"Trumpery" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he says: some one or other chained! I don't like it. I'm afraid he's been trumping up some trumpery that'll involve the ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... him she would not be friendly with him any more, I do call it snobbish, don't you, Mamma? just because she is going to be a Marquise. It isn't as if he was an English Marquis even, like Lord Valmond, that would be of some importance—but a trumpery French title, without any land or money, it is ridiculous. Of course, here no one has his own land really since the Revolution, I mean like "Tournelle," they only call the new house that; I believe the real "Tournelle" ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... never shall know, for Angelica, in a rage, cried, "Get out, you saucy, rude creature! How dare you to remind me of your rudeness? As for your little trumpery twopenny ring, there, sir—there!" And she flung it ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Annam, some have regarded it merely as a trading enterprise, and not really an embassy from the Roman Emperor; Chinese writers, on the other hand, suggest that the envoys sold the valuable jewels and bought a trumpery collection of tribute articles ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles
... blast a way through every mountain. And it was not long after he had received my mother's letter with its allusion to my lack of a father, that he addressed himself to a bigger mountain than any of these little trumpery hills that you have watched me conquering. He invited me to his room one evening, and sat me in an armchair opposite him: and then he talked, while I watched the fire getting redder, as the room grew ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... fault to find but that the taste of all this luxury was commonplace. Art, and the distinction that comes of the choice of things that taste assimilates, was entirely wanting. A doctor of social science would have detected a lover in two or three specimens of costly trumpery, which could only have come there through that demi-god—always absent, but always present if the lady ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... coffee-room for a postchaise which was to take him to his school, he picked up a county newspaper containing two such specimens of provincial poetical talent as in those days might be read in the corner of any weekly journal. One piece was headed "Reflections of an Exile;" while the other was a trumpery parody on the Welsh ballad "Ar hyd y nos," referring to some local anecdote of an ostler whose nose had been bitten off by a filly. He looked them once through, and never gave them a thought for forty years, at the ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... you and your habit—write a department for the Saturday News after the fashion of the Noctes. Think it all over whilst you are away. What are you going to bring me for a present? Don't go to buying any foolish trumpery; you have no money to waste on follies. What I need is a "Noctes," and any other useful book you may get hold of in New York. Love to ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... who, therefore, tackle all the problems of the day—men's, women's, and children's rights and duties, marriage, education, suffrage, life, death, and immortality—with supreme indifference to what anybody else thinks or has ever thought, and have their own trumpery prophets, prophetesses, heroes and heroines, poets, orators, scholars and philosophers, whom they worship with a kind of barbaric fervor. The result is a kind of mental and moral chaos, in which many ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... with us, Master Miles," he said, "and we'll be off for them pearl fisheries next week. I have bought all the sandal-wood in the wreck, paying in trumpery, and at prices only about double Indian trade, and we will heave up, and carry the ship round to the wreck, and begin to take in this afternoon. There is capital holding-ground inside the reef, and the ship can be safely carried within a hundred ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... contrast between his pious words in Congress and his mad idea of forsaking everything to follow her around the world. Oh, the hypocrite! She had felt, as she sat listening to him, that his speech was a pack of lies, a mess of conventional trumpery and platitudes! The only one there who had spoken with any real sincerity, any real virtue, was that little old man, whom she had listened to with veneration because he had been one ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... trumpery story as this remains unnoticed at the time; but when all are gone, a stray copy from a stall falls into hands which, not knowing what to make of it, make history of it. It is a very curious distortion. The reader may take it on my authority, that ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... organization, and the number of the insurgents soon swelled to many thousands. These Syrians in a foreign land already, like their predecessors, seemed to themselves not unworthy to be governed by kings, as were their countrymen at home; and— parodying the trumpery king of their native land down to the very name—they placed the slave Salvius at their head as king Tryphon. In the district between Enna and Leontini (Lentini) where these bands had their head-quarters, the open country was wholly in the hands ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... peril. And in all simplicity he, told his story, how he had found the great bulk of Baron Duvillard's money going to the opposition newspapers as pretended payment for puffery and advertising, whilst on the other hand the Republican organs received but beggarly, trumpery amounts. He had been Minister of the Interior at the time, and had therefore had charge of the press; so what would have been said of him if he had not endeavoured to reestablish some equilibrium in this distribution of funds in order that the adversaries of the institutions of the ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... detached by our hostess to cover his left wing, that he was that happy warrior for whom I was seeking. He saw me looking at the red ribbon which adorned the left wing in question and which our gardener's wife told me the other day was "a poor trumpery sort of thing if KITCHENER meant it ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 23, 1914 • Various
... them open-mouthed. I suppose in every mind personal preference is magnified into the standard of perfection, and all the arguing in the world will fail to convince A that he is—artistically speaking—colour-blind, or B that her drawing-room is a bazaar of trumpery odds and ends! All the more reason to be thankful that we agreed. We were convinced that our taste was unique; but supposing for one moment that it was bad, we should at least share ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... now cared for the trinkets and other trumpery which they formerly so greatly sought for, but desired to have cotton goods, axes, knives, carpenters tools, fish-hooks, cooking utensils, and other things required by a civilised community. They also asked for paper, pens and ink, and copybooks. We had, unfortunately, no Bibles or other ...
— The Cruise of the Dainty - Rovings in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... like," replied Dickie; "the one has her chickens to reckon, and the other has his boys to whip. I would have given them the candle to hold long since, and shown this trumpery hamlet a fair pair of heels, but that Dominie promises I should go with him to bear share in the next pageant he is to set forth, and they say there are to be ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... telescope-tubes, worms for stills, bodies and coils for boilers, vacuum-pans, wort-refrigerators and various bent and contorted forms which evince the excellence of the material and of the methods. This is hardly enough, however, to justify the occupation of the position of vantage, and the trumpery collection of ropes, lines, nets, rods and hooks which is intended for a fishing exhibit only emphasizes the decision, acquiesced in by the public, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... said the coachman, haughtily. "You are only going to some trumpery little village or other in the neighborhood, while we are going ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... pleasant one, but for the lack of victual. The strangest land ever I did see, or think to see, is this. The poor men hereaway dwell in good houses, and lack meat: the rich dwell in yet fairer, and eat very trumpery. I saw not in all my life in England so much olive oil as in one week sithence I came into Spain. What I am for to live upon here I do marvel. Cheese they have, and onions by the cartload; but they eat not but little meat, and that all strings (a tender piece thereof have I not yet seen); ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... the love of show was like the love of money, and increased by indulgences, beyond the power of a manager to gratify: I proved by mathematical demonstration, that small theatres wanted nothing but good dialogue to support them: I entreated you to send your gorgeous trumpery to rag-fair, and to diminish your overgrown Drury, which no man could now think of entering unaccompanied by a telescope and an ear-trumpet. All the persuasions of a Tully, all the energy of a Waithman, were enlisted into my harangue; which finished by ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... up to Paris, so as to do for them at a single blow, and to rise to the highest height of genius in the biggest battle that ever was fought, a mother of battles! But the Parisians wanting to save their trumpery skins, and afraid for their twopenny shops, open their gates and there is a beginning of the ragusades, and an end of all joy and happiness; they make a fool of the Empress, and fly the white ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... such a mode of transacting business; his aim was to secure a select body of customers amongst the nobility and gentry, persons who looked to quality and durability in their purchases, and were capable of estimating the solid advantages of dealing with a tradesman who despised the trumpery artifices ...
— Mr. Joseph Hanson, The Haberdasher • Mary Russell Mitford
... had theretofore known only in day-dreams the life of light frivolity and fashion which found feverish and trumpery reflection at Frampton Court, was neither equipped nor disposed to be hypercritical in the first hours of her debut there; and at any other time, in any other temper, she knew, she must have been swept off her feet by its exciting ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... the proposal, and two and two they made their way through the narrow streets, not exactly knowing where they were going. They agreed, however, that except the crowds of savage, dirty-looking Arabs, and still more hideous blacks, tumbledown houses, and bazaars full of trumpery goods, there was nothing to be seen in Zanzibar. Suddenly they found themselves in a square, which Desmond recognised as the slave-market. It was far more crowded than when Archie and he had been there before. As they looked round, ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... much experience, that there is a divine truth, and a fervor and power in imparting it, with which God inspires the man who is wholly devoted to Him, in comparison with which the higher achievements of the man who lacks these are trumpery and rubbish. Many, many men have failed in the ministry, are failing in the ministry every day, because their principal reliance has been upon what they deem their thorough mastery of the soundest theories ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... daughter to me—that she has all kinds of good qualities, and several accomplishments, knowing something of conchology, more of botany, drawing capitally in the Dutch style, and playing remarkably well on the guitar—not the trumpery German thing so called—but the real Spanish guitar." His wife wrote letters for him, copied his manuscripts, and helped to correct his proofs. She remained at Oulton, or Yarmouth, while he went about; if he went to Wales or Ireland she sometimes accompanied ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... inanimate stupidity of our surroundings. It is strange that the laborious task once achieved should so often become the thing abhorred. Scales fall from our eyes, perspective is restored, and we see what a trumpery affair held us enthralled. I have often thought with dismay of the effect on scores of reformers, whom I know, if the reform to which they have sworn allegiance should be accomplished. To many this would be a personal disaster of the gravest kind. For years ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... swallow them at a mouthful, and rise to the height of his genius in a battle greater than all the rest—a mother-battle, as 'twere. But there, there! the Parisians were afraid for their twopenny skins, and their trumpery shops; they opened the gates. Then the Ragusades began, and happiness ended. The Empress was fooled, and the white banner flaunted from the windows. The generals whom he had made his nearest friends abandoned him for the Bourbons—a set of people no one had heard tell of. The Emperor bade ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... former letter I pointed out how cleverly the Nationalists dissect the bill, how they point out that its proposals are insulting to Ireland, how they prove that its provisions are inconsistent and unworkable, how they propose to discount the trumpery restrictions and the gimcrack "safeguards" of the proposed measure, how in short, they tear the bill to rags, laugh its powers to scorn, and hold its authors in high derision. The Belfast men do not discuss ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... he was lucky, and show his winnings to his wife, and chuckle and swear over them, and boast and rail, and tell her, if it was not for the cursed way his time was cut up with hospital, and field days, and such trumpery regimental duties, he could make a fortune while other men were thinking of it; and he very nearly believed it. And he was, doubtless, clear-headed, though wrong-headed, too, at times, and very energetic; but his genius was for pushing men out of their ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... portion of the public take a morbid delight in such works as Frankenstein, that "Poor, impossible monster abhorred," who would be disgusting if he were not so extremely ludicrous: and all this search after impossible mystery, such trumpery! growing into the popular taste, is fed with garbage; doing more harm than all the preachings and poundings of optimistic Reviews will be able to remedy ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... to enter into all the metaphysical trumpery of his Schools, nor wholly to confine my self to the language of the Pulpit; where we are told, that to think of GOD and of the Devil, we must endeavour first to form Ideas of those things which illustrate the description of rewards and punishments; ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... see none for heresy, or sacrilege, or calling the Pope and his cardinals gross impostors, and you two worthies are arrant rogues and fools, or we might have become purchasers to a large amount!" exclaimed the captain indignantly. "Heave this trumpery overboard, and you, Senhores priests, may be thankful that you have been deprived of the means of cheating your countrymen and deceiving the ignorant natives by your ...
— Villegagnon - A Tale of the Huguenot Persecution • W.H.G. Kingston
... pulled up the oomiak some way from the water, out of reach of the tide, and are unloading it. There are quantities of skins, tents, harpoons, &c. There! they are all starting up from the water, loaded down with trumpery,—going off from the shore toward the ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... such courtesans as Titian and Paris Bordone had painted was waning. Their place was adequately supplied by the easy dames of society, no longer secluded, proud and tranquil, but "stirred by the wild blood of youth and stooping to the frolic." "They are but faces and smiles, teasing and trumpery," says one of their critics, yet they are declared to be wideawake, natural and charming, making the most of their smattering of letters. Love was the great game; every woman had lovers, every married woman openly flaunted her ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... the Paradiso of Dante and the Second Part of Goethe's Faust are perhaps two of the best, the most infallible, touchstones for discovering whether we really possess what Tennyson calls the 'poetic heart'—not a trumpery aesthetic imitation but ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... Cousin George well remembered the day when his brother Captain first made his acquaintance. About two years after the commencement of his life in London, Captain Stubber had had an interview with him in the little waiting-room just within the club doors. Captain Stubber then had in his possession a trumpery note of hand with George's signature, which, as he stated, he had "done" for a small tradesman with whom George had been fool enough to deal for cigars. From that day to the present he and Captain Stubber had been upon most ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... certainly much better than that trumpery walk in the moonshine. Pope had not at this time joined the Tories, and both parties subscribed. He cleared over 5,000 pounds by the Iliad. Over the Odyssey he slackened, and employed two inferior wits to ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... heard that when Vyell found her she was a serving-girl, undergoing punishment (a whipping, to be precise) for some trumpery offence against the Sabbath. Yes, my dear sir, this is true; as it is true also that Vyell, like a knight-errant of old, offered to share her punishment, and did indeed share it to the extent of sitting in the stocks beside her. You'd have thought ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... of St. Peter's, and wherever else they like; they place paltry-looking wooden confessionals beneath its sublime arches, and ornament them with cheap little coloured prints of the Crucifixion; they hang tin hearts, and other tinsel and trumpery, at the gorgeous shrines of the saints, in chapels that are encrusted with gems, or marbles almost as precious; they put pasteboard statues of saints beneath the dome of the Pantheon;—in short, they let the sublime and the ridiculous ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... relief; As, where the gifts of Flora fall, On different flowers we see Alight the busy bee, Educing sweet from all. Thus much premised, don't think it strange, Or aught beyond my muse's range, If e'en my fables should infold, Among their nameless trumpery, The traits of a philosophy Far-famed as subtle, charming, bold. They call it new—the men of wit; Perhaps you have not heard of it?[2] My verse will tell you what it means:— They say that beasts are mere machines;[3] That, in their doings, ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... Trout truto. Trowel trulo. Truant kusxemulo, forkuranteto. Truce interpaco. Truck manveturilo. Truculent kruelega. True vera. Truffle trufo. Truly vere. Trump (cards) atuto. Trumpery cxifajxo senvalora. Trumpet trumpetadi. Trumpet trumpeto. Trumpeter trumpetisto. Trunk (animal or insect) rostro. Trunk (tree) trunko. Trunk (box) kesto, vojagxkesto. Trunk (of body) torso. Truss (bandage) bandagxo. Truss ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... and murgeon-makers, and preachers and player-folk, and Episcopalians and Methodists, and fools and fiddlers, and Papists and pie-bakers, and doctors and drugsters; by the shop-folk, that sell trash and trumpery at three prices—and so up got the bonny new Well, and down fell the honest auld town of Saint Ronan's, where blithe decent folk had been heartsome eneugh for mony a day before ony o' them were born, or ony sic vapouring fancies kittled in their ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... One enthusiast said to me, "Whin he dies, may the heaven be his bed, and his statue should be beside O'Connell's in Ennis." Now this model patriot, whom every one must perforce respect for his perfect honesty and disinterestedness, keeps a wretched little shop in a trumpery cabin. His stock-in-trade consists of a few newspapers, his pantry holds but potatoes. Yet he is a great power in Ennis, and the candidate for that borough who neglected him would fare badly. I am not insinuating that any charge of venality can attach to him. Quite the ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... round as if to see that everybody was admiring his action. Bill played his Jew's harp, strummed countless sentimental, music-hall ditties on its sensitive tongue, his being was flooded with exuberant song, he was transported by his trumpery toy. Bill lived, his whole person surged with a vitality impossible ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... feeling more miserable, as Rob elaborately sustained his old friendly manner. To cry, "Hallo, Peggy!" on meeting; to discuss the doings of the neighbourhood in an easy-going fashion, as if no cloud hovered between them, and then to march past the very gates without coming in, refuse invitations on trumpery excuses, and attend a church at the opposite end of the parish—such behaviour as this was worse than inconsistent in Peggy's eyes, it approached perilously ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... that the Apostle Paul, in his intense appreciation of the "spiritual element," made light even of the "resurrection of Christ," and everywhere shows his superiority to the beggarly elements of history, dogma, and ritual, another declares that he was so enslaved by his Jewish prejudices and the trumpery he had picked up at the feet of Gamaliel, that he knew but little or next to nothing of the real mystery of the very Gospel he preached; that while he proclaims that it is "revealed, after having been hidden from ages generations," he himself manages ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... blaze and thick of the affair, Irish Protestants jubilant, Irish Papists denouncing the whole movement as fraud and trumpery, John Bull perplexed, but excited, and still subscribing, a young bishop rose in his place in the House of Lords, and, with a vehemence there unusual, declared that he saw 'the finger of God in this second ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... notice of the fact, and mention only that it was so. How the poor people found the insufficiency of those things, and how many of them were afterwards carried away in the dead carts, and thrown into the common graves of every parish with these hellish charms and trumpery hanging about their necks, remains to be spoken ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe
... speak to her, waited below. A gentleman to see her? Nay, there must certainly be some mistake, thought Helen. It must assuredly be one of the useless hangers-on of her husband come to ask her to plead for him in regard to some trumpery loan. Well! anything for a novelty, and to take her thoughts away from herself. In this frame of mind she entered the lower room, where the visitor stood with his back to the door, gazing from the window, beside ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... was well done, my bird. Thy shape invisible retain thou still: The trumpery in my house, go bring it hither For ...
— The Tempest • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... this one of the French Men smiled, and told the Spaniard, he could let him into the Secret; while your Nation was in Pursuit of this imaginary Mountain of Gold, says he, and all your People neglected their Employments; we, with such Trumpery as these, have drawn away the Wealth of your Indian Mines; we sell our Ware in your Country, and carry your Money back to our own; By which Means we inrich our own Country, and impoverish yours: Of all the Treasures that come into Spain, you enjoy only the Name; for while ...
— The Theater (1720) • Sir John Falstaffe
... was 'May commons become uncommon'—his one attempt at a joke. He prayed that Epping Forest and Finchley Common might pass under the yoke as well as our foreign enemies. Young is driven out of all patience by the sight of 'fern, ling, and other trumpery' usurping the place of possible arable fields.[68] He groans in spirit upon Salisbury Plain, which might be made to produce all the corn we import.[69] Enfield Chase, he declares, is a 'real nuisance ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... of eighteen; some showed from time to time a dangerous weakness of mind. Over-strung and enfeebled, they gave enormous sums to ignorant charlatans; and it was a common thing for some bath-attendant or other trumpery who turned healer or prophet, to make a rapid fortune by the practice of medicine or theology. The number of lunatics increased continually; suicides multiplied in the world of wealth, and many of them were accompanied ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... our mother-tongue several excellent works in verse and prose, and, heaven be praised! but little left of the trash and trumpery stuff of those duncical mumblers of ave-maries and the barbarous foregoing Gothic age, I have made bold to choose to chirrup and warble my plain ditty, or, as they say, to whistle like a goose among the swans, rather than be thought deaf among so many pretty poets and eloquent ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... Stuart invasion plot is indeed afoot, and that union abroad of the Protestant powers for which we crave is by no means accomplished. Therefore, says the Protector, you must be ready to fight on land as well as by sea. No time this for disunion, trumpery quarrels over points of form. Yet such debate has ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... trumpery bit of a thing, but it is better for me to take it than have another salary on the list. In the next act, you know, I come on as ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... love to heap them up, Aldines, and Elzevirs, and Baskervilles, and Biponts, in all their grace and majesty. This was what filled that London box. This was all I had to show for twenty-five or thirty guineas of good money; a parcel of trumpery old Greek and Latin books I had ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... snatching the skirts of Fortemani's cloak as the captain was in the act of going out to execute his threat. "Ser Ercole be reasonable, I beg of you. Are we to alarm the castle and disturb Monna Valentina over a trumpery affair such as this? Man, they will ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... afternoon the heliograph winked and flickered on the hills, striving to tell the good news to a mountain forty miles away. And in the evening there arrived, dusty, sweating, and sore, a misguided Correspondent, who had gone out to assist at a trumpery village-burning, and who had read off the message from afar, cursing his ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... that's enough. He's tired of his first choice now that he's been away from home for a while. The love that no outer attack can frighten away quails before its idol's own homely ways; it is always so.... Come, finish what you are doing if you are going to, and don't be a little goose about such a trumpery affair as that.' ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... glideth into fine ears, he calleth falsehood and trumpery. Verily, he believeth only in Gods that make a great noise ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... your time in painting pot-boilers, but could have devoted yourself to good, honest, serious work, which is more than most of us can do. We are obliged to consider what will sell and to please the public by turning out what they call pretty pictures—children playing with dogs, and trumpery things of that sort. Bah, it is sickening to see a young fellow ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... Glencora, jumping up, "that is nonsense! What is all this trumpery thing about? Leave me, because he chooses to be angry ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... cried Temperance, brandishing her pipe. "Be you wont to solace your studies with this trumpery?" ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... there with paper stars. These stars are cut coquettishly and pasted on with care. There is a frightful bogus sumptuousness about the place that causes a painful impression—balconies of hollow iron badly fixed to the wall; trumpery locks, already rotten round the fastenings, upon which vacillate, on three nails, horrible ornaments of embossed brass that are becoming covered with verdigris; shutters painted grey that are getting out of joint, not because they are worm-eaten, but because they were made of green wood by a thieving ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... herself a little, and with the voice and manner of one repeating a lesson, told Valentine word for word the trumpery tale in the book; how she had seen Mr. Melcombe early in the morning, as she went up to the house on washing-day, to help the servants. For "Madam," a widow already, had leave to live there till he should return. He was walking in ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... offerings. The visitor is told that the male figures are Mahadeva, and the female Kali: we could hear of no other deities. I leave it to those who know Indian mythology better than I do, to interpret the meaning—or rather the past meaning, for I suspect it means very little now—of all this trumpery and nonsense, on which the poor folk seem to spend much money. It was impossible, of course, even if one had understood their language, to find out what notions they attached to it all; and all I could do, on looking at these heathen idol chapels, in the midst of a Christian and ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... tapers are lighted, and everywhere I know not what paltry bit of powder wrapped in a costly cloth is kissed and worshipped. Great honor do men of this sort pay to the blessed martyrs, who, as they think, are to be glorified by trumpery tapers, but to whom the Lamb who is in the midst of the throne, with all the brightness of His majesty ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... state of the case, what are the Southern chiefs fighting about? Their apologists in England say that it is about tariffs, and similar trumpery. They say nothing of the kind. They tell the world, and they told their own citizens when they wanted their votes, that the object of the fight was slavery. Many years ago, when General Jackson was President, South Carolina did nearly rebel (she never was ...
— The Contest in America • John Stuart Mill
... Denis of France! He's a trumpery fellow to brag on. A fig for St. George and his lance! Who splitted a heathenish dragon. The saints of the Welshman and Scot Are a pair of pitiful pipers, Both of whom may just travel to pot, Compared with the patron of swipers— St. Patrick ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore
... long, where the slain outnumber the total forces engaged in older campaigns, are the greatest battles known to history, such machine-carnages bore us so horribly that we are ashamed of our ingratitude to our soldiers in not being able to feel about them as about comparatively trumpery scraps like Waterloo or even Inkerman and Balaclava. It never forgets that as long as higher education, culture, foreign travel, knowledge of the world: in short, the qualification for comprehension of foreign affairs and intelligent ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... doctor about the lady's chances of getting round, he asked a good fifty at least. I declare he quite tormented us all, and when he was quiet at last, out he went into the bit of back garden, picking trumpery little nosegays, and asking me to take them upstairs and make the sick-room look pretty with them. As if THAT did any good. I think he must have been, at times, a little soft in his head. But he was not a bad master—he had a monstrous civil tongue of his own, ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... that they were the only sensible men in the world, and that the least hint of marriage reform would lose them the next election. And then lost it all the same: on cordite, on drink, on Chinese labor in South Africa, on all sorts of trumpery. ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... "Aye—a trumpery missive, dealing with naught but summoning of the sheriff's posse and the like. There is more behind, could we but wait to ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... Miss Smith and Miss Robinson were as fine as their milliners could make them. The first of these ladies had an emerald locket almost as big as a warming-pan, and Miss Robinson's pearls were a little fortune in themselves; but the chosen objects of that young idiot's attentions wore nothing but trumpery twopenny-halfpenny trinkets, and gowns which had been made at home for all Mr. Copperhead knew. Confound him! the father breathed hotly to himself. Thus it will be seen that unmixed pleasure is not to be had in this ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... they have anything to do with each other. What riled me was the way she talked of the shooting. People do when they take a little shooting. They pay some trumpery thirty or forty pounds a year, and then they seem to think that it's almost the same as though they owned the property themselves. I've known a man talk of his manor because he had the shooting of a wood and a small farm round it. They are generally shop-keepers out of London, gin ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... fine and cool, with a wood fire spluttering in the great stone fireplace, and the light playing on the carved pillars of the canopied bed, and blinking on the oak panels; but it was a fine room, with deerskin rugs here and there on the floor, and space to move about without smashing trumpery that women collect round them, God knows why, except to hide the lines of ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... stood quiet almost a minute, running his fingers through his hair, until it stood on end like porcupine quills. "Ha! I have it," said he. "Some rascally tramp has taken my umbrella from these innocent children, and given them this trumpery music-box to ...
— Harper's Young People, August 17, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... her, Sarkis appeared, and said: 'I want a wife; I seek no riches,' Of course, the relations gave her to him at once, and with her all sorts of trumpery, some half-ruined furniture, and a few gold pieces. 'That is all her father left,' they said, and demanded from him a receipt for the whole legacy from her father. That was the way ...
— Armenian Literature • Anonymous
... language, he would take his hand out of his waistcoat front, and say to his fellow mezzotints: "Venerable men! you have come down to us from a former generation, bringing your household furniture and miscellaneous trumpery of all ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... intellect, her own costume betrayed still more. She had made her person a sort of frame or rack upon which she hung every particle of that ostentatious drapery which she was in the habit of wearing at her fashionable evenings. A year's income was paraded upon her back, and the trumpery jewels of three generations found a place on every part of her person where it is usual for fashionable folly to display such gewgaws. She sailed into the room in a style that brought to my mind instantly the ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... with royal functions; and this view is strongly supported by the claims to divinity which Salmoneus, the brother of Athamas, is said to have set up. We have seen that this presumptuous mortal professed to be no other than Zeus himself, and to wield the thunder and lightning, of which he made a trumpery imitation by the help of tinkling kettles and blazing torches. If we may judge from analogy, his mock thunder and lightning were no mere scenic exhibition designed to deceive and impress the beholders; they ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... FRANCIS,—I have just learned, with concern, that you are in prison upon two charges—one false, and another which is trumpery. I hasten to assure you that orders have been given which will satisfy your sense of justice, and, I hope, improve your opinion of myself. I believe that by this time you will have been assured that it was not I who betrayed ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... there." She met it all—she was amused and amusing. "I've already forgotten what it was I wanted to discuss with you," she said—"it was some trumpery stuff. What I want to say now is only one thing: that it's not in the least true that because my life pitches me in every direction and mixes me up with all sorts of people—or rather with one sort mainly, poor dears!—I haven't a decent character, ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... they swore! and what influence they had with hostlers and chambermaids! and what a sneaking-looking set the others were! shabby in their apparel; no fine ferocity in their countenances; no oaths in their mouths, except such a trumpery apology for an oath as an occasional "confounded hard;" with little or no influence at inns, scowled at by hostlers, and never smiled at by chambermaids—and then I remembered how often I had bothered ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... is. Only the mad can be happy, and not many of those. The few that imagine themselves kings or gods are happy, the rest are no happier than the sane. Of course, no man is entirely in his right mind at any time, but I have been referring to the extreme cases. I have taken from this man that trumpery thing which the race regards as a Mind; I have replaced his tin life with a silver-gilt fiction; you see the result—and you criticize! I said I would make him permanently happy, and I have done it. I have made him happy by the only means possible to his race—and you are ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... about the matter. Once upon a time the premises having taken fire, the husband was met walking up the High Street, loaded with his guns and fishing-rods, and replied calmly to some one that inquired after his wife, "that the poor woman was trying to save a parcel of crockery, and some trumpery books;" the last being those which served her to conduct the business of the house. There were many elderly gentlemen in the author's younger days, who still held it part of the amusement of a journey "to parley with mine host," who often ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 368, May 2, 1829 • Various
... and, if I know anything of Arthur's spirit, may cause a difference between him and you, which you'll rue all your life—a difference that's a dev'lish deal more important, my good madam, than the little—little—trumpery ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... may be sold or made in them; whether they display the finest gold lacquer ware, the most marvellous china jars, or old worn-out pots and pans, dried fish, and ragged frippery. All the salesmen are seated on the ground in the midst of their valuable or trumpery merchandise, their legs bared ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... person discredited and virtually unmarriageable. All this was more obvious to him than the consideration that a daughter should be merciful. Where was his religion if he understood mercy so little, and where were his talent and his courage if he were so miserably afraid of trumpery social penalties? Rose's heart sank when she reflected that a man supposed to be first-rate hadn't guessed that rather than not do what she could for her mother she would give up all the Engineers in the world. She became aware that she probably ...
— The Chaperon • Henry James
... pantaloons, shirts and drawers, and admiring themselves in the little mirror panneled in the bulk-head. Then, were broken open boxes and bales; rolls of printed cotton were inspected, and vastly admired; insomuch, that the trumpery found in the captain's chests was disdainfully doffed: and donned were loose folds of calico, more ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... hand—"that I should rebuild a score or two of cottages it would not pay me to rebuild—in which I force no one to live—and which I shall pull down when it pleases me, just to teach a parcel of busybodies to mind their own business; third—that I should surrender, hands down, to a lot of trumpery complaints and grievances got up partly to spite a landlord, partly to get money out of him; and fourthly—with regard to the right of way—that I should let that young prig Tatham, a lad just out of the nursery, dictate to me, bring the whole country about ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Piece o' trumpery! "Who goes" yourself! What d'ye talk o', John Whiting! Can't your eyes earn their living any longer, then, that you don't know your own neighbours? 'Tis Private Cantle of the Locals and his wife Keziar, down at Bloom's-End—who else ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... foot Police, and spavin'd Police horses, To guard St. James's Park from innovation, And cheque the daringness of depredation;— While for those partizans who mind their manners The cabinet ministers prepare grand dinners, And I, and others of my kindred trumpery, Dine with the vision'ry 'yclept Duke Humphrey:{2} I whom the Muses sometimes deign to greet, Though perch'd in "garret vile" ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... we had all perished. As soon as it was known where Cortes was, two old ships were sent over to Truxillo with horses and colts, and one pipe of wine; all the rest of their cargoes consisting of shirts, caps, and useless trumpery of various kinds. Some of the Indian inhabitants of the Guanajas islands, which are about eight leagues from Truxillo, came at this time to Cortes, complaining that the Spaniards had been accustomed to carry away the natives and their macegualos or slaves, and that a ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... story, and I have told it in the interest of your trumpery science; but if on any evening hereafter you observe me wearing this damnable watch, and you have the thoughtfulness to ask me the hour, I shall beg leave to put you to the inconvenience ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... loving, and tender, and true. If an angel from heaven brought me a gospel which contained doctrines that would not stand the test of such perfect lovableness—doctrines hard, or cruel, or unjust—I should reject him and his trumpery gospel with scorn, knowing that neither could be Christ's. Know Christ and judge religions by Him; don't judge Him by religions, and then complain because they find yourself looking at Him through a ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... his face and expression. The human face never wore an expression of more withering, relentless scorn than when the orator replied to Hayne's allusion to the "Murdered Coalition"—a piece of stale political trumpery well understood at ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... where you're wrong," piped old Luke Evans in his cracked voice. "That gas can't be analyzed, because it contains an unknown isotope, and, as for yourself, you're nothing but a daft old fool, with your tin-horn trumpery!" ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... cannot build empire I can do something else, I can throw this damnable little Kingdom down into the chaos it deserves!... I can abdicate to my cousin, Louis Delgado, who wants the throne I don't want!... I can stamp on this tinseled trumpery.... I can break jail!" He turned with an impassioned out-sweeping of his hands. Coming swiftly from behind the bench, he halted tensely before Benton and leaned defiantly forward. "Then I can free her—and by God I shall fight ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... a trumpery affair to trouble you with, but you cannot tell how much obliged I should ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... to make the vista more effective. They offer you, besides, cheap jewelry, sunny topazes and resplendent emeralds for sixpence, and diamonds as big as the Koh-i-noor at a not much heavier cost, together with a multifarious trumpery which has died out of the upper world to reappear in this Tartarean bazaar. That you may fancy yourself still in the realms of the living, they urge you to partake of cakes, candy, ginger-beer, and such small refreshment, more suitable, however, for the shadowy appetite of ghosts than for the sturdy ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... hour-and were you not to be on the ramparts by sunrise? Aedepol! do you think that we, the conquerors of the world, have nothing better to do than stand waiting by the walls of every kennel, to traffic with the dogs of the earth? Lower away! I say—and see that your trumpery be bright in color ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe |
