"Sham" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the first time. I HAVE found it out. When a man is tired of life, I suppose it is time for him to die. I've lost heart, and death is over me. Death is close to me, and I know I have got to end. But think of all the hopes I had only a little time ago, the sense of fine beginnings!... It was all a sham. There were no beginnings.... We're just ants in ant-hill cities, in a world that doesn't matter; that goes on and rambles into nothingness. New York—New York doesn't even strike me as horrible. New York was nothing but an ant-hill kicked to pieces ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... Curly," says she; "and always she says: 'Well, let it be!' She takes her losses, Curly, and sometimes she forgets. But if she ever forgets what is in my heart tonight—if she forgets that—then life is never worth while to her again. There's nothing to do then—it's all a sham and a fraud. If that's what life means I don't ...
— The Man Next Door • Emerson Hough
... spunk, all the energy, had been sapped out of me long before, and even her promise couldn't revive it. My search for a berth wasn't much more than a sham. At the back of my head I knew very well what I'd come to. The only work I was capable of was dancing attendance on her, and filling in what remained of the day and night at a rotten restaurant, a Bohemian club, and the bar ...
— The 'Mind the Paint' Girl - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... creditably. Then they were divided into two equal parts, which were marched to the opposite extremities of the plateau, when they faced about, and, charging down upon each other, engaged in a very realistic sham fight, lasting for the best part of an hour, and resulting in quite a number of casualties, several of the men being unhorsed and sustaining more or less serious injuries; after which the regiment re-formed, and we all returned to the kraal at a gallop, a party being detailed ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... whole thing is galling me, I tell you, the whole—" Brenton hesitated; "infernal sham." The last two words he flung out ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... ancient constitution—all these topics, we say, would, if we were so inclined, supply us, as they have supplied Mr. Macaulay, with abundant opportunities of grave tautology and commonplace; but we decline to raise sham debates on points where there is no contest. We can have little historic difference, properly so called, with one who has no historical difference on the main facts with anybody else: instead, then, ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... rose in arms. She would see who would keep them asunder now she had made up her mind! She had money of her own—and there were the trinkets Corney had given her! They must be valuable, for Corney hated sham things! She would walk her way, work her way, or beg her way, if necessary, but nothing should ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... the whole sham by degrees was found out, And this coin which they chose by such fine names to call, Proved a mere lackered article—showy, no doubt, But, ye gods! not the true Attic ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... say it again!" cried Thornton, hotly. "It is the truth. Your boasted Southern courage is a sham. You ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish
... more ago. A traffic in Birmingham manufactured krises and knives is done at Djocjakarta and Soerakarta, as well as at Samarang, Sourabaya and Batavia, and anyone who wishes to make a collection of native weapons should be careful to have the assistance of an expert to detect the sham from ...
— Across the Equator - A Holiday Trip in Java • Thomas H. Reid
... During his last year at school he came in for an estate of two hundred serfs, and as almost all of us were poor he took up a swaggering tone among us. He was vulgar in the extreme, but at the same time he was a good-natured fellow, even in his swaggering. In spite of superficial, fantastic and sham notions of honour and dignity, all but very few of us positively grovelled before Zverkov, and the more so the more he swaggered. And it was not from any interested motive that they grovelled, but simply because he had been favoured ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... mistress! The thought was torture to Jean Servien, the more atrocious from the unexpectedness of the discovery. He both hated and despised the coarse ruffian whose sham good-nature did not impose on him, and whom he knew for a brutal, dull-witted, mean-spirited bully. That pimply face, those goggle eyes, that forehead with the swollen black vein running across it, that heavy hand, ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... local history of the period cannot but prove instructive. Ralph Allen was then residing at Sham Castle, where Pope accused him of doing good like a thief in the night and blushing to find it unpopular. Fielding was painfully evolving "Tom Jones" from an inner consciousness that might have been ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... laff. I'd like to see any o' youse pretendin' you was dead while a big bear was poundin' you that hard that you begin to believe you ain't shammin'. An' when that ugly brute hauls off an' hits me agen, I decides then an' there that there's no occasion to sham it. But just as soon as I makes up my mind I'm dead, the bear leaves me; an' when I can no longer hear him breathin', I peeps out of a tiny little hole, and sees the big brute maulin' me old friend the Injun. Then I takes ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... he called to one of his men, and bade him order Captain Richard and his people to march the lower way on the side of the marches, and meet them in the forest; which was all a sham, for they had no Captain Richard, or any such company. [Footnote in ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe
... immediately directed his energies towards the whitewashing of the actuality. Both cherished the naive conviction that to acknowledge an evil is in a manner to countenance its existence, and both clung fervently to the belief that a pretty sham has a more intimate relation to morality than has an ugly truth. Yet so unconscious were they of weaving this elaborate tissue of illusion around the world they inhabited that they called the mental process by which they ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... Navy as segregated jobs for Negroes. Such positions have furnished a nucleus for the large, worthless, office-seeking class of Negroes in Washington, who have established the going of the people of the city toward pretence and sham. ...
— A Century of Negro Migration • Carter G. Woodson
... systeme. Nous l'avons eu." It was a summary of American naval policy during the twenty years following 1865; we "hail" things which other nations "had had," until Secretary Chandler started the movement of renovation by the first of all necessary steps, the official exposure of the sham to which we had allowed ourselves to be committed. There is an expression, "quaker guns," applied to blackened cylinders of wood, intended to simulate cannon, and mounted upon ramparts or a ship's ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... the light of the moon he read the ritual of marriage so solemnly that even the villains who stood round ceased their jokes and sneers and were silent. All things were done in order, though Juanna made no reply to the usual questions. With much sham courtesy the loathsome Pereira presided over the ceremony—their hands were joined, the ring was set upon Juanna's finger, the blessing was pronounced, ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... Between the slave and the master there has been war, and war only. This is but a new form of it. No, no; we ask for no return to the old conditions. We ask for something better. We want a Union which is a Union in fact, a Union in spirit, not a sham. By the Constitution as it is, the North has stood pledged to protect slavery in the States where it existed. We have been bound, in case of insurrections, to go to the aid, not of those struggling for liberty ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... things for a hike." Knudsen came back grumbling: "How were we to know that we are going on a hike?" The word was passed along: "Packs," "No packs." "Sweaters," "No sweaters." Then it was said that we were to wear handkerchiefs in our hats, sure sign of a sham battle pending. So at last at the whistle we turned out with sweaters, packs, ponchos ready (for though it had stopped raining we did not feel safe) and some of us with handkerchiefs twined in our hat-bands. Once ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... went to his own cabin, in which, in the haste of his exit, he had imprisoned Joey. The dog received him with delight, for Joey knew a real gale from a sham one, as well as any man before the mast. Courtenay patted his head, opened a drawer in the writing-table, and drew forth two photographs, which he kissed. He replaced them, locked the drawer, and went out, letting the dog come with ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... said hastily, "and folly for them according as you mean it; but for women there's no such thing, it's sham and humbug; and look you here, Miss Phoebe," he continued, losing his temper, "you see what your father will say to this when you get him into hot water with his people! There's more men with sons than me; and if the Crescent ain't too hot ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... all of the time." P. T. was an able judge of the public, and it is just this inability to fool all of the people all of the time that accounts for the sudden disappearance from the public eye of some one who only fooled all of the people for a little while. That person was a sham, a bluff, a gamester. He, or she, as the case may be, ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... Amyas, turning away under a strange stroke of pain and sham. "Oh! mother, mother!" and he dashed out ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... once, Radmore's quick eye detected a concealed door in the wall, on which there were encrusted the sham book titles often to be found on the doors of an old country home library. Quickly he went across and, opening it, found it gave straight on to a ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... not rich—and I dare say nearly all your schoolfellows are richer than you"—said Elsa, "is it not much better not to sham that you are?" ...
— Great Uncle Hoot-Toot • Mrs. Molesworth
... which the pilgrims are to offer up for "the extirpation of erroneous doctrines," it will cost them very little effort, for sinners who are washed clean with such delightful celerity are not likely to be in love with "erroneous doctrines" that declare the Pope's dispensing power a sham, and sternly tell men that the consequences of action, whether good or bad, are inevitable. We very much doubt, however, if "erroneous doctrines" will disappear through the prayers of the pilgrims or the curses of the Pope. Scepticism will probably gain by the spectacle ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... to-morrow, and has got by a trick the fortune my father got by hard work—then you will not like it. Then you will throw up your hands and cry 'Beatrice!' Then you will tell me that he loves me to distraction, and you will even try to make me think that I love him. It is all a miserable sham, mamma, a vile miserable sham! Give it up. I have said that I will marry him, since it appears that I have promised. But do not try to make me think that I am marrying him of my own free will, or he marrying me out of disinterested, pure, beautiful, ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... three foreign regiments, for kindling a panic in the heat of battle, by flight, and by a sustained blowing up of tumbrils, under the miserable purpose of shaking the British steadiness. But the evidences are not clear; whereas my brother insisted that the presence of sham men, distributed extensively amongst the human race, and meditating treason against us all, had been demonstrated to the satisfaction of all true philosophers. Who were these shams and make- believe ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... they'll sham lame and refuse to carry us," answered the other seaman. "But I say, Bob, what a hurry our lieutenant's in; to my mind, it's all about that young lady at the window; mark my words, there'll be a splice some day or other, and good luck to him too; a finer-hearted fellow ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... Furious, hopeless irritation consumed him. How these people enjoyed hating! At that rate it was better to be at the front. Men were more humane when they were killing each other than when they were talking about it. So was civilization nothing but a vast edifice of sham, and the war, instead of its crumbling, was its fullest and most ultimate expression. Oh, but there must be something more in the world than greed and hatred and cruelty. Were they all shams, too, these gigantic ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... Edward III., and tell the people they had taxes to pay to keep the king in ermine robes, and rings, and jewels, and to let him give feasts and tilting matches—when the knights, in beautiful, gorgeous armor, rode against one another in sham fight, and the king and ladies looked on and ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge
... neglecting his interests. Yet the average man in Rome was glad to free himself from burdensome and expensive duties towards the dead that had come down to him from past generations, and the ingenuity of the lawyers soon devised a system of sham sales by which this could be ...
— Greek and Roman Ghost Stories • Lacy Collison-Morley
... noble birth, chatting together, or betting, with their waxed tablets and their styli(11) in their hands, some waiting the commencement of the race between Fuscus and Victor, others watching with interest the progress of a sham fight on horseback between two young men of the equestrian order, denoted by the narrow crimson stripes on their tunics, who were careering to and fro, armed with long staves and circular bucklers, in all the swift and beautiful movements of the ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... dear sir, a mere beetle—he's not worth thinking of, one way or the other. But can't you guess another sham friend, who has ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... died for you! Will you be cozened, Sir, by these air-blown fancies, These male hysterics, by starvation bred And huge conceit? Cast off God's gift of manhood, And, like the dog in the adage, drop the true bone With snapping at the sham one in the water? What were you born a ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... sort of churchyard, full, literally, to bursting (the Kirkbys lie there, generation after generation of them, beneath pompous tombs), and the other church a hideous rectangular building, with flat walls and shallow, sham Gothic windows. It was thought extremely beautiful when it was built forty years ago. The town itself is an irregular and rather picturesque place, with a twisting steep High Street, looking as if a number of houses had been shot ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... There's nothing the matter with this representative of the people in the question of taste. Four Aubusson chairs... A bureau signed 'Percier-Fontaine,' for a wager... Two inlays by Gouttieres... A genuine Fragonard and a sham Nattier which any American millionaire will swallow for the asking: in short, a fortune... And there are curmudgeons who pretend that there's nothing but faked stuff left. Dash it all, why don't they do as I do? They should ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... the whole facade, while the apparently built up windows above the genuine windows of the nave aisles, whose roofs have their apex about on a level with the sills of the large central lancets, are as much frauds as any of those sham windows in symmetrical Renaissance work, which so excite the ire of ardent champions of ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White
... see what the lips shall speak: the brain almost unconsciously frames and fills the adequate and inevitable scheme. And, as always at these right poetic moments, the minor felicities follow the major. The false rhymes are nowhere; the imperfect phrases, the little sham simplicities or pedantries, hide themselves; and the poet is free, from the splendid opening landscape through the meditative exposition, and the fine picture of the shipwreck, to the magnificent final ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... was not a religious meeting; it was a meeting full of religion. And it was a picture that will ever stand fresh in my memory and which will be an inspiration in time of doubt. There was nothing there but the real things, absolutely no sham of any kind. Oh, it was wonderful! I hope you can get just a little idea of what it was. I wish you would keep this letter. I want to be able to read it ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... acknowledge, with a feeling of ill concealed pleasure. Had not they always said how it was to end? Was there anything more absurd ever conceived? Scientific men too! Hang such science! If you want a real scientific man, no wind bag, no sham, take Belfast! He knows what he's talking about! No taking him in! Didn't he by means of the Monster Telescope, see the Projectile, as large as life, whirling round and round the Moon? Anyway, ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... see an eruption which never takes place—you journey back to Reykjavik under the same melancholy conditions,—it will not be unnatural that, on returning to your native land, you should proclaim Iceland, with her Geysirs, to be a sham, ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... humor of Goldsmith and Irving, and differs, in degree at least, from the comic almanac exaggeration and coarseness which preceded it, puts its foot on every bud of sentiment, holds few things sacred, and refuses to regard anything in life seriously. But it has no mercy for any sham. ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... of the other (Russian) subjects." On one occasion the editor of the Razswyet, , in appealing to the authorities of St. Petersburg against the prohibition of a certain article by the Odessa censor, had to resort to the sham argument that the incriminated article referred merely to the necessity of granting the Jews equality in the right of residence but not in other rights. But even this stratagem failed of its object. After a year of bitter struggle against the interference of the censor and against financial ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... followed the boy? This, however, being one of the few things that he could not do, he was obliged to let the boy go while he watched Maroney. The affair seemed to have come to the sticking point. Maroney's face showed deep anxiety, and his limping was all a sham. The boy had taken a note to some place, ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... its momentous victories on sea and land. It came, however, to be seen that his true achievements were in reality only escapades, that his wit was only folly, and his so-called "sensibility" was but sham. He invented buckles, striped waistcoats, and flamboyant collars, but he knew nothing of the principles of kingship or the laws by ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... with the women: champagne's the thing; make 'em drink, make 'em talk;—make 'em talk, make 'em do anything. So I orders a bottle, as if for myself; and, 'Ma'am,' says I, 'will you take a glass of Sham—just one?' Take it she did—for you know it's quite distangy here: everybody dines at the table de hote, and everybody accepts everybody's wine. Bob Irons, who travels in linen on our circuit, told me that he had made some slap-up acquaintances among ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... River steamboat of the golden age on the river—the type, indeed, which still persists—was a triumph of adaptability to the service for which she was designed. More than this—she was an egregious architectural sham. She was a success in her light draught, six to eight feet, at most, and in her prodigious carrying capacity. It was said of one of these boats, when skilfully loaded by a gang of practical roustabouts, under the direction of an experienced ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... approbation of his sovereign. His whole manner betrayed it—the smile upon his lip, the fidgety motion of his feet, and the look which he darted from time to time around the room, as if to satisfy himself that his happiness was "not a sham but a reality." But his happiness seemed far from contagious. On his right hand there was a lovely creature, seated on a footstool, who did not partake his enjoyment. There was something so sweet ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... governed by prudential considerations, and is always asking, Will it pay? is the incarnation of fickleness, instability, and feebleness. The apparent strength of the selfish will is usually a hollow sham. But truth, right, and love are motives stronger than death. And the will, dominated by these, gives the body to be burned. The man of the future will have an iron will, because he will keep these highest ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... of the class if confronted by a mechanical and lifeless teacher. The teacher is the model unconsciously accepted and responded to by his class. He leads the way in interest and enthusiasm. Nor will any sham or pretense serve. The interest must be real and deep. Even young children quickly sense any make-believe enthusiasm or vivacity on the part of the teacher, and their ardor ...
— How to Teach Religion - Principles and Methods • George Herbert Betts
... apercu—or finds, at least, that Hawthorne was attracted by Tieck—in passages of the "American Note-Books," where he speaks of grubbing out several pages of Tieck at a sitting, by the aid of a German dictionary. Colonel Higginson ("Short Studies"), a propos of Poe's sham learning and his habit of mystifying the reader by imaginary citations, confesses to having hunted in vain for this fascinatingly entitled "Journey into the Blue Distance"; and to having been laughed at for his ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... much repeated in Prigord, Angoumois, and the Bordelais. The great interest lies in the faade, which dates from the eleventh century. Here we have a large central portal, and on each side of it, what the architectural design supposes to be a smaller one, but which in reality is only a sham doorway. The slender columns of the jambs, and the archivolts filled in with little figures, sacred, fantastic, and grotesque, are there, as in connection with the central arch; but all this has only an ornamental purpose. ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... name a second time, and a third. From that time men have never ceased to run briskly backwards and forwards, to tell Chrysogonus, I suppose, that there was some one in the country who ventured to oppose his pleasure, that the case was being pleaded otherwise than as he imagined it would be; that the sham sale of goods was being exposed, the confederacy grievously handled, his popularity and power disregarded, that the people were giving their whole attention to the cause, and that the common opinion was that the ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... Milton has it. His tobacco must be bird's-eye, as he takes a bird's-eye view of things; and his pipe is presumably a meer-sham, whence his "sable clouds turn forth their silver lining on the night." Smoking, without doubt, is a bad practice, especially when the clay is choked or the weed is worthless; but fuming against smokers we take ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... just share in the trade of the Orient. We have undertaken to protect our citizens from proper treatment in foreign lands. We continue steadily to insist on the application of the Monroe Doctrine to the Western Hemisphere. Unless our attitude in these and all similar matters is to be a mere boastful sham we can not afford to abandon our naval programme. Our voice is now potent for peace, and is so potent because we are not afraid of war. But our protestations upon behalf of peace would neither receive nor deserve the slightest attention if we were ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... might put the supposititious case of a friend, and ask what the friend ought to do. He dismissed this a moment later. It was too much like what people did in a novel, and besides, he could not carry it through. She would see through the sham at once. At this point he realised that he was just ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... nou, not sooa; they'n better mesters nah, an they'n better sooat a wark anole. They dooant mezher em we a stick, as oud Natta Hall did. But for all that, we'd none a yer wirligig polishin; nor Tom Dockin scales, wit bousters comin off; nor yer sham stag, nor sham revvits, an sich loik. T' noives wor better made ...
— English Dialects From the Eighth Century to the Present Day • Walter W. Skeat
... Obed Chute's idea, and Zillah accepted it as the only true solution. Any other solution would force her to believe that Hilda had been a hypocrite all her life—that her devotion was a sham, and her love a mockery. Such a thing seemed incredible, and it seemed far more natural to her that Hilda had acted from some mad impulse of love in obedience to the strong temptation held out by a lover. Yes, she thought, she had ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... obscurity, which meant seclusion. Were he to ply his trade in the light of day, the Muslim zealots of the city would speedily tear him in pieces as an idol-maker. "Though some of them make pictures also," he explained, "not here but in Esh-Sham and other places. They quote in excuse some fetwah of the learned. I have no appeal; for did I quote their fetwah they would call it blasphemy." The room, he said, possessed advantages for health as well as privacy. Its window gave upon the market of the shoemakers, and, when it ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... place into public view, in all its horrible deformity. The mystery was out; but not so the bosom serpent. He, if it were anything but a delusion, still lay coiled in his living den. The empiric's cure had been a sham, the effect, it was supposed, of some stupefying drug which more nearly caused the death of the patient than of the odious reptile that possessed him. When Roderick Elliston regained entire sensibility, it was to find his misfortune the town talk—the more than nine days' wonder and horror—while, ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... This sort of sham made Harrietta sick. She, whose very art was that of pretending, hated pretense, affectation, "coy stuff." This was, perhaps, unfortunate. Your Fatigued Financier prefers the comedy form in which a spade is not only called a spade but a slab of iron for digging up dirt. Harrietta never ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... wicked lord." The poet himself says that his ancestor's only companions were the crickets that used to crawl over him, receive stripes with straws when they misbehaved, and on his death made an exodus in procession from the house. When at home he spent his time in pistol-shooting, making sham fights with wooden ships about the rockeries of the lake, and building ugly turrets on the battlements. He hated his heir presumptive, sold the estate of Rochdale,—a proceeding afterwards challenged—and cut down the trees ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... certain sure he would let me go after the sham ceremony was performed, I would marry him," was the conclusion she had arrived at by morning. "No matter what happens, nothing can be half so ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... softly, but his eyes gleamed like a lynx's. His stateliness was a sham; his perfidy and hypocrisy surprised even ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... with our spiritual needs. And for several years I wrought at Christian symbolism, trying to build up for my soul a home of poetical faith so to speak. But in the end this could not satisfy me; I knew that I was cherishing a sham, a pretty make-believe after the manner of children. Better the blindness of true religion than this illusion of the imagination. And I was now ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... Mr. Beamish put his veto on the expedition. She had obeyed him by abstaining from play of late, so he fully expected, that his interdict would be obeyed; and besides the fortune-teller was a rogue of a sham astrologer known to have foretold to certain tender ladies things they were only too desirous to imagine predestined by an extraordinary indication of the course of planets through the zodiac, thus causing them to sin by the example of celestial conjunctions—a ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... harvest." So speaks the ideal official dealing with the ideal citizen in the dream life among the angels. But suppose that the worker, being not an angel but a human being, is but a mere hulking, lazy brute who prefers to sham sick rather than endure the tedium of toil. Or suppose that the grave official is not an angel, but a man of hateful heart or one with a personal spite to vent upon his victim. What then? How could one face a regime in which the everlasting ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... should have dared to think anything so odd, "can it be that these people are people of the twilight, that they live only at night their real life, and come out honestly only with the dusk? That during the day they make a sham though brave pretence, and after the sun is down their true life begins? Have they the souls of night-things, and is the whole blessed town in the ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... rest thus appointed:—Dividing his troops into three columns, Sir Edward directed that General Keane, at the head of the 95th, the light companies of the 21st, 4th, and 44th, together with the two black corps, should make a demonstration, or sham attack, upon the right; that General Gibbs, with the 4th, 21st, 44th, and 93rd, should force the enemy's left, whilst General Lambert, with the 7th and 43rd, remained in reserve, ready to act as circumstances might require. But in storming ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... us. The cynical attitude is an offence. It is possible to find in the world true-hearted, leal, and faithful dealing between man and man. To doubt this is to doubt the divine in life. Faith in man is essential to faith in God. In spite of all deceptions and disillusionments, in spite of all the sham fellowships, in spite of the flagrant cases of self-interest and callous cruelty, we must keep clear and bright our faith in the possibilities of our nature. The man who hardens his heart because he has been imposed on has no real belief in virtue, and with suitable circumstances ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... of them for a drawing by Hunt of a bird's nest. Wanting an ear for music and an eye for pictorial merit, I believed, or affected to believe, that the raptures of people who possessed the ear and eye were a sham. It irritated me to hear my aunt play, although she had been well taught in her youth and was a skilful performer. I know she would have liked to feel that she gave me some pleasure, and that her playing was admired, but I was so openly indifferent ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... them in the shape of the "Non-Juror," and would prove none the less disgusted because the play happened to be an adaptation of Moliere's "Tartuffe." As the latter comedy depicts a self-indulgent, crawling hypocrite of the worst type, and is an eloquent sermon against sham, it may be imagined that the Jacobites were not over enthusiastic when they learned that the moral of "Tartuffe" was to be applied ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... you call'd Your Saviour in Distress, You in his first Request deny'd, And then his Royal Patience try'd With a canting sham Address. ...
— Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry • Edmund Goldsmid
... is true and not a sham, to the owner at least it must often be a sheer delight, for the elf or "troll" which goes by this name takes such possession of the owner that under his guidance he sees "What man may never see, the star that travels far." "The light" that the poet declares shone on sea or shore, ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... the two and still held that rural ascendency,—feudalism as he called it,—should maintain itself by barring a fraction of the House of Commons from the votes of the majority, he pronounced the whole thing to be a sham. The intention was, he said, to delude the people. "It is all coming," said the gentleman who was accustomed to argue with him in those days. He spoke in a sad vein, which was in itself distressing to the Senator. ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... tomb at Canterbury, and at Westminster the shield of Henry V that probably did its duty at Agincourt. Several of our churches still retain the arms of the heroes who lie buried beneath them, but occasionally it is not the actual armour but sham, counterfeit helmets and breastplates made for the funeral procession and hung over the monument. Much of this armour has been removed from churches and stored in museums. Norwich Museum has some good specimens, of which we give some illustrations. There is a knight's basinet ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... that plea? You know it's a sham and generally that's another name for a lie. Don't let it go on record. The cursed thing may come staring us in the face long after this suit ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... know the name of a rope, except the one thats to hang ye, theres no need of singing out, as if ye was hailing a deaf man on a topgallant yard. May-hap you think youve got my true name in your sheep skin; but what British sailor finds it worth while to sail in these seas, without a sham on his stern, in case of need, dye see. If you call me Penguillan, you calls me by the name of the man on whose hand, dye see, I hove into daylight; and he was a gentleman ; and thats more than my worst enemy will say of any of ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... workers they were saying: "Task done or no done—night's my time—go home!" Whippoorwills flitted about the woods in cotton picking time chattering about Jack marrying a widow. He could not remember the story that goes with this. Oppossums were a "sham faced" tribe who "sometimes wandered onto the wrong side of the day and got caught." They never overcame this shame as long as ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... his chest. She knew exactly how his breast was shapen under the waistcoat, and she wanted to touch it. It maddened her to hear his mechanical voice giving orders about the work. She wanted to break through the sham of it, smash the trivial coating of business which covered him with hardness, get at the man again; but she was afraid, and before she could feel one touch of his warmth he was gone, and she ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... opposite her was the one who had filled her with fear and resentment such a short time ago. She found herself actually laughing aloud once at the absurdity of it all. Had her dread of him been fortuitous, his tyranny a mere sham? Had he really liked her all the time, and had she been a sensitive fool? She would have thought so, indeed, but for the memory of the perplexed and distracted face of her mother, the cringing and broken spirit of her who missed truth through an obsession ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... prosecution growing out of the suit last winter, and got up by certain men who had banded together to revenge their defeat on that occasion, and ruin his client, boldly demanded that the prisoner should be discharged, or his conspiring enemies be compelled to proceed at once with "their sham prosecution," as he put on the face to ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... in this dilemma: if he wears actual spectacles, he cannot see through them; if he wears sham spectacles of plain glass, his disguise will probably be detected. There is only one way out of the difficulty, and that not a very satisfactory one; but Mr. Weiss seems to have adopted it in lieu of a better. It is that of using watch-glass ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... accomplish nothing by violence," the bishop interposed. "Pray, resume your chair and hear me out. A marriage without love is a mere mockery and sham. You do not love my daughter, and she does not love you. We will not argue about that, if you please, for it is not possible to contradict an evident fact. You are an ambitious man, and marriage is only one of the ways by which ambition can be furthered. In this case, the marriage is out of ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... in the way of such a man is, that so many people believe in lies. My eager young friend, Philalethes, supposes that, if he can only expose this falsehood, show up this sham, or sound the emptiness of this piece of cant or pretence, he will do the state some service, that men will thank him and call him benefactor. He does the work, and lo! to his amazement, many excellent men count him their ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... high pressure. Now and then, in periods of adversity, he would fly into a perfect passion with things in general. But, in the end, it was a sham battle, and he saw the uselessness and humor of it, even in the moment of his climax. Once, when he found it impossible to make any of his favorite shots, he became more and more restive, the lightning ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... POWERLESS FOR ANY PURPOSE OF OFFENCE.'—Lord Palmerston, in the House of Commons, 1853.]; the necessity of permanently upholding the Mahometan rule in Europe is an absurdity. Our love for civilization, when we subject the Greeks and Christians to the Turks, is a sham; and our sacrifices for freedom, when working out the behests of the Emperor of the French and coaxing Austria to help us, is a pitiful imposture. The evils of non-intervention were remote and vague, and could neither be weighed nor described in any accurate terms. The good we ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... increased by conservation. But there is more than material value involved. We still have far too much wanton destruction of wild life in Canada, not only among those who have ignorantly grown up to it, but among the well-to-do and presumably well-educated sham sportsmen who go into any unprotected wilds simply to indulge their lust of slaughter to the full. Both these classes will be stopped in their abominations and shown a better way; for whenever man is taught a ...
— Draft of a Plan for Beginning Animal Sanctuaries in Labrador • William Wood
... said. "She might have as many drives as she chose; but presently you'll find a lot of those parsons back at the house, and she'll take to her white gowns again, and the playing of the organ all the day long, and all that sham stuff. I tell you what it is: she never seems alive, she never seems to take any interest in anything, unless you're with her. Now, you will see how the novelty of this luncheon-party in an inn will amuse her; but do you think ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... luck, she took out of it two large pearl pendants, giving them in like manner to Fortunata to view: "See," quoth she, "what 'tis to have a kind husband, I am sure no woman has better." "What," said Habinas, "hast thou put the sham on me? thou toldst me thou couldst be contented with glass beads; and for this trick, if I had a daughter I'd cut off her ears; tho' were there no women what were the rest worth? This is to piss warm and ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... sham raising of the dead, and appear to be directed at propitiatory ghosts rather than at Ndengei. There are scenes of license; 'particulars of almost incredible indecency have been privately forwarded ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... the Pleiades) and "Sham'adin" a would-be Arabic plur. of the Persian "Sham'adan"candlestick, chandelier, for which more correctly ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... follow this route of Pepys, but in the reverse direction, that is, through the Vines to Chatham and its lines of fortification, where Mr. Pickwick, Mr. Winkle, and Mr. Snodgrass became so hopelessly entangled in the sham fight which they had gone over from Rochester to see. At No. 11 Ordnance Terrace the little Charles Dickens lived from 1817 to 1821, and at No. 18 St. Mary's Place from 1821 to 1823, the financial troubles, which eventually drove the family into the Marshalsea debtors' prison, and ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... that now seems ridiculous, for certain passages are loaded with outlandish phrases or metaphors that are unintelligible except by reference to the notes. Nevertheless the English public, being then quite ignorant of the true East, tolerated Moore's sham Orientalism, even though Byron's fine poems were just then exposing the difference between working up the subject in a library and wandering in Asiatic countries. Byron's language seems in the present day turgid, and his Greeks and Turks may have a theatrical air, but his splendid ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... so-called male superiority bears a certain stamp of spuriousness and sham. It is to natural history what chivalry was to human history; ... a sort of make-believe, play, or sport of nature of an airy unsubstantial character. The male side of nature shot up and blossomed out in an unnatural, fantastic way, cutting loose from ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... general quiet in the house, but quiet in the movements of all persons in the room; speaking, not in a whisper, but in a low and gentle voice; walking carefully, not in a silk dress nor in creaky shoes, but not on tiptoe, for there is a fussy sham quietness which disturbs the sick far more than ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... is," he added, after a few moments' pause, "it's Nature's fault for making a fellow like this. I don't want to be a coward; I want to be as brave as brave—well, as brave as Murray is. I wouldn't care if I was just as full of pluck as he is. Anyhow I won't be a sham and go and pretend that some one is coming. I could never look him in the eyes again for fancying that he was reading me through and through. And ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... dauntless breast, The base invaders of his rights withstood," was surprised in his own house by major Weymies, who tore him away from his shrieking wife and children, marched him up to Cheraw court-house, and after exposing him to the insults of a sham trial, had him condemned and hung! The only charge ever exhibited against him was, that he had shot across Black river at one ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... I had a glimpse of the real Brierly a few days before he committed his reality and his sham together to the keeping of the sea. Of course I declined to meddle. The tone of this last "but you" (poor Brierly couldn't help it), that seemed to imply I was no more noticeable than an insect, caused me to look at the proposal with indignation, and on ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... foot is rest,— For if they have the least hurt in their feet They bear them up and look they be not stirr'd. When humours rise, they eat a sovereign herb, Whereby what cloys their stomachs they cast up; And as some writers of experience tell, They were the first invented vomiting. Sham'st thou not, Autumn, unadvisedly To slander such ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... world like a tin kettle, is King Neptune, and the thing is his helmet. T'other, with the crown and the necklace of spikes under her chin, is Mrs Neptune, his lawful wife; and the little chap with the big razor and shaving-dish is his wally-de-sham and trumpeter extraordinary. He's plenty more people belonging to him, but they haven't come on board ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... national menace to sham All talk and no cider Condition my room is always in when you are not around Deprived of the soothing consolation of swearing Frankness is a jewel; only the young can afford it Genius defies the laws of perspective Hope deferred maketh the ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Mark Twain • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
... Paul's death like a priest. Priests are worthy men; a great resource! Give me a priests lap when I need it. Shall I be condemned to go to the priest and leave that woman singing? If I did, I might well say the world's a snare, a sham, a pitfall, a horror! It's what I don't think in any degree. It's what you think, though. Yes, whenever you are vexed you think it. So do the priests, and so do all who will not exert themselves to chastise. I, on the contrary, know that the world is not made up of nonsense. Write to Weisspriess ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... firm understanding between the British Empire and the United States of America and France and Italy, that there will be no competitive building up of fleets or armies between them. Unless this is arrived at before the Covenant is signed the League of Nations will be a sham and a mockery. It will be regarded, and rightly regarded, as a proof that its principal promoters and patrons repose no confidence in its efficacy. But once the leading members of the League have made it clear that they have reached an understanding which will both secure to the League ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti
... Paul retorted, "that we've both sprung from the people, and are of the people. You've raised yourself above the small shop-keeping class just as much as I have. Don't let us have any sham humility about it. Whatever happens you'll always associate with folk of good-breeding and education. You couldn't go back to Barn Street. It would be idiotic for me to contemplate such a thing for my part. But between Barn Street and Mayfair there's a refined and intellectual land where ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... passage which contains the germ of this essay:—"Martin's Belshazzar (the picture) I have seen. Its architectural effect is stupendous; but the human figures, the squalling, contorted little antics that are playing at being frightened, like children at a sham ghost who half know it to be a mask, are detestable. Then the letters are nothing more than a transparency lighted up, such as a Lord might order to be lit up on a sudden at a Christmas Gambol, to scare the ladies. The type is as plain as Baskervil—they should have been dim, full of mystery, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... there is the confidence trick, in which the rustic is beguiled by the honest stranger into trusting him. This trick was practised three hundred years ago. Or there is the ring-dropping trick, it is as old as the hills. Or there is the sham sailor—now very rarely met with. When we have another war he will come to the front again. We have still the cheating gambler, but he has always been with us. In King Charles the Second's time he was called a Ruffler, a Huff, or a Shabbaroon. The woman who now begs along the streets singing a ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant
... two points. The first is that the House of Commons, Senate and Ministry, which make the laws, do not respect the interests of the North-West. My second point is that the North-West Council has the defect of its parent. There are practically no elections, and it is a sham legislature." ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... a wide, fertile place, with fruit-trees and water everywhere. "Peaches too!" he sang out, and sprang off to run, but checked himself in five steps. "I don't seem able to stop your foolish talking," he said, "but you shall not chase around like that. You'll stay with me. I tell you that's a sham. Look at it." Obedient, he looked hard at it, and the cactus and rocks thrust through the watery image of the lake like two photographs on the same plate. He shouted with strangling triumph, and continued shouting until brier-roses ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... way home after the wedding the bridegroom has to shoot a deer, the animal being represented by a branch of a tree thrown across the path by one of the party. But if a real deer happens by any chance to come by he has to shoot this. The bride goes up to the real or sham deer and pulls out the arrow, and presents her husband with water and a tooth-stick, after which he takes her in his arms and they dance home together. On arrival at the house the bridegroom's maternal uncle ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... statesmen out of place, or of editors whose journals were muzzled or suppressed; especially when the people saw great public improvements going on, had both bread and occupation, read false accounts of military successes, and were bewildered by fetes and outward grandeur. But when the army was a sham, and corruption had pervaded every office under government; when the expenses of living had nearly doubled from taxation, extravagance, bad example, and wrong ideas of life; when trusted servants were turned into secret enemies, incapable and false; when such absurd mistakes were made as the expedition ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... wherever he could do good, tentative only in the cause of Christ, and distracted by no objects from his mission. His religion was his inspiration; his conscience his reward. His system may have been perverted, his zeal mistaken, his church a sham; we are not arguing that question. But the purity of his intentions, the sincerity of his heart, can not be doubted; and the most intolerant protestant against "the corruptions of Rome" will, at least, admit that even catholicism was better than the ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... miraculous hat; a shirt that had been white, ay, ages long ago; an alpaca coat in its last sleeves; and, without hyperbole, no buttons to his trousers. Even in these rags and tatters, the man twinkled all over with impudence like a piece of sham jewellery; and I have heard him offer a situation to one of his fellow-passengers with the air of a lord. Nothing could overlie such a fellow; a kind of base success was written on his brow. He was then in his ill days; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson |
