"Cant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to the mischievous wild beast which lurks in the bottom of all our hearts, now, "Rouse up! art thou a man and darest not do this thing?" now, "Rise, kill and eat—it is thine, wilt thou not take it? Shall the flimsy scruples of this teacher, or the sanctified cant of that, bar thy way, and balk thee of thine own? Thou hast strength to brave them—to brave all things in earth, or heaven, or hell; put out thy strength ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... sitting with her needlework beside the window, looked out and saw Mrs. Rhoda Meserve coming down the street, and knew at once by the trend of her steps and the cant of her head that she meditated turning in at her gate. She also knew by a certain something about her general carriage—a thrusting forward of the neck, a bustling hitch of the shoulders—that she had important news. Rhoda Meserve always had the news as soon as the news was in ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... on religious subjects, avoid all cant. Cant words and phrases may be used in good faith from the force of habit, but their use subjects the speaker ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... horrible and in the gorge—anyway that was Two. and I am all that is left and I am going—I tride to get out and the Big storm drov me back and all I can see is Jimmy Kelp and the parson if I had not of killed them they would killed me sure and big Brodie's gone he is crazy and cant never make it back across the mountains in this storm, and Baldy Winch he took a big nugget and went off, and he stoled what handful of grub there was. And now I can look down in the gorge and see the water all white and snow and ice sickles and I am afraide ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... Says Jack I'll try, If I cant ride this prancer, He gave a jump, On old sows rump, But she led him a ...
— Jack and Jill and Old Dame Gill • Unknown
... was transfigured. Mrs. Zelotes, also, seemed to radiate with a sort of harsh and prickly delight. She descanted upon the hard-earned savings which Andrew had risked, but she held her old head very high with reluctant joy, and her bonnet had a rakish cant. ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... plans and interests, even though it might be God's providence, always angered him. And now he was irritated at the loss of one of his best clerks, just as he was becoming of great value; so he said, sharply: "I hope you are not leaning toward the silly cant of mysterious providence. Life is uncertain stumbling only to fools who can't see the chances that fortune throws in their way, or recognize the plain laws of health and success. This young Fleet has been putting two days' work in one for the past four months, and now perhaps ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... you are quite well. i am quite well. Rubens is here and he is quite well. We dont no how he got here but i am verry glad. Ant Maria said well he cant be sent back now so he sleeps on my bed and i like London it is a kweer place the houses are very big and i like my cussens pretty well they are all gals their nozes are very big i ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... wide, the Current appears gentle, throwing out but little Sands, and appears to throw out but little water the heads of this River is Indians live Some distance up this river, the presise distance I cant learn, above the mouth of this river the Sand bars are thick and the water Shoal the river Still verry wide and falling a little we are obliged to haul the boat over a Sand bar, after makeing Several attempts to pass. the wind So hard we Came too & Stayed 3 hours after it Slackened a little ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... that any consideration would induce me to resign my duty to another officer, when apprised of this fact.' All this was said with the air of one really interested in my honour; but in my increasing impatience, I told him I wanted none of his cant; I simply asked him a favour, which he would grant or decline as he thought proper. This was a harshness of language I had never indulged in; but my mind was sore under the existing causes of my annoyance, and I could not bear to have my motives reflected ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... 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)
... at heart of craft and cant, Sick of the crazed enthusiast's rant, Profession's smooth hypocrisies, And creeds of ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... in his unanimous mood—unanimously condemning cant and at the same time unanimously courteous. Now that I come to reflect I believe that, in his best moments, these are perhaps the only two points concerning which Tommy Atkins is unanimous. Whether he lives up to them or not (and to ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... Fife, Who with a lad who call'd herself a boy Because—I doubt there's some confusion here— He wore no petticoat, came on a time Riding from Muscovy on half a horse, Who must have dreamt she was a horse entire, To cant me off upon my hinder face Under this tower, wall-eyed and musket-tongued, With sentinels a-pacing up and down, Crying All's well when all is far from well, All the day long, and all the night, until I dream—if what is dreaming be not waking— Of bells a-tolling and processions rolling With candles, ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... to say something on the subject of canting nonsense, of which there is a great deal in England. There are various cants in England, amongst which is the religious cant. He is not going to discuss the subject of religious cant: lest, however, he should be misunderstood, he begs leave to repeat that he is a sincere member of the Church of England, in which he believes there is more religion, and consequently ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... has succeeded in rallying round him many of the high and generous spirits of the time. The Critic is distinguished by a more than usual proportion of thought, and by very little of the small superficial cant of criticism. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various
... 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 fool of ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... glad, at last, to come to the conclusion that we would fain draw from all these descriptions—why does this immorality exist? Because the people MUST be amused, and have not been taught HOW; because the upper classes, frightened by stupid cant, or absorbed in material wants, have not as yet learned the refinement which only the cultivation of art can give; and when their intellects are uneducated, and their tastes are coarse, the tastes and amusements of ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Court, is only what might be expected of the horrible eighteenth century—the true dark age of Europe; but surely even a composer of Handel's powers could scarcely do himself justice with such a choice blend of stupidity and cant religion as this— ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... 'I cant! He shan't know the reason; he shall go to the library just the same. We'll say it's only put off. I can't marry him on Monday! I'd sooner ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... save him from shame. God knows what I bore that night when he swore and bade me make tracks from his claim. I started to tell of the horrors of hell, when sudden his eyes lit like coals; And "Chuck it," says he, "don't persecute me with your cant and your saving of souls." I'll swear I was mild as I'd be with a child, but he called me the son of a slut; And, grabbing his gun with a leap and a run, he threatened my face with the butt. So what could I do (I leave it to you)? With curses he harried me forth; ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... subordinated to dramatic quality and a richly 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 fortune ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... spiritual sense, and would be revealed disinterestedly, would have no axe to grind and no contemptible small ends to gain, and no tradesman's commercial morality and no grafting conventionality, no moral cant based on self-interest—some being so near the 'limit' that he was intellectually and morally fearless and did not need to pose, from whom some truth could be derived, whose sincerity and power of straight-seeing was not warped and concealed by any ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... does not make him any better a man while he was alive. Don't let us cant about him now. The man was an unmitigated scoundrel—perhaps he deserved ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... rooted 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
... 'Why cant a wrong-doer have a hell of his own, and be saved from singeing innocent people? The smoke of my torment ascendeth, and even George goes coughing at the smell of brimstone. George would be much ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... to its intrinsic merits: and finds admirers by the hundred, because it is there, and for no other reason on earth: there will be no lack of objects, very indifferent in the plain eyesight of any one who employs so vulgar a property, when he may wear the spectacles of Cant for less than nothing, and establish himself as a man of taste for the mere trouble ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... moment even Selah Briggs's pride and vehemence. It was very impertinent of him to try and interfere with her purely personal business, no doubt, but he seemed to do so in a genuinely kindly rather than in a fussy interfering spirit. At any rate he didn't begin by talking to her that horrid cant about the attempt to commit suicide being so extremely wicked! If he had done that, Selah would have felt it was not only an unwarrantable intrusion upon her liberty of action, but a grotesque insult to her natural intelligence ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... a brilliant passage, of short notes, which is founded essentially on a much simpler passage of longer notes. A cant term for the old-fashioned variation (e.g., the variations of the 'Harmonious Blacksmith') was 'Note-splitting,' which at once explains itself, and the older word 'Division.' A very clear example of Divisions may be found in 'Rejoice greatly' in the Messiah. The long 'runs' on the second syllable ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... at this period had one of these two names. The incident (of anointing with ointment) is one quite in accordance with the customs of the time and country, and there is not the least improbability in its repetition under different circumstances. (Eccles. 9:8; Cant. 4:10; Amos 6:6.) The ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... many youthful minds. Doubtless the Puritans learned multiplication tables and may have found them, as did Marjorie Fleming, "a horrible and wretched plaege," though no pious little New Englanders would have dared to say as she did, "You cant conceive it the most Devilish thing is 8 times 8 and 7 times 7, it is ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... characters, lest they should be drawn into another "John Allen affair," and the wretches who were to have been saved, having been quick to detect the deceit practiced in the matter, denounce all the efforts and declarations of the actors in this affair as hypocrisy and cant, and will for a long time hold aloof from them. On the whole, therefore, we can but regard the cause of religion as more injured than benefited by the mistaken zeal of those who conducted the Water ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... in his Glossary, says of this phrase: "A cant term for a state of poverty. There was a public seat so called in Oxford; but I fancy it was rather named from the common saying, than ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... fling dust or snuff in the eyes of the person intended to be robbed; also to invent some plausible tale, to delude shop-keepers and others, thereby to put them off their guard. CANT. ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... superb disdain and witty maliciousness worthy of the land of good stories and practical jokes,—a spirit which, alas! is yielding, day by day, to that other spirit which Lord Byron has characterized as "English cant." ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... your konshens, Are is the same to us as milk to babies, Or water is to fish, or pendlums to clox, Or roots and airbs unto an Injun doctor, Or little pills unto an omepath, Or Boze to girls. Are is for us to brethe. What signifize who preaches ef I cant brethe? What's Pol? What's Pollus to sinners who are ded? Ded for want of breth! Why Sextant when we dye Its only coz we cant brethe no more—that's all. And now O Sextant? let me beg of you To let a little are into our cherch (Pewer are is sertin proper for the pews); ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... 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 ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... the kitchen smells of its smoke; he who adheres to a sect has something of its cant; the college air pursues the student, and dry inhumanity him who ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... grammar has wellnigh disappeared, the words are almost without exception the same as those used in India, Germany, Hungary, or Turkey. It is generally believed that English Gipsy is a mere jargon of the cant and slang of all nations, that of England predominating; but a very slight examination of the Vocabulary will show that during more than three hundred years in England the Rommany have not admitted a single English ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... the air in Battery Park, where the one would invoke the Statue of Liberty for a thought, or the gilded domes of Broadway for a metaphor, while the other would be scouring the horizon for the Nothingness, which is called, in the recondite cant of the sophisticated, a ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... 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 ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... whether people will ever open their eyes about all this. The orators go in for virtue, freedom, etc., the cheap cant which will charm the constituencies. They are generous with what costs them nothing—Irish land, religious liberty, emancipation of niggers—sacrificing the dependencies to tickle the vanity of an English mob and catch the praises of the newspapers. If ever ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... man of letters. Literature is a broom that sweeps lies out of the mind, and fortunate is the man who wields it. Unhappily, while Mr. Gosse is daring in portraiture, he is the reverse in comment. In comment, as his writings on the war showed, he will fall in with the cant of the times. He can see through the cant of yesterday with a sparkle in his eyes, but he is less critical of the cant of to-day. He is at least fond of throwing out saving clauses, as when, writing of Mr. Sassoon's verse, he says: ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... the cants which are canted in this canting world, though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst, the cant of ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... another. I hate to butt in Mable but it didnt seem right. I says I seen the Indien girl in the circus shoot the spots out of a card over her shoulder but wouldnt it be more censible to cut out the trick stuff till we was more used to the thing. You cant argue ...
— Dere Mable - Love Letters Of A Rookie • Edward Streeter
... and his good wife refresh one by the reality and simplicity of their life, the simple-mindedness, the absence of all cant and formalism. I mean the formal observance of a certain set of views about the Sabbath, about going to parties, about reading books, &c., the formal utterance ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... manner if they did not manage to avoid it altogether. I have just been looking at the election address of the official Liberal candidate for the part of the country in which I live; and though it is, if anything, rather more logical and free from cant than most other documents of the sort it is an excellent example of missing the point. The candidate has to go boring on about Free Trade and Land Reform and Education; and nobody reading it could possibly imagine that in the town of Wycombe, where the poll will be declared, the capital ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... I am employed in looking over the several notices which I have received of their manner of dexterity, and the way at dice of making all rugg, as the cant is. The whole art of securing a die has lately been sent me by a person who was of the fraternity, but is disabled by the loss of a finger, by which means he cannot, as he used to do, secure a die. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... Taffy. Dear friend I done my best I come like Nicodemus by night. Seeming to me when Christians fall out tis over what they pray for. When they praise God forget diffnses and I cant think where the quaraling comes in and so ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... to any effort to retrieve their own or their country's fortunes. Truer greatness, a loftier nature, a spirit more unselfish, a character purer, more chivalrous, the world has rarely, if ever known. Of stainless life and deep religious feeling, yet free from all taint of cant and fanaticism, and as dear and congenial to the Cavalier Stuart as to the Puritan Stonewall Jackson; unambitious, but ready to sacrifice all at the call of duty; devoted to his cause, yet never moved by his feelings beyond the line prescribed by ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... a tavern. I refused him with hesitation; he seized me by the hand, and drew me into a neigbouring house, where, when he saw my face pale with hunger, and my eyes swelling with tears, he spurned me from him, and bade me cant and whine in some other place; he for his part would take care of ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... to mere professions of a desire for peace. A nation, like an individual, can covertly stab the peace of another while saying, "Art thou in health, my brother?" and even the peace of civilization can be betrayed by a Judas-kiss. Professions of peace belong to the cant of diplomacy and have always characterized the ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... had whispered tidings to him. He was, said Papa Isbister, immensely proud of his plaything, this huge gaunt sailor, who had been bent into the shape of a rainbow—the foot of a rainbow—by a chance shot, which shattered his hip and gave him an impressive forward cant, which appeared to women, it seemed—I quote my old friend—in the light ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Their oddities, their courage, their imperfect knowledge of the distinctions of meum and tuum, their wondering, childlike simplicity, furnished themes for endless songs and caricatures; the comedy of "Les Zouaves" met with great success; and the cant name for them, "Zouzou," is to be heard at any time in the streets. In 1855, the Fourth Zouaves was created, consisting of but two battalions, and enrolled in the Imperial Guard; they are distinguished from the others by wearing a white turban, while that of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... 'Pollexfen, I know you well. I will set a mark on you. You are the patron of the faction. This is an old rogue, a schismatical knave, a hypocritical villain. He hates the Liturgy. He would have nothing but longwinded cant without book;' and then his lordship turned up his eyes, clasped his hands, and began to sing through his nose in imitation of what he supposed to be Baxter's style of praying, 'Lord, we are thy people, thy peculiar people, ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... examples of cant, hypocrisy, party violence, I have never seen any to be compared to the Irish Education business; and there was Rosslyn, an old Whig, voting against; Carnarvon stayed away, every Tory without exception going against the measure. As to madness, Dudley has gone mad in his own ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... prided themselves on selling nothing but cotton, would distribute among their friends parcels of seed from any specially fine plants they might encounter in their fields, and make little ado about it. Men of a more flamboyant sort, such as M.W. Philips, contemning such "ruffle-shirt cant," would christen their strains with attractive names, publish their virtues as best they might, and offer their fancy seed for sale at fancy prices. Thus in 1837 the Twin-seed or Okra cotton was in vogue, selling at many places for five dollars ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... could perceive and enjoy the romantic 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
... pilariis principalibus innititur, convenire videntur. Ibi coelum ligneum egregia pictura decoratum, hic fornix ex lapide et tofo levi decenter composita est. Ibi triforium unum, hic duo in choro, et in ala ecclesiae tercium."—De Combust. et Repar. Cant. Ecclesiae. ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam
... manliness of his character always commanded admiration, and his hatred of injustice and wrong, cant and hypocrisy, was in harmony with the nobility and passionate earnestness of his nature. He was the friend of the workingman, the poor, and the oppressed; and he exposed the abuses of jails and lunatic-asylums and trades-unions, and much besides, in the interest of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... Parson Fair's yard. The white horse had gone up the road at a brisk trot, but she had easily kept pace with him. She also harnessed him into the sleigh with no difficulty. The animal seemed docile, and as if he were to belie his hard reputation. There was, however, a proud and nervous cant to his old white head, and he set his jaw stiffly ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... I take mi dolly. 1 day Tabby washed her hare, I meen my dollys hare I gess she thort it waz 1 of her kittns. Tabbys got tu kittns. They has not got thay ize open yet, so I tryd tu pick um opn, but arnt Prudence sed that wood be cruil. If thay cant git thay ize opn thayselfs why aint I good tu pick um ...
— Randy and Her Friends • Amy Brooks
... historical critic, strove to preserve an open mind; as an ardent Republican, however, he never wavered in his support of the tariff. Even his sense of humor permitted him to swallow with out a smile the demagogue's cant about "infant industries," or the raising of the tariff after election by the Republicans who had promised to reduce it. To those of us who for many years regarded the tariff as the dividing line between the parties, his stand was most disappointing. And when ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... of thought he lays a stress unusual in modern life. It is the cant of the day, in judging the value of a man, that "it does not matter what he believes but only what he does." That is not true. It matters infinitely what a man believes; for as a man's belief so he is; as a man's thought, so inevitably is his action. There ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant
... vulgar. It has become of late unfortunately prevalent, and we know many ladies who pride themselves on the saucy chique with which they adopt certain Americanisms, and other cant phrases of the day. Such habits cannot be too severely reprehended. They lower the tone of society and the standard of thought. It is a great mistake to suppose that slang is in any way a substitute ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... ceremonials of their station; whilst the insignificant fluttering of soldiers may be termed active idleness. More confined to the society of men, the former acquire a fondness for humour and mischievous tricks; whilst the latter, mixing frequently with well-bred women, catch a sentimental cant. But mind is equally out of the question, whether they indulge ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... John Duncan, John Hume, Robert Knox, William Jameson, Robert Murray, Henry Guthrie, James Hamilton, in Dumfreis, Bernard Sanderson, John Levingstoun, James Bonar, Evan Camron, David Dickson, Robort Bailzie, James Cuninghame, George Youngh, Andrew Affleck, David Lindsay, Andrew Cant, William Douglas, Murdo Mackenzie, Coline Mackenzie, John Monroe, Walter Stuart Ministers; Archbald Marquesse of Argyle, William Earle Marshall, John Earle of Sutherland, Alexander Earle of Eglingtoun, John Earle of Cassils, Charles ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... of letters, which bears the name of St. Thomas, we find, in all the retainers of the aspiring prelate, no less than in himself, a most entire and absolute conviction of the reason and piety of their own party, and a disdain of their antagonists: nor is there less cant and grimace in their style, when they address each other, than when they compose manifestos for the perusal of the public. The spirit of revenge, violence, and ambition, which accompanied their conduct, instead of forming a presumption of ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... Bonaparte will conquer the world, if they do not learn his secret of composing armies of young men only, whose enthusiasm and health enable them to surmount all obstacles. When a gentleman, through zeal for the public service, undertakes to do the public business, we know that we shall hear the cant of backstairs counsellors. But we never heard this while the declaimer was himself a backstairs man, as he calls it, but in the confidence and views of the administration, as may more properly ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... tempting to quote the many noble sayings of this master of the commanding phrase, but one or two must suffice. It is a delight to read his published correspondence, because of this power of strong and luminous utterance, which he wields with such Titanic ease. Then, again, there is no affectation or cant, but an engaging candor and straightforwardness which bespeak a true man, considering the time when they were written. What clarity of political vision there is in ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... begged I would come and see him again soon, for that he felt he had not long to stay. As the reader may suppose, I paid but little heed to this expression, which I looked on as no more than the common cant of the aged. But I soon had cause to remember it with sorrow. For I had been but a few weeks at home, before, opening a Charleston paper, I found in a mourning column, "THE DEATH OF GENERAL MARION". Never shall I forget the heart-sickness of that moment; never forget what I felt when first I learned ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... outpouring of a God-loving soul will seem to approach too near to that abuse of religious phraseology which is a sign of superficial rather than of deep-seated piety. But, though through life a sworn enemy of every kind of cant, Bunsen never would surrender the privilege of speaking the language of a Christian, because that language had been profaned by the ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... What other could there be? You see the advantage? It makes the thing human. It surrounds it with personality. It shows that 'Friend of Humanity' isn't a cant phrase. They recommend the cure to their friends. 'Are you sure it's all right?' they are asked. 'Of course it is,' they can reply. 'I know the man, Clem Sypher himself.' And the friends are convinced and go about ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... not try to take back the boddy of Mister Peter. We berried it verry deep and it better remain here. Anny way, you cant mannage it till late summer. ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... women has lost its old meaning. They themselves, if they were alive, would not use it any longer. The conventional phrases of Evangelical Christianity ring untrue in a modern ear like a cracked bell. We have grown so accustomed to them as a cant, that we can hardly believe that they ever stood for sincere convictions. Yet these forms were once alive with the profoundest of all moral truths; a truth not of a narrow theology, but which lies at the very bottom of the well, at the fountain-head of human morality; namely, that a man ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... and broad absurdity would long ago have been detected, if it had not contained in its convenient falsehood an apology for indolence, and a disguise for incapacity. Generalized! As if it were possible to generalize things generically different. Of such common cant of criticism I extract a characteristic passage from one of the reviews of this work, that in this year's Athenaeum for February 10th: "He (the author) would have geological landscape painters, dendrologic, meteorologic, and ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... Turnbull ordered the bully to stand up, and warned him against experimenting on strangers. He then, in quaint, old-world phraseology, the outcome of much deep reading of Butler, Baxter, and Jeremy Taylor, and wholly without cant or affectation, went on ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... devil. And there were many other reasons why the saints should work miracles. They had done so under the old dispensation, and there was no obvious reason why Christians should be worse off than Jews. And again, although it be true, in the modern phrase, which is beginning to savour a little of cant, that the highest natural is the highest supernatural, nevertheless natural facts permit us to be so easily familiar with them, that they have an air of commonness; and when we have a vast idea to express, ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... casually alluded to the flash song of Jerry Juniper, I may, perhaps, be allowed to make a few observations upon this branch of versification. It is somewhat curious, with a dialect so racy, idiomatic, and plastic as our own cant, that its metrical capabilities should have been so little essayed. The French have numerous chansons d'argot, ranging from the time of Charles Bourdigne and Villon down to that of Vidocq and Victor Hugo, the last of whom has enlivened the horrors ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... be able to point to no great truth 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, since it caught its tone from such a statesman, ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... were coming in regularly, and the railways became choked with the logs dumped down on them from the sleighs. There were not enough men to roll them down to the river, nor to "deck" them there in piles. Work accumulated. The cant-hook men became discouraged. What was the use of trying? They might as well take it easy. They did take it easy. As a consequence the teamsters had often to wait two, three hours to be unloaded. They were out until long after dark, feeling their way ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... a worn-out voluptuary. Mentula is a cant term which Catullus frequently uses for a libidinous person, and ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... class. It belongs of right to the actors, but of its age or derivation nothing can be ascertained, Modern lexicography of the best repute does not acknowledge it, and for a long time it remained unnoticed, even by the compilers of glossaries of strange and cant terms. Thus, it is not to be found in "Grose's Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue," published in 1796. This is a coarse, but certainly a comprehensive work, and from its omitting to register ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... his Bible; daily assembles his servants round him to worship God. He comforts persecuted ministers, is fond of preachers; nay, can himself preach,—exhorts his neighbors to be wise, to redeem the time. In all this what "hypocrisy," "ambition," "cant," or other falsity? The man's hopes, I do believe, were fixed on the other Higher World; his aim to get well thither by walking well through his humble course in this world. He courts no notice: what could notice here do for him? "Ever ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... to 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 to ...
— The business career in its public relations • Albert Shaw
... aroused by his mulishness, "do you deliberately choose to sacrifice the life of this lady to your bull-headed fanaticism? Do you refuse to unbend your miserable Connecticut sectarianism, your Puritan cant, although by so doing you might keep your comrades from the horrors of the stake? If this is what you mean, I denounce you as unworthy to be called a man, and I name your loud protestations of religion no more than a hissing and a byword before the ungodly you profess to despise. You are ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... acquainted with the habits, and style of thinking, of the exclusive portion of the nobility of this kingdom. To this fortunate circumstance are we indebted for the production of those brilliant efforts of genius, his fashionable novels, which so long as good taste, unsullied by exaggeration, cant, and quackery, continues to exist, cannot fail to instruct and amuse the thinking ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... OMEGA}{GREEK SMALL LETTER NU},) which signifies "Lion of the forest," may have been conferred by the popular voice on more than one favorite general, distinguished for irresistible valour? Is it not also possible that "BUONA PARTE" may have been originally a sort of cant term applied to the "good (i.e., the bravest or most patriotic) part" of the French army, collectively; and have been afterwards mistaken for the proper name of an individual?[23] I do not profess to support this conjecture; but it is certain that ...
— Historic Doubts Relative To Napoleon Buonaparte • Richard Whately
... were those of a sincere, a generous, and a noble mind," says a biographer who knew him well. His contempt for base actions; his love of equity; his passion for truth, which was carried almost to a hatred of cant and hypocrisy, were the immediate causes of his want of fairness in his opinion of himself and of his self-accusation of things most contrary to ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... in the act of hoisting the sixth and last log, and just about to cant it into its place, the iron hook of the principal purchase-block gave way, and the great beam, measuring fifty feet in length, fell upon the rock with a terrible crash; but although there were fifty-two men around the beacon ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... court was no doubt that of drawing, for we find that 'He was buried with much pomp at Thetford Abbey under a tomb designed by himself and master Clarke, master of the works at King's College, Cambridge, & Wassel a freemason of BuryS. Edmund's.' Cooper's Ath. Cant., i. p. 29, col.2. ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... of unimpeachable order, and his constant intercession for divine protection were quite sufficient to exonerate him from in any way contributing either to loss of life or to loss of property. What cant, what insufferable hypocrisy! What hideous slaughter was committed in those good old times in God's name and in the name of British humanity! The late Dr Parker, preaching in the City Temple some time ago on the Armenian atrocities, exclaimed amid uproarious ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... which I would not dare mention in your hearing. We imitate them, and out-herod Herod, but we are never like them. We send to Paris for our clothes, and borrow their newest words—for they are ever inventing some cant phrase to startle dulness—and we make our language a foreign farrago. Why, here is even plain John Evelyn, that most pious of pedants, pleading for the enlistment of a troop of Gallic substantives and adjectives to ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... renewal of an old respect; his humanity, his instinct for essentials, his cool detection of pretence and cant, however finely disguised, and his English with its frank love for the embodying noun and the active verb, make reading very like the clear, hard, bright, vigorous weather of the downs when the wind is up-Channel. It is bracing. But I discovered another notebook, of which I have ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... very much afraid of the least appearance of cant, but they would do anything for "Ma"; and when, a few days later, in order to give an object-lesson to the natives, she proposed an English service, they agreed, and one of them read the lessons, and another led the singing. ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... 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, to be intended ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... upon the first of men The apple pressed with specious cant, O, what a thousand pities then That Adam ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... all cant, but am satisfied that the chief reason why France does not succeed better in her revolutions is, because she lacks the steadiness which a sincere devotion to religion gives to a nation. The country needs less man-worship and more God-worship. It needs less adulation of beautiful women, ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... by a trifling improvement of outward appearance, I cannot help thinking that the object is very cheaply purchased, even at the expense of a smart gown, or a gaudy riband. There is a great deal of very unnecessary cant about the over- dressing of the common people. There is not a manufacturer or tradesman in existence, who would not employ a man who takes a reasonable degree of pride in the appearance of himself and those about him, in preference to a sullen, slovenly ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... abandoned. Its three aisles were without ornament or architecture; there was no tower, but beside it stood a peculiar and unexplained erection, shaped like a pagoda, in three tiers of black and battered tar-boarding. It had a slight cant towards the church, and suggested nothing so much as a disreputable Victorian widow, in tippet, mantle and crinoline, seeking the support of a stone wall ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... I'd earth myself, Rather than live to act such black ambition: But, sir, you seek it with your smiles and bows. This side and that side congeing to the crowd. You have your writers too, that cant your battles, That stile you, the new David, second Moses, Prop of the church, deliverer of the people. Thus from the city, as from the heart, they spread Through all the provinces, alarm the countries, Where they run ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... the granting of these claims would tend to make woman less amiable and attractive, less regardful of her peculiar duties and obligations as wife and mother, a wanderer from her proper sphere, bringing confusion into domestic life, and strife into the public assembly, is the cant of Papal Rome as to the discordant and infidel tendencies of the right of private judgment in matters of faith; is the outcry of legitimacy as to the incapacity of the people to govern themselves; is the false allegations which selfish and timid conservatism is ever making ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... 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, ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... Mifflin & Co. of Cambridge, Mass. These variations are connected with Borrow's attitude towards the British and Foreign Bible Society, Mr. Shorter having taken occasion to pass some severe strictures upon the obvious cant which characterised the Bible Society in its relations with Borrow. These strictures, although supported by ample quotations from unpublished documents, the London publishers, being a semi-religious house, persuaded the ...
— A Bibliography of the writings in Prose and Verse of George Henry Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... whether in taste or morals, he entertained, at all times, the most profound contempt; and if, frequently, his real feelings of admiration disguised themselves under an affected tone of indifference and mockery, it was out of pure hostility to the cant of those, who, he well knew, praised without any feeling at all. It must be owned, too, that while he thus justly despised the raptures of the common herd of travellers, there were some pursuits, even of the intelligent and tasteful, in which he took but very ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... praised by Charles II, and his court, and the one that best represents the spirit of the victorious party, is the satirical poem of Hudibras by Samuel Butler. The object of the work is to satirize the cant and excesses of Puritanism, just as the Don Quixote of Cervantes burlesques the extravagances and ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... raising a revenue, the principle of which has, in effect, been disclaimed in your name, and which produces you no advantage,—no, not a penny. Or, if you choose to go on with a poor pretence instead of a solid reason, and will still adhere to your cant of commerce, you have ten thousand times more strong commercial reasons for giving up this duty on tea than for abandoning the five others that ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Mausoleums, that recalled the dread memories of kings": they were restored to their original places so far as possible by Viollet le Duc. The head of St. Denis is said to have been found when his shrine was desecrated and appropriated by the revolutionists, and in the cant of the time was brought back to Paris by "a miracle greater and more authentic than that which conveyed it from Montmartre to St. Denis, a miracle of the regeneration of opinion, registered not in the martyrology but in the annals ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... she. Rafael knew the music: a Lied by Schubert—the favorite composer of the day; a master "whose best work was still unknown," as she said in the cant she had learned from the critics, alluding to the fact that only the least subtle of the melancholy composer's works had thus ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... not do. If Christianity were right, war was wrong. Either Christianity was a foolish thing, an impossible dream, and all our profession of it so much empty cant, or war was something which every Christian should turn from ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... going to try: but were to be impressed by the magnifying agency of legal processes, and would be awe stricken accordingly. The passage, "inasmuch as it did not lie within my learned friend's province to tell you," is a delightful bit of cant. In short, the Jury was thus admitted to the secret legal arena, and into community with the learned friends themselves, and were persuaded that they were very sharp fellows indeed. What pleasant satire is here, on the mellifluous "openings" of Counsel, the ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald
... 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 the great ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... do when their arnt enuff men. Or men do it too sometimes if they are rather old and weak and cant be soldiers, but it is mostly wimmen. Some war work you get paid for but some you don't. It just depens whether you are rich and do V A D or poor and do munisions and things. V A D means something but I forget what. My brother ...
— Punch, Volume 153, July 11, 1917 - Or the London Charivari. • Various
... at as yet. I have a scouting party going out now to see if they can't pick up some or get something from them. I came to this post this day at 12 o'clock & shall remain here till this time to-morrow if God spares my life, with no other covering than the trees. I cant learn anything with respect to them different from what I wrote yesterday. The rest of the troops & their Ships lie at Staten Island yet to wait the success of this part of their army, as I suppose before they make any other attempt. They have wounded ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston |
