, I'll go seek the Wind, and I'll tell him with what pains and trouble I had got my corn to grow and ripen, and then he, forsooth! must needs come and blow ...
— Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales • Anonymous

... "Forsooth, Dad," she said, returning, "perhaps the old son of a—"—something unmannerly—"is not so great a fool. As for me, I mean to make a fine marriage and be a great lady, and I know of none hereabouts ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... government, revenues, and authority. Insomuch that, finding himself discountenanced on those accounts by the then Warden of Wadham, he shifted colledges to Trinity, and, when there, went away without his degree, scrupling, forsooth, the Subscription then required. From thence he came to London, where he spent a considerable time in creeping into all corners and companies, horoscoping up and down concerning the duration of the Government; ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell

... to; but no, it's not your way to take advice. You must keep it forsooth. Perhaps you may carry it out at some other time, forsooth. As if I didn't know better than that! I think I see your pride carrying it out, with a chance of being suspected of having kept it by you. But that's the way you cheat yourself. Just as you cheat yourself ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... enough," replied he, "to see Agesilaus and Epaminondas wallowing in the mire, while the most contemptible rascals who have been initiated are strolling in the islands of bliss!" When Antisthenes was to be initiated, and the priests were boasting of the wonderful benefit to ensue, "Why, forsooth, 'tis wonder your reverence don't hang yourself, in order to come at it sooner," was his remark. When, however, such benefits were expected to be derived from the {35} mysteries, it is no wonder the world crowded to the ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield

... to write severe words about the transgressions committed by men of genius, especially when the censor has the advantage of being himself a man of no genius, so that those transgressions seem to him quite gratuitous; he, forsooth, never lacerated any one by his wit, or gave irresistible piquancy to a coarse allusion, and his indignation is not mitigated by any knowledge of the temptation that lies in transcendent power. We are also apt to measure what ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot

... wooing of the Wind-God heard, Laughed, as a jest, his suit aside, And with one voice they thus replied: "O mighty Wind, free spirit who All life pervadest, through and through, Thy wondrous power we maidens know; Then wherefore wilt thou mock us so? Our sire is Kusanabha, King; And we, forsooth, have charms to bring A God to woo us from the skies; But honour first we maidens prize. Far may the hour, we pray, be hence, When we, O thou of little sense, Our truthful father's choice refuse, And ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... there are the peripatetic lemon squashes. Dawson calls them 'still' lemon squashes because they are made with water, not with soda or seltzer or vichy, but they are particularly badly named. 'Still' forsooth! when one of them will leap from place to place, appearing now in the column of mineral waters and now in the spirits, now in the suppers, and again in the sundries. We might as well drink Chablis or Pommery by the time one of these ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... for them at government expense, while they lounged from the theatre to the church, and the church to the theatre—were plotting with Justin the scoundrel and upstart Emperor at Constantinople, to restore forsooth the liberties of Rome? And that that was their answer to his three and thirty years of good government, respect, indulgence, which had raised them up again out of all the miseries of domestic anarchy and ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley

... utterly selfish, which materialise the soul, debase its tastes, enervate its powers, rendering it incapable of all earnest labours or self-denial, and which incapacitate it from apprehending the purity, the majesty, and the surpassing wonder of spiritual realities. These are the persons who, forsooth! are so much alarmed lest their dear children should become excited about the things which arrest the attention and engage the thoughts of the mighty angels, yea, of Jesus Christ himself. Believe it, that whatever excitement may possibly accompany the commencement of the ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod

... more wisdom and wit than a score of old English folios could together yield to the most devoted reader. Some querulous persons there are who affect to consider the present as a shallow age, because, forsooth, huge volumes of learning—each the labour of a lifetime—are not now produced. But the flood-gates of knowledge are now wide open, and, no longer confined within the old, narrow, if deep, channels, learning has spread abroad, like the Nile during the season of its over-flow. Shallow, it ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston

... why, then, should this sprig of nobility hereafter become a minister of state, or a man in power, knowing the servility of his late tutor, and that he will make a willing tool for the administration to which he belongs, then, forsooth, he is a proper man, and may possibly ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt

... king of that which was being done; and his heart was the more hardened[753] by that by which it ought to have been softened. The carnal man took to flight, fearing lest if he remained near at hand he might not be able to withstand the power of prayer; as though, forsooth, if he was hidden it could not find him, nor would penetrate to a remote place. Do you put bounds, wretched man, to the prayers of saints?[754] Is prayer an arrow that has been shot, that you may flee from the face of the bow?[755] Whither wilt thou go from ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor

... liberty of doing; for although the grave old Roman writers put it in their books for truth, it is very much doubted by our modern wiseheads, because it is so unreasonable, and so inelegant (as our dainty critic says). As though the world was always reasonable, forsooth! or undoubted historical facts did not sometimes lack ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various

... guessed that this passage would be quoted against him, and, by taking it as a motto, hoped to anticipate or disarm ridicule; or he may have selected it out of bravado, as though, forsooth, the public were too stupid to ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron



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