"Imposture" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dissertation usually prefixed to the editions of Ossian, and who compares him favorably to Homer. First among the incredulous, as might be expected, was Dr. Samuel Johnson, who, in his Journey to the Hebrides, lashes Macpherson for his imposture, and his insolence in refusing to show the original. Johnson was threatened by Macpherson with a beating, and he answered: "I hope I shall never be deterred from detecting what I think a cheat by the menaces of a ruffian ... I thought your book an imposture; I think it an imposture ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... be enough to advert very briefly to the Mohammedan imposture, though that is perhaps the most signal instance within all time, of a malignant delusion maintained directly and immediately by ignorance, by an absolute determination and even a fanatic zeal not to receive one new idea. Tenets involving the most palpable impossibilities, and asserted in self-contradictory ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... "wandering Jew;" others asserted, that he was the issue of an Arabian princess, and that his father was a salamander; while others, more reasonable, affirmed him to be the son of a Portuguese Jew, established at Bourdeaux. He first carried on his imposture in Germany, where he made considerable sums by selling an elixir to arrest the progress of old age. The Marechal de Belle-Isle purchased a dose of it; and was so captivated with the wit, learning, and good ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... mystic roll, now presides at the ticket office. Some malicious persons it is true deny the identity of this reputable character with the Evangelist of old times, and even pretend to bring competent evidence of an imposture. Without involving myself in a dispute I shall merely observe that, so far as my experience goes, the square pieces of pasteboard now delivered to passengers are much more convenient and useful along the road than the antique roll of parchment. ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... his comparative insignificance! He is undoubtedly the father of Mormonism, and the author of the "Golden Book," with the exception of a few subsequent alterations made by Joe Smith. It was easy for him, from the first planning of his intended imposture to publicly discuss, in the pulpit, many strange points of controversy, which were eventually to become the corner-stones of the structure which ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... or barouche, carefully closed, swept quickly by. We visited Barnum, of course. I think a conversational and communicative Albino was the most note-worthy curiosity in the Museum, chiefly, from his intense appreciation of the imposture of the whole concern, originated and directed ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... they are an abstract proposition and the pope.' 'You need not be afraid, I think,' he told Lord Aberdeen (December 1, 1851), 'of Mazzinism from me, still less of Kossuth-ism, which means the other plus imposture, Lord Palmerston, and his nationalities.' But then in 1854 Manin came to England, and failed to persuade even Lord Palmerston that the unity of Italy was the only clue to her freedom.[252] The Russian war made it inconvenient to quarrel ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... Escot, "of two congenial spirits, united not by legal bondage and superstitious imposture, but by mutual confidence and reciprocal virtues, is the only counterbalancing consolation in this scene of mischief and misery. But how rarely is this the case according to the present system of marriage! So far from being a central point of expansion to the great circle of universal ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... theory is true, Genesis is a lie, the whole framework of the book of life falls to pieces, and the revelation of God to man, as we Christians know it, is a delusion and a snare." Another, who had shown excellent qualities as an observing naturalist, declared the Darwinian view "a huge imposture ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... was firmly resolved that her stepdaughter's obtrusive womanhood should remain in obscurity a very much longer time, under pretence that Jacqueline was still a child. She was a child, at any rate! The portrait was a lie! an imposture! an ...
— Jacqueline, v1 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... he replied at length, "there is just one method of procedure in this case. The assassination of Susy d'Orsel, the question of this imposture, in fact all these mysterious points which have arisen cannot be cleared up ...
— A Royal Prisoner • Pierre Souvestre
... weapons or the slightest means of defence, except entreaties, which would be only their sport, and cries for help, which could never reach other ear than their own—his safety entrusted to the precarious compassion of a being associated with these felons, and whose trade of rapine and imposture must have hardened her against every human feeling—the bitterness of his emotions almost choked him. He endeavoured to read in her withered and dark countenance, as the lamp threw its light upon her features, something that promised those feelings of ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... accession of conscience, Mrs. Coulomb, who is a Catholic, smashed the effigy. She says she had not cared much so long as Hindus only were cheated, because they believed such things anyway, but she could not stand it when European gentlemen and ladies were subjects of the imposture. Perhaps it was because of this moral "strike" that Koothoomi was not ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... had been used to bend them to the service of Catholicism. The poor women bore on their hands and feet wounds, the supposed spontaneous eruption of delineations of the bleeding wounds of the crucifix, and, on the forehead, the bloody marks of the crown of thorns. To convict the imposture, the blood-stains from the wounds in the feet ran upwards towards the toes, to complete a facsimile of the original, though the poor girls were lying on their backs. The wounds, it is to be hoped, are inflicted and kept fresh and active ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... l'audace et l'imposture, Ces Juifs, dont vous voulez dlivrer la nature, 1045 Que vous croyez, Seigneur, le rebut des humains, D'une riche contre autrefois souverains, Pendant qu'ils n'adoraient que le Dieu de leurs pres, Ont vu bnir le ...
— Esther • Jean Racine
... experience in a like case. It is from their religion that Hebraic medicine has received its foundation of intelligent philosophy that carried it in its purity through all ages, free from magic, superstition, and imposture. With other creeds and religions, medicine, disease, as well as the physical phenomena affecting nature, were believed to be the arbitrary expression of anger of their gods, and that the cure of disease, or alterations in physical phenomena, were to be as arbitrarily ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... answered; "do you take us for idiots? This," I added with some sternness, "is either a ridiculous misapprehension or an attempt at imposture, and I am very careless ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... this nature is easily preserved among servants, when the master of the family thinks his interest is concerned in supporting the imposture. The melancholy produced from her confinement, and the vivacity of her resentment under ill usage, were, by the address of Anthony, and the prepossession of his domestics, perverted into the effects of insanity; and the same interpretation was strained upon her most ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... hell. Wherefore it is well done in all orders of men, but especial in the order of prelates, to put a difference between children of light and children of the world, because great deceit ariseth in taking the one for the other. Great imposture cometh, when they that the common people take for the light, go about to take the sun and the light out of the world. But these be easily known, both by the diversity of minds, and also their armours. For whereas the children ...
— Sermons on the Card and Other Discourses • Hugh Latimer
... between a higher and a lower in our nature, attributing to the higher everything good and noble, while the lower ought to be persecuted and despised, Mandeville declares the fancied higher parts to be the region of vanity and imposture, while the renowned deeds of men, and the greatness of kingdoms, really arise from the passions usually reckoned base and sensual. As his views are scattered through numerous dissertations, it will be best to summarize them ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... whom our decision will make, to the wretches that will be roasted at the stake, to our country, and I do not deem it too serious to say, to conscience and to God. We are answerable, and if duty be any thing more than a word of imposture, if conscience be not a bug-bear, we are preparing to make ourselves ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... thousands to burn the Pope in effigy. The government posted cavalry at Temple Bar, and placed ordnance round Whitehall. In that year our tongue was enriched with two words, Mob and Sham, remarkable memorials of a season of tumult and imposture. [21] Opponents of the court were called Birminghams, Petitioners, and Exclusionists. Those who took the King's side were Antibirminghams, Abhorrers, and Tantivies. These appellations soon become obsolete: ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... war talkin', Bill turns in the way he was sleepin' into an aisier imposture; and as soon as he stopped snorin' ould Tim Donovan's courage riz agin, and ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume III. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... most of them are knaves of abilities, who have usurped the easy direction of ignorance, or forced themselves as guides on weakness or folly, which bow to their charlatanism as if it was sublimity, and hail their sophistry and imposture as inspiration. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... speaks the wishes of the man, whoever he may have been, by whom it was invented: and you who talk of the progress of knowledge, and the improvement of society, and upon that improvement build your hope of its progressive melioration, you know that even so gross and palpable an imposture as this is swallowed by many of the vulgar, and contributes in its sphere to the mischief which it was designed to promote. I admit that such an improved condition of society as you contemplate is possible, and hath ought always to be ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... of the doctrines you have enumerated are a part of Christianity, but are mere additions of imposture or fanaticism." ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... issue of the 8th, under the above heading, 'A Correspondent' tries at some length to describe what he calls a most impudent imposture. I having lived at B—— for three months in the autumn of last year as butler to the house, I thought perhaps my experience of the ghost of B—— might be of interest to many of your readers, and as the story has now become public property, I shall not be doing any one ...
— The Alleged Haunting of B—— House • Various
... dismantled temple as that described at Pondicherry, and affirmed to be on the English soil adjacent to the French town. It is equally unnecessary to say that the story of the caves of Gibraltar is a gross and absurd imposture, for, in fact, it betrays itself. Parisian literature of the by-ways has its own methods, and its purveyors are shrewd enough to know what will be tolerated and what enjoyed by their peculiar class of patrons; transcendental toxicology and an industry in idols worked ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... home. Esquire indeed! It's sickening!—I am ready to have it out with him whenever he likes, and take the nigger after him when he's had his gruel. Go and tell him if you like. It's been dull enough in the place ever since that miserable imposture about the lost belt. You want something to rouse you up, and I'll give it you if you can bring those two fellows up to the scratch; but that you can't do. Look at them sneaking off like a street cur and ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... is the common slip of fools, Who count the lesser greater being near. Dupe of your own imposture and designs, I cannot bind your thoughts! but what you do Henceforth must be my subject; so take heed, And stand within ...
— Tecumseh: A Drama • Charles Mair
... future. Do not destroy the most splendid ornament of your city. Rocco is obliged to visit Italy. Lease to him the theater, he will have for his advisers the talented and estimable Bagioli and myself. For me I wish for nothing, but it pains me to see spoiled by ignorance and imposture, and vanity that which cost me so much, or to speak more correctly, which cost me everything, and you so much, and it will cost you more in fame as ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... who knows something of the limitations of that science—who knows what chemists have done and who knows the nature of things—cannot be imposed upon. When no one can be imposed upon, orthodox religion cannot exist. It is an imposture, and there must be impostors and there must be victims, or the religion cannot ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... the son of the Rector of Bickley, near Tiverton. It is related that to avoid punishment for a boyish freak he, with some companions, ran away and joined the gypsies. After a year and a half Carew returned for a time, but soon rejoined his old friends. His career was a long series of swindling and imposture, very ingeniously carried out, occasionally deceiving people who should have known him well. His restless nature then drove him to embark for Newfoundland, where he stopped but a short time, and on his return he pretended to be the mate of a vessel, and eloped with the ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... deaths at the end? Is that conceivable? A crime may be never so skilfully planned—when the eyes of deep wisdom rest on it, it becomes like a trivial show that we offer to very small children at nightfall: some magic-lantern performance, whose tawdry imposture a last gleam of sunshine lays bare. Can you conceive Jesus Christ—nay, any wise man you have happened to meet—in the midst of the unnatural gloom that overhung Elsinore? Is not every action of Hamlet induced by a fanatical impulse, which tells him that duty consists in revenge alone? and does ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... the Trinity. In preaching the election sermon of 1776, he took the ground of an undisguised rationalism. "A revelation," he said, "pretending to be from God, that contradicts any part of natural laws ought immediately to be rejected as imposture; for the deity cannot make a law contrary to the law of nature without acting contrary to himself,—a thing in the strictest sense impossible, for that which implies contradiction is not an object of Divine Power." The cardinal idea of West's; position, as of that of most of the liberal ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... hoped. The Pioneers were as good hunters as was he, their instinct was as sure, their scouts and trackers were many, and he was but one. They found the Faith Healer by a little stream, eating bread and honey, and, like an ancient woodlander drinking from a horn—relics of his rank imposture. He made no resistance. They tried him formally, if perfunctorily; he admitted his imposture, and begged for his life. Then they stripped him naked, tied a bit of canvas round his waist, fastened him to a tree, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... would be restored to life, if in his life he had been a worshipper there.... I employed a confidential person to ascertain the truth, and as I justly supposed, the whole was detected to be an impudent imposture.... Throwing down the temple which was the scene of this imposture, with the very same materials I erected on the spot the great mosque, because the very name of Islam was proscribed at Benares, and with God's blessing it is my desire ... to fill it full of true ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... on the honest imposture the better, just now, in presence of Mrs. Harris, and Mrs. Andrews, and me, asked the former, if it was not necessary to have in the house the good woman? This frighted Mrs. B. who turned pale, and ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... of discriminating and being discriminated by hearing increases in difficulty, partly because voices are assimilated, partly because the faculty of voice-discrimination is a plebeian virtue not much developed among the Aristocracy. And wherever there is any danger of imposture we cannot trust to this method. Amongst our lowest orders, the vocal organs are developed to a degree more than correspondent with those of hearing, so that an Isosceles can easily feign the voice of a Polygon, and, with some training, that of a Circle himself. ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott
... have given a thousand reasons—they did then and they do now—why an indulgence should be believed in; when honesty and common sense could give but one reason for thinking otherwise. Cleverness and imposture get on excellently ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... nun whom he had abused before profession. After a time, she appeared to be possessed; and, under treatment by a celebrated exorcist, (an inferior hand having failed,) she, or the demon in possession, among other things accused Gaufridi. Her revelations may be resolved into an imposture instigated by revenge, or a pious fraud caused by remorse, or hysterical fits, with utterance shaped by memory; but what can be said of Gaufridi's, made with a full knowledge ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... the Scylla of dullness and the Charybdis of indiscretion, and I feel that I had far better confine myself strictly to the underground drama which was being played beneath the surface of Ruritanian politics. I need only say that the secret of my imposture defied detection. I made mistakes. I had bad minutes: it needed all the tact and graciousness whereof I was master to smooth over some apparent lapses of memory and unmindfulness of old acquaintances of which ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... you it is no imposture!" declared the man before me. "You will, perhaps, understand later. Have a cigar," and he took up Digby's box and handed ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... consultation told me everything I wanted to know. I risk nothing by marrying Midwinter in my maiden instead of my widow's name. The marriage is a good marriage in this way: that it can only be set aside if my husband finds out the imposture, and takes proceedings to invalidate our marriage in my lifetime. That is the lawyer's answer in the lawyer's own words. It relieves me at once—in this direction, at any rate—of all apprehension about the future. ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... is obvious, therefore, that the utmost caution is necessary in the exercise of this right claimed by Great Britain. While we have recourse to the necessary, and, indeed, the only means for detecting imposture, the practice will be carefully guarded and limited to cases of strong suspicion. The undersigned begs to assure Mr. Stevenson that the most precise and positive instructions have been issued to her Majesty's officers on ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... the truth, and Dane was amazed. He hardly knew what to say, but ultimately stammered out some sort of denial. Anne did not give him time to speak. She said that she would see Denham herself, and get to the bottom of the imposture. Then she asked what message he had sent in the character of her father. Dane refused to give it in my presence, so I walked away for ten minutes and left them together. Oh, I was foolish, I know," she added in reply ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... the borders of nearly all the streets in Charlesbridge, with the pallid azure flame of the succory. The neighborhood was in all things a frontier between city and country. The horse-cars, the type of such civilization—full of imposture, discomfort, and sublime possibility—as we yet possess, went by the head of our street, and might, perhaps, be available to one skilled in calculating the movements of comets; while two minutes' walk would take us into a wood so wild and thick that no roof was ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... diggings men are left to sharpen their own wits by experience. Sometimes, however, the biter is pretty well bitten. There was a poor Chilian once who was deceived in this way, and paid four hundred dollars for a claim that was scarcely worth working. He looked rather put out on discovering the imposture, but was only laughed at by most of those who saw the transaction for his softness. Some there were who frowned on the sharper, and even spoke of lynching him, but they were a small minority, and had to hold their peace. However, the Chilian plucked up heart, ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... that it was judged not fit to expose, so soon, to light this piece of evidence against the queen; which a cloud of witnesses, living, and present at Paris's execution, would, surely, have given clear testimony against, as a notorious imposture." ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... good hunters as was he, their instinct was as sure, their scouts and trackers were many, and he was but one. They found the Faith Healer by a little stream, eating bread and honey, and, like an ancient woodlander, drinking from a horn—relic of his rank imposture. He made no resistance. They tried him, formally if perfunctorily; he admitted his imposture, and begged for his life. Then they stripped him naked, tied a bit of canvas round his waist, fastened him to a tree, and were ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... For who imposture can endure, A constant harping on one tune, Serious endeavours to assure What everybody long has known; Ever to hear the same replies And overcome antipathies Which never have existed, e'en In little maidens of thirteen? And what like ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... romantic drama, The Fires of Fate; but it is very difficult to find any dramatic sequel to a peripety involving mere physical disaster.[2] The moral peripety—the sudden dissipation of some illusion, or defeat of some imposture, or crumbling of some castle in the air—is a no less characteristic incident of real life, and much more amenable to the playwright's uses. Certainly there are few things more impressive in drama than to see a man or woman—or a ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... experienced these feelings. An illusion is no more than a false interpretation of a real subjective experience; although many are inclined to treat the rejection of the interpretation as equivalent to a charge of imposture ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... the charm that lured us on board the "Balaklava," and now "nothing to do," was with us like the Bottle-Imp, an incubus, still crying out: "You may yet exchange me for a smaller coin, if such there be!" "Nothing to do," is an imposture. Something to do is the very life of life, the beginning and end of being. "Picton," said I, "one thing we must do, at ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... an exteriour representation of authority and grandeur, but which is founded on more noble and immoveable principles, those of esteem and respect, arising from a sentiment of true greatness and of generosity. Be assured that when contemptible discord, with its odious attendants, artifice and imposture, could effectuate nothing, absolutely nothing, at the moment when the present war broke out, to prejudice in the least the fidelity of the Citizens of the Amstel, or to shake them in the observance ...
— A Collection of State-Papers, Relative to the First Acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of the United States of America • John Adams
... Granger; who both, with all the innocence of Criticism, give specimens of these "Relics," without a suspicion that they were transcribing literally from Lord Bacon's Essays! Unquestionably Lady Gethin herself intended no imposture; her mind had all the delicacy of her sex; she noted much from the books she seems most to have delighted in; and nothing less than the most undiscerning friends could have imagined that everything written by the hand of this young lady was her "first conceptions;" and apologise for ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... he wrought such works as proved his intimacy with the God of truth. While he professed himself the Messiah, is it indifferent whether he was showing himself to be as being beyond delusion, and above imposture?—Let us make the case our own. Suppose that we were witnesses of the miraculous works of a personage of pretensions like our Lord's, should we think it necessary or reasonable to resort to long courses of argument, or indeed to any process ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... excitement was the chance of some disturbance before we left; for Mrs Porter became more and more indignant with the "gross imposture," which culminated when at length she was called up and told that "a young man wished to speak with her." She asserted that it was "the most horrible, grinning, painted creature ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... World does not, we believe, pretend to be an authority in such matters, but that a "historical society" should receive such a gross imposition is somewhat surprising. The letter is as much a forgery and imposture as the "exceedingly interesting letter from General Washington to his wife," published a few months ago in the Day Book. Without going into any further statement or argument on this subject, it may be sufficient to remark, that Washington was not within two hundred miles of ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... diminutive thing with the superb title of the freedom of the will, and to pass it off for the highest and most glorious liberty of which the human mind can form any conception. Hobbes, it will be hereafter seen, was the first who, either designedly or undesignedly, palmed off this imposture upon the world. ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... feelings of those who differ from him in opinion. There is not, nor ought there to be, a word of reproach in it, against the moral character of Jesus, or the twelve Apostles; and the utmost the author attempts to prove is, that their system was founded, not upon fraud and imposture, but upon a mistake. After the deaths of Christ and his Apostles, it was indeed aided and supported by very bad means; but its first founders, the author believes, were guilty of no other crime than that of being mistaken; ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... miraculous power, was so suc-cessfully maintained in the heathen world by fraud, and craft, that when it came to be challenged by the Christians, it was not capable of exciting any attention to it among those who themselves pretended to the same power; which, although the certain effect of imposture, was yet managed with so much art, that the Christians could neither deny nor detect it; but insisted always that it was performed by demons, or evil spirits, deluding mankind to their ruin; and from the supposed ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... to him not as though he were a son, but as a beloved daughter. At last he died in his sleep one night, holding David's hand, looking so ineffably happy that the impostor inwardly gloried in his imposture as in one of the best deeds ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... Janson K. The border as I aught to enform you has told my children inclooding Francis Ferdinand who bares this letter a cockanbull story about bein related to your honered self by witch we know he was an imposture. I write insted of calling at the house as I am laim from cuttin my foot with an ax yesterday and it dont apear quite cuncistunt to send you a ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... true; that the events occurred suddenly, without having been in any manner premeditated; that neither the King nor myself have ever had any intelligence with, the King of Spain, against those of the religion, and that all is utter imposture which is daily said on this ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... race irrevocably? Perhaps there was an answer somewhere in his consciousness which he dared not voice to himself. Since his visit to the English Atherlys, he had put resolutely aside everything that related to that episode, which he now considered was an unhappy imposture. But there were times when a vision of Lady Elfrida, gazing at him with wondering, fascinated eyes, passed across his fancy; even the contact with his own race and his thoughts of their wrongs recalled to him the tomb of the soldier Atherly ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... amiable quality as before. I cannot see the harm, the misanthropy, the immoral and degrading tendency of this. The moral lesson is as fine as the intellectual exhibition is amusing. It is an attempt to tear off the mask of imposture from the world; and nothing but imposture has a right to complain of it. It is, indeed, the way with our quacks in morality to preach up the dignity of human nature, to pamper pride and hypocrisy with the idle mockeries of the virtues they pretend ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... of its truth. We find there no appearance of artifice or party spirit; no attempt to exaggerate on the one hand, or depreciate on the other; no remarks thrown in to anticipate objections, nothing of that caution which never fails to distinguish the testimony of those who are conscious of imposture; no endeavor to reconcile the reader's mind to what may be extraordinary in the narrative; all is fair, candid, and simple." And we number this among the proofs of the Divine authority of ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... character was similar to that of the Persian Magi, and they are often confounded by the Greek historians. Like the priests in most other nations, they employed religion in subserviency to the ruling powers, and made use of imposture to serve the purposes of civil policy. Accordingly Diodorus Siculus relates (lib. ii., p. 31, compared with Daniel ii. 1, &c., Eccles. xliv. 3) that they pretended to predict future events by divination, ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield
... among a strange people in distant lands, and offering them succor in the shape of costless denunciations of their best friends, or by scattering among them "firebrands, arrows and death." Such folly and madness, such wild mockery and base imposture, can never win for you, in the sober judgment of future times, the name of philanthropists. Will you even be regarded as worthy citizens? Scarcely, when the purposes you have in view, can only be achieved by revolutionizing ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... entertained, but oftener wearied. She was struck by the apparent talents and knowledge displayed in the various conversations she listened to, and it was long before she discovered, that the talents were for the most part those of imposture, and the knowledge nothing more than was necessary to assist them. But what deceived her most, was the air of constant gaiety and good spirits, displayed by every visitor, and which she supposed to arise from content ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... experience, of literature for life, of the obsolete fictitious for the contemporary real, education, as you no doubt observed at Oxford, destroys, by supplantation, every mind that is not strong enough to see through the imposture and to use the great Masters of Arts as what they really are and no more: that is, patentees of highly questionable methods of thinking, and manufacturers of highly questionable, and for the majority but half valid representations of life. The schoolboy who uses his Homer to throw at ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... which Stanhope now advanced was, that Caspar was a journeyman tailor or glover, from some small village on the Austrian side of the river Salzach. The reasons which he assigns for his belief in the imposture are all derived from Caspar's supposed want of integrity and veracity. They impeach the character of Caspar living, and not of Caspar dead. Why, then, did Stanhope wait for his death before he proclaimed the imposture? Why did he remain his protector, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... any man to do so, for I have lied a great deal myself, and at this supreme moment I feel the need to open my heart, to free my bosom, to publicly confess my imposture..." ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... their will by their own weakness lent, Made all its many names omnipotent; All symbols of things evil, all divine; 735 And hymns of blood or mockery, which rent The air from all its fanes, did intertwine Imposture's impious toils round each ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... distraught that you would possibly have gone right away without benefiting even to the slight extent of the comfortable night's rest you so badly needed; but this morning I am prepared to put it to the touch. And let me begin by saying, that if circumstances would permit me to continue the paternal imposture, that would be quite enough for me; unluckily, I am known in my own country as an old bachelor; so that I cannot suddenly produce a widowed daughter, without considerable unpleasantness for us both. What I can do, however," and Steel bent further forward, with eyes that ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... who read them many centuries after, and as regards those who witnessed and recorded them at the time, is quite different. To them the miracles were the first and often the chief proof that the man who wrought them had been sent by God, and that His message was a revelation, not an imposture; to us they are, if accepted at all, accepted as a part of the revelation itself. There are no doubt a few minds that are convinced by Paley's argument, and beginning with accepting the miracles as proved by sufficient external evidence, ...
— The Relations Between Religion and Science - Eight Lectures Preached Before the University of Oxford in the Year 1884 • Frederick, Lord Bishop of Exeter
... Many! And it is no mere political catch-phrase: he is their servant; he is their creature; all that in him to which they grovel (dignifying and justifying their instinctive and inherited servility by names as false as anything in ceremonial imposture) they themselves have made, as truly as the heathen has made the wooden god before which he performs his unmanly rite. It is precisely this thing—the superiority of the people to their servants—that constitutes, and was by our ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... not done the wrong, began to call them dishonest prevaricators, and to urge that such men could not possibly come with a purpose to say or do anything that was sincere. The council was incensed, the people were in a rage, and Nicias, who knew nothing of the deceit and the imposture, was in the greatest confusion, equally surprised and ashamed at such a change in the men. So thus the Lacedaemonian ambassadors were utterly rejected, and Alcibiades was declared general, who presently united the Argives, the Eleans, ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... not going into any details as to what I did and said to induce Pullanius and his associates to execute the desired contract. I acted the part of Salinator to perfection and my imposture succeeded completely. ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... privy-council, the lord-mayor, and a great congregation, blood was seen to run through the crevices of the crown of thorns, and to trickle down the face of the image. On this, some of the contrivers of the imposture cried aloud: "See how our Saviour's image sweats blood! But it must necessarily do this, since heresy is come into the church." Immediately many of the lower order of people, indeed the vulgar of all ranks, were terrified ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... Volpone, By blood and rank a gentleman, canst not fall Under like censure; but our judgment on thee Is, that thy substance all be straight confiscate To the hospital of the Incurabili: And, since the most was gotten by imposture, By feigning lame, gout, palsy, and such diseases, Thou art to lie in prison, cramp'd with irons, Till thou be'st ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... some other king or potentate, who has no soundness in him, but his soul is marked with the whip, and is full of the prints and scars of perjuries and crimes with which each action has stained him, and he is all crooked with falsehood and imposture, and has no straightness, because he has lived without truth. Him Rhadamanthus beholds, full of all deformity and disproportion, which is caused by licence and luxury and insolence and incontinence, and despatches him ignominiously to his prison, and ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... much fuller. It was soft as floss silk. After a while the capillary attraction ceased to draw, and Mr. Barnum thought of an admirable plan to revive it. He got somebody to prosecute him for false pretences and imposture, on the ground that Madame was a man. Then Mr. Barnum had, with the greatest unwillingness and many moral apologies, a medical examination; they might as sensibly have examined Vashishta's cow to find out if it was an Irish bull. Then came the attack on the impropriety of the whole thing, and finally ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... of men and women may be subjects of sport; base egoism assuming the garb of religion deserves a lash that draws the blood. Is it no act of natural piety to defend the household against the designs of greedy and sensual imposture; no service to society to quicken the penetration of those who may be made the dupes of selfish craft? While Organ and his mother are besotted by the gross pretensions of the hypocrite, while the young people contend for the ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... ruthlessly as their own health, strength, and patience are exploited by selfish hypochondriacs. They must do all these things or else run pecuniary risks that no man can fairly be asked to run. And the healthier the world becomes, the more they are compelled to live by imposture and the less by that really helpful activity of which all doctors get enough to preserve them from utter corruption. For even the most hardened humbug who ever prescribed ether tonics to ladies whose need for tonics is of precisely the same character as the need of poorer women for a glass of gin, ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... think me pitiably benighted, and possibly I might find more favor in your sight if I affected a prodigious amount of literary enthusiasm, and boundless admiration for scholarship and erudition; but that would prove too troublesome an imposture,—for I am constitutionally, habitually, and ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... 340 He ceased; then smiled Minerva azure-eyed And stroaked his cheek, in form a woman now, Beauteous, majestic, in all elegant arts Accomplish'd, and with accents wing'd replied. Who passes thee in artifice well-framed And in imposture various, need shall find Of all his policy, although a God. Canst thou not cease, inventive as thou art And subtle, from the wiles which thou hast lov'd Since thou wast infant, and from tricks of speech 350 Delusive, even in thy native land? ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... be, because miracles take place in all ages; it must be clearly proved, because perhaps after all it may be only a providential mercy, or an exaggeration, or a mistake, or an imposture. Well, this is precisely what I had said, which the writer, who has given occasion to this Volume, considered so irrational. I had said, as he quotes me, "In this day, and under our present circumstances, we can only reply, ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... need, which, in a rigid sense, you do not want, may therefore be returned not only in public benefactions to the race, but in private kindnesses. Your wife, your children, your friends stand nearest to you, and should be helped the first. There at least there can be little imposture, for you know their necessities of your own knowledge. And consider, if all the world did as you did, and according to their means extended help in the circle of their affections, there would be no more crying want in times of plenty ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... unromantic people ex cathedra, in stentorian tones, and represented as the rational foundation of science and religion, with neither of which it has any honest sympathy, it becomes positively odious—one of the worst imposture and blights to which a youthful imagination could be subjected. It is chiefly against the incubus of this celestial monster that Mr. Moore dared to lift up his eyes; and many a less courageous or less clear-sighted person was thankful to him for it. But a man with such a mission ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... succeeded in rousing Ireland to any great pitch of enthusiasm for his policy. It was still sick, and weary, and despondent after the Fenian failure, and the revolutionary leaders were not prone to tolerate or countenance what they regarded as a Parliamentary imposture. A considerable body of the Irish landed class supported the Butt movement, because they had nothing to fear for their own interests from it. They were members of his Parliamentary Party, not to help him on his way, but rather with the object of ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... necessities of an office which I had voluntarily taken on my shoulders, and beneath which I might be crushed by no moral delinquency on my own part, but could not shirk without cowardice and shame. My subsequent fortune was various. Once, though I felt it to be a kind of imposture, I got a speech by heart, and doubtless it might have been a very pretty one, only I forgot every syllable at the moment of need, and had to improvise another as well as I could. I found it a better method to prearrange ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Feeling, however, the want of consolation in their misfortunes Future effects dreaded from its past enormities God is only the invention of fear Gold, changes black to white, guilt to innocence Hail their sophistry and imposture as inspiration Invention of new tortures and improved racks Labour as much as possible in the dark Misfortunes and proscription would not only inspire courage My means were the boundaries of my wants Not suspected of any vices, but all his virtues are negative Nothing was decided, ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Memoirs of Napoleon • David Widger
... briefly, and with a voice still trembling with anger: "I accuse the man here present with having falsely and wickedly taken the names and titles of his grace the Duke of Monmouth, and with having thus, by his odious imposture, ruined the designs of the king, my master, and under such circumstances the crime of this man should be considered as an attack upon the safety of the state. In consequence, I demand that the accused here present be declared guilty ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... sailor—nay, it was said, that such was the extraordinary pliancy of its principle of disguise, the Jesuit was suffered to assume the tenets of Protestantism, and even to act as a Protestant pastor, for the purpose of more complete deception. The good of the church was the plea which purified all imposture; the power of Rome was the principle on which this tremendous system of artifice was constructed; and the reduction of all modes of human opinion to the one sullen superstition of the Vatican, was the triumph for which those armies of subtle ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... night, the full anguish of his situation rushed upon his spirit. He shrank from the rude scenes that opened before him,—from the mocker's sneer and the ruler's scourge; from the glare of impatient revenge, and the weeping eyes of helpless friendship; from the insignia of imposture and of shame; and from the protracted, thirsty, torturing death. He shrank from these,—he shrank from the rupture of tender ties,—he shrank from the parting with deeply-loved friends,—his soul was overburdened, his spirit was swollen to agony, and he rushed to his knees, and prayed, ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... insignificance, the Treaty of Holy Alliance. Since the terrible events of 1812 the Czar's mind had taken a strongly religious tinge. His private life continued loose as before; his devotion was both very well satisfied with itself and a prey to mysticism and imposture in others; but, if alloyed with many weaknesses, it was at least sincere, and, like Alexander's other feelings, it naturally sought expression in forms which seemed theatrical to stronger natures. Alexander ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... Chasselion's fete champetre— would jar upon our Anglican prejudices. As for Winkle (Porthos), the translation nicely hits off his love of manly exercises, while resting his pretensions on a more solid basis of fact than appears in the original. In the incident of the baldric, however, the imposture underlying Mr. W.'s green shooting-coat ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Christian burial, but that the heart which was brought to Vancouver some time after the event, and which the Hawaiians stoutly maintained was that of Captain Cook, was no such thing; and that the whole affair was a piece of imposture which was sought to be palmed off upon the ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... persons may keep this paper carefully by them to refresh their memories whenever they shall have further notice of Mr. Wood's half-pence or any other the like imposture. ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... of the old hunting grounds, all betokened a sad destiny for the red man. Naturally superstitious, he was prepared for the advent of some divine agency to help him in his distress. No one understood this better than the Prophet. He may have been the dupe of his own imposture, but impostors are generally formidable. He was no longer Laulewasikaw, but Tenskwatawa, "The Open Door." "He affected great sanctity; did not engage in the secular duties of war or hunting; was seldom in public; ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... on the Transylvanian frontier, during the campaigns of the Prince of Coburg and Laudohn against the Turks. It was singular enough, that on this very evening, in arguing against some of my whims touching destinies and omens, he illustrated the facility of imposture on such points by an incident ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... from her eyes. She regarded herself as one who had been hoaxed and swindled; begged me to take back the book; and never again, to the end of her life, could endure to look into the book, or to be reminded of that criminal imposture which Dr. Oliver Goldsmith had ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... period, can form any idea of the afflicting persecutions and personal indignities we had to brook. They saved our country however. The spirits of the people were so much subdued and reduced to despair by the X. Y. Z. imposture, and other stratagems and machinations, that they would have sunk into apathy and monarchy, as the only form of ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... For this imposture he was afterwards ordered by the magistrates before whom he was examined to receive a hundred lashes, and to wear a canvas frock, with the letter R cut and sewn upon it, to distinguish him more particularly ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... a few moments, and then raised her abashed eyes to Major Van Zandt. A single glance satisfied her that he knew nothing of the imposture that had been practised upon her,—knew nothing of the trap into which her vanity and ...
— Thankful Blossom • Bret Harte
... a place Quite strange to mine. For my Rhode Island stock, Grown far afield, and long acclimated, Had dropped all meanings for the name of King, Of Church, of mother country. Such appeals Were like a tinsel fringe of superstition, Alien imposture. It was all ...
— The Treason and Death of Benedict Arnold - A Play for a Greek Theatre • John Jay Chapman
... death, after an heroic resistance, was hailed as a triumph by the Russians. They counted on the extinction of the new sect in the defeat of its leader, whose dead body they carried about the country to prove the imposture of his pretensions. This piece of barbarism produced an effect the reverse of what they expected. The venerable face of the Imam, the attitude in which he had expired, with one hand pointed as if to heaven, was more impressive to those who crowded round the body than his fearless enthusiasm ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... human psychology. Unfortunately it has remained to a great extent unknown to the public and the majority of medical men and jurists. Even at the present day, this subject is regarded either in the light of magic and occult phenomena, or as being connected with imposture and charlatanism. This results from the incapacity of most men to think in a psychological and philosophical manner, to observe for themselves and to take into account the connection which exists between ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... office preparing things against to-morrow for the Duke, and so home and to bed, with some pain,... having taken cold this morning in sitting too long bare-legged to pare my corns. My wife and I spent a good deal of this evening in reading "Du Bartas' Imposture" and other parts which my wife of late has taken up to read, and is very fine as anything ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... locusts never do—"hurt men," but only those who have not the seal of God in their foreheads; that is, the worshipers of a false, idolatrous church, who are not known unto God as his true people. This is positive proof that the design of this vision is to set forth some awful religious imposture; for the "men" that they were to hurt are found in the department which by analogy ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... and after distorting her limbs and countenance during a competent time, she affected to have obtained a perfect recovery by the intercession of the Virgin.[*] This miracle was soon bruited abroad; and the two priests, finding the imposture to succeed beyond their own expectations, began to extend their views, and to lay the foundation of more important enterprises. They taught their penitent to declaim against the new doctrines, which she denominated heresy; against ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... Cobbler, which concludes the Bulak and Calcutta printed texts of The Nights, we have an interesting version of Aladdin. The hero runs away from his shrewish wife and under false presences is married to a king's daughter. He confesses his imposture to the princess, who loves him dearly, and she urges him to flee from her father's vengeance and not to return until his death should leave the throne vacant, and having furnished him with money, he secretly quits the city at daybreak. After riding ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... fell beneath their sword-thrusts he cried out, 'Villains, ye have slain your King.' Whether these words were a curious last flash of vanity, or whether he intended to serve the Prince by a generous act of imposture, can never be known. The soldiers at any rate believed that they had secured the prize. They carried off Mackenzie's head with them to Fort Augustus, and the authorities seem for some time to have been under the impression ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... satisfies our minds in the case of Daniel and Ecclesiastes; the book is either the work of John, or it is a cunning and conscienceless fraud. And it seems to me that any one who will read the book will find it impossible to believe that it is an imposture. If any book of the ages bears in itself the witness to the truth it is the Fourth Gospel. It shines by its own light. Any of us could tell the difference between the sun in the heavens and a brass disk suspended in the sky reflecting the sun's rays; and in much the same way the fact ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... point of separation. It is perfectly logical too. Prima facie, we have no complaint to make that they do differ. And here lies the improvement in the modern type of 'unbeliever.' He does not take the line of his older brethren, and rudely assail Christianity as a mere imposture with Voltaire and Paine. That sort of work has had its day. He, on the other hand, freely admits its beneficent achievements. He has grown reasonable. He accepts Christianity, as the believer does, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... stories your kind presence here shows that you have curiosity and sympathy, appeal to a great number of our other faculties, besides our mere sense of ridicule. The humorous writer professes to awaken and direct your love, your pity, your kindness—your scorn for untruth, pretension, imposture—your tenderness for the weak, the poor, the oppressed, the unhappy. To the best of his means and ability he comments on all the ordinary actions and passions of life almost. He takes upon himself to be the week-day preacher, ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... their suspicions aroused; and both, as evidently, were men of courage, not to be blinded by superstitious panic. Is it a probable thing that they would destroy an old and valued family mansion, without having exhausted every conceivable expedient to detect imposture? ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... supported by the assurance of an archbishop, she was in all likelihood deep in lying before she actually knew it. Fanaticism and deceit are strangely near relations to each other, and the deceiver is often the person first deceived, and the last who is aware of the imposture. ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... only. Therefore, though attended with a 'troubled sea of noises, and hoarse disputes,' the contest, with its hubbub and vain clamor, is the door to quietness and clear intelligence. Pedantry and pretension, quackery and imposture, shall, in spite of themselves, conduct to their own exposure and extinction; for a higher sway than ours guides all affairs, causing even the wrath of man to praise Him, and making folly itself the guide to wisdom. Hooker characterized ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... error of the verdict, escaped the gallows. Favoritism was shown in listening to accusations, which were turned aside from friends or partisans. If a man began a career as a witch-hunter, and, becoming convinced of the imposture, declined the service, he was ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... to Allumette Island. Here the old Algonquin chief, Tessouat, received them; but he presently convinced Champlain that there was no such northern route as he looked to find. Whereupon Vignau confessed his imposture, and Champlain generously let ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... regards he was a man to be respected and even feared. He prided himself on his connoisseurship in wine. Few Italians have the true virtuoso spirit. For the most part their enthusiasm is adopted to suit the time and opportunity—to practise imposture upon the British and Austrian millionaires. In painting and gemmary, Fortunato, like his countrymen, was a quack—but in the matter of old wines he was sincere. In this respect I did not differ from him materially: I was skilful in the Italian ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... to be duped, and too much honesty to bear a part in what he knew to be an imposture. "It is a silly superstition," he exclaimed, when he heard that, at the close of Lent, his palace was besieged by a crowd of the sick: "Give the poor creatures some money, and send them away." ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... away. He was glad that he had not suspected the young man unjustly. When an imposture is unmasked it is no ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... has married Michael Vanstone's son under a false name. Her husband is at this moment still persuaded that her maiden name was Bygrave, and that she is really the niece of a scoundrel who assisted her imposture, and whom I recognize, by the description of him, to ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins |
