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More "Feign" Quotes from Famous Books



... end of the play. I appreciated the heavy-hearted actor's plight as I surveyed the little throng so vitally interested in their dollar affairs. I longed to mount a chair and tell them how they had been duped, but my role called for different lines. It was my part to feign satisfaction and my duty to keep every cent invested in our enterprise from shrinking a mill. I pumped as much enthusiasm into my speech ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... battered, flat-topped dresser a few feet from the bed and pulled open a drawer. From it he took a bottle of whisky. Pretending that the cork was stuck he worked with it fumblingly to get time in which to think. He would take a drink, feign that it choked him, stagger to the head of the bed, stumble on to the pillow and then come up with the revolver in his hand. Then he ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson

... encouragement, if not candor; a little sympathy, if not confidence. But you keep yourself intrenched in a pretended which paralyzes me. Oh, not for the reason you think; for, ignorant as you may be, or indifferent as you feign to be, you are none the less what you are, monseigneur, and there is nothing—nothing, mark me! which can cause ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... amusement of their audience. I must say that I have enjoyed a play in one of these private houses more than ever I did at Drury Lane or Covent Garden. The lads act with their whole hearts, and I have seen them shed real tears over the sorrows they were called upon to pourtray. They did not feign—they really felt the part. Of course, there was little artistic skill, but a good deal ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... and I have dared, and I have heard thy song, and rent the web of Fate, and I have seen the Star, and lo! at last, at last! I find thee. Well I saw thou knewest the arms of Paris, who was thy husband, and to try thee I spoke with the voice of Paris, as of old thou didst feign the voices of our wives when we lay in the wooden horse within the walls of Troy. Thus I drew the sweetness of thy love from thy secret breast, as the sun draws out the sweetness of the flowers. But now I declare myself to be Odysseus, clad in the mail of Paris—Odysseus come on ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang

... he, "suspects the truth of my report, you need only to-day feign giving yourself up to sleep without any precaution, and we do not doubt that this rash man, pursuing his detestable purpose, will come ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various

... are the same as Turks or Hottentots in this respect, except for the saving grace of hypocrisy, which is the chief prop of European civilisation. If it were not for hypocrisy, we should all be savages as utterly and completely as in primaeval days! You know all this as well as I do—and yet you feign to desire the impossible, while all the time you play the fool with a country parson! But I'll make you pay for it—by Heaven, I will! You scorn me and my name—you call me ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli

... kitchen knife in the bosom of her dress, she went at midnight to Jiuyemon's house, and looked all round to see if there were no hole or cranny by which she might slip in unobserved; but every door was carefully closed, so she was obliged to knock at the door and feign an excuse. ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford

... no protest, had not even moved when Friday struggled in fierce resistance. He could have done much more, but it would have been useless. Long before, he had seen the negro's opening eyes and signaled him to feign unconsciousness thus deflecting attention and making him appear harmless. He had also broached his plan for escape to Friday. He had not, however, reckoned on Judd's desire to torture: he would, he now saw, have to act with his greatest speed ...
— Hawk Carse • Anthony Gilmore

... down on a bank, such as a writer of Romance might have delighted to feign. I had indeed no trees to whisper over my head, but a clear rivulet streamed at my feet. The day was calm, the air soft, and all was rudeness, silence, and solitude. Before me, and on either side, ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson

... sounds of running feet. There was a sort of struggle of some sort, it seemed, in her first returning consciousness. Her first distinct feeling was one of wonder that Dunwody himself should be the first to bend over her, and that on his face there should seem surprise, regret, grief. How could he feign such things? She pushed at his face, ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough

... received and nourished at a very early period of their existence. The first species of the group, known to voyagers and naturalists, was the celebrated opossum of North America, whose instinctive care to defend itself from danger causes it to feign the appearance of death. As the great continent of Australia became known, it was found that the great mass of its mammalia, from the gigantic kangaroo to the pigmy, mouse-like potoroo, belonged to this singular order. The order contains a most anomalous set of animals, some being ...
— Heads and Tales • Various

... reaping the tares her own hand sowed. I know her no more as child of mine, and my son fills her place so completely, I do not even miss her. That is the best I can say. No doubt I am hard, but at least I am honest; and I will not feign what I ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... out as far as I could, shoved up his sash with my cane and pushed aside his curtain. Such an unusual method of communication could not fail to bring him to the window with a rush. When he saw me, he trembled like a guilty thing, his countenance fell, and, no longer able to feign absence, he unlocked his door and let me enter ...
— A Brace Of Boys - 1867, From "Little Brother" • Fitz Hugh Ludlow

... my mother's; she is false to me; Spake thee ne'er yet one sweet word for my sake, Though day by day she sees me pine and pine. I'll feign strange throbbings in my head and feet To anguish her—as I am ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus

... exceed that original stock of ideas furnished by the internal and external senses, it has unlimited power of mixing, compounding, separating, and dividing these ideas, in all the varieties of fiction and vision. It can feign a train of events, with all the appearance of reality, ascribe to them a particular time and place, conceive them as existent, and paint them out to itself with every circumstance, that belongs to any historical fact, which it believes ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al

... poets old in their fond fables feign, That mighty Mars is god of war and strife, The Astronomers think that whereas Mars doth reign, That all debate and discord must be rife; Some think Bellona goddess of that life. Among the rest that painter had some skill, Which thus in arms did once set out the same:— A field of gules, ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 475 - Vol. XVII, No. 475. Saturday, February 5, 1831 • Various

... the beau, Or learned pigs the tabor; When traveller Bankes beats Cicero, Or Mr. Bishop Weber; When sinking funds discharge a debt, Or female hands a bomb; When bankrupts study the Gazette, Or colleges Tom Thumb; When little fishes learn to speak, Or poets not to feign; When Dr. Geldart construes Greek, ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... peerless, promised bride. A viper by the name of Jones Came in between us twain; With honeyed words he stole away My loved Belinda Jane. For he was rich and I was poor, And poets all are stupid Who feign the god of Love is not Cupidity, but Cupid. Perchance 'tis well, for had I wed That maid of dark-brown curls, You had not been, or been, instead Of boy, a pair of girls. Now listen to me, Walter Smith; Hie to yon plumber bold, An thou would'st ease my dying ...
— Humour of the North • Lawrence J. Burpee

... and costly Female Habit, and by the Use of Paint, which alter'd his Eye-Brows, Cheeks, Hair, &c. and shaving every Day, he was sufficiently disguis'd; all Things being now concerted with Theodora's Confident, Philetus was admitted to wait upon Theodora and Amaryllis, with a feign'd Message from a Lady of their Acquaintance at Rome, and was entertain'd with the utmost Respect and Grandeur, with occasion'd frequent Visits between Philetus and Theodora, and at length there was such an Intimacy contracted, by the Management ...
— Tractus de Hermaphrodites • Giles Jacob

... in Barbara's company. This was another damsel, of lower stature and plumper figure, dressed full as prettily as Barbara herself, and laughing with most merry lips and under eyes that half hid themselves in an eclipse of mirth. When Barbara saw me, she did not, as her custom was, feign not to see me till I thrust my presence on her, but ran to me at once, crying very indignantly, "Simon, who is this girl? She has dared to tell me that my gown is of country make and hangs like an ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope

... sparkles through fields Vested for ever with green, Four years since, in the house Of a gentle spirit, now dead— Wordsworth's son-in-law, friend— I saw the meeting of two Gifted women.[22] The one, Brilliant with recent renown, Young, unpractised, had told With a master's accent her feign'd Story of passionate life; The other, maturer in fame, Earning, she too, her praise First in fiction, had since Widen'd her sweep, and ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... the State of Mississippi. I will in person start for Vicksburg to-day, and with four divisions of infantry, artillery, and cavalry move out for Jackson, Brandon, and Meridian, aiming to reach the latter place by February 10th. General Banks will feign on Pascagoula and General Logan on Rome. I want you with your cavalry to move from Colliersville on Pontotoc and Okolona; thence sweeping down near the Mobile & Ohio Railroad, disable that road as much as possible, consume or destroy the resources of the enemy along that road, break ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... strove hard to conceal my true feelings, I fear that my coldness was apparent, not only to her but to the Hennikers also. She had complained of it when she called at my rooms, and certainly she had full reason for doing so. I am not one of those who can feign love. Some men ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux

... claimed the frontier of the Rhine, offering to Austria not only the territory of Venice upon the mainland, but the city of Venice itself. De Gallo yielded. Whatever causes subsequently prolonged the negotiation, no trace of honour or pity in Bonaparte led him even to feign a reluctance to betray Venice. "We have to-day had our first conference on the definitive treaty," he wrote to the Directory, on the night of the 26th of May, "and have agreed to present the following propositions: the line of the Rhine for France; Salzburg, ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... Caesar Impute the breach of hospitality, To you (my guest) to me; I am contemn'd, And my rebellious subjects lift their hands Against my head: and would they aim'd no farther, Provided that I fell a sacrifice To gain you safety: that this is not feign'd, The boldness of my innocence may confirm you: Had I been privy to their bloody plot, I now had led them on, and given fair gloss To their bad cause, by being present with them: But I that yet taste ...
— The False One • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... speak of her, how much my poor wife liked you. (The time will come when I must not, dare not, you know.) But for circumstances, she would have urged you to become our guest, or even in-dweller; but you know how it all was! I need not feign ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield

... as well of the great Lords as of other people, as well spiritual as temporal, do fly within the cities, towns, and places entfranched, as the city of London, and other like, and do feign divers suits against their Lords, to the intent to make them free by the answer of the Lords, it is accorded and assented that the Lords and others shall not be forebound of their villeins, because of the answer of ...
— Landholding In England • Joseph Fisher

... in his own room he eagerly took it out. It was written on sugar paper, with the point of a sharpened coal, and contained this line—"Feign illness from ennui." ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)

... he says, "there is no difference between one who spends her time in prayer and fasting, and one who must, at her husband's approach, make up her countenance, walk with a mincing gait, and feign a show of endearment? The virgin aims to appear less comely; she will wrong herself so as to hide her natural attractions. The married woman has the paint laid on before her mirror, and, to the insult of her Maker, strives to acquire something more than her natural beauty. Then come the prattling ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart

... roadway, and to be carried into him by a sympathising crowd, while the footman ran with a paragraph to the newspapers. But there was the likelihood that the crowd might carry me in to the rival practitioner opposite. In various disguises I was to feign fits at his very door, and so furnish fresh copy for the local press. Then I was to die—absolutely to expire—and all Scotland was to resound with how Dr. Cullingworth, of Avonmouth, had resuscitated me. His ingenious ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro

... Mankind now upon Earth, have our Sins so far provoked Heaven, that we are left utterly naked to his Fury? Is there no Power, no Leader, no Genius, that can conduct and animate us to our Death or our Defence? Yes; our great God never gave one to feign by his Permission, but he gave to another also ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... live rightly in God's law, following his commandments and doctrine, clothed righteously in his armour, and not in any feigned armour, as in a friar's coat or cowl. For the assaults of the devil be crafty to make us put our trust in such armour, he will feign himself to fly; but then we be most in jeopardy: for he can give us an after-clap when we least ween; that is, suddenly return unawares to us, and then he giveth us an after-clap that overthroweth us: this armour ...
— Sermons on the Card and Other Discourses • Hugh Latimer

... her performance keeps no day; Breaks time, as dancers From their own music when they stray. All her free favors And smooth words wing my hopes in vain. O, did ever voice so sweet but only feign? Can true love yield such ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various

... my youth! when nurtured in my breast, To love a stranger, friendship made me blest:— Friendship, the dear peculiar bond of youth, When every artless bosom throbs with truth; Untaught by worldly wisdom how to feign; And check each impulse with prudential reign; When all we feel our honest souls disclose— In love to friends, in open hate to foes; No varnished tales the lips of youth repeat, No dear-bought knowledge purchased ...
— Our Nig • Harriet E. Wilson

... M. de Bernires, a gentleman of high rank, great wealth, and zealous devotion. She wrote to him, explained the situation, and requested him to feign a marriage with her. His sense of honor recoiled: moreover, in the fulness of his zeal, he had made a vow of chastity, and an apparent breach of it would cause scandal. He consulted his spiritual director and a few intimate friends. All agreed that the glory of God was ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman

... consciousness of the age, despises the obsolete opinion that Society, the State, is bound by the same moral duties as the simple citizen. Hence, too, it holds that the "spirit of man, being of equal and uniform substance, doth usually suppose and feign in nature a greater equality and ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton

... the carriage for her. The latter greeted her with quite a show of cordiality; but the orphan shrank back from the offered kiss, and merely touched the extended hand. She had not forgotten the taunts and unkindness of other days; and, though not vindictive, she could not feign oblivion of the past, nor assume a friendly manner foreign to her. She took her seat in the carriage, and found it rather difficult to withdraw her fascinated eyes from Pauline's lovely face. She knew what was expected of her, however; and said, ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans

... feign insensibility while this apparently sober man among the crew struck a match and rolled his body over to show the granger's battered hands. The others were not convinced by this evidence, nor softened in the least. He was a granger, anyhow, ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden

... He did not know what to do with himself—whether to sit down and feign that she was well, or to remain standing in an attitude of respectful and grave anxiety. He thought he ought to depart; yet would it not be ungallant to desert her under the circumstances? She was alone. She had no servant, only ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett

... not much need to feign to be subdued; but I counterfeited to be older than I was in all respects (Heaven knows! my heart being all too young the while), and feigned to be more of a recluse and bookworm than I had really become, ...
— George Silverman's Explanation • Charles Dickens

... I am going to sally out, wearing the fireman's uniform and carrying you in my arms. You are to feign unconsciousness. The idea is that you have been badly hurt, and I am carrying you out of reach of the fire. I have some hope that in my fireman's garb and with my blackened face they will let ...
— Two Daring Young Patriots - or, Outwitting the Huns • W. P. Shervill

... in his accustomed voice as near as he could feign it. "What do you mean by coming here at this time ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester

... to be committed; and I made as much haste as I could to fill my belly with its delicates, lest I should die before I had my desire.' He thus solemnly adds, 'In these things, I protest before God, I lie not, neither do I feign this sort of speech; these were really, strongly, and with all my heart, my desires; the good Lord, whose mercy is unsearchable, forgive me my transgressions.' The whole of his career, from childhood to manhood, was, 'According to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... I striven, sweet month, to figure thee, As dreamers of old time were wont to feign, In living form of flesh, and striven in vain; Yet when some sudden old-world mystery Of passion fired my brain, Thy shape hath flashed upon me like no dream, Wandering with scented curls that heaped the breeze, ...
— Lyrics of Earth • Archibald Lampman

... however, too politic to betray any doubt of Georges' sincerity. Were he treated as a traitor, Paleologus might find another agent to do the work. It was, therefore, better to feign a belief in his story, to obtain all the information possible from him, and at the same time to prevent his gaining any knowledge of affairs that would be of the slightest use to the Turks. Instructions ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty

... of marble bore a silken sky, While cords of purple and fine linen tie In silver rings, the azure canopy. Distinct with diamond stars the blue was seen, And earth and seas were feign'd in emerald green; A globe of gold, ray'd with a pointed crown, Form'd in the ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... and a man, a thorough man, from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot, for such a man is Publius! I believe—nay, I am sure—that he is incapable of any mean action, that he could not be false in word or even in look, nor feign a sentiment be did ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... by all delight of days, nil. 234. May Allah never make you parting dree, May coins thou makest joy in heart instil, ix. 69. May God deny me boon of troth if I, viii. 34. May that Monarch's life span a mighty span, ii.75. Mazed with thy love no more I can feign patience, viii. 321. Melted pure gold in silvern bowl to drain, v. 66. Men and dogs together are all gone by, iv. 268. Men are a hidden malady iv. 188. Men craving pardon will uplift their hands, iii. 304. Men have 'plained of pining before my time, iii. 183. Men in their purposes ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... any cause for their actions. As for their saying that human actions depend on the will, this is a mere phrase without any idea to correspond thereto. What the will is, and how it moves the body, they none of them know; those who boast of such knowledge, and feign dwellings and habitations for the soul, are wont to provoke either laughter or disgust. So, again, when we look at the sun, we imagine that it is distant from us about two hundred feet; this error does not lie solely in this fancy, but in the fact that, while ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza

... eyes with one hand-to feign sleep and sang her two words sweetly, "By-O! By-O!" and Molly joined her. Thus they rocked and hummed, a picture infinitely ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst

... Foston-le-Clay, in Yorkshire—though he did not feel himself to be in his proper element—went cheerfully to work in the firm determination to do his best. "I am resolved," he said, "to like it, and reconcile myself to it, which is more manly than to feign myself above it, and to send up complaints by the post of being thrown away, and being desolate, and such like trash." So Dr. Hook, when leaving Leeds for a new sphere of labor, said, "Wherever I many be, I shall, by God's blessing, do with my might what my hand findeth to do; and if ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon

... husband she thought was past it, and to be dishonest I think she would not: if she would have been, the truth is, she was watcht so narrowly, and had so slender opportunities, she hardly could have been: but yet her cunning found out this way; she feign'd her self with child, and posts were sent in hast throughout the Land, and humble thanks was given in every Church, and prayers were made for her safe going and delivery: she feign'd now to grow bigger, and perceiv'd this hope of issue made her fear'd, ...
— A King, and No King • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... appear as good or truth, for the reason that the human being has a capacity to act which is called liberty, and a capacity of understanding called rationality. By abuse of these powers a man can appear in externals other than he is in internals; an evil man can do good and speak truth, and a devil feign himself an angel of light. But on this see the following propositions in the treatise Divine Love and Wisdom: "The origin of evil is in the abuse of faculties proper to man, called liberty and rationality" (nn. 246-270); "These two faculties are to be found with ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg

... the little isle That cleped is Albion, they most complain, They say that there is crop and root of guile: So can those men dissimulen and feign, With standing dropis in their eyen twain; When that their heartis feeleth no distress, To ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various

... come to the end of my long labours. 'There are few things not purely evil,' wrote Johnson, 'of which we can say without some emotion of uneasiness, this is the last[50].' From this emotion I cannot feign that I am free. My book has been my companion in many a sad and many a happy hour. I take leave of it with a pang of regret, but I am cheered by the hope that it may take its place, if a lowly one, among the works of men who ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... is here together with his brother, or with those whom, like his brother, he may suppose to have emancipated themselves from superstition—and tells him or them that though they do not believe they should feign belief. If the augurs declare by the flight of birds that such a thing should be done, let it be done, although he who has to act in the matter has no belief in the birds. If they declare that a matter has been fixed by fate, let it be as though it were fixed, whether fixed or no. He ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope

... am too proud of loving thee, too proud Of the sweet months and years that now have end, To feign a heart indifferent to this loss, Too thankful-happy that the gods allowed Our orbits cross, Beloved and lovely friend; And though I wend Lonely henceforth along a road grown gray, I shall not be all lonely on the way, Companioned with the attar of thy ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne

... engaged at the Society Islands. Unlike his countrymen, Wooloo was of a sedate, earnest, and philosophic temperament. Having never been outside of the tropics before, he found many phenomena off Cape Horn, which absorbed his attention, and set him, like other philosophers, to feign theories corresponding to the marvels he beheld. At the first snow, when he saw the deck covered all over with a white powder, as it were, he expanded his eyes into stewpans; but upon examining the strange substance, he decided that this must be a species of super-fine flower, ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... more beside our trysting-lake. Proud of my music, let me often make A song of goddesses and see their rape Profanely done on many a painted shape. So when the grape's transparent juice I drain, I quell regret for pleasures past and feign A new real grape. For holding towards the sky The empty skin, I blow it tight and lie Dream-drunk till evening, eyeing it. Tell o'er Remembered joys and plump the grape once more. Between the reeds I saw their bodies gleam Who cool no mortal fever in the stream Crying ...
— The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems • Aldous Huxley

... O think how ance we said— Wad ane o' us gae fickle, Or ane o' us lie dead,— To feel anither's kisses We wad feign the auld instead, An' ken the ither's footsteps ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley

... mistress's return; and as they went into the Senor's room directly, and found him without the very least appearance of having moved, justice compels us to incline to the belief in Senor Stanley's suggestion—that he could scarcely have had sufficient time to rouse, depart, do murder, and feign sleep during Pedro Benito's brief interval ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar

... was, that they became generally intoxicated, and were brought home in that state to their parents. If the children of two opposite parties, chanced to be at the same school, they usually had a fight, of which the master was compelled to feign ignorance; for if he identified himself with either faction, his residence in the neighborhood would be short. In other districts, where Protestant schools were in existence, a battle-royal commonly took place between the opposite establishments, in some field lying ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton

... the heaven's throne Is placed above the skies, and there do feign The gods and all the heavenly powers to reign, They err, and but deceive themselves alone. Heaven (unless you think mo be than one) Is here in earth, and by the pleasant side Of famous Thames at Greenwich court doth 'bide. And as for other heaven is there none. There ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various

... "sword-dancers" of Northern England, Mr. Cecil Sharp has discovered that at Earsdon, after the usual captain's song, a strange interlude occurs, in which two of the dancers feign a quarrel, and one is killed and carried out for burial amid the lamentations of the "Bessy." A travelled doctor, however, arrives, and calls to the dead man, "Jack! take a drop of my bottle, that'll go down your thrittle-throttle." Whereupon up jumps Jack and shakes his sword, and the dance ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson

... I find myself a little short," added M. Francis. That meant that he had not a sou in his pocket, that he had slept two nights on the benches along the boulevards, waked every minute by policemen, compelled to get up, to feign drunkenness in order to obtain another shelter. As for eating, I believe that he had not done that for a long while, for he stared at the food with hungry eyes that made one's heart ache, and when I had forcibly placed ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... admiration is not amusing. I have to do with people who are bored, and I must make them laugh. Now it is absurdity and madness which make people laugh, so mad and absurd I must be; and even if nature had not made me so, the simplest plan would still be to feign it. Happily, I have no need to play hypocrite; there are so many already of all colours, without reckoning those who play hypocrite with themselves.... If your friend Rameau were to apply himself to show his contempt for fortune, and women, and good cheer, and idleness, and to begin ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley

... doth not offend, Though that perforce he must agree To sound such tunes as I intend To sing to them that heareth me; Then though my songs be somewhat plain, And toucheth some that use to feign, ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various

... replied Thamar, "although there are women clever enough to feign all these symptoms, for some reason or another, so skilfully as to deceive the most clear-sighted. I believe that the maiden had swooned, as a matter ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier

... Joy of the summerplain, Life of the summerhours, Carol clearly, bound along. No Tithon thou as poets feign (Shame fall 'em they are deaf and blind) But an insect lithe and strong, Bowing the seeded summerflowers. Prove their falsehood and thy quarrel, Vaulting on thine airy feet. Clap thy shielded sides and carol, Carol clearly, chirrup sweet Thou art a mailed warrior in youth ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... forehead. Midnight struck slowly and sadly; every hour seemed to strike with leaden weight upon the heart of the poor girl. "Valentine," said the count, "summon up all your courage; still the beatings of your heart; do not let a sound escape you, and feign to be asleep; then you will see." Valentine seized the count's hand. "I think I hear a ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... which exists between you and me. It is, perhaps, hardly in the nature of woman to receive such attentions as the Major once lavished upon myself without betraying some sense of obligation. But that is past—long past. Between the Major and me there is now a yawning chasm, and I will not feign to give encouragement, Louisa, where I cannot give my heart. My affections,' said Miss Tox—'but, Louisa, this is madness!' and ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... and hyacinth, with rich inlay Broider'd the ground, more colour'd than with stone Of costliest emblem other creature here, Beast, bird, insect, or worm, durst enter none, Such was their awe of man. In shadier bower More sacred and sequester'd, though but feign'd, Pan or Sylvanus never slept, nor nymph Nor Faunus haunted. Here, in close recess, With flowers, garlands, and sweet smelling herbs, Espoused Eve deck'd first her nuptial bed, And ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson

... of waters, south and west Lonelier lands than dreams in sleep would feign to be, When the soul goes forth on travel, and is prest Round and compassed in with clouds that flash and flee Dells without a streamlet, downs without a tree, Cirques of hollow cliff that crumble, give their guest Little hope, till hard at hand he pause, to see Where ...
— A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... too pious to be willing to profane it with bloodshed. But privately they profaned it with plottings, a sort of industry just in their line. They decided to do the only thing proper to do now in the new circumstances of the case—feign an attack on the most important bastille on the Orleans side, and then, if the English weakened the far more important fortresses on the other side of the river to come to its help, cross in force and capture those works. ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain

... tried to call up my pride, and laugh off the accusation against my courage, all the more, perhaps, because I felt its truth. "Do you want anything more that I can get you, Lady Speldhurst?" I asked, trying to feign a yawn of sleepiness. The old dame's keen eyes were upon me. "I rather like you, my dear," she said, "and I liked your mamma well enough before she treated me so shamefully about the christening dinner. Now, I know you are frightened and fearful, ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne

... monstrous, all prodigious things, Abominable, unutterable, and worse Than fables yet have feign'd, or fear conceived, Gorgons, and Hydras, and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr

... part of the soldier's upbringing. 'For what are all stratagems, ambuscades, and outfalls but lying upon a large scale?' he argued. 'What is an adroit commander but one who hath a facility for disguising the truth? When, at the battle of Senlac, William the Norman ordered his men to feign flight in order that they might break his enemy's array, a wile much practised both by the Scythians of old and by the Croats of our own day, pray what is it but the acting of a lie? Or when Hannibal, having tied ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle

... yesterday. For ye fought not only with the enemy, but with that from which there is peril greater by far, even treachery in allies. I would not have you ignorant of the truth. It was not by any ordering of mine that the men of Alba went towards the mountains. I gave no such command; yet did I feign that I had given it to this end, that ye might not know that ye were deserted, and so might fight with the better courage, and that our enemies, thinking that they should be assailed from behind, might ...
— Stories From Livy • Alfred Church

... some of these animals were transformed to men, who, as soon as they assumed this new form, began to hunt the animals, and make war against them. It is expected that these animals will resume their human shapes, in a future state, and hence their hunters feign some clumsy excuses for their present policy of killing them. They believe that all animals, and birds, and reptiles, and even insects, possess reasoning faculties, and have souls. It is in these opinions, that we detect the ancient, doctrine ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... is one of those self-centered egotists who simply cannot permit people to live any way but her way. She won't have another dog in the house because it might interfere with the comfort of that silly damn—excuse me—Pom of hers. If Frank were a bit older and could feign a penchant for the Pom and his mother got the idea that the animal's affection might be alienated from her, she would at once get the child another dog, just to keep ...
— Old Mr. Wiley • Fanny Greye La Spina

... easy to state than to solve. For example, such occurrences as 'rappings,' as the movement of untouched objects, as the lights of the seance room, are all easily feigned. But that ignorant modern knaves should feign precisely the same raps, lights, and movements as the most remote and unsophisticated barbarians, and as the educated Platonists of the fourth century after Christ, and that many of the other phenomena ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang

... And the Occasion overpowers affection. Insomuch that after a thousand pondrous considerations, he resolves to deny his dearly beloved Wife a little of that same; and to that purpose will somtimes in an evening feign to have the headake, or that he is very dull and sleepy, (which is no absolutely;) and thereby commands his man to call him up somtimes very early in the morning, as if there were forsooth Customers in the Shop, &c. and hunts up and down among the ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh

... healths all round likewise: and so show yourselves true gentlemen, true Christians, ay, and true lovers? For what is love (let me speak freely to you, gentlemen and guests), what is love, but the very inspiration of that Deity whose name is Love? Be sure that not without reason did the ancients feign Eros to be the eldest of the gods, by whom the jarring elements of chaos were attuned into harmony and order. How, then, shall lovers make him the father of strife? Shall Psyche wed with Cupid, to bring forth a cockatrice's egg? or the soul be filled ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... these evils," said Rebecca, afraid to provoke the wild knight, yet equally determined neither to endure his passion, nor even feign to endure it. "Be a man, be a Christian! If indeed thy faith recommends that mercy which rather your tongues than your actions pretend, save me from this dreadful death, without seeking a requital which would change thy magnanimity ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... being repaid, if only by the portentous sentence in which the author celebrates his arrival at the shores of Loch Ness, where he reposes upon "a bank such as a writer of romance might have delighted to feign," and reflects that a "uniformity of barrenness can afford very little amusement to the traveller; that it is easy to sit at home and conceive rocks and heath and waterfalls; and that these journeys are useless labours, which neither ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett

... not all of the ghastly kind; some of them related to conduct and character. It was noted long ago how boys throw stones, for instance, at a tree, and feign to themselves that this thing or that, of great import, will happen or not as they hit or miss the tree. But my boy had other fancies, which came of things he had read and half understood. In one of his school-books was a story that began, "Charles was an honest ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells

... what it comes to. One may feign that these storage warehouses are cities, but they are really cemeteries: sad columbaria on whose shelves are stowed exanimate things once so intimately of their owners' lives that it is with the sense of looking at pieces and bits of one's dead self that one ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... expected every possible resistance in crossing the Chattahoochee River, and had made up my mind to feign on the right, but actually to cross over by the left. We had already secured a crossing place at Roswell, but one nearer was advisable; General Schofield had examined the river well, found a place just below the mouth of Soap's Creek which he deemed advantageous, and was instructed to effect ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman

... company, and so charged him merely with riotous conduct in the public streets, for which the penalty was a light fine and a few days' detention. Sleeny seemed conscious of his clemency, but gave him no look or expression of gratitude. He was too bitter at heart to feel gratitude, and too awkward to feign it. ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay

... for you, Sir,' she replied, 'to feign that other belief, and audaciously to thrust it on me ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... wolves. A prudent prince cannot and must not keep faith, when it is harmful to do so, or when the occasion under which he promised has passed by. He will always find colorable pretexts for breaking his word; and if he learns well how to feign, he will have but little difficulty in deceiving people. Among the innumerable instances of successful hypocrites Machiavelli can think of none more excellent than Alexander VI. 'He never did anything else but deceive men, nor ever thought ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... lyre with other strings, Such aid from heaven as some have feign'd they drew, An eloquence scarce given to mortals, new And undebased ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... cuestas!" Oh, my son! you have cost me dear! alluding to her own son, for whose sake she had sacrificed the former children of her husband. She died, deserted by all; for that husband, equally guilty, on hearing that her words had betrayed her, thought it policy to feign indignation at her wickedness, and refused to visit her in her dying moments. The memory of the unnatural father is still preserved in a Spanish proverb, which alludes only to his sole good quality—liberality—in which he was extreme: in application ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello

... halted at the Stone Bridge on which the lone regiment of Col. Evans lay beyond the stream. He was ordered to feign an attack on that point while the second and third divisions should creep cautiously along a circuitous road two miles above, cross unopposed and slip into the rear of Beauregard's long-drawn left wing, roll ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon

... glowing upon earth. This heavenly and earthly love unites in one flame. Again, I say, Charlotte, banish this hypocritical word 'friendship!' It is only love which I feel for you, let this sentiment enter at every avenue of your heart, and do not feign ignorance of it, sweet hypocrite. Surprise has torn away the mask! The passionate kiss, which still burns upon my lips, was not given by a friend or sister; but overcome by joy, ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach

... love with her Brother Caunus; and upon his rejecting her Addresses, hanged herself. The Poets feign she was afterwards turned into ...
— The Lovers Assistant, or, New Art of Love • Henry Fielding

... Februaro. Fecundate fruktigi. Federal federa. Federation (act) federo. Federation (state) federacio. Federative federa. Fee pagi. Feeble malforta. Feebleness malforteco. Feed nutri. Feel (touch) palpi. Feel senti. Feeling sento. Feeling palpo. Feel one's way palpeti. Feign sxajnigi. Feint sxajxnigo. Felicity felicxeco. Fell faligi. Fellow, a good karulo. Fellow-citizen samurbano. Felly (felloe) radrondo. Felon krimulo. Felt felto. Female virino, ino. Feminine virinseksa, ina. Feminism feminismo, inismo. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... love-stories on that blue-and-gold day, which was my first in the Grand Piazza of San Marco. How the lady would patter away, and pretend she didn't know that a rising young judge had his eye upon her! But she would pause and feign to examine a grain of corn, which I or some one else had thrown, just long enough to give him a chance of preening his feathers before her, spreading out his tail, and generally cataloguing his perfections. She would pretend that ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... passport—and look! the description corresponds nearly to Wallner's appearance. He is of my stature and age, has hair and whiskers like mine, and might be passed off for myself. I am quite willing to let him have my passport, and conceal myself meanwhile at home and feign sickness. The passport would enable him to escape safely; of course he would have to journey through the Alps, for every one knows him in the plain. However, the passport cannot do him any good, for there is no one to take ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach

... think: I would wish your grace to feign a pilgrimage To our Lady of Loretto, scarce seven leagues >From fair Ancona; so may you depart Your country with more honour, and your flight Will seem a princely progress, retaining Your ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster

... his perch, apparently wrapped in dreamless slumber, would in reality be watching the stealthy movements of Tim, the cat, who would come scouting through the grass towards the tin of food. Just out of reach, Tim would lie down and feign sleep as deep as Caesar's, though every muscle in his body was tense with readiness for the sudden spring. So they would remain, perhaps many minutes. Tim's patience never gave out. Sometimes Caesar's would, and he would open his eyes and flap round on ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce

... the Perch and the Sturgeon feign death; according to Couch,[42] the Landrail, the Skylark, the Corncrake adopt the same device. Among mammals, the best-known example is probably ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay

... on the lock of the door: an almost irresistible impulse urged me to spring from the bed and draw the bolt. On second thoughts, however, I determined to feign sleep, ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie

... the hurried order which involuntarily broke from the lips of Ludlow. "Let thy ship feign the silence of a wreck, but, in truth, let there be watchfulness and preparation even to her store-rooms! You have done well, Captain Ludlow, to be on the alert, though I have known sharper eyes than those of some ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper

... fling down their rose; On rapturous waves we saw her glide; The pearly sea-shell half enclose; The shoal of sea-nymphs flush the tide; And we, afire to kiss her feet, no more Behold than tracks along a startled shore, With brightened edges of dark leaves that feign An ambush hoped, as ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... remember these things, and not imitate those enemies of America who sometimes feign to put on mourning for her, sometimes jest at her distress, and find in the present situation of the disunited States (for thus they style them) an agreeable subject for pleasantry, forgetting that this disunion has a serious cause, which is certainly ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin

... remember'd kisses after death, And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign'd On lips that are for others; deep as love, Deep as first love, and wild with all regret; O Death in Life, the ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe

... cannot even feign anger against "Dame Fortune," that, by so unexpected a turn of her wheel, she should be even now bringing you to the remote village where for some time I have been forced to make my home, and where it is very probable I shall remain for some years longer. ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall

... unmeet To shed on the brief flower of youth The withering knowledge of the grave; 445 From me remorse then wrung that truth. I could not bear the joy which gave Too just a response to mine own. In vain. I dared not feign a groan, And in their artless looks I saw, 450 Between the mists of fear and awe, That my own thought was theirs, and they Expressed it not in words, but said, Each in its heart, how every day Will pass in happy work and play, 455 Now he is ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... but we should conceal all illness if we were treated as the Erewhonians are when they have anything the matter with them; we should do the same as with moral and intellectual diseases,—we should feign health with the most consummate art, till we were found out, and should hate a single flogging given in the way of mere punishment more than the amputation of a limb, if it were kindly and courteously performed from a wish to help us out of our difficulty, and with the full consciousness ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler

... men at the ind av the day. I made feign to be far gone in dhrink, an', wan by wan, all my roomful came in wid Vulmea. I wint away, walkin' thick an' heavy, but not so thick an' heavy that any wan cud ha' tuk me. Sure and thrue, there was a kyartridge ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling

... marriage negotiations. But Alencon was useless to England as a counterbalance to Spain unless France herself could be pledged as well, and Elizabeth considered it safest for the time, since that could not be done, to feign a new cordiality ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various

... when returning to the village, but strict silence is maintained. They make an enclosure around the house of the dead man; and if anyone, great or small, passes by and transgresses this bound, he shall be punished. In order that all men may know of a chief's death and no one feign ignorance, one of the timaguas who is held in honor goes through the village and makes announcement of the mourning. He who transgresses the law must pay the penalty, without fail. If he who does this wrong be a slave—one of those who serve without ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume V., 1582-1583 • Various

... I resolve to feign sickness, to make use of any pretext so as not to go to Pepita's on the following night, and yet ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera

... and though in rare cases the error and sin of a powerful lawyer may have been notorious, the preccant man was careful to surround himself with such an appearance of respectability that society should easily feign ignorance of his offence. An Elizabethan distich—familiar to all barristers, but too rudely worded for insertion in this page—informs us that in the sixteenth century Gray's Inn had an unenviable notoriety amongst legal hospices for the shamelessness of its ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson

... Who can escape? To live is to remember. To die—oh, who would forget! Even had I been weeping, and not merely mocking time away, would my tears be of Lethe at my mouth's corners? No," said Anthea, "why feign and lie? All I am is but a memory lovely ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare

... wit, yet mingled with good drink may have some relish. His inspirations are more real than others, for they do but feign a God, but he has his by him. His verse runs like the tap, and his invention as the barrel, ebbs and flows at the mercy of the spiggot. In thin drink he aspires not above a ballad, but a cup of sack inflames him, and sets his muse and nose ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle

... the rugged Persian highlands, Where the masters of the bow Skill to feign a flight, and, fleeing, Hurl their darts and pierce the foe; There the Tigris and Euphrates At one source[O] their waters blend, Soon to draw apart, and plainward Each its separate way to wend. ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius

... all the time his soul lay hot within him, at having so to humble himself before Flint; at being thus obliged to eat crow, and fawn and feign and creep. ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England

... a livelihood as a beggar in Egypt is to feign idiocy, which, I am told, is frequently done. Idiots are regarded as saints, and are never restricted in their movements, maniacs alone being confined, and they are often met with in the streets. My Swedenborgian friends might account for the absence of sense being held proof positive of the ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie

... burned down six years after. The door was locked, but he sat to wait, and after an hour came a priest in his gown to say mass. The priest looked at him, but answered nothing to his good-day (there be so many of these idle solitaries about that feign to serve God, but their heart is in the belly). I do not blame the priest; it may be he had been ...
— The History of Richard Raynal, Solitary • Robert Hugh Benson

... scarcely be said that it requires a stomach as strong as that of the emperor to be able to absorb several glasses of such a drink before retiring, and it is asserted at the Court of Berlin that there are many of his subjects of high rank who feign illness when commanded to join the imperial hunting parties, solely because of the apprehensions they entertain of being called upon by the kaiser to ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy

... that the Huron, upon being felled to the earth, concluded it best to feign death until his enemies were out of sight, when he would have risen to his feet and fled. The wound he had received was so severe, that he knew his flight would be difficult and tardy, and he, therefore, avoided giving any signs of life as long as he had reason to believe the savages ...
— The Riflemen of the Miami • Edward S. Ellis

... Northern valleys, keen after bear and wild goat; but they had never been thus treated in their lives. So the forest took them to her bosom, and, for all oaths and clamour, refused to restore. There was no need to feign madness or—the Babu had thought of another means of securing a welcome. He wrung out his wet clothes, slipped on his patent-leather shoes, opened the blue-and-white umbrella, and with mincing gait and a heart beating against his tonsils appeared as 'agent ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling

... Marton. I find her bent in two, and wrapped up in the only garment she had kept on. Taking my time, and sparing her modesty, I compel her by degrees to acknowledge her defeat, and convince her that it is better to feign sleep and to let me proceed. Her natural instincts soon working in concert with mine, I reach the goal; and my efforts, crowned with the most complete success, leave me not the shadow of a doubt that I have gathered those first-fruits to which ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... subtler analysis of motives and principles, and it suggests a mental and a moral philosophy nobler in themselves and truer to humanity and religion. The pathos, too, is more genuine; for it is not based upon the mere utterance of grief or of entreaty,—which the eloquent and the artful may, indeed, feign,—but it is found in that skilful combination of material circumstance and spiritual influence which impresses upon the feeling, more than it proves to the reason, that the hour of heart-break is at hand, and which depends less for its effect upon the dramatic ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various

... Hebrew words: except you would coin such ridiculous inkhorn terms, as you do in the New Testament, Azymes, prepuce, neophyte, sandale, parasceve, and such like."[236] "When you say 'evangelized,' you do not translate, but feign a new word, which is not understood of ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos

... of the Pretender, then resident in Rome, his advice is; never meet a Stuart at all if you can help it; but if you must, feign ignorance of him and his grievances. If he begins to talk politics, disavow any knowledge of events in England, and escape as soon as ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard

... great distress of Ernis and his daughter Loret, and Sir Guy gat him to an Inn. Heraud tended him there, and learned how it was for the sake of Felice that Guy renounced so fair a bride, dowered with so rich a kingdom. But after a fortnight, when he could no longer feign illness because of the watchfullness of the Emperor and the Princess after his health, he was forced to return to court, and delay his marriage from day to day by one excuse and another, until at length fortune ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... is very feeble and uncertain. As the relation of cause and effect is requisite to persuade us of any real existence, so is this persuasion requisite to give force to these other relations. For where upon the appearance of an impression we not only feign another object, but likewise arbitrarily, and of our mere good-will and pleasure give it a particular relation to the impression, this can have but a small effect upon the mind; nor is there any reason, why, upon the return of the same impression, we should be ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume

... either to dodge or to lie flat and feign death. So we practiced dodging, our running being more for the purpose of gaining endurance and to follow the ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope

... The Yoke is easie; Glorious are the Chains: His Fetters please, nor wish we to be Free, But Glory in the Loss of Liberty: And yet but half our Thanks we owe the Boy, He gives us Love, 'tis Hymen gives us Joy; Well might the Poets feign those Gods a-kin, For we are only Happy where they join. As when Aurora does the Bridal Morn, With an uncommon Gayety Adorn From its Illustrious Pride with ease we may Foretel the Brightness of the coming Day: So when true Love the ...
— The Pleasures of a Single Life, or, The Miseries Of Matrimony • Anonymous

... of his parents, and naturally somewhat of a square plug in a round hole in our school life. He hated all conventions, and was always in trouble with the boys, for he entirely neglected his personal appearance, while his fingers were always discoloured with chemicals, and he would not even feign an interest in the things for which they cared. I can remember him sitting on the foot of my bed, talking me to sleep more than once with some new plan he had devised for a self-steering torpedo or an absolutely reliable flying machine. He had received the sobriquet ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

... with much paper many an oath, And protestations of such solemn sense, As if our souls were sureties for the pence. Should we a full night's learned cares present, They'll scarce return us one short hour's content. 'Las! they're but quibbles, things we poets feign, The short-liv'd squibs and crackers of the brain. But we'll be wiser, knowing 'tis not they That must redeem the hardship of our way. Whether a Higher Power, or that star Which, nearest heav'n, is from the earth most far, Oppress us thus, or angell'd from that sphere By ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan

... at this juncture feel quite at his ease, but he could do no more than feign a smile. "You people," he said, "should leave off talking nonsense, and bring the eatables at once and let us have our meal, as I have still to go on the other side and see Mr. Chia Chen, to ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... grow more and more idiotic; I cannot even feign sanity. Sometime in the month of June a stalwart weather-beaten man, evidently of seafaring antecedents, shall be observed wending his way between the Athenaeum Club and Waterloo Place. Arrived off No. 17, he shall be observed to bring his head ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... call as my witness, who shalt one day be my Judge and the Judge of all, whether it is not the case that men see in this heart of mine what Thou seest not. Would that Thou didst not also see in the same heart what they do not see! But ah me! I am far baser in reality than they feign. Suppliantly I adore the will of Thy Providence that permits me to be falsely accused among men on account of so many hidden faults of which I am truly guilty in Thy sight. Thou, Lord, saidst to Shimei, 'Curse David.' ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson

... discourse, and sustaining the interests and the enjoyment of that interchange of thoughts by flying from topic to topic just as their unshackled imagination suggested. But Fernand never questioned Nisida concerning the motive which had induced her to feign dumbness and deafness for so many years; she had given him to understand that family reasons of the deepest importance, and involving dreadful mysteries from the contemplation of which she recoiled with ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds

... told Ascyltos of this, but he only laughed it off, as he had so happily extricated himself from the scrape. He was convinced that, as we were unknown and as no one had seen us, we were perfectly safe. We decided, nevertheless, to feign sickness, and to keep to our room as long as possible; but, before we knew it, our money ran out, and spurred by necessity we were forced to go abroad and sell some ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter

... fires, the kozhan, and the opening of the corral. Two women walk slowly into this space, their heads modestly bent. They stop, and a young man approaches to ascertain with whom they would dance. He then finds the desired persons, takes each by the arm, and drags him out. The men always feign unwillingness to go. In the meanwhile other pairs of women have come out and other young men become busy finding partners for them. As a rule they dance in groups of four, men and women facing each other and moving backward and forward five or six steps. As the ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis

... much as I can to deliver myself from those fallacies which we are apt to put upon ourselves, by taking words for things. It helps not our ignorance to feign a knowledge where we have none, by making a noise with sounds, without clear and distinct significations. Names made at pleasure, neither alter the nature of things, nor make us understand them, but as they are signs of and stand for determined ideas. ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke

... my own, ah! too short seemed the day For a jaunt to Downpatrick, or a trip on the sea; To express what I felt, then all language was vain, 'Twas in truth what the poets have studied to feign. ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask

... Preparation, must of necessity stifle and confound one Passion by another. The second Reason why the Fiction of a Fable pleases us more than an Historical Relation can do, is, because in an Historical Relation we seldom are acquainted with the true Causes of Events, whereas in a feign'd Action which is duly constituted, that is, which has a just beginning, those Causes always appear. For 'tis observable, that, both in a Poetical Fiction and an Historical Relation, those Events are the most entertaining, the most surprizing, ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith

... before my eyes he gleams, A Brother of the Leaves he seems; When in a moment forth he teems His little song in gushes As if it pleased him to disdain And mock the Form which he did feign While he was dancing with the train ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... this subject for heroick song Pleas'd me long choosing, and beginning late; Not sedulous by nature to indite Wars, hitherto the only argument Heroick deem'd chief mastery to dissect With long and tedious havock fabled knights In battles feign'd; the better fortitude Of patience and heroick martyrdom Unsung; or to describe races and games, Or tilting furniture, imblazon'd shields, Impresses quaint, caparisons and steeds, Bases and tinsel trappings, ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton

... "as you move around among the apparently dead ones. Wolves are most treacherous brutes, and sometimes badly wounded ones will feign to be dead when very far from it. By doing this they hope to escape the extra bullet or fatal blow of the axe that would quickly finish them. Then when the hunters are off their guard, or night comes on, they hope to ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young

... Basil was involved in constant difficulties by his own pride and suspicion. We cannot, for example, imagine Athanasius turning two presbyters out of doors as 'spies.' But the ascetic is usually too full of his own plans to feel sympathy with others, too much in earnest to feign it like a diplomatist. Basil had enough worldly prudence to keep in the background his belief in the Holy Spirit, but not enough to protect even his closest friends from the outbreaks of his imperious temper. ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin

... aim of their conjunction. Teresa's bedchamber, to which our hero constantly repaired at midnight, was the scene of their deliberations, and there it was determined that the damsel, in order to avoid suspicion, should feign herself irritated at the indifference of Ferdinand, her passion for whom was by this time no secret in the family; and that, with a view to countenance this affectation, he should upon all occasions treat her with an ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett

... scorned to profit. The Spanish ambassador in that city informed him that Philip's wrath at the recent transactions in the Netherlands was high. He was most significantly requested, by a leading personage in France, to feign illness, or to take refuge in any expedient by which he might avoid the fulfilment of his mission. Such hints had no effect in turning him from his course, and he proceeded to Madrid, where he arrived ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... to Tours, to summon all his captains and other great personages to attend him. Upon their arrival he communicated his letters to them. They all pretended great joy; but to such as more narrowly observed their behavior, it was easy to be discerned that most of them did but feign it; and, notwithstanding all their outward dissimulation, they had been better pleased if the Duke of Burgundy had been successful. The reason of this might be, because the King was greatly feared, and now, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson

... themselves were in his retinue; So whether 'twas Sir Robert, or Sir Hugh, Or Jack, or Ralph, that held the damsel dear, Come would she then, and tell it in his ear: Thus were the wench and he of one accord; And he would feign a mandate from his lord, And summon them before the court, those two, And pluck the man, and let the mawkin go. Then would he say, "Friend, for thine honest look, I save thy name, this once, from the black ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley

... to separate the boy from his Father, they having both followed the women up to London, they were both taken and put into several prisons asunder. Whereupon shortly after the Boy confessed that he was taught and suborned to devise, and feign those things against them, and had persevered in that wickedness by the counsel of his Father, and some others, whom envy, revenge and hope of gain had prompted on to that devillish design and villany; and he also confessed, that upon that day when he said ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts

... conceal'd; Loud calling,—"Where, O virgin, hast thou stray'd? "What hills, my comrade, hast thou crost in chase?" Light springing from the turf, the nymph reply'd,— "Hail goddess, greater, if with me the palm, "Than Jove himself, though Jove himself should hear." The feign'd Diana smil'd, and joy'd to hear Him to himself preferr'd; then press'd her lips With kisses, such as virgins never give To virgins. Her, prepar'd to tell the woods Where late she hunted, with a warm embrace ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid

... ridicule; especially as the sessions at these spectacles were sometimes protracted and tiresome to the last degree. Even sudden sickness was not a sufficient reason for allowing a spectator to depart, and so it was said that the people used sometimes to feign death, in order to be carried out to their burial. In some cases, it was said, births took place in the theaters, the mothers having come incautiously with the crowd to witness the spectacles, without properly considering what might be the effect of the excitement, and then ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott

... when he grew up he would be a "gentleman," in the finest outer sense of the word. His inner life he kept concealed from us. I believe he had some method of communicating his ideas to Eugen, even if he never spoke. Eugen never could conceal his own mood from the child; it knew—let him feign otherwise never so cunningly—exactly what he felt, glad or sad, or between the two, and no acting could deceive him. It was a strange, intensely interesting study to me; one to which I daily returned with fresh avidity. He would let me take him in my arms and talk to him; would sometimes, ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill

... was the case, many expressions in the Night Thoughts would seem to prove, did not a passage in Night Eight appear to show that he had something in his eye for the groundwork, at least, of the painting. Lovelace or Lorenzo may be feigned characters; but a writer does not feign a name of which he ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson

... the land. Spirit! no year of my eventful being Has pass'd unstain'd by crime and misery, Which flows from God's own faith. I've marked his slaves With tongues whose lies are venomous, beguile The insensate mob, and whilst one hand was red With murder, feign to stretch the other out For brotherhood and peace; and that they now Babble of love and mercy, whilst their deeds Are marked with all the narrowness and crime That freedom's young arm ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran

... the owner of this caravan is not dead." So they turned back to the slain and fell to prodding and slashing them with lance and sword till they came to Ala al-Din, who had thrown himself down among the corpses. And when they came to him, quoth they, "Thou dost but feign thyself dead, but we will make an end of thee," and one of the Badawin levelled his javelin and would have plunged it into his breast when he cried out, "Save me, O my lord Abd al-Kadir, O Saint of Gilan!" and behold, he ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton

... contend, Saint Paul will lie and Saint John will hate. What low, poor, paltry, hypocritical people an argument on religion will make of the pure and chosen souls! They will shuffle and crow, crook and hide, feign to confess here, only that they may brag and conquer there, and not a thought has enriched either party, and not an emotion of bravery, modesty, or hope. So neither should you put yourself in a false position with your ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... me! now I call To my pretty witchcrafts all; Old I am, and cannot do That I was accustomed to. Bring your magics, spells, and charms, To enflesh my thighs and arms. Is there no way to beget In my limbs their former heat? AEson had, as poets feign, Baths that made him young again: Find that medicine, if you can, For your dry decrepit man Who would fain his strength renew, Were ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick

... can be given him before he has time to recover position. The issue depends much on the endurance of the birds. Their movements require so much energy that one of them is apt to become exhausted before the other is quite spent. In rare cases, only one of which has been seen by me, a weary bird will feign death for a minute or so and thus obtain new strength with which to renew the combat, profiting also by the confusion which he will bring upon his adversary by his ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

... annihilated and replaced by a fixed idea, and when conscience is not entirely abolished. Dr. Kerzhenzev kills his friend, obeying a mental suggestion, which now forbids him to do it, now urges him on. Then, like the "half-insane" or those sick people who feign madness in order more easily to attain their end, this man suggests to himself that he is in reality insane. This idea gets a hold on him after the murder and fills his soul with mortal terror, the exposure of which forms the most supremely pathetic part of the whole story. All this drama of ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky

... moment a wise man acts irregularly and against his own interest in order to thwart another who tries to restrain him or direct him, or that he may disconcert those who watch his steps. It is even well at times to imitate Brutus by concealing one's wit, and even to feign madness, as David did before the King of ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz

... feigned confessions, flattering both ourselves, and also God, while we make confession unto him; or else to confess sin as our own fancies apprehend, and not as the word descries them. These things we are very incident to: Men can confess little sins, while they hide great ones. Men can feign themselves sorry for sin, when they are not, or else in their confessions forget to judge of sin by the word. Hence it is said, They turned to God, not with their whole heart, but as it were feignedly. They spake not aright, saying, what have I done? They flatter ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... contrary to the New: for both in the Old and New Testament everlasting life is offered to mankind by Christ, who is the only Mediator between God and man, being both God and man. Wherefore they are not to be heard, which feign that the old Fathers did look only for transitory promises. Although the Law given from God by Moses, as touching Ceremonies and Rites, do not bind Christian men, nor the civil precepts thereof ought of necessity to be received ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England

... Princes of Moscow who proved themselves masters in these Oriental arts. Their cunning was not of the vulgar sort which works for ends that are near; it was the cunning which could wait, could patiently cringe and feign loyalty and devotion, with the steady purpose of tearing in pieces. Added to this, they had the intelligence to divine the secret of power. Certain ends they kept steadily in view. The old law of succession to eldest ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele

... pitiest me, and wilt try to forget thy pity. Belike thou art right when thou sayest, To-morrow is a new day; belike matters will arise that will call me back to life, and I shall once more take heed of the joy and sorrow of my people. Nay, it is most like that this I shall feign to do even now. But if to-morrow be a new day, it is to-day now and not to-morrow, and so shall it be for long. Hereof belike we shall talk no more, thou and I. For as the days wear, the dealings between us shall be that thou shalt but get thee away from my life, and I shall be nought ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris

... fever in these pages burns; Beneath the calm they feign, A wounded human spirit turns Here on ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell

... actions were never purposeless, sat still, their hands clasped stealthily amid the folds of Mabel's dress; their eyes saying the dear and passionate things forbidden to their tongues. Neither would feign indifference, or attempt a lame dialogue upon other topics than those that filled their minds. Mr. Aylett was not one to pay outward heed to hints when he chose to ignore them. He kept up his walk until the carriage was driven around to the front door, informed the parting guest that it awaited his ...
— At Last • Marion Harland

... thing it is to wear a crown, Within whose circuit is Elysium And all that poets feign of ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett

... have it in mind to play a trick on the Khalif and thou shalt do the like with the Lady Zubeideh, and we will take of them, in a twinkling, two hundred dinars and two pieces of silk." "As thou wilt," answered she; "but what thinkest thou to do?" And he said,"We will feign ourselves dead and this is the trick. I will die before thee and lay myself out, and do thou spread over me a kerchief of silk and loose [the muslin of] my turban over me and tie my toes and lay on my heart a knife, ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne

... the summerwind, Joy of the summerplain, Life of the summerhours, Carol clearly, bound along. No Tithon thou as poets feign (Shame fall 'em they are deaf and blind) But an insect lithe and strong, Bowing the seeded summerflowers. Prove their falsehood and thy quarrel, Vaulting on thine airy feet. Clap thy shielded sides and carol, Carol clearly, chirrup ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... mind, nor whether he is thinking of his walking or of something quite different. To be sure, his facial expression, which is an objective fact, may give some clue to his thoughts and feelings, but "there's no art to read the mind's construction {10} in the face", or at least no sure art. One may feign sleep or absorption while really attending to what is going on around. A child may wear an angelic expression while meditating mischief. To get the subjective facts, we shall have to enlist the person ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth

... her concerning her health, He look'd at her often, but aye 'twas by stealth; When his heart it grew grit, and, sighin', he feign'd To gang to the door to see if ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... did she feign happiness that her husband heard no change in her voice as she bade him welcome, and, having travelled far that day, he soon laid himself down on the couch and fell sound asleep. Then Psyche seized the lamp and snatched off the covering, ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various

... mistress was still a child, and I could look for no protection from her. I loved her, and she returned my affection. I once heard her father allude to her attachment to me, and his wife promptly replied that it proceeded from fear. This put unpleasant doubts into my mind. Did the child feign what she did not feel? or was her mother jealous of the mite of love she bestowed on me? I concluded it must be the latter. I said to myself, "Surely, little children ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)

... I were fit to be your councillor, Thus would I speak - feign that you are with child. The mother of the maids, and some worn ladies Who oft have guilty being to court great bellies, May though it not be so, get you with child With ...
— The Noble Spanish Soldier • Thomas Dekker

... done speaking than his sharp eye detected a group of Senecas coming to the house. 'Get into bed quick,' he said abruptly, 'and feign yourself sick.' The woman did his bidding, and the Indians when they entered were completely deceived by her pretence. Then, as they departed, Brant gave a piercing signal, and some of his Mohawks gathered into the room. He had called them to help him save this woman and her family. ...
— The War Chief of the Six Nations - A Chronicle of Joseph Brant - Volume 16 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • Louis Aubrey Wood

... fought not only with the enemy, but with that from which there is peril greater by far, even treachery in allies. I would not have you ignorant of the truth. It was not by any ordering of mine that the men of Alba went towards the mountains. I gave no such command; yet did I feign that I had given it to this end, that ye might not know that ye were deserted, and so might fight with the better courage, and that our enemies, thinking that they should be assailed from behind, might be stricken with fear ...
— Stories From Livy • Alfred Church

... Those who were initiated, mimicked whatever the poets had thought fit to feign of the god Bacchus. They covered themselves with the skins of wild beasts, carried a thyrsus in their hands, a kind of pike with ivy-leaves twisted round it; had drums, horns, pipes, and other instruments calculated to make a great noise; and wore upon their heads wreaths of ivy and ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin

... you disturb yourself?" I have said to him; "if that is not agreeable to you, leave her alone. You are not obliged to feign a love which ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... fatally condemned; for it was of monarchical essence to such a point that the Apostolic and Roman papacy could not renounce the temporal power under penalty of becoming something else and disappearing. In vain did it feign a return to the people, in vain did it seek to appear all soul; there was no room in the midst of the world's democracies for any such total and universal sovereignty as that which it claimed to hold from ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... and doctrine, clothed righteously in his armour, and not in any feigned armour, as in a friar's coat or cowl. For the assaults of the devil be crafty to make us put our trust in such armour, he will feign himself to fly; but then we be most in jeopardy: for he can give us an after-clap when we least ween; that is, suddenly return unawares to us, and then he giveth us an after-clap that overthroweth us: ...
— Sermons on the Card and Other Discourses • Hugh Latimer

... of their philosophy was sceptical; for no idea could be found in the mind which was not a phenomenon there, and no inference could be drawn from these phenomena not based on some inherent "tendency to feign." The analysis which was in truth legitimising and purifying knowledge seemed to them absolutely to blast it, and the closer they came to the bed-rock of experience the more incapable they felt of building up anything upon it. Self-knowledge ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... while the hard and laborious life of the husbandman will not admit of these vices. The honest farmer lives in a wise and happy state, which inclines him to justice, temperance, sobriety, sincerity, and every virtue that can dignify human nature. This gave room for the poets to feign, that Astraea, the goddess of justice, had her last residence among husbandmen, before she quitted the earth. Hesiod and Virgil have brought the assistance of the Muses in praise of agriculture. Kings, generals, and philosophers, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson

... answers, But her performance keeps no day; Breaks time, as dancers From their own music when they stray. All her free favors And smooth words wing my hopes in vain. O, did ever voice so sweet but only feign? Can true love yield such delay, Converting ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various

... of pearl, which, poets feign, Sailed the unshadowed main,— The venturous bark that flings On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings, And coral reefs lie bare, Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris

... and supper. Roll-call is sounded twice a day, and the companies fall into line, when the first sergeants easily ascertain whether every man is at his post of duty. The bugle calls the sick, and sometimes those who feign to be, to the surgeon's quarters, and their wants and woes are attended to. By the bugle we are summoned to inspections, to camp-guard, to the feeding and watering of our horses and to drill. A peculiarly ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier

... squire was devising a plan of escape. He caused the young Richard to feign illness, and thus obtained a slight relaxation of the vigilance with which his movements, were watched, which enabled him to carry to the duke's apartments a great bundle of hay. At nightfall he rolled Richard up in the midst of it, and laying it across his shoulders, he crossed the castle court ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... I shall try thy truth; if thou dost love me, Thou weigh'st not any thing compar'd with me; Life, Honour, joyes Eternal, all Delights This world can yield, or hopeful people feign, Or in the life to come, are light as Air To a true Lover when his Lady frowns, And bids him do this: wilt thou kill this man? Swear my Amintor, and I'le kiss the ...
— The Maids Tragedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... already seen so much of nuns, nunneries and the like, that I sorely begrudged the time thus spent. Good manners forbade a demur. There was nothing to do but to feign some slight interest in the schoolrooms, dormitories, playground, chapel—facsimiles, as were the nuns themselves, of what I had ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... year, When honey lieth in the hives of bees, And all manner fruit falleth from the trees: As apples, nuts, pears, and plums also, Whereby a boy may live abroad a month or two. This cast do I use, I woll not with you feign; Therefore I wonder if he be I, certain. But, and if he be, and you meet me abroad by chance, Send me home to my master with a vengeance! And show him, if he come not here to-morrow night, I woll never receive him again, if I might; ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley

... everywhere! The babe that sees with pain The look of feign'd displeasure on the face Of doting mother; and the mother who Lays down the babe to rest—no more to wake; The youth and maiden fair who tempt the stream Of love that never brings them to the goal Their fancy pictured; hearts that droop and break: Upon life's thorny way; old age that sees ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning

... people who are bored, and I must make them laugh. Now it is absurdity and madness which make people laugh, so mad and absurd I must be; and even if nature had not made me so, the simplest plan would still be to feign it. Happily, I have no need to play hypocrite; there are so many already of all colours, without reckoning those who play hypocrite with themselves.... If your friend Rameau were to apply himself to show his contempt for fortune, and women, and good cheer, and idleness, and to begin ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley

... master and mistress's return; and as they went into the Senor's room directly, and found him without the very least appearance of having moved, justice compels us to incline to the belief in Senor Stanley's suggestion—that he could scarcely have had sufficient time to rouse, depart, do murder, and feign sleep during Pedro Benito's brief ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar

... point, that at the present moment," Raskolnikov tried his utmost to feign embarrassment, "I am not quite in funds... and even this trifling sum is beyond me... I only wanted, you see, for the present to declare that the things are mine, and that when I ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... the meantime, that she has still friends in the world, and that she must keep up her spirits. She must also endeavour to make herself of little value in the sight of the Barin, her owner. She must feign sickness or foolishness, and disfigure her countenance, or refuse to work; a woman's wit will advise her best, ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston

... existed, over in England; of that they were ready to take their oath, and the project which they had formed was as ingenious as it was diabolic: to feign a denunciation, to enact a pretended arrest, to place before the unfortunate girl the alternative of death or marriage with one of the gang, were the chief incidents of this inquitous project, and it was in the Cabaret de la Liberte that lots were thrown ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy

... displayed by the South on other questions connected with slavery. I think that no ship of state was ever freighted with a more veritable Jonah than this same domestic institution of ours. Mephistopheles himself could not feign so bitterly, so satirically sad a sight as this of three millions of human beings crushed beyond help or hope by this one mighty argument,—Our fathers knew no better! Nevertheless, it is the unavoidable destiny ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... by a display of superior dexterity, would have carried off the prize, had it not happened that some one was thus purposely watching his conduct. When detected, if an old offender, he will either look you in tire face with the greatest effrontery and an expression of defiance, or he will feign to cry, and tell you he was hungry, has no father nor mother, &c.; though frequently, on further inquiry, I have found the whole ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin

... Master was seriously ill, Tsz-lu induced the other disciples to feign they were high officials acting in his service. During a respite from his malady the Master exclaimed, "Ah! how long has Tsz-lu's conduct been false? Whom should I delude, if I were to pretend to have officials under me, having none? ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous

... humble manner in which the single youths approach their sweethearts, one can see that these young ladies hold their lovers within strict bounds and cause themselves to be treated by them with the greatest respect. I have not seen looseness and impudence, even among prostitutes. Many of the girls feign resistance, and desire to be conquered by a brave arm. This is the way, they say, among the beautiful sex in Filipinas. In Manila no woman makes the least sign or even calls out to a man on the street, or from the windows, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin

... uproar over this very illegal act. The Judge was enraged at losing his port, and the Mayor was filled with horror because Bill wiped his face on the mayoral hat. Sam had to feign amazement at being called a liar, and the puddin'-thieves kept shouting: 'Time, time; we ...
— The Magic Pudding • Norman Lindsay

... were not all of the ghastly kind; some of them related to conduct and character. It was noted long ago how boys throw stones, for instance, at a tree, and feign to themselves that this thing or that, of great import, will happen or not as they hit or miss the tree. But my boy had other fancies, which came of things he had read and half understood. In one of his school-books was a story ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells

... culture which are much better adapted to the development of health and grace, and much less to the development of vile passions and depraved natures. What I have said before will be no surprise to those who waltz, though, of course, they will feign great surprise, ignorance, and innocence of ...
— From the Ball-Room to Hell • T. A. Faulkner

... were wasted. The passion the count proposed to feign for Mademoiselle de Verneuil became a violent caprice, which the dangerous creature ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac

... no care for that, in the mean time you'll be shreudly hurt to have the way laid open to our Enjoyment, and that by my Husband's procurement too: But take heed, dear Wittmore, whilst you only design to feign a Courtship, you do it not ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn

... offered, on the same occasion, to the divine who was to preach the Countess's funeral sermon. The leading and most characteristic features of the lady's character were doubtless pointed out to our author as subjects for illustration; yet so difficult is it, even for the best poet, to feign a sorrow which he feels not, or to describe with appropriate and animated colouring a person whom he has never seen, that Dryden's poem resembles rather an abstract panegyric on an imaginary being, than an elegy on a real character. The elegy ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott

... rise, lie down a second time; and when they bring thee home and offer thee thy beans, fall backwards and only sniff at thy meat and withdraw thee and taste it not, and be satis fied with thy crushed straw and chaff; and on this wise feign thou art sick, and cease not doing thus for a day or two days or even three days, so shalt thou have rest from toil and moil." When the Bull heard these words he knew the Ass to be his friend and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... evasion, even had his military duties not kept him in Turin. He felt himself no more than a puppet dancing to the tune of Parini's satire, a puny doll condemned, as the strings of custom pulled, to feign the gestures of ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

... have your own blessed daughter, sweet and stately, comb your thinning gray locks, help you on with your overcoat, find your cane, and go trooping with you, hand in hand, down the lane on merciful errand bent. It's a temptation to grow old and feign sciatica; and if you could only know that, some day, like old King Lear, upon your withered cheek would fall Cordelia's tears, the thought would ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard

... will be opened for traffic in a few minutes, thanks to the head under the hat you feign to despise. I sent Fred over to the college to bring the boys down to clean things up. They're about ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson

... his brother heard this, he said to him, "I conjure thee by Allah, tell me the reason of thy recovery!" So he told him all that he had seen, and Shehriyar said, "I must see this with my own eyes." "Then," replied Shahzeman, "feign to go forth to hunt and hide thyself in my lodging and thou shalt see all this and have ocular proof of the truth." So Shehriyar ordered his attendants to prepare to set out at once; whereupon the troops encamped without the city and ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous

... prevails during these two months. It is reported, that Muley Ismael was so rich in gold, that the bolts of the gates of his palaces, and his kitchen utensils, were of pure gold. Timbuctoo continued to carry on a most 483 lucrative trade with Marocco, &c.; during the Feign of the Emperor Muley Abd Allah, son and successor of Ismael, and also during the reign of Seedy[283] Muhamed ben Abd Allah, who died about the year 1795, a sovereign universally regretted, and hence aptly denominated the father of his people: since the decease of Seedy[284] Muhamed ben Abd ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny

... devote so little attention to the study of food, and all matters connected with it, must inevitably remain barbaric, however skilfully they may feign a superficial refinement. It is said, although I do not commit this matter to my own brush, that among them are more books composed on subjects which have no actual existence than on cooking, and, incredible as it may appear, to be exceptionally round-bodied confers ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah

... human being has a capacity to act which is called liberty, and a capacity of understanding called rationality. By abuse of these powers a man can appear in externals other than he is in internals; an evil man can do good and speak truth, and a devil feign himself an angel of light. But on this see the following propositions in the treatise Divine Love and Wisdom: "The origin of evil is in the abuse of faculties proper to man, called liberty and rationality" (nn. 246-270); "These two faculties are to be found with the evil as ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg

... cried, darting at him a look of fury: 'Dare you still implore the Eternal's mercy? Would you feign penitence, and again act an Hypocrite's part? Villain, resign your hopes of pardon. Thus ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis

... father, knowing how strong was the Queen's desire to have a son, and seeing that God had not granted her one, told her that she herself was pregnant for a month; and she advised her to tell the King, and to publish it abroad, that she (the Queen) had been pregnant for a month, and to feign to be in that state, and said that after she (the Brahman woman) had been delivered she would secretly send the child to the palace by some confidant, upon which the Queen could announce that this boy was her ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell

... comes to. One may feign that these storage warehouses are cities, but they are really cemeteries: sad columbaria on whose shelves are stowed exanimate things once so intimately of their owners' lives that it is with the sense of looking at pieces and bits of one's dead self that ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... and would have vaguely speculated on his own existence. As Mr. M'Lennan (75. 'The Worship of Animals and Plants,' in the 'Fortnightly Review,' Oct. 1, 1869, p. 422.) has remarked, "Some explanation of the phenomena of life, a man must feign for himself, and to judge from the universality of it, the simplest hypothesis, and the first to occur to men, seems to have been that natural phenomena are ascribable to the presence in animals, plants, and things, and in the forces ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin

... that shall answer that faith which thou makest profession of. The professor that is got into the vineyard of God doth feign that he hath the faith, the faith most holy, the faith of God's elect. Ah! but where are thy fruits, barren fig-tree? The faith of the Romans was 'spoken of throughout the whole world' (Rom 1:8). And the Thessalonians' faith grew exceedingly (2 ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... thrillful boy, prepared to follow the dingy lady upon the white horse, or the band in its faded chariot. He saw the yellow road, the lines of expectant people, and the sober houses. He particularly remembered an old fellow who used to sit upon a cracker box in front of the store and feign to despise such exhibitions. A thousand details of color and form surged in his mind. The old fellow upon the cracker ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane

... melted into air. If he set out to contend,[686] almost St. Paul will lie, almost St. John will hate. What low, poor, paltry, hypocritical people an argument on religion will make of the pure and chosen souls. Shuffle they will and crow, crook and hide, feign to confess here, only that they may brag and conquer there, and not a thought has enriched either party, and not an emotion of bravery, modesty, or hope. So neither should you put yourself in a false position to your contemporaries by indulging a vein of hostility and bitterness. Though ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... matters I still withhold, be assured I am in need of some encouragement, if not candor; a little sympathy, if not confidence. But you keep yourself intrenched in a pretended which paralyzes me. Oh, not for the reason you think; for, ignorant as you may be, or indifferent as you feign to be, you are none the less what you are, monseigneur, and there is nothing—nothing, mark me! which can cause you ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... understood the thoroughness necessary to cleansing. Before undertaking the operation, therefore, in order that they might be made to feel the benefit to be derived therefrom, they would need to have the matter brought home to them in a very gentle way, lest they might feign to fear taking cold, not having ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... and mean desires: in those lawns where thy flocks feed, Diana haunts: be as her nymphs chaste, and enemy to love, for there is no greater honor to a maid, than to account of fancy as a mortal foe to their sex. Daphne, that bonny wench, was not turned into a bay tree, as the poets feign: but for her chastity her fame was immortal, resembling the laurel that is ever green. Follow thou her steps, Rosalynde, and the rather, for that thou art an exile, and banished from the court; whose distress, ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge

... well mounted; and one cannot take the horses as in the old days one took women. Well, well, my holding can pay for all. How thinkest thou? It is a well-watered strip, but my men cheat me. I do not know how to ask save at the lance's point. Ugh! I grow angry and I curse them, and they feign penitence, but behind my back I know they call ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling

... our enemies by instinct. That there was mischief in the wind Rushbrook felt sure, and his heart misgave him the more so, as occasionally the eyes of both were turned towards him. After a little reflection, Rushbrook determined to feign intoxication, as he had so often done before: he called for another pint, for some time talked very loud, and at last laid his head on the table; after a time he lifted it up again, drank more, and then fell back on the bench. ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat

... to feign to be subdued; but I counterfeited to be older than I was in all respects (Heaven knows! my heart being all too young the while), and feigned to be more of a recluse and bookworm than I had really become, and gradually set up more and more ...
— George Silverman's Explanation • Charles Dickens

... old man, "I almost shocked you to death, but I had a purpose in it. I couldn't believe that of you and knew I'd be able to read your face. You know, I believe you! It's all some infernal mistake or plot. You're not a clever enough actor to feign such distress and innocence. Go out and get some air and come back to-morrow morning. I'll stand for you in the meantime. I ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers

... by that softness and pliability of character, which properly belongs to women. An Italian proverb says: 'who knows not how to feign, knows not how to live.' Is not that a woman's proverb? In truth, how can the manly character be formed upon true principles of dignity and strength, in a country which affords no military career of glory, which contains no free institutions? Hence it is, ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael

... can do already," quoth Sancho; "for when I was steward of the brotherhood in our village, I learned to make certain marks like those upon wool-packs, which they told me, stood for my name. But, at the worst, I can feign a lameness in my right hand, and get another to sign for me: there is a remedy for every thing but death; and, having the staff in my hand, I can do what I please. Besides, as your worship knows, he whose father is mayor[12]—and I, being ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... encompassed by perils, and I know not what to do. Lo! here be these barbarians come upon us to slay us and destroy the land." "To escape death," answered Aridius, "thou must appease the ferocity of this man. Now, if it please thee, I will feign to fly from thee and go over to him. So soon as I shall be with him, I will so do that he ruin neither thee nor the land. Only have thou care to perform whatsoever I shall ask of thee, until the Lord in his goodness deign to make thy cause triumph." "All that thou shalt bid will ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various

... e'e, poor tweedle-dee Upon his hunkers bended, [hams] An' pray'd for grace wi' ruefu' face, An' sae the quarrel ended. But tho' his little heart did grieve When round the tinkler prest her, He feign'd to snirtle in his sleeve, [snigger] When thus the ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson

... fall heavily. The nobleman was wet to the skin, and his teeth chattered. He rubbed his hands together and cried, "Oh, had we but a warm hut, and a white bed, and soft bread, and sour kvas,[7] we should have naught to complain of, but would tell tales and feign fables till dawn of day!" Immediately there shone a light in the depths of the forest. They hastened up to it, and lo! there was a hut. They entered, and on the table lay bread and a jug of kvas; and the hut was warm, and the bed therein was white—everything just ...
— Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales • Anonymous

... by war, long baffled by the force Of fate, as fortune and their hopes decline, The Danaan leaders build a monstrous horse, Huge as a hill, by Pallas' craft divine, And cleft fir-timbers in the ribs entwine. They feign it vowed for their return, so goes The tale, and deep within the sides of pine And caverns of the womb by stealth enclose Armed men, a chosen band, ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil

... rose and breast of snow, My peerless, promised bride. A viper by the name of Jones Came in between us twain; With honeyed words he stole away My loved Belinda Jane. For he was rich and I was poor, And poets all are stupid Who feign the god of Love is not Cupidity, but Cupid. Perchance 'tis well, for had I wed That maid of dark-brown curls, You had not been, or been, instead Of boy, a pair of girls. Now listen to me, Walter Smith; Hie to yon ...
— Humour of the North • Lawrence J. Burpee

... as remember'd kisses after death, And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign'd On lips that are for others; deep as love,— Deep as first love, and wild with all regret. Oh death in life, the days that ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett

... their sovereigne himself, contrary to the dictates of his own conscience, contrary to all law of God and man; yea to compell forreigne churches to dance after their pipe, to worship that counterfeit image which they feign to have fallen down from Jupiter, and by force of arms to turne their neighbours out of a possession of above 1400 years, to make roome for their Trojan Horse of ecclesiastical discipline (a practice never justified in the world but either by the Turk or by the Pope): this ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 212, November 19, 1853 • Various

... Caxton's edit., fol. cccvj. rev. Poor Caxton (towards whom the reader will naturally conceive I bear some little affection) is thus dragooned into the list of naughty writers who have ventured to speak mildly (and justly) of Anselm's memory. "They feign in another fable that he (Anselm) tare with his teeth Christ's flesh from his bones, as he hung on the rood, for withholding the lands of certain bishoprics and abbies: Polydorus not being ashamed to rehearse it. Somewhere they call him a red ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... went at midnight to Jiuyemon's house, and looked all round to see if there were no hole or cranny by which she might slip in unobserved; but every door was carefully closed, so she was obliged to knock at the door and feign an excuse. ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford

... prototype. He describes him as animated with a sort of insane aversion to the poet Dante, whom he decries on every occasion in order to exalt Petrarch. A Habbas Dahdah would be much more more likely to feign an excessive admiration for the idol and glory of Italy. However, his pupil stealthily procures a Dante; reads him, of course dreams of him; in short, there is an intolerable farago ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various

... which I have ever studied has been that of my friend Peterkin, whose eccentricities I have never been able fully to understand or account for. I have observed that, on first awaking in the mornings, he has been wont to exhibit several of his most eccentric and peculiar traits, so I resolved to feign myself asleep ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne

... friend. It seemed horribly false not to mention her own talk with Amherst, yet she felt it wiser to feign ignorance, since Bessy could never be trusted to interpret rightly any departure from ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton

... carried into him by a sympathising crowd, while the footman ran with a paragraph to the newspapers. But there was the likelihood that the crowd might carry me in to the rival practitioner opposite. In various disguises I was to feign fits at his very door, and so furnish fresh copy for the local press. Then I was to die—absolutely to expire—and all Scotland was to resound with how Dr. Cullingworth, of Avonmouth, had resuscitated me. His ingenious brain rang a thousand changes out of the idea, and ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro

... answered, "Ah, Pearson, in this troubled world, a man, who is called like me to work great things in Israel, had need to be, as the poets feign, a thing made of hardened metal, immovable to feelings of human charities, impassible, resistless. Pearson, the world will hereafter, perchance, think of me as being such a one as I have described, 'an iron man, and made of iron mould.'—Yet ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott

... that though he did not believe in charms, he would feign belief, so as to magnify his own suffering, and take vengeance on some one, finally, to escape the suspicion that the gods had begun to punish him for crimes. Petronius did not think that Caesar could love really and deeply even his ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... of loving thee, too proud Of the sweet months and years that now have end, To feign a heart indifferent to this loss, Too thankful-happy that the gods allowed Our orbits cross, Beloved and lovely friend; And though I wend Lonely henceforth along a road grown gray, I shall not be all lonely on the way, Companioned with the attar of thy ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne

... system presented itself. Several of the negroes began to feign sickness, and cheat the overseer whenever it could be done with impunity. It is a part of the overseer's duty to go through the quarters every morning, examine such as claim to be sick, determine whether their sickness be real or pretended, and make the appropriate prescriptions. Under the ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox

... longer feign ignorance of your meaning, father," replied Magde, with a visible effort to suppress her anger. "It is true that in words, and even in actions, he has conducted himself with more presumption than he would have dared to assume ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen

... honest countryman wandering amid a crowd of courtiers—virtue in danger amid a myriad of vices. They speak our language; we do not know theirs. No! Louis can not love the chains that fetter him. He may feign to caress them. He thinks only of how he can spurn them. Fallen greatness loves not its decadence. No man likes his humiliation. Trust in human nature; that never deceives. Distrust courts. Your virtue is too elevated to see the snares ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott

... reign? Though turbans now pollute Sophia's shrine, And Greece her very altars eyes in vain: (Alas! her woes will still pervade my strain!) Gay were her minstrels once, for free her throng, All felt the common joy they now must feign, Nor oft I've seen such sight, nor heard such song, As wooed the eye, and thrilled ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron

... faith! can we believe, or feign Believing, that such lands exist Through ages drenched with blotting rain, For ever folded in ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)

... actually made her, she would repress every betrayal; and I was therefore shaken, on the spot, by my first glimpse of the particular one for which I had not allowed. To see her, without a convulsion of her small pink face, not even feign to glance in the direction of the prodigy I announced, but only, instead of that, turn at ME an expression of hard, still gravity, an expression absolutely new and unprecedented and that appeared to read and accuse and judge me—this was ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James

... grown older than you are, and a man, a thorough man, from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot, for such a man is Publius! I believe—nay, I am sure—that he is incapable of any mean action, that he could not be false in word or even in look, nor feign a sentiment ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... hour of disaster also should be watched and he should then be induced to fly. O sire, an enemy should never be scorned, however contemptible. A spark of fire is capable of consuming an extensive forest if only it can spread from one object to another in proximity. Kings should sometimes feign blindness and deafness, for if impotent to chastise, they should pretend not to notice the faults that call for chastisement. On occasions, such as these, let them regard their bows as made of straw. But they should be always on the alert like a herd of deer sleeping in ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... into disgrace and lost forever the favor of the king." The wild despair of the beautiful dancer was spoken of, and there were some who declared that she had made an attempt to take her life. Others asserted that she had sworn never again to appear on the Berlin stage, and that she would assuredly feign illness in order not to dance. All were looking anxiously for the rising of the curtain, and toward the side door through which the king and his suite were accustomed ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach

... from terror. The tinamou is excessively timid, and sometimes when birds of this species are chased—for gaucho boys frequently run them down on horseback—and when they find no burrows or thickets to escape into, they actually drop down dead on the plain. Probably, when they feign death in their captor's hand, they are in reality ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson

... a sense of shame. "Has not an artist a right to dream a little?" she said. Yet she blushed deeply. Were her thoughts wrong, that they needed to be thus glossed over? Was there stealing into her heart a secret that taught her to feign? ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)

... you was here, missie; it was very cunning of you to feign sleep like that—it was very cunning and over sharp, but it don't come round me. No, no; you has got to speak up now, and say what you has seen, and what you hasn't seen. I allow of no nonsense with little girls, and I can always see through them ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade

... cheat. This discredits her, but a man who cheats at cards may hold a good hand by accident. In the same way, if such wonders can happen (as so much world-wide evidence declares), they may have happened at Woods Farm, and Emma, "in a very nervous state," may have feigned then, or rather did feign them later. ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang

... in heaven and glowing upon earth. This heavenly and earthly love unites in one flame. Again, I say, Charlotte, banish this hypocritical word 'friendship!' It is only love which I feel for you, let this sentiment enter at every avenue of your heart, and do not feign ignorance of it, sweet hypocrite. Surprise has torn away the mask! The passionate kiss, which still burns upon my lips, was not given by a friend or sister; but overcome by joy, the truth has ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach

... Yorkshire—though he did not feel himself to be in his proper element—went cheerfully to work in the firm determination to do his best. "I am resolved," he said, "to like it, and reconcile myself to it, which is more manly than to feign myself above it, and to send up complaints by the post of being thrown away, and being desolate, and such like trash." So Dr. Hook, when leaving Leeds for a new sphere of labor, said, "Wherever I many be, I shall, by God's blessing, do ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon

... By the power of necromancy, some of these animals were transformed to men, who, as soon as they assumed this new form, began to hunt the animals, and make war against them. It is expected that these animals will resume their human shapes, in a future state, and hence their hunters feign some clumsy excuses for their present policy of killing them. They believe that all animals, and birds, and reptiles, and even insects, possess reasoning faculties, and have souls. It is in these opinions, that we detect the ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... Chorus of Knights, not being able to sing their own praises, feign to divert these ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al

... also comes to pass that an angel who excels in wisdom instantly sees the quality of another from his face. In heaven no one can conceal his interiors by his expression, or feign, or really deceive and mislead by craft or hypocrisy. There are hypocrites who are experts in disguising their interiors and fashioning their exteriors into the form of that good in which those are who belong to a society, and who thus make themselves appear angels of light; and these sometimes ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg

... cedar boughs, and partook of her dish of milk. She then told him she was his real mother, and that he had been stolen away from her by the detestable Toad-Woman, who was a witch. He was not quite convinced. She said to him, "Feign yourself sick, when you go home, and when the Toad-Woman asks what ails you, say that you want to see your cradle; for your cradle was of wampum, and your faithful brother, the dog, bit a piece off to try and detain you, which I picked up, as I followed in your track. They were real wampum, white ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft

... While groves attentive to th' extatic sound Burst from their roots, and raptur'd, danc'd around. Such feats the venerable Seers of old (When blissful years in golden circles roll'd) Chose and admir'd: e'en Goddesses and Gods (As poets feign) were fond of such abodes: Th' imperial consort of fictitious Jove, For fount full Ida forsook the realms above. Oft to Idalia on a golden cloud, Veil'd in a mist of fragrance, Venus rode; The num'rous ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore

... neighbourhood to pour out on you their vials of wrath, unless you have the good judgment to retire at once to a respectful distance. Warblers will flit from bush to bush uttering cries of distress and showing their uneasiness. The Mourning Dove, Nighthawk, and many others will feign lameness and seek to lead you away in a vain pursuit. A still larger number will employ the same means of deception after the young have been hatched, as, for example, the Quail, Killdeer, Sandpiper, ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson

... his, leaned out as far as I could, shoved up his sash with my cane, and pushed aside his curtain. Such an unusual method of communication could not fail to bring him to the window with a rush. When he saw me he trembled like a guilty thing, his countenance fell, and, no longer able to feign absence, he unlocked his door and let me ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)

... obtaining a livelihood as a beggar in Egypt is to feign idiocy, which, I am told, is frequently done. Idiots are regarded as saints, and are never restricted in their movements, maniacs alone being confined, and they are often met with in the streets. My Swedenborgian friends might account for the absence ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie

... might in that case have been still growing, even after his death, as there being nothing of his writing on which to found a censure and give him a lower character, his proselytes would be left at liberty to feign for him as great a variety of excellences as their enthusiastic admiration might wish him ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin

... morrow, a disclosure which did not come. She did not dare to confess her curiosity; but continued to feign ignorance, though enraged at the foolish distrust of her husband, who, doubtless, considered her a gossip, and weak like other women. Pierre, with that marital pride which inspires a man with the belief in his own superiority at home, had ended by attributing ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola

... 'crouching' and 'puffing.' In nature the frog ordinarily jumps as soon as a strange or startling object comes within its field of vision, but under certain conditions of excitement induced by strong stimuli it remains perfectly quiet, as do many animals which feign death, until forced to move. Whether this is a genuine instinctive reaction, or the result of a sort of hypnotic condition produced by strong stimuli, I am not prepared to say. The fact that the inhibition of movement is most frequently noticed after strong stimulation, ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various

... never see it. Patience was 'scourged' out of me, and now I stand still because I am worn out with struggling, waiting—not patiently, but wearily and helplessly—to see the end of my punishment. What have I done that I should feign a penitence I shall never feel? I was a happy, trusting, unoffending woman, when God smote me fiercely; and, because I was so innocent, I could not kiss my stinging rod, I grappled desperately with it. Elsie, don't stir ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson

... only read the ode but expounded it, dwelling upon felicities that had eluded him before. With countless questions crying for answer Archie was obliged to feign interest in the poem until the Governor thrust the book into his pocket with a sigh and led the ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson

... Thamar, "although there are women clever enough to feign all these symptoms, for some reason or another, so skilfully as to deceive the most clear-sighted. I believe that the maiden had swooned, as a matter ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier

... in the army, either because of these adverse omens and prophecies, or because he was convinced that the expedition would miscarry, pretended to be mad and to set fire to his house. Some historians relate that he did not feign madness, but that he burned down his house one night, and next morning appeared in the market-place in a miserable plight, and besought his countrymen that, in consideration of the misfortune which had ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch

... personate the first couple: "Adam and Eve shall stande nakede, and shall not be ashamed."[797] The proper time to be ashamed will come a little later. The serpent steals "out of a hole"; man falls: "Now must Adam cover himself and feign to be ashamed. The woman must also be seized with shame, and ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand

... not of each other's discourse, and sustaining the interests and the enjoyment of that interchange of thoughts by flying from topic to topic just as their unshackled imagination suggested. But Fernand never questioned Nisida concerning the motive which had induced her to feign dumbness and deafness for so many years; she had given him to understand that family reasons of the deepest importance, and involving dreadful mysteries from the contemplation of which she recoiled with horror, had prompted so tremendous a self-martyrdom:—and ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds

... moved no more Than with the pleasures of their court before; 80 Godlike his courage seem'd, whom nor delight Could soften, nor the face of death affright. Next to the power of making tempests cease, Was in that storm to have so calm a peace. Great Maro could no greater tempest feign, When the loud winds usurping on the main, For angry Juno labour'd to destroy The hated relics of confounded Troy; His bold Aeneas, on like billows toss'd In a tall ship, and all his country lost, 90 Dissolves with fear; and both his hands upheld, ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham

... from those who are in the limited love of the sex, and altogether from those who are in conjugial love, thus from heaven: afterwards they are sent to the most cunning harlots, who not only by persuasion, but also by imitation perfectly like that of a stage-player, can feign and represent as if they were chastity itself. These harlots clearly discern those who are principled in the above lust: in their presence they speak of chastity and its value; and when the violator comes near and touches them, ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg

... that, from that day forth, the groom Kuzma, the phaeton, and the bay horse Krassavchik were to be entirely at my disposal. I was so overjoyed at this not altogether expected good-fortune that I could no longer feign indifference in Gabriel's presence, but, flustered and panting, said the first thing which came into my head ("Krassavchik is a splendid trotter," I think it was). Then, catching sight of the various heads protruding from the doors of the hall and corridor, ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy

... Jacob. At last it was conveyed to the carrier's, at whose house at Finchley Kit was to find it next day; and the box being gone, there remained but two questions for consideration: firstly, whether the carrier would lose, or dishonestly feign to lose, the box upon the road; secondly, whether Kit's mother perfectly understood how to take care of herself in the absence ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... servant because the two hearts are in a strange land. If my heart knows how to serve up flattery as one is bound to serve it up at court, it will be rich before it returns. He who wishes to be on good terms with his lord and to sit beside him on his right, as is now the use and custom, must feign to pluck the feather from his lord's head, even when there is no feather there. But here we see an evil trait: when he flatters him to his face, and yet his lord has in his heart either baseness or villainy, never will he be so courteous ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes

... will declare, do thou attend, How Bharat may his throne ascend. Dost thou forget what things befell? Or dost thou feign, remembering well? Or wouldst thou hear my tongue repeat A story for thy need so meet? Gay lady, if thy will be so, Now hear the tale of long ago, And when my tongue has done its part Ponder the story in thine heart. When Gods and demons fought of old, ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... Haste we away." This Tamar deemed deceit, Spoken so fondly, and he kissed her lips, Nor blushed he then, for he was then unseen. But she arising bade the youth arise. "What cause to fly?" said Tamar; she replied, "Ask none for flight, and feign none for delay." "Oh, am I then deceived! or am I cast From dreams of pleasure to eternal sleep, And, when I cease to shudder, cease to be!" She held the downcast bridegroom to her breast, Looked in his face and charmed away his fears. She said not "Wherefore leave I then embraced ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor

... good manners triumph comically over his desire to get his cup o' tay and put away an hour up over. (He likes to take every chance of making up for wakeful nights at sea.) We all wish she would go quickly. Meanwhile, we feign an interest in what blousy, skirt-gaping, slop-slippered, enthusiastic maternity ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds

... self sinks man in sinful sloth: Yet, if he seek to live, he needs must feign Sense, goodness, courage. Thus he dwells in pain, A sphinx, twy-souled, a false self-stunted growth. Honours, applause, and wealth these torments soothe; Till jealousy, contrasting his foul stain With virtues eminent, by ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella

... and by the Use of Paint, which alter'd his Eye-Brows, Cheeks, Hair, &c. and shaving every Day, he was sufficiently disguis'd; all Things being now concerted with Theodora's Confident, Philetus was admitted to wait upon Theodora and Amaryllis, with a feign'd Message from a Lady of their Acquaintance at Rome, and was entertain'd with the utmost Respect and Grandeur, with occasion'd frequent Visits between Philetus and Theodora, and at length there was such an Intimacy contracted, by the Management of Philetus and ...
— Tractus de Hermaphrodites • Giles Jacob

... can I speak. I know the mirrored glass Called friendship, and the shadow shapes that pass And feign them a King's friends. I have known but one— Odysseus, him we trapped against his own Will!—who once harnessed bore his yoke right well ... Be he alive or dead of whom I tell The tale. And for the rest, touching our state And gods, we ...
— Agamemnon • Aeschylus

... leave for your own sake. But never believe, Leopold, whatever stories you hear about me, that I am deceitful, that I would play a part. I was myself when I made the scene—violent, angry, and burning with indignation. I have my whims and fancies, that I know; but I never feign—that would ill become me; for, I may say, I have too much good in me to act falsely. Yet there are so many contradictory feelings in me that I sometimes stand surprised at myself. And let me tell you, Leo, I came here to seek consolation from you, but your tone and your words have bitterly disappointed ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint

... "menace" hadn't really dropped, since she was face to face with the effect of it. Ah, the effect of it had occupied all the rest of their walk, had stayed out with them and come home with them, besides making it impossible that they shouldn't presently feign to recollect how rejoining the child had been their original purpose. Maggie's uneffaced note was that it had, at the end of five minutes more, driven them to that endeavour as to a refuge, and caused them afterwards to rejoice, as well, that the boy's irrepressibly importunate company, ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James









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