"Insincere" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bent forward again; Robert, smiling, raised his hat, and the ponies whirled her off. In anybody else Elsmere would have thought all this effusion insincere or patronising. But Lady Helen was the most spontaneous of mortals, and the only high-born woman he had ever met who was really, and not only apparently, free from the 'nonsense of rank.' Robert shrewdly suspected Lady Charlotte's social ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to respect the man I marry, and I never could respect you, Gary. You are too—too much as you are now. You'd like to punish me, physically; you'd like to hurt me, in some way—if you could. You'll never be a lover to any woman, Gary—you are too insincere. You never have loved me; you have merely been flattered over having me near you. And it is only your ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... Justify it? No. I only say this, strange as it may seem, that I believe his affection for Miss Trevanion was for herself,—so he says, from the depth of an anguish in which the most insincere of men would cease to feign. But no more of this; she is saved, ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the more because of a secret obstinate persuasion that the 'Drama' will have a majority of friends in the end, and perhaps deserve to have them. Nay, why should I throw perhapses over my own impressions, and be insincere to you who have honoured me by being sincere? Why should I dissemble my own belief that the 'Drama' is worth two or three 'Seraphims'—my own belief, you know, which is worth nothing, writers knowing themselves ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... had charms for him; and he was not ashamed to rejoice that his child should be accepted within their pale. Then he brushed a real tear from his eyes, and Mary threw herself into his arms. The tear was real, and in all that he said there was not an insincere word. It was to him a very glory of glories that his child should be in the way of becoming the Marchioness of Brotherton. It was even a great glory that she should be Lady George Germain. The Dean never forgot the livery stable, and owned day and night that God had ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... and impatient, she had yet infinite toleration for the simpleton, and could on occasion suffer fools with a gladness quite unshared by her much gentler daughter or her husband. But the snob, the sycophant, and, above all, the humbug met with short shrift at her hands, and the insincere person hated her heartily. She spoke her mind with the utmost freedom on every possible occasion, and as she had plenty of brains and considerable shrewdness ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... from a piece of paper—death comes upon them and tramples out for ever their joys and sorrows, their hopes and fears—then, sure I am, that those who mourn for them, that those who cherish their memory and regret their loss, will neither be insincere nor few, and that they themselves will meet calmly and gladly that Great Shadow, waiting and looking with sure though humble hope to a better and less transient life; to a sinless and unstained world; to the meeting with long lost friends; to the rest ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... had spoken with a curtness to which his friend's particular manner of overlooking it only added significance. "They've become," she pursued, "superficial or insincere or frivolous, but at least they've become, with the way the drag's put on, quite as dull ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... to think, and still less what to say. Had he believed for an instant that the young gentleman was insincere, he would have had him in close arrest in the twinkling of an eye; but Waring's tone and words and manner were those of contrition itself. It was not possible that one of the boys should dare to be guying him, the implacable ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... it highly probable—nay, almost certain—that General Taylor had never thought of the Presidency in connection with himself. And there is reason for believing that the first intelligence of these nominations rather amused than seriously interested him. Yet I should be insincere, were I not to confess that, in my opinion, the repeated and steady manifestations in his favor did beget in his mind a laudable ambition to reach the high distinction ...
— The Life and Public Service of General Zachary Taylor: An Address • Abraham Lincoln
... Mrs. Clandon: believe me, there are men who have a good deal of feeling, and kind feeling, too, which they are not able to express. What you miss in Crampton is that mere veneer of civilization, the art of shewing worthless attentions and paying insincere compliments in a kindly, charming way. If you lived in London, where the whole system is one of false good-fellowship, and you may know a man for twenty years without finding out that he hates you like poison, ...
— You Never Can Tell • [George] Bernard Shaw
... which he had forgotten,—to his first impressions of the camp and of her. They both stood silent, watching the canoe, now quite visible, and the man that was paddling it, with an intensity that both felt was insincere. ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... lady's comment. Your pages are most kind and complimentary, I am sure, Lycinus. No one would have so over-praised me who had not felt kindly towards me. But if you would know my real feeling, here it is. I never do much like the complaisant; they always strike me as insincere and wanting in frankness. But when it comes to a set panegyric, in which my much magnified virtues are painted in glaring colours, I blush and would fain stop my ears, and feel that I am rather being made fun of ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... closing reflection. When lovers of China—"pro-Chinese," as they are contemptuously called in the East—assert that China is more civilised than the modern West, even the candid Westerner, who is imperfectly acquainted with the facts, is apt to suspect insincere paradox. Perhaps these few notes on Tai Shan may help to make the matter clearer. A people that can so consecrate a place of natural beauty is a people of fine feeling for the essential values of life. That they should also be dirty, disorganised, corrupt, incompetent, even if it were true—and it ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... rudeness and want of regard for other people's sensitive feelings to be sincerity. And, on the other hand, it is possible that amiability may be sweeter than truth is, and that righteousness may be hypocritical and insincere. So Paul says, 'Let this white light be resolved in the prism of your characters into the threefold rays of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... to suppose that the patriotism and the zeal which every American displays for the welfare of his fellow-citizens are wholly insincere. Although private interest directs the greater part of human actions in the United States as well as elsewhere, it does not regulate them all. I must say that I have often seen Americans make great and real sacrifices to the public welfare; and I have ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... it for a deceiver and insincere, The yellow one with two faces like a hypocrite! It shows forth with two qualities to the eye of him that looks on it, The adornment of the loved one, the colour of the lover. Affection for it, think they who judge truly, Tempts men to commit that which ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... intrusion of this pedantry, so conspicuously insincere, with its implied rebuke, chafed him unspeakably, in view of the presence of McGrath. The Governor had adopted the tone, half authoritative, half reproachful, of a teacher reproving a ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... believe he is actually insincere. I have noticed that men who write or read much often appear ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... course, the landlady and her daughter, they were simply rolling their eyes) felt that at such moments it is only permissible to utter common-places, that any word of importance, of sense, or even of deep feeling, would be somehow out of place, almost insincere. Insarov was the first to get up, and he began crossing himself. 'Farewell, our ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... other apartments which composed Sherston's set of chambers, to make him determine that Miss Pomeroy should never come there. And she, being in this as unlike other, commonplace, young woman as she was in everything else, had never put him to the pain of finding an insincere excuse for his unwillingness to show her the place in which he ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... money, and made no disguise of her motive. Here was no literary lady with all the recognised adjuncts except the literature. She did not write in order that she might talk of having written. She did not talk in such flowing periods and with such overbearing wisdom that insincere friends in sheer weariness were called upon to suggest that ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... such decoration, and with the journeymen who provided it. Michelangelo himself always made his manner serve his thought. We may fail to appreciate his manner and may be incapable of comprehending his thought, but only insincere or conceited critics will venture to gauge the latter by what they feel to be displeasing in the former. What seems lawless in him follows the law of a profound and peculiar genius, with which, whether we like it or not, we must reckon. His imitators were devoid of thought, ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... free expression of myself. They have seemed to set my life to music for me, a life that has always had to be occupied with many things besides writing. Not, however, that I claim to have written much poetry: only perhaps some true rhymes: I do not see how there could be any pleasure in writing insincere ones. ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... mother thinks she can't begin to guard him too early." Miss Ambient's head drooped a little to one side, and her eyes fixed themselves on futurity. Then suddenly there was a strange alteration in her face; she gave a smile that was more joyless than her gravity—a conscious, insincere smile, and added, "When one has children, it's a great ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... and the capital of the enemy was within our power that the Mexican Government manifested any disposition to enter into negotiations for peace, and even then, as events have proved, there is too much reason to believe they were insincere, and that in agreeing to go through the forms of negotiation the object was to gain time to strengthen the defenses of their capital and to prepare ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... discovered that he was not a genuine luminary, and yet everybody in mimickry has been an ignis fatuus about him. Why not allow his magnificent enterprises and good fortune, and confess his defects; instead of being bombast in his praises, and at the same time discover that the amplification is insincere? A Minister who inspires great actions must be a great Minister; and Lord Chatham will always appear so,—by comparison with his predecessors and successors. He retrieved our affairs when ruined by a most incapable Administration; and we are fallen into ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... truth, I am sure you are too candid and liberal to be offended - you cannot doubt of my high respect for your extraordinary abilities I am even proud of having discovered them of myself without any clue. I should be very insincere, if I pretended to have gone through with eagerness your last work, which demands more intense attention than my age, eyes, and avocations will allow. I cannot read long together; and you are sensible that your work ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... whose fruitless quarrels we pay so dearly, "You are rushing forward, blind as you are, to the abolition of property; but the government marches with its eyes open. You hasten the future by unprincipled and insincere controversy; but the government, which knows this future, leads you thither by a happy and peaceful transition. The present generation will not pass away before France, the guide and model of civilized nations, has regained her rank and ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... all things, and when Alma came up to me, saying everything that was affectionate and insincere, about her "poor dear unfortunate Margaret Mary" (only women know how to wound each other so), I brushed her aside, went off to my bedroom, and lay face down on the sofa, feeling that I was utterly beaten and could fight ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... (Ratisbon), in 792, before which the bishop was summoned to explain and justify the new doctrine. Instead of this he renounced it, and confirmed his renunciation by a solemn oath to Pope Adrian, to whom the synod sent him. The recantation was probably insincere, for on returning to his diocese he taught adoptianism as before. Another synod was held at Frankfort in 794, by which the new doctrine was again formally condemned, though neither Felix nor any of his followers ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... acrid sub-flavor of irony and insincerity with which an insincere woman can not help tainting ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... her career was a succession of brilliant coups in gaining the confidence and love, not to say the money, of men of all ages, and all walks of life. Her powers of fascination were as potent as her professions of reform were insincere. She never made an honest effort to be an honest woman, she never tried to do the square thing. Yet, like other women of her type, she found all sorts of excuses for her wrongdoing. She pretended that she was persecuted, a victim of circumstances, and was ever ready ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... their heroic fortitude, patient suffering and persistent devotion, rescued the old Bay Colony from the jaws of the certain death to which the narrow and mistaken policy of the bigoted and sometimes insincere founders had doomed it. They forced them to abandon pretentious claims, to admit strangers without insulting them, to tolerate religious differences, and to incorporate into their legislation the spirit of liberty which is now the life-blood of our institutions. The religion of the Society of ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... This idea was strengthened when the gala evening arrived, and our heroine was introduced to her father's principal patron, a vain and weak-minded man, who listened to his host's extravagant adulation with evident complacency, though to every one else it was palpably insincere. Beaufort insisted on his visiting his studio, to give his opinion of the grouping of a historical piece he had sketched out for Amy to fill up. The baronet, thus flattered, suggested some alterations which would have made it absolutely ridiculous; and the artist ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... as a member of the aristocratical party and a fine old Conservative, is that these Sophists, as the professors of the new education had come to be called, and Socrates as their protagonist, were insincere and dangerous innovators, corrupting morals, persuading young men to despise the old-fashioned, home-grown virtues of the State and teaching a system of false and pernicious tricks of verbal fence whereby ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... have almost become untrue by becoming untruthful. There are statements so often stale and insincere that one hesitates to use them, even when they stand for something more subtle. This point about curiosity is not the conventional complaint against the American interviewer. It is not the ordinary joke against the American child. And in the same way I feel the danger of it being identified with ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... pontifical law concerning perpetual celibacy, because it conflicts with divine and natural law and is at variance with the canons themselves, and is superstitious and full of danger, and, lastly, because the whole affair is insincere. For the law is enacted not for the sake of religion [not for holiness' sake, or because they do not know better; they know very well that everybody is well acquainted with the condition of the great cloisters, which we are able to name], but for the sake of dominion, and this is wickedly given the ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... as style and all that collection of effects vaguely lumped together and called "atmosphere." Chesterton's peculiar "atmosphere" rises like a sweet exhalation from the very ink he sheds. And it is frankly indefinable, as all genuine style is. The insincere stylists can be reduced to a formula, because they work from a formula; Pater may be brought down to an arrangement of adjectives and commas, Doctor Johnson to a succession of rhythms, carefully pruned of excrescences, and so on, but the stylist ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... indifferent though aching with the wish to be understood; to pose as flippant while longing to be in earnest; to hide an attraction to higher things under a little air of something like irreverence. It is strange that this kind of pose is considered as less insincere than the opposite class, which is rather out of fashion for this very reason, yet to be untrue to one's better self is surely an unworthier insincerity than to be ashamed of the worst. Perhaps the best evidence of this is the costliness ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... that your kind eyes rested on the pallid, shrinking child that crept down to the dining-room when we first met, and from that day to this you have been kind and helpful to me. I said that I regarded you as one of the best friends I had in the world. Do you think me insincere? Do you think I forget how kind you were when society would not have tolerated the ghost I was? I am not one who forgets and ignores the past—who can go on to new friends with a frigid shoulder for old ones. Let us end these misunderstandings. Before the year ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... at any rate, it left his conscience, his religion, his sociological ideas, the deeper problems which concern his relation to the universe, the subtler secrets of the world in which he lives, untouched."[2233] That means that it was a fad and was insincere. There were men who were great scholars within the standards of humanism, but the enthusiasm for art, the zeal for Latin and Greek literature, the cooperative struggle for exhumations and specimens, were features of a reigning fad. The ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... the orators of the ancient world none is more suitable for modern use than Demosthenes. It is true that he is guilty of gross bad taste in some of his speeches—but rarely in a parliamentary oration. Cicero is too verbose and often insincere. Demosthenes is as a rule short, terse and forcible. It is the undoubted justice of his cause which gives him his lofty and noble style. He lacks the gentler touch of humour—but a man cannot jest when he sees servitude before the country he loves. ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... manner, the resources of his own ingenuity, from the overwhelming difficulties with which he was surrounded. Wretched client! unhappy advocate! what a combination do you form! But such is the condition of guilt—its commission mean and tremulous—its defence artificial and insincere—its prosecution candid and simple—its condemnation dignified and austere. Such has been the defendant's guilt—such his defence—such shall be my address to you—and such, I trust, your verdict. The learned counsel has told you that this unfortunate woman is not to be estimated at forty thousand ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... England, then, was really alarmed at the Stuart scheme of toleration, sincere or insincere, because it seemed theoretical and therefore fanciful. It was in advance of its age or (to use a more intelligent language) too thin and ethereal for its atmosphere. And to this affection for the actual in the ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... evil was, as always, a heart divided—that is, between God and Baal—or, perhaps, 'smooth'; that is, dissimulating and insincere. In reality, Baal alone possesses the heart which its owner would share between him and Jehovah. 'All in all, or not at all,' is the law. Whether Baals or calves were set beside God, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... the service. Strength is given him to do it with acceptance; and, through marvellous grace, he stands among the children of the Covenant! He might have been still left to himself; his promises might have been insincere, and the covenant which he professed to make with his lips he might have profaned. But though at the commencement of his exercises there was no gracious emotion felt by him, he was led by an overruling Providence to adopt means of seeking Divine favour which God should bless. ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham
... glared at him, and his hairy paw closed for an instant round the glass as though he would hurl it at the head of his companion. Then he laughed in his loud, boisterous, insincere fashion. ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... likely to disturb you, nor should you sit in a place close by the sea or drinking-shops or brothel-houses, or the houses of widows and of maidens or buildings for music, nor should you live in close proximity to the place frequented by kings, ministers, powerful statesmen, ambitious or insincere persons. You must not sit in Meditation in a windy or very high place lest you should get ill. Be sure not to let the wind or smoke get into your room, not to expose it to rain and storm. Keep your room clean. Keep it not too light by day nor too dark by night. Keep it warm in winter ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... it has had the effect of suggesting ideals on all sides. Which has resulted in laying a sort of foundation of men who believe in the ideals and would fight for them. They are good fighters and, when the sincere ones begin, they will plant their flag where the insincere and mere politicians will be forced to stand by it to save their faces. A few louder brays from Berlin, a few more threats of hoofs trampling on the Star Spangled Banner and the fuse will be fired. An American fuse might turn out an amazing thing—because ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the controversial needs of the moment, was the argument that if France were known, as Ministers pretended, to be insincere in soliciting peace, "Ministers would certainly treat with her, since they would again secure the support of the British people in the war, and expose the ambition of the enemy;" and that, therefore, the probability was that ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... have an end, and this amusing contest finally closed. Over the remains of a farewell dinner, unusually luxurious, as befitted the occasion, we parted with expressions of mutual esteem—not, I hope, altogether insincere, and the ultimate fate of the cotton is to me unknown. Up to the date of my departure from the agency not a bale of it had either come into possession of the Government or found an outlet. I am sometimes disloyal enough to indulge myself in the hope that they ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... interested reader, not to indulge in some forecast as to what rank in the poetic hierarchy Robert Browning will ultimately occupy. The commonplace as to the impossibility of prognosticating the ultimate slow decadence, or slower rise, or, it may be, sustained suspension, of a poet's fame, is often insincere, and but an excuse of indolence. To dogmatise were the height of presumption as well as of folly: but to forego speculation, based upon complete present knowledge, for an idle contentment with narrow horizons, were perhaps ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... official position would fetter his special work. He kept aloof from party politics, and was only roused when great principles were at stake. Few of the leading politicians satisfied him. Peel seemed too cautious, Gladstone too subtle, Disraeli too insincere. It was the simplicity and kindliness of his relative Palmerston that won his heart, rather than confidence in his policy at home or abroad. The House of Commons suited him better than the colder atmosphere of the House ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... that was contemptible. He had always until now accepted this idea and found it confirmed on every side. His six years at Rugby had encouraged him—he had despised, with his tolerant smile, boys and masters alike; all insincere, all weak, all to be used, if he wanted them, as he chose to use them. He had thought often of the lonely knight—that indeed should be his attitude to ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... On that account he urged so strongly that she should be brought into relation with Miss Lant, and, if possible, with certain of Miss Lant's friends. All very well, had not the reasoning been utterly insincere. It might have applied to another person; in Jane's case it was mere sophistry. Her nature was home-keeping; to force her into alliance with conscious philanthropists was to set her in the falsest position conceivable; striving to mould herself to the desires of those she loved, ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... realize their power outside of material things, and that those who seek knowledge from them cannot see nor get hold of them; therefore to an extent they exercise a certain power over those mortals who approach; and if the mortals are themselves tricky by nature, insincere, ready to take advantage of others, whether it be at the time of sitting or in their daily life, rest assured they may be imposed upon by spirits from the other side who occupy a like plane of existence ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... him that, whatever the failings of Louis XIV may have been, indolence was not of them. Then with the next ships the King sent back his budget of orders, counsel, reprimand, and praise. If the colony failed to thrive, it was not because the royal interest in it proved insincere ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... exaggerate some form of emphasis, to exaggerate a gesture or facial expression, to wrest a passage from its meaning, these, and many other devices for forcing immediate approval from an audience, are grossly insincere. There is still a broader plan on which our sincerity must be judged. To present this effectively I quote at length from Bliss Carmen's recent book, "The Poetry of Life." The essay sets a high standard, but by ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... marry; and studious, sometimes bulbous-browed and pop-eyed maidens who at class prayer-meetings requested God to "guide their feet along the paths of greatest usefulness." Neither sort tempted Carol. The former seemed insincere (a favorite word of hers at this era). The earnest virgins were, she fancied, as likely to do harm as to do good by their faith in ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... but I cherished them with as fond a tenacity as if they had been consolatory truths of which I was the first discoverer. I was intolerant to those who maintained opposite doctrines,—despised them as irrational, or disliked them as insincere. Certainly if I had fulfilled the career which my ambition predicted,—become the founder of a new school in pathology, and summed up my theories in academical lectures,—I should have added another authority, however feeble, to the sects which circumscribe the interest of man to the life that ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... instance, I was much moved by the eloquent attack on Christianity as a thing of inhuman gloom; for I thought (and still think) sincere pessimism the unpardonable sin. Insincere pessimism is a social accomplishment, rather agreeable than otherwise; and fortunately nearly all pessimism is insincere. But if Christianity was, as these people said, a thing purely pessimistic and opposed to life, then I was quite prepared to blow up St. Paul's Cathedral. But the ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... devoted themselves to art with a passion of enthusiasm which was in itself the highest expression of their principles. That they seemed often iconoclastic was in reality less the result of their hatred of authority than the prevalence of unreasoning, and therefore by their standards necessarily insincere, adherence to established formulae. Dogmas they hated, not because they were popularly received, but because although they had been vital realities to their originators, they had become in time mere lifeless forms, held in reverence by blind devotees long after ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... the insincere; or men, who, though good patriots, unconsciously substitute their passions or prejudices in the place of the public welfare; can reproach Napoleon for having introduced this institution into ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... not associate, had favoured the efforts made by the enemies of the administration, to circulate the opinion that an opposition of interests existed between the eastern and the western people, and that the endeavours of the executive to open their great river were feeble and insincere. At a meeting of the Democratic Society in Lexington, in Kentucky, this sentiment was unanimously avowed in terms of peculiar disrespect to the government; and a committee was appointed to open a correspondence with the inhabitants ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... eloquence; and therefore she was always shamming love and friendship and benevolence and tenderness. She could tell you, with words most appropriate to the subject, how horrible were all shams, and in saying so would be not altogether insincere;—yet she knew that she herself was ever shamming, and she satisfied herself with shams. "What is he going to say to me?" she asked Augusta, with her hands clasped, when she went up to put her bonnet ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... acquainted, proposing marriage. The lady very properly declined. To be courted with a fresh-nibbed pen, and paper cut sonnet-size, instead of by a live man, deserves rebuke. Men who propose by mail to a woman in the next town are either insincere, self-deceived, or else are of the sort whose pulse never goes above sixty-five, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... windows of his cobbler's shop, Fox beheld with righteous indignation the extravagant and insincere courtesies of the gentlefolk, and heard their exaggerated phrases of compliment. In protest against the unmeaning courtesies, he wore his hat in the presence of no matter whom, taking it off only in time of ...
— William Penn • George Hodges
... point, and it is well we should consider it. It would be difficult to deal with both sides at once; so I will consider the propagandist first. What I have to charge against him is that his work is insincere, that he is afraid to do justice to the other side, that he makes ridicule of our exemplars, that he helps to keep the poseur in being; and to conclude, that only by a saving sense of humour can we find our way back to ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... few words luckily or unluckily heard in passing had wholly revolutionized my ideas respecting her: now I looked upon her as hypocritical and insincere, a flatterer, and a spy upon my words and deeds. Doubtless it would have been my interest still to meet her with the same cheerful smile and tone of respectful cordiality as before; but I could not, if I would: my manner altered with my feelings, and became so cold ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... man in the country, had a powerful effect upon his followers and also upon the public at large. No nation desires war for war's sake, and the interpretation put upon Giolitti's words by the extreme neutralists and, in particular, by the insincere organs of the Vatican, was that he had seen enough to convince him that the Cabinet had decided to wage war against Germany and Austria at all costs and irrespective of the nation's interests. Giolitti's parliamentary friends demonstratively called upon ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... could exceed the grace of his movements, the charm of his manner. He fascinated everybody who was worth fascinating, and a great many people who were not. He was often wilful and petulant, and I used to think him dreadfully insincere. It was due, I think, chiefly to his inordinate desire to please. Poor Cyril! I told him once that he was contented with very cheap triumphs, but he only laughed. He was horribly spoiled. All charming people, I fancy, are spoiled. It is the secret ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... Had he fallen in with a Friedrich, even with a Browne or a Traun, there might have been different news got. Friedrich (who was never stingy in such matters, except to his own Generals, where it might do hurt) is profuse in his eulogies, in his admirations of Saxe; amiable to see, and not insincere; but which, perhaps, practically do not mean ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... and which leave you no option. The exercise of any kind of volition by a man whose consciousness is reduced to the sensation that he is being killed by "that sort of thing" cannot be anything but mere trifling with death, an insincere pose before himself. I wasn't capable of it. It was then that I discovered that being killed by "that sort of thing," I mean the absolute conviction of it, was, so to speak, nothing in itself. The horrible ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... to as the "inner circle." King Edward, and afterwards Sir Edward Grey in continuing the late King's policy, succeeded in harnessing the revanche idee and the spirit of Russian aggression to the chariot of British Imperialism. All offers of friendship made by this country were insincere. (The professorial pleader does not say so, but he leaves his readers to infer that sincerity is a German monopoly.) Concerning the British Minister's declaration in Parliament that no secret treaty existed with France, Oncken remarks: "The declaration was just as true formally as it ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... "measures" will avail nothing whatever. If there are two things set high above legislation, "movements," crusades, and preaching, one is the marrying age and the other is the birth-rate. For there the supreme instinct comes along and stamps ruthlessly on all insincere reasonings and sham altruisms; stamps on everything, in fact, and blandly remarks: "I shall suit my own convenience, and no one but Nature herself (with a big, big N) shall talk to me. Don't pester me with Right ...
— Mental Efficiency - And Other Hints to Men and Women • Arnold Bennett
... little. You remember, perhaps, that I professed to be converted last winter. Since then I am aware that I have shown a lack of interest in religious matters, which has certainly justified you in supposing that I was either hasty or insincere in my profession. I have made my arrangements to leave you soon, and should be sorry to have that impression remain on the minds of my friends. Hasty I may have been, but not insincere. Perhaps you will excuse me if I refer to an unpleasant ...
— Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy
... life! Each gallant thane, Prince, peer, and noble, follow in your train;— They praise your loveliness, and in your ear They whisper pleasing things, but insincere; Thus, as the moths enamoured of the light, Ye seek these realms of revelry each night. But as ye travel thither, did ye know What wretches walk the streets through which you go. Sisters, whose gewgaws glitter in the glare Of your great lustre, all expectant there, Watching the ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... insincere arguments of the Adiaphorists were thoroughly and convincingly refuted by their opponents. To the assertion of the Wittenbergers that the dispute was concerning mere unimportant ceremonies which were neither commanded nor prohibited by God, Flacius and Gallus replied ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... social intercourse I observe that a man's politeness is usually more helpful and a woman's more caressing. This distinction is natural, not artificial. A man seeks to serve, a woman seeks to please. Hence a woman's politeness is less insincere than ours, whatever we may think of her character; for she is only acting upon a fundamental instinct; but when a man professes to put my interests before his own, I detect the falsehood, however disguised. Hence it is easy for women to be polite, and easy to teach little ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... the preceding, born in 1758, of a cold, severe, insincere, ambitious nature, was almost always unkind to her daughter, Madame de Mortsauf. [The Lily of ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... St. Simon and perhaps by Lord Clarendon, we should have expected the malignity of the priest would have stamped the features of his great enemy with the impress of infamy, and not have simply made him appear a courtier, weak, insincere, and nothing more. Though rather beyond our subject, the character of Cardinal de Retz, as delineated by Mdme. Sevigne, in one of her letters, will help us to form a true conclusion on the different characters of the Duc and the Cardinal. She says:— "Paul de Gondi Cardinal ...
— Reflections - Or, Sentences and Moral Maxims • Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld
... England in 1675; and to that congress Temple was deputed. The work of conciliation however, went on very slowly. The belligerent powers were still sanguine, and the mediating power was unsteady and insincere. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of Claude puzzled him. Since that day in Devonshire, when Claude had endeavored to intervene, the latter had spoken scarcely a dozen words to him. He shook hands with Jim at the station and with Angela, but his congratulations sounded weak and insincere. ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... went off to his garret and wrote a scathing criticism on the work of Richard Wagner. This divine music was not for the intellectual few at all—it was getting popular and it was getting bad. Wagner was insincere—commercial—a charlatan. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... "Because you are insincere. All you want is the pie. You make me feel that the privileged classes are right in getting what they can out of ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... much over thirty, taking this and that into consideration, weighing together dowries and religious qualifications and the instancy of friends, and exhibiting what M. Bungener calls "an honourable and Christian difficulty" of choice, in frigid indecisions and insincere proposals. But Knox's next letter is in a humbler tone; he has not found the negotiation so easy as he fancied; he despairs of the marriage altogether, and talks of leaving England, - regards not "what country consumes his wicked carcass." ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... when, viewing with a compassion, most rare in those days, the impending fate of the heroic mountaineers, the powerful Count of Toggenborg tried to negotiate a peace with the Duke. Leopold's terms, however, were so humiliating and evidently so insincere that nothing came ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... done. The Union men who voted for the resolutions in which this language was embodied, would be justly liable to censure, if it were not positively certain that they were insincere; and that they were insincere is abundantly proven by their subsequent action, and the fact that many of them held commissions in the "armed forces" sent to invade the South. On the 11th of February the Legislature resolved, "That we protest against the use of force or coercion ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... group, so near nature's heart, I think I must follow this small maiden's example, and stick to my original statement. For once, Miss Burton, we have won the advantage over you, and have proved that yours are the only insincere words that have been spoken. But I know that if I stay another moment I shall be worsted. So I shall leave the field before victory ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... from his knee, in a burst of honest indignation exclaimed, "Oh! king, remember what is done by thee this day. Refusing to give righteous judgment in favor of one who prefers virtue to a crown and life! As insincere, as secret, have been your last conditions with him, but they will be revealed when the great Judge that searcheth all men's hearts shall cause thee to answer for this matter at the dreadful day of universal doom. Thou has now given sentence on a patriot and a prince, and then shall ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... perceived that in various ways he was insincere. When he prattled compliments and expressions of devotion, whether to herself or to others, she made Spanish allowance. It was polite hyperbole; it was about the same as saying good-morning; it was a cheerful way of talking that they had in Mexico; she knew thus much ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... these Italians, who were rather theatrical and ridiculous, insincere and exaggerated, but who had great pliancy and great agility in their movements and their expression, there was one German family, consisting of several persons: a married couple with sons and daughters who ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... that no man is a hero to his valet is obviously of masculine manufacture. It is both insincere and untrue: insincere because it merely masks the egotistic doctrine that he is potentially a hero to everyone else, and untrue because a valet, being a fourth-rate man himself, is likely to be the last person in the world to penetrate his master's ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... as I think, he is in danger of being permanently separated from those with whom only he can ever have a real sympathy—the sincere opponents of slavery. It will be a mistake if he shall allow the provocations offered him by insincere timeservers to drive him from the house of his own building. He is young yet. He has abundant talents, quite enough to occupy all his time without devoting any to temper. He is rising in military skill and usefulness. His recent appointment to the command of a corps by one so ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Lincoln - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 6: Abraham Lincoln • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... this and that, their little superficial ideas about themselves, and of their circumstances and tastes, and always there was something, something that was with them unspoken, unacknowledged, which made all these things unreal and insincere. ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... he showed to Pope Clement, who was so pleased with it that he sent it and Francesco together, accompanied by the Bishop of Vasona, then Datary, to the Emperor; at which his Majesty, to whom it gave much satisfaction, hinted that it should be left with him. But Francesco, being ill advised by an insincere or injudicious friend, refused to leave it, saying that it was not finished; and so his Majesty did not have it, and Francesco was not rewarded for it, as he certainly would have been. This picture, having afterwards fallen into the hands of Cardinal Ippolito de' ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 05 ( of 10) Andrea da Fiesole to Lorenzo Lotto • Giorgio Vasari
... conclusion. If Ireland has really been denied something which has proved the secret of Colonial loyalty and prosperity, what Englishman would be so short-sighted as to wish to deprive her of it for the mere sake of domination? If Home Rule were really a stepping-stone towards Imperial Federation, how insincere our professions of "thinking Imperially," if we are not prepared to sacrifice a merely local sentiment of union for a great ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... many leaders who had attempted in vain to overcome by skill and patriotism the thousand difficulties placed in their way by successive unstable, insincere Ministers of War, General Vincente occupied an honoured place. This mild-mannered tactician enjoyed the enviable reputation of being alike unconquerable and incorruptible. His smiling presence on the battlefield was in itself ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... hither from her son's estate near Lyons, and having thereby procured for me the honor of this introduction." Both Monsieur Lomaque's red-rimmed eyes were seized with a sudden fit of winking, as he made this polite speech. His enemies were accustomed to say that, whenever he was particularly insincere, or particularly deceitful, he always took refuge in the weakness of his eyes, and so evaded the trying ordeal of being obliged to look steadily at the person ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... the silent, patient, ignorant multitude. The whole spiritual atmosphere was saturated with cant—cant moral, cant political, cant religious; an affectation of high principle which had ceased to touch the conduct and flowed on in an increasing volume of insincere and unreal speech. The truest thinkers were those who, like Lucretius, spoke frankly out their real convictions, declared that Providence was a dream, and that man and the world he lived in were material phenomena, generated by natural forces out ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... von Huegel, "bear upon them the impress of God and His Christ." What Dr. Inge, who quotes these words, says of Plotinus declares his own character. He speaks of "the intense honesty of the man, who never shirks a difficulty or writes an insincere word." ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... England, amounted to eighteen sail of the line, and the wind was fair for Revel. There he would have sailed immediately to place himself between that division of the Russian fleet and the squadron at Cronstadt, in case this offer should prove insincere. Sir Hyde, on the other hand, believed that the death of Paul had effected all which was necessary. The manner of that death, indeed, rendered it apparent that a change of policy would take place in the cabinet of Petersburgh; but Nelson never trusted anything to the uncertain events of ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... prayer, and for the most sacred ceremonies and rites of the Church, particularly in the vicarious work for the dead which is a characteristic of "Mormon" faith. And who that has gazed upon these splendid shrines will say that the people who can do so much in poverty and tribulation are insincere? Bigoted they may seem to those who believe not as they do; fanatics they may be to multitudes who like the proud Pharisee of old thank God they are not as these; but insincere they cannot be, even in the judgment of ...
— The Story of "Mormonism" • James E. Talmage
... sitting by Anderson's fire the other day when his telephone bell rang. He made the usual insincere exclamation of disgust—as insincere as the horror we simulate when a bundle of letters is brought into the room, to have letters and to be called up on the telephone being really adventures and therefore welcome; and he then crossed the room ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, December 15, 1920 • Various
... circle, and Anna with her special gift for getting on with everyone, had in the early days of her life in Petersburg made friends in this circle also. Now, since her return from Moscow, she had come to feel this set insufferable. It seemed to her that both she and all of them were insincere, and she felt so bored and ill at ease in that world that she went to see the Countess Lidia ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... spoke, suddenly she felt as if Gaspare, too, were going, perhaps, to drift from her. She looked at him with an almost sharp intensity which hardened her whole face. Was he, too, being insincere with her, ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... two classes of music have been termed subjective. The first is declamation, pure and simple; the singer may be telling a lie, or his sentiment may be insincere or false; what these sounds stand for, we know from the words, their grade of passion, etc. The last phase of our art is much more subtle, and is not amenable to such accurate analysis. If we may liken music to painting, ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... and temperature, made a show of looking out for him, and doubted that the omelet had been poisoned. Brown and McTavish also doubted; but Bertie discerned an insincere ring in their voices. His appetite had left him, and he took his own pulse stealthily under the table. There was no question but what it was increasing, but he failed to ascribe it to the gin he had taken. McTavish, rifle in hand, went out on the ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... will some day," she thought, "when I get old and quiet." She was neither old nor quiet now, and her youth cried out against so poor a consolation. Then she told herself that she had the child, only to reproach herself, a moment later, with the insincere repetition of a commonplace. The child was not enough; had her nature been such as to find the child enough, she would certainly never have become Alexander Quisante's wife. Always when she was most strongly repelled by him, there was in the back of her mind the feeling that it was ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... lives have but one solace, one ecstasy, one joy. By what treachery had he been moved to all this, if he really loved another? That he was simply amusing himself with the sort of flirtation she herself could take up as a mere pastime was not to be believed. That the worshipper should be insincere in his worship was too dreadful to think of. And yet it was to this very man she had once turned to avenge herself on Walpole's treatment of her; she had even said, 'Could you not make a quarrel with him?' Now, no woman of foreign breeding puts ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... such a nature as to indicate that the man behind the work is inherently a man worth while. In either failure or success, the sole significant thing is the quality of the endeavor. A young author may fail for the shallow reason that he is insincere; but he may fail even more decisively for the sublime reason that as yet his reach exceeds his grasp. He may succeed because through earnest effort he has done almost well something eminently worth the doing; or he may succeed merely because he has essayed an unimportant and an ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... never known her to be unkind, uncharitable, unforgiving; he had never known her to be insincere, untruthful, or envious. But the decalogue is no stronger than its weakest link. Was it in the heart of such a woman—this woman he loved—was it in the heart of this young girl to ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... of common sense regarding the unseen, oftentimes regain what they may have lost, in a man's allegiance. It is a sort of madness, he begins to think, to differ from the received opinions thereon. Not that he is insincere or ironical, but that he tends, in the [55] sum of probabilities, to dwell on their more peaceful side; to sit quiet, for the short remaining time, in the reflexion of the more cheerfully lighted side of things; and what is accustomed—what holds of familiar usage— ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... in the freedom of friendly intercourse, that there was anything sour in his spirit, or harsh and narrow in his practice; when you discussed any of these things with him, the discussion was pretty sure to end, not indeed with any insincere concession of what he thought right and true, but in consideration for ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... Kate's attention, an unconvincing, insincere note in it. She fixed her eyes upon her face searchingly, then she crossed the room swiftly and dropped upon her knees beside her. Taking one of her thin hands between both of hers ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... is now almost as common as a taste for Botticelli, and perhaps equally insincere; but in 1886 there still remained that sense of contrast in both which we have declared the essence of romance. At present those curious people who resent the popular acceptance of an ideal of beauty which they have done their best to popularise are beginning ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... the dove had not uttered a word. She sat quite still staring at the bat, and wondering to hear such insincere speeches of flattery. Suddenly ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... not an insincere one, for he did not conceive it as a real statement made to a real human being. Cleo was his wonderful dream-woman, and he had no notion at all of getting any insight into her as a real woman playing an actual role in actual life. ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... For the moment she was puzzled. To her, Hugo's speech sounded insincere. But the glance of the eye that she encountered was so caressing, the curves of his mouth were so sweetly infantine, that she accused herself of harsh judgment, and remembered Hugo's foreign blood and Continental ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... of time, and must end in capitulation. Our only safety is in assuming the offensive. Are we to be terrified any longer by such Chinese devices of warfare as the cry of Disunion,—a threat as hollow as the mask from which it issues, as harmless as the periodical suicides of Mantalini, as insincere as the spoiled child's refusal of his supper? We have no desire for a dissolution of our confederacy, though it is not for us to fear it. We will not allow it; we will not permit the Southern half of our dominion to become a Hayti. But there ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various |
