"Insincerity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... back. Gregory was conscious of a belaying pin being whipped out of sight, and in an instant he was roused and tense, his nostrils vibrating with a sense of danger. The two men stared at each other, and then Horble backed into the stateroom, remarking with furtive insincerity, "There's a power of dirt to windward!" This said, the door went shut behind him. Gregory sprang to his feet and burst it open with his powerful shoulders, crushing Horble against the bunk, who, pistol in hand, fired at him point blank. The bullet went wide, and there was a ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... high-flown language, because all classes of society indulge in it more or less; and because, as we have already said, it proceeds in every instance from mental deficiencies and moral defects, from insincerity and dissimulation, and from an effeminate proneness to use up in speaking the energy we should turn to doing and apply to life and conduct. Without a substratum of sincerity, no man can speak right on, but runs astray into a kind of phraseology which bears the same ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... and her mother kissed her warmly, 'I don't want to hide anything from you. You are my only home-daughter now.' Then recollecting her prudence, she proceeded,—'You are old enough to understand the distress this insincerity of poor Laura's has occasioned,—and now that Amy is gone, we must look to you to ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... weeks with respect to the Eastern Question. Regretted Count Nesselrode's Note,[29] which Baron Brunnow owned nobody would regret more than the Count himself, acknowledged the weakness of Austria, felt sure of Lord Stratford's insincerity towards him and the Government,... as he had to Lord Aberdeen's certain knowledge called "the conduct of the Government infamous" and declared "he would let the world know that his name was Canning." He acknowledged the disadvantage ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... account for the origin of man, nor did he seek to know about his hereafter. He meddled neither with physics nor metaphysics [2]. [Sidebar] Subjects on which Confucius did not treat.— That he was unreligious, unspiritual, and open to the charge of insincerity. The testimony of the Analects about the subjects of his teaching is the following:— 'His frequent themes of discourse were the Book 1 Mencius, II. Pt. I. ii. 23-28. 2 'The contents of the Yi-ching, and Confucius's labors upon it, may be objected in opposition to this statement, and I must ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) Unicode Version • James Legge
... no humble station in intellectual society. His "evenings" were often rare mental treats. He presented the most refined picture of a gentleman, tall, slight, courteous, seemingly ever smiling, yet without an approach to insincerity. He had the esteem of his contemporaries, and the homage of the finer spirits of his time. They were earned and merited. Those who knew him knew also his wife. Mrs. Montagu was one of the most ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... important principles which were among the most solid foundations of Johnson's nature and largely explain his real greatness, namely on sound commonsense, moral and intellectual independence, and hatred of insincerity. There was really something to be said for his refusal to listen to the Americans' demand for liberty while they themselves held slaves. Living in a period of change, Johnson perceived that in many cases ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... hundred places; while the Regent was to possess no power whatever over any office, reversion, or pension. This appeared to the Prince and his allies a monstrous proposition, calculated to introduce "weakness, disorder, and insincerity into every branch of political business;" to "separate the Court from the State;" to "disconnect the authority to command service from the power of animating it by reward;" and to impose on the Regent "all the invidious duties of the kingly station, without the means of softening them ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... denunciations that are uttered against such as do not perform it aright. Were it not lawful declarations concerning the manner of doing it would not be made. In the Scriptures there is no such thing as the condemnation of insincerity in making an evil engagement; but every such compact is forbidden. When, therefore, as in many passages, swearing falsely is denounced with a heavy curse, swearing properly is virtually enjoined, and consequently, there is in like manner enjoined, every species ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham
... was nothing remarkable about his appearance. He was an ordinary brown-haired, blue-eyed young man,—not, perhaps, ordinary, for that combination is rather rare,—and there were some people who said that something in his eye betrayed what they called insincerity; indeed there was generally about him an agreeableness, a ready self-adaptation to everybody's way of thinking, a desire to recommend himself, which is always open to censure. Mrs. Wilberforce was one of the people who shook ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... contempt for Mrs. Thrale on account of that want of veracity which he imputes to her, at least as Mr. Boswell has recorded, either convicts him of narrating what Johnson never said, or Johnson himself of that insincerity of which there are too many instances, amidst all the recorded proofs of his unprovoked personal rudeness, to those with whom he conversed; for, this repeated contempt was coeval with his published letters, ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... temperament there might have been tragedy in the Rue des Saladiers, and the newspapers of Paris might have chronicled yet another crime passionnel and the appearance of Blanquette before a weeping jury. But the days of tragedy were over. Paragot thundered invectives against insincerity in Art (we were discussing my famous mythological picture still on the easel at Menilmontant) and Blanquette beamed approval. She remarked, referring to my picture, that she didn't like so many unclad ladies. It was not decent. Besides, if they lay in the grass like that, they would ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... hard to identify the personages of the satire with famous living writers, and there may be a chance that some at least of their identifications (as of Marston's Tubrio with Marlowe) are correct. But the exaggeration and insincerity, the deliberate "society-journalism" (to adopt a detestable phrase for a corresponding thing of our own days), which characterise all this class of writing make the identifications of but little interest. In every age there ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... grand difficulty, Mrs. Beaumont was too good a politician to waste time upon any inferior considerations. Instead of allowing herself leisure to reflect that all her present difficulties arose from her habits of insincerity, she, with the true spirit of intrigue, attributed her disappointments to some deficiency of artifice. "Oh!" said she to herself, "why did I write? I should only have spoken to Sir John. How could I be so imprudent as to commit myself by writing? But what can be done ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... Marquis, not to let yourself be blinded by a false notion. The Countess may have spoken well of you with the sole object of doing you justice, without carrying her intention any farther. And be sure you are wrong when you suspect her of insincerity in your regard. After all, why should you not prefer to have her dissemble her sentiments toward you, if you are the source of their inspiration? Are not women in the right to hide carefully their sentiments from you, and does not the bad ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... his patriotic record! To his ambition, selfishness, ignorance and innate insincerity he has sacrificed as much of the people's honor, of the people's interests, and of the people's blood as was feasible. History cannot be cheated. History will compare Mr. Seward's manifestoes and ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... this life, so the next felicity is to get rid of fools and scoundrels; which I cannot but own to you was one part of my design in falling upon these authors, whose incapacity is not greater than their insincerity, and of whom I have always found (if I ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... it is co-extensive with life. It is concerned with the individual, the family, the State. It touches industry, law, religion, ethics. It would not be difficult, if space allowed, to illustrate its influence in literature and art, to describe the war with convention, insincerity, and patronage, and the struggle for free self-expression, for reality, for the artist's soul. Liberalism is an all-penetrating element of the life-structure of the modern world. Secondly, it is an effective ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... to the point of sudden shivering attacks. Trask ascribed Doc's actions to an unexplained coolness which had sprung up between the steward and Shanghai Tom, although it was quite possible Doc was aware of something of the nature which had given Trask a sense of disquiet, this undercurrent of insincerity, of hidden meanings, of an evil spirit lurking under the friendly relations of Jarrow and Dinshaw with the trio who had come ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... into a terrible ferment. Again, they, and their Copperhead and other Democratic friends of the North, meanly professed belief that this was but a part of Mr. Lincoln's programme, and that his apparent backwardness was the cloak to hide his Anti-Slavery aggressiveness and insincerity. ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... World of Fashion is a trivial world where all must appear trivial; it is a place where all must act a part, and where those are most regarded who are most affected; it is a world of shams and insincerity, and very jealously guarded." ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... that way about it," said "Karl" with ill-concealed insincerity. "You must know thieving is no more what it once was. Even I, too, often am put to it to ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... confession. I have often enough spoken too harshly and vehemently of my antagonists. I have tried to fix upon them too unreservedly what seemed to me the logical consequences of their dogmas. I have condemned their attempts at a milder interpretation of their creed as proofs of insincerity, when I ought to have done more justice to the legitimate and lofty motives which prompted them. And I at least am bound by my own views to admit that even the antagonist from whose utterances I differ most widely may be an unconscious ally, supplementing rather than contradicting ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... had hitherto been vague and unsettled. My circumstances had led me to the frequent practice of insincerity; but my transgressions as they were slight and transient, did not much excite my previous reflections, or subsequent remorse. My deviations, however, though rendered easy by habit, were by no means sanctioned by my principles. Now an imposture, more profound and deliberate, ...
— Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist - (A Fragment) • Charles Brockden Brown
... the poetic energy, Suckling's is not. It is contaminated by one of those external activities which I have spoken of as being hostile to poetry. Although he perceives his subject with the right urgency, he is unwilling to be quite loyal to his perception. He makes some concession to the witty insincerity of the society in which he lives, and his poetry is soiled by the contact. It is not destroyed, not even changed in its nature, but its gold is left for ever twisted in a baser metal with which it does not suit. What we get is not a new compound with the element that corresponds to poetic energy ...
— The Lyric - An Essay • John Drinkwater
... open copy-books before him, carefully making those bold and full characters which are supposed to combine the extremes of chirographical and moral excellence, and had got as far as "Riches are deceitful," and was elaborating the noun with an insincerity of flourish that was quite in the spirit of his text, when he heard a gentle tapping. The woodpeckers had been busy about the roof during the day, and the noise did not disturb his work. But the opening of the door, and the tapping continuing from the inside, caused ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... and I have made love to her, but I never had the least encouragement. I knew all along she didn't care for me. How is she to blame? A girl is under no obligation to speak of all the men who have wanted to marry her, provided she has done nothing to be ashamed of. There's just one bit of insincerity. It's true she knew of you from me. But she looked you up because she despaired of finding employment; she was at an end of her money, didn't know what to do. I have heard this since I saw you last. It wasn't quite straightforward, ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... Reconciliation Fir, Time Fir, Birch, Elevation Flax, I Feel Your Kindness Fleur-de-lis, I burn Fleur-de-Luce, Fire Fly Orchis, Error Flytrap, Deceit Fools Parsley, Silliness Forget-me-not, Forget-me-not Foxglove, Insincerity Foxtail, Grass, Sporting Frog Ophrys, Disgust Fumitory, Spleen Fuchsia, Scarlet, Taste Furze, Love for all Seasons Garden Chervil, Sincerity Gardenia, Refinement Geranium, Dark, Melancholy Geranium, ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... not so." "True; and it is on account of the heavy showers of snow that have fallen and cooled the ground, a proof that thou art under the protection of the Almighty." Isfendiyar smiled, and said: "Thou art all insincerity and deception, thus to play upon my feelings with false or imaginary terrors." Saying this he urged his soldiers to pass rapidly on, so as to leave the sand behind them, and they presently came to a great river. Isfendiyar was now angry with Kurugsar, and said: "Thou hast declared ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... this way, and so we stopped to see you," answered Polly, with a feeling of shame at her own insincerity. ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... for training powers of will as of memory or reasoning. On the side of inhibition there is always the necessity for self-restraint and control so that the rights of others may not be infringed upon. Temptations to unfairness or insincerity in lessons and examinations are always to be met. The social relations of the school necessitate the development of personal ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... commissioned to demonstrate that the Hohenzollern system was the last word of creation. No one dreamed of distinguishing this glorification of the German people from the apotheosis of the dynasties—to which we had vowed our heart's blood—and the profound insincerity of these declamations was shown by the indifference with which the dynasties, the main feature in the programme, were afterwards got rid of, and the affair ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... of the Poets are delightful reading, and Pope's is one of the very best of them. {59} None knew the infirmities of ordinary human nature better than Johnson. They neither angered him nor amused him; he neither storms, sneers, nor chuckles, as he records man's vanity, insincerity, jealousy, and pretence. It is with a placid pen he pricks the bubble fame, dishonours the overdrawn sentiment, burlesques the sham philosophy of life; but for generosity, friendliness, affection, he is always on the watch, ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... what it had been at D'Erraha. Possibly it was as different as were the atmospheres of the two places. Eve seemed to have something of London in the reserve of her manner—the easy insincerity of her speech. She was no longer a girl untainted by worldliness—sincere, ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... more happy; the value expressed for him, by different sorts of men, raises him to esteem; there is yet something of the common cant of superficial satirists, who suppose that the insincerity of a courtier destroys all his sensations, and that he is equally a dissembler to the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... is one element of our active nature which the Christian religion has emphatically recognized, but which philosophers as a rule have with great insincerity tried to huddle out of sight in their pretension to found systems of absolute certainty. I mean the element of faith. Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is still theoretically possible; and as the test of belief is willingness to act, one may say that faith ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... their policy always went hand in hand with the Yugoslavs, saw all this, and consequently the only thing left for them to do is to insist on their attitude, constantly to reveal Austria's insincerity, to reject all pretty phrases without any meaning in them, and all compromises, which we know would never be kept. We also must reject a compromise peace which ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... suffered from a strange form of insincerity, which he had often unsuccessfully tried to cure, partly because it advantaged unsympathetic acquaintances at his expense, and partly because his wife produced unanswerable arguments against it with mortal effect. Although an unconceited man (as men go), and a very honest man, he ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... shown, that his name was always treated with singular dignity and respect, not only by the lovers of the old Republic but by the minions of the Empire; having found that no charge was ever made against him either for insincerity or cowardice or dishonesty by those who dealt commonly with his name, am I not justified in saying that they who have in later days accused him should have shown their authority? Their authority they have always found in his ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... last shilling out of their pockets and the last drop of blood out of their veins. If the headstrong self-will and unruly turbulence of a common alehouse are shocking, what shall we say to the studied insincerity, the insipid want of common sense, the callous insensibility of the drawing-room and boudoir? I would rather see the feelings of our common nature (for they are the same at bottom) expressed in the most naked and unqualified way, than see every feeling of our nature suppressed, ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... opposite direction, Mary Louise suffered another qualm, a feeling of insincerity. She was gathering credit that really was undeserved. Her return would doubtless be labelled in Bloomfield as a bit of pretty sacrifice. And the place was a very refuge. The sun dipped as she walked along, so that the tip of it reddened the ridge poles of the houses and the sky ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... course brought its protest. The people of Palo Alto met in mass meeting on March 21st, and adopted resolutions condemning the Call's course[50]. Senator Black from his sick bed wrote a letter showing the Call's insincerity and breach of faith with the pro-primary Senators[51]. The paper was bitterly denounced on the ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn
... expected to receive a note of bewitching, cajoling, feminine apology, but he did not receive it. They met again, always at Kenilworth Mansions, and in an interview full of pain at the start and full of insincerity at the finish Henry learnt that Geraldine's invitation had been for Sunday, and not Saturday, that various people of much importance in her eyes had been asked to meet him, and that the company was deeply disappointed and ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... her frank admission. "He represents a life we know so little about here on the far frontier. To you, with your code of border manliness, he may appear all affectation, mere shallow insincerity; but to me, Captain de Croix represents his class, stands for the refinements of social order to which women can never be indifferent. Those were the happiest days of my life, Monsieur; and at Montreal he was only ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... If a conduct less rigorous, less imperious, and more indulgent would have thrown greater lustre over her character, let it be remembered that some good qualities appear to be incompatible with others; nor let the seductive and corrupting nature of power be left out in the account. Her insincerity was perhaps the greatest blot in her character and the fruitful source of all the vexatious incidents of her reign. Though unacquainted with philosophical toleration, the only method of disarming the turbulence of religious factions, she yet preserved ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... completely cowed before her. Conscious himself of the insincerity and unworthiness of his declaration, he knew that she also had read him like an open book, and the knowledge made him fearfully angry; while to be foiled in his purpose and browbeaten by this girl, whom he imagined to be only what she seemed, was ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... the insincerity of his father's laugh, and rebelled against the unfairness of it. The question, he knew well, was sarcastically asked, the flavour of irony in the "permission to inquire" was not there by accident. To speak like that implied contempt of his opposition; he felt that he was being ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... feel that he is himself made higher by doing reverence to what is really above him? No nobler or more blessed feeling dwells in man's heart. And to me it is very cheering to consider that no sceptical logic, or general triviality, insincerity and aridity of any Time and its influences can destroy this noble inborn loyalty and worship that is in man. In times of unbelief, which soon have to become times of revolution, much down-rushing, sorrowful decay and ruin is visible to everybody. For myself in these days, I seem to see ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... Henry of York, had arrived from Rome, and the king proposed to place him at the head of the Irish regiments in the king's service and several others to enable him to effect a landing in England; but with his usual insincerity the French king continued to raise difficulties and cause delays until it was too late, and he thus lost for ever the chance of placing the family who had always been warm friends of France, and who would in the event of success have been his ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... lay before the French people; but among the educated minority who had political theories of their own, the publication of this reform by Edict produced the worst possible impression. No stronger evidence, it was said, could have been given of the Emperor's insincerity than the dictatorial form in which he affected to bestow liberty upon France. Scarcely a voice was raised in favour of the new Constitution. The measure had in fact failed of its effect. Napoleon's object was to excite an enthusiasm that should lead the entire nation, the ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... only oneself for audience. You know perfectly well that you are not going to give in, you are not going to attempt to stifle that which is the centre of your life; you have not courage for such slow suicide. Don't add insincerity to the other faults that are laid to your account——" She mused over the little self-administered lecture. And probing down into her consciousness, she realized that she could not face the thought of surrender. She meant to fight on. The notion of ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... into the embarrassment of being obliged absolutely to decline her when she seemed to be within his reach. He fled to his usual refuge, that of hoping for some unforeseen turn of fortune, some favourable chance which would save him from unpleasant consequences—perhaps even justify his insincerity by manifesting its prudence. And in this point of trusting to some throw of fortune's dice, Godfrey can hardly be called specially old-fashioned. Favourable Chance, I fancy, is the god of all men who follow their own devices ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... scenery of Claude, or brooded over the lofty solitudes of Salvator Rosa and the brigand—I have experienced the frivolity of France, the dissipation of Florence, the profligacy of the Venetian, the degeneracy of the Roman, and vindictiveness of the Neapolitan, the insincerity of the impoverished noble, and the truth of honest poverty—I have wondered in the gaudy sanctuary of the Papist, teeming with devotees, or pondered amid the nobler simplicity of the Heathen's Temple in the deserts ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... of the difference is on the surface, and the young people of to-day are not really so irreverent as they appear to be? The fashion now is toward plain, blunt unaffectedness; reverence is a polish of manners which implies insincerity, and the young men who are really reverent are most of them ashamed of it and work all the ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... to think me false belongs to you. Yet still I deem that Josabet, the foe Implacable of falsehood, would resign Her own life even, were it requisite, Rather than life of insincerity Be purchased by the slightest word untrue. Then of that child's descent there is no trace? Darkness profound surrounds his origin! You know not of what parents he was born? From whose hands Joad received him to his arms? Pray speak, I listen ready to believe. Princess, unto the ...
— Athaliah • J. Donkersley
... their representatives, responded with alacrity—which to Joshua seemed too eager—to his charge, and enumerated with too facile tongues God's deliverances and benefits. His ear must have caught some tones of levity, if not of insincerity, in the lightly-made vow. So he meets it with a douche of cold water in verses 19, 20, because he wishes to condense vaporous resolutions into something more tangible and permanent. Cold, judiciously applied, solidifies. Discouragements, rightly ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... about to make some angry reply, as the insincerity of the man was plainly discernible, but Will gave him a nudge in the back which caused ...
— Boy Scouts on the Great Divide - or, The Ending of the Trail • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... intentional foolery on the part of the subjects. Thus have I seen, at the prison-hospital of Salpetriere and elsewhere, young women outrageously deceiving the most serious investigators, who did not in the least suspect such insincerity. At market fairs there may often be seen booths where sleepwalkers are exhibited, who simulate genuine somnambulism more or less cleverly. Yet one would palpably err who should deny the existence of real magnetism, somnambulism, or ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... expectations were long entertained. With others the attempt to effect a religious reconciliation seems to have served merely as a mask to hide political designs; and at this distance of time it is among the most difficult problems of history to determine the proportion in which earnest zeal and rank insincerity entered as factors into the measures undertaken for the purpose of reconciling theological differences. Especially is this true respecting the overtures made by the French monarch to Philip Melanchthon, ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... Falsehood and insincerity, unsuitable as they seem to the dignity of public transactions, offend us with a less degrading idea of meanness, than when they are found in the intercourse of private life. In the latter, they discover a want of courage; in the other, only a defect of power: and, as it is impossible ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... plainly a refusal to accept the Whig shibboleths. In the Forest he was enthusiastic for the peace, and sneered at the Revolution. Pope afterwards declared that Addison had disavowed all party intentions at the time, and he accused him of insincerity for afterwards taking credit (in a poetical dedication of Cato) for the services rendered by his play to the cause of liberty. Pope's assertion is worthless in any case where he could exalt his own character for consistency at another man's expense, but it is true that both parties ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... salvation in a style of offensive denunciation that would have ruined a host of Dulcamaras, trained in the insinuating methods of the ordinary trade. But on this the Clergyman thrives, and weak women fall prostrate before his roaring insincerity. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 17, 1892 • Various
... Chester, '—and the mention of his name reminds me, by the way, that I am about to beg the favour of a minute's talk with you alone—the only thing I object to in it, is, that it DOES partake of insincerity. Now, however I may attempt to disguise the fact from myself in my affection for Ned, still I always revert to this—that if we are not sincere, we are nothing. Nothing upon earth. Let us be sincere, ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... great man from the pen of a very ladylike writer—this is the best description we can give of M. Caro's Life of George Sand. The late Professor of the Sorbonne could chatter charmingly about culture, and had all the fascinating insincerity of an accomplished phrase-maker; being an extremely superior person he had a great contempt for Democracy and its doings, but he was always popular with the Duchesses of the Faubourg, as there was nothing in ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... Lottie at ease at once, and she turned to him in apparent frankness, but with something of her old insincerity, and said, ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... writers Confucius has been accused of insincerity in a few minor matters; still, the wisdom contained in his religious doctrines, the philosophical value of his teachings relative to the regulation of human conduct, and, above all, his purity of purpose, justly entitles his name ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... are talking on religious subjects, avoid all cant. Cant words and phrases may be used in good faith from the force of habit, but their use subjects the speaker to a suspicion of insincerity. ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... than the Governor's letter, and he was almost bewildered for a moment. The thought flashed into his mind that the Governor had deceived him. In a few moments his thoughts brought together the acts of the Governor in the matter, and now he could see clearly evidence of insincerity and duplicity. He immediately sought out Mr. Denham, a merchant, who came over in the Annis with him, and gave him a history of ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer
... poets, however nobly inspired, were never accepted unless they had influential friends on the press,—why painters always married their models or their cooks, and got heartily ashamed of them afterwards,—and why people all round said so many things they did not mean. And confused by the general insincerity, she clung,—poor child!—to Lady Winsleigh, who had the tact to seem what she was not,—and the cleverness to probe into Thelma's nature and find out how translucently clear and pure it was—a perfect well of sweet water, into which one drop of poison, or better still, several drops, gradually ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... The insincerity of his graceful verse was apparent to all. Sordello and Boniface who had nodded their appreciation at the conclusion of the first, second, and third canzonets, scowled and coughed at the fourth, and though there was applause sufficient to gratify this poet's vanity it misled him as to ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... my choice of praiseworthy qualities limited, an elderly, garrulous acquaintance on his geniality, on an evening when I had writhed uneasily under a steady downpour of talk. I have bitterly rued my insincerity. Not only have I received innumerable invitations from the man whom the Americans would call my complimentee, but when I am in his company I see him making heroic attempts to make his conversation practically continuous. How often ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... ready to stop an army to argue with a child, could not be beyond reach of persuasion. With the simple frankness so innocent of guile as to make charming that which upon other lips would have been the broadest insincerity, he put that moment's ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... spring, miserliness, cupidity, desire for every kind of improper act, pride of birth, pride of learning, pride of beauty, pride of wealth, pitilessness for all creatures, malevolence towards all, mistrust in respect of all, insincerity towards all, appropriation of other people's wealth, ravishment of other people's wives, harshness of speech, anxiety, propensity to speak ill of others, violent craving for the indulgence of lust, gluttony, liability to premature death, violent propensity towards malice, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... from this school with its gushing "earnestness," it distinctions without differences, its gnat strainings and camel swallowings, its pretence of grappling with a question while resolutely bent upon shirking it, its dust throwing and mystification, its concealment of its own ineffable insincerity under an air of ineffable candour? Is there not a "lo there!" from that other school with its bituminous atmosphere of exclusiveness and self-laudatory dilettanteism? Is there not enough actual exposition of boredom come over us from ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... love as we now feel Ten thousand ills can face and foil, And passing years afresh reveal— We better are for cure and toil! I would not then my lot exchange For one where pampered luxury The hearts of man and wife estrange, And all is insincerity. A lot like this, Devoid of bliss, Dear wife, ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... struck," grumbled the Old Man with grateful insincerity. "What you fellers don't think of, there ain't any use in mentioning. Oh, Dell! Bring out that jug Blake sent me! Doggoned thirsty bunch out here—won't stir a foot till they sample that wine! Got to get rid of 'em somehow—they claim ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... all that remained of the army; and the kingdom would be left without a single soldier. William, however, could not be brought to believe that the case was so hopeless. He listened too easily to some secret adviser, Sunderland was probably the man, who accused Montague and Somers of cowardice and insincerity. They had, it was whispered in the royal ear, a majority, whenever they really wanted one. They were bent upon placing their friend Littleton in the Speaker's chair; and they had carried their point triumphantly. They would ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... becomes endued with righteousness. A bath in all the Vedas, and a behaviour of sincerity towards all creatures, are looked upon as equal in point of merit; or, perhaps, the latter is a little distinguished above the other in point of merit. Sincerity, it has been said, is Righteousness; while insincerity or crookedness is the reverse. That man who conducts himself with sincerity becomes endued with Righteousness. The man who is always devoted to sincerity of behaviour, succeeds in attaining to ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... scattered down the stream to refresh their horses, making a long banner of color in the dark canon. Don Enrique led John along the line, and presented him solemnly to each in turn. The caballeros protested eternal friendship with vehement insincerity, and the girls flashed their eyes and teeth at the blue-eyed young American without descending from their unconscious pride of sex and race. They had the best blood of Spain in them, and an American was an American, be he never ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... had marked it, and there were helping hands held out, as there always are when one struggles toward the forward margin of any Slough of Despond. He had even gone to church at long intervals, having there the good hap to fall under the influence of a man whose faults were neither of ignorance nor of insincerity. ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... used.—Journals, vii. 91. He says he would not have done it, if he could have found two in the council to support him.—Works, 144, Evelyn's Mem. ii. App. 90. This has been alleged, but I see not with what reason, as a proof of his insincerity in ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... something more than you wish to tell. I mean a bigger factor in the Crane affair than you admit. I ask no questions, I agree to your terms, and I will do exactly as you direct, relying on your promise that if I do so, you will not tell of any—any insincerity you may notice." ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... not the tendency to yield to every impression, to change with every impulse, but the capability of being moved by many and various impressions, of responding to an ever-renewed succession of impulses. Byron is defending the enthusiastic temperament from the charge of inconstancy and insincerity.] ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... The insincerity of her question made her flush quite suddenly. She knew very well whom Elisaveta meant. The latter ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... ambitious and able men. Political differences separated him from Swift, and Steele's uncertain character and inconsistent course blighted what was probably the most delightful intimacy of his life. Pope doubtless believed that he had good ground for charging Addison with jealousy and insincerity, and in 1715 an open rupture took place between them. The story of the famous quarrel was first told by Pope, and his version was long accepted in many quarters as final; but later opinion inclines to hold Addison guiltless of the grave accusations ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... shallow, quarrelsome and heathenising, yet not without a directness and a firmness of conviction which gives it a certain dignity in spite of its wrangling and irreverence. Its conservative allies it despised for their wavering and insincerity; to its Nicene opponents it repaid hatred for hatred, and flung back with retorted scorn their denial of its right to ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... arch humour. And now let us have a likeness of Ethel. She was seventeen years old; rather taller than the majority of girls; her face somewhat grave and haughty, but on occasion brightening with humour or beaming with kindliness and affection. Too quick to detect affectation or insincerity in others, too impatient of dulness or pomposity, she was more sarcastic now than she became when after-years of suffering had softened her nature. Truth looked out of her bright eyes, and rose up armed and flashed scorn or denial when ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... expensively educated girl. And in many ways interesting. I have been watching her. I have not been favoured with very much of her attention, but that fact has enabled me to see her in profile. Miss Seyffert is a fairly crude mixture of frankness, insincerity and self-explanatory egotism, and I have been able to disregard a considerable amount of the conversation she has addressed to me. Now I guess this Miss Grammont has had no mother since ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... unfortunate, as the blacks have a child-like confidence in their chosen leaders, founded partly on their primitive character, and partly on their distrust of the native whites. Both their politicians and their preachers have given abundant evidence of their insincerity during the excitement of emigration by blowing hot and blowing cold; by talking to the negroes one way, and to the whites another; and even to the extent, in some instances, of taking money to use their influence for discouraging and impeding emigration. ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... never suffered while under his guardianship; a large amount was in her treasury; this was an objective point for the usurpers. He met the military satrap, and was assured of his intentions. Satisfied of his insincerity and dishonesty, knowing he held the power of the bayonet, and would be unscrupulous in its use, calm as a Roman senator he defied the power of this unprincipled minion of a base, corrupt, and unconstitutional power, and deliberately ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... not add—mine; for that would be an insincerity unworthy of you! Of me you did not think, except as a marplot! You say you came for the great pleasure you enjoyed in Nora's society! Did it ever occur to you that she might learn to take too much pleasure ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... write me notes stating the facts. If any one does not do it, she will punish herself severely, for she will feel for many days to come that while her companions were willing to acknowledge their faults, she wished to conceal and cover hers. Conscience will reproach her bitterly for her insincerity, and, whenever she hears the sound of the door-bell, it will remind her not only of her fault, but of what is far worse, her willingness to appear innocent when she was ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott
... that I have acted conscientiously in pushing the investigations and prosecutions against those combinations which are really a menace to the country; but there are some who disagree with me, and flaunt the Consolidated Companies in my face as an evidence of insincerity on my part. I have asked you and Senator Kenmore to meet me here this afternoon, to talk over the question quite informally with the senator from New York and with ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... the law either in his superstition or in his revenge, could not be pulled down without the aid of a foreign army, is a circumstance not very grateful to our national pride. Yet this is the least degrading part of the story. The shameless insincerity of the great and noble, the warm assurances of general support which James received, down to the moment of general desertion, indicate a meanness of spirit and a looseness of morality most disgraceful to the age. That the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... when my things arrive, which ought to be soon," Gifford responded coldly, disliking the man and his rather obvious insincerity. ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... was of a kind which to us sounds intolerable. It seems as if nothing that ingenuity could devise was too extravagant for an honest man to use, and for a man who respected himself to accept. It must not, indeed, be forgotten that conventionalities, as well as insincerity, differ in their forms in different times; and that insincerity may lurk behind frank and clear words, when they are the fashion, as much as in what is like mere fulsome adulation. But words mean something, in spite of forms and fashions. When a man of great genius writes his private letters, ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... of snow to be photographed against in the full splendour of a Hyperborean disguise; but is it worth while to unpack one's valise for that? And anyhow would not the atmosphere of the picture be marred, the pose of the explorer be rendered unnatural by his consciousness of insincerity and his fear ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 14, 1919 • Various
... Great Britain. He is now agitating for this very thing in England. So that it need not seem surprising that I should be in earnest in this; and I trust that after the explanation I have made of my position and my doctrines. I shall not be charged either with insincerity or with a desire to ingratiate myself with the majority of this body, with the majority of the people, or with any one, because, thank God, I am free from all entanglements of that kind at this present speaking, and if I retain my senses I think ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... But, despite Moore's insincerity and Byron's vagaries, the man of to-day more frequently, and longer than woman, cherishes his ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... was sincere in its insincerity. The art impulse was supreme in him and love was secondary. The nine years' engagement, with the uncertain, vacillating, forgetful, absent-minded habits of erratic genius to deal with, wore out the life ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... believing in goodness as he believed in beauty; so he was delighted when Cecile and her mother made much of him. After all the vaudevilles, tragedies, and comedies which had been played under the worthy man's eyes for twelve long years, he could not detect the insincerity and grimaces of social comedy, no doubt because he had seen too much of it. Any one who goes into society in Paris, and knows the type of woman, dried up, body and soul, by a burning thirst for social position, and a fierce desire to be thought ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... can do much, but we must remember that home was God's first and holiest school. It is in the home that the child receives his first and most lasting lessons. Let us not misjudge the ability of the child to perceive the inconsistency, the insincerity, of father and mother. Even though the parent be a teacher in the Sunday school, her influence cannot be for the best if her everyday life is wasted in society and unworthy amusements. The father's praise of the Bible loses ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold
... stuff of the play. Mrs. PATRICK CAMPBELL was delicious, both in her unregenerate state, and even more during the middle phase of the refining process. She made the Third Act a pure delight. Later, when she became tragic, she sacrificed something of her particular charm to the author's insincerity. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 22, 1914 • Various
... daughters—ay! and perhaps her sons as well (though boys are not credited with so much tender divination)—knew the meaning of the little droop at the side of their mother's smiling lips. They detected the insincerity ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... exceeded his powers and that he deserved to be hung, he at the same time, with almost idiotic fatuity, sent the same Count Neuperg back to the Turkish camp to settle some items which yet required adjustment. This proved, to every mind, the insincerity of Charles. The Russians, thus forsaken by Austria, also made peace with the Turks. They consented to demolish their fortress of Azof, to relinquish all pretensions to the right of navigating the Black sea, and to allow a vast extent of territory upon its northern ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... with St. Germains, just when he should have kept aloof: and that Court despised him, as the manly and resolute men who established the Elector in England had before done. He signed his own name to every accusation of insincerity his enemies made against him; and the king and the pretender alike could show proofs of St. John's treachery under his own ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the long-talked of negotiation to include the Grenvilles, though often imminent, had never been accomplished. The probable reason of this may be traced to the King's varying disposition—possibly to his insincerity. It appears that two arrangements were going on at the same time, totally opposite in their intentions; one, a coalition of the Marquis of Buckingham and his friends, was negotiated by the Duke of Wellington, with the express authority of the King; the other, the introduction ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... dominion it was the direct successor of the Roman Empire. All the races of Europe were to meet as brothers under the one God of the new world and under the direction of his representatives on earth. It was this change in the features of the world which gave a certain air of insincerity to the Christian gospel. In the older days there had been political unity with a great diversity of religions; now there was religious unity spread over a great diversity of antagonistic political bodies. Men ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe |
