"Cant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lily in Heb., derived by some from its six (shash) leaves, and by others from its vivid cheerful brightness. "His lips are lilies" (Cant. v. 13), not in colour, but ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... to-night for saying it, my heart sat somewhat nearer to those old people who were perhaps a little too dumpish in their repentance and their faith and their hope that morning, than it did to those who took to the table with a light heart. I know all your flippant cant about gospel liberty and against Highland introspection, as you call it—as well as all your habitual neglect of a close and deep self-examination, as Paul called it; but I tell you all to-night that it would be the salvation of your soul if you too ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... gallant man who sits him down before the baize and challenges all comers, his money against theirs, his fortune against theirs, is proscribed by your modern moral world. It is a conspiracy of the middle classes against gentlemen: it is only the shopkeeper cant which is to go down nowadays. I say that play was an institution of chivalry: it has been wrecked, along with other privileges of men of birth. When Seingalt engaged a man for six-and-thirty hours without leaving the table, do you think he showed no courage? How have ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... whose sacrifices in the Union cause the war was brought to a successful termination. It will not be submitted to, and Governor Hoadley, from his former position, ought to be one of the first to demand and insist upon a remedy, and not seek to avoid or belittle it by cant phrases." ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... more appropriately named than the cottage of Mother Hays. It stood on either a real or artificial eminence between Sheerness and Warden, facing what is called "The Cant," and very near the small village of East Church. The clay and shingle of which it was composed would have ill encountered the whirlwind that in tempestuous weather fiercely yelled around the cliffs, had it not been for the firm support afforded ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... Republican Parliament, and Protectorate, the theatres of that day were closed, or, if opened by stealth, were subject to the visits of the emissaries of "Praise God Barebones," "Fight the Good Fight," and their crew. The actors were driven off the stage by soldiers, and the cant word of that period is still recorded, "Enter red coat, exit hat and cloak." William Prynne was celebrated for his writings against the immorality of the stage, and the furious invectives of Jeremy Collier, are still extant; his pen was roused by Dryden's Spanish Friar, and Congreve's witty, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume X, No. 280, Saturday, October 27, 1827. • Various
... money or money's worth, from his neighbour's pocket into his. The object of puzzling the question with religion is clear. You cannot quarrel for sixpences with the man who is helping you the way to heaven. The man who wants your sixpences, therefore, assumes a religious phraseology, which is cant, and cant is fraud, and fraud is dishonesty, and the dishonest should have a ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... Lost a Greet Deal of Cattel such as Hogs and Cows What theay call the Plage I Whent to your Aunt as you Wish Mee to Do But She Told Mee She Did not wont aney Boddy She Told Mee She Should Like to Come up to see you But She Cant Come know for she is Boddyley ill and Harry Donte Work there know But he Go up there Once in Two or Three Day Harry Offered is self to Go up to Live With your Aunt But She Made him know Ancer. I hay Been up to your Aunt at Work for 5 Weeks Hopping and ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... liberal-handed, habitually amused, slightly caustic, he looked out for the good of himself and those related to him and considered that he was justified in closing his corporate regards at that point. He had no cant and no hypocrisy, no pose and no fads. A sane, aggressive, self-centered, rational materialist of the American brand, it was not only his friends who thought him a fine fellow. He himself would have admitted so much and have been ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... that is autobiographical, and helps us to understand Carlyle's childhood and youth; but it is so mixed up with fantasy and humour that it is difficult to separate fiction from fact. Its chief aim seems to be the overthrow of cant, the ridiculing of empty conventions, and the preaching of sincerity and independence. But not yet was Carlyle's generation prepared to listen to such sermons. Jeffrey was bewildered by the tone and offended ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... disfigure his fine work on the English language by traducing all who now write that tongue. "None seek the audience, fit, though few, which contented the ambition of Milton, and all writers for the press now measure their glory by their gains," and so indefinitely onward,—which is simply cant. Does Sylvanus Cobb, Jr., who honestly earns his annual five thousand dollars from the "New York Ledger," take rank as head of American literature by virtue of his salary? Because the profits of true literature are rising,—trivial as ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... sundowners come, And cunningly ask if the master's at home, 'Be off,' she replies, 'with your blarney and cant, Or I'll call my son Andy; ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... pleonexia and deceit in war, vide Hipparch., c. 5 [tr. Works, Vol. III. Part II. p. 20]. Interesting and Hellenic, I think, the mere raising of this sort of question; it might be done nowadays, perhaps, with advantage or disadvantage, less cant and ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... commander-in-chief and of the common soldier. Dark, artful, and designing, he governed Fairfax by his suggestions, while he pretended only to second the projects of that general. Among the privates he appeared as the advocate of liberty and toleration, joined with them in their conventicles, equalled them in the cant of fanaticism, and affected to resent their wrongs as religionists and their privations as soldiers. To his fellow-officers he lamented the ingratitude and jealousy of the parliament, a court in which experience showed that no man, not even the most meritorious patriot, was secure. ...
— 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
... appears that even these cant phrases by which the church sometimes tries to fence itself off from the world into a pietistic religiousness that has little or nothing to do with life, all point, when you get their real significance, to a relation between the church and the ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden
... heard of a man who had conceived a violent eccentric prejudice against negroes; and he was not content with chiming in with the usual cant of the prejudice that they ought not to be allowed in our churches and in our rail-road-cars, but vociferated, that, if he had his way, they should not be allowed in Africa! The advantage of grit in this respect is in its annihilating a prejudice ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... didnt know what to offer them. I knew that they were cheaper than actors, because they get long engagements: forty years sometimes; but thats no rule for a single job. Then theres such a lot of them: on first nights they run away with all your stalls: you cant find a decent place for your own mother. It would have cost a fortune ...
— Fanny's First Play • George Bernard Shaw
... reasoning," says an American Unitarian divine, "partial observation, intellectual grouping, moral obliquity, spiritual ignorance,—in short, of puerility and superstition involved in a large part of the appeals, the preaching, the cant terms, the popular dogmas, the current conversation of Christendom,—are discouraging evidences how backward is the religious thought of our day, as compared with its general thought; how little harmony there is between ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... hesitated a little. "Yes, it sounds like cant, I know, but sometimes I feel as if I'd like to do some good in the world, if father only wouldn't insist upon God's putting it ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... revivalism, if that is the term for it, must be judged by its fruits. I am informed that of those who kneel here experience shows that but a small percentage relapse. The most of them become what in the Salvation Army cant—if one chooses so to ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... harlote[gh], harlot's, B. 34; harlots, B. 860. This term was not originally confined to females, nor even to persons of bad character. W. herlawd, herlod, a youth; herlodes, adamsel. Cf. "harlotte scurrus." "Gerro a tryfelour or a harlott." Med. MS. Cant. "An harlott, balator, rusticus, gerror, mima, joculator, nugatur, scurrulus, manducus. An harlottry, lecacitas, inurbanitas," etc. To "do harlottry, scurrari." Cath. Ang. in Prompt. Parv. "Ffore harlottez and hause-mene (house-men) salle helpe bott littille." —(Morte Arthure, ...
— Early English Alliterative Poems - in the West-Midland Dialect of the Fourteenth Century • Various
... above all earthly duties. To those who said: 'Because you are a Christian, surely you are not less an Englishman?' he would reply by shaking his head, and by saying: 'I am a citizen of no earthly State'. He did not realize that, in reality, and to use a cant phrase not yet coined in 1854, there existed in Great Britain no more ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... it is not the teaching of life. We have forgotten the greater virtues, and we were becoming emasculated humbugs whose gods were our own weaknesses. Then came war, and the air was cleared. Germany, in spite of her blunders and her grossness, stood forth as the scourge of cant. She had the courage to cut through the bonds of humbug and to laugh at the fetishes of the herd. Therefore I am on Germany's side. But I came here for another reason. I know nothing of the East, but as I read history it is from the desert that the purification ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... me—fascinates me—and yet I wish I could join heartily in that chorus of praise which the kind-hearted old bully has enjoyed. It is difficult to follow his own advice and to "clear one's mind of cant" upon the subject, for when you have been accustomed to look at him through the sympathetic glasses of Macaulay or of Boswell, it is hard to take them off, to rub one's eyes, and to have a good honest stare on one's own account at the man's actual ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Monticue commonly called Miss M. She is very active and pretty. I do hope I shall enjoy myself with you. I am fond of digging in the garden and I am parshial to ladies if [Pg 26] they are nice I suppose it is my nature. I am not quite a gentleman but you would hardly notice it but cant be helped anyhow. We will come ...
— The Young Visiters or, Mr. Salteena's Plan • Daisy Ashford
... much good. The curate was just as confident and uncompromising in the discharge of his office as he was yielding and diffident when only himself was in question. He was so honest, and straightforward, and true—so free from rant or cant—so strong in his simple theology, that Guy soon trusted him implicitly when he spoke of the past and of the future that was so near. The repentance that was begun by Constance's dying bed was completed, I am sure, on ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... a great deal of cant abroad on this subject," said Mr Morgan, interrupting the young oracle. "I like good architecture, but I don't relish attributing moral qualities to bricks and mortar. The hallowing influence ought to be within. Mr Folgate, we were going to call at your office. Have you thought ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... hearts his lovely garden. It is in this garden he dwells; it is there he walks. See 2 Cor. 6:16. When the south winds blow and the spices flow out he comes into his garden to eat his pleasant fruits; he gathers the myrrh and the spices, he eats honey and drinks wine and milk. See Cant. 4:16 and 5:1. This is sweet language, and is expressive of the purity of the Christian heart, where God dwells, and where he walks in the gentleness of his Spirit, delighting himself in the tender Christian graces that are budding and blooming all along ...
— Food for the Lambs; or, Helps for Young Christians • Charles Ebert Orr
... Bacchis still as much as ever, When the old gentleman began to tease him To marry, in the common cant of fathers; —"That he was now grown old; and Pamphilus His only child; and that he long'd for heirs, As props of his old age." At first my master Withstood his instances, but as his father Became more ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
... some error in the translation of the Greek expression. I replied that, in my opinion, there was; and that I had myself always been irritated by the entire irrelevance of the English word, and by something very like cant, on which the whole burden of the passage is thrown. How was it any natural preparation for a vast spiritual revolution, that men should first of all acknowledge any special duty of repentance? The ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... all! No, indeed! What is it you want me to do for you? Do you want me to help you roll a log into the water, when you've finished cutting down that tree? I might use my horns for a cant hook, ...
— The Tale of Nimble Deer - Sleepy-Time Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... no doubt that Charles was not the author. 'My reading progresses with or without fixed hope. I struggled through the "Eikon Basilike" yesterday; one of the paltriest pieces of vapid, shovel-hatted, clear-starched, immaculate falsity and cant I have ever read. It is to me an amazement how any mortal could ever have taken that for a genuine book of King Charles's. Nothing but a surpliced Pharisee, sitting at his ease afar off, could have got up such a set of meditations. It got Parson Gauden a ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... oppression. No cheek is so easily bedewed by the unnecessary tear as the cheek of the ruffian—and those who compose the "editorials" for Mr Hearst's papers have cynically realised this truth. They rant and they cant and they argue, as though nothing but noble thoughts were permitted to lodge within the poor brains of their readers. Their favourite gospel is the gospel of Socialism. They tell the workers that the world is their inalienable inheritance, ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... lust, and then prate about their inviolable legal property, and deny the power of the legislature, which stamped them property, to undo its own wrong, and secure to wives by law the rights of human beings. Would such cant about "legal rights" be heeded where reason and justice held sway, and where law, based upon fundamental morality, received homage? If a frantic legislature pronounces woman a chattel, has it no power, with returning reason, to take back the blasphemy? ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... funny, what they DO put in the newspapers,' he said. 'Here are two leaders—' he held out his DAILY TELEGRAPH, 'full of the ordinary newspaper cant—' he scanned the columns down—'and then there's this little—I dunno what you'd call it, essay, almost—appearing with the leaders, and saying there must arise a man who will give new values to things, give us new ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... A nation, like an individual, can covertly stab the peace of another while saying, "Art thou in health, my brother?" and even the peace of civilization can be betrayed by a Judas kiss. Professions of peace belong to the cant of diplomacy and have always characterized the ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... [260] Balaam is the cant name in a Newspaper Office for asinine paragraphs, about monstrous productions of Nature and the like, kept standing in type to be used whenever the real news of the day leaves an awkward space that ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... doctors can be trusted to keep your own counsel and your clients' secrets. And now for some confessions of mine. In the first place, it is my painful duty to tell you that I am a discharged convict—an 'old lag,' as the cant phrase has it." ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... things to say about Shakespeare which he dared not utter, because the British public would not stand them. But the British public has stood some very severe things about the Bible, which is even yet reckoned of higher sanctity than Shakespeare. And certainly there is as much cant about Shakespeare to be cleared away as about the Bible. However this is scarcely the place to do it. It is clear enough, however, from his usage of Painter, that Shakespeare was no more original in plot than any of his fellows, and it is only the unwise and rash who could ask for originality ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... He must seem to abound in these advantages, or another man will take his place. He must disguise himself at all costs. But disguises are not easy to make; they require time and care, which he cannot afford. So he must snatch up ready-made disguises—unhook them, rather. He must know all the cant-phrases, the cant-references. There are very, very many of them, and belike it is hard to keep them all at one's finger-tips. But, at least, there is no difficulty in collecting them. Plod through the 'leaders' and 'notes' in half-a-dozen of the daily papers, ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... anointing with ointment) is one quite in accordance with the customs of the time and country, and there is not the least improbability in its repetition under different circumstances. (Eccles. 9:8; Cant. 4:10; Amos 6:6.) ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... as it may, so far as humanity is concerned, this hypersensitive effeminacy has but a noxious influence; and all the more for the twofold reason that it is sometimes sincere, though more often mere cant and hypocrisy. At the best, it is a perversion of the truth; for emotion combined with ignorance, as it is in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of a thousand, is a serious obstacle in the path of ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... who, by his vanity seduced, And soothed into a dream that he discerns The difference of a Guido from a daub, Frequents the crowded auction. Stationed there As duly as the Langford of the show, With glass at eye, and catalogue in hand, And tongue accomplished in the fulsome cant And pedantry that coxcombs learn with ease, Oft as the price-deciding hammer falls He notes it in his book, then raps his box, Swears 'tis a bargain, rails at his hard fate That he has let it pass—but ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... precious in the play. The scenes in the brothel at Mitylene (in Act IV) have power. Many find their unpleasantness an excuse for saying that Shakespeare never wrote them. They are certainly by Shakespeare. Cant would always persuade itself that the power to see clearly ought not to be turned upon ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... pretenders of every sort, whether in taste or morals, he entertained, at all times, the most profound contempt; and if, frequently, his real feelings of admiration disguised themselves under an affected tone of indifference and mockery, it was out of pure hostility to the cant of those, who, he well knew, praised without any feeling at all. It must be owned, too, that while he thus justly despised the raptures of the common herd of travellers, there were some pursuits, even of the intelligent and tasteful, in which he took but very little interest. With the antiquarian ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... curve. Raise a few feet of that all but invisible plate three-eighths of an inch and she will yaw five miles to port or starboard ere she is under control again. Give her full helm and she returns on her track like a whip-lash. Cant the whole forward—a touch on the wheel will suffice—and she sweeps at your good direction up or down. Open the complete circle and she presents to the air a mushroom-head that will bring her up all standing within ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... ghostly Colourist reprov'd. And what didst Thou aspire to gain, Who dar'd'st the will of Jove arraign, That bounded thus within a span The little life of little man; With shallow art deriving thence Excuses for thy indolence? 'Tis cant and hypocritic stuff! The life of man is long enough: For did he but the half improve He would ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... not suspect me of wanting to preach any cant to you, or of joining in the pretence that everything is in a fine way and need not be made better. What I am striving to keep in our minds is the care, the precaution, with which we should go about making things ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... point, as to prescription of murder in Scotland[272]. 'A jury in England would make allowance for deficiencies of evidence, on account of lapse of time; but a general rule that a crime should not be punished, or tried for the purpose of punishment, after twenty years, is bad. It is cant to talk of the King's advocate delaying a prosecution from malice. How unlikely is it the King's advocate should have malice against persons who commit murder, or should even know them at all. If the son of the murdered man should kill the murderer who got off merely by prescription, I would ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... I talking sentimental cant? Don't answer, if you think that. I can't trust my own mind any more, anyway; and," with an ugly laugh, "I'll know it all some day—the ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... noble stream we journeyed for four days and nights; in clear weather making tolerably good way, but often compelled by thick fogs and drift timber to lay our ship alongside the forest, and make fast to some large tree. Occasionally the stream would cant our head suddenly, and, before the helm could be shifted, rush we went right stem on into the nearest grove of willows, with such a crashing and rattling as made one wonder at first what the deuce was the row. In one instance, whilst at dinner, a huge branch ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... of nature, gives mankind railways, power, commodities. As a matter of fact, a modern intelligent community is quite capable of doing all these things infinitely better for itself, and the beneficent influence of commerce may easily become, and does easily become, the basis of a cant. Exploitation by private persons is no doubt a necessary condition to economic development in an illiterate community of low intelligence, just as flint implements marked a necessary phase in the social development of mankind; but to-day the avaricious ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... impulse to speak with lack of matter, is the cause of much of that common-place utterance concerning things of religion which is so wearisome, but which therefore it is not always fair to despise as cant. ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... adopted as a cant expression. The woman here alluded to was a procuress well known in her day, and described in the "Tatler" (No. 84) as "the celebrated Madam Bennet." We further learn, from the "Spectator" (No. 266), that she was the Lady B. to whom Wycherley addressed his ironical dedication of "The ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... speaking seriously now. Muller felt that this was none of the whining cant people in authority among the Boers find it desirable to adopt. It was what he thought, and it chilled Muller in spite of his pretended scepticism, as the sincere belief of an intellectual man, however opposite to our own, is apt to chill us into doubt of ourselves ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... the broker. Not only did he enjoy their bohemianism and careless good-fellowship, but he entered fully into the spirit of their way of living. He professed to understand them and in a measure to sympathize with them. Entirely without humbug or cant, he recognized that they had their own place in the social game. They were outcasts, if you will, but interesting and amusing outcasts. He rather liked the looseness of living which does not quite reach ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... grasped her, put her on his back, took her two tiny hands in his large left hand, lay down flat on his stomach and crawled along on top of the wall as far as the cant. As he had guessed, there stood a building whose roof started from the top of the wooden barricade and descended to within a very short distance of the ground, with a gentle slope which grazed the linden-tree. A lucky circumstance, for the wall was much higher on this side than on ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... letters, journals, or prose sketches, his ready metrical pen wrote in verse: an excursion to England or Scotland, Yarrow Visited and Revisited, journeys in Germany and Italy, are all in verse. He exhibits in them all great humanity and benevolence, and is emphatically and without cant the poet of religion and morality. Coleridge—a poet and an attached friend, perhaps a partisan—claims for him, in his Biographia Literaria, "purity of language, freshness, strength, curiosa felicitas ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... the preceding verses, seems to have been a cant term among the early Shakers for a sluggard and selfish fellow, a kind of creature they have pretty thoroughly extirpated; and presumably by such free speech as is used in the following ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... amidships as they could get it. Presently the square canvas was all a-shiver, slatting furiously and causing the ship to tremble to her keel. "Raise tacks and sheets!" was the next order; and now came the critical moment and the question—Would she hold her way long enough to cant in the proper direction? And, as luck would have it, just then there came hissing and foaming down upon us a particularly heavy sea, into which the frigate dived until she was all a-smother for'ard. Yet, notwithstanding this, her head continued to sweep round—slowly, it is true; still—"Mainsail ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... heared of a Democrat nigger. Nigger neber did own enything so dey cant be Democrats en if dey vote a Democrat ticket dey is jes votin a lie. Cause no nigger neber did own slaves only the old nigger slave traders and dey werent nuthin but varmints anyway. Ye jes has to hev owned slaves to vote a Democrat ticket en den no ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Kentucky Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... grim, 250 And rugged as a Saracen, Or Turk of Mahomet's own kin; Clad in a mantle della guerre Of rough impenetrable fur; And in his nose, like Indian King, 255 He wore, for ornament, a ring; About his neck a threefold gorget. As rough as trebled leathern target; Armed, as heralds cant, and langued; Or, as the vulgar say, sharp-fanged. 260 For as the teeth in beasts of prey Are swords, with which they fight in fray; So swords, in men of war, are teeth, Which they do eat their vittle with. He was by birth, some authors write, 265 A Russian; some, a Muscovite; And 'mong ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... evidently weighing on the minds of men, in these days. The thing must be done—they cant do it themselves, and they are mightily afraid we won't, if we have half a chance to do anything else. If a woman was by way of being a Dante or a Darwin, she had better give it up—for Roger—and ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... an attack on cant. It was a story written by Dickens to protest against all he hated in the nature of oppression. Dickens hated the vulgar cant that only helps to bring self-advertisement: the ethic that the poor must listen ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... God's mercy or laments, all other prayers sent forth from the cold insipid sacristies of the seventeenth century, or, worse still, composed in our own day by the piety-mongers who insert in our books of prayer the pious cant of the Rue Bonaparte—all these inflated and pretentious petitions should be avoided by sinners who, in default of every other virtue, at ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... unreasonableness in his adversaries, though their case might be overwhelmingly plausible, it was ten to one he routed them in confusion. He was ready in retort. One example of this readiness Gladstone was fond of quoting: Sir Francis Burdett had made a speech against the Whigs, in which he spoke of the "cant of patriotism." "There is one thing worse than the cant of patriotism," retorted Lord John, "and that is the recant of patriotism." Again, when the Queen once asked him, "Is it true, Lord John, that you hold that a subject is justified, in certain circumstances, in disobeying his ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... hair, and was simply clad in white satin shoes, a pink muslin dress, an apple-green stuff sash, and black silk gloves, with yellow roses in her hair. Wherefore I fled from Miss McKenna and sought my friend Private Mulvaney, who was at the cant—refreshment-table. ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... sympathy of numbers cheers him, the sense of Divine forgiveness has given him power, and he is ready to face life again with new heart. Ferrier caught the note of formality again and again, but he could see that the phrases had not putrefied into cant. ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry. If we paused for a moment to examine the cheapest cant phrases that pass our lips every day, we should find that they were as rich and suggestive as so many sonnets. To take a single instance: we speak of a man in English social relations 'breaking the ice.' If this were expanded into a sonnet, ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... secured in its place by a forged steel pin, fitted with a nut and washer, which passes through the crown and the heel of the shank. All the above anchors were provided with a stock (fig. 1, hk), the use of which is to "cant'' the anchor. If it falls on the ground, resting on one arm and one stock, when a strain is brought on the cable, the stock cants the anchor, causing the arms to lie at a downward angle to the holding ground; and the pees enter ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... said, "If ever there was a man who in trying times avoided offenses, it was Mr. Lincoln. If there ever was a leader in a civil contest who shunned acrimony and eschewed passion, it was he. In a time of much cant and affectation he was simple, unaffected, true, transparent. In a season of many mistakes he was never known to be wrong.... By a happy tact, not often so felicitously blended with pure evidence ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... said Cyril "you cant get round me like that, I know something is wrong, you might as well ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford
... tradition, is spoken of as some thing quite unprecedented in this respect. The fact is that this measure of virtue was common to the English colonists generally, and eminently to the New England colonists. A good example of the ordinary cant of historical writers on this subject is found in "The Making of Pennsylvania," p. 238. The writer says of the Connecticut Puritans: "They occupied the land by squatter sovereignty.... It seemed like a pleasant ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... limitation, the average man, of whom he is thus the bard, is a rather sophisticated average man, without very deep thoughts or feelings, without a very fertile or fresh imagination or fancy, with even a touch—a little touch—of cant and "gush" and other defects incident to average and sophisticated humanity. But this humanity is at any time and every time no small portion of humanity at large, and it is to Moore's credit that ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... of feeling, says the pseudo-connoisseur, where we should only, or at least first, bring knowledge? This is the common cant of those who become critics for the sake of distinction. Let the Artist avoid them, if he would not disfranchise himself in the suppression of that uncompromising test within him, which is the only sure guide ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... and get Ellen Middleton, it is well worth your reading. Lady Georgiana certainly inherits her grandmother's genius, and there is a high-toned morality and religious principle through the book (where got she "that heroic measure"?) without any cant or ostentation: it is the same moral I intended in Helen, but exemplified in much deeper and stronger colours. This is—but you must ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... shove one another aside, and come again like figures in a moving picture.' Probably Walpole's belief in the ploughman lasted till he saw the next smock-frock; but the bitterness clothed in the old-fashioned cant is serious and is justifiable enough. Here is a picture of English politics in the time of Wilkes. 'No government, no police, London and Middlesex distracted, the colonies in rebellion, Ireland ready to be ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... came away. I cannot say that the weather ever "cleared up" that day; for, at the end of every shower, the dark, slow-moving clouds always seemed to be mustering for another downfall. We came away, and left the "cant" old body "busy bakin' for Betty," and "shooing" the hens away from her feet, and she shuffled about the house. A few yards lower in Newton Street, we turned up a low, dark entry, which led to a gloomy little court behind. This was one of ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... there is one habit,—I said to our company a day or two afterwards—worse than that of punning. It is the gradual substitution of cant or flash terms for words which truly characterize their objects. I have known several very genteel idiots whose whole vocabulary had deliquesced into some half dozen expressions. All things fell into one of two great categories,— FAST or SLOW. Man's ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... THE UNIVERSITY is first of all religious. With no cant, with the avoidance of undue emotion, with a constant appeal to Christian manhood and womanhood, men and women loyal to Jesus, seeking less their rights than to faithfully perform their duties, are being reared. For nine months in a year ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 54, No. 01, January, 1900 • Various
... In the cant of Spanish thieves, justice is called "la justa" (the just), and this name is given in French slang to the Assizes, but, as Mayor observes, it may ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... a custom at that time for persons of the first rank and distinction to give their birthday suits to the most favoured actors. I think Mr. Thurmond was honoured by General Ingolsby with his. But his finances being at the last tide of ebb, the rich suit was put in buckle (a cant word for forty in the hundred interest). One night, notice was given that the General would be present with the Government at the play, and all the performers on the stage were preparing to dress out in the suits presented. The spouse ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... have the strongest praise for the book as a whole—the biological foundation, directness, freedom from cant and prudery and the practical way in which the author gets to the level of his readers."—Dr. C. Judson Herrick, ...
— The Biology, Physiology and Sociology of Reproduction - Also Sexual Hygiene with Special Reference to the Male • Winfield S. Hall
... industry, science, thought, and study have been at work, and everything has been done, thus far, which can be done to make the earth more gladsome, and the hearts of the children of men more thankful to the Giver and Bestower of all our blessings. Away, then, with this cant, prejudice, and sneering about 'book farming.' As well cry out against book geography, or book philosophy, or book history, or book law. Chemistry, botany, entomology, and pomology unite the results ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... countenances 80 [Pretender's Son], its thro the influence of 51 [King of Prussia]. I have some reason to believe they dow, for 80 [Pretender's Son] is accompanied by one of that faction. I suspect its 59 [Count Maillebois] but I cant be positive untill I go to Paris, which I think a most necessary chant [jaunt] in this juncture, for if 2 [Lord Marshall] has no finger in the piy, I lost my host of all. When I am a few days at Paris, I take a trip sixty leagues farther South to meet 71 [Sir J. Graemne or Sir James ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... to it this hour, your Majesty, And cant the words in keeping with your wish. To himself as he goes.] Decently done!... He slipped out "sacrifice," And scarce could hide his heartache for his girl. Well ached it!—But when these things have to be It is as ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... McGovern and Bob Stratton and Jim Gladys took charge of it. Mike and Bob were running the cant-hooks, while Jim stood on top of the great pile of logs already decked. A slender, pliable steel chain, like a gray snake, ran over the top of the pile and disappeared through a pulley to an invisible horse,—Jenny, the mate ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... because it is there, and for no other reason on earth: there will be no lack of objects, very indifferent in the plain eyesight of any one who employs so vulgar a property, when he may wear the spectacles of Cant for less than nothing, and establish himself as a man of taste for the mere trouble ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... and bread and water were ordered as sovereign cures for love. Twenty replies to madame Grimaldi were written and torn, as not sufficiently expressive of a resentment that was rather vociferous than eloquent, and her confessor was at last forced to write one, in which he prevailed to have some holy cant inserted, though forced to compound for a heap of irony that related to the antiquity of her family, and for many unintelligible allusions to vulgar stories which the Ghibelline party had treasured up against the Guelfs. The most lucid part of the epistle pronounced a sentence of eternal ...
— Hieroglyphic Tales • Horace Walpole
... Confucian or Taoist, the raison d'etre of Chinese longevity, and the saving health of China. But unfortunately he —Chwangtse—did not see that his own opposite, Philosopher Mang, was driving him an inch or two away from the Middle Line. So, with a more brilliant mind (a cant phrase that!) he stands well below Laotse; just as Mencius stands below K'ung Ch'iu. The spiritual down-breathing had reached a lower plane: soon the manvantara was to begin, and the Crest-Wave to be among the black-haired People. For all these Teachers and Half-Teachers were but early ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... cant," he declared. "His very tones are studied and unnatural. His voice quavers to order, and if I should see tears on his face I should think he had pumped them up someway for effect. I don't like to be practiced on. I should like a man to believe something earnestly and ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... of time. Professing to be Johnson's friend, that biographer has raised more objections to his character, than all the enemies to that excellent man. Sir John had a root of bitterness that "put rancours in the vessel of his peace." Fielding, he says, was the inventor of a cant phrase, "Goodness of heart, which means little more than the virtue of a horse or a dog." He should have known, that kind affections are the essence of virtue: they are the will of God implanted in our nature, ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... in a man of letters. Literature is a broom that sweeps lies out of the mind, and fortunate is the man who wields it. Unhappily, while Mr. Gosse is daring in portraiture, he is the reverse in comment. In comment, as his writings on the war showed, he will fall in with the cant of the times. He can see through the cant of yesterday with a sparkle in his eyes, but he is less critical of the cant of to-day. He is at least fond of throwing out saving clauses, as when, writing of Mr. Sassoon's verse, he says: "His temper ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... realities, not merely about words; and what he offers is the result of genuine processes of production which have gone on in his own mind. If he speak of life, it is not life in the dictionary, but in the universe. If he profess to offer thoughts, he really gives the results of his thinking. He does not cant; he does not merely recite verbal formulas; he does not play the part of attorney, first determining what to advocate, and then seeking plausible reasons: everywhere one perceives that he has really brought his mind to bear upon facts, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... to use a cant phrase, is an exquisite "bit of Blarney;" but independent of the vulgar association, it has a multitude of attractions for every reader. Its interest will, however, be materially enhanced by the following admirable description ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 396, Saturday, October 31, 1829. • Various
... an old respect; his humanity, his instinct for essentials, his cool detection of pretence and cant, however finely disguised, and his English with its frank love for the embodying noun and the active verb, make reading very like the clear, hard, bright, vigorous weather of the downs when the wind is up-Channel. It is bracing. But I discovered another notebook, of which I have heard so little that ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... the little adventures, which may do very well in one company, will seem flat and tedious, when related in another. The particular characters, the habits, the cant of one company, may give merit to a word, or a gesture, which would have none at all if divested of those accidental circumstances. Here people very commonly err; and fond of something that has entertained them in one company, and in certain circumstances, repeat it with emphasis in another, where ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... "The old cant!" she cried. "The old shibboleth! What is this mission which is reserved for woman? All that is humble, that is mean, that is soul-killing, that is so contemptible and so ill-paid that none other will touch it. All that is woman's mission. And who imposed these limitations upon her? Who ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle
... back home, dont be fritened about me because I know the way. Ive got to go. something is calling me. dont be cross. I love you, but I cant stay. Im leaving my foolscap book for you, you can keep it always but I must go ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... in a great measure casual and mutable; many of their terms are formed for some temporary or local convenience, and though current at certain times and places, are in others utterly unknown. This fugitive cant, which is always in a state of increase or decay, cannot be regarded as any part of the durable materials of a language, and therefore must be suffered to perish with ...
— Preface to a Dictionary of the English Language • Samuel Johnson
... just Heaven! Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world—though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst, the cant of criticism ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... equal parts, of classical allusion, quotation from the stable, simper from the scullery, cant from the clubs, and the technical slang of heraldry. We boasted much of ancestry, and admired the whiteness of our hands whenever the skin was visible through a fault in the grease and tar. Next to love, the vegetable kingdom, murder, arson, adultery and ritual, we talked most of ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... your heart against your word, and cant afford to lose; and there's a double reason ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... hearts and no mistake, as the Grand Old Man will find—to his cost. All classes are united against the common enemy" (Mr. Gladstone). "But tell me something—How is it that the English people are deceived by that arch-professor of cant? Tell me that!" ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... me in right, Doc," and Doc was accomplishing it, partly to oblige Brandes, partly for practice. His agreeable voice so nicely pitched, so delightfully persuasive, recapitulating all the commonplaces and cant phrases concerning the literature of the day, penetrated gratefully the intellectual isolation of these humble gentlepeople, and won very easily their innocent esteem. With the Reverend Mr. Carew Doc discussed such topics ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... CANT. Cant is a kind of affectation; affectation is an effort to sail under false colors; an effort to sail under false colors is a kind of falsehood; and falsehood is a term of Latin origin which we often use instead of ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... the Prefect is somewhat too cunning to be profound. In his wisdom is no stamen. It is all head and no body, like the pictures of the Goddess Laverna,—or, at best, all head and shoulders, like a codfish. But he is a good creature after all. I like him especially for one master stroke of cant, by which he has attained his reputation for ingenuity. I mean the way he has 'de nier ce qui est, et d'expliquer ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Celtic words might be expected, but very few occur;[2] there is, however, one very curious exception to this rule, and for which, I confess, I am unable to account, (though perhaps your correspondent, Rupert C. in No. 342, might,) it is this—that in Grose's Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, or Cant Language, if the words which are evidently figurative be thrown out, nearly the whole of what remain are ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 346, December 13, 1828 • Various
... consequence, and my curiosity was Powerfully awakened by this bustle of preparation. I gazed with respect and wonder at the vagrant personages who accompanied these caravans. I loitered about the village inn, listening with curiosity and delight to the slang talk and cant jokes of the showmen and their followers; and I felt an eager desire to witness this fair, which my fancy decked out ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... began. "I take my pen in and to inform you that I'm stayin here and cant get away for the reason that I lorst my cloes at cribage larst night, also my money, and everything beside. Don't speek to a living sole about it as the mate wants my birth, but pack up sum cloes and bring them to me without saying nuthing to noboddy. ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... sentiment. On the subject of his reformation, so far as "the tree is to be known by its fruits" it is entirely sincere; the language, deportment, habits, and consistency of this well-meaning tar, being those of a cheerful and confiding Christian, without the smallest disposition to cant or exaggeration. In this particular, he is a living proof of the efficacy of faith, and of the power of the Holy Spirit to enlighten the darkest understanding, and to quicken the most ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... the whole stern of the ship was about to be carried away. Her larboard quarter next came in contact with the ice, but the severity of the shock saved her; for after the damage which has been described was received, she again bounded off with a cant to starboard. The jib was instantly run up, and it and the other headsails catching the wind, away she glided from the berg. Those who had their eyes turned aft, however, could not refrain from uttering a cry of horror, for at that instant the berg, shaken by the concussion, ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... bar made on purpose for the work and dogs to hold the logs in place. The power was water turned upon the floats of a large wheel. No large timber was left in the neighborhood, otherwise a boy of ten could not have run the mill alone; but with a cant-hook I could usually manage to roll the log upon the carriage and put it in position. We ran off the slabs first and these were the perquisites of the mill owner. They were used in his own family and some were sold or given to poor widows and others. ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... vulgar, and to try the patience of the wise. From the canting hypocrites and wild fanatics of the last century, to their less dangerous, chiefly because less successful, descendants of the present day, we hear the same unwarranted claims, the same idle tales, the same low cant; and we may discern not seldom the same mean artifices and mercenary ends. The doctrine, to say the best of it, can only serve to favour the indolence of man, while professing to furnish him with a ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... admire the personal appearance of Abou Saood. A judge of physiognomy would have objected to the downcast look of humility, the un-certain squint of one eye, the furtive expression of countenance, added to the ultra-holiness of his ejaculations when called upon for an answer, and the pious cant of his protestation against all wrong-doings. At the same time that he was acting the part of saint, I knew him to be a bird of the same feather as the rest ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... right to demand that of woman. I took a very bullying and intolerant attitude toward you—not, as I now realise, from any real conviction on the subject, but because I liked and wanted children, and also because I was influenced by the cant of the hour—the fashion being to demand of woman, on ethical grounds, quantitative reproduction as a marriage offering to the Almighty. As though indiscriminate and wholesale addition to humanity were an admirable and religious duty. Nothing, even in the Old Testament, is more stupid than ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... doubt that of drawing, for we find that 'He was buried with much pomp at Thetford Abbey under a tomb designed by himself and master Clarke, master of the works at King's College, Cambridge, & Wassel a freemason of BuryS. Edmund's.' Cooper's Ath. Cant., i. ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... BENTLEY. You cant argue with a person when his livelihood depends on his not letting you convert him. And would you mind not calling me Bunny. My name is ...
— Misalliance • George Bernard Shaw
... once applied the most glaring passages; as where they read the indictment against Robert Earl of Essex, etc. The Tories declare against further prosecution-if Tories there are, for now one hears of nothing but the Broad Bottom: it is the reigning cant word, and means, the taking all parties and people, indifferently into the ministry. The Whigs are the dupes of this; And those in the Opposition affirm that Tories no longer exist. Notwithstanding this, they will not come into ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... "Confound your cant!" cried his lordship. "You care no more for your neighbours than I do. You only want to make yourself unpleasant to me. Show me the way out, and ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... undistracted by greed, envy, ambition, or desire, I see things in their true proportion. A dreamy spectator of the world's turmoil, I do not enter into the hectic hurly-burly of life; I merely withhold my approval from cant, shams, prejudice, formulae, hypocrisy, and lies. Such is the priceless ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... her black silk gown, and came down, looking pale and languid, but still quite lovely enough to discharge what in this age of cant I suppose we should call "her mission": videlicet, to set honest men by ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... Fib.—Can any of your readers suggest a proper derivation of this word? Old Bailey, to whom a reference would occasionally save many doubts and inquiries, connects it with "fable." Johnson says nothing as to the etymology, but explains it as "a cant word among children;" while, at the same time, he inserts it on the authority of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 70, March 1, 1851 • Various
... immensely proud of his plaything, this huge gaunt sailor, who had been bent into the shape of a rainbow—the foot of a rainbow—by a chance shot, which shattered his hip and gave him an impressive forward cant, which appeared to women, it seemed—I quote my old friend—in the light of ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... never can harmonize? It is because they are aware that the Bible has authority with the people; otherwise they would never trouble themselves about so troublesome a book.' I cannot suspect you of such hypocrisy; but I must confess I regard your language as cant. As I listen to you I seem to see a hybrid between Prynne and Voltaire. So far from its being true that you have renounced the 'letter' of the Bible and retained its 'spirit,' I think it would be much more correct to say, comparing ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... Above all cant, all arguments of men, Above all superstitions, old or new, Above all creeds of every age and clime, Stands the eternal truth—the creed ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... Bangor has various manufactures, the most important of which (other than those dependent upon lumber) are boots and shoes (including moccasins); among others are trunks, valises, saws, stoves, ranges and furnaces, edge tools and cant dogs, saw-mill machinery, brick, clothing, cigars, flour and dairy products. In 1905 the city's factory products were valued at $3,408,355. The municipality owns and operates the water-works (the water-supply being drawn from the Penobscot ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... of thought he lays a stress unusual in modern life. It is the cant of the day, in judging the value of a man, that "it does not matter what he believes but only what he does." That is not true. It matters infinitely what a man believes; for as a man's belief so he is; as a man's thought, so inevitably ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant
... the subject, to bring forward the cases of all those who had been guilty of a similar offence, and had afterwards held office. He did not say what he had to say well, for he might have exposed the cant of all this hubbub, and have asked Winchilsea, who talked of sense of duty and so forth, and that he should have done the same by his dearest friend, whether he had thought it necessary to make a similar stir when Sir George ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... forth: 'Pollexfen, I know you well. I will set a mark on you. You are the patron of the faction. This is an old rogue, a schismatical knave, a hypocritical villain. He hates the Liturgy. He would have nothing but longwinded cant without book;' and then his lordship turned up his eyes, clasped his hands, and began to sing through his nose in imitation of what he supposed to be Baxter's style of praying, 'Lord, we are thy ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... all, a few words must be said as to the vocabulary of sharpers, pickpockets, thieves, and murderers, known as Argot, or thieves' cant, which has of late been introduced into literature with so much success that more than one word of that strange lingo is familiar on the rosy lips of ladies, has been heard in gilded boudoirs, and become the delight of princes, who have often proclaimed themselves ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... numerous, but perhaps the most eccentric example is to be found in Stanyhurst's rendering of Virgil, published in 1583. It is full of cant words, and reads like the work of a madman. This is a fair specimen ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... his whole fiery and romantic soul into it. It may be said that all the fine and humane elements of the revolutionary period in which he lived appear in this book,—the religious feeling, the horror of sensuality, the hatred of every kind of cant, the struggle for definite knowledge out of a confusing whirl of man's generous sentiments all broken loose, the tendency to worship duty and justice, and the Titanic extravagance of a "lustihood," both ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... describe the SPIRIT OF CANT, Of popular humbug, and vulgar rant, And tell how he looks in a tangible form, And give the length of his horns and claws, The spread of his wings, the width of his jaws, And detail the other proportions ...
— Nothing to Say - A Slight Slap at Mobocratic Snobbery, Which Has 'Nothing - to Do' with 'Nothing to Wear' • QK Philander Doesticks
... of Dekker are marked by a fiery yet careful style, Oriental richness of imagery, and originality and independence of thought. He wrote as social reformer, and attacked with unrivaled power of sarcasm all manner of cant, sham, and red-tape. His works betray the disappointment of a defeated idealist. He was a man of marked individuality, and strongly attracted or repelled others. For the last few years of his life he ceased to write, and lived in retirement in ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... to you. I have got quite a library. The Master has not taken his rattan out since the vacation. Your little kitten is as well and as playful as ever and I hope you are to for I am sure I love you as well as ever. Why is grass like a mouse you cant guess that he he he ho ho ho ha ha ha ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... led to take her first step on the downward path. Soon daily contact with vice removes abhorrence to it. Familiarity makes it habitual, and another life is ruined. The heartless moral code of the cynical young pleasure-seeking male is summed up in the cant phrase anent women: "Find, ... and forget!" It is these girls, who are victimized by their lack of self-restraint or moral principle, their ignorance or weakness, who make possible the application of such ...
— Sex - Avoided subjects Discussed in Plain English • Henry Stanton
... letter to this purpose;" to incite us, and invite us, [6317]God's epistle, as Gregory calls it, to his creatures. He sets out his son and his church in that epithalamium or mystical song of Solomon, to enamour us the more, comparing his head "to fine gold, his locks curled and black as a raven," Cant. iv. 5. "his eyes like doves on rivers of waters, washed with milk, his lips as lilies, drooping down pure juice, his hands as rings of gold set with chrysolite: and his church to a vineyard, a garden ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... nations, and who are of more value to nations than gold and fleets and armies. All that we have lately seen done, and more, would have been done thirty years since, had any other man than Andrew Jackson been at that time President of the United States. There was much cant in those days about "the one-man power," because President Jackson saw fit to make use of the Constitutional qualified veto-power to express his opposition to certain measures adopted by Congress; but the best exhibition of "the one-man power" that the country ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... very full of pretty attentions to me when I was ill. But they tell me now she's turned Tryanite; if that's it we shan't agree again. It's very inconsistent in her, I think, turning round in that way, after being the foremost to laugh at the Tryanite cant, and especially in a woman of her habits; she should cure herself of them before she pretends ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... find in the condition to which we have drifted such a one may be pilloried by wasters, gamblers, rioters, a crew that are the curse of every community. We lash the atheist and the age but give little heed to the insincerity and cant of those we do not refuse to call our own. What an example for the man anathematised. He sees the vice and meanness of those we allow to pass for orthodox, and when he sees also the complacency of the better part, he is unconvinced. We praise the sweetness of the healing waters of Christ-like charity, ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... and a fourth in Blackwood, and so the new work is well introduced. Both Tennyson and Thackeray, it is said, got well taken notice of in this way by their comrades. But there was no plan at the bottom of it—nothing to constitute them a name. The Apostles were always inveighing against cant—always affecting much earnestness, and a hearty dislike of formalism, which rendered them far from popular with the high and dry in literature, politics, or religion. They were eyed with terror by the conservatives as something foreign—German, radical, altogether monstrous. But, in reality, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440 - Volume 17, New Series, June 5, 1852 • Various
... Defututa Mentula a worn-out voluptuary. Mentula is a cant term which Catullus frequently uses for a libidinous ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... miser was all panic. His hands groped towards his waist, then suddenly flew upward beneath his moleskin pillow, and there lay clutching something out of sight. Meantime, to himself he incoherently mumbled:—"Confidence? Cant, gammon! Confidence? hum, bubble!—Confidence? fetch, ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... is ignored in the book. Under all the ridiculousness, under all the wickedness even of such men and women, lies a cause, a right inherent, a wrong committed. The cant presupposes a doctrine, and the pretension a real heroism. Your best people (in your book) seem to have no notion of this. Your heroine deserves to be a victim, not because she was rash and ignorant, but because ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... debt for their efforts to strengthen his mind and make his footing firm. Now, of all men in this country at that time, these two were least likely to support pro-slavery theories or tolerate pro-slavery cant. For while to Small's soundness there is abundance of general testimony, there is to Wythe's soundness testimony the most pointed. We have but to take the first volume of Jefferson's Works, published by order of Congress, and we find Jefferson's anti-slavery letter to Dr. Price, written ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... them into the hoss pond of oblivyon, without the slitest hesitashun. Washington never slopt over. That was n't George's stile. He luved his country dearly. He was n't after the spiles. He was a human angel in a 3 cornered hat and knee britches, and we shant see his like right away. My frends, we cant all be Washingtons, but we kin all be patrits and behave ourselves in a human and a Christian manner. When we see a brother goin down hill to Ruin let us not give him a push, but let us seize rite hold of his coat-tails and ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... dignities, potences; it is especially meet that we say, to-day, all institutions. It is the grossest wrong practically to hold otherwise. It is loss, too, and nowhere more palpably than in the educational sphere. It is no cant saying to affirm, and that in a more than merely spiritual sense, that in Christ are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.' At his throne the lines of all science terminate; above all, the ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... left alone of our club at Leyden I Desir'd him to come and spend with me the time of his vacations here, which proposal I hope he will accept and be here next week. What happy triumvirat would be ours if you were to join: but that is impossible at present; however those who cant enjoy reality are fond of feeding their fancies with agreable Dreams and charming pictures; that helps a little to sooth the sorrow of absence and makes one expect with more pati[ence] till fortune allows him to put in execution the cherish'd systems he has been ...
— Baron d'Holbach - A Study of Eighteenth Century Radicalism in France • Max Pearson Cushing
... raised a new Objection to Clarissa, in that she talked so much of Religion, which he call'd Canting. Nay, Sir, said Bellario, 'I cannot see how she can be said to cant; for her religious Reflections are neither nonsensical or affected, but such as naturally arise from a pious Mind in her several Situations; and if you are a Christian, Sir, I am sure you cannot, ...
— Remarks on Clarissa (1749) • Sarah Fielding
... was a tight fit; but that was not my trouble. Reduce your denominator—you know the quotation. I found it no philosophical cant, but a practical solution of life. My food cost me on the average a shilling a day. If more of us limited our commissariat bill to the same figure, there would be less dyspepsia abroad. Generally I cooked ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome |
