"Imposture" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as we can see through the blinding mist which now surrounds us, it looks as if the State were about as competent to control trade as to control the weather. Bureaucracy is having its fling, and when the mist clears off it will stand revealed as a well-meant (and well-paid) imposture. ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... a disgrace, and leave an imposture. Behead, and leave one of Noah's sons. Curtail, and leave an exclamation denoting surprise, joy, or grief. Behead again, ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - No 1, Nov 1877 • Various
... less than the remaining portion of the journal printed in the proceedings of the investigating committee, is itself strong circumstantial proof of the imposture underlying the whole transaction. Many sections of the completed constitution are not even mentioned in the journal; it does not contain the submission clause of the schedule, and the authenticity of the document ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... a District at some distance from his home, and on his arrival there pretended to be a Maratha Brahman. He was duly accepted by the other Brahmans, who took food with him in his house and invited him to their own. After an interval of some months the imposture was discovered, and it is stated that this official was at a short subsequent period dismissed from Government service on a charge of bribery. The Vidurs are also considered to be clever at personation, and one or two stories are told of frauds being carried out through a Vidur returning to some ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... letter yesterday you had from home. Esquire indeed! It's sickening!—I am ready to have it out with him whenever he likes, and take the nigger after him when he's had his gruel. Go and tell him if you like. It's been dull enough in the place ever since that miserable imposture about the lost belt. You want something to rouse you up, and I'll give it you if you can bring those two fellows up to the scratch; but that you can't do. Look at them sneaking off like a street cur and an Indian ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... could do now was to brazen out the imposture, and he huddled the boat-cloak round Jocko so ...
— Tom Finch's Monkey - and How he Dined with the Admiral • John C. Hutcheson
... she suspects that pique alone can force an entrance into the citadel of his heart, and her demonstrations of aversion are only a ruse de guerre. My poor aunt! I pity the disappointment and mortification to which you are destined, when you discover how complete is the imposture ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... sometimes entertained, but oftener wearied. She was struck by the apparent talents and knowledge displayed in the various conversations she listened to, and it was long before she discovered, that the talents were for the most part those of imposture, and the knowledge nothing more than was necessary to assist them. But what deceived her most, was the air of constant gaiety and good spirits, displayed by every visitor, and which she supposed to arise from content as constant, and from benevolence as ready. At length, from ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... stories your kind presence here shows that you have curiosity and sympathy, appeal to a great number of our other faculties, besides our mere sense of ridicule. The humourous writer professes to awaken and direct your love, your pity, your kindness—your scorn for untruth, pretension, imposture—your tenderness for the weak, the poor, the oppressed, the unhappy. To the best of his means and ability he comments on all the ordinary actions and passions of life almost. He takes upon himself to be the week-day preacher, ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... London assembled by tens of thousands to burn the Pope in effigy. The government posted cavalry at Temple Bar, and placed ordnance round Whitehall. In that year our tongue was enriched with two words, Mob and Sham, remarkable memorials of a season of tumult and imposture. [21] Opponents of the court were called Birminghams, Petitioners, and Exclusionists. Those who took the King's side were Antibirminghams, Abhorrers, and Tantivies. These appellations soon become obsolete: but at this time were first heard ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... been maintained by Merker, the Prussian Counsellor of Police. The theory which Stanhope now advanced was, that Caspar was a journeyman tailor or glover, from some small village on the Austrian side of the river Salzach. The reasons which he assigns for his belief in the imposture are all derived from Caspar's supposed want of integrity and veracity. They impeach the character of Caspar living, and not of Caspar dead. Why, then, did Stanhope wait for his death before he proclaimed the imposture? Why did he remain his protector, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... State convention our hearty thanks for their contemptuous treatment of Jim Brooks & Co.'s one-horse concern, consisting of fifteen or twenty officers and three or four privates. That concern is thoroughly bogus—a barefaced imposture which should be squelched and its annual nuisance abated."—New York Tribune, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... and still, to me, seems so improbable, that I must have time to consider. If you will call on me in a week, and produce your facts, I will give you my answer. I am not the man, sir, to wish to keep any one out of his true rights, but I will not yield, on the other hand, to imposture." ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 4 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... infinitely more probable that the remainder was also written by him than by any other person. The great difficulty is to conceive that a youth, like Chatterton, should ever have formed the plan of such an imposture, and should have executed it with so much perseverance and ingenuity; but if we allow (as I think we must) that he was the author of those pieces to which he subjoined his interpretations, I can see no reason whatever for supposing that he had any assistance ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... back, I can scarce conceive why it should have so wrought upon me; for, in truth, the little love I bore the Lord Giovanni might rather have led me to rejoice that his imposture should be laid bare to the eyes of all the world. I think that really there was an element of fear in my feelings—fear that, upon reflection, Madonna Paola might ask herself how came that burning sincerity into the love-songs written in her ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... of every one was intense. The conductor intimated that if he met me in society he would give me my money's worth, the fat man muttered something about my being an "imposture," several lady passengers looked bluely at me, and only one laughed heartily at the whole affair, as I did. It ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... vicomte, "to ask how monsieur explains the 18th Brumaire; was not that an imposture? It was a swindle, and not at all like the conduct ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... with too severely, in a country like England, where (within the last 200 years, and in no uncivilised state of society) persons have been burnt for witchcraft; and in which, even in the present day, every vile imposture and godless pretence of supernatural power is sure of finding eager listeners and astonished admirers. The Boyl-yas, or native sorcerers, are objects of mysterious dread, and are thought to have the power of becoming invisible ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... to them and expose this imposture," said Percival, haughtily. "I suppose you have no objection," with a hardly-concealed sneer, "to go with me ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... that seeks to withdraw even while it is uttered; and yet what it seems to dissemble is all too probably a platitude. But obviously, literature is not—as is the craft and mystery of painting—so at the mercy of a half-imposture, so guarded by unprovable honour. For the art of painting is reserved that shadowy risk, that undefined salvation. May the gods guard us from the further popularising of Impressionism; for the point of honour is the ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... but the devil has got the run of it. As for the reputations of the great dead, they are governed in the main by the chicane that obtains among the living; it is only after generations of flourishing imposture, that even approximate right gets done. Look at Raphael, see how he still reigns supreme over those who have the people's ears and purses at command. True, Guido, Guercino, and Domenichino have at last ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler
... thy crimes turn out so atrocious, that I half repent me of having undertaken to record thy memoirs; yet such monsters ought to be exhibited to public view, that mankind may be upon their guard against imposture; that the world may see how fraud is apt to overshoot itself; and that, as virtue, though it may suffer for a while, will triumph in the end; so iniquity, though it may prosper for a season, will at last be overtaken by that punishment and ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... absurdities, is sure of occupying a conspicuous place in our Colonial literature—I said: "unfortunately for the reputation of Cotton Mather, Hutchinson has preserved the Address of the Ministers, entire." Regarding the document published by Mather in the light of a historical imposture, I expressed satisfaction, that its exposure was provided in a work, sure of circulation and preservation, equally, to say the least, with the Life of Phips or the Magnalia. The Reviewer, availing himself of the opportunity, hereupon pronounces ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... of Guilt, in proportion to his depreciating a Character more sacred. Consider all the different Pursuits and Employments of Men, and you will find half their Actions tend to nothing else but Disguise and Imposture; and all that is done which proceeds not from a Man's very self, is the Action of a Player. For this Reason it is that I make so frequent mention of the Stage: It is, with me, a Matter of the highest Consideration what Parts are well or ill performed, what Passions ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... on this splendid ovation, we may only further remark, that had the Redeemer's mission been on (the infidel theory) a successful imposture, what an opportunity now to have availed Himself of that outburst of popular fervour, and to have marched straight to take possession of the hereditary throne of David. The populace were evidently more than ready to second any such ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... his unfortunate race irrevocably? Perhaps there was an answer somewhere in his consciousness which he dared not voice to himself. Since his visit to the English Atherlys, he had put resolutely aside everything that related to that episode, which he now considered was an unhappy imposture. But there were times when a vision of Lady Elfrida, gazing at him with wondering, fascinated eyes, passed across his fancy; even the contact with his own race and his thoughts of their wrongs recalled to him the tomb of the soldier ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... to pass it off for the highest and most glorious liberty of which the human mind can form any conception. Hobbes, it will be hereafter seen, was the first who, either designedly or undesignedly, palmed off this imposture ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... come into existence, he intended me no benefit, and therefore I owe him no thanks. And the inference which has been made from this wise position is, that the duty of children to parents is a mere imposture, a trick, employed by the old to defraud the ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... Detection of the Imposture of the Cock-Lane Ghost, published in the Newspapers and ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... piece of vulgarity; his like is to be found, not in the Uffizi gallery or among the harmonies of Brahms, but among the plush sofas, rococo clocks and hand-painted oil-paintings of a third-rate auction room. All women, save the least intelligent, penetrate this imposture with sharp eyes. They know that the human body, except for a brief time in infancy, is not a beautiful thing, buta hideous thing. Their own bodies give them no delight; it is their constant effort to disguise and conceal them; they never expose them aesthetically, but only as an act of the ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... latter I have read with some attention, but not having been able to procure the Spanish original, I should be glad to have the opinion of some competent Spanish scholar who has read it, as to its genuineness. My own impression is that it will prove an ingenious (perhaps innocent?) imposture. The story of its discovery in a collection of books sold by auction at Cadiz, and its publication there by Don Adolfo de Castro, in the first place, rather excites suspicion. My impression, however, is formed ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.01.12 • Various
... only the corpse was refused Christian burial, but that the heart which was brought to Vancouver some time after the event, and which the Hawaiians stoutly maintained was that of Captain Cook, was no such thing; and that the whole affair was a piece of imposture which was sought to be palmed off upon the ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... independent place of worship, or to join any already established body of Christians, anathemas are hurled at their heads, and they are told that they are guilty of the heinous crime of schism—schism, in the sense they give it, a figment of sacerdotalism, priestcraft, and imposture. But does the crime of schism not exist? Ay, it does; but it is schism from the true Church of Christ, the Church of which He is the head corner-stone, the beautified in Heaven, the sanctified on earth; from God's people, who are with Him in glory, who are with us here below, ...
— The Last Look - A Tale of the Spanish Inquisition • W.H.G. Kingston
... This is done either by changing the letters and figures, or by the use of an erasive fluid. The perfection with which the latter alteration can be performed is so complete that the most skilful eye cannot detect the imposture. A person may deposit a hundred dollars with a house in New York, and obtain their draft for that amount on Philadelphia; he then alters the one hundred to one thousand by erasing a portion of the letters and ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... required all the solemnity of the senate to repress. Indeed, even there, upon the benches, with a grave face, he often indulged in quips and cranks that convulsed his neighbouring audience, who often, amid the long dreary nights of statistical imposture, sought refuge in his gay sarcasms, his airy ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... incompatibility of such a sect (as a sect elder than Christ) with the originality and heavenly revelation of Christianity. Here is my first point of difference from the Romish objectors. The second is this: not content with exposing the imposture, I go on, and attempt to show in what real circumstances, fraudulently disguised, it might naturally have arisen. In the real circumstances of the Christian church, when struggling with Jewish persecution ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... pageantry of earthly power—and say to it openly, 'You are a lie.' Cleverness and culture could have given a thousand reasons—they did then and they do now—why an indulgence should be believed in; when honesty and common sense could give but one reason for thinking otherwise. Cleverness and imposture get on excellently ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... voice; his children are destroyed in their bloom and innocent beauty. He is arrested, tried for murder, and acquitted as insane. The light breaks in upon him at last; he discovers the imposture which has controlled him; and, made desperate by the full consciousness of his folly and crime, ends the terrible drama ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... head of the ludicrous, is either childish or profane; often healthy, as indicative of vigorous animal life, but always degraded in its relation to manly conditions of thought. It has a secondary use in its power of detecting vulgar imposture; but it only obtains this power by ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... suppress a laugh, it sounded so strangely. Corona herself turned pale, though she firmly believed the whole thing to be an imposture ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... complete master. He had played off the round of his machines to no purpose, and seemed reduced to his last expedient of the pacific kind, the discrediting the Christian religion by bringing the scandal of imposture upon its divine author. This he attempted to do by a project of rebuilding the Jewish temple—which, if he could have compassed, it would have sufficiently answered his wicked design; Christ and the prophet Daniel having in express terms foretold not only its destruction, ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... this nature is easily preserved among servants, when the master of the family thinks his interest is concerned in supporting the imposture. The melancholy produced from her confinement, and the vivacity of her resentment under ill usage, were, by the address of Anthony, and the prepossession of his domestics, perverted into the effects of insanity; and the same interpretation ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... saint, wherefore, if he now was convinced, he must have had very good evidence to convince him. We can imagine the Prior's gratitude to the young cardinal for that timely word when he saw himself in danger perhaps of being called to account for fostering and abetting an imposture. ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... said the Doctor, 'that, at any rate, one of us should go and try whether or not the thing is an imposture.' ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... knowledge, and there are periods when the pressure of these difficulties is felt with more than common force. Such, for example, were the periods of the Renaissance and the Reformation, when changes in the intellectual condition of Europe produced a widespread conviction of the vast amount of imposture and delusion which had received the sanction of a Church that claimed to be infallible, the result being in some countries a silent evanescence of all religious belief among the educated class, even including a large number of ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... struggling. But the churches make no mention of their creeds. They chatter about sex and the magic effect of church attendance and simple faith. If simple faith is enough, the churches and their differences are an imposture. Men are stirred to the deepest questions about life and God, and the Anglican church, for ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... is for the most part nothing but the substitution of reading for experience, of literature for life, of the obsolete fictitious for the contemporary real, education, as you no doubt observed at Oxford, destroys, by supplantation, every mind that is not strong enough to see through the imposture and to use the great Masters of Arts as what they really are and no more: that is, patentees of highly questionable methods of thinking, and manufacturers of highly questionable, and for the majority but half valid representations of life. The schoolboy who ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... heads of the spectators, and hair stood up on end whilst shadows more grotesque than I can tell came out and squatted on the heads. And when I, who was colder and more scientific than the rest, mumbled a trembling protest about "imposture" and "static electricity," Nyarlathotep drave us all out, down the dizzy stairs into the damp, hot, deserted midnight streets. I screamed aloud that I was not afraid; that I never could be afraid; and others screamed with me for solace. We sware to one another ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... (1327), a "king's letter" is given to Robert de Weryngton, authorising him and his agents to collect alms throughout the kingdom for the purpose of building a chapel on the hill where the Earl was beheaded, and praying all prelates and authorities to give him aid and heed. This sanction gave rise to imposture; and in December a proclamation appeared, ordering the arrest and punishment of unauthorised persons collecting money under this pretence, and taking it for ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.01.19 • Various
... at all. All we assert is, that the idea of such a thing is a very common one, and that it is very different from that which is usually held with regard to the works of Newton, Milton, and other gifted sages and philosophers. We might add, in passing, that, unless the Bible be an imposture—in which case it ought to be regarded as far inferior to the works of genuine and truthful poets and philosophers—it does correspond, as we trust will be seen, on an examination of its contents, to ...
— Thoughts on a Revelation • Samuel John Jerram
... and the waves roaring in the history of the nations reveals an abiding divine power. It leaves the self-will of man untouched, yet sets up a rampart against it. The explanation attempted three hundred and fifty years ago of an imposture or an usurpation is incompatible with the clearness of an idea which is carried out persistently through so many generations. Usurpations fall rapidly. But in this one case the divine words themselves contain the idea more clearly ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... pretended. An assembly of grave doctors and theologians cautiously examined Joan's mission, and pronounced it undoubted and supernatural. She was sent to the parliament, then residing at Poictiers; and was interrogated before that assembly: the presidents, the counsellors, who came persuaded of her imposture, went away convinced of her inspiration. A ray of hope began to break through that despair in which the minds of all men were before enveloped. Heaven had now declared itself in favor of France, and had ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... offended by priestly hypocrisy and occult necromantic jugglery,—we, who perhaps in our innermost heart of hearts ardently desire to believe in a supreme Divinity and the grandly progressive Sublime Intention of the Universe, but who, discovering naught but ignoble Cant and Imposture everywhere, are incontinently thrown back on our own resources, . . hence it comes, I say, that we are satisfied to accept ourselves, each man in his own personality, as the Beginning and End of Existence, and to minister to that Absolute ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... yesterday, is fed on its self-sufficiency—of individuals whose consequence grows neither out of manners, intellectual endowments, superior taste, nor polished connections—and of inhabitants of a metropolis, among whom shyness of intercourse is necessary as a security against imposture—it is not to be wondered that most of the showy mansions in these villages are points of repulsion rather than of attraction. It must, however, be conceded, that many of these families are hospitable, charitable, sociable, and anxious to be agreeable—qualities which would ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... wonderful, blameless, glorious life that had ended in the shame and cruelty of the Cross, when suddenly, like a cloud swooping darkly across the heaven of my thoughts, came the suggestive question: "Is it all true? Was Christ indeed Divine—or is it all a myth, a fable—an imposture?" Unconsciously I struck a discordant chord on the organ—a faint tremor shook me, and I ceased playing. An uncomfortable sensation came over me, as of some invisible presence being near me and approaching softly, slowly, ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... not only uninhabited at present, but plainly had never been inhabited at all. The young officer remembered with astonishment its specious, settled, and hospitable air on his arrival. It was only at a prodigious cost that the imposture could have been carried out upon ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... acknowledgments of debts which will be paid, and of debts which will not. Documents, whether in whole or part, of bad debt, being to those of good debt as bad money to bullion, we put for the present these forms of imposture aside (as in analysing a metal we should wash it clear of dross), and then range, in their exact quantities, the true currency of the country on one side, and the store or property of the country on the other. We place gold, and all such substances, on the side of documents, as far as they operate ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... subject:—"Robin Drury," he says, "among those who knew him (and he was known to many, being a porter at the East India House), had the character of a downright honest man, without any appearance of fraud or imposture. He was known to a friend of mine (now living), who frequently called upon him at his house in Lincoln's Inn Fields, which were not then enclosed. He tells me he has often seen him throw a javelin there, and strike a small mark at a surprising distance. It is a pity," he adds, "that this work of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 196, July 30, 1853 • Various
... after the capture of the city, as is said, in consequence of the place of his sepulchre having been revealed to one of his favourites in a dream; he immediately ordered an excavation to be made, and very soon, either by hazard or imposture, a marble slab ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 279, October 20, 1827 • Various
... will live or die; {Bury the Serum.} and then one that waits at this Ceremony, takes the Blood away, (which remains in a Lump, in the middle of the Water) and buries it in the Ground, in a Place unknown to any one, but he that inters it. Now, I believe a great deal of Imposture in these Fellows; yet I never knew their Judgment fail, though I have seen them give their Opinion after this Manner, several times: Some affirm, that there is a smell of Brimstone in the Cabins, when they are Conjuring, ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... precocious development of beauty in Jacqueline. She was firmly resolved that her stepdaughter's obtrusive womanhood should remain in obscurity a very much longer time, under pretence that Jacqueline was still a child. She was a child, at any rate! The portrait was a lie! an imposture! an affront! an outrage! ...
— Jacqueline, v1 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... incredible without the evidence of your own senses. Let me only say this, it was not so much what we saw or heard (in which you might fairly suppose that we were the dupes of our own excited fancy, or the victims of imposture in others) that drove us away, as it was an indefinable terror which seized both of us whenever we passed by the door of a certain unfurnished room, in which we neither saw nor heard anything. And the strangest marvel of all was, that for once ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... generate affectation. Most vain men are vain of qualities which they do not really possess, or possess in a lower degree than they fancy. They are always acting a part, and become touchy from a half-conscious sense of the imposture. But Boswell seems to have had few such illusions. He thoroughly and unfeignedly enjoyed his own peculiarities, and thought his real self much too charming an object to be in need of any disguise. No man, therefore, was ever less embarrassed ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... Clerkenwell, a jeweller's journeyman from Venice, who pretends to practise the transmutation of metals, and to make gold. He squeezed hundreds out of that old miser Denham, who was afraid to have the law of him for imposture, lest all London should laugh at his own credulity and applaud the cheat. And you have not seen the Italian puppet-play, which is vastly entertaining. I could find you novelty and amusement for ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... becomes the highest form of Christian duty. To hold aloof is not to display a superior form of Christianity; it is to be an apostate. As Solovyof has impressively shown in his notable conversations on War and Christianity, pacificism under present conditions is that very sort of religious imposture with which is associated the abominable ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw
... allied. They appear like actors or masqueraders dressed up and painted for amusement, or like swindlers endeavouring to pass themselves off for well-known and respectable members of society. What is the meaning of this strange travestie? Does Nature descend to imposture or masquerade? We answer, she does not. Her principles are too severe. There is a use in every detail of her handiwork. The resemblance of one animal to another is of exactly the same essential nature as the resemblance ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... duchess: her royal highness pretended to treat the whole story as romantic and visionary, or as solely arising from private pique: she chid Miss Temple, for her impertinent credulity: turned away the governess and her niece, for the lies with which she pretended they supported the imposture; and did many improper things in order to re-establish Miss Hobart's honour, which, however, she failed in accomplishing. She had her reasons for not entirely abandoning her, as will appear ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... They are above the average modern type; for their instincts tell them what real ruling is, and they despise the mockery which they have been taught to call "Reigning." "We ARE NOT the first men," they say, "and have nevertheless to STAND FOR them: of this imposture have we at last become weary and disgusted." It is the kings who tell Zarathustra: "There is no sorer misfortune in all human destiny than when the mighty of the earth are not also the first men. There everything becometh false and distorted and monstrous." The ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... and banished their fellow-subjects, and to which they forced every man to swear at the peril of his life. And now, to reconcile themselves to the world, they declare this creed, bought by so much blood, to be an imposture and a chimera. I have no doubt that they always thought it to be so, when they were destroying everything at home and abroad for its establishment. It is no strange thing, to those who look into the nature of corrupted man, to find a violent ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... succeeded in attracting a concourse of fifty or sixty thousand people to see his ascent, failed in the primary part of his undertaking,—that of filling his balloon. The people, after waiting patiently for three hours, and supposing "the whole affair an imposture, rushed in and tore it to pieces." In consequence of this failure, and the riots with which it was followed, the Governor forbade Signor Lunardi to make his ascent from Chelsea Hospital grounds. He writes again to his friend, ...
— Up in the Clouds - Balloon Voyages • R.M. Ballantyne
... obscurity and extent of an aristocracy multiplying their numbers in every generation, and resting upon no basis of property, that it is equally possible for the true "baron" to lie under suspicion as a pretender, and for the false one to prosper by imposture. On the other hand, who could hope to pass himself off for six weeks as an English earl? Yet it is evident, that where counterfeit claims are so easy, the intrusion of persons unqualified, or doubtfully qualified, must be so numerous and constant that long ago every pure ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... were attributed to the influence of malignant spirits. To meet these, the medicine-man, or juggler, invested himself with his mysterious character, and endeavored to exorcise the demon by a great variety of ceremonies, a mixture of delusion and imposture. For this purpose, he arrayed himself in a strange and fanciful dress, and on his first arrival began to sing and dance round the sufferer, invoking the spirits with loud cries. When exhausted with these exertions, ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... Bellairs and Bella, the last time she was ever likely to see them on the old frank and intimate footing. Even now, indeed, the intimacy had lost much of its charm. She loved them both more than ever, but the miserable consciousness of imposture weighed heavily upon her, and seemed to herself to colour every word she uttered. She did not stay long; and making a circuit in order to pass the jail again, in hopes of meeting her mother, she walked ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 2 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... spirit. He shrank from the rude scenes that opened before him,—from the mocker's sneer and the ruler's scourge; from the glare of impatient revenge, and the weeping eyes of helpless friendship; from the insignia of imposture and of shame; and from the protracted, thirsty, torturing death. He shrank from these,—he shrank from the rupture of tender ties,—he shrank from the parting with deeply-loved friends,—his soul was overburdened, his ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... days of our own youth, he placed the myth and the legend, with their unconscious origin and growth, not alone in opposition to the idea of Deity intervening to interrupt established order, but also to that of imposture and conscious fraud; Otfr. Mueller, when he proved that Greek mythology, far from containing moral abstractions or historical facts, is the involuntary personification of surrounding nature, subsequently developed by imagination; Max Mueller, even, when he creates the new science ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... prevaricators, and to urge that such men could not possibly come with a purpose to say or do anything that was sincere. The council was incensed, the people were in a rage, and Nicias, who knew nothing of the deceit and the imposture, was in the greatest confusion, equally surprised and ashamed at such a change in the men. So thus the Lacedaemonian ambassadors were utterly rejected, and Alcibiades was declared general, who presently united the Argives, the Eleans, and the people ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... himself my Lord Richard Onslow, and pretended to be the Speaker's son, having forged letters of credit Ind drawn money from several bankers, came to Florence, and was received as an Englishman of quality by Marquis Riccardi, who could not be convinced by Mr. Mann of the imposture till the adventurer ran away on foot to ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... religion, interpreted its laws, and conducted its ceremonies. Their character was similar to that of the Persian Magi, and they are often confounded by the Greek historians. Like the priests in most other nations, they employed religion in subserviency to the ruling powers, and made use of imposture to serve the purposes of civil policy. Accordingly Diodorus Siculus relates (lib. ii., p. 31, compared with Daniel ii. 1, &c., Eccles. xliv. 3) that they pretended to predict future events by divination, to explain prodigies, interpret dreams, and avert evils or confer benefits ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield
... chaussuye of our forefathers, and that is still worn by our Swiss? ["Cod-pieces worn"—Cotton]—To what end do we make a show of our implements in figure under our breeches, and often, which is worse, above their natural size, by falsehood and imposture? I have half a mind to believe that this sort of vestment was invented in the better and more conscientious ages, that the world might not be deceived, and that every one should give a public account of his proportions: the simple nations wear them ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... imposture, Louis ne put pas s'en defendre. Il resolut d'envoyer, au prince et au Kan convertis une ambassade pour les feliciter de leur bonheur et les engager a favoriser et a propager dans leurs etats la religion chretienne. L'ambassadeur ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt
... Madame Chasselion's fete champetre— would jar upon our Anglican prejudices. As for Winkle (Porthos), the translation nicely hits off his love of manly exercises, while resting his pretensions on a more solid basis of fact than appears in the original. In the incident of the baldric, however, the imposture underlying Mr. W.'s green shooting-coat is conveyed with ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... meeting with two enthusiastic Mormon apostles, and a long and careful examination, under their guidance, of the then newly-delivered revelations and prophecies of Joseph Smith. He describes his Mormon acquaintances as men of some intelligence, but given over, totally and blindly, to Smith's imposture. ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... pomposity, she was more sarcastic now than she became when after-years of suffering had softened her nature. Truth looked out of her bright eyes, and rose up armed and flashed scorn or denial when she encountered flattery or meanness or imposture. ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... last lecture of our course I propose to make a brief excursion with you into the border-land of science, a region chiefly occupied by imposture and superstition. To show there is such a territory, we have only to name a few of its inhabitants, such as mesmerism, animal magnetism, odylism, hypnotism, mind-reading, faith-cures, clairvoyance, spiritism, including table-rapping, spirit-rapping, ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... was glad that he had not suspected the young man unjustly. When an imposture is unmasked it is no ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... these meaner streets afforded; saying to myself, as I pushed my way through the costers' stalls of Great James Street, 'Now you are exchanging squalor for magnificence. Be prepared for a surprise.' But the ruse failed utterly, and my mind laughed aloud at the pitiful imposture. Another device was to create points of interest, like a series of shrines along a tedious road, which should present some aspect of allurement. There was a book-shop here or an art-shop there; yesterday ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... for the expression in Lindesay's narrative, "My mother has sent me," could only be used by St. John, the adopted son of the Virgin Mary. The whole story is so well attested, that we have only the choice between a miracle or an imposture. Mr. Pinkerton plausibly argues, from the caution against incontinence, that the Queen was privy to the scheme of those who had recourse to this expedient, to deter King James from ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... honesty to bring them. Each looked at me unblushingly, as though he were really original, and not a cheap German print of originals I had seen in books and pictures since I could read. I really think that they must have been unaware of their imposture. They could hardly have ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... full-page advertisements of extraordinary wines and spirits. We are not prepared to recommend them except as vermin killers. Nor are we prepared to remain silent as to their alleged virtues. The whole system of testimonials is a huge imposture. Granted that the sample is all that it is described as being, who can guarantee that what is served to the public in the face of severe competition will be ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... and to be characterised, as it was in the past, by the strong evidence of miracles,—in other words, by transcendental phenomena of a very extraordinary kind, connecting in a direct manner with what is generically termed Black Magic. Now, Black Magic in the past may have been imposture reinforced by delusion, and to state that it is recurring at the present day does not commit anyone to an opinion upon its veridical origin. To say, also, that the existence of modern diabolism has passed from the region of rumour ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... and Dryden and the author I have referred to were probably both captivated into belief by some fatuitous realization of their horoscopic predictions. Nor can we altogether blame their credulity, when we see biology, table-turning, rapping, and all the family of imposture, taken up seriously in ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... anything. But a chemist who knows something of the limitations of that science—who knows what chemists have done and who knows the nature of things—cannot be imposed upon. When no one can be imposed upon, orthodox religion cannot exist. It is an imposture, and there must be impostors and there must be victims, or the religion ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... over the crowded house. The guests flocked around the jars to taste of the wine that had been produced by occult power. The priests frowned their displeasure, and the authorities sneered and whispered "charlatan"; "fraud"; "shameful imposture"; and other expressions that always follow an occurrence ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... at the task of fashioning with invisible hands the dust of the earth and the viewless air into forms of life. I had never seen plants actually grow before and had deemed the Indian juggler's trick an imposture. But here I saw them lifting their heads, putting forth their buds, and opening their flowers by movements which the eye could follow. I confess that I fairly listened to ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... pretended and counterfeit.' I have heard of many things pretended, but no one ever could succeed in feigning himself a devil. How is it we see them in such distress when the hand is laid on them? What room is here for fraud? what suspicion of imposture? ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... decision will make—to the wretches that will be roasted at the stake—to our country—and I do not deem it too serious to say, to conscience and to God. We are answerable; and if duty be anything more than a word of imposture, if conscience be not a bugbear, we are preparing to make ourselves ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... earth. Lord L. returned to his bed; but not to rest. His mind was harassed by the consideration of the extraordinary event which had occurred to him. Was it real?—was it the work of imagination?—was it the result of imposture?—It was all incomprehensible. He resolved in the morning not to mention the appearance till he should have well observed the manners and the countenances of the family: he was conscious that, if any deception had been practised, its authors would be too delighted with their ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 273, September 15, 1827 • Various
... conceivable? A crime may be never so skilfully planned—when the eyes of deep wisdom rest on it, it becomes like a trivial show that we offer to very small children at nightfall: some magic-lantern performance, whose tawdry imposture a last gleam of sunshine lays bare. Can you conceive Jesus Christ—nay, any wise man you have happened to meet—in the midst of the unnatural gloom that overhung Elsinore? Is not every action of Hamlet induced by a fanatical ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... five years after their removal to the Great Salt Lake valley, B. G. Ferris wrote, "The real miracle [of their success] consists in so large a body of men and women, in a civilized land, and in the nineteenth century, being brought under, governed, and controlled by such gross religious imposture. "This statement presents, in concise form, the general view of the surprising features of the success of the Mormon leaders, in forming, augmenting, and keeping together their flock; but it is a mistaken view. To accept it would be to concede that, in ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... sham; he bitterly resented the innuendoes against the piety of the Sudleys, not that he cared for piety, save in the abstract; he was daunted by the brutal ignorance, the doltish inefficiency of the imposture that had so readily accepted his patently false answers to the simple questions. He had a sort of crude reverence for education, and it had seemed to him a very serious matter to take such liberties ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... to her dread of exposure made full confession at the point of death. The third escaped. Another woman who had superintended the affair was shot between Florence and Bologna in the valleys of the Apennines. Yet after the manifestation of Bianca's imposture, the Duke continued to recognize Antonio as belonging to the Medicean family; and his successor was obliged to compel this young man to assume the Cross of Malta, in order to exclude his posterity from ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... the Cumberland, with seven men and three officers; but finding that she was unable to bear the voyage, he resolved to confide in the honor of the French, and present his passport at the Mauritius. There he was detained a prisoner six years; first charged with imposture, then treated as a spy; and when these imputations were refuted, he was accused of violating his passport. The French had found in his journal a wish dotted down to examine the state of that settlement, written when a stranger to the renewal of war. Some doubt seems to have been really entertained, ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... time "the Golden Shoemaker" persisted valiantly in his attempt to answer every letter he received. Miss Jemima's scornful disapproval was of no avail. In vain she declared her conviction that every other letter was an imposture or a hoax, and pointed out that, if people wanted their letters answered, they ought to enclose a stamp. Then, for the twentieth time, she repeated her suggestion that a secretary should be engaged. At first her brother waived this proposal aside; but at length it became imperative that help should ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... above fail to open the eyes of the duped workmen of this country, what will succeed in doing so? Let us conclude this portion of our subject—disgusting enough, but necessary to expose imposture—with the following tabular view, &c., of the gross contradiction of the men, whom we wish to hold up to universal and deserved contempt, on even the most vital points of the controversy in which they are engaged; and then let our readers say ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... from the Oath of Supremacy (1688); and England's Confusion (1659). Memoirs of Lord Anglesey were published by Sir P. Pett in 1693, but contain little biographical information and were repudiated as a mere imposture by Sir John Thompson (Lord Haversham), his son-in-law, in his preface to Lord Anglesey's State of the Government in 1694. The author however of the preface to The Rights of the Lords asserted (1702), while blaming their publication ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... 8th, under the above heading, 'A Correspondent' tries at some length to describe what he calls a most impudent imposture. I having lived at B—— for three months in the autumn of last year as butler to the house, I thought perhaps my experience of the ghost of B—— might be of interest to many of your readers, and as the story has now become public property, I shall not be doing any one ...
— The Alleged Haunting of B—— House • Various
... Vicar's bedroom. The Revd. Howel said nothing more about grandchildren; often—with a finer sense—spoke to him not as though he were a son, but as a beloved daughter. At last he died in his sleep one night, holding David's hand, looking so ineffably happy that the impostor inwardly gloried in his imposture as in one of the best deeds ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston |
