"Sham" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the English people under Puritan influence that makes Great Britain a sham monarchy and a ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... new maid was pouring out her hot water, she was suddenly aware of the girl's round blue eyes wandering, as it were, mechanically to her hand. This little hoop of gold, then, had an awful power! A rush of disgust came over her. All life seemed suddenly a thing of forms and sham. Everybody then would look at that little ring; and she was a coward, saving herself from them! When she was alone again, she slipped it off, and laid it on the washstand, where the sunlight fell. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... failure is therefore a 'logical fallacy' such as we have already discussed. It follows that an extra-logical fallacy of the premises must lie in what cannot be reduced to rules of evidence, that is, in bad observations (Sec. 5), or sham ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... tortured him, and striding about the room. "To fight every minute against this monster, to fight in every fashion, to irritate her, to destroy a grain of her influence, in a single mind, in a little community, to expose her pretense, her sham virtues, her splendid hypocrisy, these are the breath of my life. That hate will never ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... the ground, dressed in uniform, and mounted on their splendid steeds: their plumes waving over their cocked-hats in true military array. A band of music, as is usual, accompanied the soldiers. There was also a "sham-fight," before the breaking up of the encampment, and it was really terrifying to me, who had never seen a battle fought, to witness two columns of troops drawn up, and, at the roll of the drum, behold them engage in deadly conflict, to all appearance, and the smoke curling ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... month that she has staid away because of sickness! It's probably an excuse to go on some picnic or other. Tell Mr. Gibson that I say to fine her double the regular amount. We must put a stop to this sham sickness among the women clerks; it's getting ...
— For Gold or Soul? - The Story of a Great Department Store • Lurana W. Sheldon
... assured that everything the Lord has made is good. Go to the priests, then, and leave philosophers in peace! At any rate, do not ask us to accommodate our doctrines to the lessons you have been taught. That is what those rascals of sham philosophers will do for you. Ask them for any doctrine you please, and you will get it. Your University professors are bound to preach optimism; and it is an easy and agreeable task to ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism • Arthur Schopenhauer
... might cost them their life. This no doubt led them to practise imposture for the purpose of concealing their ignorance; but it also supplied them with the most powerful motive for substituting a real for a sham knowledge, since, if you would appear to know anything, by far the best way is actually to know it. Thus, however justly we may reject the extravagant pretensions of magicians and condemn the deceptions which they have practised on mankind, the original institution of this class of ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... undergraduates regard me as a shilly-shallying pedant. On my part,' he added drily, 'I am not slow to retaliate. Every term I live I find the young man a less interesting animal. I regard the whole university system as a wretched sham. Knowledge! It has no more to do with ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... solitude and introspection had an alarmingly depressing effect upon him. He says that the result of this was an appalling mental agony: "It seemed to me after a day or two that there was no truth in religion, that Jesus Christ was not God, that the whole of life was an empty sham, and that I was, if not the chiefest of sinners, at any rate the most monumental of fools." He went to the Advent services feeling, he says, like a soul in hell. But matters mended after that, and the ordination itself seemed to him a true consecration. He read the Gospel, and he remembered ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... ickery, am, Pick ma nick, and slick ma slam. Oram, scoram, pick ma noram, Shee, show, sham, ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... the Bourbon dynasty drove the Louis from Paris to Versailles and from Versailles to Marly. Millions were wasted to build the vast monument of royal fatuity, and when it was done the Grand Monarque found it necessary to fly from time to time to the sham solitude and mock retirement he ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... Beside the Oxus, all the Persian lords 355 To cope with me in single fight; but they Shrank; only Rustum dar'd: then he and I Chang'd gifts,[32] and went on equal terms away.' So will he speak, perhaps, while men applaud. Then were the chiefs of Iran sham'd through me." 360 ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... there is no need to think of George Fox as arguing or fighting against real Christianity in any of the churches. He was fighting, rather, against sham religion, formality and hypocrisy wherever he found them. In that great fight all who truly love Truth and God are on the same side, even though they are called by different names. So remember that these old labels ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... favourite rendezvous, and much time was killed there in conversation, card-playing, and chess. Among the group assembled, one crisp afternoon in February, was an old gentleman, called Shamsundar Ghosh, and known to hosts of friends as "Sham Babu". He was head clerk in a Calcutta merchant's office, drawing Rs. 60 a month (L48 a year at par), which sufficed for the support of his wife and a son and daughter, respectively named Susil and ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... back so far. I am reading Clarendon's Hist. Rebell. at present, with which I am more pleased than I expected, which is saying a good deal. It is a pet idea of mine that one gets more real truth out of one avowed partisan than out of a dozen of your sham impartialists—wolves in sheep's clothing—simpering honesty as they suppress documents. After all, what one wants to know is not what people did, but why they did it—or rather, why they thought they did it; and to learn ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Among his sham titles are Dux Roani and 'de Roano,' clearly referring, as Mr. Steuart notices, to de la Cloche's travelling name of Henri de Rohan. The Neapolitan pretender, therefore, knew the secret of that incognito, and so of de la Cloche's mission to England in 1668. That, possessing this ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... has not escaped the malice of Porphyry, supposes some error and passion in one or both of the apostles. By Chrysostom, Jerome, and Erasmus, it is represented as a sham quarrel a pious fraud, for the benefit of the Gentiles and the correction of the Jews, (Middleton's Works, vol. ii. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... friends, that there was a mine of wealth in Hook Court, from whence would always come for her use, house and furniture, a carriage and horses, dresses and jewels, which latter, if not quite real, should be manufactured of the best sham substitute known. Soon after her brilliant marriage with Mr Dobbs Broughton, she had discovered that the carriage and horses, and the sham jewels, did not lift her so completely into a terrestrial paradise as she had taught ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... were drawn up; one on red paper, known as lal kagaz, containing a clause embodying Omichand's demand; the other on white, containing no such clause. Admiral Watson, with bluff honesty, refused to have anything to do with the sham treaty; it was dishonorable, he said, and to ask his signature was an affront. But his signature was necessary to satisfy Omichand. At Clive's request, it was forged by Mr. Lushington, a young writer of the Company's. ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... ensnar'd; "Caught by the husband's skill, whose art the chains "In novel form had fram'd. The Lemnian god "Instant wide threw the ivory doors, and gave "Admittance free to every curious eye: "In shameful guise together bound they laid. "But some light gods, not blaming much the sight, "Would wish thus sham'd to lie: loud laugh'd the whole, "And long in heaven the ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... at least there were any grounds for them, it would be something to get hold of, to cling to. Now there are only shadows that hide themselves in the bushes, and stick out their heads and grin; it is like fighting with the air, or firing blank cartridges in a sham fight. A fatal reality would have called forth resistance, stirred life and soul to action; but now my thoughts dissolve into air, and my brain grinds a void until it is on fire.—Put a pillow under my head, and throw something ...
— Plays: The Father; Countess Julie; The Outlaw; The Stronger • August Strindberg
... the children of the settlement, on the grassy margin of the street, or at the domestic thresholds, disporting themselves in such grim fashion as the Puritanic nurture would permit; playing at going to church, perchance; or at scourging Quakers; or taking scalps in a sham-fight with the Indians; or scaring one another with freaks of imitative witchcraft. Pearl saw, and gazed intently, but never sought to make acquaintance. If spoken to, she would not speak again. If the children gathered ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... what there is is pucka! There's nothing the matter with this representative of the people in the question of taste. Four Aubusson chairs... A bureau signed 'Percier-Fontaine,' for a wager... Two inlays by Gouttieres... A genuine Fragonard and a sham Nattier which any American millionaire will swallow for the asking: in short, a fortune... And there are curmudgeons who pretend that there's nothing but faked stuff left. Dash it all, why don't they do as I do? They ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... days and months and years have been passed in these proceedings, and the parties to the suit are exhausted, and the whole matter in dispute is worn out with age, then these men, as if they were the very heads of their profession, often introduce sham advocates along with themselves. And when they have arrived within the bar, and the fortune or safety of some one is at stake, and they ought to labour to ward off the sword of the executioner from some innocent man, or calamity and ruin, ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... much in her surpassing loveliness of person, though doubtless that had had its effect upon me, as in that angelic purity and fascinating simplicity and truthfulness of character which I now discovered to be a mere worthless sham. It was evident enough that Merlani had been her lover—most probably her accepted lover—when I appeared upon the scene; and that, dazzled by my appearance of superior wealth, she had in the most heartless and cruel manner thrown him overboard; and, with a cunning ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... and touched his helmet; he understood perfectly well. The two passed on together and the sham sailors crossed the road. Very quietly Field proceeded to the back of the house. It was a little dark here, and he guided himself by pressing his fingers to the walls. Presently he stopped, and a low chuckle ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... Lytton (bitten by what fly who knows?) attacked Tennyson in The New Timon, a forgotten satire. We do not understand the ways of that generation. The cheap and spiteful genre of satire, its forged morality, its sham indignation, its appeal to the ape-like passions, has gone out. Lytton had suffered many things (not in verse) from Jeames Yellowplush: I do not know that he hit back at Thackeray, but he "passed it on" to Thackeray's old college companion. ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... 'Northern Races of Central Australia,' by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen. They have no lessons except in tracking and catching birds, beasts, fishes, lizards, and snakes, all of which they eat. But when they grow up to be big boys and girls, they are cruelly cut about with stone knives and frightened with sham bogies—'all for their good' their parents say—and I think they would rather go to school, if they had their choice, and take their chance of being birched and bullied. However, many boys might think it better fun to begin to learn hunting as soon as they can ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... Coverlet.—It is discouraging to the mother to find the eiderdown coverlets becoming soiled where the children rub their hands over them. This can be avoided by making a tiny sham of swiss or other similar material and basting it across the top of the coverlet. It can be pinned into place at the corners with tiny baby pins or caught with a few stitches. These shams edged with narrow lace ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... one like you who stands steadfastly near me, Knows me and likes me for just what I am, Some one like you who knows just how to cheer me, Some one who's real without pretense or sham. Some one whose fellowship isn't a fetter Binding my freedom—who's loyal all through, Some one whose life in this world makes it better, Blest to me, best ...
— Some One Like You • James W. Foley
... for Lippi stand in the place of Andrea's soulless wife. Lucrezia's illusive beauty lured his soul to its doom; and Lippo, forced, as a child of eight, to renounce the world and put on the cassock he habitually disgraced, triumphantly cast off the incubus of a sham spirituality which only tended to obscure what was most spiritual in himself. He was fortunate in the poet who has drawn his portrait so superbly in his ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... other things noted in these first glimpses, that "they had everything about them in the most perfect style; ivory-backed brushes, and lovely inlaid dressing-cases, Ginevra; the best all through, and no sham!" Yes, indeed, if that could but be said truly, and need not stop ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... learnt—though this knowledge may not have passed beyond the stage of feeling—that the universe is one simple texture, in which all things have their explanation and their place. Combing out the confusions which enmesh it, losing its sham and separate life and finding its true life there, it will know what to love and how to act. The goal of this process, which has been called entrance into the freedom of the Will of God, is the state described by the writer of the "German Theology" when he said "I ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... quiet, and this requires not only general quiet in the house, but quiet in the movements of all persons in the room; speaking, not in a whisper, but in a low and gentle voice; walking carefully, not in a silk dress nor in creaky shoes, but not on tiptoe, for there is a fussy sham quietness which disturbs the sick far more than ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... enjoyments were the sham fights on land and water. Many a hard-fought battle was waged between the boys and young men who made up his guards and crews, and who would be divided into two or more opposing parties, as the plan of battle required. This was rough and dangerous sport, and was attended ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... term for vagabonds, who formerly begged about under pretence of having been discharged destitute from ships and hospitals; whence an idle malingerer wanting to enter the doctor's list is said to "sham Abraham." From a ward in Bedlam which was appropriated for the reception of idiots, which was named Abraham: it is a very old term, and was cited by Burton in the Anatomy of Melancholy so far ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... he had said nothing because he wished to reserve for himself the satisfaction of pursuing the assassins and sham ghosts of the Chartreuse when the time came. He now arrived with full power to put that design into execution, firmly resolved not to return to the First Consul until it was accomplished. Besides, it was one of those adventures he was always seeking, at once dangerous and picturesque, an opportunity ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... Arthur to-day. He is on his road home, and we hasten to town, sooner than we expected, to meet him. He complains still of his health. We shall all go down to Beaufort Court. I write this at night, the pretended uncle and sham nephew having just gone. But though we start to-morrow, you will get this a day or two before we arrive, as Mrs. Beaufort's health renders short stages necessary. I really do hope that Arthur, also, will not be an invalid, poor fellow! one in ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 4 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... only going to be a make-believe battle!" said the Calico Clown. "Our Captain told me about it. It is to be a sham battle to amuse us. See, they are aiming their guns at ...
— The Story of a Bold Tin Soldier • Laura Lee Hope
... sovereigns regard as an ugly sore in the State, to be healed, is tended and watered as a fair flower by a clerical government. Pray give something to yonder sham cripple; give to that cadger who pretends to have lost an arm; and be sure you don't forget that blind young man leaning on his father's arm! A medical man of my acquaintance offered yesterday to restore his sight, by operating for the cataract. The father cried aloud with indignant ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... the left of the dock, were the stalls reserved during the sham trial for the counsel for the defence. As yet they were only occupied by the junior advocates, Sir Colman O'Loghlen and John O'Hagan. The benches at the right of the dock, and nearer to the bench, reserved for the Attorney-General and ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... and I soon became as expert as any of them. The ends of our lances were not only headless, but covered with a soft pad, so that we could charge at each other without much risk of serious injury; and one day, in a sham fight, I unhorsed all my opponents in succession. As I rode up to where the ladies—who had come out to witness our sports—were standing, they greeted me with loud applause, and Donna Isabella especially showed ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston
... a deep one! Mistaken! well, that's clever—it's a real stroke of genius! It is a thing I never thought o', wi' all my experience! I never thought beyond bringing about the real thing—not that one could sham it!" ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... honour than old sedate Bannerman; for his lads were lighter in the heel, glegger in the eye, and brisker in the manoeuvres of war: moreover, they were all far more similar in their garb and appearance, which gave them a seeming compactness that the countrymen had nothing like. But when the sham contest began, it was not long till Bannerman's disciples showed the proofs of their master's better skill to such a mark, that Hepburn grew hot, and so kindled his men by reproaches, that there was like to have been fighting in true earnest; for the ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... shrugged up his shoulders, joined his hands, and by signs begged his pardon; for speak he could not. The sham bridegroom made his moan, that the crippled bum had struck him such a horrid thump with his shoulder-of-mutton fist on the nether elbow that he was grown quite esperruquanchuzelubelouzerireliced down to his very heel, to the no small ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... part as happy as I am tonight. And when I thought I had lost your respect and your love, I no more thought of turning to the world for solace and happiness, than I would look in a coal-bin for diamonds. I knew all about the world, and in the depths of my soul realized that it was a sham. How far away it is to-night, with these solemn mountains rising all around us; and yet how near seem God and heaven, and how sweet and satisfying the hopes they impart! I have thought it all out, Frank. The time is coming when illness or age, mortal pain and weakness, ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... board was assigned the position nearest the building, a continuous shed protecting the restaurants of all nations, each with its proper specialty in the way of viands and service. Necessarily, there was in the carrying out of the latter idea a good deal of the sham and theatrical. But that gave the thing more zest, and the saloons were by no means the least effective feature of the appliances for introducing the races to each other. Tired of the tender intercourse ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... the seared, calloused, surfeited condition of the average mind in the churches. It is glutted with sham, and atrophied by the reiteration of high-sounding ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... hater,—and consequently deliberately made himself the fiercest of partisans. It was all pure fun with him, though it was death to the victims. He dearly loved to have a cut at the Cockneys, and was never happier than when running a tilt a l'outrance with what seemed to be a sham. Still, he felt no ill-will, and could see nothing wrong in the matter. We are entirely disposed, even in reference to this period of his life, to accept the honest estimate which he made of himself, as "free from jealousy, spite, envy, and uncharitableness." When the fever of his youth had ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... mock battles that became famous all around Blue Mountain. And of all the "two-pointers" that lived in that neighborhood, Nimble and his friend Dodger the Deer were known as the best sham-fighters. They could look fiercer and act angrier than any of their young friends. And the way they tore into each other was almost enough to frighten you, if ...
— The Tale of Nimble Deer - Sleepy-Time Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... of Sinking—modern cases of bombast, triviality, false rhetoric. "Speaking generally, it would seem that bombast is one of the hardest things to avoid in writing," says an author who himself avoids it so well. Bombast is the voice of sham passion, the shadow of an insincere attitude. "Even the wretched phantom who still bore the imperial title stooped to pay this ignominious blackmail," cries bombast in Macaulay's Lord Clive. The picture of a phantom who is ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... v. Walker, 211 U.S. 603 (1909), where two Georgians who conducted all of that business in Georgia created a sham corporation in South Dakota for the sole purpose of bringing suits in the federal courts which ordinarily would have been brought in the Georgia courts. Diversity jurisdiction was held not ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... life, my boy! You're up against realities all the time. Not a sham within the horizon. You eat till you burst, work till you sleep, and sleep till you're kicked awake. You should just see Liosha. Maturin says he has only met one other woman sailor like her, and that was the daughter of a trader sailing ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... my money diminish; I'm sick of the taste of champagne. Thank God! when I'm skinned to a finish I'll pike to the Yukon again. I'll fight — and you bet it's no sham-fight; It's hell! — but I've been there before; And it's better than this by a damsite — So me for the Yukon ...
— The Spell of the Yukon • Robert Service
... there not even a worse stumbling-block in aesthetics, delusive and deceptive, casting a veil of borrowed splendour and sham beauty over everything? They sang of "The Knights' Vigil of Light." What knights' vigil? With patents of nobility and students' certificates; false testimonials, as they might have told themselves. Of light? That was to say of the upper classes ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... have brought what was bidden, though it was never mentioned to you in English, which shows that your pretending not to understand was all a sham. What made you ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... sex,—the asserting, self-reliant, conquering air which marks the male animal. Wide-awake men (and women, too) who know what this element is, and means, will agree with me, and prefer the sharp twang of true fibre to the most exquisite softness and sweetness that were ever produced by sham refinement. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... there's no style or sham or fuss; We are glad to welcome callers who are glad to be with us, And we sit around and visit or we start a merry game, And we show them by our manner that we're mighty pleased they came, For there's ...
— When Day is Done • Edgar A. Guest
... me sham insanity during the trial, and he became irritably insolent in his manner toward me because I positively refused to do so. He told me that if I stuck to the truth I would surely be convicted, but if ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... withstood," was surprised in his own house by major Weymies, who tore him away from his shrieking wife and children, marched him up to Cheraw court-house, and after exposing him to the insults of a sham trial, had him condemned and hung! The only charge ever exhibited against him was, that he had shot across Black river at one of Weymies' ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... the least hurt in their feet, They bear them up and look they be not stirr'd. When humours rise, they eat a sovereign herb, Whereby what cloys their stomachs they cast up; And as some writers of experience tell, They were the first invented vomiting. Sham'st thou not, Autumn, unadvisedly To slander such rare creatures as ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... little groups, those of the same age keeping together, for there is no greater tyrant in the world than a big Kaffir boy over his younger fellows; when above nine or ten years old they practise sham-fighting with sticks; an imitation hunt is another of their boyish ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... the lad, who at the first touch of the three-pronged spear forgot all his sham resistance and settled himself in an easy position with his left arm round one of the staying ropes, standing well balanced and ready to dart the implement down into one of the great beautifully-marked ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... or blame of such as she would be worth having; awaiting either, she felt herself braced. She could envisage the past, collect it, display it in her lap without fear. "Here's my life's work, so far as it has gone. Now beat me, if you will; I'm not afraid of honest blows." She knew there would be no sham outcries from this high-looking ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... no distance can dim, Through a hundred disguises we can't mistake him, Whose play is all earnest, whose wit is the edge (With a beetle behind) of a sham-splitting wedge. ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... tells us: 'Things are not what they seem.' You appear disinclined to believe that I am one of those 'whited sepulchres,' outwardly fair and comely, but filled with unsavoury dust and ugly grinning skulls? Life is a huge sham, and we are all masked puppets, jumping grotesquely, just as the strongest hands pull the wires. Regina, I have gone to and fro upon the earth long enough to learn that the most acceptable present is never labelled advice; ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... Cesarine, keeping her eyes in play but little rewarded by her scrutiny of the sham Marseillais who devoured, like an old campaigner, never sure of the next meal, or of Rebecca who superintended the table in her stead with ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... resurrection to a new life? Would it be so some day with the Nation? Would the quiet workers, the pure thinkers, the faithful citizens mass some day to sweep away the lawlessness, the outrage, the crime, the treachery, the trickery, the shame, the sham of self-government's failures; to roll away the stone for the resurrection to a new Democracy? 'High brows,' 'dreamers,' 'ghost walkers,' 'barkers,' 'biters,' 'muck-rakers!' Oh, he knew the choice names that lawless greed cast at such as he; but a greater ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... bands play and the Review continues till past eleven o'clock. Then follows a sham fight. At noon precisely the royal carriages draw off the ground into the highway that leads down to the town and Gloucester Lodge, followed by other equipages in such numbers that the road is blocked. A multitude comes ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... but at the suggestion of the Treasurer of Portugal, John Affonso de Alemquer, he decided on this African crusade instead. For the same strength and money might as well be spent in conquests from the Moslem as in sham-fights between Christians. So after reconnoitring the place, and lulling the suspicions of Aragon and Granada by a pretence of declaring war against the Count of Holland, King John gained the formal ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... tell her so, and the way you leave her in the morning is going to settle her happiness for the day, though she may be too proud to let you know that it makes any difference. Women are quick to detect a sham, and they don't want you to say anything that you don't feel, but you are pretty sure to feel tenderly toward her sometimes, careless though you may be, and then is the time to tell her so. You don't want to wait until she is dead, and then buy ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... believe he will," I observed, laughing. "There will be a sham Dawson in the office and the genuine article will be out on the rampage. He is a man who couldn't sit still, not even if you tied him in his chair and ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... pretty good comedy. It is the first realistic South Sea story; I mean with real South Sea character and details of life. Everybody else who has tried, that I have seen, got carried away by the romance, and ended in a kind of sugar candy sham epic, and the whole effect was lost—there was no etching, no human grin, consequently no conviction. Now I have got the smell and look of the thing a good deal. You will know more about the South Seas after you have read my little tale than if you ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to place selling sham relics. Augustine wrote against "those hypocrites who, in the dress of monks, wander about the provinces carrying pretended relics, amulets, preservatives, and expecting alms to feed their lucrative poverty and recompense ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... difficulties. Baron von Blow; his conciliatory character. Vexatious cases. Two complicated marriages. Imperial relations. Superintendence of consuls. Transmission of important facts to the State Department. Care for personal interests of Americans. Fugitives from justice. The selling of sham American diplomas; effective means taken to stop this. Presentations at court; troublesome applications; pleasure of aiding legitimate American efforts and ambitions; discriminations. Curious letters demanding aid or information. Claims to inheritances. Sundry odd applications. The "autograph ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... keep the family ship, laden with all the weight of its time-honoured glory, sailing under the colours of his slip of a girl-wife alone! Often have I felt the lash of scorn. "A thief who had stolen a husband's love!" "A sham hidden in the shamelessness of her new-fangled finery!" The many-coloured garments of modern fashion with which my husband loved to adorn me roused jealous wrath. "Is not she ashamed to make a show-window of herself—and with ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... that delights you can't help seein' an injustice, can't help seein' through shams of all kinds, sham sentiment, sham compliments, sham justice. The tender lovin' nature that blesses your life can't help feelin' pity for them less blessed than herself. She looks down through the love-guarded lattice of her home from which ...
— Samantha on the Woman Question • Marietta Holley
... with which they had been received, were now attempting a transformation of their usual loundering gait into a martial stride, with the result of a foolish strut, very unlike the dignified progress of the sham earl, whose weak back roused in them no suspicion, and who had taken care they should not see his face. Across the paved court, and through the hall to the inner court, Tom led ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... wandering step and gestures. The roll of wheels came dull and muffled on her ear: those were phantoms surely, those meaningless faces that met her in the street, not living men and women, and yet she had a distinct perception of an apple-woman's stall, of some sham jewelry she saw in a shop-window. She was near turning back then, but it didn't seem worth while, and it was less trouble to plod stupidly on, always westward, ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... a bluff game, and I knew it, for as yet I had not secured my credentials; but when I saw the swart face of the sham agent change to a sickly yellow, and Smug begin to draw back and look anxiously from left to right, I was inwardly triumphant; but, alack! it is only in fiction that the clever detective always has the best of it, and at this moment there came an ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... arm; dropped the spear, caught up his club, forced back my head over the gunwale of the boat, raised his club and made believe to beat me to death, hammering the boat side with all his might. After this he made a sham attack upon my uncle, who, however, took it coolly, and only laughed after seeing the attack upon me, though I had noticed one hand go to his gun when Ebo made at me with ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... willing to hear me? I will explain further. Three years ago, my old friend Mr. Abernuckle failed. He owned this house, and, wishing to save it from his creditors, he had previously made a sham sale of it to me. I have occupied it free of rent. On the strength of this house, I got credit for furniture, for clothes, for our bread and meat. On the strength of this house, I have borrowed money enough to keep my principal creditors at bay. On the strength of this house, we occupy ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... and sprang off to run, but checked himself in five steps. "I don't seem able to stop your foolish talking," he said, "but you shall not chase around like that. You'll stay with me. I tell you that's a sham. Look at it." Obedient, he looked hard at it, and the cactus and rocks thrust through the watery image of the lake like two photographs on the same plate. He shouted with strangling triumph, and continued shouting until brier-roses along a brook and a farm-house unrolled ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... been tow-rowin up and down the high seas at tenpence a day these six years past, doin my little bit to spoil Boney's game; and here was this chap—dismissed with ignominy, mind!—toff'd out like a dandy Admiral, flashin his French rings and sham Emperors ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... face and figure—my poor figure of which I was so proud—there is nothing left which could really please you. I have been a vain, empty-headed girl all my life. I cared for myself more than anything on earth. I do now! You think I am brave and uncomplaining, but it is all a sham. I am too proud to whine, but in reality I am seething with bitterness and rebellion. I am longing to get well, not to lead a self-sacrificing life like Rachel Greaves, but to feel fit again, and wear pretty clothes, and dance, and flirt, and be admired—that's what ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... disgraced." Sutch started a little at the word. "Yes, perhaps—disgraced," Durrance repeated. "Well, the shock of the disgrace is, after all, his opportunity. Don't you see that? It's his opportunity to know himself at last. Up to the moment of disgrace his life has all been sham and illusion; the man he believed himself to be, he never was, and now at the last he knows it. Once he knows it, he can set about to retrieve his disgrace. Oh, there are compensations for such a man. You and I know ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... so simple!" cried Felice. "You think, because you guessed my assumed indifference to him to be a sham, that you know the extremes that people are capable of going to! But a good deal more may have been going on than you have fathomed with all your insight. I CANNOT give him up until he chooses ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... the fellows off for a while, but presently John's protector went away, and then the others became playful. They took their rifles and amused themselves with levelling them at him, and making sham bets as to where they would hit him. John, seeing the emergency, backed his chair well into the corner of the wall and drew his revolver, which fortunately for himself ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... stairs that night, in spite of the cautions given by the usher to be quiet, a sham scuffle ensued on purpose between Salisbury and Frank Digby, during which the former let his candle fall over the bannisters, and they were left in darkness; though, happily for the comfort of the doctor's dinner party, the second hall and back staircase ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... not based on reality; sham, in a large sense, is never successful. In the life of the individual, as in the more comprehensive life of the State, pretension is ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... after surgical preliminaries, to be devoured by vultures, and how the vultures, when gorged, would flap to the roof of his house and sit there in contemplation. And the companion on my left would tell how, when he was unfamous and on his beam-ends, he would stay in bed with a sham attack of influenza, and on the day when a chance offered itself would get up and don his only suit—a glorious one—and, fitting an eye-glass into his eye because it made him look older, would go forth to confront the chance. And ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... a potato you can detect that fact at a glance when that mouth is in repose—foreign travel can never remove that sign. But he was a very delightful gentleman, and his little foible did not hurt him at all. We all have our shams—I suppose there is a sham somewhere about every individual, if we could manage to ferret it out. I would so like to go to France. I suppose our society here compares very favorably with French society does it ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... "or rather I will speak it—between you and me runs the river of your parents' blood. It is so, yet, Miriam, I will confess to you that I repent me of that deed. Age makes us judge more kindly. To me your faith is nothing and your God a sham, yet I know now that to worship Him is not worthy of death—at least not for that cause would I bring any to their death to-day, or even to stripes and bonds. I will go further; I will stoop even to borrow from His creed. Do not ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... so." Thus he plays upon the name Esau, and takes the Hebrew word as though it were written, not [Hebrew: 'eshaw] but [Hebrew: 'ashav], a thing made.[123] Whence he shows that Esau represents the sham (made-up) greatness, which is boastful and insolent and shameless. Philo is referring perhaps to Apion, the vainglorious anti-Semite, whom he often covertly attacks. Again, whenever there is repetition in the text, a deeper meaning is portended. Dealing with ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... them. A garbled quotation from the Scriptures or an appeal to their domestic affections is the very thing required. Moreover, the man understands an audience. He can bully it, you know; put on airs of sham independence to cover his real obeisance; while you are polite and deferent to hide your ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... and go northward into what has now become their own country. They winter in Lincolnshire, gathering fresh strength during 873 from the never-failing sources of supply across the narrow seas. Again, however, in this year of ominous rest they renew their sham peace with poor Buhred and his Mercians, who thus manage to tide it over another winter. In 874, however, their time has come. In the spring, the pagan army under the three kings, Guthrum, Oskytal, and Amund, burst into Mercia. In this ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... others, of a scheming woman? Stories current in camp and Congress of the way that this grim humorist had, with an apposite anecdote or a rugged illustration, brushed away the most delicate sentiment or the subtlest poetry, even as he had exposed the sham of Puritanic morality or of Epicurean ethics. Brant had even solicited an audience, but had retired awkwardly, and with his confidence unspoken, before the dark, humorous eyes, that seemed almost too tolerant of his grievance. He had been to levees, ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... Where is the term that's claptrappier? Means out of temper, or out of your mind. Boot-black or old crossing-sweeper's far happier, Tied to his task in the town—as you'll find. Picking up coppers far better than picking up Shells by the sea, or sham friends on the snore. Bah! What have buffers to do with such ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 8, 1892 • Various
... not that the Committee was composed of English gentlemen, who would not wittingly do anything but examine into matters to the best of their ability, it would really seem, after a careful survey of the whole situation, as if this Committee was a mere sham got up as a shield to protect a ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... of the Aesir, where they practiced trials of skill one with another and held tournaments and sham fights. These last were always conducted in the gentlest and most honorable manner; for the strongest law of the Peacestead was that no angry blow should be struck or spiteful word ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... indignantly. "That's only Uncle Paul's way. He always talks like that when he gets on to politics. Why, I have a sham quarrel with him sometimes about Napoleon. I pretend that I admire him ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... beginning there was really nothing to prevent us from taking possession of the ship. The crew were a set of ruffians, specially picked for the job. The sham chaplain came into our cells to exhort us, carrying a black bag, supposed to be full of tracts, and so often did he come that by the third day we had each stowed away at the foot of our beds a file, a brace of pistols, a pound of powder, and twenty slugs. ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... sham!" cried Mr. Damon. "I think I can get a good night's sleep now. So they have formally ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton
... Aveyron, my object being to ascend the valley of a tributary of the Lot, to a spot where it flows out of a pool of unknown depth, called the Gouffre de Lantouy. The road passed under the village of Savagnac, built upon the hillside. A Renaissance castle with sham machicolations, little chambers. with their projecting floors resting on brackets turrets on culs de lampe and with extinguisher roofs, and a high terrace overgrown with vines and fig-trees left to fight their own battle, lorded ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... hate him!" responded Yerba. "He only wanted to bore me with his stupid, formal, sham-parental talk. Because he's my official guardian he thinks it necessary to assume this manner towards me when we meet, and treats me as if I were something between his stepdaughter and an almshouse orphan or a police board. It's perfectly ridiculous, for ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... a wretched life of struggles, of suppressed rebellion, of unuttered poetry, who to get away from Lousteau had climbed the highest and steepest peak of her scorn, and who would not have come down if she had seen the sham Byron at her feet, suddenly stepped off it as ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... The whole thing is galling me, I tell you, the whole—" Brenton hesitated; "infernal sham." The last two words he flung out ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... have gone to you for sisterly help and comfort, such as you gave just now, I would have frozen in the snow, and been less cold. Unless you break down the bar you put between us, I never want to see your face again,—never, living or dead! I want no sham farce of friendship between us, benefits given or received: your hand touching mine as it might touch Bone's or David Gaunt's; your voice cooing in my ear as it did just now, cool and friendly. It maddened me. Rest can scarcely come from ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... this sham walking delegate was a Pinkerton man, detailed grudgingly from the Chicago storm-center on Tom's requisition. His task was to scrutinize Nancy Bryerson's past, and to identify, if possible, one or more of the three ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... the old gentleman, "why do you people dabble in matters you don't understand? Come here, Tweddle, and let me show you. Can't you see what a miserable sham the thing is—a cheap, tawdry imitation of the splendid classic type? Why, by merely exhibiting such a thing, you're ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... and sham-fight; an enemy supposed to be attacking a convoy. Being in the convoy, I haven't a clear idea of what happened, but only know we were kept dodging about kopjes, and bolting across ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... passion he dared to dignify with the name of love: and when she now asked him to do her the justice which he could no longer plead his father's anger for denying—O God, where were thy thunderbolts!—he told her that their marriage was a sham one, that the chaplain was but a servant in disguise, and that in truth she was only his mistress. I had been dismissed the service through him—I will speak of that anon—the chaplain was dead—she ...
— Edward Barnett; a Neglected Child of South Carolina, Who Rose to Be a Peer of Great Britain,—and the Stormy Life of His Grandfather, Captain Williams • Tobias Aconite
... knows and understands. She is an angel, Brandon, an angel from heaven. But," she burst forth, "I am not altogether a sham. I AM the daughter of Colonel Castleton, and I AM the cousin of all the Murgatroyds,—the poor relation. It isn't as if I were the scum of the earth, is it? I AM a Castleton. My father comes of a noble family. And, Brandon, the only thing I've ever done in my life ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... imminent danger. A few old women ran clumsily down the road; others huddled into a corner to urinate, and all of them were howling at the top of their lungs, overcome by the necessity of insulting the women of La Doctrina, as if instinctively they divined the uselessness of a sham charity that remedied nothing. One heard only ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... might have been willing to write home from Padua or Louvain, in order to coax another remittance from his Irish friends—he would afterwards, in the presence of such men as Johnson, Burke, and Reynolds, wear sham honours. It is much more probable that, on his finding those supplies from Ireland running ominously short, the philosophic vagabond determined to prove to his correspondents that he was really at work somewhere, instead of merely idling away his time, begging or borrowing the wherewithal to pass ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... suddenly and passionately that her home-coming had been a miserable farce, a sham, and a delusion. And she called bitterly to mind words that she had once either read or heard: "Where the heart ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... the latter should have light in abundance, while the former would be involved in thick darkness. Availing himself of the privilege conferred by his peculiar office, and, perhaps, unwilling in his own person to test the rival powers of a sham prophecy and a real American bullet, he prudently took a position on an adjacent eminence; and, when the action began, he entered upon the performance of certain mystic rites, at the same time singing a war song. ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... that the attitude of the Socialists toward "tainted wealth" was all a sham. What had happened was simply that the German members of the local were getting German money, and making it "Socialist money" by the simple device of passing it through their consecrated hands. As this had ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... honesty in his clients, and less sham ridicule; but fundamental belief consoled him for superficial irony. As stated, he was enabled to live; people supported him with their backs turned. He was sometimes astonished that men could profess so little and believe so much at his house, when at church they ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... still unaccustomed laughter his reply to the proffered services of the guide. Indeed, there was much laughter in their excursions: his native humour sprang from the same well that held his seriousness. She was amazed at his ability to strip a sham and leave it grotesquely naked; shams the risible aspect of which she had never observed in spite of the familiarity four years had given her. Some of his own countrymen and countrywomen afforded him the greatest amusement in their efforts to carry off acquired European "personalities," combinations ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... scale of the whole facade, while the apparently built up windows above the genuine windows of the nave aisles, whose roofs have their apex about on a level with the sills of the large central lancets, are as much frauds as any of those sham windows in symmetrical Renaissance work, which so excite the ire of ardent champions ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White
... is Lemuel Barker?" She stood with the pillow- sham in her hand which she was just about to fasten on the pillow, and Sewell involuntarily took note of the fashion ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... Surajbansi Rajput principality goes back to the seventh century. It came into the British sphere in 1846. During part of the reign of Raja Sham Singh (1873-1904), the present Raja, Sir Bhure Singh, K.C.S.I., C.I.E., administered the State as Wazir, filling a difficult position with loyalty and honour. He is a Rajput gentleman of the best type. The Raja owns the ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... the music very much—so much that he begged for another selection and yet another. Mr. Smith did not appear to realize that Messrs. Pennock and Gaylord were passing through sham interest and frank boredom to disgusted silence. Equally oblivious was he of Mrs. Jane's efforts to substitute some other form of entertainment for the violin-playing. He shook hands very heartily, however, with Pennock and Gaylord when ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... into the world, and saw little in it that was good. He had tried to cherish an ideal, and found fidelity to it more than difficult. His philosophy did not assure him that a real deity existed. Death ended all. Was it not better to be done with the sham of life; to drink the Lethe water, and sink into eternal, dreamless slumber? He longed unspeakably to see Cornelia face to face; to kiss her; to press her in his arms; and ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... still visible in his interior, and, in order to get rid of a piece of evidence contrary to the traditions he holds to, seriously maintaining that this skeleton never belonged to a living creature, but was created with just these appearances; a make-believe, a sham, a Barnum's-mermaid contrivance to amuse its Creator and impose upon his intelligent children! And now people talk about geological epochs and hundreds of millions of years in the planet's history as calmly as if they were discussing the age of their deceased great-grandmothers. Ten or a ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... would not have been necessary to assign a reason for his conduct: madness is unaccountable: Ratione modoque tractari non vult. But when design, cunning, and fraud are made the charge, and carried to such an height, as to suppose him to be a party to the contrivance of a sham resurrection for himself, it is necessary to say to what end this cunning tended. It was, we are told, to a kingdom: and indeed the temptation was little enough, considering that the chief conductor of the plot was crucified for his pains. But were the means made use of at ...
— The Trial of the Witnessses of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ • Thomas Sherlock
... not trouble him greatly, however. It was only in keeping with what he conceived he had finally discovered the whole world to be—a gigantic sham—and he mentally remarked to himself "I told you so," and drew an unusually large spread-eagle upon a fresh ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith
... Sunday came in upon Sunday, roaring on his flat, defenceless shore, Sunday behind Sunday rose towering, in awful perspective, away to the verge of an infinite horizon—Sunday after Sunday of dishonesty and sham—yes, hypocrisy, far worse than any idolatry. To begin now, and in such circumstances, to study the evidences of Christianity, were about as reasonable as to send a man, whose children were crying for their dinner, off to China ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... the bastions; but in the high building which surmounted the gate, and which was several stories one above the other, the port-holes were closed with red doors, on the outside of which were painted the representations of cannon, not unlike at a distance the sham ports in a ship of war. The gates of a Chinese city are generally double, and placed in the flanks of a square or semicircular bastion. The first opens into a large space, surrounded with buildings, which are appropriated entirely ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... except the one thats to hang ye, theres no need of singing out, as if ye was hailing a deaf man on a topgallant yard. May-hap you think youve got my true name in your sheep skin; but what British sailor finds it worth while to sail in these seas, without a sham on his stern, in case of need, dye see. If you call me Penguillan, you calls me by the name of the man on whose hand, dye see, I hove into daylight; and he was a gentleman ; and thats more than my worst enemy will say of any of the family ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper |
