"Canting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... one can make the kind of weapon of it you do. I don't mean of course that one shouldn't be rationally persuaded. But that's a different thing. 'Influence' makes me think of canting clergymen, and stout pompous women, who don't know what they're talking about, and can't argue—who think they've settled everything by a stale quotation—or an appeal to 'your better self'—or St. Paul. If Mr. Winnington tries it on with ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 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 ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... and you have a pretty fair organ. But you produce your notes badly; and that music which you sing is beneath you. It is a form of melody which expresses a puerile state of culture—a dawdling, canting, see-saw kind of stuff—the passion and thought of people without any breadth of horizon. There is a sort of self-satisfied folly about every phrase of such melody; no cries of deep, mysterious passion—no conflict—no sense of the universal. It makes men small as they ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... the name of his father's place, but with the name of its present owner he was not familiar. Doubtless, he might sometimes have heard it from his father, but the latter, when he spoke of the present possessor of the Court, generally did so as "that Roundhead dog," or "that canting Puritan." ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... remain here no longer. If I do, I fear I shall sink down into something almost as pitiful as one of these canting, gossiping people myself. I can do them no good—they do not like or trust me. I will accept this call and go back to ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... a man could be a decent and comfortable human being, although he was a minister, and had so gained his confidence and good-will that he could say anything to him at their next interview. Captain Duncan finished his remarks by a decided expression of his disapproval of the canting regulation phrases so frequently employed by religious people, which are perfectly nauseous to men of ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... grin was anyway disturbed by this rough usage. At every jump too, Hands appeared still more to sink into himself and settle down upon the deck, his feet sliding ever the farther out, and the whole body canting towards the stern, so that his face became, little by little, hid from me; and at last I could see nothing beyond his ear and the ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... from which he was to break away. The characterisation of The Way of the World is light and true, that of The Old Bachelor is heavy and yet vague. Vainlove indeed, the 'mumper in love,' who 'lies canting at the gate,' is individual and Congrevean. But Heartwell, the blustering fool, Bellmour, the impersonal rake, Wittol and Bluffe, the farcical sticks, Fondlewife, the immemorial city husband, and the troop of undistinguished women—what can be ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... all who have got rich by pilfering, canting, and cheating, those you may beat and bind, and hold captive for ransom. And chiefly the Sheriff of Nottingham—look you, ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... steamed from a rocket flare-back, grasses burned away from the fins of a small scoutship. But even as Shann rose to one knee, his shout of welcome choked in his throat. One of those fins sank, canting the ship crookedly, preventing any new take-off. And over the crown of a low hill to the west swung the ominous black ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... And Reay threw back his head and laughed joyously. "'Off you go!' said my editor, one fine morning, after I had slaved away for him for nearly two years—'We don't want any canting truth-tellers here!' Now mind that stone! You nearly slipped. Hold ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... of coaches. Jonson selected one, and gave the coachman an order; he took care it should not reach my ears. During the half hour we passed in this vehicle, Job examined and reexamined me in my "canting catechism," as he termed it. He expressed himself much pleased with the quickness of my parts, and honoured me with an assurance that in less than three months he would engage to make me as complete a ruffler as ever ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... cant to starboard, had answered perfectly; for, high as was the tide that night, the Dolphin, though so powerful, could not have moved a ship of 1,500 tons with her keel still partly sustaining her weight on the rooks on which she had struck. By canting her as he had done, she had actually floated—and no more than floated—an hour before the tide was at ...
— A Memory Of The Southern Seas - 1904 • Louis Becke
... with an almost human scream of terror, plunged over the side. Alice reached swiftly for the flying bridle reins of her own animal and as her hand closed upon them he quieted almost instantly. Relieved of the weight of the other horse, the boat shifted its position for the worse, the bottom canting to a still steeper angle. A flash of lightning revealed the precariousness of the situation. A few inches more, and the water would rush over the side, and both realized that she would ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... make them scholars, but not men; to talk rather than to know, which is true canting. The first thing obvious to children is what is sensible; and that we make no part of ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... "The snivelling, canting, whining puppy! Have you any idea that his merit-marks made him captain of the ship?" ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... the winding, white ribbon of road—through Brodnyx village, past the huge barn-like church which had both inspired and reproached her faith, with its black, caped tower canting over it, on to Walland Marsh, to the cross roads at the Woolpack—My, how they would talk at the Woolpack!... but she would be far away by then ... where?... She didn't know, she would think of that later—when she had told Ellen. Oh, there would be ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... anybody ELSE? Of cors you did! You wrote it for money,—money from the maniger, money from the bookseller,—for the same reason that I write this. Sir, Shakspeare wrote for the very same reasons, and I never heard that he bragged about serving the drama. Away with this canting about great motifs! Let us not be too prowd, my dear Barnet, and fansy ourselves marters of the truth, marters or apostels. We are but tradesmen, working for bread, and not for righteousness' sake. ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... tumbled from its hight, or at least that something new and strange had happened. For instance, what had become of his powers of discernment? Here was this miserable doctor, who had been one of the thorns of his life, whom he had looked down upon as a canting hypocrite. Was he, after all, mistaken? The explanation of to-night looked like it; he had been deceived in that matter which had years ago come between them; he could see it very plainly now. In spite of himself, the doctor's earnest, manly apology would come back and ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... whether Dodd had really composed a certain prayer on the night before his execution. "Sir, do you think that a man the night before he is to be hanged cares for the succession of the royal family? Though he may have composed this prayer then. A man who has been canting all his life may cant to the last; and yet a man who has been refused a pardon after so much petitioning, would hardly be praying thus fervently for ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... one doesn't want to use terms that have been used in a thousand different senses in any way that isn't a perfectly unambiguous sense, and at the same time one doesn't want to seem to be canting about things or pitching anything a note or two higher than it ought legitimately to go, but it seems to me that this sort of something that Mr. Britling is always asking for in his essays and writings and things, and what you are ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... interests of others. The miser should not accumulate his gold at the expense of another; the libertine should not revel in beauty's arms, by force; the lady must make a willing sacrifice—thus nobody is injured—and thus the pleasure is legitimate; though bigoted churchmen and canting hypocrites may declaim on the sin of carnal indulgences unsanctioned by the priest and his empty ceremonies. Fools! NATURE, and her laws, and her promptings, and her desires, spurn the trammels of form and custom, and reign triumphant over the hollow mummery of the ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... pillar, listened. I think it was the first time I ever heard a preacher speaking in a large church who did not speak so loud that an echo chased his sentences round and round the vaulted dome and strangled the sense. The tone was conversational and the manner so free from canting conventionality that I moved up closer to get ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... heathenish custom they have adopted here, of tearing up and down the streets from morning till night. I wish, by Jove! they would ride over their canting Padre! I think he would find some other ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... or Coglioni, family were of considerable antiquity and well authenticated nobility in the town of Bergamo. Two lions' heads conjoined formed one of their canting ensigns; another was borrowed from the vulgar meaning of their name. Many members of the house held important office during the three centuries preceding the birth of the famous general Bartolommeo. He was born in the year 1400 at Solza in the Bergamasque Contado. His father, Paolo, or ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... possession of the wheel. The seamen who had gone aloft loosed the foretop sail, the carpenters cut the stern cable, the best bower was cut at the same moment, just in time to prevent the ship from canting the ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... mystery to me. My father in a rough stern voice bade him speak with more reverence of sacred things, on which the pair of them gave tongue together, swearing tenfold worse than before, and calling my father a canting rogue and a smug-faced Presbytery Jack. What more they might have said I know not, for my father picked up the great roller wherewith he smoothed the leather, and dashing at them he brought it down on the side of ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... have for a friend the most thorough-paced scamp, with a generous heart, than the most respectable, canting, whining, Pharisee. ...
— Wise or Otherwise • Lydia Leavitt
... me into being; The things of this our world are well worth seeing; And let me add, moreover, well worth feeling; Then what the Devil would people have? These gloomy hunters of the grave, For ever sighing, groaning, canting, kneeling. Some wish they never had been born, how odd! To see the handy works of God, In sun and moon, and starry sky; Though last, not least, to see sweet Woman's charms,— Nay, more, to clasp them in our arms, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... fault is to be found in the opposite extreme; though there are so many virtues consequent on independence of thought and independence of habits, that I am not sure the good does not equal the evil. There is no canting, and very little hypocrisy, in mere matters of habits, in France; and this, at once, is abridging two of our own most besetting vices. Still the French can hardly be called a very original people. Convention ties them ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... walk? There's a stick for you. I ought to break your thick skull with it, but I'm going to be weak enough to give it to you to walk home. Go home and tell your wife and children that you are one of the most treacherous, canting, hypocritical scoundrels in Arrowfield, and that you have only got your deserts if you are lamed ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... quoting Scripture, you canting hypocrite," cried Sills. "Do you think we are afraid of any such thing happening to us? Our curses may come ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... one instance that might shew him to have some sense of religion as well as justice. When two monks were outvying each other in canting[16] the price of an abbey, he observed a third at some distance, who said never a word; the King demanded why he would not offer; the monk said, he was poor, and besides, would give nothing if he were ever so rich; the King replied, "Then you are the fittest person ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... 'with your snivelling jaw. Who are you, to preach at me? You're glad enough I'm here—all of you. Why, I'm the only one of you as ain't going to make a bit over this job. Where would you all be, I should like to know, you canting swine, if it wasn't for me and my sort? Why, it's the likes of me as keeps the likes of you,' with which he walked straight to the gallows and told the hangman to 'hurry up' and not keep ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... not have the money,' said Richard, at the same time giving me a violent slap across the shoulders. 'Mr. Sanders was a canting old Methodist, and you are like him. But take care, if you say a word of what has passed I will be ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... "Canting bigotry and carping criticism," says Magoon, "are usually the product of obtuse sensibilities and a pusillanimous will. Plutarch tells us of an idle and effeminate Etrurian, who found fault with the manner ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... polite society, my native sphere, seems to me as corrupt as consciousness of culture and absence of honesty can make it. A canting, lie-loving, fact-hating, scribbling, chattering, wealth-hunting, pleasure-hunting, celebrity-hunting mob, that, having lost the fear of hell, and not replaced it by the love of justice, cares ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... good bit besides are coming to Isobel, and you want to collar the sag, like you did that of the old woman out in Lucerne. Well, you don't do it, my boy. I've other views for Isobel. Do you think I want to see her married to—to—the son of a fellow like that—a canting snuffler who prigs letters and splits on his own son?" and swinging the fat finger round he thrust it almost into ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... artist? and vice versa? Behind the mask of good manners we all of us go about judging and condemning one another root and branch. We are in no real agreement as to the worth either of men or things. It is an illusion of the 'canting moralist' (to use Stevenson's phrase) that there is any fixed and final standard of Good. Good is just what any one thinks it to be; and one man has as much right to his ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... 1819, describes the Gipsies as "impostors and jugglers forming a kind of commonwealth among themselves, who disguise themselves in uncouth habits, smearing their faces and bodies, and framing to themselves a canting language, wander up and down, and under pretence of telling fortunes, curing diseases, &c., abuse the common people, trick them of their money, and steal ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... 'Canting and lying,'—said Willie, which produced a thundering laugh; 'but I am teaching the callant a better trade, and that is, ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... the reality and healthiness of the religion of those brave knights than their cheerful and open countenance, their thorough enjoyment of all the good things of this life, their freedom in thought and speech. You never catch Joinville canting, or with an expression of blank solemnity. When his ship was surrounded by the galleys of the Sultan, and when they held a council as to whether they should surrender themselves to the Sultan's fleet ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... is grass; here to-day and gone tomorrow, as the Bible says. Still he was an old man, and not good for much; there's better folk than him left behind. Is th' canting old maid as ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Domenichino, the corregiescity of Corregio, the learning of Poussin, the airs of Guido, the taste of the Caraccis, or the grand contour of Angelo." "Grant me 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 tormenting! I would go fifty miles on foot, for I have not a horse worth riding on, to kiss the hand of that man whose generous heart will give up the reins of his imaginations ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... issue of that unfortunate and most deplorable struggle increased the intensity of his bitterness. Although he did not hope for a renewal of the strife, he trusted that if it were renewed, he might have the opportunity of laying the country in waste, and of exterminating the canting, hypocritical, puritanical, independents. He soon perceived the folly of the Seat of Government being situated on the very frontier, the more especially as Detroit was to be surrendered to the very people ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... fight him with, and what you might fright him with, for the Devil is to be frighted with several Things besides Holy Water; but 'tis too serious for you, and you'll tell me I am a preaching and a canting, and the like; so I must let the Devil manage you rather than displease you with ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... "You canting sneak!" said another boy, putting his fist under the captive's chin; "you were going to the master ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... us in private lodgings, the Reverend Mr Pigtop looking as sour as any canting Methodist in Barebones' parliament, and quite reconciled to the singularly starch figure that he presented. There was certainly a sad discrepancy between his dress and his discourse. However, it was a good travelling disguise, and very serviceable to a petty officer breaking ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... top of the precipitous ascent and found themselves upon the broken edge of the forest amid a black chaos of piled up rock and underbrush. Evidently, the land here was giving way, little by little, for here and there they could see a tree canting tipsily over the edge, its network of half-exposed roots making a last gallant stand against the erosive process and helping to hold the weight of the great boulders which ere long would crash down into the ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... made any spiritual advancement, they would have new wants to express and new thanksgivings to offer. But they have been for a decade of years stuck fast in the mud, and they splash the same thing on you every week. We need a universal church cleaning by which all canting and humdrum ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... weel-worn clay here lies: Ye canting zealots, spare him! If honest worth in heaven rise, Ye'll mend ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... you wouldn't have Mr. and Mrs. Anderson, nor your father, nor that canting street preacher, nor the children you've just mentioned. It's just possible you might have the boy Ronald, but even that is problematical—you'd have ...
— Sue, A Little Heroine • L. T. Meade
... Wenlock, "how this villain has stole the hearts of my uncle's servants; I suppose this canting old fellow knows where he is, if the ...
— The Old English Baron • Clara Reeve
... good fool!" the canting rogue again began to whine, edging nearer. "Charity, mistress! For the sake of the prophets and the disciples! The seven sacraments, the feast of the Pentecost and the Passover! In the name of the holy Fathers! St. Sebastian! St. ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... mista'en: he only bid me good-mornin' like, in a quiet dacent way. So I dusted him a chair, an' fettled up th' fireplace a bit; but I hadn't forgotten th' Rector's words, so says I, "I wonder, sir, you should give yourself that trouble, to come so far to see a 'canting old fool,' ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... and John Adams, and Franklin, and all the rest of the crew, I tell you, the stuff they teach American school-children about them is a poisoning of the wells! Franklin was a man of profligate life, whom I would never have admitted inside my doors! And as for the Adamses—intriguers—canting fellows!—both of them." ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... I was following showed the faintest spread in the direction of their canting—they must have been only a few miles from blast center. As I passed each one I could see where the metal on the blast side had been eroded—vaporized by the original blast, mostly smoothly, but with welts and pustules ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... to Braska. Presently he heard things of him that made him believe Howard was contemplating desertion, and no sooner had Lieutenant Davies arrived than he became assured of it. "I had to serve under that damned, canting Methodist preacher," said Howard, "and I won't have him nosing around where I am. I'll desert first." Now, Haney had no objection to Howard's "skipping,"—it would be good riddance to dangerous timber,—but ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... ante, i. 458. In Humphry Clinker, in the Letter of June 11, the turnkey of Clerkenwell Prison thus speaks of a Methodist:—'I don't care if the devil had him; here has been nothing but canting and praying since the fellow entered the place. Rabbit him! the tap will be ruined—we han't sold a cask of beer nor a dozen of wine, since he paid his garnish—the gentlemen get drunk with ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... fresco. If he will only give his magnificent genius fair play, there is not enough cant and dulness even in the criticism of art from which Sterne prayed kind heaven to defend him, as the worst of all the cants continually canted in this canting world—to keep the giant down ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... they had aroused. He was at some trouble to discover the passages or phrases 'that had drawn down such sudden thunder from the serene heavens of public virtue': he was comically puzzled to comprehend why the reviewers were scandalised. He trampled with sarcasm and scorn upon canting critics, and retorted that the prurient prudery of their own minds suggested the impurities which they found in works of pure art. There is nothing, he insists, lovelier, as there is nothing more famous in later Hellenic ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... Oh, I know the sort you are: no mercy for yourself or anyone else. I know. My experience has done that for me anyhow: I can tell the pious, canting, hard, selfish woman when I meet her. Well, keep yourself to yourself: I don't want you. But listen to this. Do you know what I would do with you if you were a baby again? aye, as sure as ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... and exciting feelings of envy, jealousy and hatred among our citizens. Be not deceived by their clerical robes and assumed sanctity; it is all lighter than a feather in the balance. My friends, there is danger ahead. Beware lest you be led blindfold to ruin by canting hypocrites. These are the men that endanger our liberties. Stand aloof, give no support to religious bigotry and fanaticism. I call on you as Christians, as patriots, "to touch not, taste not, handle not ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... squeeze to my rampant prick. Then, breaking from me, she fled to her own room, pretending to endeavour to shut the door in my face but taking care to give way and hasten towards her bed. I caught hold of her as she bent forward as if to get into it, and canting up her chemise, the only article of dress she wore, I was into her longing and luscious cunt from behind up to the hilt in one thrust. She gave a subdued scream, and called to Ellen to come and prevent me from violating her. Ellen came, but wisely would only look on while I ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... "While the present natural, simple, and affectionate character prevails among these descendants of the mutineers, they will be delightful to our minds, they will be amiable and acceptable in the sight of God, and they will be useful and happy among themselves. Let it be our fervent prayer that neither canting and hypocritical emissaries from schools of artificial theology on the one hand, nor sensual and licentious crews and adventurers on the other, may ever enter the charming village of Pitcairn to give disease to the minds or the bodies ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... has no right to say to his own generation, turning quite away from it, 'Be damned!' It is the whole Past and the whole Future, this same cotton-spinning, dollar-hunting, canting and shrieking, very wretched generation of ours." CARLYLE to EMERSON, ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... round towers, leaning all awry; a vast pile fashioned like a church front, with twin steeples canting drunkenly; the tremendous columns the captain had told him of; jutting masses that hinted in their half-formed outlines of gigantic, crouching beasts. And everywhere in that weird field of shapes were the openings of caves—dark blots in the ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... call him a man of great words and small deeds. All that he did she found ill done, and told him of it. His sober, godly garments of sombre hue afforded her the first weapon of scorn wherewith to wound him. A crow, she dubbed him; a canting, psalm-chanting hypocrite; a Scripture-monger, and every other contumelious epithet of like import that she should call to mind. He ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... ordered productivity; and federate our colonies into a world-Power of the first magnitude? Give these people the most perfect political constitution and the soundest political program that benevolent omniscience can devise for them, and they will interpret it into mere fashionable folly or canting charity as infallibly as a savage converts the philosophical theology of a Scotch missionary ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... of all climes, of all feelings, and of all stages of existence. The delight of my boyhood, the study of my manhood, perhaps (if allowed to me to attain it) he may be the consolation of my age. His poetry is the Book of Life. Without canting, and yet without neglecting religion, he has assembled all that a good and great man can gather together of moral wisdom clothed in consummate beauty. Sir William Temple observes, "that of all the members of mankind ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... of a sleek hypocrite. He was dressed in black like a bishop or dean in plain clothes, but wore scarlet gloves and a brilliant scarlet waistcoat. A bevy of inferior priests surrounded him, many of them very dark-looking and sinister men. The Cardinal spoke in a smooth whining manner, just like a canting Methodist preacher. The audience seemed to look up to him as to a god. A spirit of the hottest zeal pervaded the whole meeting. I was told afterwards that except myself and the person who accompanied me there was not a single Protestant ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... Wakefield" together. The plot of the "Goodnatured Man" is, like almost all Goldsmith's plots, very ill constructed. But some passages are exquisitely ludicrous; much more ludicrous, indeed, than suited the taste of the town at that time. A canting, mawkish play, entitled "False Delicacy," had just had an immense run. Sentimentality was all the mode. During some years, more tears were shed at comedies than at tragedies; and a pleasantry which moved the audience to anything more than ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... into a ringing laugh: but in the middle of it, stopped dead short, and his face elongated. "Lord sake, mad'm," said he impressively," mind what y' are at, though; Barkton's just a trap for fanciful femuls: there's a n'oily ass called Osmond, and a canting cut-throat called Stephenson and a genteel, cadaveris old assassin called Short, as long as a maypole; they'd soon take the rose out of Miss Floree's cheek here. Why, they'd starve Cupid, an' veneseck Venus, ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... mendacious, unveracious, fraudulent, dishonest, faithless, truthless, trothless; unfair, uncandid; hollow-hearted; evasive; uningenuous, disingenuous; hollow, sincere, Parthis mendacior; forsworn. artificial, contrived; canting; hypocritical, jesuitical, pharisaical; tartuffish; Machiavelian; double, double tongued, double faced, double handed, double minded, double hearted, double dealing; Janus faced; smooth-faced, smooth spoken, smooth tongued; plausible; mealy-mouthed; affected &c 855. collusive, collusory; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... that a walking tour, as some would have us fancy, is merely a better or worse way of seeing the country. There are many ways of seeing landscape quite as good; and none more vivid, in spite of canting dilettantes, than from a railway train. But landscape on a walking tour is quite accessory. He who is indeed of the brotherhood does not voyage in quest of the picturesque, but of certain jolly humours—of the hope and spirit with which the march begins at morning, and the peace and spiritual ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... now!" answered the old man. "This dolt, my Lord of Northumberland—they must have missed rocking of him in his cradle!— this patch, look thou, hath taken offence at the canting name men have ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... trifled with life come to me, and their very faces flash past with looks of tragic significance. By their own fault they were ruined; they were shut out of the garden of their gifts; their city of hope was ploughed and salted. The past cannot be retrieved, let canting optimists talk as they choose; what has been has been, and the effects will last and spread until the earth shall pass away. Our acts our angels are, or good or ill; our fatal shadows that walk by us still. The thing done lasts for eternity; the lightest act of man or woman has incalculably ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... I had not finished," continued Mark. "If ever you say another word to us, whether we are together or whether we are alone, about being grateful, and that sort of thing, I shall say you are a canting humbug—at least, my cousin will; I shouldn't ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... her child; she who was alone near her when she died. Ask her, and she will tell you the wretch, who has prejudiced all minds against the good, the pure, the noble; the villain, the cruel despicable villain, who rested not till his base arts had ruined the—the—virtuous; that Jefferies, the canting hypocrite, the wretched miscreant, who has won all hearts because he speaks so fair, he, he alone is guilty. Put the question to him; let Nurse Langford ask him if the dying spoke falsely when she ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... it, as I live!" thought Tom to himself. "'Frailty, thy name is woman!' The canting, little, methodistical humbug! She must have slipped it off my waist as I lay senseless. I suppose she means to keep it in pawn, till I redeem it by marrying her. Well I might take an uglier mate certainly; ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... our precious can ran low, and in canting it over in the dark, something beside the molasses slipped out. How long it had been there, kind Providence never revealed; nor were we over anxious to know; for we hushed up the bare thought as quickly as possible. The creature certainly died a luscious death, quite equal to Clarence's ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... waves, and the surface of the sea was comparatively smooth, but after a while a curious phenomenon began to be noticed; immense billows would suddenly appear, rushing upon the Ark now from one direction and now from another, canting it over at a dangerous angle, and washing almost to the top of the huge ellipsoid of the dome. At such times it was difficult for anybody to maintain a footing, and there was great terror among the passengers. But Cosmo, and stout ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... after listening to the arguments against the peace made by some of the remonstrants, and to Charles's replies, "it is too much to undertake to dispute with these canting knaves; it were better to have them strapped in the kitchen by your turnspits." Ibid., ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... perils of sickness, shipwreck, shot and steel with a persistent heroism that almost compels one's admiration, despite the mistaken enthusiasm which is its animating cause. Nay, do not speak, senor; I know exactly what you would say; I have heard, until I have become sick of it, the canting jargon of those meddlesome busy-bodies who, knowing nothing of the actual facts of slavery, or for their own purposes, hunt out exceptional cases of tyranny which they hold up to public execration as ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... value his Fanatical Cant, for there were Men of better Sense than he, thought it no Sin; and that I knew the Opinion of the greatest Wits in the Town, in those things; and car'd not what a parcel of Canting Coxcombs said.—To which he reply'd, My Coming hither was to do you good, and to turn you (if Possible) from your Wicked Courses; but seeing you are hardened in it, and will not be reclaimed, I will take care to have your Quarters beat up, and spoil your ...
— The London-Bawd: With Her Character and Life - Discovering the Various and Subtle Intrigues of Lewd Women • Anonymous
... Richard! You are not surely gone over to the side of those canting fellows (Spanish Jesuits in disguise, every one of them, they are), who pretended to turn up their noses at Franky Drake, as a pirate, and be ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... is a Temple too, Where Christians come to pray; But canting knaves and hypocrites, And ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... upright timbers secured to the beams below the deck; they have a cross-piece bolted to them, the inner end of the bowsprit steps between them, and is thus prevented from slipping in. The cross-piece prevents it from canting up. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... from God!" I exclaimed, holding the arquebuse up to view. Then I kneeled on the prostrate wretch and clutched his throat. Anger gathered in my brain as lightning clusters about a mountain top. I threw aside the arquebuse and proceeded to kill the canting mendicant. I do not know that I killed him; I hope I did. I cannot speak with certainty on that point, for I was quickly thrown away from him by the avenging mob that rushed upon us and tore the fellow limb from limb. The other friars were set ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... be ready to speak your minds" said Blake, "and a base man will avoid you." But to insist that he also shall speak his mind is to go a step further, it is to take from the impostor his wooden leg, to prohibit his lucrative whine, his mumping and his canting, to force the poor silly soul to stand erect among its fellows and declare itself. His occupation is gone, and he does not love the censor who deprives him of ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... salvation of souls or notoriety? Are you striving to foment discord in your community or cast oil upon the troubled waters? Are you striving to establish on earth the universal brotherhood of Man and common fatherhood of God, or Throwing Stones at Christ and the Christian Cause from the cover of a canting hypocrisy? ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... Missionary and Anti-Missionary Baptists. The latter church is strong all through the mountains. They are bigoted and ignorant, and boast that their knowledge comes direct from the throne, and they have nothing to do with man-made theories, as they call education. Their preaching is a sort of canting reiteration of the text and what few Scripture verses they chance to know and some hackneyed expressions. They are great on arguing, and it would be laughable if it was not so pitiful to hear the profound questions they discuss. Last season one ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 38, No. 01, January, 1884 • Various
... who leaves the remainder in blindness and uncertainty to follow their passions, or adopt opinions against which the favored wage war, must of necessity be eternally at odds with the rest of the world, canting about their oracles and mysteries, supernatural precepts, invented purely to torment the human mind, to enthral it, and leave man answerable for what he could not obey, and punishable for what he was restrained from performing. We need not then be astonished if, since ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... with him as a poet, and he knew by heart many passages from his poems, though he disliked Pope's personal character as a man, saying he was all affectation, and speaking of his letter to Arbuthnot when the latter was dying as a consummate piece of canting. Dryden was another of his favourite poets, and when he was speaking one day in high praise of Dryden's fables, Amicus mentioned Hume's objections, and was told, "You will learn more as to poetry by reading one good poem than by a thousand volumes of criticism." Smith regarded the French theatre ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... politics, are striving now to prove that the Republican party has been unclean and vicious all its life.... Some of these worthies masquerade as reformers. Their vocation and ministry is to lament the sins of other people. Their stock in trade is rancid, canting self-righteousness. They are wolves in sheep's clothing. Their real object is office and plunder. When Dr. Johnson defined patriotism as the last refuge of a scoundrel, he was unconscious of the then undeveloped capabilities and uses of the word reform.... Some ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... siccarly. "Oratory," properly a private chapel or closet for prayer; here a canting term for brothel: cf. abbess bawd; nun whore, and so forth. "Siccarly," certainly, surely "Thou art here, sykerlye, Thys churche to robb with felonye," MS. Cantab Ff. ...
— The Choise of Valentines - Or the Merie Ballad of Nash His Dildo • Thomas Nash
... only character that the author has treated in a consistently farcical vein. Eila Frost's canting old father-in-law in Not Counting the Cost is made ridiculous in his harangue on the duties of the young wife to her insane husband; but, with this exception, little is said of him in the story. It would seem that Tasma ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... Next comes canting Hypocrisy, with his Bible in his hand, telling us that "every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving." What does he mean; that ardent spirit is the gift of ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... mother," he said, in a canting tone, looking at Monsieur and Madame Hochon who accompanied her, "that my uncle's way of life is not becoming; he could, however, make Mademoiselle Brazier respected by the community if he chose. Wouldn't it be far better for her to be Madame Rouget than the ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... heard none of this lesson for fourteen years past. We have been huffed and bullied with your Act of Toleration; you have told us that you are the Church established by law as well as others; have set up your canting synagogues at our Church doors, and the Church and members have been loaded with reproaches, with oaths, associations, abjurations, and what not. Where has been the mercy, the forbearance, the charity, you have shown to tender consciences of the Church of England, that ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... There was a priest with Mr. Helbeck who got it hot too—that old chap Bowles—I dare say you've seen him. Aye, he's a snake, is Helbeck!" the young man repeated. Then he reddened still more deeply, and added with vindictive emphasis—"and an interfering,—hypocritical,—canting sort of party into t' bargain. He'd like to lord it over everybody aboot here, if he was let. But he's as poor as ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and red-hot, until three o'clock or so; when I usually knock off (unless it rains) for the day . . . I am fierce to finish in a spirit bearing some affinity to those of truth and mercy, and to shame the cruel and the canting. I have not forgotten my catechism. 'Yes verily, and with God's help, ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... cocked hat down on his forehead. "I'll show you how little you know of human nature and character. I'll take this wild Indian boy, brought up in the woods, and as free and careless as a deer, and in six months I'll change him into a canting, crop-eared, whining pen-machine, with quills behind his ears, and a back always bending humbly. I'll take this honest barbarian and make a civilized and enlightened individual out of him—that is to say, I'll change him into a rascal ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... the Macdonalds," he said—"of them. The uncle was a damn rebellious, canting, planting Scotchman. Horton Pen was the centre of the Separation Movement. We could have hung him if we'd wanted to. The nephew was the writer of an odious blackmailing print. He calumniated all the decent, loyal inhabitants. He was an agent of you pirates, too. We arrested him—got his papers; ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... said Grierson, "dog and traitor as he is, let him sink to the lowest pit, there to wait the arrival of his canting and Covenanting spouse, whom we shall now take the liberty of carrying to head-quarters, there to await her sentence, for decoying a king's sworn servant and a sergeant, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... But canting knave of pen and sword, nor sanctimonious fool, Shall never win this Southern land, to cripple, bind, and rule; We'll muster on each bloody plain, thick as the stars of night, And, through the help of God, the Wrong ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... the bright, dry light all is gay and busy. The most sthetic, and perhaps most humiliating, sight that a Westerner could see we came on there: two Arab Spahis walking down the main street in their long robe uniforms, white and red, and their white linen bonnets bound with a dark fur and canting slightly backwards. Over six feet high, they moved unhurrying, smoking their cigarettes, turning their necks slowly from side to side like camels of the desert. Their brown, thin, bearded faces wore ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... gloomed on him a moment. "Art more like a snivelling, canting Jack Presbyter. I tell you, man, I can ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... names that signifie nothing; but are taken up, and learned by rote from the Schooles, as Hypostatical, Transubstantiate, Consubstantiate, Eternal-now, and the like canting of Schoole-men. ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... firmament that fiery orange shape began canting downward; and the cheering swelled in a savage frenzy of sound. And Pierson's arm ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... some reward of our endeavours and are disappointed; not success, not happiness, not even peace of conscience, crowns our ineffectual efforts to do well. Our frailties are invincible, our virtues barren; the battle goes sore against us to the going down of the sun. The canting moralist tells us of right and wrong; and we look abroad, even on the face of our small earth, and find them change with every climate, and no country where some action is not honoured for a virtue and none where it is not branded for a vice; and we look in our experience, and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson |
