"Cant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... another letter for me to the papers. [He makes a wry face]. Yes: I know you don't like it; but it must be done. The starvation this winter is beating us: everybody is unemployed. The General says we must close this shelter if we cant get more money. I force the collections at the meetings until I am ...
— Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... irregularities of conduct which are smiled at, and taken for granted, in a man made after the normal, comely fashion, become a scandal in the case of a poor, unhappy devil like me, at which good people hold up their hands in horror. Faugh!—I tell you I'm sick of such cowardly cant. A pretty example the Almighty's set me of justice and mercy! Handsome encouragement He has given me to be virtuous and sober! Much I have for which to praise His holy name! Arbitrarily, without excuse, or faintest show of antecedent ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... Theodore Lane's social satires may be mentioned Scientific Pursuits, or Hobbyhorse Races to the Temple of Fame, four folio plates; The Parson's Clerk (a comic song), four illustrations in ridicule of cant and hypocrisy; Legal Illustrations (seventy humorous applications of law terms); The Masquerade at the Argyll Rooms (a large plate full of vigour, life, and character); New Year's Morning: the Old One ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... Duncan, John Hume, Robert Knox, William Jameson, Robert Murray, Henry Guthrie, James Hamilton, in Dumfreis, Bernard Sanderson, John Levingstoun, James Bonar, Evan Camron, David Dickson, Robort Bailzie, James Cuninghame, George Youngh, Andrew Affleck, David Lindsay, Andrew Cant, William Douglas, Murdo Mackenzie, Coline Mackenzie, John Monroe, Walter Stuart Ministers; Archbald Marquesse of Argyle, William Earle Marshall, John Earle of Sutherland, Alexander Earle of Eglingtoun, John Earle of Cassils, ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... different and shameless purposes did he now prostitute it! That which had been in his better days a principle of just pride, a spur to industry, an impulse to honor, and a safeguard to integrity, had now become the catchword of a mendicant—the cant or slang, as it were, of an impostor. He was not ashamed to beg in its name—to ask for whiskey in its name—and to sink, in its name, ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... expressive I ever looked upon. And his voice was loud as the fall of mighty waters. And it was wonderfully flexible, and full of music. And he always spoke in natural tones. There was nothing like cant or monotony in his utterance. Yet he would raise his voice to such a pitch at times that you could hear him half a mile away. He was the most perfect actor I ever saw, because he was not an actor at ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... drive all the grazing cattle, every four-footed baast off the land, and pound 'em in Ballynavogue; and if they replevy, why I'll distrain again, if it be forty times, I will go. I'll go on distraining, and I'll advertise, and I'll cant, and I'll sell the distress at the end of the eight days. And if they dare for to go for to put a plough in that bit of reclaimed bog, I'll come down upon 'em with an injunction, and I would not value the expinse of bringing down a record a pin's pint; and if that went ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... successful attempt at mere conformity. Such "morality" would conceal an inner conflict. The fruits of this conflict would be neurosis and hysteria on the one hand; or concealed gratification of suppressed desires on the other, with a resultant hypocrisy and cant. True morality cannot be based on conformity. There must be no conflict between ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... and get Ellen Middleton, it is well worth your reading. Lady Georgiana certainly inherits her grandmother's genius, and there is a high-toned morality and religious principle through the book (where got she "that heroic measure"?) without any cant or ostentation: it is the same moral I intended in Helen, but exemplified in much deeper and stronger colours. This is—but you ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... degree to which the Epistle to Philemon (ascribed to Paul) is FULL—short as it is—of expressions like PRISONER of the Lord, FELLOW SOLDIER, CAPTIVE or BONDMAN, (3) which were so common at the time as to be almost a cant in Mithraism and the allied cults. In I Peter ii. 2 (4), we have the verse "As newborn babes, desire ye the sincere MILK of the word, that ye may grow thereby." And again we may say that no one in that day could mistake the reference herein contained to ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... the cant name in a Newspaper Office for asinine paragraphs, about monstrous productions of Nature and the like, kept standing in type to be used whenever the real news of the day leaves an awkward space that ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... say something on the subject of canting nonsense, of which there is a great deal in England. There are various cants in England, amongst which is the religious cant. He is not going to discuss the subject of religious cant: lest, however, he should be misunderstood, he begs leave to repeat that he is a sincere member of the old-fashioned Church of England, in which he believes there is more religion, and consequently less ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... the same breath with war may seem like sheer cant and hypocrisy. But in the possibility that those who best understand the use and nature of armed power may excel all others in stimulating that higher morality which may some day restrain war lies a main chance for the future. The Armed Services of the United States do ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... slipping of the cable. We soon had the shackle out, and the released portion of the cable at once rushed through the hawse-pipe with a roar that must certainly be heard at the settlement. Then I dashed aft to the wheel and flung it hard over to help the ship to cant, which she did with, as it seemed to me, most exasperating sluggishness. But she paid off at last, when we hauled aft the staysail sheet, braced up the yards, and the Mercury began, very deliberately, to forge ahead, and our great adventure was at length fairly begun. ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... rueful prophet. I do not write as a pessimist, hardly as a critic; still less as a censor; to waste time in deriding others' theories of life is a very poor substitute for enjoying it! I think we do very fairly well as we are; only do not let us indulge in the cant in which educators so freely indulge, the claim that we are interested in ideas intellectual or artistic, and that we are trying to educate our youth in these things. We do produce some intellectual athletes, and we knock a few hardy minds ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... such things in the abstract—always in the abstract—calmly in the abstract. He was an old-fashioned Conservative of the Sir Leicester Deadlock style. When he was moved by an extra shower of aggressive democratic cant—which was seldom—he defended Capital, but only as if it needed no defence, and as if its opponents were merely thoughtless, ignorant children whom he condescended to set right because of their inexperience and for their own good. He stuck calmly to his own order—the order ...
— On the Track • Henry Lawson
... most read and praised by Charles II, and his court, and the one that best represents the spirit of the victorious party, is the satirical poem of Hudibras by Samuel Butler. The object of the work is to satirize the cant and excesses of Puritanism, just as the Don Quixote of Cervantes burlesques the ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... justice broke forth: 'Pollexfen, I know you well. I will set a mark on you. You are the patron of the faction. This is an old rogue, a schismatical knave, a hypocritical villain. He hates the Liturgy. He would have nothing but longwinded cant without book;' and then his lordship turned up his eyes, clasped his hands, and began to sing through his nose in imitation of what he supposed to be Baxter's style of praying, 'Lord, we are thy people, thy peculiar people, ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... the kitchen smells of its smoke; he who adheres to a sect has something of its cant; the college air pursues the student, and dry inhumanity him who herds ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... caricaturing instead of representing things as they are. But we carry with us all who intimately know the spiritual condition of the Narrow Church in asserting that in some cases at least its members have nothing more to show for their religion than a formula, a syllogism, a cant phrase or an experience of some kind which happened long ago, and which men told them at the time was called Salvation. Need we proceed to formulate objections to the parasitism of Evangelicism? Between it and the Religion of the ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... understand it, consists in the nice adjustment of what is due to me from my neighbours, and to them from me. Here, among the poor, where a native reserve has not grown, as a fungus upon it, a native cant, where there is no desire to seem better than one is, and no belief that one is so by seeming—here, I say, among the Tuscan poor, there is never any difficulty, for here there is no excrescence to the substantial quality of the soul, but precisely ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... spouse a fitting mate, though late in life. But, what are fifty years? They mark the prime of a healthy man's existence. He has by that time seen the world, can decide, and settle, and is virtually more eligible—to use the cant phrase of gossips—than a young man, even for a young girl. And may not some fair and fresh reward be justly claimed as the crown of a ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Ghost, "if man you be in heart, not adamant, forbear that wicked cant until you have discovered What the surplus is, and Where it is. Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die? It may be, that in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man's child. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... him to respect of self by showing him what his mind is capable of. I argue on no sectarian, no religious grounds even. Is it possible to make a man's self his most precious possession? Anyhow, I work to that end. A doctor purges before building up with a tonic. I eliminate cant and hypocrisy, and then introduce self-respect. It isn't enough to employ a man's hands only. Initiation in some labour that should prove wholesome and remunerative is a redeeming factor, but it isn't all. His mind must work also, and awaken to its ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... who ever heared of a Democrat nigger. Nigger neber did own enything so dey cant be Democrats en if dey vote a Democrat ticket dey is jes votin a lie. Cause no nigger neber did own slaves only the old nigger slave traders and dey werent nuthin but varmints anyway. Ye jes has to hev owned slaves to vote a ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Kentucky Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... that stirred up a man's blood like sea-bathing; and the whole thing was clean gone from me, and I was dreaming England, which is, after all, a nasty, cold, muddy hole, with not enough light to see to read by; and dreaming the looks of my public, by a cant of a broad high-road like an avenue, and with the sign ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... times log-rolling was always a great frolic and brought the people from far and near to lend a helping hand in building the new house. In handling logs, lumbermen have tools made for that purpose—cant-hooks, peevy irons, lannigans, and numerous other implements with names as peculiar as their looks—but the old backwoodsmen and pioneers who lived in log houses owned no tools but their tomahawks, their axes, and their rifles, and the logs of most of their houses were rolled in place ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... have to remark that in my trials the proportion has been found to be considerably less than that often given in tables of the composition of wheat. In one sample it was found to be as low as 0.15 per cant., in another it did not rise above 0.20 per cent. The amount was usually so inconsiderable, that I did not think it worth while to retard the progress of the work by following out processes which could add little to the utility of ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... the devil take such cant! Say, once and always, Luca was a wittol, I am his cut-throat, you are . ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... promise, or require Another than the five-string'd lyre Which He has vow'd again to the hands Devout of him who understands To tune it justly here! Beware The Powers of Darkness and the Air, Which lure to empty heights man's hope, Bepraising heaven's ethereal cope, But covering with their cloudy cant Its ground of solid adamant, That strengthens ether for the flight Of angels, makes and measures height, And in materiality Exceeds our Earth's in such degree As all else Earth exceeds! Do I Here utter aught too dark or ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... sluggish press-magnet, causing its armature to be attracted, thus lifting the platen and its projecting arm. As the arm lifts upward, the pin moves along the under side of the lower arm of the rocking-lever, thus causing it to cant and shift the type-wheels to the right or left, as desired. The principles of operation of this apparatus have been confined to a very brief and general description, but it is believed to be sufficient for the ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... seas, Vs brought from Ginnie land, away to France, the Lord we praise. And warre he proues it plaine when we entered his ship, A prisner therefore I remaine, and hence I cannot slip Till that my ramsome be agreed vpon, and paid, Which being leuied yet so hie, no agreement cant be made. And such is lo my chance, the meane time to abide A prisner for ransome in France, till God send time and tide. From whence this idle rime to England I doe send: And thus till I haue further time, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, v5 - Central and Southern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... looking at her husband, and her own face was transfigured. Mrs. Zelotes, also, seemed to radiate with a sort of harsh and prickly delight. She descanted upon the hard-earned savings which Andrew had risked, but she held her old head very high with reluctant joy, and her bonnet had a rakish cant. ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... "Yur lize wot cant be chawd of Chineece jaik; xekewted bi me fur a plitikle awfens, and et bi mi starven hogs, wich aint hed nuthin afore sence jaix boss stoal mi korn. BIL ROPER, and ov ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... that 'He was buried with much pomp at Thetford Abbey under a tomb designed by himself and master Clarke, master of the works at King's College, Cambridge, & Wassel a freemason of BuryS. Edmund's.' Cooper's Ath. Cant., i. p. 29, col.2. ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... would be obliged to live more expensively.' BOSWELL. 'Perhaps, Sir, I should be the less happy for being in Parliament. I never would sell my vote, and I should be vexed if things went wrong.' JOHNSON. 'That's cant, Sir. It would not vex you more in the house, than in the gallery: publick affairs vex no man.' BOSWELL. 'Have not they vexed yourself a little, Sir? Have not you been vexed by all the turbulence of this reign, and by that ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... hatred and villification take the form of superb disdain and witty maliciousness worthy of the land of good stories and practical jokes,—a spirit which, alas! is yielding, day by day, to that other spirit which Lord Byron has characterized as "English cant." ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... General Horatio C. King, Frank B. Thurber, J. Amory Knox, E.B. Harper, W.J. Arkell, Dr. Nagle, the poet Geogheghan, Doc White, and Joseph Howard, jun. They were the old guard of the land of Bohemia, where a minister's voice sounded good to them if it was a voice without cant or religious hypocrisy. I remember a letter sent by President Harrison to one of these dinners, in which, after acknowledging the receipt of an invitation to attend, he regretted being unable to be present at "so attractive ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... Thorndyke's help, and I know that you doctors can be trusted to keep your own counsel and your clients' secrets. And now for some confessions of mine. In the first place, it is my painful duty to tell you that I am a discharged convict—an 'old lag,' as the cant phrase ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... capital necessary to insure success. It is a pleasure to me to hear that you are so comfortably settled and that your health is so much improved. I trust God will continue His kindness towards you. Let me say also that I admire the good-sense and absence of flattery and cant which your letter displayed. Farewell. I shall always be glad to hear from you as ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... stream we journeyed for four days and nights; in clear weather making tolerably good way, but often compelled by thick fogs and drift timber to lay our ship alongside the forest, and make fast to some large tree. Occasionally the stream would cant our head suddenly, and, before the helm could be shifted, rush we went right stem on into the nearest grove of willows, with such a crashing and rattling as made one wonder at first what the deuce was the row. In one instance, whilst ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... digestion makes it wit no more: Sense, past through him, no longer is the same; For food digested takes another name. I pass o'er all those confessors and martyrs Who live like S-tt-n, or who die like Chartres, Out-cant old Esdras, or out-drink his heir, Out-usure Jews, or Irishmen out-swear; Wicked as pages, who in early years Act sins which Prisca's confessor scarce hears. Even those I pardon, for whose sinful sake Schoolmen new tenements in hell must make; Of whose strange crimes no canonist can tell In what ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... downward path. Soon daily contact with vice removes abhorrence to it. Familiarity makes it habitual, and another life is ruined. The heartless moral code of the cynical young pleasure-seeking male is summed up in the cant phrase anent women: "Find, ... and forget!" It is these girls, who are victimized by their lack of self-restraint or moral principle, their ignorance or weakness, who make possible the application of ...
— Sex - Avoided subjects Discussed in Plain English • Henry Stanton
... meaning of the word owes its birth to one Joe Dun, a famous bailiff of the town of Lincoln, so extremely active and so dexterous in his business, that it became a proverb, when a man refused to pay, "Why do you not dun him?" that is, Why do not you set Dun to arrest him?—Hence it became a cant-word, and is now as old as since the days of Henry VII. Dun was also the general name of hangman, before that ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks
... with her needlework beside the window, looked out and saw Mrs. Rhoda Meserve coming down the street, and knew at once by the trend of her steps and the cant of her head that she meditated turning in at her gate. She also knew by a certain something about her general carriage—a thrusting forward of the neck, a bustling hitch of the shoulders—that she had important ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... Professor shows himself, is there any reader that can part with him in declared enmity? Let us confess, there is that in the wild, much-suffering, much-inflicting man, which almost attaches us. His attitude, we will hope and believe, is that of a man who had said to Cant, Begone; and to Dilettantism, Here thou canst not be; and to Truth, Be thou in place of all to me: a man who had manfully defied the 'Time-prince,' or Devil, to his face; nay perhaps, Hannibal-like, was mysteriously consecrated from birth to that warfare, and ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... for centuries in a dialect precisely similar to that spoken at this day, by the obscure, despised, and wretched people in England, whose language has been considered as a fabricated gibberish, and confounded with a cant in use among thieves and beggars; and whose persons have been, till within the period of the last year, an object of the persecution, instead of the protection of our laws."—Extract from a letter of William Marsden, Esq. addressed to Sir Joseph Banks, ...
— The Gipsies' Advocate - or, Observations on the Origin, Character, Manners, and Habits of - The English Gipsies • James Crabb
... the examples of cant, hypocrisy, party violence, I have never seen any to be compared to the Irish Education business; and there was Rosslyn, an old Whig, voting against; Carnarvon stayed away, every Tory without exception going against the measure. As to madness, Dudley has ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... justice and uprightness of my views."—What justice and uprightness there was in beginning a war with America, the world will judge of, and the unequalled barbarity with which it has been conducted, is not to be worn from the memory by the cant ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... the full enormity of the cant about Penny Dreadfuls can best be perceived by travelling to and fro for a week between London and Paris and observing the books read by those who travel with first-class tickets. I think a fond belief in Ivanhoe-within-the-reach-of-all would ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the name of St. Thomas, we find, in all the retainers of the aspiring prelate, no less than in himself, a most entire and absolute conviction of the reason and piety of their own party, and a disdain of their antagonists: nor is there less cant and grimace in their style, when they address each other, than when they compose manifestos for the perusal of the public. The spirit of revenge, violence, and ambition, which accompanied their conduct, instead of forming a presumption of hypocrisy, are the surest pledges of their sincere attachment ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... two worlds are loth, In which much wisdom spake so merrily. A voice, and no mere echo, thine, Of many tones, but manly ever. Thy rustic Biglow's rugged line A grateful world neglecteth never! It smote hypocrisy and cant With flail-like force; sleek bards that ripple Like shallow pools—who pose and pant, And vaguely smudge or softly stipple,— These have not brain or heart to sing As Biglow sang, our quaint Hosea, Whose "Sunthin ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 22, 1891 • Various
... and going bedwards. Suppose now, he should tumble in upon me at midnight —how could I tell from what vile hole he had been coming? Landlord! I've changed my mind about that harpooneer. — I shan't sleep with him. I'll try the bench here. just as you please; i'm sorry i cant spare ye a tablecloth for a mattress, and it's a plaguy rough board here —feeling of the knots and notches. But wait a bit, Skrimshander; I've .. got a carpenter's plane there in the bar —wait, I say, and I'll make ye snug enough. So saying he procured the ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... found in perfection among the sons of men. The very fact of his greatness made his failings all the more dangerous and unfortunate. To be blinded by the splendor of his fame and the lustre of his achievements and prate about the sin of belittling a great man is the falsest philosophy and the meanest cant. The only thing worth having, in history as in life, is truth; and we do wrong to our past, to ourselves, and to our posterity if we do not strive to render simple justice always. We can forgive the errors and sorrow for the faults of our great ones gone; we cannot afford ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... with a grimace. "You are about to say I repent of folly—or the enticing of a virgin—or that I fell victim to the blandishments of some tricky dame—I know all that cant by rote!—a man always repents until his broken head is mended, but all that is apart from the real thing—which is this:—In what way does my moment with a lady in the dark affect the Viceroy of the Indies? Why should his Excellency trouble himself that Ruy Sandoval ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... both necessary and profitable to the Commonwealth. No doubt a great deal of pious discussion would centre round the Vice-Admiral's easy moral but very logical opinions. The main thing in his mind, and in that of everybody else who was free from poisoned cant, was that the most shocking crimes were being openly advocated by Philip, King of Spain, against all European Protestants, rich or poor, who came within the clutches of the savages that administered the cruelties of the Inquisition. The canting crowd shrieked against ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... with a quotation from the Autobiography, which in its sincerity and absolute freedom from literary cant will be cherished by all whose desire is to behold "the bright countenance of truth in the quiet and still air of delightful studies." "I have drawn a high prize in the lottery of life," wrote Gibbon. "I am ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... men may be glad to hold as a friend. Yet we find in the condition to which we have drifted such a one may be pilloried by wasters, gamblers, rioters, a crew that are the curse of every community. We lash the atheist and the age but give little heed to the insincerity and cant of those we do not refuse to call our own. What an example for the man anathematised. He sees the vice and meanness of those we allow to pass for orthodox, and when he sees also the complacency of ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... North was fonder of Charles Baxter than of anyone else, save his sister. He hated sham and cant: if a man had a single reality in him the old Doctor found it; and Charles Baxter in many ways exceeds any man I ever knew in the downright quality of genuineness. The Doctor was never tired of telling—and with humour—how he once went to Baxter to have a table made for his office. When ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... themselves in the principles of the Saviour, no less than the confession that they themselves ruled only by a delegation of power from Christ, was regarded by the Protestant Americans as religious cant. The power behind the throne was more likely force of arms. The provision that other nations professing these principles should be "received with as much readiness as affection in this holy alliance" was regarded as a bid and possible conspiracy for the extension of legitimacy not alone ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... a very celebrated preacher named De Coq. I went to hear him, and, though much struck with his fluency of language, did not much admire his style of preaching; there was too much of cant and declamation, and at times he made a most intolerable noise, roaring as if he were addressing an army. This man, however, succeeded in drawing tears from the audience; but this did not surprise me, for it is astonishing how ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... noblest ends she once had, though she thought it then unrest and striving—what Carmen, who was under no illusions about Henderson, or Uncle Jerry, or the world of fashion, and had an intuitive perception of cant that is sometimes denied to the children of light, called "taking pleasure in the things of the mind." To do Margaret justice, there entered into her reflections no thought of the title and position of the Earl of Chisholm. They had never been alluring to her. If one ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... 0l—2d [French Ministry] countenances 80 [Pretender's Son], its thro the influence of 51 [King of Prussia]. I have some reason to believe they dow, for 80 [Pretender's Son] is accompanied by one of that faction. I suspect its 59 [Count Maillebois] but I cant be positive untill I go to Paris, which I think a most necessary chant [jaunt] in this juncture, for if 2 [Lord Marshall] has no finger in the piy, I lost my host of all. When I am a few days at Paris, I take a trip sixty leagues farther South to meet 71 [Sir J. Graemne or Sir James Harrington] ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... But our bold Briton, without fear or awe, O'erleaps at once the whole Apocrypha; Invades the Psalms with rhymes, and leaves no room For any Vandal Hopkins yet to come. But when, if, after all, this godly gear Is not so senseless as it would appear, Our mountebank has laid a deeper train; His cant, like Merry Andrew's noble vein, Cat-calls the sects to draw them in again. At leisure hours in epic song he deals, Writes to the rumbling of his coach's wheels; Prescribes in haste, and seldom kills by rule, But rides triumphant between stool and stool. Well, let ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... that he became reckless, and, instead of slinking off, he, too showed the same insubordination and disregard for Mr. Arnot's power and dignity that had been so irritating in Haldane. Clapping his hat on one side of his head, and with such an insolent cant forward that it quite obscured his left eye, Pat rested his hands on his hips, and with one foot thrust out sidewise, he fixed his right eye on his employer with the expression of sardonic contemplation, and then ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... rid of one who would save him from shame. God knows what I bore that night when he swore and bade me make tracks from his claim. I started to tell of the horrors of hell, when sudden his eyes lit like coals; And "Chuck it," says he, "don't persecute me with your cant and your saving of souls." I'll swear I was mild as I'd be with a child, but he called me the son of a slut; And, grabbing his gun with a leap and a run, he threatened my face with the butt. So what could I do (I ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... Parliament, and Protectorate, the theatres of that day were closed, or, if opened by stealth, were subject to the visits of the emissaries of "Praise God Barebones," "Fight the Good Fight," and their crew. The actors were driven off the stage by soldiers, and the cant word of that period is still recorded, "Enter red coat, exit hat and cloak." William Prynne was celebrated for his writings against the immorality of the stage, and the furious invectives of Jeremy Collier, are still extant; his pen was roused by Dryden's Spanish Friar, and Congreve's ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume X, No. 280, Saturday, October 27, 1827. • Various
... uncelestial but not devilish manhood? In defiance of monition and in spite of resolution, the primrose path is trodden by all sorts and conditions of men, sinners no doubt, but not necessarily abstractions of sin, and to assert the contrary makes for cant and not for righteousness. The form and substance of the poem were due to the compulsion of Genius and the determination of Art, but the argument is a vindication of the natural man. It is Byron's "criticism of ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... Or Turk of Mahomet's own kin; Clad in a mantle della guerre Of rough impenetrable fur; And in his nose, like Indian King, 255 He wore, for ornament, a ring; About his neck a threefold gorget. As rough as trebled leathern target; Armed, as heralds cant, and langued; Or, as the vulgar say, sharp-fanged. 260 For as the teeth in beasts of prey Are swords, with which they fight in fray; So swords, in men of war, are teeth, Which they do eat their vittle with. He was by birth, some authors write, 265 A Russian; ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... in limitation, the average man, of whom he is thus the bard, is a rather sophisticated average man, without very deep thoughts or feelings, without a very fertile or fresh imagination or fancy, with even a touch—a little touch—of cant and "gush" and other defects incident to average and sophisticated humanity. But this humanity is at any time and every time no small portion of humanity at large, and it is to Moore's credit that he sings its ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... an aunt? Then learn the rules of woman's cant, And forge a tale, and swear you read it, Such as, save woman, none would credit Win o'er her confidante and pages By gold, for this a golden age is; And should it be her wayward fate, To be encumbered with a mate, A dull, old dotard ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... which see the learned Jesuit F. Fariat, Illyrici Sacr. T. i. p. 355. Saint Domnius, who is honored among the saints on the 7th of May, is said to have been ordained by him first bishop of Salona, then the metropolis, which see was afterwards translated to Spalatro. 7. Cant. v. ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... are loose and profane, and many are ignorant and strangers to the work of the Lord upon their own hearts."—Letter from Protesters, subscribed in the name of many ministers, &c. met at Edinburgh, 17th of March 1653, by Mr. Andrew Cant, p. 6. See what is said in reply to this, in "The Assertor's Answer," printed in the same year, ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... after-life Scott was wont to pride himself upon being a man of business, and he averred, in contradiction to what he called the cant of sonneteers, that there was no necessary connection between genius and an aversion or contempt for the common duties of life. On the contrary, he was of opinion that to spend some fair portion ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... in her walking clothes. As she tied on her veil and took up her little black bag from the drawer she heard her own voice, which sounded to her ears like the voice of a stranger, repeating the words she had said to Kemper a little earlier: "No—no—I cant. It is impossible." And she said over these words many times because they infused into her heart the courage of despair which she needed to impel her to the step before her. When the door closed after her and she ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... proof of Immanuel and the [1] realism of Christianity, that it caused even the publi- cans to justify God. Although clad in panoply of power, the Pharisees scorned the spirit of Christ in most of its varied manifestations. To them it was cant and carica- [5] ture,—always the opposite of what it was. Keen and alert was their indignation at whatever rebuked hypocrisy and demanded Christianity in life and religion. In view of this, Jesus said, "Wisdom is justified of all her ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... but from all modern languages—Indian, African, Chinese, Mongolian—according to its needs, its adopted children far outnumbering those of its own blood. It absorbs at its will the slang of the street gamin, the cant of thieves and beggars; is actually creative in the baby talk of mothers and nurses; drops, forgets, and actually invents new words with no pedigree like those of Lear, ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... an attack on cant. It was a story written by Dickens to protest against all he hated in the nature of oppression. Dickens hated the vulgar cant that only helps to bring self-advertisement: the ethic that the poor must listen to the rich, not because ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... read the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, which, with greater beauty and tenderness, carried forward the thought of the hymn; and then he knelt and offered a prayer that was so simple and child-like, so free from form and cant, and so direct from the heart, that Gregory was deeply moved. The associations of his early home were now most vividly revealed and crowned by the sacred hour of family worship, the memory of which, like a reproachful face, had followed ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... where there was a long table full of victuals; at the lowest part sat his negroes, his hired men were next, then the family and myself; and at the head, the venerable father and his wife presided. Each reclined his head and said his prayers, divested of the tedious cant of some, and of the ostentatious style of others. "After the luxuries of our cities," observed he, "this plain fare must appear to thee a severe fast." By no means, Mr. Bertram, this honest country dinner ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... the cant of freedom that is becoming so common among us, and from which we were once so free; say what you will, Ro, of the inconsistency of those who raise the cry of 'feudality,' and 'aristocracy,' and 'nobility,' at the very moment ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... a lying cant that would represent the merchant and the banker as people disinterestedly toiling for mankind, and then most useful when absorbed in their transactions; for the man is ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... translation are numerous, but perhaps the most eccentric example is to be found in Stanyhurst's rendering of Virgil, published in 1583. It is full of cant words, and reads like the work of a madman. This is a fair specimen ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... this hour, your Majesty, And cant the words in keeping with your wish. To himself as he goes.] Decently done!... He slipped out "sacrifice," And scarce could hide his heartache for his girl. Well ached it!—But when these things have to be It is as well to breast ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... and Johnson began that life of struggle against debt, ridicule and unkind condition that was to continue for forty-seven years; never out of debt, never free from attacks of enemies; a life of wordy warfare and inky broadsides against cant, affectation and untruth—with the weapons of his dialectics always kept well burnished by constant use; hated and loved; jeered and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... the weedfield when, above the hum of insect life, above the inward clamor of his own busy speculations, there came to his ear dimly and distantly a sound that made him halt and cant his head to one side the better to hear it. Somewhere, a good way off, there was a thin, thready, broken strain of metallic clinking and clanking—an eery ghost-chime ringing. It came nearer and became plainer—tonk-tonk-tonk; ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... any writer, how absurd also is such a sentence from the pen of one who, (as we have lately seen,) no sooner descends to particulars than he makes himself ridiculous by betraying his own excessive ignorance.... "The letter for the spirit," also! which is one of the 'cant' expressions of Mr. Jowett and his accomplices in 'free handling,'—based evidently on a misconception of the meaning of 2 Cor. iii. 6. The contrast recurs at pp. 36, 357, ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... that war "ennobles," and that when they say ennobles they mean that it is destructive to the ten thousand things in life that they do not enjoy or understand or tolerate, things that fill them, therefore, with envy and perplexity—such things as pleasure, beauty, delicacy, leisure. In the cant of modern talk you will find them call everything that is not crude and forcible in life "degenerate." But back to the very earliest writings, in the most bloodthirsty outpourings of the Hebrew prophets, for example, you will find that ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... all such cant! I gave you the choice, and you made your selection with your eyes fully open. Accept poverty as your doom, and with it my eternal displeasure. I intend to make you suffer for your obstinacy. You shall find, to your sorrow, that I am not to be trifled with, or my name is ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... feel a bit sorry for my father. He seemed to me to be the victim of his own foolish sentimentality. The current cant required my attendance at his funeral, but it was really ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... constantly bestowing such promotions on persons of mediocre talent and claims. Waiving the point, whether it is right or wrong to make men bishops because they have been political partizans, the cause of this alleged injustice may be found in the tone of the times, which was eminently tinctured with cant. The Clapham sect were in the ascendancy; and Ministers scarcely dared to offend so influential a body. Even the gentle Sir James Mackintosh refers, in his Journal, with disgust to the phraseology ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... whirr began: then at the word "Go!" the sailors released their holds and the aeroplane lurched forward just clear of the bulwarks. Margaret Bunce clutched the rail nervously. One or two of the men had been somewhat slow in letting go, causing the aeroplane to cant over in a manner that was alarming to the onlookers. But long practice with the aeroplane in all kinds of gusty weather had developed in Smith an instinct for the right means of meeting an emergency ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... task was yet to be performed—the loading of the grand piano. We found it necessary to remove the raft to a place where the bank was more shelving, so that the shore side of the structure would rest on the ground, because the weight of the piano on one side would cant it over so that ...
— Field and Forest - The Fortunes of a Farmer • Oliver Optic
... black specks like Whacker Chadwick had when he had the measles. i have et them like that and they taist jest like those yeller spots in creem tarter bisquit when it gets way in a corner of your mouth up under your ear on the inside and you cant reech it with a drink of water. ennyway it dident rane and i had to ho whitch is jest my luck. mother let me go at 4 oh clock to go in swimming with the Chadwicks and Potter and Skinny Bruce. we had sum fun tying gnots in Skinnys shert sleev. ...
— Brite and Fair • Henry A. Shute
... Deputies at Carlsruhe present, who delivered two speeches, in which every third word was "freedom!" An address was delivered also by a merchant of the city, in which he made a play upon the word spear, which signifies also in a cant sense, citizen, find seemed to indicate that both would do their work in the good cause. He was loudly applauded. Their song of union was by Charles Follen, and the students were much pleased when I told them how he was ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... fatigued and disgusted with this cant:—"The Carnatic is a country that will soon recover, and become instantly as prosperous as ever." They think they are talking to innocents, who will believe that by sowing of dragons' teeth, men may come up ready grown and ready armed. They who will give themselves the trouble ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... which is fed by the Apostles with unanimous consent. Interpolation.]. Which one Church the Holy Spirit also in the Song of Songs designates in the person of the Lord and says: "My dove, my spotless one, is but one. She is the only one of her mother, chosen of her that bare her" (Cant. 6:9). Does he who does not hold this unity of the Church [unity of Peter. Corrupt reading.] think that he holds the faith? Does he who strives against and resists the Church [who deserts the ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... Now welcome thou dread power, Nameless, yet thus omnipotent, which here Walk'st in the shadow of the midnight hour." BYRON: Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Cant, iv, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... loathe, and rather than suffer him to consummate his nuptials, suppose I should (as sure I should) kill myself, it were blasphemy to lay this fatal marriage to heaven's charge——curse on your nonsense, ye imposing gownmen, curse on your holy cant; you may as well call rapes and murders, treason and robbery, the acts of heaven; because heaven suffers them to be committed. Is it heaven's pleasure therefore, heaven's decree? A trick, a wise device of priests, no more——to make the nauseated, tired-out ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... nearly all the recognized modes of satiric composition throughout the range of his long list of works. In the Tale of a Tub he employed the vehicle of the satiric tale to lash the Dissenters, the Papists, and even the Church of England; in a word, the cant of religion as well as the pretensions of letters and the shams of the world. In the Battle of the Books the parody or travesty of the Romances of Chivalry is used to ridicule the controversy raging between Temple, Wotton, Boyle, and Bentley, regarding the comparative ...
— English Satires • Various
... betrayed her, while she said her parting words. What I saw, what I heard, was no longer within the limits of doubt. The sweet girl's interest in my welfare was not the merely friendly interest which she herself believed it to be. And I said just now that I was "touched." Cant! Lies! I loved her more dearly than I had ever loved her yet. There is the truth—stripped of poor prudery, and the mean fear of being ...
— The Guilty River • Wilkie Collins
... excellences, as the vulgar eye will rest more upon the splendour of the uniform than the quality of the troops. It is this very harmony, particularly in Pope, which has raised the vulgar and atrocious cant against him:—because his versification is perfect, it is assumed that it is his only perfection; because his truths are so clear, it is asserted that he has no invention; and because he is always intelligible, it is taken for granted that he has no genius. ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... came by, Says Jack I'll try, If I cant ride this prancer, He gave a jump, On old sows rump, But she led him a ...
— Jack and Jill and Old Dame Gill • Unknown
... quite as effectually and everlastingly upon the cross as off it; but to be poor long enough to acquire a sense of proportion by coming to close grips with life; to learn what things and people really are, the good and the bad of them together; to have to weigh and measure cant and sentimentality and Christian charity—which last is a fearsome thing—in the balance with truth and common sense and human kindness. It is an ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... a man of really pure and generous character like Brasidas lending himself to be the mouthpiece of Spartan hypocrisy. To him the sounding phrases and lofty professions which he uttered may have meant something: but in their essence they were mere hollow cant, intended to divert attention from the true issue, and drag a peaceful and prosperous community into the private quarrels of Sparta. So degraded was now the tone of politics in Greece, even among her best and ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... "is the mere cant of ignorant enthusiasm, which appealeth from learning and from authority, from the sure guidance of that lamp which God hath afforded us in the Councils and in the Fathers of the Church, to a rash, self-willed, and arbitrary interpretation of ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... that does not make him any better a man while he was alive. Don't let us cant about him now. The man was an unmitigated scoundrel—perhaps ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... seen a chaplain refuse his ration. And of the salt of the good God's earth are the chaplains. There was Major the Reverend John Pringle, of Yukon fame, whose only son Jack was killed in action after he had walked two hundred miles to enlist. No cant, no smug psalm-singing, mourners'-bench stuff for him. He believed in his Christianity like a man; he was ready to fight for his belief like a man; he cared for us like a father, and stood beside us in the mornings as we drank our ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat
... musical composer has been left to the guardianship of the few sound and enlightened judges who thoroughly comprehend him, to the humble but honest admiration of professional performers, to the practice and imitation of effeminate amateurs, to the cant of criticism of the worthies on the free list, and to the instinctive applause of the popular voice. Even with these humbler hands to build up his monument, the great master of music has a perpetual possession within the hearts of men, that the poet and the painter may well envy. Every chord in the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various |
