"Affectation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... them. What with his folly, Sholto's mean conceit, George's hypocrisy, that man's vulgarity, Mrs. Fairfax's affectation, your insufferable amiability, and the dreariness of those concertina people, I feel so wretched that I could find it in my heart to loathe anybody ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... who snarled at men systematically, but showed his cynicism to be mere affectation, when Timon attacked him with his own ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... conduct the Berlin Philharmonic Concerts. He died at Cairo, on the 13th of February 1894. Buelow was a pianist of the highest order of intellectual attainment, an artist of remarkably catholic tastes, and a great conductor. A passionate hater of humbug and affectation, he had a ready pen, and a biting, sometimes almost rude wit, yet of his kindness and generosity countless tales were told. His compositions are few and unimportant, but his annotated editions of the classical masters are of great ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... placed in his trembling hand, he was unable to open it. He passed it dumbly to Dick in piteous helplessness, who, after a hasty glance at the message, read it aloud cheerily, and with a splendid affectation of inconsequence, as though his mother's return was a matter of course, and not ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... you give me one for her," she remarked, without the slightest affectation, and as if it were the most natural thing for one cousin to thus ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... a Prussian country-house, during the triumphant days of the winter which followed on Sadowa. The story was brilliantly told, and of some political importance. But it was disfigured by arrogance and affectation, and Ashe's eyes began to dance a little. Cliffe meanwhile could not forget that he was in the presence of a rival and an official, could not refrain after a while from a note of challenge here and there. The conversation ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... but the General met it suavely with a flourish of his wide-brimmed hat and a blandishing smile. He was one of those gentlemen of the old school, I came to know later, to whom it was an inherent impossibility to appear without affectation in the presence of a member of the opposite sex. A high liver, and a good fellow every inch of him, he could be natural, racy, charming, and without vanity, when in the midst of men; but let so much as the rustle of a petticoat sound on the pavement, and he would begin to strut and plume himself ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... Corny," she said, "that I hardly know what ought to be my reply. Of one thing, however, I feel certain; persons surrounded as we are by dangers that may, at any instant, involve our destruction, have an unusual demand on them for sincerity. Affectation, I hope, I am never much addicted to, and prudery I know you would condemn. I have a feeling uppermost, at this instant, that I wish to ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... than becomes a young man of twenty-five. He had great force of character—you might have seen that from his grave brow, and felt it in his simple speech and manner, that was absolutely free from affectation. ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... people, and if, throughout the country, something of the primness and formality of ancient manners has been preserved, it the rather serves to give a quaint and picturesque grace to society. The affectation of French manners applies principally to the capital, which, both in manners and morals, can by no means be taken as a standard for the whole country. The Swedes are neither licentious, nor extravagantly over-mannered: the Stockholmers are both. During the whole of our journey to Lapland, ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... Blanchefleur, lays like those of Marie de France.[196] Marie was Norman, and lived in the time of Henry II., to whom she dedicated her poems. They are mostly graceful love-tales, sweetly told, without affectation or effort, and derived from Celtic originals, some being of Armorican and some of Welsh descent. Several are devoted to Tristan and other Arthurian knights. In the lay of the Ash, Marie tells a story of female ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... words of double meaning and words that might possibly be construed in a sense different from that intended, are strictly forbidden. Perspicuity requires a style at once clear and comprehensive and entirely free from pomp and pedantry and affectation ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... as if beaten in this solemn game, turned gravely and saluted the white. Birnier looked down from his chair with the affectation of just having noticed that some one was there. After a pause he returned the greeting, a little point which Bakahenzie thoroughly appreciated. Birnier had learned that according to Mungongo and the warrior, Zalu Zako had not yet been anointed king-god; therefore that Bakahenzie evidently intended ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... to the Judges. Though in his nature he had not only a firme gravity, but a severity, and even some morosity (which his children and domestiques had evidence enough of) [yet][2] it was so happily tempred, that his courtesy and affability towards all men was so transcended, so much without affectation, that it marvellously reconciled [him] to all men of all degrees, and he was looked upon as an excellent courtyer, without receadinge from the native simplicity of his owne manner. He had in the playne way of speakinge and delivery (without much ornament of eloqution) a strange power of makinge ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... much time in studies is sloth; to use them too much for ornament is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules is the humor ...
— Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader • John L. Huelshof
... to work in the future with such disregard of each other's ideas and methods as they have done in the past. It was at one time the custom among painters almost to despise the "black-and-white man" who drew for the Press in any shape or form; but that piece of affectation has nearly been destroyed by the general ridicule with which it is now received, and by the knowledge that there are already, at the end of the nineteenth century, just as many men of talent working by methods suitable ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... children, without affectation or condescension, as if they too were grown-ups. My parents were always entertaining people, and it was assumed without comment that I too was host no less than they. Twice a day I had to be in evidence: at tea time, face and ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... entrance to the music-room. The sound of a string quartette is faintly heard. The entrance on the left leads to other reception-rooms. MRS. MARCHMONT and LADY BASILDON, two very pretty women, are seated together on a Louis Seize sofa. They are types of exquisite fragility. Their affectation of manner has a delicate charm. Watteau would have loved ...
— An Ideal Husband - A Play • Oscar Wilde
... can show, } Wou'd Custom give us leave, the active too, } Since we no Provocations want from you. } For who but we cou'd your dull Fopperies bear, Your saucy Love, and your brisk Nonsense hear; Indure your worse than womanish Affectation, Which renders you the Nusance of the Nation; Scorn'd even by all the Misses of the Town, A Jest to Vizard Mask, the Pit-Buffoon; A Glass by which the admiring Country Fool May learn to dress himself en Ridicule: Both striving who shall most ingenious grow In Leudness, Foppery, Nonsense, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... the affectation of a supercilious indifference, he smiled haughtily, and gave a look of dramatic appeal to ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... affected, that in so much discourse upon this extraordinary party, I should say so little of the Earl of Bute, who is the supposed head of it. But this was neither owing to affectation nor inadvertence. I have carefully avoided the introduction of personal reflections of any kind. Much the greater part of the topics which have been used to blacken this nobleman are either unjust or frivolous. At best, they have a tendency to give the resentment of this bitter calamity ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... of Alcibiades, Plutarch mentions this defect in his speech; or it may have been a 'fine gentleman' affectation. ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... we were at liberty for an indefinite period. In forty minutes we struck another shore and another clime. San Francisco is original in its affectation of ugliness—it narrowly escaped being a beautiful city—and its humble acceptation of a climate which is as invigorating as it is unscrupulous, having a peculiar charm which is seldom discovered until one is beyond its spell. Sailing into the adjacent summer,—summer is intermittent in the ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... the performances of the Fantoccini. If people, like the Vicar of Wakefield, will sometimes "allow themselves to be happy," they can hardly fail to have a hearty laugh at the drolleries of the Fantoccini. There may be degrees of absurdity in the manner of wasting our time, but there is an evident affectation in decrying these humble and innocent exhibitions, by those who will sit till two or three in the morning to witness a pantomime at ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... you have therefore now to do, is so to behave to this proud-spirited wretch, as may banish from his mind all remembrance of] past disobligations,* and to receive his addresses, as those of a betrothed lover. You will incur the censure of prudery and affectation, if you keep him at that distance which you have hitherto [kept him at.] His sudden (and as suddenly recovered) illness has given him an opportunity to find out that you love him (Alas! my dear, I knew you loved him!) He has seemed to change ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... took their leaves, and wept, with a decent and silent sorrow, in which there was something very striking and tender: The people in the canoes, on the contrary, seemed to vie with each other in the loudness of their lamentations, which we considered rather as affectation than grief. Tupia sustained himself in this scene with a firmness and resolution truly admirable: He wept indeed, but the effort that he made to conceal his tears, concurred, with them, to do him honour. He sent his last present, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... before the date of the said sermon to find a certain merchant-burgess of the city of Edinburgh, David Grierson, occupying a portion of a front land situated in the Canongate, a little to the east of Leith Wynd. It would be sheer affectation in us to pretend that this merchant-burgess had any mental or physical characteristic about him to justify his appearance in a romance, if we except the power he had shown of amassing wealth, of which he had ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... the best and most judicious of Latin writers! In some places, where either the fancy or the words were his, or any other's, I have noted it in the margin, that I might not seem a plagiary; in others I have neglected it, to avoid as well tediousness, as the affectation of doing it too often. Such descriptions or images well wrought, which I promise not for mine, are, as I have said, the adequate delight of heroic poesy; for they beget admiration, which is its proper object; as the images of the burlesque, which is contrary to ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... had gratified his rigor by the punishment of his enemies, he determined to give contentment to the people in a point which, though a mere ceremony, was passionately desired by them. The queen had been married near two years, but had not yet been crowned; and this affectation of delay had given great discontent to the public, and had been one principal source of the disaffection which prevailed. The king, instructed by experience, now finished the ceremony of her coronation; and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... Tyneside. In his speech he exaggerated the burr of the Newcastle tongue. Most of us were anxious to get rid of that undesirable distinction. Mr. Cowen clung to it as one of the most precious of his possessions. He had to pay for this piece of affectation in later life, when he became a figure in the House of Commons. His first notable speech in that assembly was on the Royal Titles Bill of Mr. Disraeli. It was a very brilliant performance, greatly admired by those who were able ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... curious resemblance to Richardson's novel. The English printer, however, could not read French,[29] and there is sufficient evidence to show that he was independent of any influences save those which he took from real life. None the less, of course, Marivaux, who has a name for affectation which his writings scarcely deserve, has an interest for us as a harbinger of the modern novel. Pamela was published in two volumes in 1740. The author was sufficiently ill-advised to add two more in 1741. In this latter instalment Mrs. B. was represented as ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... whose jargon he had retained some smattering, which, together with some expressions he had perfectly acquired from Madame de Vendome, formed a language that would have puzzled a Cato. His speech was short and stupidly dull, and the more so because he obscured it by affectation. He thought himself very sufficient, and pretended to a great deal more wit than came to his share. He was brave enough in his person, and outdid the common Hectors by being so upon all occasions, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... either by particular description, or by reference to the use of these terms in other grammars. In some instances it was found necessary to employ less common terms, but in the choice of these I endeavoured to avoid the affectation of technical nicety. I am far from being persuaded that I am so fortunate as to have hit on the best possible plan. I am certain that it must {xiii} be far from complete. To such charges a first essay must necessarily ...
— Elements of Gaelic Grammar • Alexander Stewart
... a consideration of these several points, that, in our antiquated style of villa architecture, some national feeling may be discovered; but in any buildings now raised there is no character whatever: all is ridiculous imitation, and despicable affectation; and it is much to be lamented, that now, when a great deal of public attention has been directed to architecture on the part of the public, more efforts are not made to turn that attention from mimicking Swiss chalets, to erecting English houses. We ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... Affectation! Affectation! It is the nauseating disease of the day! If a thinking man, a sincere philanthropist, takes into consideration the condition of the working classes and endeavors to lay bare their necessities, scarcely has his work made an impression before it is greedily ...
— What Is Free Trade? - An Adaptation of Frederic Bastiat's "Sophismes Econimiques" - Designed for the American Reader • Frederic Bastiat
... of words is a good thing, not a bad. We are therefore unwilling to take the vow of linguistic poverty. If we lack the ability to bend words to our use, it is from laziness, not from scruple. We desire to speak competently, but without affectation. We know that if our diction rises to this dual standard, it silently distinguishes us from the sluggard, the weakling, and the upstart. For such diction is not to be had on sudden notice, like a tailor-made suit. Nor can it, like such a suit, deceive anybody ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... ourselves are seldom entirely free from affectation. An ardent, active girl may easily become so interested in her charities and her studies that she may make a genuine plea that she is too busy for parties and calls; but perhaps she ought not to give up society ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... enchantment fades; Through life's wide stage, from sages down to kings, The puppets move, as art directs the strings: Imperious beauty bows to sordid gold, Her smiles, whence heaven flows emanent, are sold; And affectation swells th' entrancing tones, Which nature ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... Saying, that for money he might be got to our side Says of wood, that it is an excrescence of the earth Seems she hath had long melancholy upon her Sermon ended, and the church broke up, and my amours ended also Sermon upon Original Sin, neither understood by himself Sermon without affectation or study Shame such a rogue should give me and all of us this trouble She has this silly vanity that she must play Sick of it and of him for it Silence; it being seldom any wrong to a man to say nothing Singing with many voices is not singing So every thing stands still for money Some ends ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... with unusual cordiality, and Mr. McKenna inspected the nickel-in-the-slot machine with affectation of much curiosity. ...
— Mr. Dooley: In the Hearts of His Countrymen • Finley Peter Dunne
... Athens, and he finally became the best known figure in the city. He criticized in his own frank, fearless way all the doings of the times—nothing escaped him. He was a self-appointed investigating committee in all affairs of state, society and religion. Hypocrisy, pretense, affectation and ignorance trembled at his approach. He was feared, despised and loved. But those who loved him were as one in a hundred. He became a public nuisance. The charge against him was just plain heresy—he had spoken disrespectfully of the gods and through his teaching he ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... of our destination, talk to a Hounslow post-boy about making haste to Augusta, as apply to our Turkish guide in modern Greece for a direction to Stymphalus, Nemea, Mycenae, &c. &c. This is neither more nor less than classical affectation; and it renders Mr. Gell's book of much more confined use than it would otherwise have been:—but we have some other and more important remarks to make on his general directions to Grecian tourists; and we beg leave to assure ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... the large, brilliantly lighted supper-room, with nearly all its tables occupied, he was curious to observe how she would meet the many critical eyes turned toward her. Again he was puzzled as well as surprised. She walked at his side as though the room were empty. There was no affectation of indifference, no trace of embarrassed or of pleased self-consciousness. From the friendly glances and smiles that she received it was also apparent that she had already made acquaintances. She moved with the easy, graceful step of perfect good breeding and assured confidence, ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... her, with his instinctive warm, transient smile, holding out his hand sheepishly. It was a most extraordinary and amazing thing that he could never regard the ceremony of shaking hands with a relative as other than an affectation of punctilio. Happily he was not wearing his hat; had it been on his head he would never have taken it off, and yet would have cursed himself for ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... remain, and will occasion the former to cease intermeddling with the affairs of the latter. The Dutch affairs are still to be settled. The new King of Prussia is more earnest in supporting the cause of the slaveholder than his uncle was, and in general an affectation begins to show itself of differing from his uncle. There is some fear of his throwing himself into the Austrian scale in the European division of power. Our treaty with Morocco is favorably concluded through the influence of Spain. That with Algiers affords no expectation. We have been rendered ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... of this quality in others; so that his patience was pretty well tried by his Irish allies. "At the same time, he expressed his contempt for religion in a way which the bishop saw reason for ascribing to vanity—"the miserable affectation of appearing worse than he really was." One officer there was, named Truc, whose brutality recalled the impression, so disadvantageous to French republicanism, which else had been partially effaced by the manners and conduct of his comrades. To ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... the fire was grouped a motley, gipsy crew of all ages; the elders in the place of honour above the fire; the children by the door. The firelight threw their copper-coloured faces into strong relief; each wore an expression of stolid expectation. Stolidity is the pet affectation of the breed; at heart he is as garrulous as an ape. Like mongrels generally, their manners were bad; a grunt served for welcome, and places were coolly pointed out where they ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... served, not merely with the words of the mouth or the bending of the knee; it is the pure and upright heart which he requires, and with which alone he will be satisfied; with this upright frame of mind we may live in the world, without either singularity or affectation, and cheerfully conform to its customs and amusements, yet preserve the most strict subjection and ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... is the Portuguese word, consequently the very best. Ulissipont is pedantic; and as I have Hellas and Eros not long before, there would be something like an affectation of Greek terms, which I wish to avoid, since I shall have a perilous quantity of modern Greek in my notes, as specimens of the tongue; therefore Lisboa may keep its place. You are right about the 'Hints;' ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... of profane swearing is aggravated by the consideration, that in it duty and decency are sacrificed to the slenderest of temptations. Suppose the habit, either from affectation, or by negligence and inadvertency, to be already formed, it must always remain within the power of the most ordinary resolution to correct it: and it cannot, one would think, cost a great deal to relinquish the pleasure and honor which it confers. A concern for ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... who care for him, for some little pet selfishness of his own. But this father of his seems to be even worse than the son. Family name indeed! And I venture to say he expatiated upon the glory of his family name to my uncle. If there's one thing that my uncle goes quite mad about it is this affectation of superiority on the ground of the colour of a man's blood! No wonder he refused to withdraw the prosecution! What could Mr. Rae have been thinking ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... a continual protest against the formalism, affectation, pedantry and despotism of the age of the Bourbons. His ideal of man was the unconventional, unconstrained, solitary, but harmless and easy-going savage. Hobbes was the growth of a sterner and more serious age. The only reality to him in heaven and on earth was force: his one ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... you mean. People think Horace's love of the rural life an affectation. I believe it to be most sincere. After the strain of the conventionality and the adulation of the Augustan court, the natural existence of the country must have been welcome to him. I know it is the fashion to say that a love of Nature belongs only to the Moderns, but I do not think so. Into Pindar, ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... speaking and writing." But the fashion went on growing; and even uneducated people thought it a clever thing to use a Latin instead of a good English word. Samuel Rowlands, a writer in the seventeenth century, ridicules this affectation in a few lines of verse. He pretends that he was out walking on the highroad, and met a countryman who wanted to know what o'clock it was, and whether he was on the right way to the town or village ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... Philip and Mr. Potts; also Sir Penthony. Two or three determined ball-goers have arrived, and are dotted about, looking over albums, asking each other how they do, and thinking how utterly low it is of all the rest of the county to be so late. "Such beastly affectation, you know, and such a putting on of side, ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... morning, asked if we had read Maeterlinck's "Life of the Bee." From that he fell to discussing other things of Maeterlinck's with Mr. Brett, and incidentally talked of Ibsen. There wasn't the least affectation about it all. The quotations and allusions he made were mixed up incidentally with conversation about the beauty of the country, and life on a farm. He was interested in the subjects, and took it for granted that we were, so he chatted ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... the "American humorist" of journalism to be funny; and it should be left to him and to his kind. And in the next paragraph Mrs. Edwards describes her heroine as "walking wearily along the weary street of Chesterford St. Mary." Bad style again, and this time in the way of affectation. A man's way may be weary if he is tired or weak; but not even then should it be so called, when he has just been spoken of as weary himself, or as walking wearily; and weary as applied descriptively to a village street is almost nonsense. These defects are not important, but ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... they did at one time, with such a grace and agilitie, as nothing could be better, with their lowe inclinatitions, high Capers and Turnings, without affectation of strayning, as it should seeme with facilitie and careles ease at pleasure and sweete iestures, as in such a thing may bee imagined, and not else where to bee seene. Neuer any one troubling an other, but who so was taken prisoner, did presently kisse their Conquerour, and voyded the place. And ...
— Hypnerotomachia - The Strife of Loue in a Dreame • Francesco Colonna
... unsuspectedly, by endeavouring to detract from me, in points of person and figure that I obviously excelled in. This is, I own, too strong of self praise; but I should be ungrateful to nature, and to a form to which I owe such singular blessings of pleasure and fortune, were I to suppress, through an affectation of modesty, the mention of such ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... He was devoted to her; the decided preference she gave him over every other man, upon such occasions, flattered his affection; and he would, at any time, leave even Grace Chatterton to attend his sister. All this too was without affectation, and generally without notice. Emily so looked the delicacy and reserve she acted with so little ostentation that not even her own sex had affixed to her conduct the epithet of squeamish; it was difficult, therefore, for her to do anything which ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... vision of the epoptae was the vision of real faith, so the muesis, or veiling of the mystae, was no mere affectation of mysticism. Not so easily could be set aside this weight of sorrow upon the eyelids, which, notwithstanding that, leading to self, it leads to wandering, leads also through Divine aid to that peace which passeth all understanding. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... herself under the wing of some taller friend. A resident of Haworth, still alive, remembers the girls passing him frequently on the way down to the shops, and their hands would involuntarily be lifted to the face on the side nearest to him, with a view to avoid observation. This was not affectation; it was absolute timidity. Miss Wheelwright always thought George Richmond's portrait—for which Charlotte sat during a stay at Dr. Wheelwright's in Phillimore Place—entirely flattering. Many of Charlotte's ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... the affectation of Orrery, in ending all his letters on the Life of Swift in studied varieties of phrase[657], and never in the common mode of 'I am', &c., an observation which I remember to have been made several years ago by old Mr. Sheridan. This species of affectation ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... after which we pine in this sickly age. We do not want carefully and consciously constructed poems of mosaic. Strength is what we need and what will heal us. Strength is true morality, and true beauty. It is the strength in Byron that falsifies the accusation of affectation and posing, which is brought against him. All that is meant by affectation and posing was a mere surface trick. The real man, Byron, and his poems are perfectly unconscious, as unconscious as the wind. The books which have lived and always will live have this unconsciousness in them, and what is ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... rings). Well, one of them, Mr. Baxter— Harold—(she looks quickly up at DELIA and down again in pretty affectation, but she is really laughing at herself all the time) he writes statistical articles for the Reviews—percentages and all those things. He's just the sort of man, if he knew that I was your mother, to work it out that I was more than thirty. The other one, Mr. Devenish—Claude—(she ...
— Belinda • A. A. Milne
... seriousness of anything on earth. He despised their whole-hearted passion for sports at an age when he was beginning to be interested in less wholesome and far more complex absorptions.... He despised their straight, clean affections and quarrels and their tortuous sense of humour; the affectation that led them to take cold baths instead of hot ones: their shy, rather knightly mental attitude towards their sisters and ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... education, and had become the determined enemy of boarding-schools, where every thing is taught and nothing understood; where airs, graces, mouth primming, shoulder-setting and elbow-holding are studied, and affectation, formality, hypocrisy, and pride are acquired; and where children the most promising are presently transformed into vain, pert misses, who imagine that to perk up their heads, turn out their toes, and exhibit the ostentatious opulence of their ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... a clear and ringing voice, "I accept your praise without any affectation of false modesty. We have no reason to fear the intervention of that grain of sand which sometimes stops the working of the machine. Perpignan, poor fool though he is, will be our best friend, and will do our work quite unconsciously. Can the Duke retain any atom of suspicion after these ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... essential nobleness of Swift's nature which makes the voyage to the Houyhnhnms a noble and not a disgusting piece of literature. There are people who pretend that this section of Gulliver's Travels is almost too terrible for sensitive persons to read. This is sheer affectation. It can only be honestly maintained by those who believe that life is too terrible ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... fashion), the gown fastened up to the throat, with a small linen collarette, and plain white muslin sleeves buttoned round the wrists. The hands offered to me were small and well-shaped. Her manners were quite as simple as her costume. I never saw a simpler woman. Not a shade of affectation or consciousness, even—not a suffusion of coquetry, not a cigarette to be seen! Two or three young men were sitting with her, and I observed the profound respect with which they listened to every word she said. ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... cavaliero of the age of Queen Elizabeth. In every period, the attempt to gain and maintain the highest rank of society, has depended on the power of assuming and supporting a certain fashionable kind of affectation, usually connected with some vivacity of talent and energy of character, but distinguished at the same time by a transcendent flight, beyond sound reason and common sense; both faculties too vulgar to be admitted into the estimate of one who claims to be esteemed "a choice ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... a shirt-front at all? But to take a costume of which the only conceivable cause or advantage is that it is a sort of uniform, and then not wear it in the uniform way—this is to be neither a Bohemian nor a gentleman. It is a foolish affectation, I think, in an English officer of the Life Guards never to wear his uniform if he can help it. But it would be more foolish still if he showed himself about town in a scarlet coat and a Jaeger breast-plate. It is the custom nowadays to have ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... compositions pretending to describe Gypsy life, but written by persons who are not of the Gypsy sect. Such compositions, however replete with fiery sentiments, and allusions to freedom and independence, are certain to be tainted with affectation. Now in the Gypsy rhymes there is no affectation, and on that very account they are different in every respect from the poetry of those interesting personages who figure, under the names of Gypsies, Gitanos, Bohemians, etc., in novels and on the ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... churchman are strongly marked in the characters and fortunes of Whiston and Bishop Newton; and even the dullness of Michael de Marolles and Anthony Wood acquires some value from the faithful representation of men and manners. That I am equal or superior to some of these, the effects of modesty or affectation ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... is singular how long the rotten will hold together, provided you do not handle it roughly. For whole generations it continues standing, 'with a ghastly affectation of life,' after all life and truth has fled out of it; so loth are men to quit their old ways; and, conquering indolence and inertia, venture on new. Great truly is the Actual; is the Thing that has rescued itself from bottomless deeps of theory and possibility, and stands there as ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... wantonness your ignorance.] You mistake by wanton affectation, and pretend to mistake ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... he seldom condescended to notice; but Mary Ann was something of a favourite. He was continually encouraging her tendency to affectation (which I had done my utmost to crush), talking about her pretty face, and filling her head with all manner of conceited notions concerning her personal appearance (which I had instructed her to regard as dust in the balance compared with the cultivation of her mind ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... seated in the centre of the group on a squared block of stone from the quarry, is a tall strong man, with a striking cockatoo nose, glossy black hair, pointed beard, upturned moustache, and a Mephistophelean affectation which is fairly imposing, perhaps because the scenery admits of a larger swagger than Piccadilly, perhaps because of a certain sentimentality in the man which gives him that touch of grace which alone can excuse deliberate picturesqueness. His eyes and mouth are by no means rascally; he has a ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... materials printed for him, the farther he can go. No doubt it is sometimes desirable, even necessary, to look to some manuscript authority for the clearing-up of a special point; but too often the profession of having perused a great mass of manuscript authorities is an affectation and a pedantry. He who searches for and finds the truth in any considerable portion of history, performs too great an achievement to care for the praise of deciphering a few specimens of difficult handwriting, and revealing the sense hidden in certain words couched in obsolete spelling. ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... at home in this primitive environment. His freedom from affectation and false dignity recommended him to the laity, while his fairness and good-nature put him in quick sympathy with his legal brethren and their clients. Long years afterward, men recalled the picture of the young judge as he mingled ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... tribe of contemptible, sycophantic, brainless calves in broadcloth, who are ever ready to fall down and worship the golden emblem of themselves. And yet she is pug-nosed, freckle-faced, and red-headed; insolent to her equals, coarsely familiar with her inferiors; her vulgarity is without wit, her affectation is devoid of elegance or grace; ignorant and stupid, the meanest kitchen wench would suffer by a comparison with her. In striking contrast with this ludicrous specimen of degraded aristocracy, there were several young ladies present ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... wished provision to be made, were at least as unexceptionable as many, I may even add as most of those whom Lord Shelburne had collected from the two former Administrations. The infatuation, however, which pervaded the whole of his Government, operated most forcibly in this instance. The affectation of holding the ostensible language of Mr. Pitt, in 1759, is only mentioned to show the ridiculous vanity of the Minister who, unsupported by public success, or by the parliamentary knowledge and man[oe]uvre of ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... do any amount of silly things without rebuke or even notice; and he might have done so, had he chosen, ever since his wedding-day. You felt that at once. Mrs. Oke simply passed over his existence. I cannot say she paid much attention to any one's, even to mine. At first I thought it an affectation on her part—for there was something far-fetched in her whole appearance, something suggesting study, which might lead one to tax her with affectation at first; she was dressed in a strange way, ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... Du Plessis, with much simpering and affectation, quite unworthy of the original, drew the working geologist out, and inspired him with hopes of securing her hand and property. Mr. Rawdon spoke very freely of the wealth he had in the hand and in the bush, of his readiness to make allowance for Madame Du Plessis, if that "haffable ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... a girl whom you would like immensely, I can tell you that. A beauty without affectation, a high and tender nature—if one can read the soul in the face. And the old colonel is a ...
— Marjorie Daw • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... affectation which, for many years past, has prevailed in Paris even to a degree perfectly childish, of idolizing the memory of your Henry the Fourth. If anything could put any one out of humour with that ornament ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... at dinner, had an opportunity of displaying her generosity. They were busy making havoc of the manner of a distinguished person who was much talked of at that time, and whom they had all chanced to meet. Now Nan ordinarily was very intolerant of affectation; but had she not promised to be ten times kinder to everybody? So she struck in in defence of ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... is, at last. The white trousers, blue coat, and yellow waistcoat—and more especially that cock of the hat—indicate, as surely as inanimate objects can, that Chalk Farm and not the parish church, is their destination. The girl colours up, and puts out her hand with a very awkward affectation of indifference. He gives it a gallant squeeze, and away they walk, arm in arm, the girl just looking back towards her 'place' with an air of conscious self-importance, and nodding to her fellow-servant who has gone up to the two-pair-of- stairs ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... the topmost of the porch steps with the air of being permanently implanted; leaning forward, elbows on knees, cheeks on palms, in a treacherous affectation of profound reverie; and his back (all of him that was plainly visible in the hall light) tauntingly close to a delicate foot which would, God wot! willingly have launched him into the darkness beyond. It was his dreadful pleasure ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... plant a new tree of Art. But to set aside the works of perfected Art, and to seek out its scanty and simple beginnings, as some have desired, would be a new and perhaps greater mistake; it would be no real return to the fundamental; simplicity would be affectation, and ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... old proverb, Dolus latet in generalibus, and Arthur Young in not the only public economist who has warned his readers against the deceitfulness of round numbers. I think, on the contrary, that vastly more error has been produced by the affectation of precision in cases where ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... schisms of which the kingdom had been formerly so productive. Imposture and fanaticism still hung upon the skirts of religion. Weak minds were seduced by the delusion of a superstition styled Methodism, raised upon the affectation of superior sanctity, and maintained by pretensions to divine illumination. Many thousands in the lower ranks of life were infected with this species of enthusiasm, by the unwearied endeavours of a few obscure preachers, such as Whitfield and the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... the west what opium is to the Orientals, waking day-dreams, had become necessities and events for the salons. Madame de Genlis wrote in a graceful style, and clothed her characters and ideas with a certain affectation of austerity which gave a becomingness to love: she moreover affected an universal acquaintance with the sciences, which made her sex disappear before the pretensions of her mind, and which recalled in her ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... unshipping of cargo; and as he lifted himself from the stooping attitude which his work demanded, he saw Andrew Binnie approaching him. He pretended, however, not to see him, and became suddenly very deeply interested in the removal of a certain case of goods. Andrew was quite conscious of the affectation, but he did not blame Jamie; it only made him the more anxious to atone for the wrong he had done. He stepped rapidly forward, and with extended ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... perversity—not upon their parts who employ them now in their acquired senses, but on theirs from whom little by little they received their deflection, and were warped from their original rectitude. A 'prude' is now a woman with an over-done affectation of a modesty which she does not really feel, and betraying the absence of the substance by this over-preciseness and niceness about the shadow. Goodness must have gone strangely out of fashion, the corruption of ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... pronouncing the name with an affectation of reverence. "The honour of the Willoughbys is thus preserved from every taint, and all the blame must fall on ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... or suspicion, did not prevent me from making a most excellent supper, during which little passed betwixt me and my entertainer, unless that he did the usual honours of the table with courtesy, indeed, but without even the affectation of hearty hospitality, which those in his (apparent) condition generally affect on such occasions, even when they do not actually feel it. On the contrary, his manner seemed that of a polished landlord towards an unexpected and unwelcome guest, whom, for the sake of his own credit, ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... like rats in a ship, abandon the hold into which on the very next voyage the water will infallibly penetrate, owing to the ravages of decay. Anne of Austria did not feel satisfied with the time her eldest son devoted to her. The king, a good son, more from affectation than from affection, had at first been in the habit of passing an hour in the morning and one in the evening with his mother; but, since he had himself undertaken the conduct of state affairs, the duration of the morning and evening's visit had been reduced ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... required no words to inform her of what was passing in Rhoda's mind. But she forestalled any words which might have come, by an affectation of misunderstanding her. ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... while watching the path down which she had disappeared, wondering at her abrupt departure, which for the moment drove from his mind all thought of McGuire's troubles. It was difficult to associate Beth with the idea of prudery or affectation. Her visit proved that. She had come to the Cabin because she had wanted to hear him play, because she had wanted to sing for him, because too his promises had excited her curiosity about him, and inspired a hope of his assistance. But the visit ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... another little pause. Trent rubbed his chin, with an affectation of turning over the idea. Inwardly he was telling himself, somewhat feebly, that this was very right and proper; that it was quite feminine, and that he liked her to be feminine. It was permitted to her—more than permitted—to set her loyal belief ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... afterwards, the two Peters were seen moving through the Parliament Close (which new-fangled affectation has termed a Square), the triumphant Drudgeit leading captive the passive Peebles, whose legs conducted him towards the dramshop, while his reverted eyes were fixed upon the court. They dived into the Cimmerian abysses of John's ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... be an affectation, sir," said Chiffield, aloud, "to pretend that I do not understand to whom you refer, my ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... sympathy with other people's woes unless these found an echo in his own, and the callousness which he so often displayed was not entirely the affectation it was thought by his friends or even by his enemies. Great in so many things, there were circumstances when he could show himself unutterably small, and he seldom practised consistency. Frank by nature, he was ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... supply ideas to Chatham and Disraeli cannot be wholly devoid of merit. Certainly he wrote well, in that easy elegance of style which was the delight of the eighteenth century; and he is consistently happy in his choice of adjectives. But his work is at every point embellished with that affectation of classical learning which was the curse of his age. He sought no general truths, and he is free from the accusation of sincerity. Nor has he any enthusiasm save that of bitter partisanship. He hated Walpole, and his political writings are, at bottom, no more than an attempt ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... began to weary her, however, and it began to seem an affectation to him; so that he was soon mangling the English language in speech and in the frequent notes he found it necessary to send his idol on infinitely unimportant matters that could not wait from after lunch ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... N. simplicity; plainness, homeliness; undress, chastity. V. be simple &c. adj. render simple &c. adj.; simplify, uncomplicate. Adj. simple, plain; homely, homespun; ordinary, household. unaffected; ingenuous, sincere (artless) 703; free from affectation, free from ornament; simplex munditiis [Lat][Horace]; sans facon[Fr], en deshabille[Fr]. chaste, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... with which two women conduct a deadly feud, and politely tear each other's eyes out. George Sand was famous then beyond her present-day esteem, and she was a woman of vigour almost masculine and of a straightforwardness which was almost an affectation. She loved to go about in boots and blouse, and to ride bareback; she smoked cigars, and wrote at night. The Comtesse d'Agoult was eminently feminine. She would rather have spent one thousand francs ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... wood-cut blocks in the old editions of Vasari have preserved for us. A modest, unassuming man—that one might, a priori, have been quite sure of—delighted to talk of his work and of the processes connected with them, doing so with frankness, enthusiasm and unreserve—utterly above the affectation of mystery or secresy as to his modus operandi, and quite ready to say to all the world, "Do the same if you will, and better if you can." I need hardly say that he received us with the utmost courtesy, and with that genuinely unaffected simplicity of manner which is the heritage and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... long while to run. It is, in truth, a sad reflection which should stir up strong protest in every earnest soul, that this sin—so deadly in its nature—should be practically safe so far as the pulpit is concerned. In many cases this is a result of sensitive timidity, or it may be an affectation of refinement which is but veneered coarseness. If it be the first, it should be respected but not yielded to; if it be the second, it should receive no indulgence from us. The great Hebrew prophets, and the Supreme Teacher Himself, did not surrender this stronghold of the soul to the ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... fresh of thought, so free from all affectation, so gentle and winning in all her ways, and, sooth to say, so happy in the admiration of Philibert, which she was very conscious of now. It darted from his eyes at every look, although no word of it had yet passed his lips. The radiance of her spirits flashed like sunbeams through ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... mind within. In The Cossacks this absence of analysis is still more apparent. It is a picture of a curious and simple race, painted, not from within, but from the outside or Russian point of view. But here is no refining, no affectation of pastoral simplicity. The Cossacks is distinctly a primitive poem, one which can scarcely be classed either as idyl or epic, though, in spite of its scenes being mainly rural, it perhaps approaches more nearly to the epic. There is an Homeric ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... must," the other agreed heartily. "It seemed to us that his trying to make us put aside the respect due to his rank was a sort of affectation, and really impressed it more disagreeably upon us. We took him for an upstart favourite; though we might have known, had we thought of it, that the king never promotes unduly. Who could possibly have believed that a young fellow, not yet twenty, I should say, ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... to determine, whether it be modest or imperious, whether it rellish more of a softnesse, sweetnesse, and delicacy, than of a certain Noble brisque and generous air, whether it incline more to the simplicity of Nature, or the subtile refinements of Art, whether it be polite to affectation, or betray a certain negligence which hath its graces too, as well as its measures of Art, and last of all whether it be not a little crampt in attempting to be too exact, or else better accomodate it selfe by its freedome from ...
— A Philosophicall Essay for the Reunion of the Languages - Or, The Art of Knowing All by the Mastery of One • Pierre Besnier
... was an educated Cossack. He had been to Russia proper, was a regimental schoolteacher, and above all he was noble. He wished to appear noble, but one could not help feeling beneath his grotesque pretence of polish, his affectation, his self-confidence, and his absurd way of speaking, he was just the same as Daddy Eroshka. This could also be clearly seen by his sunburnt face and his hands and his red nose. Olenin asked him to ...
— The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy
... Harmonique. She went early to the hall that she might hear the entire music-making of the evening—Van Kuyp's tone-poem, Sordello, was on the programme between a Weber overture and a Beethoven symphony, an unusual honour for a young American composer. If she had gone late, it would have seemed an affectation, she reasoned. Her husband kept within doors; she could tell him all. And then, was ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... Linn," his friend answered, with a fine affectation of carelessness. "I merely looked in to see how you were getting on. There's no news. The government seem to be in a mess, but even their own friends are ashamed of their vacillation. They're talking of still ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... said the Bloater, with a knowing smile, the knowingness of which consisted chiefly in the corners of the mouth being turned down instead of up. This peculiarity, be it carefully observed, was natural to the Bloater, who scorned every species of affectation. Many of his young friends and admirers were wont to imitate this smile. If they could have seen the inconceivably idiotic expressions of their countenances when they tried it, they would never have made ...
— Life in the Red Brigade - London Fire Brigade • R.M. Ballantyne
... is unknown in Canada. There are no children here. The boy is a miniature man—knowing, keen, and wide awake; as able to drive a bargain and take an advantage of his juvenile companion as the grown-up, world-hardened man. The girl, a gossipping flirt, full of vanity and affectation, with a premature love of finery, and an acute perception of the advantages to be derived from wealth, and from keeping up a certain appearance ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... one whim or affectation in common life noted in any memoir of that age which may not be found drawn and framed in some corner or other of Ben Jonson's dramas; and they have this merit, in common with Hogarth's prints, that not a single circumstance is introduced in them which does not play ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... Emmy used to treat her John in the days of their engagement,—the little ways, half loving, half mischievous, in which she alternately petted and domineered over him. Now she called him "Mr. Evans," with an anxious affectation of matronly gravity. Had they been lecturing her into these conjugal proprieties? Probably not. I felt sure, by what I now experienced in myself, that, were I to live in that family one week, all such little deviations ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... of Painting and Architecture has been so well and frequently described that it would have been mere affectation to make more than a few passing ...
— Bruges and West Flanders • George W. T. Omond
... attired in what resembled the uniform of an officer of the navy, stepped into the middle of the arena, and with the affectation of good breeding characteristic of the class, said, "Ladies and gentlemen: I have the honor to announce that John Brinton, the most extraordinary and celebrated tamer of lions in the world, will appear before you in his remarkable performance, during ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... humour. The schoolmaster without this humanising virtue never yet won your love and admiration, and to miss your affection and loyalty is to lose one of life's chiefest delights. You are as quick to detect the humbug who hides his mediocrity behind an affectation of dignity as was dear old Yorick, of whom you will read when you have got to know the sweetness of Catullus. This Yorick it was who declared that the Frenchman's epigram describing gravity as "a mysterious carriage of the body to cover ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... officer of Dunwoodie's influence in the rebel armies; and the maid returned to the apartment, accompanied by her father and aunt, at the expiration of the time that she had fixed. Dunwoodie and the clergyman were already there. Frances, silently, and without the affectation of reserve, placed in his hand the wedding ring of her own mother, and after some little time spent in arranging Mr. Wharton and herself, Miss Peyton ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... called upon him, and appeared to bear the loss of his son with a manly composure. There was no affectation about him; and he talked, as usual, upon indifferent subjects.[50] He seemed to me to hesitate as to the intended Italian tour, on which, I flattered myself, he and Mrs. Thrale and Dr. Johnson were soon to set out; and, therefore, I pressed it as much as I could. I mentioned, that ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... have greatly changed. I have seen something—not much, it is true—of men and of life, and have found that it is an easy thing to dream of success, but a long and difficult task to achieve it. That I have talent it would be affectation to deny; but many a poor and struggling lawyer is my equal. The best I can hope for, Juanita, is a youth of severe toil and griping penury, with, perhaps, late in life,—almost too late to enjoy it,—competence and an honorable name. And even that is by ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... unconventionality; but they had brought each her full complement of servants with her, and each was apparently giving herself in the summer to the unrealities that occupied her during the winter. Everywhere Annie had found the affectation of intellectual interests, and the assumption that these were the highest interests of life: there could be no doubt that culture was the ideal of South Hatboro', and several of the ladies complained that in the summer they got behind with their reading, or their art, or their music. They ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... the exile of Carnot. The manner in which he now signed his orders and proclamations—Member of the Institute, General in Chief of the Army of the East—showed his determination to banish from the life of France that affectation of boorish ignorance by which the Terrorists had rendered themselves ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... exemplified; as often in his letters as in his essays; and always with something final about it. He is never more himself than when he says, briefly: 'Sentiment came in with Sterne, and was a child he had by Affectation'; but then he is also never more himself than when he expands and develops, as in this rendering of the hisses which damned his ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... consequence, who of all people most faithfully and compactly exhibits the impress of his times and his times' tendencies, not merely in his writings—where it conceivably might be just predetermined affectation—but in his personality. ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... concerning Mrs Patrick Campbell's Deirdre and Electra deserve a little consideration. One of the critics attached to the paper spoke of the affair as being an "indifferent performance of indifferent tragedies," and then said it was "a simple affectation to profess to enjoy it," and that it was not, "as some people seem to think, a mark of culture, but only of insufficient culture not to acknowledge that one is bored ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... 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 such passages ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... clearly because the hair that usually covered them was plastered about his face by the snow. In his normal day his eyes gleamed behind his hair like sunlight in a thick wood. He wore a little pointed beard that could only be considered an affectation; in one word, if you imagine a ridiculously small sheep-dog with no legs, a French beard and a stump of a tail, you have him. And if you want to know more than that I can only refer you to the description of his great-great-great-grandson "Jacob," described ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... eminently suggestive of the theme, shall be brought out with more brilliancy. In general, the whole must be made to sound natural, without musical pretension, and as if it were the production of the moment; and should not create a distorted, overdrawn effect, or exhibit modern affectation. ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck
... the Monday "Pop." to D—— and me. I managed to go and stay for most of it. Norman Neruda, Piatti, and Janotha—have you heard Janotha play the piano? I think she is very wonderful. It is so absolutely without affectation, and so selfless, and yet such a mastery of the instrument. Her rippling passages are like music writ in water, and she has a singing touch too, and when she accompanies, the subordination and sympathy are admirable. She is not pretty, nor in any way got up, but is elfish and quaint-looking, ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... the storm of ridicule that swirled round the heads of Rossetti and his devoted and courageous friends, he doubtless acted within his role; but he utterly failed to see below the surface of the apparent affectation of the artists, and all he had to say of Sir John Millais' "Vale of Rest," in the lines descriptive of the ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... remov'd less than a hair's breadth from one sullen posture for almost three hours at The Alchymist; who at that excellent Play of Harry the Fourth (which yet I hope is far enough from Farce) hath very hardly kept his Doublet whole; but affectation hath always had a greater share both in the action and discourse of men than truth and judgement have; and for our Modern ones, except our most unimitable Laureat, I dare to say I know of none that write ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... glance at that," said Sissie, with an affectation of carelessness, indicating a longish, narrowish piece of paper covered with characters in red and black, which had been affixed to the wall of the passage with two pins. "We put it there—at least I did—to ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... finest judges to the poetic fact that living spirit can animate every form it finds prepared for its indwelling. Johnson and the rest were right in perceiving that pastoral elegy had very commonly been an insincere affectation, a mere exercise in writing; the age into which they were born denied them the ear that could hear the amazing music of Lycidas, or perceive the sensuous, imaginative, spiritual intensity which drowns its incongruities in a flood of poetic life. There is a still more important truth which ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... forming some opinion of a man's sense and character from his dress; and I believe most people do as well as myself. Any affectation whatsoever in dress implies in my mind a flaw in the understanding.... A man of sense carefully avoids any particular character in his dress; he is accurately clean for his own sake; but all the rest is for other ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... carriages. "Compare," he will say, "the fine gentleman of former times, ever on horseback, booted and spurred, and travel-stained, but open, frank, manly, and chivalrous, with the fine gentleman of the present day, full of affectation and effeminacy, rolling along a turnpike in his voluptuous vehicle. The young men of those days were rendered brave, and lofty, and generous, in their notions, by almost living in their saddles, and having their foaming steeds 'like proud seas under them.' ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... this matter of negro slavery, has undertaken to apply his explosive pitch and rosin, not to the affectation of humanity, but to humanity itself. He mocks at pity, scoffs at all who seek to lessen the amount of pain and suffering, sneers at and denies the most sacred rights, and mercilessly consigns an entire class of the children of his Heavenly Father to ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... There Affectation, with a sickly mien, Shows in her cheek the roses of eighteen. Rape of the Lock, Canto IV. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... would he mistake your meaning, and put in a conceit most seasonably out of season. His talk without affectation was compressed, like his beloved Elizabethans, even unto obscurity. Like grains of fine gold, his sentences would beat out into whole sheets. He had small mercy on spurious fame, and a caustic observation on the FASHION FOR MEN OF GENIUS was a standing dish. Sir Thomas ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... appear as blithe and free as the birds of the air, and like them as volatile and active, tuneful and vociferous. The visage, action, and deportment of the Seminoles form the most striking picture of happiness in this life; joy, contentment, love, and friendship, without guile or affectation, seem inherent in them, or predominant in their vital principle, for it leaves them with but the last breath of life.... They are fond of games and gambling, and amuse themselves like children, in relating extravagant stories, ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... of effecting that. Some poor palliative is probably all we shall obtain. The Marquis de la Fayette goes hand in hand with me in all these transactions, and is an invaluable auxiliary to me. I hope it will not be imputed either to partiality or affectation, my naming this gentleman so often in my despatches. Were I not to do it, it would be a suppression of truth, and the taking to myself the whole merit where he has the ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... Europe, he replied with equal indifference, "That they could not possibly be new to him, who had been so much engaged in the wars on the frontiers of Tartary;" though the chances are, that he had never before seen a firelock: with such ridiculous affectation of superiority, and contempt for other nations, does the unconquerable pride of this people inspire them. It seems, indeed, to be laid down as a general principle, never to be caught in the admiration of any thing brought among them by foreigners. Whenever a man of rank came ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... afraid that in my critical little mind I looked upon it as an affectation on the part of the older people to speak of life in this doleful way. I thought that they really knew better. It seemed to me that it must be delightful to grow up, and learn things, and do things, and be very good indeed,—better than children could possibly know how to be. I knew afterwards ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... only one among many instances in which Chaucer disclaims the pursuits of love; and the description of his manner of life which follows is sufficient to show that the disclaimer was no mere mock-humble affectation of a gallant. ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... "was probably sometimes ideal, but the woman with whom he cohabited was a despicable drab of the lowest species." The case of popular and patriotic poetry is very different. It is wholly devoid of affectation. Whatever be its literary merits or demerits, it always represents some genuine and usually deep-rooted conviction. It enables us to gauge the national aspirations of the day, and to estimate the character of the nation whose yearnings ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... throw down his houses in town and country, to rebuild them after the present mode; destroy all his plantations, and cast others into such a form as modern usage required, and give the same directions to all his tenants, unless he would submit to incur the censure of pride, singularity, affectation, ignorance, caprice, and perhaps increase his majesty's displeasure; that the admiration I appeared to be under would cease or diminish, when he had informed me of some particulars which, probably, I never heard of at court, the people there being too much ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... their steamers and railroads, that there is but little pure provincialism left. They have borrowed from each other in different sections most liberally, and not only has the vocabulary of the south and west contributed its phraseology to New England, but there is recently an affectation in consequence of the Mexican war, to naturalise Spanish words, some of which Mr Slick, who delights in this sort of thing, has ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... entirely for papa's consideration," said Lady Laura, with an affectation of solemnity in her voice. "I think it has always been felt that any politician may accept such an offer as that when it is made to him, but that no politician should ask for it. My father feels that he has to do the best he can with his influence in the borough, ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... of our last parting ringing in our ears, we both feel that it would be useless affectation to attempt to meet as ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... Aminatrait which distinguished the later Empire and its correlate the Renaissance, he drew together the elements of his picture to express an eminently characteristic conception of curious murder. What amplitude of outline; what severe grace of drapery! And what mad affectation of attention to the ghastly baggage she is preparing for her flight! I can only instance for a parallel the pitiful case of the young Ophelia, decked with flowers and weeds, and faltering in her pretty treble songs about lechery and dead bodies. It needs ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... administration. Those he declined, and commenced that neutral existence which, with the majority of politicians, is worse than none. There was a weakness in Burke's character which did him infinite mischief for the first ten years of his political life. We shall not call it an affectation in the instance of so great a man, but it paid all the penalties of folly—and this was his propensity to feel, or at least to express, a personal affection for the men whom he politically followed. Even of Hamilton, the most ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... by pirates and sold as a slave. His purchaser released him, giving him charge of his household and of the education of his children. Diogenes despised wealth and affectation, and lived in a tub. "Do you want anything?" asked Alexander the Great, greatly impressed by the abounding cheerfulness of the philosopher under such circumstances. "Yes," replied Diogenes, "I want you to stand out of my sunshine ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden |
