"Pretense" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... co-conspirators because my woman's wit is sharper than thy greed. We are confidants because I know too much of thy misdeeds. We are going to succeed because I laugh at thy fat fears, and am never deceived for a moment by pretense of sanctity ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... no pretense of not understanding. Her look met his in a betrayal of the pleasure his invitation gave her. Yet she shook ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... of business rents an office in a reputable rather than a fashionable quarter of the town. There is nothing he more despises than pretense. "Where there is much show," he says, "there is seldom any thing very solid behind"—an observation which so profoundly impresses his landlady's fancy, that she makes a pencil memorandum of it forthwith, in her great family Bible, on ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... cruel conduct, and I would confess, without a wish to conceal one single fact, the sins which wrought such mischief and have brought such strange punishments. I can only do so by telling the story of how one sin led to another, until all culminated in that fearful fraud, the pretense ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... would never let me coax her into earning but a single half-crown. Some time since she might have made a good match of it! there was Ildefonso and Andrea, and many other brave fellows besides, who supported our whole house, herself among the rest; but she set up the paltry pretense that the gentry were robbers and murderers, and that she could not let them into her heart. The gallants were such generous spirits, they meant to have the baggage actually tied to them in church; but silly youth has neither sense nor truth. ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... marching up and down in the wet grass. Whitney and I guy him. To-day a sentry on post was reading "As You Like It" and whenever I go down the line half the men want to know who won the boat race— To-day Wood sent me out with a detail on a pretense of scouting but really to give them a chance to see the country. They were all college boys, with Willie Tiffany as sergeant and we had a fine time and could see the Spanish sentries quite plainly without a glass. I hope you will not worry ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... are making love under the pretense of being intellectual," she rejoined. "What would we do without the dear deceptions that make ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... themselves reluctantly on the grassy bank beside me, and gazed out in the dignity of an imagined manhood across my river, which now was lighted bravely by the retiring sun. Had I not felt with them, longed with them, they could never so splendidly have maintained their pretense. But between us, there in the evening on my stream with only the birds and the sun to see, it was not pretense. Upon the contrary, all cloaks were off, all masks removed, and we were face to face in the strong light of reality. ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... southward "eaten with vermin, diseased, scattered, dispirited, unclad, unfed, disgraced." Colonies were ignoring the old order of things, electing their own assemblies and enacting their own laws. The Tory provincial assemblies were unable to get men enough together to make a pretense of doing business. ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... He had been with Goethe at the University of Leipsic. Of a moody temperament, disheartened by failure in his profession, and soured by a hopeless passion for the wife of another, he had borrowed a pair of pistols under pretense of a journey, and had shot himself on the night ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... this pretense?" he demanded, sharply. "You were given a fair trial, and there's an end ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... "alleging that he keeps company with none but aristocrats."[2463] At Toulouse, without mentioning the lieutenant-colonel, whose life they threaten by anonymous letters and oblige to leave the town, they transfer the whole corps to another district under the pretense that "its principles are adverse to the Constitution."[2464] At Auch, and at Rennes, through the insubordination which they provoke among the men, they exhort resignations from their officers. At Perpignan, by means of a riot which they ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... went on, "we have evidence of a reconciliation between Collins and his wife. It may be simply a pretense, an effort to delude the police. But from what we have gathered about Mrs. Collins, it is unlikely that she would consent to live with a murderer, even though she ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... with living according to them, the unhappiness will be gone before we know it. It is a well-known psychological law that if we choke the expression of an emotion, we shall presently find that we have smothered the emotion itself. It may seem like hollow pretense at first, but it will pay to pretend hard; when we have pretended long enough, we shall find we no longer need to pretend. There will always be those, no doubt, who will declare it impossible, and they will continue to be ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... whose form was nothing but bone. "Yes, we know it," and he and his followers moved off a little space from Maidwa, as if they were afraid of him. "You have come," resumed the buffalo-spirit, "to a place where a living man has never before been. You will return immediately to your tribe, for, under pretense of recovering one of the magic arrows which belong to you by your father's dying wish, they have sent you off that they might become possessed of your beautiful wife, the Red Swan. Speed home! You will find the magic arrow at the lodge-door. You will live to ...
— The Indian Fairy Book - From the Original Legends • Cornelius Mathews
... "You mean, let's make pretense that we are real sure-enough Santa Claus and just pick out everything we want to give everybody, and pretend that we could get it and ...
— Santa Claus's Partner • Thomas Nelson Page
... grew very dull loitering about the Hall, and since he did not read much, like Godwin, sitting for long hours by the fire at night watching Rosamund going to and fro upon her tasks, but not speaking with her overmuch. For notwithstanding all their pretense of forgetfulness, some sort of veil had fallen between the brethren and Rosamund, and their intercourse was not so open and familiar as of old. She could not but remember that they were no more her cousins only, but her lovers also, and that she must guard herself lest she seemed to show preference ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... a mermaid's singing, on high like an angel's; it called with the same deep appeal to sense and soul alike. The sailors stood rapt; Dunham kept up a show of singing for the church's sake. The others made no pretense of looking at the words; they looked at her, and she began to falter, hearing herself alone. Then Staniford struck in again wildly, and the sea-voices lent their powerful discord, while the ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... The method they took was to watch me from morning until night. I dared not go out from my mother-in-law's room, or from my husband's bedside. Sometimes I carried my work to the window, under a pretense of seeing better, in order to relieve myself with some moment's repose. They came to watch me very closely, to see if I did not pray instead of working. When my husband and mother-in-law played cards, if I did turn toward the fire, they watched ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... not think I could," she said. She dried her eyes quickly and rose to her feet. "It is very silly of me, I know, but I cannot help it in the least," said she, turning from him in pretense of arranging the knickknacks ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... you with all my heart and soul, my own sweet woman, and before God we can do no harm: with love such as ours there can be no such thing as sin. Society is a tissue of pretense: convention a fleeting fantom. My sweet ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... fire of hate tortured him, and striding about the room. "To fight every minute against this monster, to fight in every fashion, to irritate her, to destroy a grain of her influence, in a single mind, in a little community, to expose her pretense, her sham virtues, her splendid hypocrisy, these are the breath of my life. That ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... reaching him of a certain post as librarian, in the gift of an old corporation, being vacant, Hector at once made application for it, but only to receive the answer that Pegasus must not be put in harness: poor Pegasus, on a false pretense of respect, must be kept out of the shafts! His fat friends would not permit him to degrade himself earning his bread by work he could have done very well; he must rather starve! He tried for many posts, one after the other. Heavier and heavier fell ...
— Far Above Rubies • George MacDonald
... to the desk drawer and made a pretense of fumbling through his papers; but it was easy to see that the document he sought had been carefully placed on the top of the sparse, untidy pile that cluttered the interior of the ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... in days before any pretense at establishment of a system of law and government, and before the holding of property had assumed any very stable form, may have retained a certain glamour of romance. The loose gold of the mountains, the loose cattle of the plains, before society had fallen ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... the flock together whenever any of them show a disposition to straggle, and the sheep speedily learn to know him and regard him as their friend. He never injures them, though he frequently makes a great pretense of doing so. Sometimes he takes a refractory sheep by the ear, or seizes it by the wool on his neck, but the case is exceedingly rare where he ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... same reason—a previous visit. At Nottingham we were within ten or fifteen miles of this section, and by following a splendid road could have reached Rowsley Station, with its quaint inn, near Chatsworth House and Haddon Hall. No one who makes any pretense of seeing England will miss either of these places. Haddon Hall is said to be the most perfect of the baronial mansion houses now to be found in England. It is situated in a wonderfully picturesque position, on a rocky bluff overlooking the River Wye. The manor was ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... stranger passing in a hired droschki. Cartoner and Deulin could see from the passing glance beneath the flat, green cap that they were seen and recognized at every turn. On the steps of the station they were watched with a polite pretense of looking the other way by two of the higher ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... his bride presented themselves at the inn to be put up. The scowling young Romany was particular, considering that he spent most nights in the open, with a sky for a roof. So the master of the inn thought when he rejected on one pretense or another the first two rooms that were shown him. He wanted two rooms, and they must connect. Had the innkeeper such apartments? The innkeeper had, but he would very much like to see the price in advance if he was going to turn over to guests of such light baggage the best accommodations ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... the prosperity of Sardis[3] was now at its height, there came thither, one after another, all the sages of Greece living at the time, and among them Solon, the Athenian. He was on his travels, having left Athens to be absent ten years, under the pretense of wishing to see the world, but really to avoid being forced to repeal any of the laws which at the request of the Athenians he had made for them. Without his sanction the Athenians could not repeal ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... marriage," Coralie continued, "my little son, called Rupert, after the Crusader Trevelyan, was born. Under the pretense of visiting some of my relations, I went to Lincoln. In the registry of the church of St. Morton Friars you will find the proper attestation of my ...
— Coralie • Charlotte M. Braeme
... my pillow, with shut eyes, I mean to weld our faces—through the dense Incalculable darkness make pretense That she has risen from her reveries To mate her dreams with mine in marriages Of mellow palms, smooth faces, and tense ease Of every longing nerve of indolence,— Lift from the grave her quiet lips, and stun My senses with her kisses—drawl the glee Of her glad mouth, full blithe and tenderly, ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley
... minutes neither of them spoke a word. Fenella made a pretense at eating her luncheon. Arnold ate mechanically, his thoughts striving in vain to focus themselves upon the immediate question. It was ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... painstaking care behind a screen, to hide what he was doing. He'd discovered a peep-hole bored through the brick wall from the lean-to where Von Holtz worked. He was no longer locked in there. Tommy abandoned the pretense of imprisonment after finding an automatic pistol and a duplicate key to the lock in Von Holtz's possession. He'd had neither when he was theoretically ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... old man had left it here for some one to come and get. If she followed Hoff, how was she to discover who the message was for? Puzzled as to what she should do, she borrowed a pencil from the clerk on the pretense of writing a postal and hastily copied the figures, after which she restored the slip to the book in which she had ...
— The Apartment Next Door • William Andrew Johnston
... He made pretense of agreeing to Pharaoh's suggestion, and the chief steward of the king gave him an abundant store of gold and silver and jewels, also sheep and oxen and camels. Abraham was conducted to a beautiful palace, where many slaves attended him and bowed before him, ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... Wall came the rustlers, every one of them except Doubleday's old foreman, Abe Hawk, who scorned all pretense of compromise. He advised Laramie not to go near the celebration. When Laramie intimated he might go, Abe was greatly incensed. A master of bitter sarcasm, he trained his batteries on his sandy-haired friend and these failing he ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... of course, but it irritated him to think that she recognized the fact. She had an uncanny faculty of seeing through his every pretense. In his next letter he said nothing ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... people of Man had no list to fight against Olauus or the Islanders, because they bare good will towards them, Reginald and Alanus lord of Galway being defeated of their purpose, returned home vnto their owne. Within a short space after Reginald, vnder pretense of going vnto the Court of his lord the king of England, receiued an 100. markes of the people of Man, and tooke his iourney vnto Alanus lord of Galway. Which the people of Man hearing tooke great indignation thereat, insomuch that ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... victors in the post-bellum strife which was raging around her would succeed, for a time at least, in establishing this ideal "class society." While the Nation slumbered in indifference, she feared that these men, still full of the spirit of slavery, in the very name of law and order, under the pretense of decency and justice, would re-bind those whose feet had just begun to tread the path of liberty with shackles only less onerous than those which had been dashed from their limbs by red-handed war. As she thought ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... forty people, "whom I don't know," he writes dejectedly to his wife, "and don't want to know; and wish that I might spend the evenings quietly in my own chamber." To Montcalm, who was of noble birth with no shamming, this lowbred pretense and play at courtcraft became a bore; to his staff of officers, a source of continual amusement; but De Levis presently falls victim to a pair of fine eyes possessed by the wife ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... on medical attendance, for when the storm was seen to be coming up he had eaten more stuff from the lunch basket than just one Walter could comfortably store away, and the headache that followed was not mere pretense. ...
— The Motor Girls Through New England - or, Held by the Gypsies • Margaret Penrose
... nights, under pretense of insomnia, he drew his bed to the open window and gazed sentimentally into the suddenly discovered ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... naphtha; he could have laughed. What was the wretched little puffing thing to him now? The single green light—that alone was the all in all. It belonged to the Nevski he was sure; for one reason or another she had but made pretense of going to sea, and, instead, had come here—to wait. The woman was on her now, ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... entered into partnership with a Lion on the pretense of becoming his servant. Each undertook his proper duty in accordance with his own nature and powers. The Fox discovered and pointed out the prey; the Lion sprang on it and seized it. The Fox soon became jealous of the Lion carrying off the Lion's share, and said that he would no longer find ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... an American officer in the British army. Doesn't look the part, eh? They say he was the first American to be granted a commission without any pretense of his being a Canadian. They accepted him as an American. It was a case of that or nothing. Lived here for years, and knew the country so well that they felt they had to have him on ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... aside ever so slightly, from the broad path of honor, on the plausible pretense that he is justified by the goodness of his end. All good ends can be worked out by ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... many? Prejudice, and absurd misunderstanding of the golden days of Spanish California as well as of the Spanish race and character. It is far from being my wish to offend, but I wish to present correct historical facts. Thirdly—there is no pretense to consider this brief sketch a complete or detailed history, but only a truthful outline of the heroic and ...
— Chimes of Mission Bells • Maria Antonia Field
... at the man. What was he talking about? He and his kind had burned and dusted cities and villages, and had smashed the lives of millions of human beings on the pretense that they were trying to help. What sort of ...
— The Destroyers • Gordon Randall Garrett
... route by way of Namur. To drive home the importance of obeying this order we were reminded of the regulation, printed in French and posted throughout the city, "that whosoever passed the city limits or approached the fighting line without military permit, or on the pretense of having such a permit, or whosoever deviated from the route laid down would be shot 'sur le champ.'" That same evening, however, army orders declared that the Namur route was closed. We got a second War Office pass sending us to Aix by way of Louvain, ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green
... unreasonable hours that they were frequented only by vagabonds, were of no value in the early recognition of syphilis, could not administer salvarsan under conditions to which a discriminating patient would dare to trust himself, and made no pretense at following their cases beyond the door or discharging them from medical care as cured. One of the largest cities in this country until a year ago had not even a night clinic to which day workers could ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes
... competent authors and their works are accessible to all. That any one who claims to believe the Bible should give his time to teaching innocent and uninformed children and adults the conclusions of rationalistic criticism seems almost too absurd to believe; and when it is done under the pretense of honoring the Bible, it is but another illustration of how our moral and intellectual vision can be warped and distorted when we look through the colored ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz
... in, jaded and tired, and asked Thea to go on with her game, as he was not equal to talking much before dinner. He sat down and made pretense of glancing at the evening paper, but he soon dropped it. After the railroad began to grow tiresome, Thea went with the children to the lounge in the corner, and played for them the game with which she used to amuse Thor for hours together behind the parlor stove at home, making shadow pictures ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... was smiling, and these sharp witted slum bairns exchanged knowing glances. "Whaur's that sma'—?" He dived into this pocket and that, making a great pretense of searching, until he found a narrow band of new leather, with holes in one end and a stout buckle on the other, and riveted fast in the middle of it was a shining brass plate. Tammy ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... stocking she was mending; her trembling hand refused to support even the pretense of work. Outside the snow was falling just as it was falling, perhaps, on the little grave where all her youth and hope ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... He hoped, although 170,000 fighting men are not easy to hide, that the Kaiser also would not see it. It was a very forlorn hope. The Allies also cherished a hope. It was that Constantine not only would look the other way while they slipped across his country, but would cast off all pretense of neutrality and join them. So, as far as was possible, they avoided giving offense. They assisted him in his pretense of neutrality. And that was what caused the situation. It was worthy of a comic opera. ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... is the sum of Oriental philosophy. For centuries Moulay Idriss had held out fanatically on its holy steep; then, suddenly, in 1916, its chiefs saw that the game was up, and surrendered without a pretense of resistance. Now the whole thing was over, the new conditions were accepted, and the chief of police assured us that with the French uniform at our side we should be ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... You know what the New York hotels are. When I asked for a room for her the clerk would eye her furs dubiously, look over his book in pretense, and then inform me ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... to give up all her best to every comer, but keeps a sweet, separate intimacy for each. But if you do not find it all as I write, think me not less dependable nor yourself less clever. There is a sort of pretense allowed in matters of the heart, as one should say by way of illustration, "I know a man who...," and so give up his dearest experience without betrayal. And I am in no mind to direct you to delectable places toward which you will hold yourself less tenderly than I. So by ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... lady instantly supplied. "Events have so precipitated themselves, monsieur, that pretense and conventionality were an affectation. I am informed, you understand, of your brilliant rescue of Mademoiselle ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... right on this side," said Elihu Titus, cannily peering at the nether mechanism in pretense that he had left his seat to ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... grew; I gave commands; Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands As if alive. Will't please you rise? We'll meet The company below, then. I repeat, The Count your master's known munificence Is ample warrant that no just pretense Of mine for dowry will be disallowed; Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed At starting, is my object. Nay, we'll go Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though, Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity, Which Claus of Innsbruck ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... no pretense of according to Barney the faintest indication of the respect that is supposed to be due to those of royal blood. Barney commenced to hope that he had finally come upon one who would know ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... a broken-down clergyman, whose dirty white neckcloth seemed adjusted on a secret understanding of moral obliquity, its knot suggesting a gradual approach to the last position a knot on the neck can assume, kept walking up and down the parti-colored gloom, flaunting a pretense of lecture on the scenes presented. Whether he was a little drunk or greatly in his dotage, it was impossible to determine without a nearer acquaintance. If I venture to give a specimen of his mode of ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... my head for several hours as to what substitute I could find for tinder—the only thing I still lacked, and which I could not ask for under any pretense whatsoever—when I remembered that I had told the tailor to put some under the armpits of my coat to prevent the perspiration spoiling the stuff. The coat, quite new, was before me, and my heart began to beat, but supposing the tailor had not ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... woman, half asleep, and a boy with large pink transparent ears that stood out from his head like the handles of a jar, on the other side, about a seat which the Hebrew wanted, and which the others had kept filled with packages on the pretense that it was engaged. It was a loud and fierce quarrel enough, but it won no sort of favor; and when the Jewess had given a final opinion that the greedy old woman was no lady, and the boy, who disputed in an ironical temper, replied, "Highly complimentary, I must say," there was no ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the assembled suitors, the majestic queen spoke as follows: "You make vain pretense that you love me; you speak of me as a prize, and you say you seek me as a wife. Now hear the conditions under which I will decide, and commence the trial. Whichever one of you shall first bend the bow of ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... consolation, I fear that the spiritual Tabernacle of Excelsior and the Reverend Mr. Wynn did not meet that requirement. She only felt the dry, oven-like heat of that vast shell, empty of sentiment and beauty, hollow in its pretense and dreary in its desolation. She only saw in it a chief altar for the glorification of this girl who had absorbed even the pure worship of her companion, and converted and degraded his sublime paganism to her petty creed. With a woman's withering contempt for her own art displayed in another ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... aristocratic-looking figure he made as he entered my office, with his air of the man whose hands have never known the stains of toil, with his manner of having always received deferential treatment. There was no pretense in my curt greeting, my tone of "despatch your business, sir, and be gone"; for I was both busy and much irritated against him. "I guess you want to see our cashier," said I, after giving him a hasty, absent-minded hand-shake. "My boy out there will ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... felt the flame in her face and turned quickly on pretense of searching for something in her sewing-basket. She was so long about it that ...
— Polly and the Princess • Emma C. Dowd
... to realize the greatness of the truly great. We must value everything in its own kind, affirming what it is, and not regretting what it is not. But the prerequisite of all appreciation, without which our contact with art is a pastime or a pretense, is that we be honest with ourselves. In playing solitaire at least ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... my part, I carefully observed the latitude, and followed, on setting out, a particular point of the compass, to come to a river which I knew. I took that route, under pretense of going to a certain nation to procure dry provisions, which we were in want of, and which are of great help on ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... of the tribulation Bill had experienced under his Christian master and mistress, he had been led to disbelieve in the Protestant faith altogether, and declared that he felt persuaded that it was all a "pretense," and added that he "never went to Church; no place was provided in church for 'niggers' except a little pen for ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... the beginning of the period with which we have first to deal must not be regarded as making any pretense to exactitude. We have no means of assigning a definite date to any of the most primitive-looking pieces of Greek sculpture. All that can be said is that works which can be confidently dated about the middle of the sixth century show such a degree of advancement as implies more ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... given rise to with him: "When he kept his store on Broadway, between Murray and Warren Streets, there sat on the sidewalk before it, on an orange box, an old woman, whose ostensible occupation was the selling of apples. This business was, however, merely a pretense; the main object being beggary. As years rolled on, Mr. Stewart became impressed with the idea that the old dame was his guardian angel of good luck, and this impression took so firm a hold upon his mind that when he removed to Chambers Street, ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... unrestrained by law or morals, and learning through a negro belonging to the place of an intended attack upon their party, for the purpose of robbery, they hastily re-embarked what of their property and stock they had debarked. Under pretense of dropping a few miles lower down the river for a more eligible site, they silently and secretly left in the night, and never attempted another stop until reaching the Walnut Hills, now Vicksburg. A few of the party concluded to remain here, while the larger number went on down; some ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... Basilius is dying, Quiteria is married to him as a mere matter of form, to soothe his last moments; but when the service is over, up jumps Basilius, and shows that his "mortal wounds" are a mere pretense.—Cervantes, an episode in Don Quixote, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... of pagan times is nothing but a recital of the incidents and means by which the more wicked gained possession of power over the less wicked, and retained it by cruelties and deceptions, ruling over the good under the pretense of guarding the right and protecting the good from the wicked. All the revolutions in history are only examples of the more wicked seizing power and oppressing the good. In declaring that if their authority did ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... make himself the key of all his works And eke the measure of his providence; The piercing eye of truth to whom nought lurks But lies wide ope unbar'd of all pretense. But frozen hearts! away! flie farre from hence, Unlesse you'l thaw at this celestiall fire And melt into one minde and holy sense With Him that doth all heavenly hearts inspire, So may you with my soul in one ...
— Democritus Platonissans • Henry More
... concluded to return to the scenes of his boyhood. He had made a substantial fortune in cattle, and had fought his way through the vicissitudes of the frontier until success crowned his efforts. A large family had in the mean time grown up around him, and under the pretense of giving his children the advantages of an older and established community he sold his holdings and moved back to his native borough. Within six months he returned to the straggling village which he had left on the plains, bringing the family with him. Shortly afterwards I met him, and ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... a minute and let me tell you what I mean. I have been thinking about it and I know you will appreciate what I have to say, and I know you can do it. Now listen." Whereupon the mother went on to explain quite graphically a process of pretense—good, ...
— Nerves and Common Sense • Annie Payson Call
... more drastic than ordinary court martial and practically amounts to condemnation without trial, for trials under it are simply farcical, since neither defense nor appeal is granted. Nearly five hundred revolutionists were put to death under this system, many of them without even the pretense of ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... the American force at Niagara consisted of a few hundred militia with no responsible officer in command, who were making a pretense of patrolling thirty-six miles of frontier. They were undisciplined, ragged, without tents, shoes, money, or munitions, and ready to fall back if attacked or to go home unless soon relieved. Having nothing to fear ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... Not easily deceiv'd. For first of all, He knows of this amour; and watches me With jealous eyes, lest I devise some trick To break the match. If he discovers it, Woe to poor Davus! nay, if he's inclin'd To punish me, he'll seize on some pretense To throw me into prison, right or wrong. Another mischief is, this Andrian, Mistress or wife, 's with child by Pamphilus. And do but mark their confidence! 'tis sure The dotage of mad people, not of lovers. Whate'er she shall bring ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
... sensations. We have seen that it is a state of tertiary formation and very complex. There is required, then, (1) that the elements constituting imagination be determined in a rigorous manner, but the foregoing analysis makes no pretense of being definitive; (2) that each of these constitutive elements may be strictly related to its anatomic conditions. It is evident that we are far from possessing the secret of such ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... King of England succeeded in taking Prince David, the brother of Leolin, and, under the pretense that he had been guilty of treason, he cut off his head too, and set it up on another pole at the Tower of London, by ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... out in his heart-broken bewilderment and unwittingly condemns the whole spirit and pretense of Puritanism. The Puritans fled from the wicked old world for purity's sake, they were relentless in prayer, they were absolutely under the control of the church and clergy, and yet, their Governor ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... with awe, yet he never afterwards witnessed a real battle. John Beatty, who became later a Colonel, then Brigadier-General, was my Lieutenant-Colonel; he did not, I think, even possess the equivalent of my poor pretense of military training. He was, however, a typical volunteer Union soldier; brainy, brave, terribly in earnest, always truthful, and what he did not know he made no pretense of knowing, but set about learning. He had by nature the spirit of a ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... business of life, I mean to try not to be unfair to you or injure you in any way. In my pleasure, if we can be together, I would like to share the fun with you. Whatever joy or success comes to you will make me glad. Without pretense, and in plain words, good-will to you is what I mean, in ...
— The Spirit of Christmas • Henry Van Dyke
... I saw with pleasure at the house of Madam de Warrens. M. d'Aubonne saw me, I was strongly recommended by his relation; he promised, therefore, to question and see what I was fit for, and, if he found me capable to seek me a situation. Madam de Warrens sent me to him two or three mornings, under pretense of messages, without acquainting me with her real intention. He spoke to me gayly, on various subjects, without any appearance of observation; his familiarity presently set me talking, which by his cheerful and jesting manner he encouraged without restraint—I was absolutely ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... they reached Armin's cabin. After that fate would decide. He was already hatching a scheme in his brain. If he failed to get Blake early in the fight which he anticipated he would show the white flag, demand a parley with the outlaw under pretense of surrendering Celie, and shoot him dead the moment they stood face to face. With Blake out of the way there might be another way of dealing with Upi and his Kogmollocks. It was Blake who wanted Celie. In Upi's eyes there were other ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood
... dear no! Don't you know that this is a fairy tale, and all fun and pretense; and that you are not to believe one word of it, even if ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... Anarchist is a person who throws bombs and commits other outrages, either because he is more or less insane, or because he uses the pretense of extreme political opinions as a cloak for criminal proclivities. This view is, of course, in every way inadequate. Some Anarchists believe in throwing bombs; many do not. Men of almost every other shade of opinion ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... blue-checked homespun trousers, concluded that this moment was the accepted time to count the balls in his brother's shot-pouch. This he proceeded to do, with the aid of the sullen glare from the embers within and the fluctuating gleams of the lightning without. There was no pretense of utility in Rufe's performance; only the love of ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... opinion. There can be little doubt that the official persons were sometimes sincere in the belief that they were inspired—such is the testimony of observers for both savage and civilized communities—and many modern instances bear out this view. On the other hand, there is reason to suppose that pretense and fraud often crept into the administration of the oracles. When the questions were known beforehand the responses may have been based on information that came from various quarters and on insight into the particular situation about which the inquiry was made. ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... to a priest as freedom: a happy, exuberant, fearless, self-sufficient and radiant man he both feared and abhorred. A free soul was regarded by the Church as one to be dealt with. The priest has ever put a premium on pretense and hypocrisy. Nothing recommended a man more than humility and the acknowledgment that he was a worm of the dust. The ability to do and dare was in itself considered a proof ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... you a question, Mrs. Bishop," said Mr. Harding, after he had made a pretense of refusing a third helping of fried chicken. "Did you really raise ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... the truth of policy, but religious truth—your manners will be sincere. They will have earnestness, simplicity, and frankness—the best qualities of manners. They will be free from assumption, pretense, affectation, flattery, and obsequiousness, which are all incompatible with sincerity. If you have sincerity, you will choose to appear no other, nor better, than you are—to dwell in a ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady
... challenging stars of deviltry in Bonita's eyes when they met those of Rutherford over the shoulder of Alviro while she danced, but the color was beating warm through her dark skin. The lift of her round, brown throat to an indifferent tilt of the chin was mere pretense. The languorous passion of the South was her inheritance, and excitement mounted in her while she kept ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... placed in temporary control of the See of Cartagena he shrewdly urged the Church party to make at least a pretense of disbanding as a political organization. The provinces of Cundinamarca and Panama were again in a state of ferment. Congress, sitting in Bogota, had before it for consideration a measure vesting in the President the power to interfere in certain ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... propaganda of education and must spread the knowledge to others. We must educate the army of innocents who fall because they do not know the truth, and we must reach that vaster army, whose gullibility permits these frauds to flourish. We must show them the false foundation and the hollow pretense upon which such schemes are founded. We must show them that each detail of the business is inspired by a wrong motive; that the so-called personal letters even are printed by the hundreds of thousands, and ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... raw by repeated blows. He seemed desirous to get the poor girl out of existence, or, at any rate, off his hands. In proof of this, he afterwards gave her away to his sister Sarah (Mrs. Cline) but, as in the case of Master{157} Hugh, Henny was soon returned on his hands. Finally, upon a pretense that he could do nothing with her (I use his own words) he "set her adrift, to take care of herself." Here was a recently converted man, holding, with tight grasp, the well-framed, and able bodied slaves left him by old master—the persons, ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... theory, these were exchangeable for gold at par; at worst, they were a total loss; yet as they were, variant and depreciated since the panic of 1857, they were the money of the people when the Civil War began. Before the end of 1861 the banks gave up the pretense of redeeming their notes in coin. The United States Treasury suspended the payment of specie early in 1862, and thereafter for seventeen years the paper money in circulation depended for its value on the hope that it would some day ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... marriage in the chapel we went back to Dalton, and there he abused me in the most frightful manner. He pretended to be enraged because I rebuked him in the chapel. His rage was only a pretense. Then it all came out. He told me plainly that my marriage with him was a mockery; that the man Porter who had married was not a clergyman at all, but a creature of his whom he had bribed to officiate; that Reeves was not a captain, and that ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... conscious honor and integrity of the people of America and the internal sentiment of their own power and energies must be preserved, an earnest endeavor to investigate every just cause and remove every colorable pretense of complaint; if an intention to pursue by amicable negotiation a reparation for the injuries that have been committed on the commerce of our fellow-citizens by whatever nation, and if success can not be obtained, to lay the ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... to people's houses," protested he, knowing I'd not realize what a flimsy pretense ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... Esau declined the presents offered to him. Naturally, that was a mere pretense. While refusing the gifts with words, he held his hand outstretched ready to receive them.[271] Jacob took the hint, and insisted that he accept them, saying: "Nay, I pray thee, if now I have found grace in thy sight, then receive my present at my hand, forasmuch ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... be the contents of the present chapter, it was necessary to write it in order to give a clear idea of the subject. Under the pretense of virtue venal love has too long been covered with a veil of hypocrisy. Prostitution, marriage for money and venal concubinage are, each in its way, elements of corruption and decadence which, combined with alcohol, ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... was given, and with the movement came some relief to the mental and moral strain. As we passed in front of the Forty-first Illinois, a field officer of that regiment, in a clear, ringing voice, was speaking to his men, and announced that if any man left the ranks on pretense of caring for the wounded he should be shot on the spot; that the wounded must be left till the fight was over. His men cheered him, and we took up the cheer. Blood was beginning to flow through our veins ...
— "Shiloh" as Seen by a Private Soldier - With Some Personal Reminiscences • Warren Olney
... he gave any sign that he heard. Annie-Many-Ponies, watching from under her drooping lids, saw that Bill Holmes had edged closer to Ramon, while he made pretense of being much occupied with ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... how unscrupulous her enemies, than is afforded by the fact that, in the latter part of this year, they actually brought back Madame La Mothe to Paris with the purpose of making a demand for a re-investigation of the whole story of the fraud on the jeweler—a pretense for reviving the libelous stories to the disparagement of the queen, the utter falsehood and absurdity of which had been demonstrated to the satisfaction of the whole world four years before. Nor was it wholly a Jacobin plot. ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... raw winter afternoon, he stopped at her house, intending under a pretense of a craving for hot tea to win Kitty to speech of her friend Marcia. Well-simulated shivers, a reference to the biting air, would secure his cousin's solicitude, then, at perhaps the third cup, he would in ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... he told me he dare not speak to you on the subject, you were so fiery; and if you heard that the property was confiscated, you would certainly do some rash act, and that any thing of the kind would be a pretense for laying hold of you; and then he said that he did not think that he would live long, for he was weaker every day; and that he only hoped his life would be spared another year or two, that he might keep you quiet till better times came. He said that if they supposed that we were ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... Under pretense of placing the Prince in greater safety, and removing him from persons who might influence him, to the detriment of the peace and welfare of the kingdom, he was conducted, in great state, to the Tower; his uncle assuming the office of ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... who, under the pretense of recording some particular stage in the development of a language, does what he can to arrest its growth, stiffen its flexibility and mechanize its methods. For your lexicographer, having written his dictionary, comes to be considered "as one having authority," whereas ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... country that "the freedom of the press is the great bulwark of civil and religious liberty" is one of the most precious legacies which they have left us. We have learned, too, from our own as well as the experience of other countries, that golden shackles, by whomsoever or by whatever pretense imposed, are as fatal to it as the iron bonds of despotism. The presses in the necessary employment of the Government should never be used "to clear the guilty or to varnish crime." A decent and manly examination of the acts of the ...
— Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Harrison • James D. Richardson
... saw it, too, for I saw the quick look under his bushy brows that I knew of old. Then he began to chat of all things except ourselves and diseases and with such an infinite geniality that I could see poor Lucy's pretense of animation merge into reality. Then, without any seeming change, he brought the conversation gently round to ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... rocks, they had to escape from smugglers, they had to hide in caves, and once Alice had to fall down on the rocks, and pretend to be hurt. It was a very real fall, too, and she did not have to make much of a pretense at limping. ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope
... several of the conspirators, notably the six who had associated together to assassinate the queen, were in London awaiting their opportunity. Anthony Babington lodged at Walsingham's own house, lured there by the wily secretary under pretense of taking him into his confidence; while Babington, to further his own ends, seemingly acquiesced in the minister's plans. It was a case of duplicity against duplicity, craft matched against craft, with ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... they contended only with staves, called rudes, or with blunted weapons; but when warmed and inspirited by the pretense of battle, they changed their weapons, and advanced at the sound of trumpets to the real strife. The conquered looked to the people or to the emperor for life; his antagonist had no power to grant or to refuse it; but if the spectators were ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... who say you are perfectly square and that is why I send for you now that we may work together and make the greatest headway. Do you know that the scoundrel Hosley has become infatuated with my daughter?—a pretense for criminal purposes, of course. To-day he seeks me out to tell me they are engaged! A few hours later I hear he is crying at ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... a fair effort at local and national biography with no pretense to scientific treatment. Some attention is given also to religious and educational institutions. Apparently almost any one financially able to aid the enterprise or sufficiently influential to have his sketch incorporated into the work appears in this volume. One man's ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... speaks six or seven thousand words, so that fifteen hundred words would not fill a fifteen-minute speech. This difficulty is met in debates by the longer time allowed, for each side ordinarily has an hour; but even then there can be no pretense of a thorough treatment. The ordinary written argument of a student in school or college can therefore do very little with large public questions. The danger is that a short argument on a large question may breed in one an easy ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... swinish lifting of the wide-flaring nostrils, in the humid glowing of the inflamed eyes. A nausea of disgust swept over her. She fought it down. Then, with hypocrisy that amazed herself, she met his ardent stare boldly, though with a pretense of timidity. She spoke with a hesitant, remonstrant voice, ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily |
