"Gloss over" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... before Hitty Dimock, one she could no way evade or gloss over; no gradual lesson, no shadow of foreboding, preluded the revelation; her husband was unmistakably, savagely drunk. She did not sit down and cry;—drearily she gathered her baby in her arms, hushed it to sleep with kisses, passed down into the kitchen, woke up the brands of the ash-hidden ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... pride or anger, the tongue needs a bridle no less than the hand; and when the heart can utter itself truly only in the forms of such passions, silence is its only safeguard. In speaking of the follies or vices of others, sincerity should be tempered by a Christian charity, which, while it does not gloss over vice, does not dwell upon it needlessly, nor take a malicious pleasure in spreading it abroad, nor indulge self-complacency by dilating upon it, to give the idea that one is superior ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... To gloss over the mother's disability, I looked brightly at Pethel, as though in ardent recognition of his prowess among waves. With a movement of his head he indicated his daughter—indicated that there was no one like her in the whole ...
— James Pethel • Max Beerbohm
... Marigny concealed his uneasiness: by a display of good humor he hoped to gloss over the palpable absurdity of his ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... passion! It will not always banish from your mind, that you have acted ignobly—and condescended to subterfuge to gloss over the conduct you could not excuse.—Do truth and principle ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... escaped being what he had designed. It was not easy for him, in spite of accumulations fondly and funnily regarded as of systematic practice, not now to be ashamed; the one thing comparatively easy would be to gloss over his course. The billiard-room was NOT, at the particular crisis, either a natural or a graceful place for the nominally main occupant of so large a house to retire to—and this without prejudice, either, to the fact that his visitor wouldn't, as he apprehended, explicitly ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... the weather was fine and dry, Muggridge scraped off what he could with bits of stick, and tufts of grass, but his efforts were not very successful, for the mud was thick and clinging, and Paul clambered back into the cart with a very, very heavy heart. He did not gloss over to himself the wrongfulness of his behaviour, or the seriousness of the situation. He was bound to be found out, and then he would perhaps be sent back to school, or one of the maids would be sent for to take charge of him, and a flush of shame ...
— Paul the Courageous • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... an image of the heavenly mercy which, even in the sinner's last moments, labours to enter into his soul. The adulterous passion of Queen Margaret and Suffolk is invested with tragical dignity and all low and ignoble ideas carefully kept out of sight. Without attempting to gloss over the crime of which both are guilty, without seeking to remove our disapprobation of this criminal love, he still, by the magic force of expression, contrives to excite in us a sympathy with their sorrow. In the ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... of this slanderous prejudice will not be converted by my pleading. Envy is an incurable disease; jealousy makes blind, and the common saying is surely true, that none are so blind as those who will not see. But neither have I the least desire to hide or gloss over our real failings and shortcomings. Those who cannot rest on their own real merits and accept the blame for their undeniable demerits must not dare to challenge the judgment of the world. The Jew does dare it, and all he asks of his critics is fairness, impartiality, justice. ...
— Zionism and Anti-Semitism - Zionism by Nordau; and Anti-Semitism by Gottheil • Max Simon Nordau
... West, and these men must continue to deal with the machinery of life, and to call it progress. Their very preachers dare not rebuke them. They gloss over the hunting for money and the thrice-sharpened bitterness of Adam's curse, by saying that such things dower a man with a larger range of thoughts and higher aspirations. They do not say, "Free yourselves from your own slavery," but rather, "If you can possibly ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling
... All his proposals made to Richard were on a more just and public ground than those which had been made to John by the Barons, and notwithstanding the sycophancy of historians and men like Mr. Burke, who seek to gloss over a base action of the Court by traducing Tyler, his fame will outlive their falsehood. If the Barons merited a monument to be erected at Runnymede, Tyler merited one ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... august cause of liberty. The Protestant princes fought, he tells us, for what they took to be the truth,—whether it really was the truth does not matter. Their motives were not always lofty and their historian is not in the least concerned to hide or to gloss over their frequent venality and selfishness. His point of view is that they fought for a higher good than that which their eyes were fixed upon, and this higher good was the advancement of free cosmopolitanism, 'Europe', ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... "big business." It is impossible to rely on the political information given in most of our newspapers; they are dominated by a party, subservient to "the interests," afraid to publish anything that will offend them. They misrepresent facts, give prejudiced accounts of events, gloss over occurrences unfavorable to their ends, circulate unfounded rumors to create opinion, pounce upon every flaw in the records of opponents,- going often to the point of shameless libel,- while eulogizing indiscriminately the politicians of their own party. Many of ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... ailments give me leisure, I shall read and think with pleasure; Conversation learn to relish, And with books my mind embellish. Now, methinks, I hear you cry, Mr. Dean, you must reply. Madam, I allow 'tis true: All these praises are your due. You, like some acute philosopher, Every fault have drawn a gloss over;[1] Placing in the strongest light All your virtues to my sight. Though you lead a blameless life, Are an humble prudent wife, Answer all domestic ends: What is this to us your friends? Though your children by a nod Stand ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... details, especially after the hints dropped by Mr. Fink, to keep them carefully off the subject of his immediate past. There had been many others in the world who, on attaining fame, had preferred to gloss over their earlier history. It seemed to be tacitly understood amongst this wonderful freemasonry of newspaper men that Mr. Merton Ware was to be humoured in this way. He was a man of the present. Character sketches of him were to be all foreground. ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a real existence, with real mentality, to deal with, but I suppose it's good enough for the quasi-intellects that stupefy themselves with text-books. The trick here is to gloss over Leverrier's mistake, and blame Lescarbault—he was only an amateur—had delusions. The reader's attention is led against Lescarbault by a report from M. Lias, director of the Brazilian Coast Survey, who, at the time of Lescarbault's "supposed" observation had been watching the ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... and black, crowned with her helmet of gleaming hair; and, with her hands behind her, looked over Clara's head through the window into the garden. She would not help Clara gloss over this ugly fact. ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... his field of vision is much more limited than that of his general. On the other hand, it is of vital importance to the latter to gloss over his mistakes, and draw attention only to those things which will add to his reputation. The private soldier has no such feeling. It is only to the officers of high rank engaged that a battle can bring glory and renown. To the army of common soldiers, who do the actual ...
— "Shiloh" as Seen by a Private Soldier - With Some Personal Reminiscences • Warren Olney
... during the past two anxious months the Viceroy's action in sending troops north, the occurrence of riots at various points, H. E.'s communication of decrees in which the Peking Government sought to gloss over the northern uprising, and his eagerness to make out that the Empress Dowager had not incited the outbreak and had no hostile feeling against foreigners have inevitably made one uneasy. But on looking back one appreciates the skill and constancy with which H. E. has met a most serious ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... to indulge in these thoughts," I exclaimed, passing the palm of my hand to my brow; "they will unman me, or make me turn traitor. Traitor! ay, that's the word. I must throw no false gloss over it. Deserter—a wretch, false to his flag! No, no; she herself would despise me. These men now in arms around me have never sworn allegiance to their sovereign; they have been forced into rebellion by ill-treatment and injustice, by ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... reason pressed on, and among them, in the seventeenth century, in France, was Richard Simon. He attempted to gloss over the declarations of Scripture against lending at interest, in an elaborate treatise, but was immediately confronted by Bossuet. Just as Bossuet had mingled Scripture with astronomy and opposed the Copernican theory, so now he mingled Scripture with political economy ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... which we now perceive. The platform of argument on which the question of "Theism" must be discussed is that of the observable Cosmos; and if, as Dr. Flint is constrained to admit, there is a fearful spectacle of misery presented by this Cosmos, it becomes mere question-begging to gloss over this aspect of the subject by any vague assumption that the misery must have some unobservable ends of so transcendentally beneficent a nature, that were they known they would justify the means. Indeed, this kind of discussion ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes |
