"Foist" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... trying to foist a deliberate deception, where were they mistaken? It was possible for such men as these to make an honest mistake. That would more than likely turn out to be the case here. But how could there be a mistake in the production of a phenomenon such as Fenwick had witnessed? How ...
— The Great Gray Plague • Raymond F. Jones
... Friends? Answer: "Naw!" Well, what did the boy propose to do? Answer, digging his toes into the boards: "Didn't know—anyt'ing!" What was his name? "Jim." Jim what? "Didn't know. Sometimes der gun callt himself 'Darragh,' an' sometimes 'Mullen,' an' sometimes 'Smit.' Aggh! He callt himself the foist t'ing dat come to his tongue—he didn't have ...
— The Mascot of Sweet Briar Gulch • Henry Wallace Phillips
... things to go wrong than he had thought humanly possible in the management of a mine, and between ordering his machinery and taking on new men he had had scant leisure for affairs of the heart. He was young and inexperienced and the dealers took advantage of it to foist off old stock and odd parts, and then his engineers became fractious and disgruntled because he expected quick results. It was all very different from what he had expected when he had taken over the Paymaster lease, and yet it had to be endured and muddled through somehow until the mine was safely ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... reprinted by Thomas Amyot for the Shakespeare Society in 1844, the hero's servant is named Sander, and this seems to have given the hint to Lacy, when altering Shakespeare's "Taming of the Shrew," to foist a 'Scotsman into the action. Sawney was one of Lacy's favourite characters, and occupies a prominent position in Michael Wright's picture at Hampton Court. Evelyn, on October 3rd, 1662, "visited Mr. Wright, a Scotsman, who had liv'd long ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... Uncle William leaned on his hoe and fixed her with stern eye. "Easier a brick without straw, a law without a legislature, than to foist an idea, a plan, a measure on this village save in one way. My dear Annie, haven't you found out in five days that Miss Pamela is chief of the clan? Sister, aunt, cousin, in varying degrees, to every Roscoe and Collamer in the township—and there are no others ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... denied them, despite of my own innocence. What would you have me do? Resume a name never conceded to me,—perhaps not righteously mine,—thrust myself upon the unwilling and shrinking hands which disowned and rejected me; blazon my virtues by pretensions which I myself have promised to forego, and foist myself on the notice of strangers by the very claims which my nearest relations dispute? Never! never! never! With the simple name I have assumed; the friend I myself have won,—you, my generous benefactor, my real father, who never forsook nor insulted ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... people who were none too well disposed. With incredible folly, before in any way consolidating her position, she formed a plot worthy only of a second-rate cinematograph, pretended pregnancy and planned to foist a "supposititious child" upon the nation. A plan, foredoomed by its folly to failure, which brought down on her the contempt and ridicule not only of Serbia, but of all Europe. Such was the history of Serbia up to ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... This is a strict, law-abiding, old-fashioned town. Decency has been reigning here for over two hundred years. The average citizen of Charleston has no sympathy for the sort of thing you are evidently trying to foist on us. You've got sense enough to know that all I have to do is to telephone the police to take charge of this matter and air it in open court. You might get it whitewashed in your town by some pull or other, but not here. I think, ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... universe is the one parent of all, whether they trace their descent from this primary source through a glorious or a mean line of ancestors. Be not deceived when men who are reckoning up their genealogy, wherever an illustrious name is wanting, foist in that of a god in its place. You need despise no one, even though he bears a commonplace name, and owes little to fortune. Whether your immediate ancestors were freedmen, or slaves, or foreigners, pluck up your spirits boldly, ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... doing her utmost to foist upon us the responsibility for the rupture. We were forced to mobilize by the immense responsibility which would have fallen upon our shoulders if we had not taken all possible precautionary measures at a time when Austria, while confining herself to discussions of a dilatory ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... I had stood, reverential, in the noble forest of pillars in the Cathedral, then afterwards, in my simplicity, allowed someone to foist a whole case of Eau de Cologne upon me, I shortened my stay, in my haste to see Paris. But, having by mistake taken a train which would necessitate my waiting several hours at Liege, I decided rather to continue ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... Puerto Rico, and Hawaii was of great interest to her, and she at once asked for the enfranchisement of the women of these newly won island possessions. She regarded it as an outrage for the most democratic nation in the world to foist upon them an exclusively masculine government, a "male oligarchy," as she called it. "I really believe I shall explode," she wrote Clara Colby, "if some of you young women don't wake up and raise your voice in protest.... ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... months that followed were the most terrible in the history of Samoa. A handful of exasperated whites—treaty officials, missionaries, and consuls—were determined to foist Tanumafili on the unwilling natives of the group, and backed by three men-of-war, they declared Mataafa a rebel and plunged the country into a disastrous and sanguinary war. England and America, in the person of their ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... below. On the whole, Shakespeare must have had a singular rather than a prepossessing face; and it is wonderful how, with this bust before its eyes, the world has persisted in maintaining an erroneous notion of his appearance, allowing painters and sculptors to foist their idealized nonsense on its all, instead of the genuine man. For my part, the Shakespeare of my mind's eye is henceforth to be a personage of a ruddy English complexion, with a reasonably capacious brow, intelligent and quickly observant eyes, a nose curved slightly ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... I lit a cigarette and let them argue. In such cases, every married couple has its own queer and private and particular and idiosyncratic way of coming to an agreement. The third party who tries to foist on it his own suggestion of a way is an imbecile. The dispute on the point of vanity, charmingly conducted, ended by Sir ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... met him again, I cannot say how he took the invectives and the "murder-subscription." Perhaps it was not quite right of me to foist on him, as examples of genuine Parisian opinion, two such papers as those I gave him; but, then, all is fair not merely in love but in war also, and in regard to the contentions of France and Germany, my sympathies were entirely on the ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... you snorin' through the picture till I'm ashamed for the whole place. If I was the kind of girl had it in me to run around with other fellows, that's what I'd be drove to do, the deal you've given me. Movie! That's a fine enjoyment to try to foist off on a woman to make up for eight years of being so fed up on stillness that ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... certaine officers, as Churchwardens, Sidemen, and 8. men, whose duety bound them to see the buildings & ornaments appertaining to Gods seruice, decently maintayned, & good order there reuerently obserued. And lest negligence, ignorance, or partiality, might admit or foist in abuses, & corruption, an Archdeacon was appointed to take account of their doings by an yerely visitation, & they there sworn duly to make it. He & they againe had their Ordinary, the Bishop, euery 3. yere to ouerlook their actions, & ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew
... which for partisan reasons plays on the bigotry of English people by the booming of such books, no matter how scurrilous or how vile are their innuendoes. The comment of M. Paul-Dubois on these attempts to foist on the Catholic Church responsibility for the evil case in which Ireland finds herself, deserves quotation:—"Cette these grossiere et fanatique ne vaut l'honneur d'un devellopment ni d'une discussion: contentons nous de remarquer comme il est habile et simple de rejeter sur Rome la responsabilite ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... stewards one cannot help feeling sorry for him. He had to get all the right services out of the tenants, and tell them what to do each week and see that they did it; he had to be careful that they brought the right number of eggs and pigs up to the house, and did not foist off warped or badly planed planks upon him. He had to look after the household serfs too, and set them to work. He had to see about storing, or selling, or sending off to the monastery the produce of the ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... a despotism? Never having felt the results of a weak executive, they do not know the dangers of unlimited power. No man is more republican in sentiment than I am, but I think it no less than a crime to foist a republic upon a people in no way fitted for it, and all those who abandon the King in this hour of danger, who do not uphold his authority to the fullest extent, are participants in that crime and are helping to bring on those events which I fear ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... Guardians were not accustomed to restrain themselves, and did not withhold the expression of their indignation upon this announcement. As Mr. Doll had himself been a guardian of St. Simon Magus, it was clear to their impartial minds that he was trying by a trick to foist a bastard—perhaps his own—on ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... Marc, "since you wish to show deference to the Church, why do you foist upon her, by force or by subterfuge, a coffin which she ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... of the morning passed like minutes to the girls, and they were surprised when the porter came through with his "Foist call fo' dinnah!" ...
— The Outdoor Girls in the Saddle - Or, The Girl Miner of Gold Run • Laura Lee Hope
... a third ticket in the field you would defeat free coinage; defeat a withdrawal of the issue power of national banks; defeat Government ownership of railroads, telephones and telegraphs; defeat an income tax and foist gold monometallism and high taxation upon the people for a generation to come, which would you do?... When I shall go back to the splendid commonwealth that has so signally honored me beyond my merits, I want to be able to say to the people that all the great doctrines ...
— The Agrarian Crusade - A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics • Solon J. Buck
... latitude to-day. He'll meet opposition enough when he tries to foist this putty-clay of his on the world. By the way, what are you going ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... bank-notes. They did not shoot him, and when they rode off he addrest them with profound gratitude, making a congee: "Gentlemen, I wish you good night, and we are very much obliged to you that you have not used us ill!" And this is the cuckoo that has had the audacity to foist upon me ten buttons on a side and a black velvet collar—A damn'd ninth of ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... will devote his days to the settlement of the question of human rights in the Council Chamber, instead of being threatened with the prisons of Carolina, were to sit down the prisoner of Massachusetts, that State which is so anxious to foist the sin of slavery upon her sister—though at present she can discover only an act of inhospitality to be the ground of a quarrel with her—the Legislature would not wholly waive ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... a concentration of vice? See how baseness and wickedness can stand with head erect! Oh, hardened monsters! But the other eleven. How can they expect us to believe this transparent falsehood—this palpable device? How can they foist it upon the Court?' ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... "Hero Siegfried!" Then he laughed like anything and sat down beside me and said: "You were enjoying yourself so much this morning that you had not even a glance to spare for me." "Contrariwise (I've got that from Dora), I never foist myself on anyone, and never hang around anyone's neck." Then he wanted to put his arm round my waist (and probably, most probably, he would have kissed me), but I sprang to my feet and called Dora or rather Thea, for before the gentlemen we pretend that ...
— A Young Girl's Diary • An Anonymous Young Girl
... sentence with some Greek word, which for seeming garnish they crowd in at a venture; and rather than be at a stand for some cramp words, they will furnish up a long scroll of old obsolete terms out of some musty author, and foist them in, to amuse the reader with, that those who understand them may be tickled with the happiness of being acquainted with them: and those who understand them not, the less they know the more they may admire; ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... about it?" he said to Grace. "When the North gets angry enough to put its foot down, all this bluster about State- rights, and these efforts to foist slavery on a people who are disgusted with it, ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... ill-gotten gains, and arrogant from her success with the supple-kneed politicians of the North, put the Church in the North upon the defensive by demanding toleration, if not actual adoption. The issue was made in trying to foist upon the whole Church a slave holding Episcopacy. This last act was the feather, if such it might be called, ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller
... helped thee to thy liquor, I trow?" said Gamel, hastily. "Think not to foist thy fooleries upon me. Should I find thee with a lie on thy tongue, the hide were as well off thy shoulders. To thy ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... was awaiting this. Thou wilt inoculate our knightly veins With thy corrupted Jewish blood. Thou 'lt foist This adder on my bosom. Henry Schnetzen Is no weak dupe, whom every lie may start. Make ready, Jew, ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... of the kind, and my mind was filled with abhorrence of such men as Corbridge, who would not only send a person into the other world simply to gratify a scientific curiosity or for purposes of profit, but would rehabilitate a departed spirit with all his lost needs and appetites, and then foist him upon a comparative stranger for care and sustenance. Such conduct was not only mean, but criminal in its nature, and if there was no law against it, one ...
— Amos Kilbright; His Adscititious Experiences • Frank R. Stockton
... to suffer from serious disadvantages. In reality this was not the case. Contrast it for a moment with the undignified welter of undigested and ex parte theories which academic prosodists have tried for three hundred years to foist upon English verse, and it will be seen that the simple Japanese rule has the merit of dignity. The only part of it that we Occidentals could not accept perhaps, with advantage to ourselves, is the peculiarly Oriental ...
— Japanese Prints • John Gould Fletcher
... and enforcing them, and a swarm of petty officials are kept busy attending to this intricate machine of popular government. In sober truth, it must be said that capitalism has created, and could not exist without, the very bureaucracy it charges Socialism with attempting to foist upon the nation."[301] ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... of figure you cut at Oxford, and the disgrace in which you left the University. Allow me to say, sir, that it reflects little credit on your honour that you should have imposed on your late employer, and taken advantage of his weak health and faculties to foist yourself upon ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... Jeremy, prattling away like a madman. "I am weary of the stuff. I'm hunting the world over, in search of a friend. Nobody loves me. I want to find someone who'll believe the lies I tell him without expecting me to believe the truth he tries to foist on me. I want to find a man as tricky with his brains as I am with my hands. He must be a politician and a spy, because I love excitement. That's why I called you a spy. If you were one, you might have admitted ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... it when I landed. They didn't take long about arresting me, and I listened to all the speeches and resolutions. If I'd been a prince there couldn't have been more excitement. The end of all was that they agreed that it wasn't right that New Zealand should be allowed to foist her criminals upon her neighbors, and that I was to be sent back again by the next boat. So they posted me off again as if I was a damned parcel; and after another eight-hundred-mile journey I found myself back for the third time moving ...
— My Friend The Murderer • A. Conan Doyle
... institutions; in the Russian Mir, in its older form; in the Arab tribal organisation and the Javan village communities."[1058] That "primitive Communism" of "tribal society," the organisation of savages and semi-savages, of the decadent and of the unfit, Socialists wish to foist upon a highly cultured nation. The above arguments, penned by the philosopher of British Socialism and the editor of "Justice" in recommendation of Communism, suffice ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... the leaders would have to encounter the competition not solely of the candidate of the minority, but of all the men of established reputation in the country who were willing to serve, it would be impossible any longer to foist upon the electors the first person who presents himself with the catchwords of the party in his mouth, and three or four thousand pounds in his pocket. The majority would insist on having a candidate worthy of their choice, or they would carry their votes somewhere else, and the ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... or negro witch-doctors; and those priests were the intellectuals of their time. I wonder when we shall have a party of intellectuals content to find out the people's ideals and to serve them faithfully, instead of trying to foist their own ideals ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... seafaring American, which can be found in vol. vi, p. 113, of his "History." On page 153 he asserts that he is an "impartial historian"; and about three lines before mentions that "it may suit the Americans to invent any falsehood, no matter how barefaced, to foist a valiant character on themselves." On page 419 he says that Captain Porter is to be believed, "so far as is borne out by proof (the only safe way where an American is concerned),"—which somewhat sweeping denunciation of the veracity of all of Captain Porter's ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... I feel assured of this, that were we to attempt to set up the plea that that other woman was alive when the marriage took place in Cumberland, you, yourself, would be ashamed of the evidence which it would become your duty to endeavour to foist upon the jury. We should certainly be beaten, and, in the ultimate settlement of the property, we should have to do with enemies instead of friends. The man was tried for bigamy and acquitted. Would any jury get over that unless you had evidence ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... just this great success, and the polemical renown of the novel, that roused my suspicions when first I chanced to see the German version of it? Contrary to the reputation which our neighbours on the other side of the Vosges like to foist upon us, French literature, at the present day, is far less noisily scandalous than their own. It is only necessary to glance over the advertisements which certain German publishing firms issue at the end of their publications in order to be convinced of ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis
... were trying to gain power themselves. This group was opposed to Wei Chung-hsien, who ruthlessly had every discoverable member murdered. The remainder went into hiding and organized themselves secretly under another name. As the new emperor had no son, the attempt was made to foist a son upon him; at his death in 1627, eight women of the harem were suddenly found to be pregnant! He was succeeded by his brother, who was one of the opponents of Wei Chung-hsien and, with the aid of the opposing clique, was ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... him!" cries Vetch with an evil sneer. "He turns preacher! You fool! Who are you to foist yourself into the concerns of your betters—a fellow only saved from the gutter by charity! While the girl is a minor I will deal with this estate as I please; and when she comes of ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... delicate face quiet and impassive, and shook out the shimmering folds of her beautiful dress. She said casually, picking up her fan and evidently preparing for some sort of adjournment: "Oh, Arnold, don't be so absurd. Of course you can't foist yourself off on a family that's no relation to you, that way. And in any case, it wouldn't do for you to graduate from a co-educational State University. Not a person you know would have heard of it. You know ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... your examples are dangerous. Rogues, hell-hounds, Stentors! out of my doors, you sons of noise and tumult, begot on an ill May-day, or when the galley-foist is afloat to Westminster! [DRIVES OUT THE MUSICIANS.] A trumpeter could not ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... said, "how the kids are carryin' on these days. People are feelin' pretty generous, an' they'll toss 'em a nickel er a dime fur their paper an' tell 'em to keep the change fur Christmas, an' foist thing you know the little beggars are shootin' craps er pitchin' pennies. We've got to make an example of ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... been forgotten, and its author is fast following it into oblivion, while the shade of Carlyle looms ever larger, towering already above the Titans of his time, reaching even to the shoulder of Shakespeare! Gosse? Who is this presumptuous fellow who would take Carlyle in tutelage, foist himself upon the attention of the public by making a peep-show of the great essayist's faults? There is, or was, a pugilist named Gesse, or Goss; but as he did not deal foul blows to the dead, this must be a different breed of dogs. ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... to connect Jeremiah with its discovery and introduction to the Monarch, and even with its composition, may be ignored. Had there been a particle of evidence for this, it would have been seized and magnified by the legalists in Israel, not to speak of those apocryphal writers who foist so much else on Jeremiah and Baruch.(268) That they have not even attempted this is proof—if proof were needed—that Jeremiah, the youthful son of a rural family, and probably still unknown to the ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... Jews, the seeking up of the ten missing tribes, or to the regeneration of the interesting coloured population of the globe. Each lady contributor takes it in her turn to keep the basket a month, to sew for it, and to foist off its contents on a shrinking male public. An exciting time it is when that turn comes round. Some active-minded woman, with a good trading spirit, like it, and enjoy exceedingly the fun of making hard-handed worsted-spinners cash up, ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... really hard it is to foist a moral or a truth upon an unsuspecting public through a burlesque without entirely and absurdly missing one's mark, I will here set down two experiences of my own in this thing. In the fall of 1862, in Nevada and California, the people got to running wild about extraordinary ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... mighty cool in Jean Arlac to foist her on thee. And now that we have left the crowd behind and are comfortable ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... stereotyped literary and dramatic view of French married life is wickedly false.' The corruption of morals, she says, which so generally prevails in Paris, and which has been so systematically aggravated by the luxury and extravagance of the second Empire, has emboldened writers to foist these false pictures of married life on ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... He can't. Stillwater has kept him solely because that unspeakable wife of his hopes to foist their dull, ugly ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... must go over this tape recording and see what we have on our hands. Then we must make a thorough, unbiased study of these animals, and show Rainsford and his accomplice that they cannot hope to foist these ridiculous claims on the scientific world with impunity. If we can't convince them privately, there'll be nothing to do ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... guess that he was in no humour to carry coals. In a distant corner of the room he seated himself and fell to frowning at the table on which his elbow rested. At no time was he a man upon whom one would be likely to foist his company undesired, for he had at command on occasion a hauteur and an aloofness that challenged respect even ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... first signature being appended to it in the Greyfriars' Churchyard, Edinburgh, on February 28, 1638, to maintain the Presbyterian Church and to resist all attempts on the part of Charles I. to foist Episcopacy upon it; it was ratified by the Scottish Parliament in 1640, and subscribed by Charles II. in ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... wid de pigeon toes and de bow legs!" yelped the grocer's boy. "If he's goin' de way dem feet are pointed, foist t'ing yous know he'll be runnin' ...
— Owen Clancy's Happy Trail - or, The Motor Wizard in California • Burt L. Standish
... that a rapid series of events this afternoon has proved to me that Mrs. Killenhall is one of a gang who are responsible for the murder of John Ashton, who stole his diamond and certain papers, and who have endeavoured, very cleverly, to foist one of their number, a scoundrelly clever actor, on the public, as a peer of the realm who had been missing. Mrs. Killenhall—who has another name—probably got wind of possible detection about noon today, and took advantage of Miss ...
— The Middle of Things • J. S. Fletcher
... law, there are yet some who seem to have a mission to reopen the conflict by ever dragging the problem into the open arena of our political life. Under the specious pretext of national welfare they would foist upon the Canadian Public opinions and measures opposed to our existing system and to the broad spirit of liberty that inspires and maintains it. But we all know that in this persistent and methodical opposition to our separate schools the fundamental issue is a religious one. Life, after all, ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... to go back to the noisy pavements, the clanging car-bells, the noisome odors of the city,—and all for what? Simply because a jealous fisherman and a hysterically sympathetic young woman chose to foist it ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... you be stabbed by a soldier? Mass, that's true! when was Bobadill here, your captain? that rogue, that foist, that fencing Burgullion? ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson
... grandame Gold; Inquire into your years, and laugh to find 150 Your crazy temper shows you much declined. Were you not dim and doted, you might see A pack of cheats that claim a pedigree, No more of kin to you, than you to me. Do you not know, that for a little coin, Heralds can foist a name into the line? They ask you blessing but for what you have; But once possess'd of what with care you save, The wanton boys would piss ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... main plot—which turns not only on the courtship, by a mere fribble, of a lady whose husband is supposed to be dead, and who has very complacently forgotten all about him, but on a ridiculous plot to foist a pretender off as the dead husband itself—is simply absurd. The lack of probability, which is the curse of the minor Elizabethan drama, hardly anywhere appears more glaringly. Parasitaster, or The Fawn, a satirical comedy, is much better, but the jealous ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... may be muddy wine in need of clarification; there is some slight doubt about this point. It appears that the vintner of old was much more tempted to foist unworthy stuff upon his customers than his colleague of today who is very much restricted by law ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... in the world is also basal. It is the compliment which noisy childhood and industrious boyhood insistently demand from the world about. Even the infant revels in this testimony, preferring crude and noisy playthings of proportion to the innocent nerve-sparing devices which the adult tries to foist upon him. The coal scuttle is made to proclaim causal relation between the self in effort and the not-self in response more satisfactorily than the rag doll; and the manifest glee over the contortions of the playful father whose hand is slapped is not innate cruelty but the delight ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... it was some crackbrain scribbler who tried to prove Poe "mad," some accomplished scholar who endeavored to disparage him in order to magnify some other writer, or some silly woman who attempted to foist herself into notice by relating "imaginary facts" concerning the poet's hidden life, Mrs. Whitman was always ready ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... bon enfaunt (Goodchild), just as a braggart Burgundian was called by Tudor dramatists a burgullian. Bellinger is for Barringer, an Old French name of Teutonic origin. [Footnote: "When was Bobadil here, your captain? that rogue, that foist, that fencing burgullian" (Jonson, Every Man in his Humour, iv. 2).] Those people called Salisbury who do not hail from Salesbury in Lancashire must have had an ancestor de Sares-bury, for such was the earlier name of Salisbury ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... be little doubt that before many years have passed, in England as elsewhere, the Churches will have to face the question of the best methods of themselves undertaking that task of religious training which they have sought to foist upon the State. If they are to fulfil this duty in a wise and effectual manner they must follow the guidance of biological psychology at the point where it is at one with the teaching of their own most ancient traditions, and develop the merely formal rite of ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... between peoples may be molified and healed by indemnities, which also serve his purpose because they necessitate the incurring of a bonded debt, interest bearing. But the history of the world for centuries proves that a condition of war is Mammon's opportunity to foist a debt upon a free people and to increase the burden of those whose bonds he ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott
... brother of his own shameless queen, but Isabella had declined this alliance on the ground that it had not been properly ratified by the Cortes of Castile, and as a result the plan was soon dropped. In the midst of the rebellion which had broken out after Henry's attempt to foist La Beltraneja upon the state, he had proposed as a conciliatory measure that one of the most turbulent of the factional leaders, Don Pedro Giron, Grand Master of Calatrava, should wed Isabella, and the offer had been accepted. This man, who was ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... for too high stakes, Ackerman," Mr. Tolman objected. "It is a little rough to put all the burden on Dick. Suppose we divide up the responsibility and foist half of it on Stephen? Let us say you will come if both boys make good in their studies ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... cover and defend their weak points, it is difficult to delude wife and mother and children and the house-friend of the family; fortunately for them, however, these persons almost always keep a secret which in a manner touches the honor of all, and not unfrequently go so far as to help to foist the imposture upon the public. And if, thanks to such domestic conspiracy, many a noodle passes current for a man of ability, on the other hand many another who has real ability is taken for a noodle to redress the balance, and the total average of this kind of false coin in circulation in the ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... court they be," said David, to some inquiry from his more ignorant companion, as he generally affected to consider him. Indeed, with but little wit and less valour, he wished to foist himself upon one possessing both, as a being of extraordinary wisdom and fortitude. And truly, if loud words and big lies could have done this, he would have had no lack either of courage ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... motor-cars (those far greater, because unrestricted, bores), railways have taken on for me some such charm as the memory of the posting coaches had for the greybeards of my boyhood, some such charm as aeroplanes may in the fulness of time foist down for us on motor-cars. 'But I rove,' like Sir Thomas More. And I seem to think that a cheap literary allusion will make you excuse that vice. To resume my breathless narrative I decided that I would slowly follow the ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... Foreign Office. Chauvelin viewed it with jealousy, it being his aim to represent Maret as an emissary to the British and Irish malcontents.[130] Pitt, when he granted the interview, cannot have known of this, or of the design of Lebrun ultimately to foist Maret into the place of Morgues at the French Embassy. Accordingly he welcomed Maret cordially. No tactical skirmish about chairs took place, and Maret afterwards declared that the great Minister behaved affably throughout, brightening his ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... myself more or less of a fatalist, it annoyed me that I never could in the very slightest degree shake his convictions on that point. Moreover, when I plagued him too much with Herbert Spencer, he had a way of retaliating, and would foist upon me his favourite authors. He was never a worshipper of any one writer, but always had at least a dozen prophets in whose ...
— Derrick Vaughan—Novelist • Edna Lyall
... the lord mayor and aldermen in their barge, and all the citizens with their barges decked and trimmed with targets and banners of their mysteries accordinglie, attending on her grace. The bachellers barge of the lord maior's companie, to wit, the mercers', had their barge with a foist trimmed with three tops, and artillerie aboord, gallantlie appointed to wait vpon them, shooting off lustilie as they went, with great and pleasant melodie of instruments, which plaied in most swete and heavenlie maner. Her grace shut (shot) the bridge about two of the clocke in the after noone, ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip
... drunken Bards:—you have asked what the Welsh have done in the world; you are supposed to have slighted some person of their family—a tenth cousin!—anything turns their blood. Or you have once looked straight at them without speaking, and you discover years after that they have chosen to foist on you their idea of your idea at the moment; and they have the astounding presumption to account this misreading of your look to the extent of a full justification, nothing short of righteous, for their treachery and your ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... proceedings freely attributed to the writers of the Bible, the commentators would cover him with contempt. (75) If it be blasphemy to assert that there are any errors in Scripture, what name shall we apply to those who foist into it their own fancies, who degrade the sacred writers till they seem to write confused nonsense, and who deny the plainest and most evident meanings? (76) What in the whole Bible can be plainer than the fact that Ezra and his companions, in the second ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part II] • Benedict de Spinoza
... However, Lawes was loyal to his friend, and whatever alterations his wider knowledge of the requirements of stage production may have led him to introduce into the masque as performed at Ludlow, he never sought to foist any changes of his own into the published poem, when, having tired himself with making copies for his friends, he at length decided, with Milton's consent, to send it forth into the world in its ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... public may be noticed in some financial publications. An editorial notice or subsidised paragraph will be inserted in the paper, extolling the merits and predicting the certain success of some concern which it is desired to bolster up or to foist upon the public. This is done in such a way that the reader is expected to believe that it is the genuine ex- pression of a truthful opinion by the editor, who has obtained his information from unimpeach- able sources. Of course, this peculiar kind of advertisement has to be paid for, but ...
— Everybody's Guide to Money Matters • William Cotton, F.S.A.
... I am unable to help you," he replied. "And in case I have not made myself sufficiently clear upon the subject, let me tell you that I deeply resent the plot by which you endeavoured to foist such ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the world is fairly teeming with books,—good books, books written with a motive, books inculcating morals, books teaching lessons,—it seems almost a piece of presumption too great for endurance to foist another upon the market. There is scarcely room in the literary world for amateurs and maiden efforts; the very worthiest are sometimes poorly repaid for their best efforts. Yet, another one is offered the public, a maiden effort,—a little thing with absolutely nothing to commend it, that seeks ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... interesting—that is, flesh-and-blood people. Of course I know that lovers are the life of fiction, and that a story of any kind can scarcely hold the reader without them. The love-interest, as they call it, is also supposed to be essential to the drama, and friends of mine who have tried to foist their plays upon managers have been overthrown by the objection that the love-interest is not strong enough in what they have done. Yet lovers in real life are, so far as I have observed them, bores. They are confessed to be disgusting before or after marriage when they let their ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... one that introduced the hobble skoit. My Bella was one of the foist to wear one. There ain't a fad that he don't go over to Europe and get. He made a fortune ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... scarcely a qualification for the office he holds—if we make one trifling exception (hardly worth mentioning)—for he is nothing more than, merely, a first-rate musician. With this single accomplishment, it is like his impudence to try and foist himself upon the Cockney dilettanti after M. Jullien, who possessed every other requisite for a conductor but a knowledge of the science; which is, after all, a paltry acquirement, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 16, 1841 • Various
... paupers, to beget pauper children and foist them upon the community for support, is an outrage against society. We believe it is not improper to speak out plainly upon this subject, and in no uncertain tone, notwithstanding the popular prejudice which cries, "Hush, be quiet; don't interfere with ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... he had not come for any Seraphine! Mora might deny herself to him; but she would not foist another upon him. Only, alas! this grave and Reverend Prioress of whom the Bishop spoke, hardly seemed one with the woman of his desire; she who, but three evenings before, had yielded her lips to his, clasping her arms around him; loving, even ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... of the window into the highway. He might have been tracked by his trail of romances, as was Hop-o'-my-Thumb, in the fairy tale, by the white stones he dropped behind him. Poor Barbier, who ministered to a passion for novels that demanded twenty volumes a day, was at his wit's end. He tried to foist on the Emperor the romances of the year before last; but these Napoleon had generally read, and he refused, with imperial scorn, to look at them again. He ordered a travelling library of three thousand volumes to be made for him, ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... For de love of Mike, d'yuh mean to tell me Lizzie is talking back? Whadda yuh know about dat! Whadda yuh know about dat! You'll get sick on us here, foist t'ing we know. Where ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... declares that "nothing could be stronger than his language, nothing weaker than the impression it leaves on the mind. It is like a dictionary of obsolete English suffering from a severe fit of delirium tremens." A prominent literary periodical saw, in the attempt to foist Thompson on the public as a genuine poet, a sectarian effort to undermine the literary press of England. In the course of a year the sale of "Sister Songs" amounted to 349 copies. The "New Poems" fared worse; its sale, never large, practically ...
— The Hound of Heaven • Francis Thompson
... of the humbler class of wandering minstrels, are expected to repeat their lays as they have received them. But, although in the main these professional gentlemen adhere to the traditional words which they know by heart, the temptation must be very strong to foist at suitable pauses into their tales impromptu passages—best described in stage language as "gag"—which they think will be acceptable to their audience. And whether or not this be actually the case with the Indian bards, we are expressly told that it is so with the Arab story-teller, ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... the contrary, the nation as a whole is in a condition of marvellous and still rapidly-growing prosperity. If that be so, if there be no disease, then obviously is there no need for the remedy which Mr. Williams and other Protectionists are anxious to foist upon the country. But though that conclusion will be sufficiently obvious to most minds, there are among us hypochondriacal persons who never think that they are quite well, and these unfortunates will still hanker after some patent medicine to cure their ...
— Are we Ruined by the Germans? • Harold Cox |
