"Dissimulation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... position would be the means of aiding some Catholic power to crush the prestige of England—that is not a possibility too remote for the imagination of Romish wirepullers. Are Englishmen acquainted with the history of Papal Rome? Have they adequate knowledge of the subtlety, the craft, the dissimulation, the foresight of this most wonderful religious system? I think not, or they would be more on their guard against her Jesuitical advances. The idea of your Gladstone going to your Parliament to hand over this country to Rome under the specious pretence of remedying Irish ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... which revolutions and counter-revolutions were events of daily occurrence, was naturally prolific in desperate and crafty political adventurers. This was the very school in which men were likely to acquire the dissimulation of Mazarin, the judicious temerity of Richelieu, the penetration, the exquisite tact, the almost instinctive presentiment of approaching events which gave so much authority to the counsel of Shaftesbury, that "it was as if a man had inquired of the oracle of God." In ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... good news from Tambach, gone straight to Luther at Gotha, accompanied by the preacher Wolfhart from Augsburg. Luther, notwithstanding his suffering, now discussed with them this matter, so important in his eyes. As an honest man, to whom nothing was so distasteful as 'dissimulation,' he earnestly warned them against all 'crooked ways.' The Swiss, in case he died, should be referred to his letter to Meyer; should God allow him to live and become strong, he would send them a written ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... palace, adorned with the ensigns of royalty, and, preceded by his lictors, went to despatch some affairs that related to the public safety, still pretending that he took all his instructions from the king. This scene of dissimulation continued for some days, till he had made his party good among the nobles; when, the death of Tarquin being publicly ascertained, Ser'vius came to the crown, solely at the senate's appointment, and without attempting to gain the suffrages of ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... curiosity I had felt about his reticence on the previous night would have been rather allayed than stimulated had I not noticed that a page had been torn out of the book just at this point. The frayed edge left had been pruned and picked into very small limits; but dissimulation was not Davies's strong point, and a child could have seen that a leaf was missing, and that the entries, starting from the evening of 9th September (where a page ended), had been written together at one sitting. I was ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... their education, nor connected with their interest. And how has any man been originally prejudiced against the present minister? Or what passion or interest can any man gratify, by imagining or declaring his country on the verge of ruin? The multitude, my lords, censure and praise without dissimulation, nor were ever accused of disguising their sentiments; their voice is, at least, the voice of honesty, and has been termed the voice of heaven, by that party of which those affect to be thought whom ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... artillery general. At least, the General relished the pleasure of seeing Garain abandoned, betrayed by his friends Berthier-d'Eyzelles and Martin-Belleme. It made him laugh even to the wrinkles of his small eyes. He laughed in profile. Weary of a long life of dissimulation, he gave to himself suddenly the joy of ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Kenwick's allusions to the Colonel's party afforded Geof no little amusement. His pleasure in Oliver's society had always partaken somewhat of the admiring sentiment a plain man entertains for a clever comedian. Being himself incapable of dissimulation, even in a good cause, he was the more disposed to condone any harmless exercise of a gift which he ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... of exchange for Jamaica and Tortuga, to receive money there. Captain Morgan having notice of this, and perceiving he could not prevail with the French captain to follow him, resolved to lay hold on this occasion, to ruin the French, and seek his revenge. Hereupon he invited, with dissimulation, the French commander, and several of his men, to dine with him on board the great ship that was come to Jamaica, as is said. Being come, he made them all prisoners, pretending the injury aforesaid done ...
— The Pirates of Panama • A. O. (Alexandre Olivier) Exquemelin
... ground he layes in the second Chapter; whereupon hee builds most of this Fabrick, viz. That Subjects must either be dallyed or flatterd withall, or quite crusht. Whereby our Author advises his Prince to support his authority with two Cardinall Vertues, Dissimulation, and Cruelty. He considers not herein that the head is but a member of the body, though the principall; and the end of the parts is the good of the whole. And here he goes against himselfe in the twenty sixt Chapter of his Rep. 1. 1. where hee blames ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... had Vizcarra been deceived by the cibolero's manner, that his confidence and coolness had returned, and any one knowing nothing more of the affair than could be gathered from that conversation would have certainly been deceived by him. This dissimulation both in speech and manner appeared perfect. By the keen eye of Carlos, however—with his knowledge of the true situation—the tremor of the speaker's lips, slight as it was—his uneasy glance—and an occasional hesitancy in his speech, were all observed. ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... impetuous clasp of the young nobleman, "alas, whither can I fly? I do not know my way through the wood, and there are bulls in all directions. I am not used to them! Lord Mordaunt, I implore you, let the tears of one but little skilled in the art of dissimulation——" ...
— Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... of most of my men friends that such half-concealed encouragements, such evasions and drawings back are a necessary part of the love-play—the woman's unconscious testing of the fussy male. There is one friend, a doctor, who tells me that the woman's dissimulation of her own inclination has come to be a secondary sexual characteristic, a manifestation of the operation of sexual selection, diluted, perhaps, and altered by civilisation, but an essential feature in every courtship, ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... Beder, "I must needs own she has been extraordinarily kind to me, and has done all she could to persuade me that she loves me faithfully; but I observed something last night, which gives me just reason to suspect that all her kindness was but dissimulation. Whilst she thought me asleep, although I was really awake, she stole from me with a great deal of precaution, which made me suspect her intention, and therefore I resolved to watch her, still feigning myself asleep." He then related to Abdallah in what manner he had seen her make ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... The affection which is equal to such a test certainly ought to be eternal. It is to be wondered at that women do not oftener employ it to judge of their lovers; a fool, an egoist, or a petty nature could never stand it. Philip the Second himself, the Alexander of dissimulation, would have told his secrets if condemned to a month's tete-a-tete in the country. Perhaps this is why kings seek to live in perpetual motion, and allow no one to see them more than fifteen ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... paralytic and bed-ridden. The other cause may be found in the accidental but reasonable hostility of the Byzantine court to the first Crusaders, as also in the disadvantageous comparison with respect to manly virtues between the simplicity of these western children, and the refined dissimulation of the Byzantines. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... as the rule of his conduct, a celebrated Italian proverb, inculcating the policy of reserve and dissimulation. From a practised diplomatist, this advice was characteristic; but it did not suit the frankness of Milton's manners, nor the nobleness of his mind. He has himself stated to us his own rule of conduct, which was to move ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... So much dissimulation, meanness, and rapacity, which this trait in his character exhibited, they had little reason to expect from the king of Nouffie, after expressing for them so warmly and repeatedly as he had done, protestations of the ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... upon the apparently excessive credulity of Othello has been already pointed out. What further conclusions can be drawn from it? Obviously, to begin with, the inference, which is accompanied by a thrill of admiration, that Iago's powers of dissimulation and of self-control must have been prodigious: for he was not a youth, like Edmund, but had worn this mask for years, and he had apparently never enjoyed, like Richard, occasional explosions of the reality within him. In fact so prodigious does ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... according as our jealousy is or is not awake, or our aversion stimulated, are tokens of truth or of dissimulation and pretence. There is a story of a sane person being by mistake shut up in the wards of a Lunatic Asylum, and that, when he pleaded his cause to some strangers visiting the establishment, the only remark he elicited ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... higher duty which he is bound to follow, the duty of a king to his people? The motive is a fine one, but it is scarcely handled with Browning's accustomed skill and subtlety. King Victor, of whose "fiery and audacious temper, unscrupulous selfishness, profound dissimulation, and singular fertility in resources," Browning speaks in his preface, is an impressive study of "the old age of crafty men," the futile wiliness of decrepit and persevering craft, though we are scarcely made to feel the once potent personality ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... My imagination is tranquil. My mind is slow, just, reflective, and inconsequent. I have vivacity, courage, firmness, elevation, and excessive timidity. I am true without being frank. Timidity often gives me the appearance of dissimulation and duplicity; but I have always had the courage to confess my weakness, in order to destroy the suspicion of a vice which I have not. I have the finesse to attain my end and to remove obstacles; but I have none to penetrate the purposes of others. I was born tender and sensible, constant and ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... have been made, suppose a reversal of the Court's finding and the year's policy to have become immediately needful, wisdom would indicate an extreme frankness of demeanour. And our two officials preferred a policy of irritating dissimulation. While the revolution was being prepared behind the curtain, the President was holding night sessions of the municipal council. What was the business? No other than to prepare an ordinance regulating those very customs which he was secretly conspiring to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... own rank and dignity, to regulate their feelings and expressions by a severe etiquette, which precludes all violent and avowed display of passion, and which, but that the whole world are aware that this assumed complaisance is a matter of ceremony, might justly pass for profound dissimulation. It is no less certain, however, that the overstepping of these bounds of ceremonial, for the purpose of giving more direct vent to their angry passions, has the effect of compromising their dignity with the world in general; as was particularly noted when those distinguished rivals, ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... the darkness. With him also disappeared Miss Amy's singular alacrity. Sitting down carefully again on the edge of the bunk, she leaned against the post with a certain indefinable languor that was as touching as it was graceful. I need not tell any feminine readers that there was no dissimulation in all this,—no coquetry, no ostentation,—and that the young girl was perfectly sincere! But the masculine reader might like to know that the simple fact was that, since she had regained consciousness, she had been filled with remorse ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... ministers, and furnishes Gentiles with the means of admonishing and confounding the blindness of the Jews. But graces are lost on carnal and hardened souls. Herod had then reigned upwards of thirty years; a monster of cruelty, ambition, craft, and dissimulation; old age and sickness had at that time exasperated his jealous mind in an unusual manner. He dreaded nothing so much as the appearance of the Messiah, whom the generality then expected under the notion of a temporal prince, and whom he could ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... or humanity, made him carry his views to the possession of the crown itself, and, as this object could not be attained without the ruin of the Queen and her family, he fell, without hesitation, into concert with the opposite party. But, being sensible that the most profound dissimulation was requisite for effecting his criminal purposes, he redoubled his professions of zeal and attachment to that Princess; and he gained such credit with her as to influence her conduct in a point which, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... depended on to preserve a secret? or a person who was as artful as Mr. Bygrave himself, and who was kept in reserve to forward the object of some new deception which was yet to come? In the first two cases, Mrs. Lecount could trust in her own powers of dissimulation, and in the results which they might achieve. In the last case (if no other end was gained), it might be of vital importance to her to discover an enemy hidden in the dark. In any event, she determined to run ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... worse than I am in my health, and better than I am in my penitence, it is fit I should be punished for my double dissimulation: and you have the pleasure of being one of my punishers. My sincerity in both respects will, however, be best justified by the event. To that I refer.—May Heaven give you always as much comfort in reflecting upon the reprobation I have met with, as you seem to have pleasure ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... Does it imply false and extravagant claims to qualities we do not possess? Or is there the spirit of the Mountebank in it? If one were a deliberate Machiavel of dissimulation, if one fooled the people thoroughly and consciously, would one be a charlatan? Or are charlatans simply harmless fools who are too embarrassed to confess their ignorance and ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... AS HONEST AS I AM—his character of bonhommie not sitting at all easily upon him. In the scenes where he tries to work Othello to his purpose, he is proportionably guarded, insidious, dark, and deliberate. We believe nothing ever came up to the profound dissimulation and dexterous artifice of the well-known dialogue in the third act, where he first enters upon the execution ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... known how far it is given to woman to penetrate the mysteries of human nature, for she is gifted, it seems to me, with a dissimulation in which she wraps herself, as with an impenetrable veil of outward innocence, and ignorance, from our less acute perception and ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... be more cunning than he seemed. The Master of Ballantrae, James in baptism, took from his father the love of serious reading; some of his tact, perhaps, as well, but that which was only policy in the father became black dissimulation in the son. The face of his behaviour was merely popular and wild: he sat late at wine, later at the cards; had the name in the country of "an unco man for the lasses"; and was ever in the front of broils. But for ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... had been hoping for our turn to come. Mr. Frank Taylor, an Associated Press correspondent, was helpful to us, declaring to the Bolshevik rulers that American troops were withdrawing from Archangel. We had been faithful (sic) to the lectures, for a purpose of dissimulation, and the Red fanatics really thought we were converted to the silly stuff called bolshevism. It was plain to us also that they were playing for recognition of their government by the United States. ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... to be obliged to persist, madame," said Colbert, after a silence which enabled the duchesse to sound the depth of his dissimulation, "but I must warn you that for the last six years denunciation after denunciation has been made against M. Fouquet, and he has remained ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... a portentous ruffian if he had a little more life in him; he has to do the deeds and express the emotions of a most bloody and crafty miscreant; but it is only now and then that we catch the accent of a real man in his tones of cajolery or menace, dissimulation or triumph. Andrugio, the venerable and heroic victim of his craft and cruelty, is a figure not less living and actual than stately and impressive: the changes of mood from meditation to passion, from resignation to revolt, from tenderness to resolution, ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... frequently wounded, can diminish the wonderful vivacity of their emotions, which they know how to communicate with the infallible rapidity and certainty of an electric spark. Discreet by nature and position, they manage the great weapon of dissimulation with incredible dexterity, skillfully reading the souls of others with out revealing the secrets of their own. With that strange pride which disdains to exhibit characteristic or individual qualities, it is frequently the most noble virtues which are ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... age—a love for money, which was insatiable. I must acknowledge that the company and mode of living were more to my satisfaction than the vigils, hard fare, and constant prayer, with which the old man had threatened me, when I proposed to enter the community, and I soon became an adept in dissimulation and hypocrisy, and a great favourite with ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... complete accord. They think it is very smart to do things which are against the rules; but they think it is very stupid to get caught. They believe in using their wits to get the best of other people—especially older people, like parents and teachers. They believe in practising concealment, dissimulation and insincerity; but they are very wary of getting saddled with a downright lie. They have the utmost contempt for a "tell-tale," and they include in this opprobrium any boy who hasn't sense enough to keep from older people an inkling of any sort, as to what he himself may ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... possession of her maidenhood. As soon as a natural movement proves to me that love accepts the offering, I take my measures to consummate the sacrifice. At that moment, giving way suddenly to the violence of her feelings, and tired of her assumed dissimulation, she warmly locks me in her arms at the very instant of the voluptuous crisis, smothers me with kisses, shares my raptures, and love blends our souls in the ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... perforce Leave him in wardship to his innocence. His young and open soul—dissimulation Is foreign to its habits! Ignorance Alone can keep alive the cheerful air, 115 The unembarrassed sense and light free spirit, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... not conceal his thankfulness at escaping the cross-examination which he had anticipated with the dread natural to one wholly unpractised in dissimulation. ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... he had to read the oration. A lump in his throat prevented him getting through with it, and he handed the paper to his son Drusus to finish. "Oh!" cried his enemies then and Tacitus after them, "what dissimulation! what rank hypocrisy! when in reality he must be overjoyed to be in the dead man's shoes." When that same Drusus (his dear son and sole hope) died some years later, he so far controlled his feelings that none saw a muscle of his face moved ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... the secret from my stepfather was impossible. I had vainly endeavored for months to find the flaw in his armor of dissimulation; I had but broken not one dagger, but twenty against the plates of that cuirass. If I had had all the tormentors of the Middle Ages at my service, I could not have forced his fast-shut lips to open, or extorted an admission from his ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... looking behind her fearfully. "Let's hurry on! I'm afraid," she added with the ineffectiveness of dissimulation, "that I've kept you from your sleep too long. Together with your awful experience and that long ride, you must be shattered for the ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... impossible for them to accomplish anything as private citizens, but if they should get the consulship and divide the authority between them for rivalry against him, they would both be a match for him and quickly overcome him, being two against one. So they arranged an entire plan of dissimulation, to wit, that if any of their companions should urge them to the office, they should say they no longer cared to obtain the consulship: after this they put forth their best efforts to get it, in spite of the fact that they had formerly been friends with some of the other ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... apprehension of the ill designs of the Leaders in Sedition here, giving me at the same time so strong assurances of his own loyalty and the good dispositions of his Countrymen that I unsuspecting his dissimulation and treachery was led to impart to him the encouragements I was authorized to hold out to his Majesty's loyal Subjects in this Colony who should stand forth in support of Government which he received with much seeming approbation and repeatedly assured me he would ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... the this speech she looked proudly at the constable with a face marked by so much dissimulation and feminine audacity, that the husband stood looking as foolish as a girl who has allowed a note to escape her below, before a numerous company, and he was afraid of having made ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... study of human nature, that afforded in the various conditions of army life is unsurpassed—a life in which danger, fatigue, hunger, etc., leave no room for dissimulation, and expose the good and bad in each individual to the knowledge of ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore
... first Christian emperor is not one which strikes us with admiration. As emperor he sank into "a cruel and dissolute monarch, corrupted by his fortune, or raised by conquest above the necessity of dissimulation ... the old age of Constantine was disgraced by the opposite yet reconcilable vices of rapaciousness and prodigality" (Gibbon's "Decline and Fall," vol. ii., p. 347). He was as effeminate as he was vicious. "He is represented with false hair of various colours, laboriously arranged by the ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... disguise, he had not the hypocrisy to maintain systematic deceit. He could play a part for a while, from an exulting joy in his own address; but he could not wear a mask with the patience of cold-blooded dissimulation. Why enter into painful details, so easily divined by the intelligent reader? The faults of the son were precisely those to which Roland would be least indulgent. To the ordinary scrapes of high-spirited boyhood no ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... might speak big, and therein would be borne out, yet was he the more dreadful, but less harmful, and far from the practice of the Lord of Leicester's instructions, for he was downright; and I have heard those that both knew him well and had interest in him, say merrily of him that his Latin and dissimulation were alike; and that his custom of swearing and obscenity in speaking made him seem a worse Christian than he was, and a better knight of her carpet than he could be. As he lived in a roughling time, so he loved sword and buckler men, and such as our fathers were wont to call men of ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... on the head of our Captaine, and tooke from his wrists two bracelets of Esnoguy, and put them vpon the Captaines armes, colling him about the necke, and shewing vnto him great signes of ioy: which was all dissimulation, as afterward it wel appeared. The captaine tooke the said crowne of leather and put it againe vpon his head, and gaue him and his wiues certaine smal presents, signifying vnto him that he had brought certaine new things, which afterward he would ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... suspected at most. On the contrary, it never occurred to the mind of the second that she could gain anything by innocent artifices. The one was always tempted to infringe upon the truth, and her first emotion was a negative one. The other was ignorant of dissimulation, and every deception was foreign to her. The first never asked for anything, but she owed everywhere. The second did not hesitate to ask if she needed anything, which was very rarely, and never purchased anything ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... are better than the sigh suppressed, Corroding in the cavern of the heart, Making the countenance a masque of rest[ni] And turning Human Nature to an art. Few men dare show their thoughts of worst or best; Dissimulation always sets apart A corner for herself; and, therefore, Fiction Is that ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... whom there is no love lost, make the discovery that they are rivals, one of them, I can't say which, is capable of killing the other, for one is strong in innocence and lawful love; the other, furious to see the fruit of so much dissimulation, so many sacrifices, even ...
— The Stepmother, A Drama in Five Acts • Honore De Balzac
... was vested with that high dignity, two parts of his conduct were very remarkable; he could never persuade himself that it was lawful to employ spies, or give any countenance or entertainment to such persons, who by a communication of guilt, or dissimulation of manners, wind themselves into such trusts and secrets, as enable them to make discoveries; neither could he ever suffer himself to open letters, upon a suspicion that they might contain matters of dangerous consequence, and proper for statesmen to know. As to the first he condemned ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... intolerance indeed which some of his predecessors had set he never imitated. For all persecution he felt a fixed aversion, which he avowed, not only where the avowal was obviously politic, but on occasions where it seemed that his interest would have been promoted by dissimulation or by silence. His theological opinions, however, were even more decided than those of his ancestors. The tenet of predestination was the keystone of his religion. He often declared that, if he were to abandon that tenet, he must abandon with it all belief ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... letters also containing an extended justification of himself, to which he added a profession of his faith, what he condemned and what he followed, without any dissimulation, so that all subtilities of interpretation might be avoided. There was a public recitation of these. They contained all things like those which Caelestius had previously presented and expressed in the same sense and drawn up in the same thoughts. ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... copper, on copper plates, having doubtless learned that their were European merchants who would not be deterred from vending poisonous foods provided a good fat profit attended the transaction. In short, they practiced some of the dissimulation and tricks of trade to ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.
... But with friends all guile and dissimulation ceases. We often praise the merits of our neighbor in the hope that he in turn will praise us. Only a few have the humility and the whole-hearted simplicity to listen well and to answer well. Sincerity ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... most commonly to be the mother's influence, though naturally a bad father's would have the same result. Every lawyer is familiar with the fact. This Krogstad, now, has been persistently poisoning his own children with lies and dissimulation; that is why I say he has lost all moral character. (Holds out his hands to her.) That is why my sweet little Nora must promise me not to plead his cause. Give me your hand on it. Come, come, what is this? Give me your hand. There now, that's settled. I assure you ...
— A Doll's House • Henrik Ibsen
... he omits nothing but their sincerity; of the enlightened simplicity of the anchoret philosophers he retains nothing but their selfishness; of the intellectual influence of the Gooroo pontiffs he covets nothing but their dissimulation. He has taught his gaping disciples that a skilfully compounded and plausibly administered lie is a goodly thing,— except it be told against the cause of a Brahmin, in which case no oxyhydrogeneralities ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... the vices opposed to truth, and (1) lying: (2) dissimulation or hypocrisy: (3) boasting and the opposite vice. Concerning lying there are four ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... that I cannot describe better than by saying that its features forcibly reminded me of those of a fox. I am not in jest. I observed this resemblance plainly. I observed the same obliquity of eyes, the same sharp quick glance that betokened the presence of deep dissimulation, of utter ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... other he had fomented the mutiny in the Army through the Agitators; to lull suspicion when it was roused, he had at the last moment protested in the House in the presence of Almighty God that he knew the Army would lay down their arms; and not till his flight was the whole depth of his dissimulation known! On these statements, and the disposition of mind that could invent them or believe in them, see Mr. Carlyle's impressive words (Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, I. 220-222). The real facts are to be gathered or inferred from the Commons Journals. Cromwell had been in London through ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... the plains and valleys near the cities Spain was supreme. From this moment on O'Reilly knew he must rely entirely upon himself. The success of his enterprise—his very life—hinged upon his caution, his powers of dissimulation, his ability to pass as a harmless, helpless pacifico. It gave him an unaccustomed thrill, by no ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... seal his re-entree into Delhi society with the open friendship of the most powerful European civilian within the battered walls of the wicked city. He needed all his nerve now, for Hugh Fraser Johnstone was a past master of the arts of dissimulation. ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... whom, a kinsman of Malchus, had seen him at Gethsemane, denied thrice that he had ever had the least connection with Jesus. He thought that Jesus could not hear him, and never imagined that this cowardice, which he sought to hide by his dissimulation, was exceedingly dishonorable. But his better nature soon revealed to him the fault he had committed. A fortuitous circumstance, the crowing of the cock, recalled to him a remark that Jesus had made. Touched to the heart, he ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... therefore, entreat them not to be offended when at this time we cannot grant the desired title, but to be contented until a union with respect to doctrine shall have been effected." (R. 1825, 6.) Thus Tennessee was careful to avoid even the appearance of denying her convictions. Dissimulation was not in her nature. True to her convictions she formulated the address of her second petition for negotiations as follows: "To the Rev. Synod of North Carolina, who assume the title Lutheran, but which we, at this time, for the reason aforesaid, ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente
... and yet retain at least the principal part of their property. Ambition and avarice were to be alike gratified, but they were to contrive the concealment of their hypocrisy. With this view, they agreed upon a course of meanness and dissimulation, which involved the most tragical consequences. Ananias seems to have proposed, and Sapphira to have abetted, the transaction. With her consent, which he chose to obtain, and which might have been legally necessary, their estate was sold; and part only of the purchase-money ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... good sense forbade it. She felt a stirring of unfamiliar terror in the presence of the man. She scorned herself for the weakness, but it persisted. Her very fear dictated the counsels of prudence. She believed that in dissimulation lay her only possibility of safety. The thought of any intercourse with the moonshiner was unspeakably repugnant, yet she dared not risk needless offense. Nevertheless, the first effect of her resolve was a self-contempt that moved her to wrath, and made her opening ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... Carteret, who he finds kind to him, but it may be a little envious, and most other men are, and of many others; and upon the whole do find that it is a troublesome thing for a man of any condition at Court to carry himself even, and without contracting enemys or envyers; and that much discretion and dissimulation is necessary to do it. My father staid a good while at the window and then sat down by himself while my Lord and I were thus an hour together or two after dinner discoursing, and by and by he took his leave, and told me he would stay below for me. Anon I took leave, and coming down found my ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... impressed on him was reserve, which she had instilled into him out of regard for her own interests. My readers will understand what I mean, but the child, in following his mother's instructions, had gone beyond the bounds of moderation; he possessed reserve, it is true, but he was also full of dissimulation, suspicion, and hypocrisy—a fine trio of deceit in one who was still a boy. He not only concealed what he knew, but he pretended to know that which he did not. His idea of the one quality necessary to success in life was an impenetrable reserve, and to obtain this he had accustomed himself ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... people, he said, would easily pardon the errors of a young man, ambitious of glory, and deceived by the craft of Agesilaus. But finding Agis was suspicious, and not to be prevailed with to quit his sanctuary, he gave up that design; yet what could not then be effected by the dissimulation of an enemy, was soon after brought to pass by ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... memoriam, with the legal formalities dear to Spanish usage, in which he recounted all the services of every kind that he had rendered in the colonies. Lest obstacles might be put in the way of his departure, he resorted to a little dissimulation and caused the report to be spread that he intended to go to Paris to finish his law studies and take his degree at the university there. The colonists, including the Governor, were duped by this subterfuge and he departed in company with the Prior, who took with him ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... this canoe was ready, I had him summoned into the presence of his companions; and after laying before him all that had transpired, I told him that any further dissimulation was out of the question, and that he must say whether he had seen these things or not; that I was desirous of improving the opportunity that presented itself; that I had forgotten the past; but that, if I went farther, I would have him hung and ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain V3 • Samuel de Champlain
... Bacon's ingenious essay, 'Of Simulation and Dissimulation,' he states these as the three disadvantages of the qualities:—'The first, that Simulation and Dissimulation commonly carry with them a show of fearfulness, which, in any business, doth spoil the feathers of round flying up to the mark. The second, that it puzzleth and perplexeth the ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... you can never do!" said Glazzard, deliberately. "You enter upon a lifetime of dissimulation. Ten, twenty years hence you will have to act as careful a part as on the day when you and she first present yourselves ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... enjoyable journey. M. Malicorne, M. Bragelonne—ah! M. de Wardes, let me present you." The young men saluted each other in a restrained manner. Their very natures seemed, from the beginning, disposed to take exception to each other. De Wardes was pliant, subtle, full of dissimulation; Raoul was calm, grave, and upright. "Decide between us—between De ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... in the experienced coquette's look and tone seemed to say that Mme. de Listomere-Landon's knowledge of her husband's character went perhaps deeper than his wife's. Mme. d'Aiglemont, in dismay, took refuge in this transparent dissimulation, ready to her hand, the first resource of an artless unhappiness. Mme. de Listomere appeared to be satisfied with Julie's answers; but in her secret heart she rejoiced to think that here was a love affair on hand to enliven her solitude, for that her ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... from the constables, if not taken at a disadvantage. Still, as that would compel him to fly into the woods, and as it would separate him from Dulcibel, he had been very careful not to express in public his abhorrence of all the recent proceedings. I am afraid that he was guilty of considerable dissimulation, even paying his court to some of the "afflicted" maidens when he had the opportunity, with soft words and handsome presents; and trying in this way to enlist a party in his behalf, in case he or any of his friends should ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... natives' respect for the stranger, and ignorance of the manners of white men, especially when accompanied, as in this instance, with an openness of countenance and a frankness of manner far beyond the arts of dissimulation.* ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... vicious when it reasons, admirable only when it springs from the heart and spends itself in sublime impulses that set at naught all selfish considerations. Sooner or later, dear one, you too will say, "Yes! dissimulation is the necessary armor of a woman, if by dissimulation be meant courage to bear in silence, ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... the pain of a slight that Penn, always too honest to resort to dissimulation from selfish motives, had assumed towards her a regard he did not feel. But the little artifice failed. She saw she was not wanted, and was jealous—angry with him, with Virginia, with herself. For thus it is with the discontented ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... offer of my sister's, and never once thought on the treachery she had so lately been guilty of; and I have since reflected, that happy was it for me, that passion was so much uppermost with her, that she could not execute any plot, that required a dissimulation of any long continuance; for had her good humour lasted but one four-and-twenty hours, it is very probable that I should have opened my whole heart to her; should have endeavoured to have begun a friendship with her, and perhaps have betrayed ...
— The Governess - The Little Female Academy • Sarah Fielding
... of virtues! let no mortal leave Thy onward path, although the earth should gape, And from the gulf of hell destruction cry, To take dissimulation's winding way. —DOUGLAS. ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... singular, however, that Goldsmith, who thus in conversation could keep nothing to himself, should be the author of a maxim which would inculcate the most thorough dissimulation. "Men of the world," says he, in one of the papers of the "Bee," "maintain that the true end of speech is not so much to express our wants as to conceal them." How often is this quoted as one of the subtle remarks ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... the Gentiles: but when they came, he drew back and separated himself, fearing them that were of the circumcision. And the rest of the Jews [the Jewish Christians] dissembled likewise with him; insomuch that even Barnabas was carried away with their dissimulation. But when I saw that they walked not uprightly according to the truth of the gospel, I said unto Cephas before them all, If thou, being a Jew, livest as do the Gentiles, and not as do the Jews, how compellest thou the Gentiles to ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... of the lost bonds! Mrs. Packard had made no mistake when she assured me of the secrecy with which they had endured their misfortune. It gave me great relief; I could work more safely with this secret unshared. But the situation called for dissimulation. It was with anything but real openness that ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... were only $65,000 in the treasury, and an army of but 68,000 soldiers. The powers that had given in their adhesion to the Pragmatic Sanction were tardily and but half acknowledging her succession, and from France she could get nothing but dissimulation and uncertainty. On November 1st the young royal wife was joyfully and peacefully creating her husband Grand Master of the Order of the Golden Fleece, and co-regent, and conferring upon him the Bohemian electoral vote. In less than six weeks from that day the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... as to the affairs of this world, integrity hath many advantages over all the fine and artificial ways of dissimulation and deceit; it is much the plainer and easier, much the safer and more secure way of dealing in the world; it has less of trouble and difficulty, of entanglement and perplexity, of danger and hazard in it: it is the shortest and nearest way to our end, carrying us ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... instinct divined his unbounded loyalty; and, with bitter protest at her weakness, she knew with equal certainty that she shrank from his love with her old, unconquerable repugnance. With a dissimulation which even he did not penetrate, she looked her thanks as the officer led the way to the street, and said, "Since your friends provide the carriage, you can ride, miss; ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... arrogance, Nor trifling titles of vanity dazzleth us, Nor golden manacles stand for a paradise. Here wrong's name is unheard; slander a monster is, Keep thy sprite from abuse, here no abuse doth haunt, What man grafts in a tree dissimulation. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 395, Saturday, October 24, 1829. • Various
... authority rested upon him; he had abandoned the service of God; but the training whereby he had fitted himself for it stood him in good stead; it had developed his insight, his subtlety, and, strange to say, his powers of dissimulation. Contrary to what is popularly supposed, his study of the affairs of the other world had enabled him to deal with this world's affairs with a half-contemptuous facility. As for the minor technicalities, the social pass-words, ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... them; will you give me a little sketch of his conversation?" "Most willingly," said I, and accordingly related the whole. When I had concluded, she shook her head, and replied, "Beware, my friend, of his arts. Your own heart is too sincere to suspect treachery and dissimulation in another; but suffer not your ear to be charmed by the siren voice of flattery, nor your eye to be caught by the phantom of gayety and pleasure. Remember your engagements to Mr. Boyer. Let sincerity and virtue be your guides, and they will lead you to happiness and peace." She waited ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... kingdom. He is not only a most agreeable companion but (as I am credibly informed) a very honest man; highly susceptible of friendship, warm, steady, and even generous in his attachments, disdaining flattery, and incapable of meanness and dissimulation. Were I to judge, however, from Quin's eye alone, I should take him to be proud, insolent, and cruel. There is something remarkably severe and forbidding in his aspect; and, I have been told, he was ever disposed to insult his inferiors ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... engagement with Rugge lasted, had rendered the Comedian's dramatic talents unavailable on the stage. He now expressed himself without the pathetic hoarseness or cavernous wheeze which had previously thrown a wet blanket over his efforts at discourse. But Vance put no very stern construction on the dissimulation which his change seemed to denote. Since Waife was still one-eyed and a cripple, he might very excusably shrink from reappearance on the stage, and affect a third infirmity to save his pride from the exhibition of the ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... by virtue and a generous nature, is not unapt to be imposed on. Thus Milton describes Uriel, "the sharpest-sighted spirit in heaven," and "regent of the sun," deceived by the dissimulation and flattery of the devil, for which the poet gives a philosophical reason, but needless here to quote.[218] Is anything more common, or more useful, than to caution wise men in high stations against putting too much trust ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... abominably conscious of it, and sensitive—I had been billeted on Brown's hospitality without his knowledge. The mistake (I cannot tell who was responsible) could not be covered out of sight; it was past all aid of kindly dissimulation by the time Brown returned to the house to find the unwelcome guest bathing in shame upon his doorstep. Can I say more than that he took me into the family circle—by no means an expansive one, or accustomed, as some are, to open gleefully ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... refined service of love. The man is not born for the woman, only the woman for the man. "Men cannot understand the hearts of women." The life of Woman must be outwardly a well-intentioned, cheerful dissimulation of ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... immensely superior to those who express no pity at all. This is a kind of upholding of faith above works, and is very comfortable. To do Ralph Nickleby justice, he seldom practised this sort of dissimulation; but he understood those who did, and therefore suffered Bray to say, again and again, with great vehemence, that they were jointly doing a very cruel thing, before he again offered to interpose ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... it, that I could hardly persuade myself that it was the same person. A mind thus susceptible of new impressions must be, I conceived, of a wonderful texture. Nothing was further from my expectations than that this vivacity was mere dissimulation and would take its leave of him when he left the company; yet this I found to be the case. The door was no sooner closed after him than his accustomed solemnity returned. He spake little, and that little was delivered with ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... you think that he who has taught you that English coldness, under the veil of which men of worth would conceal their feelings, was not aware of the transparency which belongs to this cuirass of pride? Try concealment with others, but not with me. Dissimulation is more than a blunder, for in friendship ...
— Vautrin • Honore de Balzac
... girl. Her high physical animation and the burden of themes it plucked for delivery carried her flowing over impediments of virginal self-consciousness, to set her at her ease in the talk with men; she had not gone through the various Nursery exercises in dissimulation; she had no appearance of praying forgiveness of men for the original sin of being woman; and no tricks of lips or lids, or traitor scarlet on the cheeks, or assumptions of the frigid mask, or indicated reserve-cajoleries. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Bruncker, at Sir W. Batten's, and tells us the Generall is sent for up, to come to advise with the King about business at this juncture, and to keep all quiet; which is great honour to him, but I am sure is but a piece of dissimulation. So home, and did give orders for my house to be made clean; and then down to Woolwich, and there find all well: Dined, and Mrs. Markham come to see my wife. So I up again, and calling at Deptford for some things of W. Hewer's, he being with me, and then home and spent the evening with Sir ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... the bed, both hands supporting her chin, staring at vacancy. He had guessed the truth-the agony of it! She had wept—real tears, the tears of subjection. She had begun—a coquette, trusting to her skill in dissimulation, but her heart had betrayed her. She had wept and Markham had seen her tears. Even a less sophisticated man than he would have known that women of her type only weep when they are stirred to the lees. Had she deceived him in the end? The ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... children, and never harsh or quick-tempered, but this may perhaps be partly due to their constitutional lethargy. They seldom refuse a child anything, but taking advantage of its innocence will by dissimulation make it forget what it wanted. The time arrives when this course of conduct is useless, and then the child learns to mistrust the word of its parents. Minute quantities of opium are generally administered ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... Charlton T. Lewis) 1561-1626 Of Truth ('Essays') Of Revenge (same) Of Simulation and Dissimulation (same) Of Travel (same) Of Friendship (same) Defects of the Universities ('The Advancement of Learning') To My Lord Treasurer Burghley In Praise of Knowledge To the Lord Chancellor To Villiers on his Patent as a Viscount Charge to Justice Hutton ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... Aminadab, however, in his frequent visits to the Fleet, persisted in saying that I was a poor-spirited creature, a mere tool in Brough's hands, and had not saved a shilling. Opinions, however, differed; and I believe it was considered by the turnkeys that I was a fellow of exquisite dissimulation, who had put on the appearance of poverty in order more ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sitting at all easy upon him. In the scenes, where he tries to work Othello to his purpose, he is proportionably guarded, insidious, dark, and deliberate. We believe nothing ever came up to the profound dissimulation and dextrous artifice of the well-known dialogue in the third act, where he first enters upon ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... she met the Vidame in the park, and afterwards held a long conversation with Mrs. Malory. As for the Vidame, he was in feverish high spirits, he devoted himself to Matilda, in fact Mrs. Brown-Smith had insisted on such dissimulation, as absolutely necessary at this juncture of affairs. So Matilda bloomed again, like a rose that had been 'washed, just washed, in a shower.' The Vidame went about humming the airs of the country which he had honoured by adopting it as the ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... his throne, and to deliver all Spain into the hands of the infidels. In concerting and executing this treacherous plot, it seemed as if his whole nature was changed; every lofty and generous sentiment was stifled, and he stooped to the meanest dissimulation. His first object was to extricate his family from the power of the king, and to remove it from Spain before his treason should be known; his next, to deprive the country of its remaining means of ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... Well, that's a cheat. It begins in dissimulation, and ends in detection and punishment. I don't pity the parties; it serves them right. They meet without pleasure, and part without pain. The first time I went to Nova Scotia to vend clocks, I fell in with a German officer, who married a ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... aside all dissimulation and declared war on Serbia, on the pretext that the Serbians had crossed the frontier and attacked Bulgarian troops. On October 11, 1915, the Bulgarian army began operations by attacking the Serbians at Kadibogas, northwest of Nish, the attack gradually extending up ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon) |
