"Quackery" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... effort to cure patients is made. Sufferers with means are kept comfortable by being given drugs whenever they demand them, thus satisfying their consciences that they are being "treated," while vainly waiting till they are sufficiently strong to get entirely off "dope." In such a house of quackery Marie stayed two years. Her remaining fifteen hundred dollars and a thousand of her sister's went for fake treatment. She learned to smoke cigarettes with the young doctor; she played cards, gossiped, ate, slept and was never refused a comforting dose whenever she couldn't "stand it a minute longer." ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... be as well for me to call on Dr. Doddleson as I drive home. I shall make a point of seeing Miss Halliday twice a day. I find your housekeeper a very sensible person. She will remain in close attendance upon the sick-room; and I must beg that there is no quackery—no home-made remedies. I have given your housekeeper all directions as to treatment and diet, and she has my orders to allow no one but herself in the invalid's room. There is a marked tendency to ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... country, with that of American artists' life there. The observations are throughout racily humorous, and those who have within a few years visited 'the Cradle of Art' cannot fail to recognize, as hit off with no sparing hand, more than one American notoriety. Art quackery as it exists, is well shown up in 'Americans in Rome;' the author having little in common with those amiable romancers who glorify every illiterate picture-maker, though he never fails to do justice to true genius. We believe, in short, that these sketches ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... disappointed suitors, over-nice moralists, and malicious wits, it can boast of one signal advantage over all other business callings,—that eminence in it is always a test of ability and acquirement. While in every other profession quackery and pretension may gain for men wealth and honor, forensic renown can be won only by rare natural powers aided by profound learning and varied experience in trying causes. The trickster and the charlatan, who in medicine and even in the pulpit find it ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... than a mass of discontent which does not know what remedy is to be sought. All sorts of cures will be tried, many of them mere quackery, and their failure ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... have liked one himself, but had no money, and was further restrained by a sense of conviction that his father would say it was all nonsense and quackery. ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... in all its forms had inspired Average Jones with a profound contempt and dislike for the cruelest of all forms of swindling medical quackery. And this swollen, smug-faced intruder looked a particularly offensive specimen of his kind. Therefore ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... blague^. sham; pretense, pretending, malingering. lip homage, lip service; mouth honor; hollowness; mere show, mere outside; duplicity, double dealing, insincerity, hypocrisy, cant, humbug; jesuitism, jesuitry; pharisaism; Machiavelism, organized hypocrisy; crocodile tears, mealy-mouthedness^, quackery; charlatanism^, charlatanry; gammon; bun-kum^, bumcombe, flam; bam [Slang], flimflam, cajolery, flattery; Judas kiss; perfidy &c (bad faith) 940; il volto sciolto i pensieri stretti [It]. unfairness &c (dishonesty) 940; artfulness &c (cunning) 702; misstatement ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... they can do more execution by being converged upon him. Had he appeared as an intelligent, knowing, and efficient controversialist on the side of the traditions of his profession, his wholesale denunciation of quackery, vulgar or genteel, might be referred to conceit; had he turned state's evidence against the accredited deceptions of his own profession, and gone over entirely to the enthusiasts who think that medicine is not an ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... refused medicine, rejected medical advice; no reasoning, no entreaty, has availed to induce her to see a physician. After reading your letter she said, "Mr. Williams's intention was kind and good, but he was under a delusion: Homoeopathy was only another form of quackery." Yet she may reconsider this opinion and come to a different conclusion; her second thoughts are ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... all for which I have striven will recoil upon my head, and bury me beneath its ruins. This day decides not only your fate, poor child, but mine. To-day must Mesmer prove to the world that the animal magnetism, which physicians deride as a quackery, savans deny as impracticable, and the people ignorantly worship as sorcery, is a golden link which binds humanity to heaven. To-day you shall be healed by the magnetic power which binds you to me, and links us both ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... imprudent selections they had in some cases made, the extreme boldness of some foreign adventurers, the jealousy of the army, and strong national prejudices, all contributed to confound disinterested zeal with private ambition, and talents with quackery. Supported by the promises which had been given by Mr. Deane, a numerous band of foreigners besieged the congress; their chief was a clever but very imprudent man, and although a good officer, his excessive vanity amounted almost to madness. With M. de ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... of these men. The doubt which may be reasonably felt and expressed as to the consistency of their attitude reflects no discredit on them personally. Nevertheless, the alternative must be faced, that a 'modernised' Catholicism must either descend to deliberate quackery, or proclaim that the bank from which the main part of her revenues ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... excessive bitterness between the applicants for ordination and those appointed to confer it: one young clergyman at Weimar shot himself on this account; heresy, and jarring, and unprofitable logic, were universal. Hence Herder's vehement attacks on this 'pernicious quackery;' this delusive and destructive 'system of words.'[26] Wieland strove against it for another reason. He had, all his life, been labouring to give currency among his countrymen to a species of diluted epicurism; to erect a certain smooth, and elegant, ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... with these gentlemen, it is because he will bear "no brother near the throne" of humbug and quackery. Like a steward who tricks his master, but keeps the rest of the servants honest, PUNCH will gammon the public to the utmost of his skill, but he will take care that no one else shall exercise a trade of which he claims by prescription ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 28, 1841 • Various
... study of quackery on one side and of gullibility on the other, founded on the mediaeval idea of the philosopher's stone,[155] and applies as well to the patent medicines and get-rich-quick schemes of our day as to ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... any ulterior effects which may be apprehended from the remedy itself. It generally troubles them not a whit that their remedy implies a complete reconstruction of society, or even a reconstitution of human nature. Against all such social quackery the obvious injunction to the quacks is, ...
— What Social Classes Owe to Each Other • William Graham Sumner
... reasoning in many others. But the rather liberal rules of interpretation, which it is now the fashion to apply to the first chapter of Genesis, will relieve the reader from any scruples on the former account; and as to the latter, in these days of scientific quackery, it would be quite too harsh to make any great complaint about such peccadilloes. The writer has taken up almost every questionable fact and startling hypothesis, that have been promulgated by proficients ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
... pay for the one insertion?" "Oh, nothing," I replied, "as the editorial probably did you more injury than the advertisement did you good." On leaving, with prophetic vision, he said, "I prophesy a short life for this paper; the business world is based on quackery, and you cannot live without it." With melancholy certainty, I replied, "I fear you ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... motive of delicacy that he persisted in making a needless mystery of his suspicions. In any case he was evidently a man who despised all quackery from the bottom of his heart. The old doctor looked at him with a frown of disapproval, as if his frank confession had violated the unwritten laws ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... be more true, than the proposition ludicrously illustrated in this passage, that real science is in most instances of slow growth, and that the discoveries which are brought to perfection at once, are greatly exposed to the suspicion of quackery. Like the ephemeron fly, they are born suddenly, and may be expected to ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... widespread interest has been developed in the question: Can disease be healed through mental treatment? If so, under what conditions and subject to what limitations? Has mental healing a philosophical and scientific basis, or is it variously composed of quackery, superstition, and assumption? In the simplest terms, how much truth does it contain? Any candid inquirer will admit that even if a minimum of its claims can be established, the world needs it. If it can be of service in lessening or mitigating the appalling aggregation of human suffering, disease, ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... of superstitious reverence for office which leads us to exaggerate the merits of the occupant, and to suppose that he must be wiser than common men. He, however, who gains access to cabinets, soon finds out by what foolishness the world is governed. He finds that there is quackery in legislation as in everything else; that rulers have their whims and errors as well as other men, and are not so wonderfully superior as he had imagined, since even he may occasionally confute them in argument. Thus awe subsides into confidence, confidence inspires familiarity, and ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... devil by prayers and fasting; and, by George, sir, I wouldn't swap my modest victory for the vogue of the biggest boomster in England! [Boisterously.] Ha, ha, ha! Whoop! [Seizing ROOPE and shaking him.] Dare to preach your gospel to me now, you arch-apostle of quackery and self-advertisement! ...
— The Big Drum - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... Intellectual non-combatant It is so hard to prove a negative Let him be patient with an opinion he does not accept Life becomes to them as death and death as life List of things that everybody says and nobody thinks List of things that everybody thinks and nobobody says Lurch to quackery, owing to their very loose way of evidence Meddling with things that can take care of themselves Most persons have died before they expire No company of craftsmen that did not need sharp looking after Nobody talks much that does n't say unwise things Not love in word, neither ...
— Widger's Quotations from the Works of Oliver W. Holmes, Sr. • David Widger
... and down in all the restless agony of body that arises from an overstrained mind. But soon Miss Monro reappeared, bringing with her a dose of soothing medicine of her own concocting, for she was great in domestic quackery. What the medicine was Ellinor did not care to know; she drank it without any sign of her usual merry resistance to physic of Miss Monro's ordering; and as the latter took up a book, and showed a set purpose of remaining with her patient, ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... current hypothesis about Mohammed, that he was a scheming impostor, a falsehood incarnate, that his religion is a mere mass of quackery and fatuity, begins really to be no longer tenable ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... fluctuations, and other terms of galvano-therapeutics. The doctor frankly admitted that he was not in a way of making a great deal of money or reputation by his discovery. It promised too much, and people consequently thought it must be quackery, and as sufficient proof of this he mentioned that he had now been five years engaged in practising the Thought-extirpation process without having attained any considerable celebrity or attracting a great number of patients. But he had a sufficient support in other branches ...
— Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy
... presented by the Empress to M. Gerard, chief clerk of Foreign Affairs, on the occasion of his going to Vienna to draw up the articles for her marriage-contract. "I should blush," said she, "if that proof of the quackery of my education were shown to me. I do not believe that I ever put a pencil to that drawing." However, what had been taught her she knew perfectly well. Her facility of learning was inconceivable, and if all her teachers had been as ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... is of so general a kind as to remind us more of some of the old philosophers than of the Roman satirists. At the same time he says he has only spoken against impostors, and is only the enemy of false pretence, quackery, lies, and puffing. But we may suppose that he would not be sparing of his lash in any direction, for in the "Resuscitated Philosophers," he observes, "Philosophy says that ridicule can never make anything worse than it is in itself, and whatever ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... fabrications, and the rudest tools and implements of husbandry. A large family herd together, of all ages and both sexes, in one little hut, sleep on one mat, and eat from one dish. From irregularity of habits and frequent exposure, they are often sick; and with the aid of a superstitious quackery, sink rapidly and in great numbers ...
— Thoughts on Missions • Sheldon Dibble
... plague by Moses, upon what seems to have been a sudden inspiration, was a stroke of genius in the way of quackery. He was, indeed, in this way almost portentous. It had a great and terrifying effect upon the people, who were completely subdued by it. Against corporeal enemies they might hope to prevail, but ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... Faculty: War and Peace Clearing away the Fog The Danger of living among Christians: A Question of peace or war Legislative Quackery, Ignorance, and Blindness to the Future Evils that need Attention What is Intellectual Greatness Spiritual Wonders—Slater's Tests; Spirit Pictures; Telegraphy; Music; Slate Writing; Fire Test MISCELLANEOUS ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, May 1887 - Volume 1, Number 4 • Various
... alarmed and his imagination excited, he has no difficulty in detecting all or a great many of the symptoms in himself, although at the same time none of them may exist. The quack, in his advertisements and publications, frequently warns the reader against quacks and quackery, as, for instance, take the following ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... excellent Vincent de Paul himself!) were, whether they wished it or not, thaumaturgi. If we set out with the principle that every historical personage to whom acts have been attributed, which we in the nineteenth century hold to be irrational or savoring of quackery, was either a madman or a charlatan, all criticism is nullified. The school of Alexandria was a noble school, but, nevertheless, it gave itself up to the practices of an extravagant theurgy. Socrates and Pascal were not exempt from hallucinations. ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... healthy, and praiseworthy; who even exasperate them, that they may make capital out of the weaknesses of fallen man, are the most contemptible and yet the most dangerous of public enemies, let them cloak their quackery under whatsoever patriotic, or scientific, ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... believed that incarnate fiends could be expelled and evil spirits of every kind rebuked—these, like the holy water, the robes of the priest, and the sign of the cross, the Calvinists considered either with scorn and contempt as the tools of deliberate quackery and imposture, or with horror and loathing, as the fit emblems and instruments of ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... day, there can be no greater one than having certain portions of the people set off from the rest by a line drawn—they not privileged as others, but degraded, humiliated, made of no account. Much quackery teems, of course, even on democracy's side, yet does not really affect the orbic quality of the matter. To work in, if we may so term it, and justify God, his divine aggregate, the People, (or, the veritable horn'd and sharp-tail'd Devil, his aggregate, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... artistic movement had invaded dress and upholstery, and Pre-Raphaelitism tapered down into aestheticism, domestic art, and the wearing of sunflowers. Du Maurier became its satirist; Bunthorn and Postlethwaite presented it to the philistine understanding in a grotesque mixture of caricature and quackery. ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... manuals of school logic should not have secured Baxter from the repeated blunder of 'Cum hoc, ergo, propter hoc'; but still more strange that his piety should not have revolted against degrading prayer into medical quackery. ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... what improvement has taken place in the Surrey region. If at first he indulged in rant, he has now subsided into an even vein; he puts things plumply, and tells his feelings gravely, and makes his points without quackery. So it is plain that when he gives notice of a contribution for his college, in which young men are trained for the ministry, and states simply, in justification, that one hundred and fifty have already left it, and are now engaged in preaching the dissenting word, he is to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... under the universal depression and want of confidence, all trade had well-nigh stopped, and political quackery, with its cheap and dirty remedies, had full control of the field. In the very face of miseries so plainly traceable to the deadly paper currency, it may seem strange that people should now have begun ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... him as one; and I conjure you, sir, to let the fatherless find in the preceptor, a father. Let him only meet for a year or two with kindness, and I will cheerfully trust to Providence for the rest. Though I detest the quackery of getting up a scene, I wish to be as impressive as I can, as I am sorry to say, more than a year will unavoidably pass before I can see this poor youth again. Let me, at that time, I conjure you, see him in health and cheerfulness. ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... nation was falling to pieces from its own sins. Brutish and filthy idolatry in high and low—oppression, violence, and luxury among the court and the nobility—shame, and poverty, and ignorance among the lower classes—idleness and quackery among the priesthood—and as kings over all, one fool and profligate after another, set on the throne by a foreign conqueror, and pulled down again by him at his pleasure. Ten out of the twelve tribes of Israel had been carried off captive, young and old, into a ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... improve, when the bill came and blighted everything. Now the people are growing idle and discontented. They are all right when left alone. Everybody likes the Donegal peasants, and they deserve to be liked. Only leave them alone; that's what they want; and not Home Rule nor any other quackery." ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... exposition of the state of the kingdom in 1814 was undignified, and appeared to be unjust. The points in which it reflected honour on the authority from whence it emanated, were the moral tone, the liberal spirit, and the absence of all quackery, which were its leading features. These recommendations had their weight with right-minded, sensible people; but they passed for little with a public accustomed to the dazzling noise and bustle of the power which ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... with a smiling countenance, and while one hand is employed in shaking yours, he is disembarrassing you of the contents of your pocket with the other. Underline is a gentleman of some literary attainments, though not entirely divested of quackery; he is particularly noted for the emphasis he gives to certain points in his discourse, and though in some cases, perhaps, he is a little too prodigal of this kind of effect, yet we could not well do without him. Undermine is a greater rascal than Underhand, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 532. Saturday, February 4, 1832 • Various
... interest to the historian) a Secret-Book of Queen Elizabeth, in manuscript, written, for aught I know, by her own hand. On examination, however, it proved to contain, not secrets of state, but recipes for dishes, drinks, medicines, washes, and all such matters of housewifery, the toilet, and domestic quackery, among which we were horrified by the title of one of the nostrums, "How to kill a Fellow quickly"! We never doubted that bloody Queen Bess might often have had occasion for such a recipe, but wondered at her frankness, and at her attending to these anomalous necessities in such a methodical ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... reason not easy to explain, treated as removing every objection to the concession of Home Rule to Ireland. This astounding variation of opinion in the doctors of the State savours of empiricism, not to say quackery. A surgeon who tells a patient that he will not live unless his leg is amputated may be right, and may be worthy of trust; another surgeon who asserts that amputation is unnecessary may be right, and worthy of trust. But the surgeon who one moment insists that amputation ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... disgraceful business than the various "consumption cure" humbugs be imagined? Founded on fraud, maintained by deceit, perpetuated by falsehood—the sick are exploited to pay dividends on corporate quackery. How much longer will this outrage on the unfortunate victims of the White Plague be tolerated? If not for humanitarian reasons, then for its own protection, at least, society should demand that such cruel frauds be suppressed. Their existence is a ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... kind of cheating is quackery.—The quack is liar, thief, and murderer all in one. For in undertaking to do things for which he has no adequate training and skill, he pretends to be what he is not. He takes money for which he is unable to render a genuine equivalent. And by inducing people to trust their lives in his incompetent ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... "An immense power for quackery, my dear Miss Olive!" This broke from Basil's lips in spite of a vow he had just taken not to say anything that should "aggravate" his hostess, who was in a state of tension it was not difficult to detect. But he had lowered his tone to friendly pleading, and the offensive ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... no sooner ended his remarks when a score of Saints and Sinners sprang up to protest against this ribald quackery. The utmost confusion prevailed for several moments. Finally the venerable Dr. Poole was accorded the floor. "Far be it from me," said he, solemnly, "to lend my approval to any enterprise that contemplates bibliomania as a disease instead ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... took agues—and afterwards scrofula—under his protection; patronized by his old dowager, and lucky in some of his desperate quackery, Dr. Frumpton's reputation rapidly increased, and from different counties fools came to consult him. His manners were bearish even to persons of quality who resorted to his den; but these brutal manners imposed upon many, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... preventing the spread of the cancer, but leaving it just where it is. They admit that, constitutionally, it has now a right to ravage two-thirds of the body politic—but they protest against its extension. This in moral quackery. Even some, whose zeal in the Anti-Slavery cause is fervent, are so infatuated as to propose no other remedy for Slavery but its non-extension. Give it no more room, they say, and it may be safely left to its fate. Yes, but who shall "bell the cat?" Besides, ...
— No Compromise with Slavery - An Address Delivered to the Broadway Tabernacle, New York • William Lloyd Garrison
... tyrannical but the idea once admitted that there may be many churches; that what is called the State can be separated from what is called the Church; the plea of infallibility and of authority soon becomes ridiculous—a mere fiction of political or fashionable quackery to impose upon the uneducated ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the latter;—such appeals being always met by him with those sallies of ridicule, which he found the best-humoured vent for his impatience under argument, and to which, notwithstanding the venerable name and services of Mr. Bentham himself, the quackery of much that is promulgated by his followers presented, it must be owned, ample scope. Romantic, indeed, as was Lord Byron's sacrifice of himself to the cause of Greece, there was in the views he took of ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... for scientific treatment. Practitioners hitherto have been the only students; and so, as in medicine, before the rise of Physiology and Natural History, experimenta fructifera, and not lucifera, have been sought. The scheme of such a science has even been thought quackery, through the vain attempts of some theorists to frame universal precepts, as though their failure (arising from the variety of human circumstances) proved that the phenomena do not conform to universal ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing
... jargon, leaving obscurity more obscure than before. As for us, who hunger after lucidity, let us relinquish abstruse theories to whoever delights in them and confine our ambition to observable facts, without pretending to explain the quackery of the plasma. Our method certainly will not reveal to us the origin of instinct; but it will at least show us where it would be waste of time to ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... crabbed terms; the gold-dust of erudition to gild over a title; such as "Tetradymus, Hodegus, Clidopharus;" "Adeisidaemon, or the Unsuperstitious." He pretends these affected titles indicated their several subjects; but the genius of Toland could descend to literary quackery. ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... have been here a fortnight. I am already a little stronger...Dr. Gully feels pretty sure he can do me good, which most certainly the regular doctors could not...I feel certain that the water-cure is no quackery. ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... inducement to notice the above disorder arises out of the well-known fact, that there is no complaint of childhood more frequently subjected to quackery and mismanagement than is this. Indeed, there are few maladies against which a greater array and variety of means have been recommended, than ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.
... willingly submit to any guide who boldly asserts his claim to superior discernment. It is more difficult to ascertain and establish the merits of a poem than the powers of a machine or the benefits of a new remedy. Hence it is in literature, that quackery is most easily puffed, and excellence most ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... put side by side with Captain Bobadil, in the same comedy, perhaps Jonson's masterpiece in the way of comic caricature. Cynthia's Revels was a satire on the courtiers and the Poetaster on Jonson's literary enemies. The Alchemist was an exposure of quackery, and is one of his best comedies, but somewhat overweighted with learning. Volpone is the most powerful of all his dramas, but is a harsh and disagreeable piece; and the state of society which it depicts is too revolting ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... promise, but very defective. By erasures here and skillful touches there he had hoped to assist nature in carrying out her evident intentions. The tragedy that well-nigh resulted taught him that human lives are dangerous playthings, and that quackery in attempting spiritual reform involved more peril than ignorant ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... with your clothes first; and then we will see to the rest. My goodness, what a bundle: quackery, ignorance, quarrelsomeness, vainglory; idle questionings, prickly arguments, intricate conceptions; humbug and gammon and wishy-washy hair-splittings without end; and hullo! why here's avarice, and self-indulgence, and impudence! luxury, effeminacy and peevishness!—Yes, I see ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... for a poverty-stricken horde—could only result in making him a poor craftsman, for he had but half a heart in either cause. By the poverty and ignorance of his people, the Negro minister or doctor was tempted toward quackery and demagogy; and by the criticism of the other world, toward ideals that made him ashamed of his lowly tasks. The would-be black savant was confronted by the paradox that the knowledge his people needed was a twice-told ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... fearless of all riders." But the confidence with which they propose their theories is less surprising than the facility with which their propositions have been entertained, and their extravagant pretensions admitted. We need not marvel at the success of quackery in medicine and theology, when we look at the career of the St. John Longs in political life. From the time in which the bullion question came out of Pandora's Scotch mull, parliament has been wearied with the interminable discussions ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 476, Saturday, February 12, 1831 • Various
... commerrianti. The landholders, to be taxed; the literary men, to be silenced; and the merchants, to have all the ports shut against them. These sounding words in Italian are even better adapted to the purposes of quackery than ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein |
