"Cant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hugging the old proprieties. Hegel will be to the next generation what Sir William Hamilton was to the last. Nothing will have been disproved, but everything will have been abandoned. An honest man has spoken, and the cant of the genteel tradition has become harder for ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... is furthermore aroused to act, according to 2 Cor. 5:14: "The charity of Christ presseth us." Hence it is that the soul is spiritually nourished through the power of this sacrament, by being spiritually gladdened, and as it were inebriated with the sweetness of the Divine goodness, according to Cant 5:1: "Eat, O friends, and drink, and be inebriated, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... and perjury? And what does he think of the poor man executed at Birmingham, who declared at his death, he had been provoked by the infamous handbill? I know not who wrote it. No, my good friend: Deborah may cant rhymes of compassion, but she is a hypocrite; and you shall not make me read her, nor, with all your sympathy and candour, can you esteem her. Your compassion for the poor blacks is genuine, sincere from your soul, most amiable; hers, a measure of faction. Her party supported the abolition, and regretted ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... Huda or salvation. The old bawd was still dressed as a devotee, and keeps up the cant of her caste. No sensible man in the East ever allows a religious old woman ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... challenged the nobler things in men and brought out the hidden largeness. They were humorous eyes that saw things in their true proportions and in their real relationships. They looked through cant and pretense and the great and little vanities of great and little men. They were the eyes of an unflinching courage and an unfaltering faith rising out of a sincere dependence upon the Master of the Universe. To believe in ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... contain one word of cant; he just wished me good luck, and told me to write to him whenever I felt that he could be of use to me. A less sensible man might have preached to me and talked about the "threshold of a career"; but, thank goodness, he knew what I ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... our people,' could only be a black-hearted scoundrel. I can see Monsieur exactly the same as ever in the King. The bad brother who voted so wrongly in his department of the Constituent Assembly was sure to compound with the Liberals and allow them to argue and talk. This philosophical cant will be just as dangerous now for the younger brother as it used to be for the elder; this fat man with the little mind is amusing himself by creating difficulties, and how his successor is to get out of them I do not know; he holds his younger brother ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... your wishes about letting you know what I think of the country, though, on reading it over, I don't really know whether I have talked a lot of rubbish or not. I have given you a lot of semi-political cant, when what you want to know is simply, how easy is it to make coin out here. Well, I think the answer to that is pretty easy. If a man is not ambitious, and would be content to be a common or garden farmer for the greater part of his life, and have, say a $1000 a year to settle down on when ...
— Canada for Gentlemen • James Seton Cockburn
... society is always and everywhere provincial. One thing about it then was different from what it is now: I mean the attitude of the stay-at-homes toward the been-abroads. They revered them and deferred to them, and they called them Hajii, or travellers, in a cant which must have been very common, since George William Curtis used the same Oriental term for his Howadji in Syria and his Nile Notes of ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... to assure you he does not jest without a purpose, or play the buffoon only to coin sixpences. The fact, then, we propose to illustrate is this:—that Punch is a teacher and philanthropist, a lover of truth, a despiser of cant, an advocate of right, a hater of shams,—a hale, hearty old gentleman, whose notions are not dyspeptic croakings, but healthful opinions of good digestion, and who, though he wear motley and indulge in drolleries without measure, is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... enough, but savors of cant in the mouths of men who fought long and hard to maintain ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... equal claim of all to the use of God's Earth, to share in those blessings which the great Father of all men has lavished upon His children, and which form the only means by which life can be maintained, is but hypocrisy and cant. The "rights of property," the financial interests of the privileged classes, the Elder Brothers, the so-called "power of the capitalists," may be based on and involved in the recognition of the claim of the few to control ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... A cant word, but of Gypsy origin, signifying a sister in debauchery, as Pal denotes a brother in villainy. It is the Plani and Beluni of the Spanish Gypsies, by whom sometimes Beluni is made to signify queen; e.g. Beluni de o tarpe (tem opre), ...
— Romano Lavo-Lil - Title: Romany Dictionary - Title: Gypsy Dictionary • George Borrow
... certainly not have neglected the lowland of Sharon, which was in all respects suited for their habits. Deer, which still inhabit Galilee (Tristram, Land of the Israel, pp. 418, 447), are likely, before the forests of Lebanon were so greatly curtailed, to have occupied most portions of it (See Cant. ii. 9, 17; viii. 14). To these two Canon Tristram would add the crocodile (Land of Israel, p. 103), which he thinks must have been found in the Zerka for that river to have been called "the Crocodile River" by the Greeks, and ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... three faces can be rendered happy and contented, by a trifling improvement of outward appearance, I cannot help thinking that the object is very cheaply purchased, even at the expense of a smart gown, or a gaudy riband. There is a great deal of very unnecessary cant about the over- dressing of the common people. There is not a manufacturer or tradesman in existence, who would not employ a man who takes a reasonable degree of pride in the appearance of himself and those about him, in preference to a sullen, slovenly fellow, who works doggedly on, ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... has a quality which all men feel; and which may be called a sudden antiquity. Its classicalism was not altogether a cant. When it had happened it seemed to have happened thousands of years ago. It spoke in parables; in the hammering of spears and the awful cap of Phrygia. To some it seemed to pass like a vision; and yet it ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... preached in St. Peter's as a candidate (August 14th) is thus recorded: "Forenoon—Mind not altogether in a preaching frame; on the Sower. Afternoon—With more encouragement and help of the Spirit; on the voice of the Beloved, in Cant. 2:8-17.[6] In the Evening—With all my heart; on Ruth. Lord, keep me humble." Returning from St. Peter's the second time, he observed in his class of girls at Dunipace more than usual anxiety. One of them seemed ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... cants which are canted in this canting world, though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst, the cant of criticism ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... probability, for any little science you possess, having in fact never obtained any personal demonstration or experience of its first principles and measurements, nor being capable of doing so? Then let us hear no more cant about the uncertainty of a religion dependent upon testimony, and the certainties of experimental science. Whatever certainty may be attainable by scientific men—and we have seen that is not much—it is very certain you have got none of it. The very best you ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... Sketches, 1875. He is a shrewd observer, and his humor has a more satirical side than Artemus Ward's, sometimes passing into downright denunciation. He delights particularly in ridiculing sentimental humbug and moralizing cant. He runs atilt, as has been said, at "copy-book texts," at the temperance reformer, the tract distributer, the Good Boy of Sunday-school literature, and the women who send bouquets and sympathetic letters to interesting ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... minority, or Protesters, were led by such ministers as Mr. James Guthrie of Stirling, their first oracle, Mr. Patrick Giliespie of Glasgow University, Mr. John Livingston of Ancram, Mr, Samuel Rutherford of St. Andrews, and Mr. Andrew Cant of Aberdeen; with whom, as their best lay head, was Johnstone of Warriston. Peace-makers, such as Mr. Robert Blair of St. Andrews and Mr. James Durham of Glasgow, negociated between the two sides; and Mr. Robert Leighton, in his ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... Taffy. Dear friend I done my best I come like Nicodemus by night. Seeming to me when Christians fall out tis over what they pray for. When they praise God forget diffnses and I cant think where the quaraling comes in and so ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... to his common-places. To the third it may likewise be objected that it is drawn from mythology, though such as may be more easily assimilated to real life. Idalia's "velvet green" has something of cant. An epithet or metaphor drawn from Nature ennobles Art; an epithet or metaphor drawn from Art degrades Nature. Gray is too fond of words arbitrarily compounded. "Many-twinkling" was formerly censured as ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... days you will be my wife, and when I promise to love and cherish you until death shall part us, it will be no empty vow that will pass my lips, but a solemn pledge which my whole life shall redeem. But do not expect from me the language of romance, the cant of sentiment; I look upon you as the dearest and most precious treasure that was ever consigned to a man's keeping, but not as an idol before which I must bow. I must strengthen you with my strength, rather than yield to your weakness; in my very harshness, Ellen, there is a tenderness which ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... which pervade them are worthy of the theme, and the style is excellent. There is nothing of either cant or pedantry in the treatment. There is simplicity, directness, and freshness of manner which strongly win and hold ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... play, and she had a vague but passionate belief in what she and Russia might do together. Yet here were these declaimers threatening to overrun Europe, and "Equality setting peoples at the throats of kings!" The cant about fraternity, the catch-words and sentiments, vanish like smoke. No anathemas on the Revolution were fiercer than those of the "Ame Republicaine," who had burned to restore the ancient institutions of Athens. The hostess of Diderot ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... with his hand. "I cannot forget my father's account of the times when Red-nosed Noll ruled the roost, and that arch-traitor Hutchinson held the castle, and insulted all the Cavaliers in the town and neighbourhood by his preaching, and his cant, and his strict rules and regulations; and now, forsooth, every man and woman in the place thinks fit to stand up for the usurper William, and not an expression of sympathy do I hear for the cruel fate of our ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... This cant about posterity I hate; About posterity were I to prate, Who then the living would amuse? For they Will have diversion, ay, and 'tis their due. A sprightly fellow's presence at your play, Methinks should also count for something too; Whose genial wit the audience still inspires, ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... becoming civilized. Duke could certainly claim a share in their education; he had given them lessons and an example in good manners. In his quality of Englishman, and so punctilious in the matter of cant, he was a long time in making the acquaintance of the other dogs, who had not been introduced to him, and in fact he never used to speak to them; but after sharing the same dangers and privations, they gradually grew used to one another. Duke, who ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... feel. Less excusable were the attacks he made upon those whose religious views differed from his own. The insults he sometimes offered to possible readers were as needless as they were brutal. In one of his later novels he mentioned "the rowdy religion—half-cant, half-blasphemy, that Cromwell and his associates entailed on so many Englishmen." There is little reason to doubt that under proper conditions Cooper could easily have developed into a sincere, narrow-minded, ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... "The cant of the impressionist school," he said sadly; "on the contrary, the business of the artist is to paint what he knows to be there," and he gazed complacently at his own canvas, which had the appearance of a spirited drawing of a fortified place, or of the contents ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... "Thirty year I've been ridin' John Cardigan's log-carriages; thirty year I've been gettin' everythin' out of a log it's possible to git out, which is more'n you fellers at the trimmers can git out of a board after I've sawed it off the cant. There's a lot o' you young fellers that've been takin' John Cardigan's money under false pretenses, so if I was you I'd keep both eyes on my job hereafter. For a year I've been claimin' that good No. 2 stock has been chucked ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... cant name for a captive negro, or Polynesian, on board a slave or pirate ship." ('O.E.D.') But no instance is given of ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... Emerson, sitting with her needlework beside the window, looked out and saw Mrs. Rhoda Meserve coming down the street, and knew at once by the trend of her steps and the cant of her head that she meditated turning in at her gate. She also knew by a certain something about her general carriage—a thrusting forward of the neck, a bustling hitch of the shoulders—that she had important news. Rhoda Meserve always had the news as soon as the news was in being, and generally ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... intelligent community is quite capable of doing all these things infinitely better for itself, and the beneficent influence of commerce may easily become, and does easily become, the basis of a cant. Exploitation by private persons is no doubt a necessary condition to economic development in an illiterate community of low intelligence, just as flint implements marked a necessary phase in the social development of mankind; but to-day the avaricious getter, like some ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... distract my attention. I don't think Westminster Abbey helps me personally to attend to the service. On the contrary, I think it makes me think of the building. I used somehow to imagine that service in the open air was necessarily associated with cant. Now I like it far the best. Not merely because it is more sanitary—till some one learns how to ventilate a building decently—but because it absolutely forces you to feel insignificant, and anxious that the great Creator ...
— What the Church Means to Me - A Frank Confession and a Friendly Estimate by an Insider • Wilfred T. Grenfell
... CANT. Cant is a kind of affectation; affectation is an effort to sail under false colors; an effort to sail under false colors is a kind of falsehood; and falsehood is a term of Latin origin which we often use instead of the ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... talk of unchastity, who, while she was plighting her troth to this same Eugene, were not ashamed to prostitute her to Strozzi! Cease your disgusting cant, and learn that I acknowledge and respect the tie that binds your daughter to her real spouse: and woe to you, if you dare trouble the current of her peaceful life! Farewell. Say to his majesty that I shall be forever grateful ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... not suspect me of wanting to preach any cant to you, or of joining in the pretence that everything is in a fine way and need not be made better. What I am striving to keep in our minds is the care, the precaution, with which we should go about making things better, so that the public order may not be destroyed, so that no fatal shock may ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... and all metaphor is poetry. If we paused for a moment to examine the cheapest cant phrases that pass our lips every day, we should find that they were as rich and suggestive as so many sonnets. To take a single instance: we speak of a man in English social relations 'breaking the ice.' If this were expanded into a sonnet, we should have before ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... home, dont be fritened about me because I know the way. Ive got to go. something is calling me. dont be cross. I love you, but I cant stay. Im leaving my foolscap book for you, you can keep it always but I must go back ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... last. I cant tell you much about it yet on account of its avin been so foggy since we got here. We didnt deboat in Paris as I was expectin. We sailed up a river to a town with a wall around it and got off there. I dont know what the wall was ...
— "Same old Bill, eh Mable!" • Edward Streeter
... merely personal influence restrain him. He cared only for the praise or blame of the understanding few. Whatever the popular judgment, he knew there was a work to be done and that he had power to do it; and this was his personal ambition—to do that work in the world, and to do it without cant and humbug and self-seeking. Such were the aims that, newly returned to England, he confides to the sister who had ever prophesied great things of "her boy"; and in the end he made good the works spoken so boldly, yet surely in no mere spirit of boasting. He ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... question of the fact. The instinctive cry of the female in anger is noli me tangere. I take this as the most obvious and at the same time the least hackneyed instance of a fundamental quality in the female tradition, which has tended in our time to be almost immeasurably misunderstood, both by the cant of moralists and the cant of immoralists. The proper name for the thing is modesty; but as we live in an age of prejudice and must not call things by their right names, we will yield to a more modern nomenclature ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... course, while resentment was almost a stranger to his nature. We all shed tears, the girls sobbing aloud; and we were both solemnly blessed. Nor am I ashamed to say I knelt to receive that blessing, in an age when the cant of a pretending irreligion—there is as much cant in self-sufficiency as in hypocrisy, and they very often go together—is disposed to turn into ridicule the humbling of the person, while asking for the blessing ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... manhood ever owes to the weak and helpless. Search London over and you will not find elemental goodness in a shape more worthy than it was to be found in the caves—nor can we forego a moment's reflection upon the cant which ever preaches the vice of the poor and so rarely stops to ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... are marked by a fiery yet careful style, Oriental richness of imagery, and originality and independence of thought. He wrote as social reformer, and attacked with unrivaled power of sarcasm all manner of cant, sham, and red-tape. His works betray the disappointment of a defeated idealist. He was a man of marked individuality, and strongly attracted or repelled others. For the last few years of his life he ceased to write, and lived in retirement in Nieder-Ingelheim ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... world our eyes would blind With false pretenses of such a kind, With humbug, cant, or bigotry, Or a specious, sham philosophy, 20 With wrong dressed up in the guise of right, And darkness passing itself for light, Let us imitate John and exclaim with a frown, "The coin ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... things are Christ's; all dominions, dignities, potences; it is especially meet that we say, to-day, all institutions. It is the grossest wrong practically to hold otherwise. It is loss, too, and nowhere more palpably than in the educational sphere. It is no cant saying to affirm, and that in a more than merely spiritual sense, that in Christ are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.' At his throne the lines of all science terminate; above all, the science that ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... Townsend, owner of the cross mine, I write you because I am afraid I aint got your pardners name right and because Ive got something on my mind that I cant keep any more. Im the girl that got burned at the High Light. Your pardner saved my life and you were awful kind to me. Everybody's been very kind to me too. I spose you know 111 not be able to work in dance halls no more because Im quite ugly now with them scars all over my face. ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... bottom of a hillside meadow I was hunting for the entrance of a path into a patch of woods. Auber, instead of helping me, kept gazing back at the fading light while he made random observations on the nature of the sky-line,—one of his cant hobbies. "See how crudely the character of everything is defined up there against the sky," I heard him say, while I continued to search for the path. "Now even a sheep or a cow, or an inanimate thing, like that stone wall, for instance,—see how its character as a wall comes out as it sweeps ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... proper history of what has been previously thought on the subject: an IMPOSSIBLE literature, taking it all in all, unless one knows how to leaven it with some mischief. In effect, the old English vice called CANT, which is MORAL TARTUFFISM, has insinuated itself also into these moralists (whom one must certainly read with an eye to their motives if one MUST read them), concealed this time under the new form of the scientific spirit; moreover, there is not absent from them a secret ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... as a woman. He was a strict disciplinarian, a keen questioner, and an unflinching demander of a Christian walk. Not one jot or tittle would he allow his people to yield to the loose ways of the world. In his sermons he dealt hard blows at cant; and in his private conversation he generally managed to put his finger upon the sore spot. One day a collier came to see him, and complained, in a rather whining tone, that the path of his life ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... lily in Heb., derived by some from its six (shash) leaves, and by others from its vivid cheerful brightness. "His lips are lilies" (Cant. v. 13), not in colour, but ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... scene is strictly historical. The army knew in what manner the emperor had rewarded Marshal Lefebvre, and it became a cant-phrase for soldiers who wished to borrow money of their comrades: ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... thoughts to which I should like to give expression might perhaps too readily fall into abstract or philosophical terms. They might, on the other hand, only too readily clothe themselves in cant phrases and assume the hortatory tone. I shall try to avoid dialectic or theory on the one hand, and preaching on the other. I take it that what I am to say is addressed chiefly to young men, and that it ought to ...
— The business career in its public relations • Albert Shaw
... leisure and cultivation, fond of light and fanciful pursuits, and among others of forming verbal conceits. Hence, we find that the disciples were first called Christians at Antioch, no doubt, derisively,[30] and in Julian's time they had a cant saying that they had suffered nothing from the X or the K (Christ or Constantius). A celebrated school of rhetoric was established here, and no doubt some of the effusions penned at this time, abounded ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... dreaming—dreaming—I begin To doubt if I be dreaming I am Fife, Who with a lad who call'd herself a boy Because—I doubt there's some confusion here— He wore no petticoat, came on a time Riding from Muscovy on half a horse, Who must have dreamt she was a horse entire, To cant me off upon my hinder face Under this tower, wall-eyed and musket-tongued, With sentinels a-pacing up and down, Crying All's well when all is far from well, All the day long, and all the night, until I dream—if what is dreaming be not waking— Of bells a-tolling ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... N. obliquity, inclination, slope, slant, crookedness &c. adj.; slopeness[obs3]; leaning &c. v.; bevel, tilt; bias, list, twist, swag, cant, lurch; distortion &c. 243; bend &c. (curve) 245; tower of Pisa. acclivity, rise, ascent, gradient, khudd[obs3], rising ground, hill, bank, declivity, downhill, dip, fall, devexity|; gentle slope, rapid slope, easy ascent, easy descent; shelving ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... had been hoping for. Without such a remark, he would not have dared do as he did. He threw the tent cover over the canoe amidships, causing the unstable craft to cant: "That won't do," he remarked, and took out several articles, including the medicine chest, put them ashore under the bushes, and, when he replaced them, contrived that the ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... of his sisters, and matched them admirably. He was a kind-hearted, outspoken, generous young man, up to anything, from a midnight spree to a special religious service; hating everything like cant as decidedly "low," and going in for sincerity, truth, and free- thought. Moreover, he spent his money, or, more strictly speaking, his father's money as well as his own, on horses, dogs, and guns, and left sundry little bills to stand over till the poor creditors ...
— Working in the Shade - Lowly Sowing brings Glorious Reaping • Theodore P Wilson
... words to express the fulsomeness of our Crimes, calling us Dogs, and Swine, and Goats, and a deal of such Billingsgate-Stuff, till he had so provok'd my Passion, That I told him boldly, That I didn't 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 ...
— The London-Bawd: With Her Character and Life - Discovering the Various and Subtle Intrigues of Lewd Women • Anonymous
... many of the poets about whom he writes so eloquently would be not a little surprised at the qualities he finds in their work. Byron, for instance, who spoke with such contempt of what he called 'twaddling about trees and babbling o' green fields'; Byron who cried, 'Away with this cant about nature! A good poet can imbue a pack of cards with more poetry than inhabits the forests of America,' is claimed by Mr. Noel as a true nature-worshipper and Pantheist along with Wordsworth and Shelley; and we wonder what Keats would have thought of a critic who gravely suggests ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... were there have expressed the opinion that, from the manner in which the shooting was done, it must have been by a man with one arm. However, Eliab will make a good Radical show, and we shall have another dose of Puritanical, hypocritical cant about Southern barbarity. Well, we can bear it. We have got the power in Horsford, and we mean to hold it. Niggers and nigger-worshippers must take care of themselves. This is a white man's country, and white men are going to rule it, ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... to it this hour, your Majesty, And cant the words in keeping with your wish. To himself as he goes.] Decently done!... He slipped out "sacrifice," And scarce could hide his heartache for his girl. Well ached it!—But when these things have to be It is as ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... the northern slope and plain. The dimensions of the work are fifty-five metres each way. The curtains, except the western, where stood the Bab el-Bahr ("Sea gate"), were supported by one central as well as by angular bastions; the northern face had a cant of 32 degrees east (mag.); and the northwestern tower was distant from the sea seventy-two me'tres, whereas the south-western numbered only sixty. The spade showed a substratum of thick old wall, untrimmed granite, and other hard materials. ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... reasoning," says an American Unitarian divine, "partial observation, intellectual grouping, moral obliquity, spiritual ignorance,—in short, of puerility and superstition involved in a large part of the appeals, the preaching, the cant terms, the popular dogmas, the current conversation of Christendom,—are discouraging evidences how backward is the religious thought of our day, as compared with its general thought; how little harmony there is between our schools and our churches, ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... they could do so without danger to themselves. Then, O Heavens, the palaver! What beatings of tom-toms! What mouthings of pharisaical moralities—platitudes! Run now, good people, for you may see clearly how evil is dealt with in high places! It made him smile. Such hypocrisy! Such cant! Still, so the world was organized, and it was not for him to set it right. Let it wag as it would. The thing for him to do was to get rich and hold his own—to build up a seeming of virtue and dignity which would pass muster ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... benefit to mankind, and they have done this by the power of faith, and by loyalty to their consciences, perverted as they were in some respects. The Puritans were not agreeable companions to the idle, luxurious, or frivolous; they were rigid ever, to austerity; their expressions degenerated into cant, and they were hostile to many innocent amusements. But these were peculiarities which furnished subjects of ridicule merely, and did not disgrace or degrade them. These were a small offset to their moral wisdom, their firm endurance, their elevation of sentiment, ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... Georgian and abandoned. Its three aisles were without ornament or architecture; there was no tower, but beside it stood a peculiar and unexplained erection, shaped like a pagoda, in three tiers of black and battered tar-boarding. It had a slight cant towards the church, and suggested nothing so much as a disreputable Victorian widow, in tippet, mantle and crinoline, seeking the support of a stone wall after ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... to the feelings and passions of men, the Honorable Member had great advantages in dwelling on this topic; because it was a subject which those who disliked everything that had the air of cant and profession on the one hand, or of indifference on the other, found it awkward to meddle with. Establishments, tests, and matters of that nature, were proper objects of political discussion in that House, but not general charges of Atheism and Deism, as pressed upon ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... sufficiently genial fashion, nevertheless with a certain reserve. He was not quite certain if Baltic's conversion was genuine, and if he found proof of hypocrisy, was prepared to fall foul of him forthwith. Sir Harry was not particularly religious, but he was honest, and hated cant with all his soul. ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... contrary he sounded, for the first time in my dealings with literary aspirants of every kind, that sure, sane, penetrating, non-sentimental note so common to the best writers of the Continent, a note entirely free from mush, bravado and cant. He had a style as clear as water, as simple as rain; color, romance, humor; and if a little too much of vanity and self-importance, still one could forgive him for they were rather well-based. Already used to dealing ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... thousand things in life that they do not enjoy or understand or tolerate, things that fill them, therefore, with envy and perplexity—such things as pleasure, beauty, delicacy, leisure. In the cant of modern talk you will find them call everything that is not crude and forcible in life "degenerate." But back to the very earliest writings, in the most bloodthirsty outpourings of the Hebrew prophets, for example, you will find that ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... of Mark Twain's natural leaning toward ministers of the gospel, and the explanation of it is easier to realize than to convey. He was hopelessly unorthodox—rankly rebellious as to creeds. Anything resembling cant or the curtailment of mental liberty roused only his resentment and irony. Yet something in his heart always warmed toward any laborer in the vineyard, and if we could put the explanation into a single sentence, perhaps we might say it was because he could meet them ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... attention. I know not a more solemn or important duty that a member of Parliament can have to discharge, than by giving, at fit seasons, a free opinion upon the character and qualities of public men. Away with the cant of "measures, not men!" the idle supposition that it is the harness, and not the horses, that draws the chariot along! No, sir, if the comparison must be made, if the distinction must be taken, men are everything, measures computatively nothing. ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... fifteen wide. The most difficult task was yet to be performed—the loading of the grand piano. We found it necessary to remove the raft to a place where the bank was more shelving, so that the shore side of the structure would rest on the ground, because the weight of the piano on one side would cant it over so that ...
— Field and Forest - The Fortunes of a Farmer • Oliver Optic
... my sport Vain were thy cant and beggar whine, Though human spirits of thy sort Were tenants of these ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... coffee-house talk, but the moralist, who looks indeed at actual life, but stands well apart and knows many hours of melancholy and hypochondria. He preaches the morality of his time—the morality of Richardson and Young—only tempered by a hearty contempt for cant, sentimentalism, and all unreality, and expressing his deeper and stronger nature. The style, however acquired, has the idiosyncrasy of the man himself; but I shall have to speak of the Johnsonian view in the next period, when he became the acknowledged ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... Voice!" he whispered. "Thou shalt not kill! Thou shalt not kill! You lie!" he cried in a sudden outburst of terrible fierceness. "He was not a fool. He loved men more than the mockery and cant of courts. He loved—he trusted me—and I betrayed him. Who knew when he fled wildly away from the pomp and inequalities he hated? I! Who watched for his secret letters? I! Who came to America when ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... to try and interfere with her purely personal business, no doubt, but he seemed to do so in a genuinely kindly rather than in a fussy interfering spirit. At any rate he didn't begin by talking to her that horrid cant about the attempt to commit suicide being so extremely wicked! If he had done that, Selah would have felt it was not only an unwarrantable intrusion upon her liberty of action, but a grotesque insult to her natural ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... fling dust or snuff in the eyes of the person intended to be robbed; also to invent some plausible tale, to delude shop-keepers and others, thereby to put them off their guard. CANT. ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... ever open their eyes about all this. The orators go in for virtue, freedom, etc., the cheap cant which will charm the constituencies. They are generous with what costs them nothing—Irish land, religious liberty, emancipation of niggers—sacrificing the dependencies to tickle the vanity of an English ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... our oars wings.l So Chiabrera, Cant. Eroiche. xiii Faro de'remi un volo. And Tasso ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... part of his baptismal name, the distinguished New Englander thus announces his proud position: "Ime the first Lord in the younited States of A mercary Now of Newburyport. it is the voice of the peopel and I cant Help it." This extract is from his famous little book called "A Pickle for the Knowing Ones." As an inventor of a new American style he goes far beyond Mr. Whitman, who, to be sure, cares little for the dictionary, and makes his own rules of rhythm, so far as there is any rhythm in his sentences. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Aeneid he follows what he conceives to have been Virgil's practice. "I will not give the reasons," he declares, "why I writ not always in the proper terms of navigation, land-service, or in the cant of any profession. I will only say that Virgil has avoided those properties, because he writ not to mariners, soldiers, astronomers, gardeners, peasants, etc., but to all in general, and in particular to men and ladies of the first quality, who have been better bred than to ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... SMALL LETTER NU},) which signifies "Lion of the forest," may have been conferred by the popular voice on more than one favorite general, distinguished for irresistible valour? Is it not also possible that "BUONA PARTE" may have been originally a sort of cant term applied to the "good (i.e., the bravest or most patriotic) part" of the French army, collectively; and have been afterwards mistaken for the proper name of an individual?[23] I do not profess to support ...
— Historic Doubts Relative To Napoleon Buonaparte • Richard Whately
... yet, forsooth, a gallant man who sits him down before the baize and challenges all comers, his money against theirs, his fortune against theirs, is proscribed by your modern moral world. It is a conspiracy of the middle classes against gentlemen: it is only the shopkeeper cant which is to go down nowadays. I say that play was an institution of chivalry: it has been wrecked, along with other privileges of men of birth. When Seingalt engaged a man for six-and-thirty hours without leaving the table, do you think he showed no ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... scenery and costumes, he ought to possess some theories, or at least ideas, concerning pictorial art, the history of modern painting and the like, and be capable of guessing what a daring experimentalist like Mr Gordon Craig is aiming at and what relation his scene-pictures bear to the current cant of the art critic. It is deplorable when one finds serious critics gushing about the beauty of costly stage effects belonging to the standard of taste exhibited by wedding-cakes, Christmas crackers, old-fashioned valentines and Royal Academicians. Dancing must mean something more ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... of character; his greatness and disinterestedness. "His very failings were those of a sincere, a generous, and a noble mind," says a biographer who knew him well. His contempt for base actions; his love of equity; his passion for truth, which was carried almost to a hatred of cant and hypocrisy, were the immediate causes of his want of fairness in his opinion of himself and of his self-accusation of things most contrary ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... Gillespie, John Duncan, John Hume, Robert Knox, William Jameson, Robert Murray, Henry Guthrie, James Hamilton, in Dumfreis, Bernard Sanderson, John Levingstoun, James Bonar, Evan Camron, David Dickson, Robort Bailzie, James Cuninghame, George Youngh, Andrew Affleck, David Lindsay, Andrew Cant, William Douglas, Murdo Mackenzie, Coline Mackenzie, John Monroe, Walter Stuart Ministers; Archbald Marquesse of Argyle, William Earle Marshall, John Earle of Sutherland, Alexander Earle ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... question; an inverted mode of reasoning equally uncharitable and illogical. My son had an undisguised dislike to any ostentatious display of religious sentiment and phraseology, particularly on the part of those who were not teachers by calling. He sometimes suspected more cant than sincerity in the practice, and thought these matters better suited for inward communication between man and his Maker than for public exhibition on common occasions. With my wife's permission I insert the following letter, now for the first ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... man you be in heart, not adamant, forbear that wicked cant until you have discovered What the surplus is, and Where it is. Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die? It may be that, in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man's child. Oh ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens
... perhaps the finest retort he ever heard in the House of Commons was that of Lord John in reply to Sir Francis Burdett. The latter had abandoned his Radicalism in old age, and was foolish enough to sneer at the 'cant of patriotism.' 'I quite agree, said Lord John, 'with the honourable baronet that the cant of patriotism is a bad thing. But I can tell him a worse—the recant of patriotism—which I will gladly go along with him in reprobating whenever he shows ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... Some persons cant about the wickedness of the times: believe them not; this is the most saintly of ages, the most pure of generations, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 360 - Vol. XIII. No. 360, Saturday, March 14, 1829 • Various
... House, the culminating story That marks the zenith of his swift career, All the great qualities that won him glory, As writer and reformer too, appear: Righteous resentment of abuses hoary, Of pomp and cant, self-centred, insincere; And burning sympathy that glows unchecked For those who sit in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 5, 1917 • Various
... system shall be put in operation which does not recognize and affirm the tenets of their respective creeds, they render the adoption of any such system impossible. They see this; they know it; they mean it. And nothing moves me to indignation quicker than their stereotyped cant of "Godless education," "teaching infidelity," "knowledge worthless or dangerous without Religion," &c. &c. Why, Sirs, it is very true that the People need Religious as well as purely Intellectual culture, ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... mercantile part of the people, the diction is in a great measure casual and mutable; many of their terms are formed for some temporary or local convenience, and though current at certain times and places, are in others utterly unknown. This fugitive cant, which is always in a state of increase or decay, cannot be regarded as any part of the durable materials of a language, and therefore must be suffered to perish with other things ...
— Preface to a Dictionary of the English Language • Samuel Johnson
... manufactures, the most important of which (other than those dependent upon lumber) are boots and shoes (including moccasins); among others are trunks, valises, saws, stoves, ranges and furnaces, edge tools and cant dogs, saw-mill machinery, brick, clothing, cigars, flour and dairy products. In 1905 the city's factory products were valued at $3,408,355. The municipality owns and operates the water-works (the water-supply being drawn from the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... ready-made tie, dragged his shrinking cuffs into the open, set his hat at a killing cant and sidled toward the young woman. He made eyes at her, was taken with sudden coughs and "hems," smiled, smirked and went brazenly through the impudent and contemptible litany of the "masher." With half an ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... we reach "the Father" through "the Son," and that He is able to keep us from falling and to present us faultless before the presence of the Divine glory with exceeding joy (Jude 24). The Gospel of "the Word made flesh" is not the meaningless cant of some petty sect nor yet the cunning device of priestcraft, though it has been distorted in both these directions; but it can give a reason for itself, and is founded upon the deepest laws of the threefold constitution of man, embracing the whole man, body, soul and spirit. It is not ...
— The Creative Process in the Individual • Thomas Troward
... words has by this time become very much reduced, although here and there we find some cant expressions of the day which shock our sensibilities. Much refinement in this respect could not be expected at a period where a young lady of fortune could be represented as calling her maid, and afterwards herself, a "damned jade," and a lady from the country as saying she had not yet had "her ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... of history and biography," Freddie went on, "and I've thought about what I read and about what's going on around me. I tell you the world's full of cant. The people who get there don't act on what is always preached. The preaching isn't all lies—at least, I think not. But it doesn't fit the facts a man or a woman ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... eye; A certain lifting of the nose's tip; A certain curling of the nether lip, In scorn of all that is, beneath the sky; In brief it is an aspect deleterious, A face decidedly not serious, A face profane, that would not do at all To make a face at Exeter Hall,— That Hall where bigots rant, and cant, and pray, And laud each other face to face, Till ev'ry farthing-candle ray Conceives itself a great gas-light ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... expression of sarcasm. His motions were always so graceful, that he might almost have been suspected of having studied them; for he might, on any occasion, have, served as a model for an artist, so remarkably striking were his ordinary attitudes. Andrew Gemmells had little of the cant of his calling; his wants were food and shelter, or a trifle of money, which he always claimed, and seemed to receive as his due. He, sung a good song, told a good story, and could crack a severe jest with ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... religion, peace and justice." The exhortation of these monarchs to their people to fortify themselves in the principles of the Saviour, no less than the confession that they themselves ruled only by a delegation of power from Christ, was regarded by the Protestant Americans as religious cant. The power behind the throne was more likely force of arms. The provision that other nations professing these principles should be "received with as much readiness as affection in this holy alliance" was regarded as a bid and possible conspiracy for the extension of legitimacy not alone to Europe, ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... not," said Mr. Brougham, "identify the people of France with their government; for I believe that every wish of the French nation is in unison with those sentiments which animate the Spaniards. Neither does the army concur in this aggression; for the army alike detests the work of tyranny, plunder, cant, and hypocrisy. The war is not commenced because the people or the army require it, but because three or four French emigrants have obtained possession of power. It is for such miserable objects as these that the Spaniards are to be punished, because they have dared to ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 496 - Vol. 17, No. 496, June 27, 1831 • Various
... of feeling, says the pseudo-connoisseur, where we should only, or at least first, bring knowledge? This is the common cant of those who become critics for the sake of distinction. Let the Artist avoid them, if he would not disfranchise himself in the suppression of that uncompromising test within him, which is the only sure ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... else. Perhaps I may go out with something that I had not got before. I need not tell you that to me reformations in morals are as meaningless and vulgar as Reformations in theology. But while to propose to be a better man is a piece of unscientific cant, to have become a deeper man is the privilege of those who have suffered. And such ...
— De Profundis • Oscar Wilde
... another class of critics whose cant is simply can't, and who, being unable or unwilling to surrender themselves to these simple sources of enjoyment, are grandiloquent upon the dignity of manhood, and the absurdity of full-grown men in playing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... Powers—England and Russia—may think that they thus escape all responsibility for what goes on in Persia, but the world has long since grown familiar with such methods. Mere cant, however seriously put forth in official statements, no longer blinds educated public opinion as to the facts in these acts of international brigandage. The truth is that England and Russia are still playing a hand in the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... Hiram, you had quit talking cant,' said Dr. Frank, in a tone of disgust. 'Take my advice, and stop it, that is, if ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... much as a painter treats them, drawing them in squarely, seizing the more important features, and neglecting all that does not assert itself as too essential to be passed over—hence the slang and cant words of every profession, and indeed all language; for language at best is but a kind of "patter," the only way, it is true, in many cases, of expressing our ideas to one another, but still a very bad way, ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... seraphim in the dictionary I was ashamed I had made it serrafim but seraphim is not a word you can guess at like another long one outlandish in this letter which spells itself. Miss Dearborn says use the words you CAN spell and if you cant spell seraphim make angel do but angels are not just the same as seraphims. Seraphims are brighter whiter and have bigger wings and I think are older and longer dead than angels which are just freshly dead and after a long time in heaven ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Good speed to the Speaker, to the Speech. Your Country is luckier than most at this time; it has still real Preaching; the tongue of man is not, whensoever it begins wagging, entirely sure to emit babblement, twaddlement, sincere—cant, and other noises which awaken the passionate wish for silence! That must alter everywhere the human tongue is no wooden watchman's-rattle or other obsolete implement; it continues forever new ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... herself be placed in the lowest dungeon." For them of Guise the princess was a thorn in the flesh, for she lacked not wits, or language, or courage, insomuch that they had some discussion about making away with her. [Memoires de Castelnau, p. 119; Histoire de l'Etat de France, Cant de la Republique que de la Religion, sous Francois II., by L. Regnier, Sieur de la Planche.] She demanded that at any rate able lawyers might act as counsel for her husband. Peter Robert and Francis ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... expense not greater than the rent which he now pays annually. If I seem to boast more than is becoming, my excuse is that I brag for humanity rather than for myself; and my shortcomings and inconsistencies do not affect the truth of my statement. Notwithstanding much cant and hypocrisy—chaff which I find it difficult to separate from my wheat, but for which I am as sorry as any man—I will breathe freely and stretch myself in this respect, it is such a relief to both the moral and physical system; and I am resolved that I will not through humility ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... full enormity of the cant about Penny Dreadfuls can best be perceived by travelling to and fro for a week between London and Paris and observing the books read by those who travel with first-class tickets. I think a fond belief in Ivanhoe-within-the-reach-of-all ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... man, used to winning your way by direct means—axe to the tree, cant-dog to the rolling log, but that isn't the way in politics. I know this preachment from me sounds strange. It may offend you, but you mustn't allow yourself to be offended. You have simply quarrelled ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... the movement, but underneath the absurdities there was something serious. These young men and women, who were themselves terribly in earnest, were systematically hostile not only to accepted conventionalities in the matter of dress, but to all manner of shams, hypocrisy, and cant in the broad Carlylean sense of those terms. To the "beautiful souls" of the older generation, who had habitually, in conversation and literature, shed pathetic tears over the defects of Russian social and political organisation without ever moving a finger to correct them—especially the ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... who would save him from shame. God knows what I bore that night when he swore and bade me make tracks from his claim. I started to tell of the horrors of hell, when sudden his eyes lit like coals; And "Chuck it," says he, "don't persecute me with your cant and your saving of souls." I'll swear I was mild as I'd be with a child, but he called me the son of a slut; And, grabbing his gun with a leap and a run, he threatened my face with the butt. So what could I do (I leave it to you)? With curses he harried me forth; Then he was alone, ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... Doctor North was fonder of Charles Baxter than of anyone else, save his sister. He hated sham and cant: if a man had a single reality in him the old Doctor found it; and Charles Baxter in many ways exceeds any man I ever knew in the downright quality of genuineness. The Doctor was never tired of telling—and with humour—how he once went to Baxter to ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... watched him first to see if he could ride; he rode well. When he came he could not fence; in six months he was a good hand with the foils; physical fatigue seemed as unknown to him as mental inertia. There was no strain and no cant about him; he smoked hard, drank well after exertion, with pleasure always. He delighted to talk to my mother, chaffing her Styrian ideas with a graceful deference that made her smile. Victoria adored him openly, and Krak did not understand why he ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... for you, because I am blind? No, I have not. Why do you expect me, being in darkness, to be better than men who have their sight—why should you? Is the hand of Heaven more manifest in my having no eyes, than in your having two? It's the cant of you folks to be horrified if a blind man robs, or lies, or steals; oh yes, it's far worse in him, who can barely live on the few halfpence that are thrown to him in streets, than in you, who can see, and work, and are not dependent on the ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens |
