"Cant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... you, indeed?" shouted Mr Durfy; "going with you, is he? to learn how to cant and sing psalms! Not if I know it—or if he does, you and he and your brother and your old ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... unreasonableness in his adversaries, though their case might be overwhelmingly plausible, it was ten to one he routed them in confusion. He was ready in retort. One example of this readiness Gladstone was fond of quoting: Sir Francis Burdett had made a speech against the Whigs, in which he spoke of the "cant of patriotism." "There is one thing worse than the cant of patriotism," retorted Lord John, "and that is the recant of patriotism." Again, when the Queen once asked him, "Is it true, Lord John, that you hold that a subject is justified, ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... in the past, creating a tradition of public and private action which needs no definite formula. The man who did more than any other to supply this lack in a new country, by imbuing its national consciousness—even its national cant—with high aspiration, did—it may well be—more than any strong administrator or constructive statesman to create a Union which should ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... James Hamilton, in Dumfreis, Bernard Sanderson, John Levingstoun, James Bonar, Evan Camron, David Dickson, Robort Bailzie, James Cuninghame, George Youngh, Andrew Affleck, David Lindsay, Andrew Cant, William Douglas, Murdo Mackenzie, Coline Mackenzie, John Monroe, Walter Stuart Ministers; Archbald Marquesse of Argyle, William Earle Marshall, John Earle of Sutherland, Alexander Earle of Eglingtoun, John Earle of Cassils, Charles Earl of Dumfermeling, John ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... of cant words renders jests imperfectly intelligible. Greek humour was clearer in this respect than that of the present day, especially since our vocabulary has been so much enriched from America. Puns also restrict the pleasantries dependent on them to one country, no great loss ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... the hells yawn for their prey, and opera-singers and fiddlers—creatures hatched from gold, as the dung-flies from the dung-swarm, and buzz, and fatten, round the hide of the gentle Public In the cant phase, it was "the London season." And happy, take it altogether, happy above the rest of the year, even for the hapless, is that period of ferment and fever. It is not the season for duns, and the debtor glides about with a less anxious eye; and the weather is warm, and the vagrant ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... virtually allowed the practice of the disciples of John, and excused, as only for a time, that of His own disciples. The very name, 'bridegroom,' was taken from the Old Testament (Ps. xix. 6 sq., Is. lxi. 10, xlix. 18, Cant. iv. 8); and its assumption by Christ was a sanction of marriage, and showed that Marcion did wrong ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... attempt at mere conformity. Such "morality" would conceal an inner conflict. The fruits of this conflict would be neurosis and hysteria on the one hand; or concealed gratification of suppressed desires on the other, with a resultant hypocrisy and cant. True morality cannot be based on conformity. There must be no conflict between ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... interesting notes on Lockhart in his later life, recalls his remark: "If I had to write my Life of Scott over again, now, I should say more about his religious opinions. Some people may think passages in his novels conventional and commonplace, but he hated cant, and every word he said came from his heart." Of Lockhart's own religious opinions, Mr. Gleig writes: "A clergyman, with whom he had lived in constant intimacy from his Oxford days [probably the writer himself], was in the frequent habit, between 1851 and 1853, of calling upon Lockhart ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... also at Aix a very celebrated preacher named De Coq. I went to hear him, and, though much struck with his fluency of language, did not much admire his style of preaching; there was too much of cant and declamation, and at times he made a most intolerable noise, roaring as if he were addressing an army. This man, however, succeeded in drawing tears from the audience; but this did not surprise me, for it is astonishing how easily this is accomplished. This reminds me of a ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... Cant. First, were his sacred garments rent and torn; Then laid they violent hands upon him; next, Himself imprison'd, and his goods asseiz'd: This certify the Pope: away, take horse. [Exit Attendant. ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe
... admirably balanced by her home affections, which remained unsullied and unshaken to the end of her days. She had, in common with her three brothers and her charming sister, the advantage of a wise and loving mother—a woman pious without cant, and worldly-wise without being worldly. Mrs. Porter was born at Durham, and when very young bestowed her hand and heart on Major Porter; an old friend of the family assures us that two or three of their children were born in Ireland, and that certainly Jane ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... supper, Daddy; never mind your money now" says Franconia, laughing heartily: at which Bob regains confidence and resumes his supper, keeping a watchful eye upon his old master the while. Every now and then he will pause, cant his ear, and shake his head, as if drinking in the tenour of the conversation between Franconia and her uncle. Having concluded, he pulls out his money and spreads it upon the chest. "Old Bob work hard fo' ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... is more wonderful than fiction,'" said the doctor. And I conclude the readers of this tale are all of the doctor's opinion; so sweet to the mind is cant. ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... is a real man under all circumstances, having no awe of authority, no hesitation in speaking his mind, but a great reverence for women and a real respect for a religion that does not savor of cant. ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... sympathetic study of character. A Marked Man is the story of a younger son of an old English county family who, while sharing the pride and indomitable spirit of his ancestry, develops a hatred for conventional prejudices and religious cant, and, after making a final assertion of independence by marrying a farmer's daughter, emigrates to New South Wales to establish a name and ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... fashion to be known, With eyes all white, and many a groan, With neck awry and snivelling tone, And handkerchief from nose new-blown, And loving cant to sister Joan; 'Tis a new teacher about the town, Oh! the town's ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... the same breath with war may seem like sheer cant and hypocrisy. But in the possibility that those who best understand the use and nature of armed power may excel all others in stimulating that higher morality which may some day restrain war lies a main chance for the future. The Armed Services ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... gentleman employed by government to collect informations against the papists, and so much distinguished in the employment, that Topcliffizare became the cant term of the day for hunting a recusant, was at this time a follower of the court; and a letter addressed by him to the earl of Shrewsbury contains some particulars of this progress worth preserving.... "I did never see her majesty better received by two ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... much cant as real piety obtrusively expressed. Poor old thing! I have no fear but that little Giblets will go my way! he worships me, and I shall not leave his h's nor more important matters to her mercy. He is nearly big enough for the day school Mr. Parsons is setting on foot. ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... multifarious variations; but it is to little purpose that we deride the men who govern us, for they are what we and our institutions have made them. If we want better representatives, we must mend our own ways and especially purge ourselves of political cant and national vanity,—which is the food that ward politicians grow fat on. The profession of a politician is based on instability, and he cannot acquire, as matters now stand, the solidity of character that we look for ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... objected on principle to all forms of frivolous amusement, such as music, dancing, or novel reading, while games and even pictures were regarded as meaningless luxuries. Such puritanical convictions might have easily degenerated into mere cant; but underlying all was a broad and firm basis of wholesome respect for individual freedom and a brave adherence to truth. He was a man of good business capacity, and a thorough manager of his wide and lucrative interests. He saw that compensation and not chance ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... a somewhat bold saying for a divine: "But, to avoid all commonplace cant as much as I can on this head, I will forbear to say, because I do not think, that 'tis a breach of Christian charity to think or speak ill of our neighbour. We cannot avoid it: our opinion must follow the evidence," &c. ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... sun, and a fine fresh healthy trade that stirred up a man’s blood like sea-bathing; and the whole thing was clean gone from me, and I was dreaming England, which is, after all, a nasty, cold, muddy hole, with not enough light to see to read by; and dreaming the looks of my public, by a cant of a broad high-road like an avenue, and with the sign on ...
— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to go away on bizness. I had ought to hav said good-by but I cant wate till you gets back so I thort I wold write. I love you. I hates everyboddy else when I think of you. I dont love no other woman but you. Nor never did. If ever I go away and dont come back dont ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... a Conveyance of the great and Valluable Country below the Kentucky from the Cherokees. He and about 300 adventurers are gone out to take Possession, who it is said intends to set up an independent Government & form a Code of Laws for themselves. How this may be I cant say, but I am affraid the steps taken by the Government have been too late. Before the Purchase was made had the Governor interfered it is believed the Indians would not ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... proportionate to its constant supply. Dear reader, you are very difficult to please. My descriptions you call slow, my imaginings frivolous, science dry. Jokes are feeble and personalities tedious morality is stale, religion is cant. What, how can I write? You have had a taste of all and if you are not content the fault is—well, let me be on the safe ...
— Three Months of My Life • J. F. Foster
... ashamed of that ragged regiment of shallow thinkers, and obscure writers and talkers who at present infest our literature, and whose parrot-like repetition of their own stereotyped phraseology, mingled with some barbarous infusion of half Anglicised German, threatens to form as odious a cant as ever polluted the stream of thought or disfigured the purity of language. Happily it is not likely to be more than a passing fashion; but still it is a very unpleasant fashion while it lasts. As in Johnson's day, every young writer imitated as well as he could the ponderous diction and everlasting ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... courage to give his reasons for his opinion. His reasons filled the churches with hatred. Instead of answering his arguments they attacked him. Men who were not fit to blacken his shoes blackened his character. There is too much religious cant in the statement of Mr. Thorburn. He exhibits too much anxiety to tell what Grant Thorburn said to Thomas Paine. He names Thomas Jefferson as one of the disreputable men who welcomed Paine with open arms. The testimony ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... to lead. But as the sweet-faced old leader called upon one and another to speak, and as many spoke with streaming eyes, D'Entremont quivered with sympathy. He was not so blind that he could not see the sham and cant of some of the speeches, but in general there was much earnestness and truth. When Priscilla rose in her turn and spoke, with downcast eyes, he felt the beauty and simplicity of her religious life. And he rightly ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... violently introduced into the English language, and metaphors borrowed from the boldest lyric poetry of a remote age and country, and applied to the common concerns of English life, were the most striking peculiarities of this cant, which moved, not without cause, the derision both ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... e'er an aunt? Then learn the rules of woman's cant, And forge a tale, and swear you read it, Such as, save woman, none would credit Win o'er her confidante and pages By gold, for this a golden age is; And should it be her wayward fate, To be encumbered with a mate, A dull, old dotard should he be, That dulness claims thy ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Saviour; and then Christ, thus possessing the heart by faith, he works by love, and "he that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God, and God in him." Love hath this special value in it, that it transports the soul in a manner out of itself to the Beloved, Cant. iv. 9. Anima est ubi amat, non ubi animat;(196) the fixing and establishing of the heart on God is a dwelling in him; for the constant and most continued residence of the most serious thoughts and affections, ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... there was yet time—resign his fortune, and accept Sophie and a clear conscience, poverty and a country parish. But persons who have wealth absolutely in their power, to take or to leave, sec clearly how much poetical extravagance, hypocrisy, and cant exist in the arguments of those who advocate the beauties and advantages of being poor. Deliberately and voluntarily to forego the opportunities, the influence, the ease, the refinement, which money alone can command—let not the sacrifice be underrated! ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... a Dyeing man and i Mustnt Tell Who cause if my mother was Home I Wood and she wood say yes. She always helps dyeing folks and sick ones one the boys will go and he can ride Moses or prince Which he likes. I guess marty so i Cant right any more the paper is so littul and ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... make him any better a man while he was alive. Don't let us cant about him now. The man was an unmitigated scoundrel—perhaps he deserved ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... the first of men The apple pressed with specious cant, O, what a thousand pities then That Adam was ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... which he taught, no great distinct policy which he embodied, no noble words which once fascinated his age, and which, in after years, men would not willingly let die. But we shall be able to say "he had a genial manner, a firm, sound sense; he had a kind of cant of insincerity, but we always knew what he meant; he had the brain of a ruler in the clothes of a man of fashion". Posterity will hardly understand the words of the aged reminiscent, but we now feel their effect. The House of Commons, ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... that I have the benefit of Dr. Thorndyke's help, and I know that you doctors can be trusted to keep your own counsel and your clients' secrets. And now for some confessions of mine. In the first place, it is my painful duty to tell you that I am a discharged convict—an 'old lag,' as the cant phrase has it." ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... Queen after a long pause, "—but that is one of the cant phrases that we have learned by heart. I mean just the reverse of what I have said. You can imagine the change that your words ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... "and I never will. I do not want to know your d—d principles—or grievances, or whatever they are. We were living an easy life, in the plenty of money, and nothing to complain of. You take it all away, with your cursed cant—" ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... something is left out of the portrait, the likeness will be imperfect; if the anxiety or the inquisitiveness of readers to know private details is left ungratified, the writer will be met by the current cant that the public has a right to know. The line is not easily drawn, and few subjects for the biographer can ever desire to be as candidly dealt with by him as Cromwell acted with Sir Peter Lely, in the request to be painted as he was, warts and all. Thus, too often the result will be ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... to sweep out the water without ceasing and suffering severely from clouds of mosquitoes. When at last the storm abated and they could return to the house, they found everything wet and mildewed and the cottage leaning with a decided cant to one side. Worst of all, one of the horses had become entangled in the barbed-wire fence that had been blown down by the wind, and was dreadfully injured. Thus they discovered that life in the tropics has its drawbacks as well as ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... "gentlemanly," which seems to me to be often inappropriately used, and often, too, with such exaggerated distortion of meaning, while the full simplicity of the noun "man," and the adjective "manly" are unacknowledged—that I am induced to class it with the cant ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... balance of power. The debate lasted through the nights of the 27th and 28th, the West-India interest affecting great horror of slavery, and depicting the encouragement the measure would give to that evil in terms of great and even pious alarm. Never did a party resort more scandalously to cant and hypocrisy to serve a purpose than this, on the memorable occasion of "the sugar debate." The resolution was carried, and a bill embodying it rapidly passed the commons, but was resisted in the lords ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... they are the enemies of the cross of Christ. Whose end is destruction, whose god is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things,"—and as to Christ thy Lord, most comely "as the lily among thorns," being his "love among the daughters," Cant. ii. 2. so also, thou, in a special way, art the dearly beloved and longed for, the joy and crown, of every sincere servant of Christ in the gospel, Phil. iv. 1. Thou art, if not the only, yet the chief object of their ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... the sincerity of men, who, like Wesley, travelled 'nine hundred miles in a month, and preached twelve times a week' for no ostensibly adequate reward, there were others who saw in Methodism, and especially in the extravagancies of its camp followers, nothing but cant and duplicity. It was this which prompted on the stage Foote's 'Minor' (1760) and Bickerstaffe's 'Hypocrite' (1768); in art the 'Credulity, Superstition, and Fanaticism' of Hogarth (1762); and in literature the 'New Bath Guide' of Anstey (1766), the 'Spiritual Quixote' of Graves, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... spouse a fitting mate, though late in life. But, what are fifty years? They mark the prime of a healthy man's existence. He has by that time seen the world, can decide, and settle, and is virtually more eligible—to use the cant phrase of gossips—than a young man, even for a young girl. And may not some fair and fresh reward be justly claimed as the crown of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... may likewise be objected that it is drawn from mythology, though such as may be more easily assimilated to real life. Idalia's 'velvet-green' has something of cant. An epithet or metaphor drawn from Nature ennobles Art; an epithet or metaphor drawn from Art degrades Nature. Gray is too fond of words arbitrarily compounded. 'Many-twinkling' was formerly censured as not ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... useless as herself. She supposed it was wicked—but she did not care! She ought to be resigned to the mysterious dispensations of Providence—that was the prescribed phraseology of pious people. She had heard the cant times without number. What more would they have than her utter destitution of love and bliss? Was she not miserable enough to satisfy the sternest believer in purgatorial purification? to appease the wrath even of Him who had wrought her desolation? ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... belong to another day, and that they are, in some sense, to be shut out from common life and speech. This does not mean such common use of Biblical phrases in every day conversation as to cause it to grow into that form or irreverence known as cant, but it does mean simple usage of Bible thought, and the effort to fit it to the conditions of daily life. Such a habit in itself will force any family to discriminate as to what things in the Bible are living and eternal, and what things belong rightly to that far away ...
— Study of Child Life • Marion Foster Washburne
... off Fleet Street, and Johnson began that life of struggle against debt, ridicule and unkind condition that was to continue for forty-seven years; never out of debt, never free from attacks of enemies; a life of wordy warfare and inky broadsides against cant, affectation and untruth—with the weapons of his dialectics always kept well burnished by constant use; hated and loved; jeered ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... Cant. i. 15; iv. i.; v. 12.—St. Bernard himself is said to have had "dove-like eyes" (V.P. v. 12); and the meaning of the phrase is explained thus: "In his eyes there shone a certain angelic purity and a dove-like simplicity (single-mindedness)" ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor
... no feeling for you, because I am blind? No, I have not. Why do you expect me, being in darkness, to be better than men who have their sight—why should you? Is the hand of Heaven more manifest in my having no eyes, than in your having two? It's the cant of you folks to be horrified if a blind man robs, or lies, or steals; oh yes, it's far worse in him, who can barely live on the few halfpence that are thrown to him in streets, than in you, who can see, and work, and are not dependent on the mercies of the world. A curse on you! You who ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... judicious tone of voice and the familiar cant of the curly brown head, and answered promptly, "I want you to play Good Samaritan for a little while, be nurse ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... billiards, and when he is tired and wishes to rest himself he stays up all night and plays billiards, it seems to rest his head. He smokes a great deal almost incessantly. He has the mind of an author exactly, some of the simplest things he cant understand. Our burglar-alarm is often out of order, and papa had been obliged to take the mahogany-room off from the alarm altogether for a time, because the burglar-alarm had been in the habit ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... miser had, after all, the one great redeeming quality of being true to himself. He made no pretense to religion and had an abhorrence of hypocrisy. Cant was not in his nature. Out into the world he went, a ferocious shark, cold-eyed for prey, but he never cloaked his motives beneath a calculating exterior of piety or benevolence. Thousands upon thousands he had deceived, for business was business, ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... sympathies, and hold himself irresponsible. But he would be conscious of a more miserable weakness in thus divorcing himself from his fellow-men who in the domain of art must ever walk hand in hand with him. So he prefers to say that, of all the various forms in which Cant presents itself to suffering humanity, he knows of none so outrageous, so illogical, so undemonstrable, so marvelously absurd, as the Cant of "Too Much Mercy." When it shall be proven to him that communities are degraded and brought to guilt and crime, suffering or destitution, from a predominance ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... words. What I saw, what I heard, was no longer within the limits of doubt. The sweet girl's interest in my welfare was not the merely friendly interest which she herself believed it to be. And I said just now that I was "touched." Cant! Lies! I loved her more dearly than I had ever loved her yet. There is the truth—stripped of poor prudery, and the mean fear ...
— The Guilty River • Wilkie Collins
... slang are often confused in the popular mind, yet they are not synonymous, though very closely allied, and proceeding from a common Gypsy origin. Cant is the language of a certain class—the peculiar phraseology or dialect of a certain craft, trade or profession, and is not readily understood save by the initiated of such craft, trade or profession. It may be correct, ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... sport and games, to my own great relief be it added, for the dweller in the tents of the literary world hears but little of the ordinary topics of conversation, and becomes suffocated, if he be not to the manner born, with the nauseating cant and self-sufficiency which is so typical of the literary world of to-day, and more especially typical of its younger members. But at George Newnes's house you hear but little shop. We discussed golf and its rapidly increasing popularity, the newest "serve" at tennis, ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... fingers up for doles," Replied the haughty surgeon; "To use your cant, I don't play roles Utility that verge on. First amputation—nothing less - That is my line of business: We surgeon nobs despise all jobs Utility that ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... him a sharp critic of human nature, and his sense of personal disappointment turned into a bitterness hardly to be distinguished from cynicism. In a passionate longing for a better order of things, in the merciless denunciation of the cant and bigotry which was enlisted in the cause of the existing order, he resembled Byron. The rare union in his nature of the analytic and the emotional gave to his writings the very qualities which he enumerated as characteristic of the age, and his consistent sincerity made his voice distinct above ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... lands, near a little country village that lay just at the foot of the mountains. It was made up of the simple peasantry, where life was free from cant, suspicions, criticism and morbid curiosity. Here they could live and follow the bent of their minds, undisturbed and unobserved if they so wished. They kept their identity unknown yet the villagers ...
— Within the Temple of Isis • Belle M. Wagner
... many persons in the world who cannot bear to receive instruction when conveyed to them in a serious form, who shrink with loathing from the cant with which too many religious novels are loaded; and who yet might be induced to listen to precepts of religion and morality, when arrayed in a more amusing and attractive garb, and enforced by characters who speak ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... fell into any misery, he called it "seeing life," If his head was broken by a chairman, or his pocket picked by a sharper, he comforted himself by imitating the Hibernian dialect of the one, or the more fashionable cant of the other. Nothing came amiss to him. His inattention to money matters had concerned his father to such a degree that all intercession of friends was fruitless. The old gentleman was on his deathbed. The whole family (and Dick among ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... but dissolute man, who under a better system might have been a good speaker. A writer of some mark was CREMUTIUS CORDUS, whose eloquent account of the rise of the Empire cost him his life: in direct defiance of the fashionable cant of the day he had called Cassius "the last of the Romans." The higher spirits seemed to take a gloomy pleasure in speaking out before the tyrant, even if it were only with their last breath; more than one striking instance of this is recorded by Tacitus; and ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... sun in Cant. vi. already quoted, "Clear as the sun," may be taken as equivalent to "spotless." That is its ordinary appearance to the naked eye, though from time to time—far more frequently than most persons have any idea—there are spots upon the ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... knows to be indulgent, that t'obey. Here's no Sedition hatcht, no other Plots, But to entrap the Wolf that steals our Flocks. Who then wou'd be a King, gay Crowns to wear, Restless his Nights, thoughtful his Days with Care; Whose Greatness, or whose Goodness cant secure From Outrages which ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... employment, lonely and despondent, she is led to take her first step on the downward path. Soon daily contact with vice removes abhorrence to it. Familiarity makes it habitual, and another life is ruined. The heartless moral code of the cynical young pleasure-seeking male is summed up in the cant phrase anent women: "Find, ... and forget!" It is these girls, who are victimized by their lack of self-restraint or moral principle, their ignorance or weakness, who make possible the application ...
— Sex - Avoided subjects Discussed in Plain English • Henry Stanton
... so far as to say that the paper gives its holder a certain power in a certain quarter where such power is immensely valuable." The Prefect was fond of the cant of diplomacy. ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... Take a specimen of other answers. If anybody were so far left to himself as to go with this question to some of our modern wise men and teachers, they would say, 'Saved? My good fellow, there is nothing to be saved from. Get rid of delusions, and clear your mind of cant and superstition.' Or they would say, 'Saved? Well, if you have gone wrong, do the best you can in the time to come.' Or if you went to some of our friends they would say, 'Come and be baptized, and receive the grace of regeneration in holy baptism; and then come to the sacraments, and be ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... patience, just Heaven! Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world—though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst, the cant of criticism is the most ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... singular felicity of speech, he addressed two years ago to the Indian Civil Service:—"We have a clouded moment before us now. We shall get through it—but only with self-command and without any quackery or cant, whether it be the quackery of blind violence disguised as love of order, or the cant of unsound and misapplied sentiment, divorced from knowledge and untouched by any ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... nonsense! The whole thing is a horrible confusion of ideas—half remorse and half cant—the one so mixed up with the other in your mind that you cannot disentangle them. But, believe me, others feel very sure that sacred things and—and what I won't call bluntly by its name, go very ill together! So don't waste those airs on ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... for the spoliation of landlords upon the Bible and upon the ideal of a "Divine brotherhood," forgetting that the Bible contains a commandment "Thou shalt not steal," as well as many warnings against lying, deceit, cant, and covetousness. One of the champion Bible-Socialists, for instance, writes: "If all men are brothers, as Christ undoubtedly taught, then the land, the source of wealth, the means by which men can earn ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... house in Lebanon, to look 'from the lions' dens, from the mountains of the leopards,' to the things that are invisible; even as Paul said when he was in affliction, 'We look not at the things which are seen' (Cant 4:8; 2 Cor 4:18). He draws them out thence, I say, as sheep appointed for the slaughter; yea, he goeth before them, and they follow ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... I was living there at the time the business happened. Didn't the countess pull Lady Isabel to pieces! She and Miss Levison used to sit, cant, cant all day over it. Oh, I assure you I know all about it, just as much as Joyce did. Have you got that headache, that you are leaning on ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... famus like St. Elspeth's sister Ester. I should not want to keep a dairy if I had to tend to it every day, but St. Elspeth says just to rite when I feel like it which I don't s'pose will be offen as there is usuly something to do which I like better. I am riting today becaus it rains and I cant go ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... reaction against Byron—I do not speak of that mixture of cant and stupidity which denies the poet his place in Westminster Abbey, but of literary reaction—has shown itself still more unreasoning. I have met with adorers of Shelley who denied the poetic genius of Byron; others who seriously compared his poems with those of Sir Walter Scott. ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... it too strong; now I think I do understand you. But, Hiram, drop all that sort of thing. If you want to join Chellis's church, join it; but talk your cant to the marines.' ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... that prayer is not always answered in the way which man would have it. He went into battle with supreme confidence, not, as has been alleged, that the Lord had delivered the enemy into his hands, but that whatever happened would be the best that could happen. And he was as free from cant as from self-deception. It may be said of Jackson, as has been said so eloquently of the men whom, in some respects, he closely resembled, that "his Bible was literally food to his understanding and a guide to his conduct. He saw the visible finger of God in every incident of ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... us first be sure what the words mean. There is no use talking about a word till we have got at its meaning. We may use it as a cant phrase, as a party cry on platforms; we may even hate and persecute our fellow-men for the sake of it: but till we have clearly settled in our own minds what a word means, it will do for fighting with, but not for working with. Socrates of old used to tell the young Athenians that the ground of ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... togither-r-r—heave! Togither-r-r—heave! Once more, heave! Walk her up, boys! Walk her up! Come on, Angus! Where's yer porridge gone to? Move over, two av ye! Don't take advantage av a little man loike that!" Angus was just six feet four. "Now thin, yer pikes! Shove her along! Up she is! Steady! Cant her over! How's that, framer? More to the east, is it? Climb up on her, ye cats, an' dig in yer claws! Now thin, east wid her! Togither-r-r—heave! Aw now, where are ye goin'? Don't be too rambunctious! Ye'll be afther knockin' a hole in to-morrow mornin'. Back a little now! Whoa! How's that, ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... appropriate in the terms which distinguish and characterize it. I have ever been of opinion that an abolition of this unnatural jargon would open the path to reformation. And my observations on these people have constantly instructed me that indulgence in this infatuating cant is more deeply associated with depravity and continuance in vice than is generally supposed. I recollect hardly one instance of a return to honest pursuits, and habits of industry, where this miserable perversion of our noblest and peculiar ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... Again you fail: yet safe's the word; Take courage, and attempt a third. But just with care employ your thoughts, Where critics marked your former faults; The trivial turns, the borrowed wit, The similes that nothing fit; The cant which every fool repeats, Town jests and coffee-house conceits; Descriptions tedious, flat, and dry, And introduced the Lord knows why: Or where we find your fury set Against the harmless alphabet; ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... which was already passing into something like a mannerism, with a sort of half-playful, half-serious battery against a living writer (in this case Mr Frederic Harrison), and with a laudatory citation from a dead one (in this case Bishop Wilson). Mr Harrison had blasphemed "the cant about culture," and Mr Arnold protests that culture's only aim is in the Bishop's words, "to make reason and the will of God prevail." In the first chapter, famous thenceforward in English literature by its title, borrowed from Swift, of "Sweetness and Light," we have the old rallyings ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... forsooth, a gallant man who sits him down before the baize and challenges all comers, his money against theirs, his fortune against theirs, is proscribed by your modern moral world. It is a conspiracy of the middle classes against gentlemen; it is only the shopkeeper cant which is to go down nowadays. I say that play was an institution of chivalry; it has been wrecked along with other privileges of men ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... went; and here the same dissimilarity marked their conduct as at school. Anthony applied intensely to his studies, and made rapid progress in mental and moral improvement. Serious without affectation, and pious without cant, he daily became more attached to the profession he had chosen, hoping to find through it a medium by which he could one day restore to the world the talents which for half a century his father had buried in the dust. ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... of your hypocritical cant, Cunnil McLane! What have you been teachin' that child to read an' write fur—out of your Bible, too? What do you bring her presents fur, and hang around us when we know you despise us all, except fur the black folks we can sell you cheap? Haven't I been sold to men like ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... nearly finished and I put the last hand to," said Le Balafre, "a good fellow that I dispatched yonder and who prayed me to throw his head into the Maes.—Men have queer fancies when old Small Back [a cant expression in Scotland for Death, usually delineated as a skeleton. S.] is gripping them, but Small Back must lead down the dance with us all in ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... literary history must be built on the evidence before it, and the actual text of The Feast at Solhoug, and of Olaf Liljekrans must be taken in spite of anything their author chose to say nearly thirty years afterwards. Great poets, without the least wish to mystify, often, in the cant phrase, "cover their tracks." Tennyson, in advanced years, denied that he had ever been influenced by Shelley or Keats. So Ibsen disclaimed any effect upon his style of the lyrical dramas of Hertz. But we must appeal from the arrogance ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... farm, capital, industry, science, thought, and study have been at work, and everything has been done, thus far, which can be done to make the earth more gladsome, and the hearts of the children of men more thankful to the Giver and Bestower of all our blessings. Away, then, with this cant, prejudice, and sneering about 'book farming.' As well cry out against book geography, or book philosophy, or book history, or book law. Chemistry, botany, entomology, and pomology unite the results of their researches in their various directions, and, while ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... A person of some note in the literary world is of opinion, that glum and glom are modern cant words; and from this circumstance doubts the authenticity of Rowley's Manuscripts. Glum-mong in the Saxon signifies twilight, a dark or dubious light; and the modern word gloomy is ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... (right, fig. 3), and is secured in its place by a forged steel pin, fitted with a nut and washer, which passes through the crown and the heel of the shank. All the above anchors were provided with a stock (fig. 1, hk), the use of which is to "cant'' the anchor. If it falls on the ground, resting on one arm and one stock, when a strain is brought on the cable, the stock cants the anchor, causing the arms to lie at a downward angle to the holding ground; and the pees enter and bury themselves ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... sin &c. 945; irreverence; profaneness &c. adj.; profanity, profanation; blasphemy, desecration, sacrilege; scoffing &c.v. [feigned piety] hypocrisy &c. (falsehood) 544; pietism, cant, pious fraud; lip devotion, lip service, lip reverence; misdevotion[obs3], formalism, austerity; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... dressed herself in her black silk gown, and came down, looking pale and languid, but still quite lovely enough to discharge what in this age of cant I suppose we should call "her mission": videlicet, to set honest men by ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... Vincent. "It is a cant antithesis in opinion to oppose them to one another; but, so far as mere theoretical common sense is concerned, I would much sooner apply to a great poet or a great orator for advice on matter ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... discerns The difference of a Guido from a daub, Frequents the crowded auction. Stationed there As duly as the Langford of the show, With glass at eye, and catalogue in hand, And tongue accomplished in the fulsome cant And pedantry that coxcombs learn with ease, Oft as the price-deciding hammer falls He notes it in his book, then raps his box, Swears 'tis a bargain, rails at his hard fate That he has let it ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... Prisons, a cant term in the French Revolution for a spy under the jailers.—C. Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... painted or adorned, but is from the beginning beautiful; and God has not made some beautiful things, but Beauty is the creator of the universe. Therefore the poet is not any permissive potentate, but is emperor in his own right. Criticism is infested with a cant of materialism, which assumes that manual skill and activity is the first merit of all men, and disparages such as say and do not, overlooking the fact that some men, namely poets, are natural sayers, sent into ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... both in the law of God and man: [Sidenote: Script. Brit. cent. I.] and for that cause exceedinglie giuen to religion, especiallie the inhabitants of this Ile of Britaine, insomuch that the whole nation did not onelie take the name of them, but the Iland it selfe (as Bale [Sidenote: De ant. Cant. cent. lib. I.] and doctor Caius agree) came to be called Samothea, which was the first peculiar name that euer it had, and by the which it was especiallie [Sidenote: This Ile called Samothea.] knowne before the arriuall ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (1 of 8) • Raphael Holinshed
... this kind, he had to defend himself more than once against the charge of "Jingoism," as the cant term of the day had it; and more particularly in the debate on foreign policy on June 10th, 1898, when it was made by an old ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... converting its ennobling scenery into the images of lofty thoughts; which shall give visible form and life to the abstract ideas of our written constitutions; which shall confer upon virtue all the strength of principle and all the energy of passion; which shall disentangle freedom from cant and senseless hyperbole, and render it a thing of such loveliness and grandeur as to justify all self-sacrifice; which shall make us love man by the new consecrations it sheds on his life and destiny; which shall force through the thin ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... say this, too: love is of the body; not the body, but of the body. Ah! the misery that would be saved if we confessed that! Ah! for a little directness to liberate the soul! Your soul, dear Lucy! I hate the word now, because of all the cant with which superstition has wrapped it round. But we have souls. I cannot say how they came nor whither they go, but we have them, and I see you ruining yours. I cannot bear it. It is again the darkness creeping in; it is hell." Then he checked himself. "What nonsense ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... young men about town, or any other class of the heterogeneous irregulars who make up "Young England"—being a perfectly disinterested party in the question, inasmuch as having lost my reputation for youth, I have never acquired one for wisdom—hereby raise my voice against the intolerable cant, which assumes every man to be a hare-brained scapegrace at twenty, and Solomon at forty-five. Youth sows wild oats, it may be; too many men in more advanced life seem to me to sow no crop of any kind. There are empty fools at ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... scattered pictures of anguish heroically borne, and of Christian resignation to death, which are all the more touching because the example of courage through simple and perfect faith is enforced without cant or sentimentality. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... which is beehind old Sam Bursars house who is our naybor. I am glad you have a short name, I had ruther be cald Andre than Nickulus, Cristuff or Jean-Marie, but I wood ruther you were cald Bill or Pete or Sniper, but you cant help being what they call you so never mind. I suported you this weak by selling 70 copies of the Greenville Mirror by hand. It is a good paper and shood be patronized. I wakt into Jim Parkers offis he is the editur and sed, Mister Parker, if you have a loose job and no ...
— Deer Godchild • Marguerite Bernard and Edith Serrell
... delivered two speeches, in which every third word was "freedom!" An address was delivered also by a merchant of the city, in which he made a play upon the word spear, which signifies also in a cant sense, citizen, find seemed to indicate that both would do their work in the good cause. He was loudly applauded. Their song of union was by Charles Follen, and the students were much pleased when I told them how he was honored ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... merely touched the outside, a member of the University of Oxford, and a very clever writer, Mr. Frederic Harrison, developed, in the systematic and stringent manner of his school, the thesis which Mr. Bright had propounded in only general terms. "Perhaps the very silliest cant of the day," said Mr. Frederic Harrison, "is the cant about culture. Culture is a desirable quality in a critic of new books, and sits well on a possessor of belles lettres; but as applied to politics, it means simply a turn for small fault-finding, love of selfish ease, ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... foreigners and Catholics by name in the elections of 1844 and 1852, and probably in 1848. Look to their alliance with Free Germans and Fourierites, Free Soilers and Secessionists. And, above all, look to the miserable cant with which they raise the hue and cry of persecution in favor of the Catholics, and, indirectly, deny to Protestant ministers the right to make war upon a huge corporation, calling itself a church, dealing in human souls, ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... down the columns. "Sentimentalists!" he said as his eye caught an interjection. "Cant!" he added. Then he looked at Hylda, and remembered once again on whom and what his speech had been made. He saw that her ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... off the grasp of the policemen as though it had been a feather: with one great stride he reached the countess and caught her roughly by the wrist. "Look at her, will you?" he cried: "you and the likes of you, with your smooth cant, have killed her! You crush us and starve us till we turn, and then you shoot us down like ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... profess, and gospel we have preached, and holy sacraments rightly administered, we signify unto you to be our intent, so far as God will assist us to withstand your idolatry. Take this for warning, and be not deceived."[**] With these outrageous symptoms commenced in Scotland that cant, hypocrisy, and fanaticism which long infested that kingdom, and which, though now mollified by the lenity of the civil power, is still ready to break out ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... break loose as an independent being. And even then he was still so incomplete that his parents might well have exclaimed 'Good Heavens! have you learnt nothing from our experience that you come into the world in this ridiculously elementary state? Why cant you talk and walk and paint and behave decently?' To that question Baby Raphael had no answer. All he could have said was that this is how evolution or transformation happens. The time may come when the same force that compressed the development of millions of years into nine ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... Venice. The play commonly terminates with a parade borrowed from La Fontaine's tales or from the farces of the Italian drama, which are not only pointed but more than free, and sometimes so broad that they cant be played only before princes and courtesans;"[2275] a morbid palate, indeed, having no taste for orgeat, instead demanding a dram. The Duc d'Orleans sings on the stage the most spicy songs, playing Bartholin in "Nicaise," and Blaise in "Joconde." ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... "Confound your cant!" cried his lordship. "You care no more for your neighbours than I do. You only want to make yourself unpleasant to me. Show me the way ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... right wing of the regiment, and all who knew the old farmer soldier knew him to be one of the most stubborn fighters in the army, and at the same time a "Methodist of the Methodists." He was moreover a pure Christian gentleman and a churchman of the straightest sect. There was no cant superstitions or affectation in his make-up, and what he said he meant. It was doubtful if he ever had an evil thought, and while his manners might have been at times blunt, he was always sincere and his language chosen and chaste, with the possible exception during battle. ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... in a sufficiently genial fashion, nevertheless with a certain reserve. He was not quite certain if Baltic's conversion was genuine, and if he found proof of hypocrisy, was prepared to fall foul of him forthwith. Sir Harry was not particularly religious, but he was honest, and hated cant ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... scowling old sundowners come, And cunningly ask if the master's at home, 'Be off,' she replies, 'with your blarney and cant, Or I'll call my son Andy; ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... sunny France at last. I cant tell you much about it yet on account of its avin been so foggy since we got here. We didnt deboat in Paris as I was expectin. We sailed up a river to a town with a wall around it and got off there. I dont know what the wall ...
— "Same old Bill, eh Mable!" • Edward Streeter
... fairly turn his attention. I know not a more solemn or important duty that a member of Parliament can have to discharge, than by giving, at fit seasons, a free opinion upon the character and qualities of public men. Away with the cant of "measures, not men!" the idle supposition that it is the harness, and not the horses, that draws the chariot along! No, sir, if the comparison must be made, if the distinction must be taken, men are everything, measures computatively nothing. I speak, sir, of times of difficulty ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... hath not a doll's temper Fear God and dread the Sunday-school France has neither winter, nor summer, nor morals Graham Bell Hain't we all the fools in town on our side? Happily, the little child was to evade that harsher penalty Hatred of humbug, and a scorn for cant Header Hickory-nuts I could a staid if I'd a wanted to, but I didn't want to. If loyalty to party is a form of patriotism, I am no patriot Lecky Livy, if it comforts you to lean on the Christian faith do so! Modest" Club My advice is not to raise the flag Operas Optimist ...
— Widger's Quotations from Albert Bigelow Paine on Mark Twain • David Widger
... running to him, "take me away from him: I cant bear——" I turned towards him, and shewed him my dog-tooth in a false smile. He felled me at one stroke, as he might have felled ...
— The Miraculous Revenge - Little Blue Book #215 • Bernard Shaw
... such things in the abstract—always in the abstract—calmly in the abstract. He was an old-fashioned Conservative of the Sir Leicester Deadlock style. When he was moved by an extra shower of aggressive democratic cant—which was seldom—he defended Capital, but only as if it needed no defence, and as if its opponents were merely thoughtless, ignorant children whom he condescended to set right because of their inexperience and for their ...
— On the Track • Henry Lawson
... can wade through a few sentences of malice, meanness, falsehood, perjury, treachery, and cant,' said Slurk, handing the paper to Bob, 'you will, perhaps, be somewhat repaid by a laugh at the style of this ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... there is one habit,—I said to our company a day or two afterwards,—worse than that of punning. It is the gradual substitution of cant or flash terms for words which truly characterize their objects. I have known several very genteel idiots whose whole vocabulary had deliquesced into some half dozen expressions. All things fell into one of two great categories,—fast or slow. Man's chief end was to be a brick. When ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... sort of cant," said Sir Richmond in a fierce parenthesis, "that the supplies of oil are inexhaustible—that you can muddle about with oil anyhow.... Optimism of knaves and imbeciles.... They don't want to be pulled up by any ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... which I should like to give expression might perhaps too readily fall into abstract or philosophical terms. They might, on the other hand, only too readily clothe themselves in cant phrases and assume the hortatory tone. I shall try to avoid dialectic or theory on the one hand, and preaching on the other. I take it that what I am to say is addressed chiefly to young men, and that it ought ...
— The business career in its public relations • Albert Shaw
... from its resemblance to the animal substance of the same name, I have to remark that in my trials the proportion has been found to be considerably less than that often given in tables of the composition of wheat. In one sample it was found to be as low as 0.15 per cant., in another it did not rise above 0.20 per cent. The amount was usually so inconsiderable, that I did not think it worth while to retard the progress of the work by following out processes which could add little to the ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... passes by all these achievements, not so much as alluding to them. He records but this one circumstance—that Noah became drunk and was scoffed at by his youngest son. He intended it as a valuable example, teaching pious souls to trust in God's mercy. On the other hand, the proud, the lovers of cant, the sanctimonious, the wise-acres,—let them learn to fear God and beware of passing a reckless judgment upon others! As Manasseh the king declares, God displays in his saints both his wonders and his terrors "against wicked and sinful men." This is illustrated in ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... plentiful." "I do not think it possible to better the black woman morally," said Mrs. Hill. "The germs of high and lofty thought are not in her, that is certain." "Have you ever tried to put that theory to a test?" asked Mrs. McLane sharply. "I cant say that I have," returned Mrs. Hill slowly. "If the Negro is morally low, we are ourselves responsible, and God will call us to account for it. In our greed for gain we stifled every good impulse, fostered and encouraged immorality and unholy living among our slaves by disregarding the sacredness ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... Some persons cant about the wickedness of the times: believe them not; this is the most saintly of ages, the most pure ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 360 - Vol. XIII. No. 360, Saturday, March 14, 1829 • Various
... monarchs to their people to fortify themselves in the principles of the Saviour, no less than the confession that they themselves ruled only by a delegation of power from Christ, was regarded by the Protestant Americans as religious cant. The power behind the throne was more likely force of arms. The provision that other nations professing these principles should be "received with as much readiness as affection in this holy alliance" was regarded as a bid and possible conspiracy for the extension ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... now read poetry." True, it will not read whatever bears the name it will not read nursery themes; nor tenth-rate imitations of tenth-rate imitations of Byron, Scott, or Wordsworth; nor the effusions either of mystical cant, or of respectable commonplace; nor yet very willingly the study-sweepings of reputed men, who deem, in their complacency, that the world is gaping for the rinsings of their intellect. But it will read genuine poetry, if it be ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... patience, just Heaven! Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world——though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst, the cant of ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... has vow'd again to the hands Devout of him who understands To tune it justly here! Beware The Powers of Darkness and the Air, Which lure to empty heights man's hope, Bepraising heaven's ethereal cope, But covering with their cloudy cant Its ground of solid adamant, That strengthens ether for the flight Of angels, makes and measures height, And in materiality Exceeds our Earth's in such degree As all else Earth exceeds! Do I Here utter aught ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... week in February, 1881, the world hovered over the death-bed of Thomas Carlyle. He was the great enemy of all sorts of cant, philosophical or religious. He was for half a century the great literary iconoclast. Daily bulletins of the sick-bed were published world-wide. There was no easy chair in his study, no soft divans. It was just a place to work, and to stay ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... not for a moment regret our philanthropical move, despite its awful waste of life and gold. England, however can do her duty to Africa without cant, and humbug, and nonsense about the 'sin and crime of slavery.' Serfdom, like cannibalism and polygamy, are the steps by which human society rose to its present status: to abuse them is ignorantly to kick down the ladder. The spirit of Christianity may tend ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... it will be found that, while most of our counties have given family names, sometimes corrupted, e.g. Lankshear, Willsher, Cant, Chant, for Kent, with which we may compare Anguish for Angus, the larger towns are rather poorly represented, the movement having always been from country to town, and the smaller spot serving for more exact description. An exception is Bristow ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... lib. i. cant. 2.)] I seized by the forelock this unexpected opportunity; and, by dint of negotiating and intriguing [candid King] I succeeded in indemnifying our Monarchy for its past losses, by incorporating Polish Prussia ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the merest cant," he said, "for Great Britain and France to talk about the violation of the neutrality of Belgium after what they themselves have done and are doing.... The only forum of public opinion open to me is the United States. The situation is far too vital for me to care a snap about ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... that your pleasures are yet incomplete. Moreover, it is certain that a woman of parts who has once meddled with literature will never wholly lose her love for the discussion of that delicious topic, nor cease to relish what (in the cant of our new age) is styled "literary shop." For these reasons I attempt to convey to you some inkling of the present state of that agreeable art which you, madam, raised to its ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... a worn-out voluptuary. Mentula is a cant term which Catullus frequently uses for a libidinous person, and particularly ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... sighs, "Were I but the washer of her clothes, I should breathe the scent of her." Or the Egyptian will cry, "O were I the ring on her finger, that I might be ever with her," just as the Shulammite bids her beloved (though in another sense) "Place me as a seal on thine hand" (Cant. viii. 6). Love intoxicates like wine; the maiden has a honeyed tongue; her forehead and neck are like ivory. Nothing in all this goes beyond the identity of feeling that lies behind all poetical expression. But even in this realm of metaphor and image and ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... nimbosus, Anna, aquosus. He is tempestuous in the summer, when he rises heliacally; and rainy in the winter, when he rises achronically. Your lordship will pardon me for the frequent repetition of these cant words, which I could not avoid in this abbreviation of Segrais, who, I think, deserves no little commendation ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... element in Greek life and art; yet it is a mistake to call him a Greek. An Athenian of the time of Pericles was, he thought, the noblest specimen of humanity that history had to show, and of that nobility he assimilated what he could. He acquired a distaste for cant, prudery, facile emotion, and philanthropy; he learnt to enjoy the good things of life without fear or shame; to love strength and beauty, and to respect the truth. For all that, he was a modern too; sharp eyes can see it in his verse. A touch ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... send him various things ordered, such as half a dozen scythes and stones, curry combs and brushes, weeding and grubbing hoes, and axes, and that now he must buy them in America at exorbitant prices. Not long afterward he wrote again: "I have received my goods from the Recovery, and cant help again complaining of the little care taken in the purchase: Besides leaving out half and the most material half too! of the Articles I sent for, I find the Sein is without Leads, corks and Ropes ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... The cant of civilization fatigues. Civilization is a fine and beautiful structure. It is as picturesque as a Gothic cathedral. But it is built upon the bones and cemented with the blood of those whose part in all its pomp is that and nothing more. It cannot be reared in the generous ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... of the wind and pendulous labor of rolling, the three cutters joyfully took the word to go. With a creak, and a cant, and a swish of canvas, upon their light heels they flew round, and trembled with the eagerness of leaping on their way. The taper boom dipped toward the running hills of sea, and the jib-foreleech drew a white arc against the darkness of the sky to ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... well; I am happy to find matters are managed so impartially in the post-office here. Nothing like a public cant for making matters find their true level. Tell the postmaster, then, I'll keep the letter, and the rather, as it happens, by good luck, ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... spirit when I add that to build a cathedral, and to spend our tears and pity upon a Saviour who was crucified nearly two thousand years ago, while women and men and little children are being crucified in our midst, without pity and without help, is cant, and sentimentality, and ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... of the cross mine, I write you because I am afraid I aint got your pardners name right and because Ive got something on my mind that I cant keep any more. Im the girl that got burned at the High Light. Your pardner saved my life and you were awful kind to me. Everybody's been very kind to me too. I spose you know 111 not be able to work in dance halls no more because Im quite ugly ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... It happened in Markdale to an uncle of my mothers. He wanted to marry Miss Jemima Parr. Felicity says Jemima is not a romantic name for a heroin of a story but I cant help it in this case because it is a true story and her name realy was Jemima. My mothers uncle was named Thomas Taylor. He was poor at that time and so the father of Miss Jemima Parr did not want him for a soninlaw and told him he was ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... here presented him, and with whatever metaphysical acumen and talent for meditation he is possessed of. Let him strive to keep a free, open sense; cleared from the mists of prejudice, above all from the paralysis of cant; and directed rather to the Book itself than to the Editor of the Book. Who or what such Editor may be, must remain conjectural, and even insignificant: [*] it is a voice publishing tidings of the Philosophy of Clothes; undoubtedly ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... healthy mind, of any extent, that I have discovered in Europe for long generations; it was he that first convincingly proclaimed to me (convincingly, for I saw it done): Behold, even in this scandalous Sceptico-Epicurean generation, when all is gone but hunger and cant, it is still possible that Man be a Man! For which last Evangel, the confirmation and rehabilitation of all other Evangels whatsoever, how can I be too grateful? On the whole, I suspect you yet know only Goethe the Heathen ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... and I mention them only that Dr. Johnson's opinion of the works may be known; but many of them are examples of elaborate criticism, in the most masterly style. In his review of the 'Memoirs of the Court of Augustus,' he has the resolution to think and speak from his own mind, regardless of the cant transmitted from age to age, in praise of the ancient ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... Shakespeare which he dared not utter, because the British public would not stand them. But the British public has stood some very severe things about the Bible, which is even yet reckoned of higher sanctity than Shakespeare. And certainly there is as much cant about Shakespeare to be cleared away as about the Bible. However this is scarcely the place to do it. It is clear enough, however, from his usage of Painter, that Shakespeare was no more original in ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter |
