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More "Humbug" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was so conciliatory that I remembered in an instant what a humbug the man was, and became suddenly possessed with the vague conviction that he ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... Joseph Emson; "what a young humbug you are, Dicky. Fancy you going back with me to the old dad, and us saying, 'Here we are, back again, like two bad shillings, father. We've spent all our money, and we're ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... administration in Washington, peculiarly sensitive to political importunities, not to retain, outside of Kansas, the Kansas troops if he could possibly avoid it, there had been more or less of rancor between him and them. His opinion of them was that they were a "humbug" [Ibid., vol. ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... "Just for hokkerben, to humbug them. I suppose he had oils rubbed on his heels. But when he had drawn the rats away and asked for his money, they would not give it to him. So then, what do ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... who doesn't choose to move while Flashman is at the door; and East, who stays by his friend, anticipating trouble. The sporting set now gathered round Tom. Public opinion wouldn't allow them actually to rob him of his ticket, but any humbug or intimidation by which he could be driven to sell the whole or part at ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... of that professional humbug, Pepps," rejoined her ladyship. "You doctors know a common disorder as soon as you see it, only you think it looks wise not to ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... revealed to our mind. As to Cuvier, Coleridge's hatred of him was more to our taste; for (though quite unreasonable, we fear) it took the shape of patriotism. He insisted on it, that our British John Hunter was the genuine article, and that Cuvier was a humbug. Now, speaking privately to the public, we cannot go quite so far as that. But, when publicly we address that most respectable character, en grand costume, we always mean to back Coleridge. For we are a horrible John Bull ourselves. As Joseph Hume observes, it makes no difference to us—right ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... understand in the least the women of today. Formerly, upon exciting occasions, we had a good nervous attack and all was over; the crisis passed, we became amiable again, put on rouge and went to a ball. Now it is languor, ennui, stomach troubles—all imagination and humbug! The men are just as bad, and they call it spleen! Spleen! a new discovery, an English importation! Fine things come to us from England; to begin with, the constitutional government! All this is perfectly ridiculous. As for you, Clemence, you ought to put an end to such ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... her followers in pantalets and short gowns. The people outside, and especially those interested in the progress of legislation, are beginning to ask one another how long this farce is to continue. How long this most egregious and ridiculous humbug is to be permitted to obstruct the progress of business before the Committees and the Houses, and whether Mrs. Ernestine L. Rose and her followers ought not to be satisfied with the notoriety they have already attained. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... fellow," with his usual Creole drawl, "you did not wait for my opinion. Ah—oh—why, Captain Cringle, a thousand pardons. Friend Bang, there, swears that he can't do without you; and all he says about me is neither more nor less than humbug—ah." ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... The art of China and Japan is so old that its real origin is almost a matter of guesswork, and has a certain general obscurity to most outsiders, owing to language, religion, and customs. This has led to a commercial exploitation of their art in Europe, and in America particularly, based mostly on humbug and partly on facts. If all the pottery, rugs and furniture said to have come from distinguished artists and from even more distinguished circles of ownership, mostly palaces of the Ming dynasty, were enumerated, there would be nothing left to have come from ...
— The Galleries of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... pure love, love free from law and restraint, love that scoffs at society and its customs, sufficient unto itself and despising public opinion, that was just bosh, the humbug of poets, musicians and dancers—a set of outcasts like that woman who was taking him away, cutting him off forever from all the ties that bound him to ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... accomplishments. An author was, according to him, a man who turned out books as a bricklayer turns out houses or a tailor coats. So long as he supplied a good article and got a fair price, he was a fool to grumble, and a humbug to ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... upon your cheeks is whitening and the razor must be used more vigilantly to further deception. Those creases in your face can no longer be dismissed as character lines; the shagginess of your eyebrows has the flying years to account for it. Plainly, John, you and humbug must part company. You are not of this generation and it is not ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... talk about reading by moonlight, and how they could tell a friend half a mile away," he remarked to Felix; "but let me say that it's all a humbug. There never was a brighter night than this, I reckon you'll agree with me, Felix; and yet look at that stump not a stone's throw away; you couldn't say now whether it was a cow lying down, a horse, a rock, ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy
... like a child, and slipped her feet to the floor: "Oh, you cross Marta, you dear humbug!" she cried, "As if you wouldn't let the master walk over you and never complain! Go on with that wonderful muffler of his, and I will let him in myself. No, don't touch me! Let me go alone and ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... Old Gentleman from Monaghan, Sat down and refused to go on again, Till they gave him a crown for leaving the town, That wretched old humbug of Monaghan. ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... that first time!' the Commander burst out, in exasperation; 'it's the second time now—that is, if it isn't all humbug. That's what I mean to find out first—you stay here till I come back, ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... flesh-and-blood sympathies, and at the same time turning it into a wild, wonderful, remote, fairy-land region, where all sorts of poetical things may take place without the slightest difficulty. Of course Shakespeare would not have done thus, but that he saw quite through the grand critical humbug which makes the proper effect of a work of art depend upon our belief in the actual occurrence of the thing represented. But your "critic grave and cool," I suppose, is one who, like Wordsworth's ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... sharply with her fan. "What a humbug you are—the Great Pretender! But tell me, am I not right ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... rule circumstances," said Jack dryly, sitting down in his own room, and taking up Carlyle. "What an amount of humbug is talked in this ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... egg diet. Unfortunately, while asleep he had drifted by both the missions of St. Paul and Holy Cross. And he could sincerely say, as he afterward did, that talk about missions on the Yukon was all humbug. There weren't any missions, and he ...
— Lost Face • Jack London
... quarter-day, managed to get taken on at a furniture warehouse. He moved people from the suburbs to London, from London to the suburbs, from one suburb to another. His companions were hurried and querulous. In particular, he loathed the foreman, a pious humbug who allowed no swearing, but indulged in something far more degraded—the Cockney repartee. The London intellect, so pert and shallow, like a stream that never reaches the ocean, disgusted him almost as much as ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... there is a dreadfully scrappy dinner, the evident remains of a party to which I didn't invite you, and yet I conceal my agony, I wear a merry smile; I say, "What! come to take pot-luck with us, Brown my boy! Betsy! put a knife and fork for Mr. Brown. Eat! Welcome! Fall to! It's my best!" I say that humbug which I am performing is beautiful self-denial—that hypocrisy is true virtue. Oh, if every man spoke his mind what an intolerable society ours would ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... its Composite Nature. Disproved by its Motion. Evolution only a big Perpetual Motion Humbug. Work of a Designer in the structure of the Eye. The Eye-Maker sees over a wide Field and far. ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... Mr. Boxsious, contemptuously. "I dispute that point with you at the outset. Why, you've got a good cloth coat, a clean shirt, and a smooth-shaved chin. You've got the sleek look of a man who has slept between sheets and had his breakfast. You can't humbug me about poverty, for I know what it is. Poverty means looking like a scarecrow, feeling like a scarecrow, and getting treated like a scarecrow. That was my luck, let me tell you, when I first thought of trying ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... whispered to her. "Don't you go getting caught by that sweep who runs their chapel up in London. He's a humbug if ever there was one—you mark my words. I know a thing or two. He's done your aunts a lot of harm, and he'll have his dirty fingers on ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... that on the following day, spent in idling in the forest and about the hamlet, conversing with the cottagers, we were told that our old man was a bit of a humbug; that he was a great talker, with a hundred schemes for the improvement of his fortunes, and, incidently, for the benefit of his neighbours and the world at large; but nothing came of it all and he was ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... at once that I was sadly disappointed. It was a pleasure, of course, to see what I had read of and pictured to my mind, from early boyhood; but this contemptible little affair looked very much like a humbug. A vague idea had taken possession of my mind that I would see a whole district of country shooting up hot water and sulphurous vapors—a kind of hell upon earth; but that thing ahead of us—that little curl of smoke on the horizon looked so peaceful, so inadequate a result ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... unveracities, escorted each unveracity of them by its corresponding misery and penalty; the phantasms and fatuities, and ten-years' corn-law debatings, that shall walk the earth at noonday, must needs be numerous! The universe being intrinsically a perhaps, being too probably an 'infinite humbug,' why should any minor humbug astonish us? It is all according to the order of nature; and phantasms riding with huge clatter along the streets, from end to end of our existence, astonish nobody. Enchanted St Ives' workhouses and Joe Manton aristocracies; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... doctor, you Barnabas, an' tell 'im to cheese it." 'Dolph—short for Godolphus—pricked both ears and studied the sky-line. Perceiving nothing there—not even a swallow to be chased—he barked twice (the humbug!) for sign that he understood thoroughly, and at once fell to new capers by way of changing the subject. Tilda became severe. "Look here, Godolphus," she explained, "this is biz-strict biz. You may wag your silly Irish tail, but that don't take me in. Understand? . . ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Kirkbank,' he said, confidentially. 'The dear soul never pretends to be any better than the rest of us. She gambles, and we all know she gambles; she pegs, and we all know she pegs; and she makes rather a boast of being up to her eyes in debt. No humbug ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... and on, a deal shrewder. But he rides to hounds, and dines his tenants still, that he does; he's one o' th' old style. Everything you eat and drink's off his estate, the day he dines his tenants. No humbug 'bout ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... did not prove congenial to her—especially Mademoiselle Therese. Though she seemed to be a clever teacher, Barbara could never be sure that she was speaking the truth, and in writing home she described her as "rather a humbug." ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... Constitution and the laws, who is professedly only fighting to give us all Liberty, the birthright of every American, and who, nevertheless, has ground us down to a state where we would not reduce our negroes, who tortures and sneers at us, and rules us with an iron hand! Ah! Liberty! what a humbug! I would rather belong to England or France, than to the North! Bondage, woman that I am, I can never stand! Even now, the Northern papers, distributed among us, taunt us with our subjection and tell us "how coolly Butler will grind them down, paying no regard to ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... hours," he said. "I have looked you up at the first opportunity. Now am I a nuisance? Be frank! I told the servant that if you were at work you weren't to be disturbed. Don't humbug about it; if I am in the way, ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... arrant humbug to affect to despise the honor that the world seems disposed to bestow upon us. I say us, for I cannot and will not take it all to myself. I may have been the originator of the idea, but I could have done nothing without your co-operation, ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... found your other business increasing?-It was not for that reason that I gave it up. I got more humbug by it than all ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... "Humbug, man!" said Dick; "you're working yourself into a state of nervous excitement. Why, what the devil do you make of all that nonsense about a mysterious agent ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... expect him unflinchingly to live up to them in season and out of season is about as sensible as to expect him perpetually to live up to the photographs and anecdotes), we may take them as his ideal. He dislikes humbug: he tries to be polite. Could one sketch a sounder scaffolding on which to build all the odd divergencies—crankinesses and heroisms, stupidities and engagingnesses—which may go to make the edifice of an average decent soul's material, mental ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... enough to separate the wisdom from the cynicism of his chief. He saw the lesson of moderation. "You have failed, my very able chief," he said to himself, "because you have never believed intensely enough to move you to act. You have attached too much importance to the adulteration—the folly and the humbug. And here you are, still only a critic, destructive but ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... suddenly put out his tongue at me in derision, I could not have felt more humiliated. I thought to myself—Serve me right for a sneaking humbug. . . . His eyes shone straight into my face, but I perceived it was not a mocking brightness. All at once he sprang into jerky agitation, like one of those flat wooden figures that are worked by a string. His arms went up, then came down with a slap. He became another man altogether. "And I had ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... people don't want to be reminded of those things. I tell you I have always found pride behind that sort of piety. The Yankees think we are heathens, and that they are the elect who are to enlighten us. Pshaw! I hate such humbug." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... "That I am a humbug?" said Florence. A look came into her eyes which he could not quite fathom. It was a hungry look. They lit up for a moment, then faded, then an expression of resolve crept round ...
— The Time of Roses • L. T. Meade
... no consequence at all. The lumber book is a humbug," he replied; "I don't believe in it; indeed, I had even forgotten that there was any such book. The firm don't recognize it, and I think it is liable to lead us all into blunders and ...
— Desk and Debit - or, The Catastrophes of a Clerk • Oliver Optic
... world given over to robbery, to conquest, to vanity, to ignorance, to humbug, to the worship of ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... telling a plausible tale with a view to tricking the people into entrusting them with power. The only possible way by which politicians as a class can be improved is the political and psychological education of the people, so that they may learn to detect a humbug. In England men have reached the point of suspecting a good speaker, but if a man speaks badly they think he must be honest. Unfortunately, virtue is not so widely diffused as this theory ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... that, you snub me. Still, you know what I mean—there's none of that off-and-on humbug between us. If we grumble with one another we are united just the same: if we don't write when we are parted, we are just the same when we meet—there has been some rational reason for silence; but as for lovers ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... about women, but I have always supposed that you knew everything. You certainly have always had the tone of that sort of omniscience. So come here as soon as possible and let me see that you are not a humbug. She 's a ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... humbug, humbug!" cried Prince Bolkonski, frowning and taking his daughter's hand; he did not kiss her, but only bending his forehead to hers just touched it, and pressed her hand so that she winced and uttered ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... trifling sort of things he has done, to have a capital notion of the principles of grouping. Now these things are valuable in themselves, but they are doubly, trebly valuable as possessed by a person of real comic humour; and a total despiser of that Venerable Humbug which almost all the artists of our day seem, in one shape or other, to revere as the prime god of their idolatry. Nobody, that has the least of an eye for art, can doubt that Cruikshank, if he chose, might design as many annunciations, ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... black. I despair of humanity, I despair of the war, I despair of myself. There is not one gleam of light in all the sad landscape, and the abyss seems waiting at my feet to swallow me up with everything that I cherish. It is no use saying to this demon of the darkness that I know he is a humbug, a mere Dismal Jemmy of the brain, who sits there croaking like a night owl or a tenth-rate journalist. My Dismal Jemmy is not to be exorcised by argument. He can only be driven out by a ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... subject abroad is also now fairly developing. The discovery was at first looked upon as a humbug, but this view is giving way before the facts presented in the local papers. The leading journals of the country have sent special correspondents to write up the subject. The New York Tribune and Herald, Harper's Weekly, the Springfield Republican and other papers, have ...
— The American Goliah • Anon.
... not find the account by Megasthenes of Indian beginnings (Plinius and Arrianus) at all amiss: the Kaliyuga computation of 3102 B. C. is purely humbug, just like the statement about the beginning of the Chinese times, to which Lassen gives credit. How can Herodotus have arrived at a female Mithra, Mylitta? Everything feminine is incompatible with the sun, yet nowhere, as far as I can see, ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... (concealment) 528; simulation &c (imitation) 19; dissimulation, dissembling; deceit; blague[obs3]. sham; pretense, pretending, malingering. lip homage, lip service; mouth honor; hollowness; mere show, mere outside; duplicity, double dealing, insincerity, hypocrisy, cant, humbug; jesuitism, jesuitry; pharisaism; Machiavelism, "organized hypocrisy"; crocodile tears, mealy-mouthedness[obs3], quackery; charlatanism[obs3], charlatanry; gammon; bun-kum[obs3], bumcombe, flam; bam*[obs3], flimflam, cajolery, flattery; Judas kiss; perfidy &c (bad faith) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... to the business of which his father had been justly proud. The house of Henry Woodman had been a pioneer in the establishing of a trade in pure drugs. In the time of the elder Woodman, adulteration and humbug were the rule, not the exception, ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... There were ill-natured people who had another description for her solicitude; but she had brought herself to believe that she had an unselfish regard for your humble servant, and that she was necessary to my comfort in the world, and I was pleased at the innocent humbug. It afforded me excellent creature comforts; and I was indebted to it for a constant welcome when I got to Paris—which is something to the traveller. We cling to an old hotel, after we have found the service bad, the cooking execrable, and the rooms dirty. It is an ancient ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... evil of his present artificial courses—the humbug required to keep up his position as dandy, politician, and philosopher (in neither of which latter characters the man is in earnest), must get into his heart at last; and then his trade is ruined. ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... able to refute the charge of senility were any one disposed to question the value of my statements—could announce to the world my great discovery a thousand times a day, and very properly the world would decline to believe in me. The world would cry humbug, and I should have been unable, had I failed to find you, to convince the world that I was not a humbug. With the discovery of your eye, all that is changed. I shall have an ally in you, and that is valuable for the reason that your statements, whatever they may be, will always ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... a million times submit to expense and inconvenience than hand the country over to a set of thieves who'd sell us to-morrow. We're not such fools as ye take us for. Don't we know these heroes? And when we see them and Gladstone and Morley and Humbug Harcourt with his seventeen chins, all rowling together in Abraham's bosom (as ye may say)—Harcourt licking Harrington's boots, when only yesterday Tim was spittin' in his eye—we say to ourselves 'Wait yet awhile, my Boys, wait yet ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... Oxford, whose Elementarbuch des gesprochenen Engliach, translated into his native language for the use of British islanders as a Primer of Spoken English, is the most accessible standard work on the subject. In such words as plum, come, humbug, up, gum, etc., Mr. Sweet's evidence is conclusive. Ladies and gentlemen in Southern England pronounce them as plam, kam, hambag, ap, gan, etc., exactly as Felix Drinkwater does. I could not claim Mr. Sweet's authority if I dared to whisper that such coster English as the ...
— Captain Brassbound's Conversion • George Bernard Shaw
... ceased to take any interest in the matter. What a humbug you are, Mr. Harding; one never knows when you are serious. But what has all this to do with that poor boy who has gone off with ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... intended. "Of course such a marriage would suit my child, and would suit me," he wished to say;—"not only, or not chiefly, because your son is a nobleman, and will be an earl and a man of great property. That goes a long way with us. We are too true to deny it. We hate humbug, and want you to know simply the truth about us. The title and the money go far,—but not half so far as the opinion which we entertain of the young man's own good gifts. I would not give my girl to the greatest and richest nobleman under the British Crown, ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... very well! But I warn you that you mustn't reckon on me. No, not that! I'm in the detective service; and in the detective service I remain. Nothing doing. I've tasted honesty and I mean to eat no other bread. No, no, no, no! No more humbug!" ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... that you had better not call me a humbug!" cried Lord Lambeth. "I have only been in town three weeks; but you must have been hiding away; ...
— An International Episode • Henry James
... "Why, I declare if there is not something written upon it!" and he put up his binoculars, "Why, it is nothing more nor less than a big advertisement. Looks like humbug," he continued. "What's the name of ...
— Punch Among the Planets • Various
... lost some words, for the professor leaned over and whispered to me: "He has got that out of William Morris. Depend upon it, the man is a humbug. He is not ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... tell you, it's so sad! If you're the sweet woman that in spite of everything I think you are, you'll be sorry all the way through to your heart. He—he hired a wretched humbug of a man who pretended to be an English swell to teach him manners, so that he could be a little worthier of you. He, Nick Hilliard, the noblest gentleman that ever drew breath, to stoop to learning from a little thing who called itself Montagu Jerrold. He did it because ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... didn't know—— You've been very severe with me when I've suggested she wasn't. At first, when I wanted to do her as Humbug, you wouldn't stand it, and now, when I've done ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... give a few big cheques to them," she went on, meditatively, "and you never ask how they're managed, or what rings are running them for their own benefit, or how your money is spent—and you think you've done a noble, philanthropic thing! Oh no—I wasn't talking about humbug charity. I was talking about doing some genuine good in ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... given you a broken head for your pains. But you are so damnably courteous, as well as such an unutterable fool!" He broke off with a hard laugh and a savage kick at the coals in front of him. "I couldn't see myself doing it," he said, "humbug as you are." ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... Death and gallows to them, whoever they are. Is it that pale-faced little parson's daughter? Or is it her tight-laced hypocrite of a father, that comes whining here with his good advice to me who know the world so well? Never mind, my boy. Keep a smooth face, and play the humbug till you've got her, and her money, and then break her impudent little heart if you will. Go to sleep, my boy, and dream you ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... my man! Do you think that this is a performance in a booth, and that I am to be taken in by all the humbug of the professional mesmerist? Do as I tell you,—come ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... and his nauseous sentimentality parade themselves on almost every page. For all his "Oh heavenses," "courageous little souls," and "ay de mis," he never once guessed the nature of his offence, never realized the beastliness of that moral and religious humbug which to himself seems always to have justified him in playing tyrant and vampire to a woman ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... spend all that time? Not I. Let him leave me alone. He does not care twopence about me, and it's mere humbug and hypocrisy all his pretending ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... "I can always humbug Miss Walker and make her say lots of indiscreet things," Tims returned, with labored diplomacy. "But I don't repeat them—at least, ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... 'Oh, humbug! you could do it easily if you chose,' said the elder brother. 'Besides, I'll help you, if papa ...
— Holiday Tales • Florence Wilford
... "skyugled," and sometimes he "skyugled" a coat or watch. Slanganderin' - Foolishly slandering. Slasher gaffs - Spurs for cocks, with cutting edges. Slibovitz - A Bohemian schnapps. Slumgoozlin' - Slum or sham guzzling, humbug. Slumgullion - A Mississippi term for a legislator. So mit,(Ger.) - Thus with. Solidaten,(Ger. Soldaten) - Soldiers. Sonntag,(Ger.) - Sunday. Soplin - A sapling, young tree. Sottelet,(Ger. Gesattelt) ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... they're doing the agreeable in their social circle, they'll say, 'I've offered for the war.'—'Ah, what a fine thing you have done; of your own free will you have defied the machine-guns! '—'Well, yes, madame la marquise, I'm built like that!' Eh, get out of it, humbug!" ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... now what it was that had happened to her. She could no longer humbug herself into insisting that it hadn't happened. The thing had been secret and treacherous with her, and she had been secret and treacherous with it. She had refused to acknowledge it, not because she had been ashamed of it but ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... "Journal of Association") he dwells in detail on the several popular cries, such as, "a fair day's wage for a fair day's work," illustrating them from the Bible, urging his readers to take it as the true Radical Reformer's Guide, if they were longing for the same thing as he was longing for—to see all humbug, idleness, injustice, swept out of England. His other contributions to these periodicals consisted of some of his best short poems: "The Day of the Lord;" "The Three Fishers;" "Old and New," and others; of a series of Letters on the Frimley ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... he said, "Pretty, yes; but are you sure she is quite aboveboard? There's something I don't like about her eyes." I wish he had not said so. I know there is a kind of unfriendly feeling towards her among some of the girls, especially the Druces and Charley. I have heard Charley openly call her a humbug, but I have thought much of this was dislike to the softer manners, and perhaps jealousy of my notice, and the expression that the old lord noticed is often the consequence of living ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the devil," interrupted the squire, boiling over. "You are an ignorant impostor, and your science a humbug. I had a ram once that would have taught you more in five seconds than you've learned from books ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... properly shot at sight. When Germany has refused to honour her name to a "scrap of paper" she has been a holy martyr obeying a law of necessity. But when England has honoured hers she has been a holy humbug, whose hypocrisy deserved to be exposed. Therefore God punish England! Above all, when God has crowned the arms of Germany with success on the battlefield, his most Christian Majesty, William the Pious, has always been with Him. Therefore God bless ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine
... up in a lovefeast. "Friends," said he, "a man asked me what I made so mich noise abaat religion for; he said, 'It's all humbug,' and I said, 'Thaa'rt roight for once, mon; it's th' sweetest humbug that iver I tasted. I have been sucking it for mony a lang year, and it is sweeter than iver.'" (Humbug is the Yorkshire name ...
— Little Abe - Or, The Bishop of Berry Brow • F. Jewell
... observation, is eminently trustworthy and true, but out of it hardly rises above the conceptions of a boarding-school Miss in her teens. She appears to us a kind of strong-minded old maid, but with her strong-mindedness greatly modified by the presumption as well as the sentimentality of romantic humbug. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... Come, Belle, make up your mind, and let us be off to America; and leave priests, humbug, learning, ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... church. 'Whereas, the Presbyterians are quite unable to assume any financial obligation in support of a minister.' Why, the whole outfit doesn't contribute a dollar a month. Isn't it preposterous, a beastly humbug! Who is this young whipper-snapper, Lloyd, pray?" Father Mike's ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... children distrust, even dislike them, and probably venturing to pinch her cheek or pat her on the shoulder into the bargain, accepted the situation with another type of smile—the Smile-that-children-expect. As a matter of fact, children hate it. They see through its artificial humbug easily. They prefer a solemn and unsmiling face invariably. It's the latter that produces chocolates and sudden presents; it's the stern-faced sort that play hide-and-seek or stand on their heads. The Smilers are bored at heart. They mean to escape at the first opportunity. And the children ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... is entertaining, and I will prophesy that Gaul will move in our time, and that the movement will be directed against the pestilent humbug of ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... people of Southern Khorassan is to offer one's food in turn to everybody present and say, "Bis-millah," before commencing to eat it yourself. Although a ridiculous piece of humbug, it is generally my custom to fall in with the peculiar ways of the country, and for days past have invariably offered my food to scores of people whom I knew beforehand would not take it. The lack of courtesy at this ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... old humbug!" cried Uncle John, indignantly. "Why can't she go, when there's money and time to spare? Would you keep her here to cuddle and spoil a vigorous man like yourself, when she can run away and see ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... Queen is not my game. I am "going for" the priests behind her, the mystery-men who give the sanction of religion to all the humbug and hypocrisy, as well as to all the plunder and oppression, that obtain amongst us. Those new colors were consecrated (that is the word) by the Dean of Windsor. The old colors were consecrated forty-two years ago by the ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... I mean it," she retorted stiffly, "as you will find to your cost." Without troubling to answer, he lunged for the door handle; but she waved him aside. "All humbug—playing at politeness—when ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... among the expectant crowd. The clock struck the hour of noon, but the little Delaware skiff was nowhere to be seen; and, as the sun declined from the zenith, the people gradually dispersed, muttering, "Another humbug!" ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... mediaeval humbug. I suppose you think 'C. of E.' is the only respectable thing to be. And yet your C. of E.-ism hasn't—" He stopped abruptly, as if he had just arrested himself in ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... master again. It will succeed, I am sure, and you may make a great deal of money, but we don't need money. What we need is the happiness which we have always had until now. Now there will be companies, and patents, and lawsuits, and experiments, and people calling you a humbug, and other people saying they discovered it long ago, and all sorts of persons coming to see you, and you'll be obliged to go to all sorts of places, and you will be an altered man, and we shall never be happy again. ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... such humbug. If you've no feelings about it, I'm sure that I've none. Indeed I don't know what's the good of feelings. They never did me any good. Are you ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... into a hearty fit of laughter. Tom at first felt inclined to quarrel with him, but a poke in the ribs from his messmate, and the word "humbug," made him instead join in Desmond's cachinnations. Adair had invited his midshipmen to dine with him, and had by his kind remarks succeeded in driving Tom's absurd notions out of his head. Tom, who really felt grateful to him, talked cheerfully ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... Established The "I am's," "I will's," Etc. The Invitation The King's Pardon The Little Child and the Big Book The Little Tow-headed Norwegian The Loving Father The Missing Stone The Moody and Sankey Humbug The Most Hopeless Man in New York now a Sunday-school Superintendent The Orphan's Prayer The Place of Safety The Praying Cripple The Praying Mother The Prodigal Son The Repentent Father The Reporter's Story ...
— Moody's Anecdotes And Illustrations - Related in his Revival Work by the Great Evangilist • Dwight L. Moody
... officers, and I find them ready to give me all facilities. I have a place for my books and microscope in the chart room, and there I sit and read in the morning much as though I were in my rooms in Agar Street. My immediate superior, Johnny Thompson, is a long-headed good fellow without a morsel of humbug about him—a man whom I thoroughly respect, both morally and intellectually. I think it will be my fault if we are not fast friends through the commission. One friend on board a ship is as much as anybody ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... seen him for several days," said she. "He must certainly be in Belgium. And as for a bomb, that's humbug. You say yourself that he's very gentle and wouldn't harm ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... had not finished," continued Mark. "If ever you say another word to us, whether we are together or whether we are alone, about being grateful, and that sort of thing, I shall say you are a canting humbug—at least, my cousin will; I shouldn't like ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... Brutus has been talking about "our hearts," and "kind love, good thoughts, and reverence." To Cassius, all that is mere rose-water humbug, and he knows it is so to Antony too. He hastens to put in such motives as he knows will have weight with Antony, as they also have with himself. And it is remarkable that several of these patriots, especially Cassius, the two Brutuses, and Trebonius, afterwards ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... havee,' I think we may leave these two last out of consideration. Under ordinary circumstances, I should have barred jumping on the chest of a man who is afflicted with blindness; but as this particular individual has seen fit to humbug me to the top of his bent, I shall waive that scruple. Senor Taltavull, I'm with you in this to anything short of justifiable ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... it's a fact. She takes to beggin' as naterally as a goslin' takes to a puddle; and when she first come to town she commenced a-beggin', and has kep' it up ever since. She used to tackle me the same as she does everybody else, askin' me to give somethin' to this, and to that, and to t'other pet humbug of her'n, but I never would do it; and when she found she could'nt worry me into it, like the rest of 'em, it set her very bitter against me; and I heard of her tellin' I'd treated her with rudeness, which I'd always treated her civilly, only when I said 'No,' she found coaxin' and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... attempt at savage life was that of the harmless humbug who called himself the hermit. In a great tree, close by the highroad, he had built himself a little cabin after the manner of the Swiss Family Robinson; thither he mounted at night, by the romantic aid ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... mixture of philosophy and poetry. He was fond of metaphysics and prone to indulge in abstract speculations, though his metaphysics were somewhat fine spun and fanciful, and his speculations were apt to partake of what my father most irreverently termed "humbug." For my part, I delighted in them, and the more especially because they set my father to sleep and completely confounded my sisters. I entered with my accustomed eagerness into this new branch of study. Metaphysics were now my passion. My sisters attempted ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... it so very remarkable, for the tiny diatoms made cities, and were far more astonishing animals than they. I thought that would silence them; but they just turned round, and informed me that my diatoms were plants, not animals,—so my story was all humbug. Then I was mad; and couldn't get over the fact that these little rascals had done what we, the kings of the sea, couldn't do. I wasn't content with being the biggest creature there: I wanted to be the most skilful also. I ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... big hands with an air of Christian resignation, and looked up at the panels of the coffered ceiling. "In that," he answered, "I may honestly say, I can't help you. Humbug apart, I have not known Mrs. Yorke-Bannerman's address—or Maisie's either—ever since my poor friend's death. Prudent woman, Mrs. Yorke-Bannerman! She went away, I believe, to somewhere in North Wales, and afterwards ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... dialogue was concluded, another member of the company, Mr. Folair, joined Nicholas, and confided to him the contempt of the entire troupe for the Infant Phenomenon. "Infant Humbug sir!" he said. "There isn't a female child of common sharpness in a charity school that couldn't do better than that. She may thank her stars she was born ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... "Back to Nature!" Nature! ah, my friend, what mischief that cry has done me. Where was there an apostle apter to receive this doctrine, so convenient for me as it was—beautiful Nature, and all that humbug? It is nothing but that. Well, the world was watching; and it saw "The Piano," the "White Girl," the Thames subjects, the marines ... canvases produced by a fellow who was puffed up with the conceit of being able to ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various
... charge, and had no business having this man. Probably he had borrowed him from some other chap. I said to him; "Pat, what on earth are you doing with Fritz?" "To tell yer the truth, sorr-r, Oi haven't yet made up my moind!" "Let us have no humbug, take him back to the cage!" "Very well, sorr-r!" About ten minutes later I saw Pat without his prisoner. "Here, Pat, what on earth did you do with Fritz?" "Well, sorr-r, he kept beggin' and beggin' to be let go, so Oi just put a Mills in his pocket with the pin out, and tould him to run for his ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... You think he's going, to guess that snake's riddles. Rot! Stuff and nonsense! Humbug! Get out! ...
— Turandot, Princess of China - A Chinoiserie in Three Acts • Karl Gustav Vollmoeller
... know what you're going to say—it's less and less of a pretense with them, I grant you; they're more and more succumbing to the force of the suggestion; but here and there I fancy there's one who still sees through the humbug, and knows that money and motors and clothes are simply the big bribe she's paid for keeping ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... "There's no humbug about her game," cried Black, whose face was lined with the furrows of anxiety and pale with long watching; "she means to take us on the open sea, and she's welcome to the course. If I don't riddle her ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... all the fuss about? With a barrow-load of gold he could not buy an instant's safety for Iris, not to mention himself. The language difficulty was insuperable. Were it otherwise, the Dyaks would simply humbug him until he revealed the source of his wealth, and then murder him as an effective ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... nothing, and be paid well for it, he would have been delighted. But he shunned Dudley. Partly because he was afraid of compromising his own respectability, and partly because he had sense enough to see that Dudley's honest eyes looked through him, and saw what a humbug he was. ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... day! Hair drawn back, a la Pompadour, powdered with gold-dust; a touch of rouge, perhaps, on either cheek; ruffles of rich lace at shoulders and elbows; pink brocade and emeralds, picked out with diamonds! Mr. Mortimer's teachings in every graceful movement! It will be all humbug, for I have no real beauty, not much grace; but people will think me beautiful and graceful for all that, while I wear my costumes. They are several—this is only one—all highly becoming! I have a vision of a sea-green ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... said the Corporal, after he had communicated from his own pipe the friendly flame to his comrade's; "tell you what—talk nonsense; the commander-in-chief's no Martinet—if we're all right in action, he'll wink at a slip word or two. Come, no humbug—hold jaw. D'ye think God would sooner have snivelling fellow like you in his regiment, than a man like me, clean limbed, straight as a dart, six feet one ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... air just as in the old days, and forgetting all that the prison cell had taught him so bitterly! The others' good indeed! He had been busily concerned for the homes of others, and had not even succeeded in building his own! What humbug! Down there were three neglected beings who would bring accusations against him, and what was the use of his sheltering himself behind the welfare of the many? What was the good of receiving praise from tens of thousands and being called benefactor by the whole world, if those three whose ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... heaven, at last, as I find convenient. This I take to be about what slavery is. I defy anybody on earth to read our slave-code, as it stands in our law-books, and make anything else of it. Talk of the abuses of slavery! Humbug! The thing itself is the essence of all abuse! And the only reason why the land don't sink under it, like Sodom and Gomorrah, is because it is used in a way infinitely better than it is. For pity's sake, for shame's ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the bench to a friend of his own; it was, without exception, the most intelligent telegraphic despatch that it was possible for one human eye to convey to another, and said more plainly than words could—"You shall see how I can humbug them all." That look opened my eyes completely to the farce that was acting before me, and entering into the spirit of the scene, I must own that I enjoyed it amazingly. The blacksmith was mesmerised by a look alone, and for half an hour went on in a most ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... rather sharply, to discover any mischief which might lurk in his expression. Perceiving that he looked perfectly sincere, and was innocent of any intention to quiz him, he merely uttered, in the most contemptuous tone, the single word "Humbug!" ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... to humbug those who are so eager to be humbugged as people are in this world of humbug—We show ourselves excessively disinterested, which ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... direct from God's own hand and revelation. But I don't have any faith in modern spiritual seansys. They seem to me,—and I would say it in a polite, courtous way, for I wouldn't hurt your feelin's for the world,—all mixed up with modern greed and humbug." ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... that there's fower places staunin' in Millar's Level," said Jamie Lauder, "an' I'm telt there's five or six staunin' in the Black Horse Dook. It's a' a bit of humbug, an' I think we should try an' ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... got up in a lovefeast. "Friends," said he, "a man asked me what I made so mich noise abaat religion for; he said, 'It's all humbug,' and I said, 'Thaa'rt roight for once, mon; it's th' sweetest humbug that iver I tasted. I have been sucking it for mony a lang year, and it is sweeter than iver.'" (Humbug is the Yorkshire name for sweets and goodies). ...
— Little Abe - Or, The Bishop of Berry Brow • F. Jewell
... He has had a letter from him in which he, Wilmarth, confesses that matters are in a very serious strait unless Mr. Floyd Grandon is willing to risk his private fortune. "Don't do it," counsels the younger. "The new machinery is a confounded humbug, but if any one can make it work, Wilmarth is the man. If St. Vincent wants to get his daughter a husband, why does he not offer her to Wilmarth? If she is as pretty as you say, she ought not go begging for a mate, but when I marry for ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... be asked to run. And the healthier the world becomes, the more they are compelled to live by imposture and the less by that really helpful activity of which all doctors get enough to preserve them from utter corruption. For even the most hardened humbug who ever prescribed ether tonics to ladies whose need for tonics is of precisely the same character as the need of poorer women for a glass of gin, has to help a mother through child-bearing often enough to feel that he is not living wholly ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... Piozzi Letters, ii. 141. Miss Burney, who was with the Thrales, writes:—'Dr. Johnson has written to Mrs. Thrale, without even mentioning the existence of this mob; perhaps, at this very moment, he thinks it "a humbug upon the nation," as George Bodens called the Parliament.' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, i. 401. When Johnson wrote, the mob had not risen to its height of violence. Mrs. Thrale in her answer, giving the date, 'Bath, ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... board," cried Barkins. "I say, Gnat, isn't he a humbug? Ha, ha! Study the manners and customs! Stuffing himself with Chinese sweets and hankering after puppy-pie, like the ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... said Sylvie, "a man tried to humbug me at the market wanting to know if I had seen him put on his shirt. Such bosh! There," she cried, interrupting herself, "that's a quarter to ten striking at the Val-de-Grace, and ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... produce the play within the "certain time," but his courage was not strong enough. He was afraid that Sir Geoffrey might be offended by the suggestion and return the play at once. He wished that he had gone to Mr. Redder, as Henry had done, and asked him to place the play for him. "Redder'd stand no humbug," he said to himself. ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... "Mind you don't humbug me!" Chia She observed. "I shall to-morrow send again your mistress round to ask Yuean Yang. If you two have spoken to her, and she hasn't given a favorable answer, well, then, no blame will fall on you. But ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... we may be asked, no genuine beggars? And the answer is, Not one. My old soldier was a humbug like the rest; his ragged boots were, in the stage phrase, properties; whole boots were given him again and again, and always gladly accepted; and the next day, there he was on the road as usual, with toes exposed. His boots ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... which they felt he was able to take. Through all his publications may be traced the marks of the path which half led up to this happy height. His humor has often been the cloak, but not the mask, of a sturdy purpose. His work has been characterized by a manly love of truth, a hatred of humbug, and a scorn for cant. A genial warmth and whole-souledness, a beautiful fancy, a fertile imagination, and a native feeling for the picturesque and a fine eye for color have afforded the basis of a style which has become more and ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... whom no living being spends a wink, So stand aside and let me have my bellow, You surely will not grudge me pen and ink! I've little doubt that if you stop to think You'll recollect I've met you once before, I'm not the humbug who would wish to shrink From friends of old, and so let's have your paw; Of course 'twere better we were ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott
... was not a very candid State paper, and the popularity Jefferson afterwards created for its sentiments was not wholly free from humbug. Many men were more ready to think themselves the equals of Washington or Hamilton in the respects in which they were not so, than to think a negro their own equal in the respects in which he was. The boundless space ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... liked best," said Atherley, "was the American one. I really admired old Stamps, and old Stamps admired me; for she knew I thoroughly understood what an unmitigated humbug she was. She had a fine sense of humour, too. How her eyes used to twinkle when I ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... ceased to believe in Ancient Mythology, and has been even heard to hint that he considers Dr. LEMPRIERE a bit of a humbug. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, Jan. 2, 1892 • Various
... when all the devils are loosed out of Hell. Browning was the great challenger of the multitude of devils. He did not achieve his optimism by ignoring Satan, but by defying him. His courage was not merely of the stomach, but of the daring imagination. There is no more detestable sign of literary humbug than the pretence that Browning was an optimist simply because he did not experience sorrow and indigestion as other people do. I do not mean to deny that he, enjoyed good health. As Professor Phelps, of Yale, says in a recent ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... with black. I despair of humanity, I despair of the war, I despair of myself. There is not one gleam of light in all the sad landscape, and the abyss seems waiting at my feet to swallow me up with everything that I cherish. It is no use saying to this demon of the darkness that I know he is a humbug, a mere Dismal Jemmy of the brain, who sits there croaking like a night owl or a tenth-rate journalist. My Dismal Jemmy is not to be exorcised by argument. He can only be driven out by ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... the whole dunderheaded lot! His empire would have been a blessing to them, and they would have had some chance of being civilized under the French. All this unification of nationalities is the great humbug of the century. Every stupid race thinks it's happy because it's united, and civilization has been set back a hundred years by the wars that were fought to bring the unions about; and more wars will have to be fought to keep them up. What a farce it is! What's become of the nationality ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... said; but the little white volcano almost laughed in her face, and the black diamond eyes twinkled furiously as they turned away to hide their scornful amusement—so strong was the nun's conviction that the new benefactress was a humbug. The Princess looked at the names quite calmly after she had written them—Sister Saint Paul, Sister Giovanna, and Sister Marius—and asked whether she had seen any of them during her visit. But the Mother Superior answered that they were all three either nursing private cases ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... to apply to the subject of boys' singing in school during the break may be: Can they sing without strain or push? Can they sing easily, or does it hurt? There is a certain amount of humbug in boys that must be allowed for, but it does not affect calculations as to their singing-powers more than upon their other abilities, if ...
— The Child-Voice in Singing • Francis E. Howard
... treason. A personal letter would not have satisfied his virtuous indignation; he chose a loud "yellow journal," a laboratory of blackmail despised by a million Frenchmen, who nevertheless swallowed all its humbug with ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... given every young author to see himself thus clearly in the glass of criticism. We may guess, however, that these critical mystifications were not altogether free from the element of calculating humbug. Schiller knew full well that to be castigated in public would not be a bad thing for his budding reputation; and so, as no one else came forward to do the slashing, he did it himself. It is amusing to read that a Frankfurt ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... Economist. Not in the least. It proves the humbug of the Bimetallic position up to the hilt. Of course, you must assume, that the cannibals desire to dress in evening clothes. I confess that has to be considered, and then the question lies in a nutshell. There can't ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 1, 1890 • Various
... you are right. There is plenty of humbug in the world; but I don't think I am one. Now the question is: Shall I be on the side of the foundationers, or shall I be on the side of the paying girls in the Great ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... swiftly as appraise the rather glacial drift of Western thought; and the wisdom of both East and West combines in her to teach a very nearly total incredulity in human virtue. Western morals she regards as humbug, ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... not only that the man in any way weak is quite unable to stand the steady test of R.N.W.M.P. life. Apart from that, no blatherskite can endure it; no vain boaster, no aggressive bully, no slacker, and no humbug of any kind can possibly keep his end up in the force." So wrote a widely experienced and keen-witted "old-timer," in 1908, ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... don't mean the Keely motor man?" cried Jennie, laughing. "That arrant humbug! Why, all the papers in the world have exposed his ridiculous pretensions; he has done nothing but ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... nothing of your constitution, while I can soon set you on your feet again. I am sick of the Institute and of Moron-val, and never wish to see either more." Thereupon the doctor launched forth in a philippic against the school which supported him. Moronval was a thorough humbug, he never paid anybody, and every one was giving him up; the affair of Madou had done him great injury; and finally Dr. Hirsch went so far as to compliment Jack ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... famous wine, that had been eleven years in bottle. We were unusually merry, and fell into toasts and speeches. I felt as if I had been his intimate friend for years, for he had not one atom of Levantine "humbug" in his composition. Poor fellow, little did he think, that in a few short weeks from this period his blood would flow as freely as the wine which he ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... are roundly called lies, and his silence is vilified as treachery. And on the strength of peccadillos, reprehensible in an author, but excusable in a son, the Anglo-Saxon race is accused of prudishness, humbug, pretentiousness, deceit, cunning, and bad cooking. Personally I think it was rash of Mr. Strickland, in refuting the account which had gained belief of a certain "unpleasantness" between his father and mother, ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... characterization, as far as it goes, would fit men who write very differently from this. It fits me, for instance, and yet look at my angular scrawl." He held up a specimen of his own irregular hand, beside the elegant penmanship of the note, and Larcher had to admit himself a humbug as a graphologist. ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... I love the unhighschooled ways Ol' farmers hed when I was younger— Their talk wuz meatier and would stay, While book-froth seems to whet your hunger. For puttin' in a downright lick 'twixt humbug's eyes, there's few can metch it. An' then it helves my thoughts as slick, ez stret ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... Lalage. "Father has told me four times already. He has been saying it over and over ever since breakfast. It means that I may as well eat as much as I can now because I shall be sick to-morrow any way. But that's all humbug, of course. I shouldn't be sick if I ate the whole box. Last Christmas I ate three boxes as well ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham
... of Henri IV., for if they did not instigate Ravaillac, their doctrine of regicide inspired him. They can creep into any kingdom, any institution, any household, because they readily accept any terms and subscribe to any conditions in the certainty that by the adroit use of flattery, humbug, falsehood, and corruption, they will soon become masters of the situation. In France they are the real Morbus Gallicus. In Italy they are the soul ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... from beside the day's accumulations of papers upon his heaped-up desk. He laid upon himself the burden of labor, examining and cross-examining men for hours upon a single point of essential fact—quick to detect fraud and intolerant of humbug,— but infinitely patient with those who were merely dull, evading no drudgery, and, above all, never evading the dear pains ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... her views of visible repentance and conversion. Dermot was responsive to her awakened tenderness, but he was perversely reticent as to whether repentance or expedience prompted him. She required so much religious demonstration, that she made him shrink from manifesting his real feelings as "humbug," and Viola knew far more that his repentance was real than she did. Those proofs of true repentance—confession and restitution—I am sure he gave, and that most bravely, when, after weeks of weary and sorrowful work on Harold's part and his, the ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of leave-taking were done with and dismissed; so far as he could, he had avoided them. He had ever been a hard man and knew well enough that the clerks disliked him. He hated humbug. He had come to India, almost forty years ago, not to make friends, but to make a fortune. And now the fortune was made, and the room behind him stood ready, spick and span, for the Scotsman who would take his chair to-morrow. Drawers had ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... obtained him everything, while money alone availed me. I took him roundly to task for his treachery, which caused him secretly to throw away a leg of mutton he had concealed; I also threatened to expose the humbug of his pretension to caste, but it was then too late to procure more food. Having hitherto much liked this man, and fully trusted him, I was greatly pained by ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... originally in the humblest possible way; and how many of the dregs of colonial society—the occupiers of the lowest rung on the colonial ladder—reached their new home with all the pomp and circumstance of quarter-deck sublimity, and all the humbug and pretension of real or fancied aristocracy. Is the result we see—for these contrasts are to be found plentifully in all the colonies at the Antipodes—what it ought to be, or not? That is ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... of Bulgaria is not a genuine thing; and he represents the whole part played by Prussia in these ancient disputes. That part is the very reverse of genuine; it is a piece of ludicrous and transparent humbug. If Prussia had any religion, it would be a northern perversion of Protestantism utterly distant from and indifferent to the controversies of Slavonic Catholics. But Prussia has no religion. For her there is no God; and Ferdinand ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... b'leeve yar a humbug, but if that ole thing does run, and, mind, I tell yer, I don't b'leeve it will, do yer know what I'm ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis
... day I'll suddenly discover that He does exist. In that case, Mr. Savva, I thank you, but I'd rather not. Why should I? I live a nice, quiet existence. Of course, it's all a humbug, an imposition. But what business is it of mine? The people want to believe—let them. It wasn't ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... adroit management of the trial, the fraud of the accuser was exposed. She confessed herself a pretender and suffered "condign punishment." This case happened within six miles of Scot's home and opened his eyes to the possibility of humbug. In the very same year two pretenders, Agnes Bridges and Rachel Pinder, were convicted in London. By vomiting pins and straws[8] they had convinced many that they were bewitched, but the trickery was soon found ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... lagoon on the top of one of the highest peaks of Hinchinbrook Island, in which all manner of sea fish revelled. When doubt was expressed as to the possibility of sea-water and sea-fish getting up so far "on top" and it was suggested—"What you think, that old man humbug you?" "Yes," was the ready response; "me think that old fella no tell true. Him humbug." Some blacks possess something ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... to a white heat, continued: "But plain and plump, I'll tell you this, Herr Guest"—he pronounced it "Gvest." "If you are not satisfied with me, and my teaching, you're at liberty to try some one else. If this is a preliminary to inscribing yourself under that miserable humbug, that wretched charlatan, who pretends to teach the piano, do it, and have done with it! No one will hinder you—certainly not I. You're under no necessity to come here beforehand, and apologise, and give your reasons—none of the others did. ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... suspect your connection with Lucien, you may as well blow his brains out at once. You will be asked where you have been for so long. You must say that you have been traveling with a desperately jealous Englishman.—You used to have wit enough to humbug people. Find ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... who voluntarily endured every imaginable hardship if he thought he could be of service to his fellow-men, but, as he wrote elsewhere, 'we are concerned with pluses alone.' Since life is what it is, its amenities are doubly precious. Only they must be amenities without humbug. ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... Lady, it may not be amiss to mention, for the benefit of such of my readers as are unacquainted with her now forgotten celebrity, that she was a phenomenon in the mesmeric line; one of the earliest that had indicated the birth of a new science, or the revival of an old humbug. Since those times her sisterhood have grown too numerous to attract much individual notice; nor, in fact, has any one of them come before the public under such skilfully contrived circumstances of stage effect as those which at once mystified ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... walked away, both commenting, after each other's fashion, upon this ragged old sailor; and agreed that he was nothing but a humbug, trying to be a bugbear. But we had not gone perhaps above a hundred yards, when chancing to turn a corner, and looking back as I did so, who should be seen but Elijah following us, though at a distance. Somehow, ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... with some spice of caricature, in a mock defiance given to Francis Jeffrey, "King of Blue and Yellow," by the facetious Maginn, under his pseudonym of Morgan Odoherty: —"Christopher, by the grace of Brass, Editor of Blackwood's and the Methodist Magazines; Duke of Humbug, of Quiz, Puffery, Cutup, and Slashandhackaway; Prince Paramount of the Gentlemen of the Press, Lord of the Magaziners, and Regent of the Reviewers; Mallet of Whiggery, and Castigator of Cockaigne; Count Palatine of the Periodicals; Marquis of the Holy Poker; Baron of Balaam and Blarney; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... all the days of his mortal life, and have such chance of getting to heaven, at last, as I find convenient. This I take to be about what slavery is. I defy anybody on earth to read our slave-code, as it stands in our law-books, and make anything else of it. Talk of the abuses of slavery! Humbug! The thing itself is the essence of all abuse! And the only reason why the land don't sink under it, like Sodom and Gomorrah, is because it is used in a way infinitely better than it is. For pity's sake, for shame's sake, because we are men born of women, and not savage beasts, many ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... of considerable doubt as to the discovery he had made touching the apprehended burglary; and his uncertainty was the greater, inasmuch as he had frequently heard the highest possible encomiums lavished upon Duncan's extraordinary powers of invention and humbug. ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... true, especially in his earlier books, that he girds against what he conceives to be certain abuses in the Roman Catholic Church and her priesthood in out-of-the-way countries; but then he attacks other forms of Christianity and other religions too. He had a great hatred of cant and humbug under the cloak of religion, and denounced them accordingly. There is nothing remarkable in this. We all denounce cant and humbug in the abstract, often most loudly when we are humbugs ourselves. If Burton attacked Christianity more than other ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... examined her myself," he said. "Of course she was excited, and could not answer; beside, hanged if I don't believe it was all humbug tormenting her with Greek and Latin. Yes; I'll question her when I get back, and if she'll possibly pass, give her the certificate. Poor child; how white she was, and what a queer look there was in those great eyes, when she said: 'I ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... to another, with the useful ambition of keeping it up as long as they could. To my mind the old comedy of "Gammer Gurton's Needle" is worth the whole of them. It may be coarse, earthy, but in reading it one feels that he is at least a man among men, and not a humbug among humbugs. ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... earth am I to do?" asked Pembury of Tom Senior one day; "I've not got a single contribution yet. There's you making out you're too busy, and Rick the same. It's all humbug, I know! What are you busy at I'd like to know? I never ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... a quick, if partial, recovery; "too much humbug, too much self. I have seen a great deal of myself lately, and ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... decoys. Bubbles are only wind plus soap and water; But well-stirred suds, and well-blown flatulence, In this fool world, have influence immense, And draw unthinking dupes from every quarter. Eloquence is but Wind, yet flowery trope Is Humbug's favourite lure; And what is Diplomatic Skill but soap? Trust me! Success is sure! Bubbles are bright, bewitch the mob, float far, And cost the blower little. The watery sphere looks like a world, a star, And when it bursts, being exceeding ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 15, 1893 • Various
... had stepped in ahead of them. The Socialists were making converts by myriads; skeptics and cynics were sowing hatred not of the Church merely but of all religion. It was time to abandon "the prisoner of the Vatican" humbug, time to permit zealous Catholics, whose orthodoxy no one could question, to serve God and their fellow-men according to the needs and methods of the ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... fellow, for an impudent, swindling, sneaking French humbug!—Your tone instantly changes, and you tell him to go about his business: but at twelve o'clock at night, when the voyage is over, and the custom-house business done, knowing not whither to go, with a wife and fourteen exhausted children, scarce able to ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the visiter—"as I was observing a little while ago, there are some very outre notions in that book of yours Monsieur Bon-Bon. What, for instance, do you mean by all that humbug about the soul? Pray, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... this subject. I am a mortal enemy to every description of humbug; and I believe there is as much in the medical world as in any other. Madeira wine had for a century been in high and deserved reputation, when on a sudden some fashionable physician discovers that it contained more acid than ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... liked them in five styles; I wouldn't subscribe to more than three. That little man with the orchid that daddy has just seized is the author of the last of the 'Rulers of India' series—Sir Somebody Something, K.C.S.I. My unconscionable humbug of a parent probably wants to get something approaching a fact out of him. Daddy's writing a thing for one of the reviews on the elective principle for India this week. He says he's the only writer on Indian subjects who isn't disqualified by ever having been there, ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... of Anaheim who were enamored by the Misses Bimpa were skeptical of this, and affirmed that it was a "humbug," but this question will be settled in the evening. Meanwhile, the commotion around the circus is increasing each moment. From among the long, low wooden buildings surrounding the canvas circus there comes the roar of the lions and elephant; the parrots, fastened to rings ...
— Sielanka: An Idyll • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... out. You are not a bit solemn, really, only you put on the airs of a sister of mercy. So you don't like Etta; you need not be afraid of telling me so; she is the greatest humbug in the world, only Giles is so foolish as to believe in her. I call her a humbug because she pretends to be what she is not; she is really a most prosaic sort of person, and she wants to make people believe that she is ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... that had been hitherto almost execrable; and that which was utterly impossible to-day, if done last year would have been a triumphant success, and consequently he pronounced the whole thing an 'imposition and a humbug.' 'I can understand a right and a wrong as well as any man,' he would say, 'but I know nothing about things that are neither or both, according to who's in or who's out of the Cabinet. Give me the ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... fourth appearance. I very much wished you had been there; you would have seen that the public does not hate your friend. I appeared in a box, and the whole pit clapped their hands at me. I blushed, I hid myself; but I should be a humbug if I did not confess to you that I was sensibly affected. It is pleasant not to be dishonored in one's ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... way in which he vouched for the truth of it all too, solemnly staking the lives of his children on his veracity! I stared at him in amazement, not knowing what to make of it: one moment I thought he must be out of his mind; the next I concluded he had been a humbug all along, an ape in a lion's skin. Oh, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... that written or oral instructions will teach every man how to grapple with savages like Stafford, Cruiser, Phlegon, or Mr. Gurney's gray colt, would be sheer humbug—that must depend on the man; but we have an instance of what can be done that is encouraging. When Mr. Rarey was so ill that he was unable to sit Mr. Gurney's gray colt, the boasting Mr. Goodenough tried his hand, and was beaten pale and ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... You want to take me to the court-house. You can't humbug me," said Noddy, fully confirmed in his suspicions by the conduct of ...
— Work and Win - or, Noddy Newman on a Cruise • Oliver Optic
... himself a magician from beyond the land where the sun rose, and rejoiced in the name of Doctor Capricornus, A.V.G.T., and M.U.H.S., which the great learning of Herr Schwein interpreted by A Very Great Traveller, or Thief, and Member of the Universal Herbage or Humbug Society. Now, the feats displayed by this new candidate for public favour were of the stupidest order (remember, this is not the statement of a disinterested party), consisting merely in pointing out any pebble on the ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes
... present state of things so excessively that any change would be a relief to him." ... "Froude is staying up, and I see a great deal of him." ... "Froude is most enthusiastic in his plans, and says, 'What fun it is living in such times as these! how could one now go back to the times of old Tory humbug?'" From henceforth his position among his friends was that of the most impatient and aggressive of reformers, the one who most urged on his fellows to outspoken language and a bold line of action. They were not men to hang back and be afraid, but they were cautious and considerate of ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... others, and they highly approve its sentiments. They, with you, are fully of the opinion that it is high time to take a firm stand against the no-government doctrine. They are far from regarding it merely as a humbug." John A. Collins, the Anti-slavery agent referred to, founded a community at Skaneateles, N. Y., based upon the following dictums: A disbelief in any special revelation of God to Man, in any form of worship, in any special regard for the Sabbath, in any church, disbelief in all governments based ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... is something to get over. It would be ridiculous not to admit that. And I am always determined to be perfectly straightforward. I detest humbug of any kind. So I do not deny for a moment that there is something. Still it would be a very good marriage for Constance, a very good marriage, indeed. Even papa must acknowledge that. Money, position, age, everything of that kind, in its favour. One could ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... a humbug, and the biggest humbug is the best man. That 's the Yankee doctrine, and that 's the reason the Yankees get along so well. You have no organ of secretiveness. You have a window in your breast that every ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... whitening and the razor must be used more vigilantly to further deception. Those creases in your face can no longer be dismissed as character lines; the shagginess of your eyebrows has the flying years to account for it. Plainly, John, you and humbug must part company. You are not of this generation and it ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... Quackleben pulled from his pocket a small portable case of medicines—"Catch me without my tools,"—he said; "here I have the real useful pharmacopoeia—the rest is all humbug and hard names—this little case, with a fortnight or month, spring and fall, at St. Ronan's Well, and no one will die ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... them out of their reckoning. Fright unsettles the judgment: the oppressive silence of the woods is a vacuum in which the mind goes astray. It's a hollow sham, this pantheism, I said; being "one with Nature" is all humbug: I should like to see somebody. Man, to be sure, is of very little account, and soon gets beyond his depth; but the society of the least human being is better than this gigantic indifference. The "rapture on the lonely shore" is agreeable only when you know you can at any ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... impossible as a mechanical one. The discovery of the convertibility of forces shows this. The development theory of the generation of motion by processes of the self-heating or the self-cooling of the machine, or by chemical actions and reactions, is, in its last analysis, only a big perpetual motion humbug. ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... gagged with linsey-woolsey, can only deal with a fraction of the life of man, talk goes fancy free and may call a spade a spade. It cannot, even if it would, become merely aesthetic or merely classical like literature. A jest intervenes, the solemn humbug is dissolved in laughter, and speech runs forth out of the contemporary groove into the open fields of nature, cheery and cheering, like schoolboys out of school. And it is in talk alone that we can learn our period and ourselves. In short, the first duty of a man is to speak; that is ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... history as simply the most shameful episode in the English annals. Thinking this, you will not consider my opinion good for anything, and therefore I need not inflict it upon you. Humbugs, however, will explode in the present state of the atmosphere, and the Austrian humbug, for instance, is at last, God be praised for it, exploding. John Bull, I suppose, will work himself into a fine fever about that; but he will think none the worse of the old ladies in Downing Street ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... this humbug," interrupted Newall angrily. "You can see what Percival's up to. He's trying to white-wash Moncrief, who's too big a funk to come here ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... sir. I presume even Jezebel had some redeeming qualities. Rubbish! humbug! don't tell me! Can good ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... Elvan ought to have told you that it does me good to see an Englishman. Here for a holiday? Blazing hot, but it won't last long. South wind. My wife can't stand it. She's here because of the doctors, but it's all humbug; there are lots of places in England would suit her just as well, and perhaps better. Let's have some tea, Alice, there's a good girl. Mr. Warburton looks thirsty, and I can manage a dozen cups or so. Where's Winifred? Let her bring in the kits. ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... Nathan rather sharply, to discover any mischief which might lurk in his expression. Perceiving that he looked perfectly sincere, and was innocent of any intention to quiz him, he merely uttered, in the most contemptuous tone, the single word "Humbug!" ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... certainly in his keeping, and after the "trade" made between them, he felt that she had some rights in the matter which he was bound to respect. But the affair was no longer a secret; for after the "humbug was exploded," as Leopold expressed it, he told his father all about it. The landlord only laughed at it, and insisted that the nurse was crazy; and her excited conduct at the hotel rather ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... relation between true emotion and particular facts, as opposed to general terms, and implicitly recognize it in the repulsion they feel toward any one who professes strong feeling about abstractions—in the interjectional "Humbug!" which immediately rises to their lips. Wherever abstractions appear to excite strong emotion, this occurs in men of active intellect and imagination, in whom the abstract term rapidly and vividly calls up the particulars it represents, ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... American public discern the difference between a true fac-simile and a cunning counterfeit. Instead of the sham tete-de-Buchanan, they see the very "trick of Coeur-de-lion's face;" and finding themselves as little taxed for the original, as ever they were for the humbug, vote you a public benefactor, and send a round-robin to Congress demanding the instantaneous enactment of a universal copyright law, if not the grant of a gold medal to the beneficent Godfrey. I anticipate, however, your reply. Ten thousand copyrights would not tempt you ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... down and whispered to her. "Don't you go getting caught by that sweep who runs their chapel up in London. He's a humbug if ever there was one—you mark my words. I know a thing or two. He's done your aunts a lot of harm, and he'll have his dirty fingers on you ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... poet—against all the world, in the unjustifiable attempts begun by Warton and carried on at this day by the new school of critics and scribblers, who think themselves poets because they do not write like Pope. I have no patience with such cursed humbug and bad taste; your whole generation are not worth a Canto of the Rape of the Lock, or the Essay on Man, or the Dunciad, or 'any thing that is his.'—But it is three in the matin, and I must go to bed. Yours ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... prescribed by Mr. Warren. Any patriotic, money making farmer, who believes in the Tribune, purchasing Yamamai eggs and setting his worms to feed upon mulberry, which they refuse to eat, and consequently, all die, will probably give up silk culture as being nothing more or less than a humbug. And thus the ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXIV., No. 12, March 18, 1871 • Various
... use that word. It's so false—such humbug—for me at any rate. To say I could care for you as a friend is simply blasphemy! How can it be possible for me? But I'll try. Thanks for anything! You're ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... their clubs." "College-bred girls have no taste for housekeeping." "Rents are so high and manners so luxurious." Good heavens, what silly trash, what puerile nonsense! Are we all little boys and girls, I ask you, that we are to put one another off with such transparent humbug? Here we have to deal with a primitive instinct—the profoundest and deepest-seated instinct of humanity, save only the instincts of food and drink and of self-preservation. Man, like all other animals, has two main functions: to feed ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... it give me," the young man none the less rationally asked, "the chance to be? A brute of a humbug to her?" ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... Hansen came not, and he began to wonder whether it was not really his duty to report her. She was carrying the thing too far; it would not do at all any longer, this humbug with these cabbage-leaves and ...
— Norse Tales and Sketches • Alexander Lange Kielland
... all humbug about Jinny being neurotic. He's neurotic himself and so he thinks everybody else is. He's got it ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... out the really excellent boys. Ti'a is the man who has just been fined 1/2 his wages; he is a beautiful old man, the living image of "Fighting Gladiator," my favourite statue—but a dreadful humbug. I think we keep him on a little on account of his looks. This sign o marks those who have been two years or upwards in the family. I note all my old boys have the cross of honour, except Misifolo; well, poor dog, he does his best, I suppose. You should see him scour. It is a remark ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... would be very weak, indeed, if a majority, with a disciplined army and navy and a well-filled treasury, could not preserve itself when attacked by an unarmed, undisciplined, unorganized minority. All this talk about the dissolution of the Union is humbug, nothing but folly. We do not want to dissolve the ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... profound mystery surrounded them, and many wild theories were propounded to account for their existence. They were at first accredited with a fabulous antiquity, and in at least one instance this notion was responsible for what must be called misrepresentation, if not humbug.[147] Having been placed by popular fancy at such a remote age, they were naturally supposed to have been built, not by the Mayas,—who still inhabit Yucatan and do not absolutely dazzle us with their exalted ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... books now as a Protestant, or Church of England man; but I do not believe all that churchmen believe. I think there's a good deal of humbug about what is called Christianity altogether. I have tried several creeds, and there's none of them squares ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... mate talking together in the friendliest way possible. That Hudson is a humbug; there is some mystery between him ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... which he intended. "Of course such a marriage would suit my child, and would suit me," he wished to say;—"not only, or not chiefly, because your son is a nobleman, and will be an earl and a man of great property. That goes a long way with us. We are too true to deny it. We hate humbug, and want you to know simply the truth about us. The title and the money go far,—but not half so far as the opinion which we entertain of the young man's own good gifts. I would not give my girl to the greatest and richest nobleman under the British Crown, if I did not think ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... to witness a regular procession of officials whom the "man of God" appointed, in accordance with value received. Even Goremykin was compelled to bow before the mystic humbug. Rasputin for five years caused to be appointed or dismissed all the bishops, and woe betide any person who attempted to ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... Hight, was called. Hiltring, hiding. Hing, hang. Hinny, honey, sweet. Hirple, hop. Histie, bare, dry. Hizzie, girl, jade. Hoddin, jogging. Hoddin grey, undyed woolen. Holme, evergreen oak. Hornie, the Devil. Hotch, jerk. Houghmagandie, fornication, disgrace. Houlet, owl. Hound, incite to pursuit. Hum, humbug. Hurdies, buttocks. ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... standing upright like free and fearless men, and giving the devil's agent the straightest eye-puncher of which the human arm is capable. I thank Heaven, Sir, that I'm not made on that plan. I'm out to fight humbug and hypocrisy, even when they masquerade as friendship and benevolence; and when I see a fellow coming along with hundreds of pious texts in his mouth, and his hands dripping with the blood of innocent women and children, why, I've got to say what ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 19, 1916 • Various
... Langdon could not be secured by humbug or in exchange for favors and as it could not be "delivered," Peabody, of course, was willing to pay in actual cash for the vote. This was the final step but one in political conspiracies of this nature?—cash. But Langdon would not take cash, so Peabody had to resort to the last agency ...
— A Gentleman from Mississippi • Thomas A. Wise
... me a hint that, on arriving at Tripoli, there would be exhibited a good deal of fantazia, ("humbug[10]") by the health-office department. Accordingly, after we had been an hour in port, the health officer came alongside, and affected great surprise at our not having passports, and asked me, with great pomposity, what ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... grateful to my feelings than another, it is a new house—a large house, with its ceilings embellished with snowy mouldings; its floors glowing with warm-tinted carpets, with cushioned chairs and sofas to sit on, and a piano to listen to; with fires so arranged you can see them, and know there is no humbug about it; with walls garnished with pictures, and above all mirrors, wherein you may gaze and always find something to admire, you know. I have a great regard for a good house, and a girlish passion ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... doubts whether a venture thus started by direct help and patronage of the fiend would succeed; and Amyas himself, disliking the humbug, told Ayacanora that it would be better to have told the tribe that it was a good deed, and ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... dress, and Mr. Canton had diligently fixed a great gulf between himself and his fellow-men. Charlton's old, bitter aggressiveness, which had well-nigh died out under the sweet influences of Lurton's peacefulness, came back now, and he mentally pronounced the new chaplain a clerical humbug and an ecclesiastical fop, and all such mild paradoxical epithets as he was capable of forming. The hour of service was ended, and Charlton was in his cell again, standing under the high window, trying to absorb some of the influences of the balmy air that reached him in such niggardly ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... All that humbug which has only sent poor folks to rack and ruin! Ah! I should just like to see you trying to cultivate the land better, and make it yield what it'll ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... infernal humbug," said Boardman, "I can't tell whether you want me or not. But I'm in for it now, and I'll go." Then he bought ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... in the following terms:—"I receive the body of the most high and powerful lady, Madame le Marquise de Pompadour, maid of honour to the queen. She was in the school of all virtues," &c. The remainder of this most edifying discourse is lost in oblivion, but surely the force of humbug could no ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... ale there, and mulled it very well; nor of how we sat talking, Fenn like an old, faithful, affectionate dependant, and I—well! I myself fallen into a mere admiration of so much impudence, that transcended words, and had very soon conquered animosity. I took a fancy to the man, he was so vast a humbug. I began to see a kind of beauty in him, his aplomb was so majestic. I never knew a rogue to cut so fat; his villainy was ample, like his belly, and I could scarce find it in my heart to hold him responsible for either. He was good enough to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... make up your mind, and let us be off to America; and leave priests, humbug, learning, and ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... splendid fellow; I respect your courage, and I shall attend your lecture. Never mind what Mr. Farnaby and Regina say. Regina's poor little conventional soul is shaken, I dare say; you needn't expect to have my niece among your audience. But Farnaby is a humbug, as usual. He affects to be horrified; he talks big about breaking off the match. In his own self, he's bursting with curiosity to know how you will get through with it. I tell you this—he will sneak into the ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... the rest of that solemn tomfoolery, were "taught" by the arithmetic teachers in the academies of the eighteenth century, because they are utterly ignorant, and know themselves to be utterly ignorant, of the reality of the subject, and because, therefore, they have to humbug the parent and pass the time by unreal inventions. The case is not a bit better in the higher grade schools. They do not do so much of the bogus teaching of English, but they do nothing whatever in ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... material substances or upon the emotions of the heart. But, remember, first Use, then Beauty, and neither complete without the other. Use without Beauty is ungracious giving, and Beauty without Use is humbug; never forgetting, however, that there is a region of the mind where the use is found in the beauty, where Beauty itself serves the direct purpose of raising us to see a higher ideal which will thenceforward permeate ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... point my experience may be of value to you. What is comprised under the head of philosophical research will never aid or satisfy you. I am an old man, Beulah, and have studied philosophic works for many years; but, take my word for it, the mass of them are sheer humbug. From the beginning of the world philosophers have been investigating the countless mysteries which present themselves to every earnest mind; but the arcana are as inscrutable now as ever. I do not wish ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... gleeful laugh like a child, and slipped her feet to the floor: "Oh, you cross Marta, you dear humbug!" she cried, "As if you wouldn't let the master walk over you and never complain! Go on with that wonderful muffler of his, and I will let him in myself. No, don't touch me! Let me go ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... should, therefore, give suitable names to their children, that is, such names as will correspond with their state, character and relations to God,—names which do not suggest the idea of war, rapine, humbug, romance, and sensuality, but which are associated with the Christian life and calling, and which serve as a true index to the spirit and character of the parental fireside. Reason, as well as faith, will dictate such a ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... Are you crazy? Do you suppose I would want to humbug Mr. Manders? No, no—Mr. Manders has always been too kind a friend for me to do that. But what I wanted to talk to you about, was my going back ...
— Ghosts - A Domestic Tragedy in Three Acts • Henrik Ibsen
... "Oh, Jack, that's all humbug. If you begin to lay everything to the credit of books, I'll quite lose my opinion of you," cried Peterkin, with a look of contempt. "I've seen a lot o' fellows that were always poring over books, and when they came ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... "economy." I don't know that he had ever taken up political science seriously, or that he had any preference for one kind or form of government over another. I repeat,—his radicalism was that of a humorist. He despised big-wigs, and pomp of all sorts, and, above all, humbug and formalism. But his radicalism was important as a sign that our institutions are ceasing to be picturesque; of which, if you consider his nature, you will see that his radicalism was a sign. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... respect for his agent, when he found that he could neither humbug nor frighten him, Bullion filled out and signed the notes. Next they reviewed the stock-market, and decided upon the course to be pursued. Bullion then fell into a profound meditation, and did not speak for five minutes, though the busy eyebrow showed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... Thrale].' Piozzi Letters, ii. 141. Miss Burney, who was with the Thrales, writes:—'Dr. Johnson has written to Mrs. Thrale, without even mentioning the existence of this mob; perhaps, at this very moment, he thinks it "a humbug upon the nation," as George Bodens called the Parliament.' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, i. 401. When Johnson wrote, the mob had not risen to its height of violence. Mrs. Thrale in her answer, giving the date, 'Bath, 3 o'clock on Saturday morning, June 10, 1780,' asks, 'Oh! ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... children, while I deny that we, the masters, have anything to do with the making or keeping them so. I maintain that despotism is the best kind of government for them; so that in the hours in which I come in contact with them I must necessarily be an autocrat. I will use my best discretion—from no humbug or philanthropic feeling, of which we have had rather too much in the North—to make wise laws and come to just decisions in the conduct of my business—laws and decisions which work for my own good in the first instance—for theirs ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... if he'd been going to be hung next week it would have been all one to him. He'd have put off thinking about it until about an hour before, and then would have made all his arrangements and done the whole business quietly and respectably, without humbug, but without any flashness either. You couldn't put him wrong, or make him do or say anything that was ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... the whole project a humbug, and refusing to have anything to do with it, equipped himself with club and cutlass, and started off on a solitary excursion towards the south-easterly part of the island, which we had not yet explored. He returned in the afternoon ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... despair of myself. There is not one gleam of light in all the sad landscape, and the abyss seems waiting at my feet to swallow me up with everything that I cherish. It is no use saying to this demon of the darkness that I know he is a humbug, a mere Dismal Jemmy of the brain, who sits there croaking like a night owl or a tenth-rate journalist. My Dismal Jemmy is not to be exorcised by argument. He can only be driven out by a ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... the papers this morning. In the Figaro an article from that old humbug Villemessant. He calls upon his fellow-citizens in Paris to ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... on the 20th of July, "gray and cloudy as you please: but I am most disappointed, I think, in the evenings, which are as commonplace as need be; for there is no twilight, and as to the stars giving more light here than elsewhere, that is humbug." The summer of 1844 seems to have been, however, an unusually stormy and wet season. He wrote to me on the 21st of October that they had had, so far, only four really clear days ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... speaking quickly and almost anxiously, with a certain naivete that was attractive, but that did not suggest simplicity, but rather great sensitiveness of mind. "I never take quack medicines or foods. I have no need to. And I think they're all invented to humbug us." ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... "I take very little stock in saints, and she strikes me as a little of a humbug, your Cecilia; but I would like to know what the effect of the 'Old Curiosity Shop' would be on a full-blooded Indian squaw. Catherine, will you try to read it if I bring ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... forget that I have to live with the governor. When two people live together—it don't matter whether theyre father and son or husband and wife or brother and sister—they can't keep up the polite humbug thats so easy for ten minutes on an afternoon call. Now the governor, who unites to many admirable domestic qualities the irresoluteness of a sheep and the pompousness ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... gold, gold was wanting for all this, and to keep up with his friends at the court. Perhaps this very day he might get the place, if he had only some good claret to entertain them with; therefore she had better give him a couple of diamonds from the purse. And so he went on with his lies and humbug, until at last ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... dreadful humbug," he said, feeling that the confession must come. "Don't be shocked, Louisa; it is not altogether about my father, but I tell you the truth when I say ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 2 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... torpid, who breakfast and dine hugely, he could not have provided us with more food. Murray, who was one of many at this meal, seemed to be very interested in what Mr. Edwardes said about diet, and I told him afterwards that he was an arch-humbug; but it turned out that he had been bothered all his life—at least he said so—by indigestion, and that at Wellingham he had lived on some peculiar biscuit for nearly a fortnight, which recalled to my mind what Ward had ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... Marshes and visited Winchelsea and Rye. And in between I was taken by Canon and Mrs. Thesiger to lunch or dinner or tea in the other Canons' houses, and was introduced to the Dean and the Archbishop. I attended the Cathedral services to an extent that provoked Viola to denounce me as a humbug. ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... confidently expects to make some most extraordinary discoveries of various diseases—of greed, foolish ambition, ossification of the heart, moral leprosy, chronic stupidity, latent idiocy, and that very common and often unsuspected complaint usually known as Humbug. (Humbugna Communis.) His fee in no case will exceed ten cents per week; and patients WILL ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 14, 1870 • Various
... especially in a Russian one! She did not restrict herself in her expressions; her countrywomen received particularly severe treatment at her hands. Sanin was more than once set laughing by some bold and well-directed word. Above all, Maria Nikolaevna had no patience with hypocrisy, cant, and humbug. She discovered it almost everywhere. She, as it were, plumed herself on and boasted of the humble surroundings in which she had begun life. She told rather queer anecdotes of her relations in the days of her childhood, spoke of herself as quite ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... the public really cares for. If he does his best he may feel that he is as fairly earning his livelihood as his fellow workmen, the blacksmith and the stonecutter, and is as little dependent as they upon either charity or humbug. The best that government has done for art in France is the commissioning of the great decorative paintings of Baudry and Puvis. In this country, also, governments, national, State, or municipal, are patronizing art in the best possible way, and in making buildings splendid ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... morning Haydon left for town. 'It is curious,' he comments, 'to have known thus the two great heads of the two great parties, the Duke and Lord Grey. I prefer the Duke infinitely. He is more manly, has no vanity, is not deluded by any flattery or humbug, and is in every way a grander character, though Lord Grey is a ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... and then broke forth; such as odious, horrid, detestable, shocking, HUMBUG. This last new-coined expression, which is only to be found in the nonsensical vocabulary, sounds absurd and disagreeable, whenever it is pronounced; but from the mouth of a lady it is, "shocking, detestable, ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... distasteful it may be. It is his business, and he will starve if he neglects it. So have I felt that, when anything in the shape of a novel was required, I was bound to produce it. Nothing can be more distasteful to me than to have to give a relish of Christmas to what I write. I feel the humbug implied by the nature of the order. A Christmas story, in the proper sense, should be the ebullition of some mind anxious to instil others with a desire for Christmas religious thought, or Christmas festivities,—or, better ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... a German, even if she was good. Besides, I don't want to be good any more—I am not a humbug—I have learned to be bad. Aren't you going to ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... it had "burst," others that it had "burned out." Betsy said: "Whatever it was, it was a humbug;" and the wisest man in Whitefield could neither tell whence it came nor whither it went. One thing, however, was certain: Farmer Lathem said that never, since his orchard began to bear, had he gathered such a crop ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... the lime-burner, staring about him. "Thank Heaven, the night is gone, at last; and rather than pass such another, I would watch, my lime-kiln, wide awake, for a twelvemonth. This Ethan Brand, with his humbug of an Unpardonable Sin, has done me no such mighty favor, ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... stop half way, but to set right, as far as she can, whatever she has done wrong—not for the honour of her family, not for her own fame, not for any of those considerations which unfortunate circumstances have induced her to regard as hollow, and in point of fact, as approaching to humbug—but because it is wrong, and ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... you alone for giving a thing a pretty turn! Youre a humbug, you know, Lord Summerhays. John doesnt know it; and Johnny doesnt know it; but you and I know it, dont we? Now thats something that even you cant answer; so be off with you for ...
— Misalliance • George Bernard Shaw
... as they have been for her!" said the Rector, shaking his head. His face was very lugubrious, for though as a parson he was essentially a kindly, easy man, to whom humbug was odious, and who dealt little in the austerities of clerical denunciation, still he had his face of pulpit sorrow for the sins of the people—what I may perhaps call his clerical knack of gentle condemnation—and ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... Beer,—it's Candor!' said Abel. 'It's your own proposal, Hollins. Suppose it's evil to swear: isn't it better I should express it, and be done with it, than keep it bottled up, to ferment in my mind? Oh, you're a precious, consistent old humbug, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... "Then manners really mean humbug," declared Ingred, who loved to argue. "To say you're glad to see people, when you're not, is telling deliberate fibs. Most hypocritical, I call it! Why can't people ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... throne of France, "I never had any doubt that Williams was of Indian extraction, and a descendant of Eunice Williams. His father and mother were both of them at my father's house, although I cannot ascertain definitely the year. I consider the whole story a humbug, and believe that it will be exploded in the course of a few months." As a matter of fact, the story has been exploded,—though the features of the Reverend Eleazer Williams, when in the full flush of manhood, ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... terms and we got none. We did not object to go under the War Office. We did not make speeches calculated to humbug or deceive while we ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... the books now as a Protestant, or Church of England man; but I do not believe all that churchmen believe. I think there's a good deal of humbug about what is called Christianity altogether. I have tried several creeds, and there's none of them squares ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... always regard such a union of the two trees with great veneration, and believe it to be a holy marriage instituted by Providence. For himself, Ossaroo—not being a very strict sectarian, nor much given to religion in any form, laughed at the superstition, and called it "humbug." ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... everyone concerned. Frankly, the Green family exasperate me," declared Mrs. Fielding. "I can put up with Jack. He's such a smart, good-looking boy, and he can drive like the devil. But I've no use for the other two, and never shall have. I think Green's a humbug. Is he going to join your ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... democracy (applied to a political party); develop (for 'expose'); devouring element (for 'fire'); donate; employé; enacted (for 'acted'); indorse (for 'approve'); en route; esq.; graduate (for 'is graduated'); gents (for 'gentlemen'); 'Hon.'; House (for 'House of Representatives'); humbug; inaugurate (for 'begin'); in our midst; item (for 'particle, extract, or paragraph'); is being done, and all passives of this form; jeopardize; jubilant (for 'rejoicing'); juvenile (for 'boy'); lady (for 'wife'); last (for 'latest'); lengthy (for 'long'); leniency (for 'lenity'); loafer; loan ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... feel, eh?" said Kitty quickly. "That I've been in love with a man who didn't care a straw for me, and that I'm dying of love for him? And this is said to me by my own sister, who imagines that...that...that she's sympathizing with me!...I don't want these condolences and humbug!" ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... return. "What to do—how to pass the years before me—is the question with me now, as I suppose it is with so many girls of my age. I must find a mission. Can you suggest one? Only don't let it have anything humanitarian about it. That would make me a humbug, which I have never been yet. It must be something entirely for my own pleasure and profit. Do think about it ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... it into a wild, wonderful, remote, fairy-land region, where all sorts of poetical things may take place without the slightest difficulty. Of course Shakespeare would not have done thus, but that he saw quite through the grand critical humbug which makes the proper effect of a work of art depend upon our belief in the actual occurrence of the thing represented. But your "critic grave and cool," I suppose, is one who, like ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... the simple, the ignorant, well-intentioned, but deceived neighbours, to add their signatures to cases of which they know nothing, and of which the details are a series of bombast, falsehood, ignorance, and humbug. There are many of the cases which I have related to which I could have obtained the signatures of clergymen, Members of Parliament, magistrates, and other persons high in rank and station in life, without saying a word about overseers, churchwardens, and parishioners, ...
— Observations on the Causes, Symptoms, and Nature of Scrofula or King's Evil, Scurvy, and Cancer • John Kent
... the old humbug of sex superiority because she had seen it fall on its face to howl over a trodden worm, with the result that it discovered itself hollow behind, like ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... already what a humbug she is!" Alicia said, but Captain Filbert's inner eye seemed retained ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... that it is commonly supposed to be: it is hard work—harder than any but a growing boy can understand; it requires attention, and you are not strong enough to attend to your bodily growth, and to your lessons too. Besides, Latin and Greek are great humbug; the more people know of them the more odious they generally are; the nice people whom you delight in either never knew any at all or forgot what they had learned as soon as they could; they never turned to the classics after they ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... the contrary that I was now persuaded that there was a simulation of personality, such as was generally the case with the public mediums, and I said to my brother, who had not heard any of my questions, that this was another humbug, and then repeated what had passed, saying that Turner could not have worked in that way. After this I did not care to follow ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... the present," replied Rodolphe. "The humbug," he added regretfully, following the cocked hat with his eyes, "he has ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... "There is a vast amount of thinking which ought to be in the market. We hold our best thoughts and give our second best."... "We do a good deal of shirking in this life on the ground of not being geniuses. The truth is, there is an immense amount of humbug lurking in the folds of those specious theories about genius. Let a man or woman go to work at a thing, and the genius will take ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... Oh, I know what you're going to say—it's less and less of a pretense with them, I grant you; they're more and more succumbing to the force of the suggestion; but here and there I fancy there's one who still sees through the humbug, and knows that money and motors and clothes are simply the big bribe she's paid for keeping out of some ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... 'You dear old humbug,' she cried, cutting short the sentence that neither of them quite understood, 'I believe ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... they ought. Ingratitude, we are told, is as the sin of witchcraft, and although the table of exports exhibits our fair island as hastening to a state of ruin, and the despatch tells us that "by the united influence of mock philanthropy, religious cant, and humbug," a reformed parliament was forced "to precipitate the slavery spoliation act under the specious pretext of promoting the industry and improving the condition of the manumitted slaves," still we maintain, and the reasonable will agree with us, that ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... me believe anything of the kind, Mr. Gordon. I know you've made a strike, but you had made it before you ever came to the valley. Mr. Davis told me so. We simply couldn't drive you out. That's all humbug. You want me to have it—and I'm not going to take it. That's all there is to ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... diatoms made cities, and were far more astonishing animals than they. I thought that would silence them; but they just turned round, and informed me that my diatoms were plants, not animals,—so my story was all humbug. Then I was mad; and couldn't get over the fact that these little rascals had done what we, the kings of the sea, couldn't do. I wasn't content with being the biggest creature there: I wanted to be the most skilful also. I didn't remember that every thing has its own place ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... all their hearts, there was not one lofty aspiration. These people, in their daily life were like squirrels in a cage, and because they moved, they thought they were progressing. In them scepticism had killed belief; religion, family, country, were, as they phrased it, all humbug. They had only one aim, one passion—to enjoy themselves. Their watchword was "pleasure." All those who did not perish of consumption would die ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... Lordship are all a humbug now, you know," said the Justice; "mere St. Germains titles—Earl of Beauchamp and ambassador plenipotentiary from France, when the Duke Regent scarce knew that he lived, I daresay. But you must have ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... tricking the people into entrusting them with power. The only possible way by which politicians as a class can be improved is the political and psychological education of the people, so that they may learn to detect a humbug. In England men have reached the point of suspecting a good speaker, but if a man speaks badly they think he must be honest. Unfortunately, virtue is not so widely diffused as ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... these things sometimes, doctor, and though a great deal of it seems to be humbug, it is as you say—I know some are sincere, and I know there is a right way. I have been more than half tempted many times during the last few weeks to discover for myself the secret of power, but I am deterred by certain considerations, which you would, ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... Japan is so old that its real origin is almost a matter of guesswork, and has a certain general obscurity to most outsiders, owing to language, religion, and customs. This has led to a commercial exploitation of their art in Europe, and in America particularly, based mostly on humbug and partly on facts. If all the pottery, rugs and furniture said to have come from distinguished artists and from even more distinguished circles of ownership, mostly palaces of the Ming dynasty, were enumerated, ...
— The Galleries of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... feel it; I don't believe in it. My dear, your strong mind is all humbug, or you would not look so frightened," and again she was on the verge of hysterical laughing; "it is only that I can't stand a chorus of old ladies in commotion. How happy Alick must be to have his prediction verified by some ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Zaire at the fourth appearance. I very much wished you had been there; you would have seen that the public does not hate your friend. I appeared in a box, and the whole pit clapped their hands at me. I blushed, I hid myself; but I should be a humbug if I did not confess to you that I was sensibly affected. It is pleasant not to be dishonored in ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... friend the postillion, who chanced to be present at a considerable part of the old ostler's discourse; "it is, as you say, the greatest of humbug, and merely, after all, gets a fellow into trouble; but no regular bred highwayman would do it. I say, George, catch the Pope of Rome trying to curry favour with anybody he robs; catch old Mumbo Jumbo currying ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... you? The post's in at Dollington fifty minutes before we get our letters here. D—d nonsense—it's all that heavy 'bus of Driver's—I'll change that. They leave London at five, and get to Dollington at half-past ten, and Driver never has them in sooner than twenty minutes past eleven! D—d humbug! I'd undertake to take a dog-cart over the ground in ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... better than Carlyle that there is a world diameter between the South hiring a man for life, and by force holding him in slavery. But Carlyle for three years poured out such vapid humbug, cant and hypocrisy as this, and never once was sound in his thinking or fair in his view-point during the ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... "It is hard to say what I feel. I don't know myself.... But I'm not going to lose you like this. I'm not going to let you slip a second time. I was awake about it all last night. I don't care where you are, what your people are, nor very much whether you've kept quite clear of this medium humbug. I don't. You will in future. Anyhow. I've had a day and night to think it over. I had to come and try to find you. It's you. I've never forgotten you. Never. I'm not going to be sent back ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... the three flag-staffs before the church; that he passes me a slatternly woman and a frowzy girl or two through the Piazza occasionally; and that he calls down the flocks of pigeons hovering near. I fancy the latter half ashamed to show themselves, as being aware that they are a great humbug, and unrightfully ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... meditatively, "and you never ask how they're managed, or what rings are running them for their own benefit, or how your money is spent—and you think you've done a noble, philanthropic thing! Oh no—I wasn't talking about humbug charity. I was talking about doing some genuine good ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... 'squisitely delicious little humbug," said aunty, laughing. "Now good-night all three of you, and get to bed as fast as you can, as I don't want 'grandmother dear' to scold me for your all ...
— Grandmother Dear - A Book for Boys and Girls • Mrs. Molesworth
... female politician. "You may go round," and round we went, not a little amused at such an exhibition of enthusiasm. I remember very well the excitement during the campaign of 1840; and I did my share with the New Hampshire boys in getting up decoy cider barrels to humbug the Whigs as they passed in their barouches to attend some great convention or hear Daniel Webster. But it seems to me there is much more political excitement during this campaign than there was in 1840. Flagstaffs and banners ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... in being disciplined into making those disclosures, which at first he seemed bent on withholding. Whether the priest honestly interpreted what he believed the divinity said to him, or whether he was not all the while guilty of a vile humbug, I shall not presume to decide. At any rate, whatever as coming from the god was imparted to those present seemed to be generally of a complimentary nature: a fact which illustrates the sagacity of Kolory, or else the timeserving disposition of this ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... men with your fists and boots. Knock out four of them. Run a mile, dragging a girl—from a man chasing you, and shooting at you with a revolver. Kill a murderer with a murderess's dagger. Nurse a girl with an attack of hysteria. Drive a coach, humbug a woman, a parson, a railway porter, a guard and a station-master. Kill a man armed with that steel-clawed thing there, steal a car, knock a man off a train, and bring home the exhausted woman alive and your chief enemy drunk and a prisoner—do ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... Fogeyism is being lowered to his last resting place, Pettifoggism, being his chief mourner, will be so overwhelmed with grief that he will tumble into the same grave. How then to hasten the demise of this venerable Humbug is the question. Some are for letting him die a natural death, others for reducing him gradually by a system of slow starvation: for myself, I confess, I am for knocking him on the head at once. Until this event, so long wished for by all ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... been better for you," returned his father, sharply: "we should not have had all this fooling and humbug if you had ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... then invited," said Mr. Hawkins, "to a little dinner at another supporter of the Claimant's, and one somewhat shrewder than the rest." The Claimant described this party as consisting of a county magistrate, a money-lender, a lawyer, and a humbug. ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... difference' between Homo and Pithecus, should yet range them, on anatomical grounds, in distinct sub-classes.") What a complete and awful smasher (and done like a "buttered angel") it is for Owen! What a humbug he is to have left out the sentence in the lecture before the orthodox Cambridge dons! I like Lubbock's paper very much: how well he writes. (119/3. Sir John Lubbock's paper was a review of Leydig on the Daphniidae. M'Donnell's was "On the Homologies of the Electric Organ ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... unknown man—too old to be able to refute the charge of senility were any one disposed to question the value of my statements—could announce to the world my great discovery a thousand times a day, and very properly the world would decline to believe in me. The world would cry humbug, and I should have been unable, had I failed to find you, to convince the world that I was not a humbug. With the discovery of your eye, all that is changed. I shall have an ally in you, and that is valuable for the reason that your statements, whatever they may be, will ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... so purports. Not that he is not himself moved by moral considerations. Almost invariably he is. But he will never admit it for himself, and he deeply suspects it in others. The words "hypocrite," "humbug," "sentimentalist" spring readily to his lips. But let him work off his steam, sit quiet and wait, and you will find, often enough, that he has arrived at the same conclusion as the "sentimentalist"—only, of course, for quite different reasons! For intellect he ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... interview with the lightning-rod agent in Mark Twain's Sketches, 1875. He is a shrewd observer, and his humor has a more satirical side than Artemus Ward's, sometimes passing into downright denunciation. He delights particularly in ridiculing sentimental humbug and moralizing cant. He runs a tilt, as has been said, at "copy-book texts," at the temperance reformer, the tract distributor, the Good Boy of Sunday-school literature, and the women who send bouquets and sympathetic letters ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... in the subject abroad is also now fairly developing. The discovery was at first looked upon as a humbug, but this view is giving way before the facts presented in the local papers. The leading journals of the country have sent special correspondents to write up the subject. The New York Tribune and Herald, Harper's Weekly, the Springfield Republican ...
— The American Goliah • Anon.
... he and I were alone. Why he should have chosen me as the pail into which to pour his troubles I cannot say. I let him talk on, and when he had ended I showed him plainly that I had been thinking most of the time about something else. Whether Marriot was entirely a humbug or the most conscientious person on our stair, readers may decide. He was fond of argument if you did not answer him, and often wanted me to tell him if I thought he was in love; if so, why did I think so; if not, why not. What ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... incredible humbug of Murphy's had gone on for nearly half an hour, when the cold arising from his want of clothes, and the riot about him, and the fumes of the vinegar, roused M'Garry, who turned on the bed and opened his eyes. There he saw a parcel of people standing round him, with candles ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... placed it on a red cloth in order to obtain possession of "the stone." He sat watching the toad all night, but the toad did not eject anything. "Since that time," he says, "I have always regarded as humbug ('badineries') all that they relate of the toad-stone and of its origin." He then describes the actual stone which passes as the toad-stone, or "Bufonius lapis," and says that it is also called batrachite, or brontia, or ombria. His description exactly corresponds with the "toad-stones" which ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... "Why, you unbelieving old humbug! It's the truth. You ate till I was ashamed of you, and then you lay down to sleep about this time yesterday, and here you are now as sleepy as ever. If you don't get up I'll go and tell the ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... impossibility, and if I did they would think me a lunatic or a snivelling, sentimental humbug. I believe that lots of my old friends would scarcely speak to me again. Why, putting aside the pleasures of sport, if the views you preach were to be accepted, what would become of keepers and beaters and huntsmen ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... shall all be treated as my guests, and while you live in the Palace my people will wait upon you and obey your slightest wish. There is only one thing I ask in return for my help—such as it is. You must keep my secret and tell no one I am a humbug." ...
— The Wonderful Wizard of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... his plea, think you? Why, he disapproved of gambling; couldn't think of lending me a sixpence for any such purpose; and, as for going into such a suspected quarter as a gambling-house—wouldn't do it for the world! Was there ever such a puritan—such a humbug!" ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... fifty Jennys. But the shrewd, romantic, honest, true Jenny was behind them all, not stupid, not sentimental, bold as a lion, destructively experienced in hardship and endurance, very quick indeed to single out and wither humbug that was within her range of knowledge, but innocent as a child before any other sort of humbug whatsoever. That was why she could now sneer at the stage-heroine, and could play with the mysterious beauties of her own reflection; but it was why she could also be led into quick indignation ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... for the unlucky parson. His decent reticence is branded as hypocrisy, his circumlocutions are roundly called lies, and his silence is vilified as treachery. And on the strength of peccadillos, reprehensible in an author, but excusable in a son, the Anglo-Saxon race is accused of prudishness, humbug, pretentiousness, deceit, cunning, and bad cooking. Personally I think it was rash of Mr. Strickland, in refuting the account which had gained belief of a certain "unpleasantness" between his father and mother, to state that ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... business having this man. Probably he had borrowed him from some other chap. I said to him; "Pat, what on earth are you doing with Fritz?" "To tell yer the truth, sorr-r, Oi haven't yet made up my moind!" "Let us have no humbug, take him back to the cage!" "Very well, sorr-r!" About ten minutes later I saw Pat without his prisoner. "Here, Pat, what on earth did you do with Fritz?" "Well, sorr-r, he kept beggin' and beggin' to be let go, so Oi ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... a horrid grimace he made, and how he lifted up both his hands, as if to wave off an imaginary cup of tea! I always thought that the tea sent over to this country from China was a miserable humbug; so poor Min-Yung's horror at being asked to drink a cup of it, quite upset me, and I laughed immoderately. Min-Yung laughed, too; and understood by the way I shook my fore-finger at him, just as well as if I had said, "You know very well, my dear Min-Yung, ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... The most untheoretic persons are aware of this relation between true emotion and particular facts, as opposed to general terms, and implicitly recognize it in the repulsion they feel toward any one who professes strong feeling about abstractions—in the interjectional "Humbug!" which immediately rises to their lips. Wherever abstractions appear to excite strong emotion, this occurs in men of active intellect and imagination, in whom the abstract term rapidly and vividly calls up the ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... been pained by hearing the words 'humbug,' 'great advertizing establishment,' etc., applied to the New York Fair, as well as to fairs in general. Now, nothing could be more unjust than the first term; and as to the latter, we have only to say that, if human nature were perfect, fairs would be unnecessary, and ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... make me believe anything of the kind, Mr. Gordon. I know you've made a strike, but you had made it before you ever came to the valley. Mr. Davis told me so. We simply couldn't drive you out. That's all humbug. You want me to have it—and I'm not going to take it. That's all there is ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... moves upon the bridegroom. An Essex Street girl in the crowd, watching them go, says disdainfully: "None of this humbug when I get married." It is the straining of young America at the fetters of tradition. Ten minutes later, when, between double files of women holding candles, the couple pass to the canopy where the rabbi waits, she has already forgotten; and when the ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... "Parson, humbug! When charity drivels it ought to be turned off by justice! I will follow the little light I have. I suspect, from the description, that the wretch who at Le Noir's instance carried off the nurse and child was no other than the notorious ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... came not, and he began to wonder whether it was not really his duty to report her. She was carrying the thing too far; it would not do at all any longer, this humbug with these cabbage-leaves and ...
— Norse Tales and Sketches • Alexander Lange Kielland
... for I have all the time the association of some horrid creature they might have come from, you know; but it will do just as well to humbug people: I shall make Cornelia Schenck believe that this came from my ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... promised me solemnly to be my wife, making the one stipulation of secrecy, and a certain period of waiting; she wrote me letters repeating this promise, and confidential enough to prove that she considered herself bound to me by such an implied relation. I don't give in to humbug—I don't set myself up as a saint—and in most ways I can look after my own interests pretty keenly; you know enough of her position as a penniless girl, and at that time, with no influential connections ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... the man in any way weak is quite unable to stand the steady test of R.N.W.M.P. life. Apart from that, no blatherskite can endure it; no vain boaster, no aggressive bully, no slacker, and no humbug of any kind can possibly keep his end up in the force." So wrote a widely experienced and keen-witted "old-timer," in 1908, and he was ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... inside her bar; the truth was, the good widow was perfectly well aware that her snug little free-hold and thriving little trade were quite as great objects of attraction as her delectable self, and acting on the same principle as that old humbug 'Elizabeth,' insanely called 'the good Queen Bess,' viz: the balancing opposite interests, she drew custom to her house and grist to her mill, without troubling herself as to selection from her numerous admirers, which, ...
— Edward Barnett; a Neglected Child of South Carolina, Who Rose to Be a Peer of Great Britain,—and the Stormy Life of His Grandfather, Captain Williams • Tobias Aconite
... later, when Paul opened the dining-room for her to pass out, she touched his shoulder affectionately and laughed. "Hammer and tongs to Sophie Zobraska! Oh, Paul, aren't you a bit of a humbug?" ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... is the evil of his present artificial courses—the humbug required to keep up his position as dandy, politician, and philosopher (in neither of which latter characters the man is in earnest), must get into his heart at last; and then his trade is ruined. A little more politics and Plato, and the natural disappears altogether from Mr. Bulwer's writings: ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... with cloak-makers? We have troubles enough of our own. We have our families to support—our wives and children and relations. Shall they starve for some foolish cloak—makers? Comrades, don't listen to such humbug. Do your work—get done with it. You have good jobs—don't lose them. These revolutionists! They would break up the whole world for their nonsense! It's not they who have to suffer; it's us working people. We do the starving, we do ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... inspired him. They can creep into any kingdom, any institution, any household, because they readily accept any terms and subscribe to any conditions in the certainty that by the adroit use of flattery, humbug, falsehood, and corruption, they will soon become masters of the situation. In France they are the real Morbus Gallicus. In Italy they are the ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... woman hide the dulness of a stupid husband, or coax the fury of a savage one? We accept this amiable slavishness, and praise a woman for it: we call this pretty treachery truth. A good housewife is of necessity a humbug; and Cornelia's husband was hoodwinked, as Potiphar ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... joy: "never was a piece so well played as Zaire at the fourth appearance. I very much wished you had been there; you would have seen that the public does not hate your friend. I appeared in a box, and the whole pit clapped their hands at me. I blushed, I hid myself; but I should be a humbug if I did not confess to you that I was sensibly affected. It is pleasant not to be dishonored in ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... is very easy to humbug those who are so eager to be humbugged as people are in this world of humbug—We show ourselves excessively disinterested, which ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... mind me making up to you in this way; but 'pon my honour, I took such a liking to your face, seeing it among that mass of humbug where we were just now, that I was going to speak to you then, only I ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... "Oh, that's all humbug!" cried one of the men, "just to make us remain. Mates, are we to go, or are we to stop and get abused by this ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... and a young woman of new tendencies, and proud of my liberty, but I did not care to find myself in an empty house with a stranger. Something of my confidence left me. Confidence with women, you know, is all humbug after a certain point. Or perhaps you don't know, for most of you are men. But anyhow my pluck ebbed in a quick rush, and I ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... for years past he had written against Bunn all he knew or could think of. And when Shirley Brooks struck at him in "The Man in the Moon" in the course of a mock election-address beginning—"I hate the humbug of the 'wrongs of the poor man' class of writing when any sneaking rascal is found poaching and punished for it"—Jerrold held his peace, and in due time voted to have the damaging assailant invited to join Punch's Staff. Mrs. Landells, without ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... But there is no book which can instruct one to read the human countenance correctly; and some special circumstance must have roused the suspicions of these four persons so much as to cause them to make these observations, and they were not as usual deceived by the humbug of this skilled actor, a past master in ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... enjoyment. And it is noticeable that busy men, coming to art for pleasure when they are too weary for looking, listening, or thinking, so often prefer the sensation-novel, the music-hall song, and such painting as is but a costlier kind of oleograph; treating all other art as humbug, and art in general as a trifle wherewith to wile away a lazy moment, a trifle about which every man can know what he ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... be understood that nothing more serious than some hilarious escapade or sardonic bit of humor ever crossed the life of Eugene Field in Denver. His innate hatred of humbug and sham made the Denver Tribune a terror to all public characters who considered that suddenly acquired wealth gave them a free hand to flaunt ostentatious vulgarity on all ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... way we rule circumstances," said Jack dryly, sitting down in his own room, and taking up Carlyle. "What an amount of humbug is talked in ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... pocket-book, all with the gravity of Solomon. He then thanked me profusely, remarking that such little services were due between countrymen; shook hands with me, "for auld lang syne," as he said; and took himself solemnly away, radiating dirt and humbug as ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... went and gave Barbara my mind. She should marry Mr. Jephson, who saved her life, or be the laughing stock of the country. I showed her up to herself, with her glass ball, and her teleopathy, and her sham love-letters, that she wrote herself, and all her humbug. She cried, and she fainted, and she carried on, but I went at her whenever she could listen to reason. So she said "Yes," and I am the ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... 'There's no humbug about him, at least,' said Felix. 'He is really cut up exceedingly. Indeed all I have been doing was to get him to moderate his dolefulness. I believe he thinks me a ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of which the scene "reminds" him; Secretary of War Stanton is receiving a message from the front, describing a great victory, in which one prisoner and one gun were taken; Secretary of State Seward is handing an order to a messenger for the arrest of a man who had called him a "humbug," the habeas corpus being suspended throughout the Union at that period; Secretary of the Navy Welles—the long-haired, long-bearded man at the head of the table—is figuring out a naval problem; at the side ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... and humbly thankful, are perhaps a little too apt to celebrate their joy in the face of the afflicted ones who have it not; and the afflicted ones only follow a general law in protesting that it is a very worthless thing, if not a complete humbug." This spirit of exclusiveness on the one side and of irascibility on the other may be greatly deplored, but who is there among us, I wonder, wholly innocent of blame? Mr. Saintsbury himself confesses to a silent chuckle of delight when ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... is profitable. But a time will come when, with its curiosity sated, the public will turn upon the poet, and throw into his face, on his own authority, that he is but as they are, that his airs of inspiration and divine right are humbug. And in that day the poet will block his silk hat, will shave away the silken moustache, will get him a bottle of Mrs. Allen's Hair Restorer, and betake himself to the sombrero of his ancestors—but it will be all too late. The cat ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... along during the night, but the morning sun rising clear and bright would almost tempt one to believe that it had been a dream, if the pools of water in the hollows of the rocks and the dampness of blanket or oil-cloth had not proved the sun a humbug. Our general distance each day would be about thirty-two miles, with an average of six portages. At sunset we made our camp on some rocky isle or shelving shore, one or two cut wood, another got the cooking things ready, a fourth gummed the seams of the canoe, a fifth cut shavings ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... jealous she would think nothing of thrusting a dagger between his ribs. Reality,—what a delight it is! The actual touch and feeling of the spontaneous natural creature have been so buried beneath centuries of hypocrisy and humbug that we have ceased to believe in them save as a metaphysical abstraction. But even as water, long depressed under-ground in perverse channels, surges up to the surface, and above it, at last, in a fountain of relief, so Nature, after enduring ages of outrage and ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne
... wished naturally enough for our assistance in the coming battle. As for the marvellous chief Rezu, or rather for his supernatural attributes and all the cock-and-bull story about an axe—well, it was humbug like the rest, and if she believed in it she must be more foolish than I took her to be—even if she were unhinged on certain points. For the rest, her information about myself and Umslopogaas doubtless had reached her from Zikali in some obscure ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... for nothing. Wish I had been. He's the sort of chap who loses no end of I.O.U.'s at cards one night, and when he wins piles of ready the next never offers to redeem them. You let me alone about ALGY. I tell you I know him. There's no bigger humbug in Christendom with all his soft sawder and gas about everybody being the dearest and cleverest fellow he's ever ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Volume 101, October 31, 1891 • Various
... that. I make no pretence to be what I am not. I would not pass off somebody else's picture as my own, for instance. But I cannot sham to be moral. I could not possibly love a woman without wanting her all to myself, and I have not the slightest belief in the sanctimonious humbug of a man who plays the Platonic lover only. But I don't cheat, and I don't lie. I am what ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... something was deemed admirable now that had been hitherto almost execrable; and that which was utterly impossible to-day, if done last year would have been a triumphant success, and consequently he pronounced the whole thing an 'imposition and a humbug.' 'I can understand a right and a wrong as well as any man,' he would say, 'but I know nothing about things that are neither or both, according to who's in or who's out of the Cabinet. Give me the command of twelve thousand men, let me ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... Mrs. Dearman. "It is the invariable end of it, I believe. Just humbug and rubbish. It is either an invention, pure and simple, or else it is perfectly explicable. Don't you think ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... comin', Sukey, so be a man; fur I'm gwine to celerbrate. I'm gwine up loike a rocket, ef I does come down loike a stick." And Sergeant Blower said to John Copperhead of Chicago, "Down in 'old Virginny' I used to think the fourth of July a humbug, but this prison has made me a patriot. Now I'd like to burn an all-fired sight of powder, and if you help, and God is willing, I shall do it." In a similar strain wrote ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... you is a humbug?" she said. "You know perfect well why you is using that. You want to hide us, that's why. What a silly old Aunt Sawah ...
— A Little Mother to the Others • L. T. Meade
... their knees? Peace and joy to his innocent fatuity! He believes himself the most rational of men; in fact, he's the most superstitious. He fancies himself a philosopher, an inquirer, a discoverer. He has not yet discovered that he is a humbug, that Theodore is a prig, and that I am an adventurer. He prides himself on his good manners, his urbanity, his knowing a rule of conduct for every occasion in life. My private impression is that his skinny old bosom contains unsuspected treasures of impertinence. He takes his stand on ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... Indeed though I should be the last to imitate it, such chastity on your part would win my admiration. But, having these natural desires, if you attempt to suppress them, then I say that your so-called chastity is all humbug." ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.
... "it may have been all the same with the dog, and I believe there's humbug in it; for if the dog had made his appearance, as master pretends he did, all of a sudden, he'd a been more ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... that of a highly respectable British cynic; his intelligence is largely one of trifles; he is wise over trivial and trumpery things. He delights in reminding us—with an air!—that everybody is a humbug; that we are all rank snobs; that to misuse your aspirates is to be ridiculous and incapable of real merit; that Miss Blank has just slipped out to post a letter to Captain Jones; that Miss Dash wears false teeth and ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... Hague Ordains, the anonymous author attacks "our great reformer and humbug," Count Leo Tolstoy. She claims that there was hardly a village in China so abounding in filth and ignorance as the Tula village of Yasnaya Polyana, ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... men an unfaith in old usages, so judgment halted between sentence and execution. At Three Pines the government teacher brought out influential whites to threaten and cajole the stubborn tribes. At Tunawai the conservatives sent into Nevada for that pacific old humbug, Johnson Sides, most notable of Paiute orators, to harangue his people. Citizens of the towns turned out with food and comforts, and so after a season ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... panic when some accident has thrown them out of their reckoning. Fright unsettles the judgment: the oppressive silence of the woods is a vacuum in which the mind goes astray. It's a hollow sham, this pantheism, I said; being "one with Nature" is all humbug: I should like to see somebody. Man, to be sure, is of very little account, and soon gets beyond his depth; but the society of the least human being is better than this gigantic indifference. The "rapture on the lonely shore" is agreeable ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... "physical scientist" pays any heed at all, that he will devise a series of "tests" and "experiments" of his own, to fit his preconceived notion of things psychical, with the latent conviction, at least, that he will be able to prove the whole thing a humbug. ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... live in Hamburg. Nevertheless he continued to conduct the Berlin Philharmonic Concerts. He died at Cairo, on the 13th of February 1894. Buelow was a pianist of the highest order of intellectual attainment, an artist of remarkably catholic tastes, and a great conductor. A passionate hater of humbug and affectation, he had a ready pen, and a biting, sometimes almost rude wit, yet of his kindness and generosity countless tales were told. His compositions are few and unimportant, but his annotated editions of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... uncompromising style of exposing fools and gibbeting knaves. And after making due allowance for those indescribable differences of taste which separate us from our fathers in every region of art—and even admitting, what is by no means sure, that sixty years ago rascality, snobbery, and humbug were more rampant in society than nowadays—we are still disposed to regret that a writer whose best work is superlatively good should have dwelt so persistently in his earlier stories upon the dreary and ignoble side of English life. From ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... the future of his country. Irish life appeared to him one vast mistake; and so far as he had any plans for the future they were of a life removed from the chaos and fret and toil and moil and disappointments and humbug of politics. He thought of returning once more to his profession; but he resolved that it would be neither amid the incessant decay of Ireland, nor surrounded by hostile faces and unsympathetic hearts in England. His thoughts were of the mighty country which had extended its hospitality and ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... remarkable, for the tiny diatoms made cities, and were far more astonishing animals than they. I thought that would silence them; but they just turned round, and informed me that my diatoms were plants, not animals,—so my story was all humbug. Then I was mad; and couldn't get over the fact that these little rascals had done what we, the kings of the sea, couldn't do. I wasn't content with being the biggest creature there: I wanted to be the most ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... seriously, or that he had any preference for one kind or form of government over another. I repeat,—his radicalism was that of a humorist. He despised big-wigs, and pomp of all sorts, and, above all, humbug and formalism. But his radicalism was important as a sign that our institutions are ceasing to be picturesque; of which, if you consider his nature, you will see that his radicalism was a sign. And he did service to his cause. Not an abuse, whether from the corruption of something old, or the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... disappointed gentleman. "This can never enlarge the intellect or improve the mind. Mrs M. is a humbug—not a drop of information can I get for love or money. Nothing but whisperings here, closetings there—all that comes to my share is threats of shootings and duckings under pumps. I'll go back to Waterloo Place this ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... the summer of 1848, the book was announced as about to appear shortly, under the title of Lavengro: An Autobiography, which was soon changed to Life: a Drama. The difficulty of writing a book which should have "no humbug in it," proved, as may well be supposed, immense, and would in any case be quite sufficient to account for the long period of gestation. His perplexities may have often been very near akin to those ascribed to ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... be to sell out to Wilmarth. He has had a letter from him in which he, Wilmarth, confesses that matters are in a very serious strait unless Mr. Floyd Grandon is willing to risk his private fortune. "Don't do it," counsels the younger. "The new machinery is a confounded humbug, but if any one can make it work, Wilmarth is the man. If St. Vincent wants to get his daughter a husband, why does he not offer her to Wilmarth? If she is as pretty as you say, she ought not go begging for a mate, but when I marry for a fortune ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... takes to beggin' as naterally as a goslin' takes to a puddle; and when she first come to town she commenced a-beggin', and has kep' it up ever since. She used to tackle me the same as she does everybody else, askin' me to give somethin' to this, and to that, and to t'other pet humbug of her'n, but I never would do it; and when she found she could'nt worry me into it, like the rest of 'em, it set her very bitter against me; and I heard of her tellin' I'd treated her with rudeness, which I'd always treated her civilly, only when I said 'No,' she found coaxin' and palaverin' wouldn't ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... for my part," said Sylvie, "a man tried to humbug me at the market wanting to know if I had seen him put on his shirt. Such bosh! There," she cried, interrupting herself, "that's a quarter to ten striking at the Val-de-Grace, and not ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... genuine recipe for the leaven of the Pharisees is still extant, and runs as follows: —Self-deceit 0.33 want of charity 0.5 outward show 0.33, humbug infinity, insert Sim or not as required. Reader, let each one who would seem to be righteous take ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... nationalities—Poland, Finland, and even Ireland; and thus a strong nationalist tendency exists in the revolutionary movement. Against this nationalist tendency Shaw set himself with sudden violence. If the flag of England was a piece of piratical humbug, was not the flag of Poland a piece of piratical humbug too? If we hated the jingoism of the existing armies and frontiers, why should we bring into existence new jingo armies and new jingo frontiers? All the other revolutionists ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... fingering a headstall.) Jack's an ass. There's enough brass on this to load a mule—and, if the Americans know anything about anything, it can be cut down to a bit only. 'Don't want the watering-bridle, either. Humbug!—Half a dozen sets of chains and pulleys for one horse! Rot! (Scratching his head.) Now, let's consider it all over from the beginning. By Jove, I've forgotten the scale of weights! Never mind. 'Keep the bit only, and eliminate every boss from the crupper ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... Emma Dean, you dear old humbug. No wonder you couldn't look sad when I talked about leaving Harlowe House. Now, confess. You were in the secret, weren't you?" Grace stood with her hands on Emma's shoulders, looking into ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower
... ought to be up and denouncing, and they crouch and crawl instead of standing upright like free and fearless men, and giving the devil's agent the straightest eye-puncher of which the human arm is capable. I thank Heaven, Sir, that I'm not made on that plan. I'm out to fight humbug and hypocrisy, even when they masquerade as friendship and benevolence; and when I see a fellow coming along with hundreds of pious texts in his mouth, and his hands dripping with the blood of innocent women and children, why, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 19, 1916 • Various
... replied that he might go and be d——d, if he liked, and that he considered him a swab and a humbug, and appealed to Jack Pringle whether he, Jack, ever saw such a sanctified looking prig ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... was saying," resumed the visiter—"as I was observing a little while ago, there are some very outre notions in that book of yours Monsieur Bon-Bon. What, for instance, do you mean by all that humbug about the soul? Pray, sir, what is ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... over to me and accused me of fighting. I explained the whole circumstances, emphasising the fact that the sneaking, drivelling humbug was drawing five shillings from the British Pension Fund and yet was parading and voicing his anti-British sentiments far and wide, when there were many admitted and honourable British prisoners walking about and in greater need of the money. The officer ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... constitution, while I can soon set you on your feet again. I am sick of the Institute and of Moron-val, and never wish to see either more." Thereupon the doctor launched forth in a philippic against the school which supported him. Moronval was a thorough humbug, he never paid anybody, and every one was giving him up; the affair of Madou had done him great injury; and finally Dr. Hirsch went so far as to compliment Jack ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... gasped the yellow hen, in amazement; "if the copper man can do half of these things he is a very wonderful machine. But I suppose it is all humbug, like so many other ...
— Ozma of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... well confess at once that I was sadly disappointed. It was a pleasure, of course, to see what I had read of and pictured to my mind, from early boyhood; but this contemptible little affair looked very much like a humbug. A vague idea had taken possession of my mind that I would see a whole district of country shooting up hot water and sulphurous vapors—a kind of hell upon earth; but that thing ahead of us—that little curl of smoke on the horizon looked so peaceful, so inadequate ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... mildest possible of knowledge to her pupils. Very possibly, too, she will teach Chemistry—think of it, ye brethren of the retort!—without experiments!! For just such atrocious and ridiculous humbug have we known to be passed off on children, in 've-ry expensive' 'first-class' ladies' schools in Philadelphia and in New York, for instruction in Chemistry. The young brains were vexed and wearied day after day to acquire ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... emergency. In his heart the big frog knew he was no wiser than the Yips, but for a frog to know as much as a person was quite remarkable, and the Frogman was shrewd enough to make the people believe he was far more wise than he really was. They never suspected he was a humbug, but listened to his words with great respect and did just what he advised ...
— The Lost Princess of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... hurlyburly of rocks around. That it moves there is no question; but when I tell you that it is now obliged to be artificially kept from falling, by a chain fixing it behind, and a beam to rest on before, I think you will agree with me in muttering "the humbug!" Artists have so diligently falsified the view, ad captandum, that you will have some difficulty in recognising so old a friend as the Logan: it is commonly drawn as if isolated, thus, and would so, no doubt, be very astonishing; but, when my memory ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... you out. You are not a bit solemn, really, only you put on the airs of a sister of mercy. So you don't like Etta; you need not be afraid of telling me so; she is the greatest humbug in the world, only Giles is so foolish as to believe in her. I call her a humbug because she pretends to be what she is not; she is really a most prosaic sort of person, and she wants to make people believe that she is a ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... land for nothing—you need only sign—have they not done the likes of us often enough? No, my friend, none of your humbug. Nowadays we have a little sense," he added, and began shouting at a colt that ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... been here twenty-four hours," he said. "I have looked you up at the first opportunity. Now am I a nuisance? Be frank! I told the servant that if you were at work you weren't to be disturbed. Don't humbug about it; if I am ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... tell me if I'd raise her pay, she'd stop stealin' and—and raise some honest children." Mr. Killibrew threw back his head broke into loud, jelly-like laughter. "Why, don't you know, Peter, she's an old liar. If I gave her a hundred a week, she'd steal. And children! Why, the old humbug! She's too old; she's had her crop. And, besides all that, I don't mind what the old woman takes. It isn't much. She's a good old darky, faithful as a dog." He arose from his swivel-chair briskly and floated Peter out before him. "Tell ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... sad want of spirit in being disciplined into making those disclosures, which at first he seemed bent on withholding. Whether the priest honestly interpreted what he believed the divinity said to him, or whether he was not all the while guilty of a vile humbug, I shall not presume to decide. At any rate, whatever as coming from the god was imparted to those present seemed to be generally of a complimentary nature: a fact which illustrates the sagacity of Kolory, or else the timeserving disposition of this ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... for his agent, when he found that he could neither humbug nor frighten him, Bullion filled out and signed the notes. Next they reviewed the stock-market, and decided upon the course to be pursued. Bullion then fell into a profound meditation, and did not speak for five minutes, though the busy eyebrow showed that his mind was not ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... between I was taken by Canon and Mrs. Thesiger to lunch or dinner or tea in the other Canons' houses, and was introduced to the Dean and the Archbishop. I attended the Cathedral services to an extent that provoked Viola to denounce me as a humbug. ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... "if the old man turns out a humbug, you may do what you please. I wash my hands of the matter. For the girl herself, you may be at rest. I don't know what harm she may do to me, but I certainly can't hurt her. It seems to me," said Newman, "that you are very well matched. You are both hard cases, and M. Nioche and ...
— The American • Henry James
... of our old-country neighbors gave much heed to what are called spirit-rappings. On the contrary, they were regarded as a sort of sleight-of-hand humbug. Some of these spirits seem to be stout able-bodied fellows, judging by the weights they lift and the heavy furniture they bang about. But they do no good work that I know of; never saw wood, grind corn, cook, feed the hungry, or go to the help of poor anxious mothers at the bedsides ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... her, she did not care much for St. Servant, and the people did not prove congenial to her—especially Mademoiselle Therese. Though she seemed to be a clever teacher, Barbara could never be sure that she was speaking the truth, and in writing home she described her as "rather a humbug." ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... and Plato has the added glory of that acquired beauty, that bust of the Indian Bacchus which is now indissolubly mingled with his tradition. They have passed into the world of the ideal, and every humbug takes his freedoms with their names. But Machiavelli, more recent and less popular, is still all human and earthly, a fallen brother—and at the same time that nobly dressed and nobly dreaming writer ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
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