"Cant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dog! To stop my sport Vain were thy cant and beggar whine, Though human spirits of thy sort Were ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... bigness, just as it isn't altogether its freedom and its openness. Perhaps it's because it keeps its spirit of the adventurous. I love it the same as my children love The Arabian Nights and The Swiss Family Robinson. I thought it was mostly cant, once, that cry about being next to nature, but the more I know about nature the more I feel with Pope that naught but man is vile, to speak as impersonally, my dear Diddums, as the occasion will permit. ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... far spent, yet he behoved in the afternoon, yea when near evening, to run fast, and not to lie in the field, and miss his lodging, upon which he, with uplifted eyes, said, "Lord, how can I run? Lord, draw me, and I shall run," Cant. i. 4. The minister hearing this, desired him to pray, but he answered nothing; yet within an hour he prayed before him and his own lady very devoutly, and bemoaned his own weakness both inward and outward, saying, "I ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... made of Mark Twain's natural leaning toward ministers of the gospel, and the explanation of it is easier to realize than to convey. He was hopelessly unorthodox—rankly rebellious as to creeds. Anything resembling cant or the curtailment of mental liberty roused only his resentment and irony. Yet something in his heart always warmed toward any laborer in the vineyard, and if we could put the explanation into a single sentence, perhaps ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... who knew the old farmer soldier knew him to be one of the most stubborn fighters in the army, and at the same time a "Methodist of the Methodists." He was moreover a pure Christian gentleman and a churchman of the straightest sect. There was no cant superstitions or affectation in his make-up, and what he said he meant. It was doubtful if he ever had an evil thought, and while his manners might have been at times blunt, he was always sincere and his language chosen and chaste, ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... accept Sophie and a clear conscience, poverty and a country parish. But persons who have wealth absolutely in their power, to take or to leave, sec clearly how much poetical extravagance, hypocrisy, and cant exist in the arguments of those who advocate the beauties and advantages of being poor. Deliberately and voluntarily to forego the opportunities, the influence, the ease, the refinement, which money alone can command—let ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... fail: yet Safe's the word; Take courage and attempt a third. But first with care employ your thoughts Where critics mark'd your former faults; The trivial turns, the borrow'd wit, The similes that nothing fit; The cant which every fool repeats, Town jests and coffeehouse conceits, Descriptions tedious, flat, and dry, And introduced the Lord knows why: Or where we find your fury set Against the harmless alphabet; On ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... pigments enjoyed by the medivalists and unattainable now, it would be far better were they to make the best use of existing materials, and study their further development. There is no need for this cant cry of fugacity, which casts such a blight on modern art. Durable pigments are not yet obsolete, they have only to be employed and employed properly to furnish paintings equal in permanence to those of the old masters. "Titian," says Haydon, "got his colours from the colour shops on ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... school—defined woman, "a featherless biped vehemently addicted to jealousy." Whether she is more featherless than the male can be decided at a trifling expense of time, money, and reason: you have but to go to court. But as for envy and jealousy, I think it is pure, unobservant, antique Cant which has fixed them on the female character distinctively. As a molehill to a mountain is women's jealousy to men's. Agatha may have a host of virtues and graces, and yet her female acquaintance will not hate her, provided ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... serious conversation, like his serious writing, is his best. No one ever stammered out such fine piquant, deep, eloquent things, in half a dozen sentences, as he does. His jests scald like tears; and he probes a question with a play upon words. There was no fuss or cant about him. He has furnished many a text for Coleridge to preach upon." (I. Plain Speaker.) Charles was frequently merry; but ever, at the back of his merriment, there reposed a grave depth, in which rich colors and tender lights were inlaid. For his jests sprang ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... that this is both obvious and to be ignored—a platitude with a flavour of cant. Is it? Do we not hear again and again the appeal to envy and hatred as motives of action, a desire in social life to pull down, if levelling up is not immediately practicable? Is not jealousy of the success of others, whether individuals ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson
... type appealed strongly to the broker. Not only did he enjoy their bohemianism and careless good-fellowship, but he entered fully into the spirit of their way of living. He professed to understand them and in a measure to sympathize with them. Entirely without humbug or cant, he recognized that they had their own place in the social game. They were outcasts, if you will, but interesting and amusing outcasts. He rather liked the looseness of living which does not quite reach the disreputable. Behind all this, however, was a high ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... offence — but my heart is very full — and if your worship won't give me leave to speak, — I must vent it in prayers to heaven for my benefactor.' When he quitted the room, Lismahago said, he should have a much better opinion of his honesty, if he did not whine and cant so abominably; but that he had always observed those weeping and praying fellows were hypocrites at bottom. Mr Bramble made no reply to this sarcastic remark, proceeding from the lieutenant's resentment of Clinker having, ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... and in the effort fell partially over a settee as he sputtered out: "I'm a gemptman, what-smatter with Hanner." He intended to use the cant phrase, "That's what's the ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... steadily. It was the long-meditated defence of Turner, provoked by Blackwood's Magazine six years before, encouraged by Carlyle's "Heroes," and necessitated by the silence, on this topic, of the more enlightened leaders of thought in an age of connoisseurship and cant. ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... the world, either. Nature's poet fares no better than Nature herself. Half the world is out of the pale of knowledge; a good part of the rest are stunted by cant in its Protean shapes, or by inherited narrowness and prejudice, and innumerable soul-cankers. They neither know nor think of Nature or Poetry. Just as there are hundreds in all great cities who never leave their accustomed streets winter or ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... Gospel as carried over the world by Paul, Cleon in his own distinguished person sums up the last word of Greek culture, in its intellectual prowess, its serene beauty, its many-sided charm, and its total inability to save the world. Cleon is an absolute pessimist. He is sincere; such cant as the "choir invisible" means nothing to him, for death will turn his splendid mind into a pinch of dust. Death is far more horrible to poets and artists than to the ignorant, he assures the king, who had thought just the opposite: is it ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... represents a healthy idea of danger, why can you not simply take the idea of danger and leave the idea of damnation? If you see clearly the kernel of common-sense in the nut of Christian orthodoxy, why cannot you simply take the kernel and leave the nut? Why cannot you (to use that cant phrase of the newspapers which I, as a highly scholarly agnostic, am a little ashamed of using) why cannot you simply take what is good in Christianity, what you can define as valuable, what you can comprehend, and leave all the rest, all the absolute ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... Defututa Mentula a worn-out voluptuary. Mentula is a cant term which Catullus frequently uses for a libidinous person, ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... almost endangering her beautiful neck as she peered down into the hole where the water lay, black and gloomy. She turned and walked aft with her feet in the scuppers, and her right hand pressed against the deck, so great was the cant on the vessel. It was uphill walking too, for the schooner was sagged in the waist, and the stern tilted up to a considerable height. Nevertheless she reached the poop at ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... "Simus," literally, fiat-nosed, was a cant word, used for a clown; Galba being jeered for his rusticity, in consequence of his long retirement. See c. viii. Indeed, they ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... strange. Yet Flora seemed to understand. And I had such an unpleasant sense of being outside, and not understanding, as I never felt before, and I did not like it a bit. I knew quite well that if Father had been there, he would have said it was all stuff and cant. But I did not feel so sure of my Aunt Kezia. And suppose it were not cant, but was something unutterably real,—something that I ought to know, and must know some day, if I were ever to get to Heaven! I did not ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... gave him new reassurance, and he could even face the nights, the long hours when Tenney was at home. Tenney he took pains not to meet. He distinctly objected to being pressed into a corner by the revivalist cant of a man he could not wisely offend. Nor did he see her whom he called "the woman." Sometimes in the early dusk after Tenney had got home, he was strongly moved to walk past the house and see if their light looked cheerful, or if he could hear the sound ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... second Augustine or Francois Xavier would ever have done half the good among the devil-may-care Roumis that was wrought by the dauntless, listless, reckless soldier, who followed instinctively the one religion which has no cant in its brave, simple creed, and binds man to man in links that are as true as steel—the religion of a gallant gentleman's ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... don't know," said Honor in assumed despair, "I've lost my programme and am thrown quite on the mercy and veracity of my gentlemen friends. I regret to say—if you say this is yours—I cant refuse it, for I've neither programme nor ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... live in a way and do things in a style that would be impossible in New York. At my club I meet all kinds of men. Many of them are prominent citizens and many of them have large fortunes. I mix with them all. I don't mean to say I run constantly with the prom. cits. and the millionaires. I don't. I cant afford that. But they occasionally entertain me. And I as often entertain them. So many restaurants here are both inexpensive and good that I can return their hospitality self-respectingly and without undue expense. In New York I would not only ...
— The Native Son • Inez Haynes Irwin
... constantly dwelling upon a single idea, and by excluding rational and corrective influences, has brought about a quite abnormal state of mind, is still counted of value by theologians. Much of the current cant concerning 'mysticism' may be cited in illustration of this. Exactly what mysticism is no one appears to know. Definitions are numerous and varied. So far as most mystics are concerned the definition of Harnack—"Mysticism is rationalism applied to a sphere beyond reason"—appears to hit the mark, ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... diversities. And that is the objection urged by all the lower and more vulgar schools of infidelity throughout the world. In all these schools, called schools of Rationalism in Germany, Socialism in England, and by various other names in various countries which they infest, this is the universal cant. The first step of all these philosophical moralists and regenerators of the human race is to attack the agency through which religion and Christianity are administered to man. But in this there is nothing ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... into the wind, a jostling crowd of men poured out on the ice from under the flapping sail. Each man bore a tool of some sort, either ax, cant-dog, iron-shod peavey-stick, or cross-cut saw; and the moonshine flashed on the steel surfaces. It was plain that the party viewed its expedition as an opportunity for reckless roistering, and spirits had added a spur to ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... monster survives? Is it nothing that they have fallen, and yet such a wrong that the fetters of the bondman should fall? Is the claim of property in man so sacred, and the blood of our brothers so cheap? Have done with this heartless cant,—this prating about the constitutional rights of traitors! When the Moslem chief was marching to the chastisement of a revolted tribe, the insurgents, seeing disaster inevitable in a fair field, resorted ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... old sundowners come, And cunningly ask if the master's at home, 'Be off,' she replies, 'with your blarney and cant, Or I'll call my son Andy; ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... and yet to deny the equal claim of all to the use of God's Earth, to share in those blessings which the great Father of all men has lavished upon His children, and which form the only means by which life can be maintained, is but hypocrisy and cant. The "rights of property," the financial interests of the privileged classes, the Elder Brothers, the so-called "power of the capitalists," may be based on and involved in the recognition of the claim of the few to control the use of the Earth. But the rights of man, the material, moral and spiritual ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... me in right, Doc," and Doc was accomplishing it, partly to oblige Brandes, partly for practice. His agreeable voice so nicely pitched, so delightfully persuasive, recapitulating all the commonplaces and cant phrases concerning the literature of the day, penetrated gratefully the intellectual isolation of these humble gentlepeople, and won very easily their innocent esteem. With the Reverend Mr. Carew Doc discussed such topics as the influence on ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... manner said, 'and all action is a degrading pis-aller. Get through the day somehow, with as little harm to yourself and other people as may be; do your duty if you like it, but, for heaven's sake, don't cant ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... ties, than men are. On the contrary, we are perpetually told that women are better than men, by those who are totally opposed to treating them as if they were as good; so that the saying has passed into a piece of tiresome cant, intended to put a complimentary face upon an injury, and resembling those celebrations of royal clemency which, according to Gulliver, the king of Lilliput always prefixed to his most sanguinary decrees. If women are better than men in anything, it ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill
... cant, but am satisfied that the chief reason why France does not succeed better in her revolutions is, because she lacks the steadiness which a sincere devotion to religion gives to a nation. The country needs less man-worship and more God-worship. It ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... enough, but savors of cant in the mouths of men who fought long and hard to maintain ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... last lingering illness, these "Observations" were for him but an inadequate outlet for the expression of the courageous and hopeful philosophy which was always his distinguishing characteristic. To cover his pain with a jest,—to preach without cant the gospel of love,—to do the best that he could do according to the lights before him—these generous motives and high purposes are to be read between the lines by those who knew him as legibly as if they shone out in words upon ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley
... fire muskets at as yet. I have a scouting party going out now to see if they can't pick up some or get something from them. I came to this post this day at 12 o'clock & shall remain here till this time to-morrow if God spares my life, with no other covering than the trees. I cant learn anything with respect to them different from what I wrote yesterday. The rest of the troops & their Ships lie at Staten Island yet to wait the success of this part of their army, as I suppose before they make any other attempt. They have ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... if they do," said Dick bluntly; "I don't believe you when you say so. I call it cant. How do you know? You can't tell ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... behind his back and bubbles out, 'Hold not out your hand to me lest I spit on it. 'Tis like your snivelling cant to write sweet psalms for smuggling rogues and try to frighten honest ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... the movement, but underneath the absurdities there was something serious. These young men and women, who were themselves terribly in earnest, were systematically hostile not only to accepted conventionalities in the matter of dress, but to all manner of shams, hypocrisy, and cant in the broad Carlylean sense of those terms. To the "beautiful souls" of the older generation, who had habitually, in conversation and literature, shed pathetic tears over the defects of Russian social and political organisation without ever moving a finger ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... new Objection to Clarissa, in that she talked so much of Religion, which he call'd Canting. Nay, Sir, said Bellario, 'I cannot see how she can be said to cant; for her religious Reflections are neither nonsensical or affected, but such as naturally arise from a pious Mind in her several Situations; and if you are a Christian, Sir, I am sure you cannot, on Consideration, dislike ...
— Remarks on Clarissa (1749) • Sarah Fielding
... indeed?" shouted Mr Durfy; "going with you, is he? to learn how to cant and sing psalms! Not if I know it—or if he does, you and he and your brother and your old fool ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... to come back and take up his wanderings and his discoveries. Some day, I will tell you how he broke his promise to help a friend. That was long since, and he has, by this time, been nearly spoilt for what he would call shikar. He is forgetting the slang, and the beggar's cant, and the marks, and the signs, and the drift of the undercurrents, which, if a man would master, he must always continue ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... custom at that time for persons of the first rank and distinction to give their birthday suits to the most favoured actors. I think Mr. Thurmond was honoured by General Ingolsby with his. But his finances being at the last tide of ebb, the rich suit was put in buckle (a cant word for forty in the hundred interest). One night, notice was given that the General would be present with the Government at the play, and all the performers on the stage were preparing to dress out in the suits presented. The spouse of Johnny (as he was commonly called) try'd ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... see your brazen face blush black, when you hear yourself proved to be a liar and a hypocrite. At a public meeting in the Town-hall yesterday, I had the pleasure of hearing myself insulted by the speaker opposed to me in the question under discussion, by allusions to my private affairs; by cant about monsters without natural affection, family despots, and such trash; and when I rose to answer, I was met by a shout from the filthy mob, where the mention of your name enabled me at once to detect the quarter in which this base attack had originated. When I looked round, ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... This cant about posterity I hate; About posterity were I to prate, Who then the living would amuse? For they Will have diversion, ay, and 'tis their due. A sprightly fellow's presence at your play, Methinks should also count for something too; Whose genial wit the audience still inspires, Knows from ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... and disgusted with this cant:—"The Carnatic is a country that will soon recover, and become instantly as prosperous as ever." They think they are talking to innocents, who will believe that by sowing of dragons' teeth, men may come up ready grown and ready armed. They who will give themselves the trouble of considering ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... merest cant," he said, "for Great Britain and France to talk about the violation of the neutrality of Belgium after what they themselves have done and are doing.... The only forum of public opinion open to me is the United States. The situation is far too vital ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... people of leisure and cultivation, fond of light and fanciful pursuits, and among others of forming verbal conceits. Hence, we find that the disciples were first called Christians at Antioch, no doubt, derisively,[30] and in Julian's time they had a cant saying that they had suffered nothing from the X or the K (Christ or Constantius). A celebrated school of rhetoric was established here, and no doubt some of the effusions penned at this time, abounded ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... Above all cant, all arguments of men, Above all superstitions, old or new, Above all creeds of every age and clime, Stands the eternal truth—the ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... destructive to the ten thousand things in life that they do not enjoy or understand or tolerate, things that fill them, therefore, with envy and perplexity—such things as pleasure, beauty, delicacy, leisure. In the cant of modern talk you will find them call everything that is not crude and forcible in life "degenerate." But back to the very earliest writings, in the most bloodthirsty outpourings of the Hebrew prophets, for example, you will ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... looking at her husband, and her own face was transfigured. Mrs. Zelotes, also, seemed to radiate with a sort of harsh and prickly delight. She descanted upon the hard-earned savings which Andrew had risked, but she held her old head very high with reluctant joy, and her bonnet had a rakish cant. ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Campbell, I. C. Wears, and others delivered eloquent addresses to enthusiastic audiences. Mr. Douglass deeply wounded the religious feelings of his race by declaring; "I shall not dwell in any hackneyed cant by thanking God for this deliverance which has been wrought out through our common humanity." A hundred pulpits, a hundred trenchant pens sprang at the declaration with fiery indignation; and it was some years before the bold orator was able to make himself tolerable ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... without good humour. Pope was proud of his notice. Wycherley wrote verses in his praise, which he was charged by Dennis with writing to himself, and they agreed for a while to flatter one another. It is pleasant to remark how soon Pope learned the cant of an author, and began to treat critics with contempt, though he had yet suffered nothing from them. But the fondness of Wycherley was too violent to last. His esteem of Pope was such that he submitted ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... yellow freckles and red hair, and was simply clad in white satin shoes, a pink muslin dress, an apple-green stuff sash, and black silk gloves, with yellow roses in her hair. Wherefore I fled from Miss McKenna and sought my friend Private Mulvaney, who was at the cant—refreshment-table. ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... dealt chiefly with sport and games, to my own great relief be it added, for the dweller in the tents of the literary world hears but little of the ordinary topics of conversation, and becomes suffocated, if he be not to the manner born, with the nauseating cant and self-sufficiency which is so typical of the literary world of to-day, and more especially typical of its younger members. But at George Newnes's house you hear but little shop. We discussed golf and ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... it this hour, your Majesty, And cant the words in keeping with your wish. To himself as he goes.] Decently done!... He slipped out "sacrifice," And scarce could hide his heartache for his girl. Well ached it!—But when these things have to be It is as well to ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... should have been utterly dependent on Europe. That is just what Europe would have liked. But he did not legislate for Europe, but for America. He considered its necessities, not abstract theories, nor even the interests of other nations. How hypocritical the cant in England about free-trade! There never was free-trade in that country, except in reference to some things it must have, and some things it could monopolize. Why did Parliament retain the duty on tobacco and wines and other things? Because ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... wedlock. The virgins wear theirs loose, plaited in small plaits of three, which, being parted in the centre, allows the hair to fall evenly down all round the head like a well-arranged mop. On approaching these fairs, they seductively give their heads a cant backwards, with a half side-jerk, which parts the locks in front, and discloses a pretty little smiling face, with teeth as white as pearls, and lips as red as rubies. Pretty as they are when young, this beauty fades at once after bearing children, and ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... devil. And there were many other reasons why the saints should work miracles. They had done so under the old dispensation, and there was no obvious reason why Christians should be worse off than Jews. And again, although it be true, in the modern phrase, which is beginning to savour a little of cant, that the highest natural is the highest supernatural, nevertheless natural facts permit us to be so easily familiar with them, that they have an air of commonness; and when we have a vast idea to express, there is always a disposition ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... way; in the wilderness He'll send us manna." On similar occasions in the past Hubbard had made like remarks to this, and he continued to make them on similar occasions in the future. Invariably they were made with a simplicity that robbed them of all cant; they came from ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... is the cant name in a Newspaper Office for asinine paragraphs, about monstrous productions of Nature and the like, kept standing in type to be used whenever the real news of the day leaves an awkward space that must be ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... world, we are consequently blameless—and rather praiseworthy—for our past transgressions. It is such sophistry as is contained in the foregoing extract, that kindles my indignation into a blaze. I abhor cant—I abhor hypocrisy—and if some of the advocates of the Colonization Society do not deal largely in both, I am unable to comprehend the meaning ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... from all nationalities, and their descendants, but the English and Irish elements predominated. They had an argot peculiar to themselves. It was partly made up of the "flash" language of the London thieves, amplified and enriched by the cant vocabulary and the jargon of crime of every European tongue. They spoke it with a peculiar accent and intonation that made them instantly recognizable from the roughs of all other Cities. They called themselves "N'Yaarkers;" we came ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... would be conscious of a more miserable weakness in thus divorcing himself from his fellow-men who in the domain of art must ever walk hand in hand with him. So he prefers to say that, of all the various forms in which Cant presents itself to suffering humanity, he knows of none so outrageous, so illogical, so undemonstrable, so marvelously absurd, as the Cant of "Too Much Mercy." When it shall be proven to him that communities are degraded and brought to guilt and crime, suffering or destitution, ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... themselves in an uncomfortable manner if they did not manage to avoid it altogether. I have just been looking at the election address of the official Liberal candidate for the part of the country in which I live; and though it is, if anything, rather more logical and free from cant than most other documents of the sort it is an excellent example of missing the point. The candidate has to go boring on about Free Trade and Land Reform and Education; and nobody reading it could possibly imagine that in the town of Wycombe, where the poll will be declared, the capital of the ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... cant, Confess'd his flame, and swore by Styx, Whate'er she would desire, to grant— But ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... which was surely a great admission for a lover to make, slipped quietly into Hope's workshop not to spoil sport—a juvenile idea which we recommend to older persons, and to such old maids as have turned sour. The great majority of old maids are match-makers, whatever cant may keep saying and writing to ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... Bob Stratton and Jim Gladys took charge of it. Mike and Bob were running the cant-hooks, while Jim stood on top of the great pile of logs already decked. A slender, pliable steel chain, like a gray snake, ran over the top of the pile and disappeared through a pulley to an invisible horse,—Jenny, the mate of Molly. Jim threw the ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... stinging epithets, no abuse of our noble English tongue by cheap exaggerations. Our poets do not need to underscore words or to use heavy headlines and italics. Their invective has been mighty because so restrained and so compressed. There is none of the common cant or the common plausibilities. There is no passing off of counterfeits for realities, no "pouring of the waters of concession into the bottomless buckets ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... can wade through a few sentences of malice, meanness, falsehood, perjury, treachery, and cant,' said Slurk, handing the paper to Bob, 'you will, perhaps, be somewhat repaid by a laugh at the style of ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... walks. See 2 Cor. 6:16. When the south winds blow and the spices flow out he comes into his garden to eat his pleasant fruits; he gathers the myrrh and the spices, he eats honey and drinks wine and milk. See Cant. 4:16 and 5:1. This is sweet language, and is expressive of the purity of the Christian heart, where God dwells, and where he walks in the gentleness of his Spirit, delighting himself in the tender Christian graces that are budding and blooming all along the ...
— Food for the Lambs; or, Helps for Young Christians • Charles Ebert Orr
... your heart against your word, and cant afford to lose; and there's a double reason for revoking ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... nonsense, sir. I think he do, because if he didn't he'd on'y have to give his head a cant on one side and send that there lantern a-flying; and he never do. Now steady: it's a bit steeper here. See your ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... entertained, at all times, the most profound contempt; and if, frequently, his real feelings of admiration disguised themselves under an affected tone of indifference and mockery, it was out of pure hostility to the cant of those, who, he well knew, praised without any feeling at all. It must be owned, too, that while he thus justly despised the raptures of the common herd of travellers, there were some pursuits, even ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... pilgrimage is so deftly parodied in a railroad route to the heavenly goal. Full of keen satire, it does not, as it might at first seem, tend to diminish Bunyan's dignity, but inspires one with a novel sense of it, as one is made to gradually pierce the shams of certain modern cant. But a more profound consequence was the direction of Hawthorne's expanding thought toward sin and its various and occult manifestations. Imagine the impression upon a mind so fine, so exquisitely responsive, and so well prepared for grave ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... istis articulis praenotatis fecit Bonifacius, Cant. Arch. suorum suffraganeorum sibi subditorum universorum, praelatorum pariter et cleri procuratorum, convocationem isto anno apud Londonias semel et secundo, propter gravamina et oppressiones, de die in diem per summum ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 183, April 30, 1853 • Various
... through the Stait, my house and barns wuz burnt, and all I hev to show for my property is Confedrit munny, which is a very dead article uv death. I know not what the venerable old sucker in the pulpit wuz a goin to say, but ef he kin look over this section uv the heritage, and cant preach a elokent sermon on that text, he aint much on ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby
... John C. A Dictionary of Modern Slang, Cant, and Vulgar Words. Used at the present day in the streets of London; the universities of Oxford and Cambridge; the houses of Parliament; the dens of St. Giles; and the palaces of St. James. Preceded by a ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... to robbers and mariners. Thieves are dubbed by Shakespeare as St. Nicholas's clerks[51], and Rowley calls highwaymen by the same title. Possibly this may be accounted for by the association of the light-fingered fraternity with Nicholas, or Old Nick, a cant name for the devil, or because The Golden Legend tells of the conversion of some thieves through the saint's agency. At any rate, the good Bishop of Myra was the patron saint of scholars, and therefore was naturally selected ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... Archon i): "It is God's attribute alone—that is, it belongs to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, as a property of nature, that He is understood to exist without any material substance and without any companionship of corporeal addition." Bernard likewise says (Hom. vi. super Cant.): "Let us assign incorporeity to God alone even as we do immortality, whose nature alone, neither for its own sake nor on account of anything else, needs the help of any corporeal organ. But it is clear that every created spirit needs corporeal substance." ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... bishops. I suspect, indeed, that the shops of the mere trading Methodists attract as many auditors by their singing as by their preaching; consequently, enlarged churches and improved psalmody would serve to protect many of the people from becoming the dupes of that CANT and CRAFT of FANATICISM, which is so disgraceful to the age, so dangerous to religion, and so inimical to the progress of truth ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... often confused in the popular mind, yet they are not synonymous, though very closely allied, and proceeding from a common Gypsy origin. Cant is the language of a certain class—the peculiar phraseology or dialect of a certain craft, trade or profession, and is not readily understood save by the initiated of such craft, trade or profession. It may be correct, according to the rules of grammar, but it is not universal; it is ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... complexion, regular features, and a remarkably pretty figure. Marianne was still handsomer. Her form, though not so correct as her sister's, in having the advantage of height, was more striking; and her face was so lovely, that when in the common cant of praise, she was called a beautiful girl, truth was less violently outraged than usually happens. Her skin was very brown, but, from its transparency, her complexion was uncommonly brilliant; her features were all good; her smile was sweet ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... life in God. To many readers this free outpouring of a God-loving soul will seem to approach too near to that abuse of religious phraseology which is a sign of superficial rather than of deep-seated piety. But, though through life a sworn enemy of every kind of cant, Bunsen never would surrender the privilege of speaking the language of a Christian, because that language had been profaned by the thoughtless repetition ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... were there have expressed the opinion that, from the manner in which the shooting was done, it must have been by a man with one arm. However, Eliab will make a good Radical show, and we shall have another dose of Puritanical, hypocritical cant about Southern barbarity. Well, we can bear it. We have got the power in Horsford, and we mean to hold it. Niggers and nigger-worshippers must take care of themselves. This is a white man's country, and white men ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... of a man who had conceived a violent eccentric prejudice against negroes; and he was not content with chiming in with the usual cant of the prejudice that they ought not to be allowed in our churches and in our rail-road-cars, but vociferated, that, if he had his way, they should not be allowed in Africa! The advantage of grit in this respect is in its annihilating a prejudice by presenting a vivid vision of its theoretical ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... CANT. Cant is a kind of affectation; affectation is an effort to sail under false colors; an effort to sail under false colors is a kind of falsehood; and falsehood is a term of Latin origin which we often use instead of the stronger Saxon ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... gesture as if sweeping something behind him). Oh, let us put aside all that cant. It horrifies me when I think of the doses of it she has had to endure in all the weary years during which you have selfishly and blindly sacrificed her to minister to your self-sufficiency—YOU (turning on him) who have not one ...
— Candida • George Bernard Shaw
... add 'Defender of the Faith' as our cautious English neighbors persist in doing?" asked the girlish Marquise with a smile. "Your country, Madame McVeigh, has no such cant in its constitution. You have reason to be proud of the great men, the wise, far-seeing ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... BENTLEY. You cant argue with a person when his livelihood depends on his not letting you convert him. And would you mind not calling me Bunny. My name is Bentley ...
— Misalliance • George Bernard Shaw
... God sees some faithful disciples still Breasting the current to do His will. The little bird on the topmost bough Merrily pipes to the Poet below, Asking an answer as gay, I trow! But he hears the surging waves without,— The atheist's scoff and the infidel's doubt, The Pharisee's cant and the sweet saint's prayer, And the piercing cry for rest from care; And tears of pity and tears of pain Ebb and flow in every strain, As he ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... of thought he lays a stress unusual in modern life. It is the cant of the day, in judging the value of a man, that "it does not matter what he believes but only what he does." That is not true. It matters infinitely what a man believes; for as a man's belief so he is; as a man's thought, so inevitably is his action. There ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant
... came by, Says Jack I'll try, If I cant ride this prancer, He gave a jump, On old sows rump, But she led him a ...
— Jack and Jill and Old Dame Gill • Unknown
... who at this period had one of these two names. The incident (of anointing with ointment) is one quite in accordance with the customs of the time and country, and there is not the least improbability in its repetition under different circumstances. (Eccles. 9:8; Cant. 4:10; Amos 6:6.) The custom ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... John Duncan, John Hume, Robert Knox, William Jameson, Robert Murray, Henry Guthrie, James Hamilton, in Dumfreis, Bernard Sanderson, John Levingstoun, James Bonar, Evan Camron, David Dickson, Robort Bailzie, James Cuninghame, George Youngh, Andrew Affleck, David Lindsay, Andrew Cant, William Douglas, Murdo Mackenzie, Coline Mackenzie, John Monroe, Walter Stuart Ministers; Archbald Marquesse of Argyle, William Earle Marshall, John Earle of Sutherland, Alexander Earle of Eglingtoun, John Earle of Cassils, ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... projection in the crown works in a recess (right, fig. 3), and is secured in its place by a forged steel pin, fitted with a nut and washer, which passes through the crown and the heel of the shank. All the above anchors were provided with a stock (fig. 1, hk), the use of which is to "cant'' the anchor. If it falls on the ground, resting on one arm and one stock, when a strain is brought on the cable, the stock cants the anchor, causing the arms to lie at a downward angle to the holding ground; and the pees enter and bury themselves ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... was obliged to remonstrate with her on the subject of over-indulgence and injudicious praise; but she could not gain his heart. Her piety consisted in an occasional heaving of sighs, and uplifting of eyes to the ceiling, and the utterance of a few cant phrases. She told me she was a clergyman's daughter, and had been left an orphan from her childhood, but had had the good fortune to obtain a situation in a very pious family; and then she spoke so gratefully of the kindness she had experienced from its ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... He then read aloud where he prays for the King, &c. and observed, 'Sir, do you think that a man the night before he is to be hanged cares for the succession of a royal family[787]?—Though, he may have composed this prayer, then. A man who has been canting all his life, may cant to the last[788].—And yet a man who has been refused a pardon after so much petitioning, would hardly be praying thus fervently for ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... pursued the Alderman, 'there's a great deal of nonsense talked about Want—"hard up," you know; that's the phrase, isn't it? ha! ha! ha!—and I intend to Put it Down. There's a certain amount of cant in vogue about Starvation, and I mean to Put it Down. That's all! Lord bless you,' said the Alderman, turning to his friends again, 'you may Put Down anything among this sort of people, if you only know the ...
— The Chimes • Charles Dickens
... of God in your own hearts, who is always speaking, always instructing, always illuminating the heart that is attentive to Him.' Jonathan Edwards called the poor parish minister of Ettrick 'a truly great divine.' But Law goes on to say, 'A great divine is but a cant expression unless it signifies a man greatly advanced in the divine life. A great divine is one whose own experience and example are a demonstration of the reality of all the graces and virtues of the gospel. ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... closed, or, if opened by stealth, were subject to the visits of the emissaries of "Praise God Barebones," "Fight the Good Fight," and their crew. The actors were driven off the stage by soldiers, and the cant word of that period is still recorded, "Enter red coat, exit hat and cloak." William Prynne was celebrated for his writings against the immorality of the stage, and the furious invectives of Jeremy ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume X, No. 280, Saturday, October 27, 1827. • Various
... a bit sorry for my father. He seemed to me to be the victim of his own foolish sentimentality. The current cant required my attendance at his funeral, but it ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... before the baize and challenges all comers, his money against theirs, his fortune against theirs, is proscribed by your modern moral world. It is a conspiracy of the middle classes against gentlemen: it is only the shopkeeper cant which is to go down nowadays. I say that play was an institution of chivalry: it has been wrecked, along with other privileges of men of birth. When Seingalt engaged a man for six-and-thirty hours without leaving the table, do you think he showed no courage? How have we had the best ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Mr. Palsey "she cant guess the worst yet," out loud he added "hush Miss Winston, you are over fatigued, that is all, would you like a cup of coffee? the refreshment room ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford
... prominent place for learning. He was the scholar of Zoroaster at Babylon, and learned of him most of that knowledge which afterward rendered him so famous. So saith Apulcius (Floridorum secundo), and so say Jamblichus (in vita Pythag. c. 4), Porphyry (Ibid. p. 185. edit. Cant.), and Clemens Alexandrinus (Stromata i. p. 223) for the Zabratus or Zaratus of Porphyry, and the Na-Zaratus of Clemens, were none other than this Zoroaster; and they relate the matter thus: that when Cambyses conquered Egypt he found Pythagoras there on his travels, for the improvement ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield
... half-way across the weedfield when, above the hum of insect life, above the inward clamor of his own busy speculations, there came to his ear dimly and distantly a sound that made him halt and cant his head to one side the better to hear it. Somewhere, a good way off, there was a thin, thready, broken strain of metallic clinking and clanking—an eery ghost-chime ringing. It came nearer and became plainer—tonk-tonk-tonk; ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... would have answered it. Take a specimen of other answers. If anybody were so far left to himself as to go with this question to some of our modern wise men and teachers, they would say, 'Saved? My good fellow, there is nothing to be saved from. Get rid of delusions, and clear your mind of cant and superstition.' Or they would say, 'Saved? Well, if you have gone wrong, do the best you can in the time to come.' Or if you went to some of our friends they would say, 'Come and be baptized, and receive ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... and dearest friend, not to one's mother or brother would one babble promiscuously on such awful themes; and to have the soul's sublime and eternal emotions, its sacred and unspoken communings, lugged out into farcical prominence by such conversational cant as that, is to dry up the very fountain of true religion, and put a premium on the successful grin of an ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... dividends. The true slaveholder feels that he is encamped among his slaves, that he holds them by the right of conquest, that the relation is one of war, and that there is no crime he may not be compelled to commit in self-defence. Disdaining all cant, he clearly perceives that the system, in its practical working, must conform to the principles on which it is based. He accordingly believes in the lash and the fear of the lash. If he is cruel and brutal, it may as often be from policy as from disposition, for brutality and cruelty are ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... cried, running to him, "take me away from him: I cant bear——" I turned towards him, and shewed him my dog-tooth in a false smile. He felled me at one stroke, as he might have ...
— The Miraculous Revenge - Little Blue Book #215 • Bernard Shaw
... "is the mere cant of ignorant enthusiasm, which appealeth from learning and from authority, from the sure guidance of that lamp which God hath afforded us in the Councils and in the Fathers of the Church, to a rash, self-willed, and arbitrary interpretation of the Scriptures, wrested ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... him to worship God. He comforts persecuted ministers, is fond of preachers; nay, can himself preach,—exhorts his neighbors to be wise, to redeem the time. In all this what "hypocrisy," "ambition," "cant," or other falsity? The man's hopes, I do believe, were fixed on the other Higher World; his aim to get well thither by walking well through his humble course in this world. He courts no notice: what could notice here do for him? "Ever in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... glad, at last, to come to the conclusion that we would fain draw from all these descriptions—why does this immorality exist? Because the people MUST be amused, and have not been taught HOW; because the upper classes, frightened by stupid cant, or absorbed in material wants, have not as yet learned the refinement which only the cultivation of art can give; and when their intellects are uneducated, and their tastes are coarse, the tastes and amusements of classes still more ignorant must be coarse and vicious likewise, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... cant!" interrupted the duke impatiently. "Didn't I charge you to have that cursed de Sigognac, otherwise Captain Fracasse, cleared out of my way? You have not done it—my orders have not been obeyed. It is worth ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... my hair for the wedding. And though thou get this yet there is that which thou wilt not get, for Trwyth the boar will not let any man take from him the comb and the scissors, unless Drudwyn the whelp hunt him. But no leash in the world can hold Drudwyn save the leash of Cant Ewin, and no collar will hold the leash except ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... wandering through the mountains of Nubia, or the plains of Romania, have conversed for centuries in a dialect precisely similar to that spoken at this day, by the obscure, despised, and wretched people in England, whose language has been considered as a fabricated gibberish, and confounded with a cant in use among thieves and beggars; and whose persons have been, till within the period of the last year, an object of the persecution, instead of the protection of our laws."—Extract from a letter of William Marsden, Esq. addressed ...
— The Gipsies' Advocate - or, Observations on the Origin, Character, Manners, and Habits of - The English Gipsies • James Crabb
... Simon observed, a soldier of the old school, with powdered head, side locks, and pigtail. His face is shaped like the stern of a Dutch man-of-war, narrow at top, and wide at bottom, with full rosy cheeks and a double chin; so, that, to use the cant of the day, his organs of eating may be said ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... will be found that, while most of our counties have given family names, sometimes corrupted, e.g. Lankshear, Willsher, Cant, Chant, for Kent, with which we may compare Anguish for Angus, the larger towns are rather poorly represented, the movement having always been from country to town, and the smaller spot serving for more exact description. An exception is Bristow (Bristol), Mid. Eng. brig-stow, the place ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... 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 ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... effective and satisfying. His discussion, for example, of prologues and epilogues considered in relation to the theatrical conditions which determined their character is admirable.[174] A note on "the cant of supposing that the Iliad contained an obvious and intentional moral"[175] is also full of sense and vigor, but these qualities are so thoroughly diffused through the work that there is no need of particularizing. ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... fancy, feeling, or natural object, has so far added permanently to the sum of human happiness, is not as sure of a welcome and a well-done from the Infinite Fatherliness as he that has turned an honest penny by printing a catechism; but we are sure that it is a shallow cant which holds up the errors of men of genius as if they were especial warnings, and proofs of how little the rarest gifts avail. Is it intended to put men on their guard against being geniuses? That is scarcely called for till those who yield to the temptation become more numerous. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... No, indeed! What is it you want me to do for you? Do you want me to help you roll a log into the water, when you've finished cutting down that tree? I might use my horns for a cant hook, such as the ...
— The Tale of Nimble Deer - Sleepy-Time Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... cant term derived, I suppose, from an Irish word signifying a savage.) One who adheres to the ancient constitution of the state, and the apostolical hierarchy of the Church of ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... stood the test of time. Am I colour-blind?" Now this gentleman's state of mind is far more common than he supposes; only few people care to confess even to their bosom-friends that they do not accept public opinion—or rather the opinions of authority. The age has grown contemptible from cant, and traditions which are perhaps highly respectable in their place are thrust upon us in season and out of season. Regarding matters of fact there is no room for differences of opinion when once the fact is established; and regarding problems in elementary morality we perceive the same surety. ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... the merchant were robbed of even ever so little he could retaliate by sending the guilty one to prison. But the merchant himself could invidiously and continuously rob the customer without fear of any law. All of this was converted into a code of moralities; and any bold spirit who exposed its cant and sham was denounced as an agitator and as an enemy of law and order. [Footnote: A few progressive jurists in the International Prison Congress are attempting to secure the recognition in law of the principle that society, as a supreme ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... (R. C.) What whining monk art thou? what holy cheat, That would'st encroach upon my credulous ears, And cant'st thus vilely! Hence! ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Thomas Otway
... no agents. Besides, I didnt know what to offer them. I knew that they were cheaper than actors, because they get long engagements: forty years sometimes; but thats no rule for a single job. Then theres such a lot of them: on first nights they run away with all your stalls: you cant find a decent place for your own mother. It would have cost a fortune to bring ...
— Fanny's First Play • George Bernard Shaw
... being left alone of our club at Leyden I Desir'd him to come and spend with me the time of his vacations here, which proposal I hope he will accept and be here next week. What happy triumvirat would be ours if you were to join: but that is impossible at present; however those who cant enjoy reality are fond of feeding their fancies with agreable Dreams and charming pictures; that helps a little to sooth the sorrow of absence and makes one expect with more pati[ence] till fortune allows him to put in execution ...
— Baron d'Holbach - A Study of Eighteenth Century Radicalism in France • Max Pearson Cushing
... portable. They are as current as copper coin, and about as valuable. They serve equally the first capacities and the lowest, and they are, at least, as useful to the worst men as the best. Of this stamp is the cant of Not men, but measures; a sort of charm, by which many people got loose from every honourable engagement. When I see a man acting this desultory and disconnected part, with as much detriment to his own fortune ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... principle to all forms of frivolous amusement, such as music, dancing, or novel reading, while games and even pictures were regarded as meaningless luxuries. Such puritanical convictions might have easily degenerated into mere cant; but underlying all was a broad and firm basis of wholesome respect for individual freedom and a brave adherence to truth. He was a man of good business capacity, and a thorough manager of his wide and lucrative interests. He saw that compensation ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... that when describing such institutions as the far-famed of Thebes, the Sacred Band annihilated at Chaeroneia, he was compelled to a reticence which permitted him to touch only the surface of the subject. This was inevitable under the present rule of Cant[FN359] in a book intended for the public: but the same does not apply to my version of The Nights, and now I proceed to discuss the matter serieusement, honnetement, historiquement; to show it in decent nudity not in suggestive ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... that does not make him any better a man while he was alive. Don't let us cant about him now. The man was an unmitigated scoundrel—perhaps he deserved all ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... foremost attraction,—there is all the more reason why we should do it justice in its original and awfully real presentment in its single generation of veritable discipleship. What became drivelling and cant, presumption and bigotry, pretence and hypocrisy, as soon as a fair trial had tested it, was in the hearts, the speech, the convictions, and the habits of a considerable number of persons in one ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... dreamer of a college decade. His religion was simple and practical; he had never had any morbid ideas; he had lived a healthy, natural, and honourable life, until he went for a mikonaree, and if he had no cant, he had not a clear idea of how many-sided, how responsible, his life must be—until that one particular day. This ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... would be in the religious world that a man like Jesus, who, without a professional education, a craftsman by birth and early training, uttered scarce a phrase endorsed by clerical use, or a word of the religious cant of the day, but taught in simplest natural forms the eternal facts of faith and hope and love, would meet with the chief and perhaps the only BITTER opponents of ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... realize the stupidity of the average sex-twaddle. We have no illusions about each other. We know exactly what we are after. We know exactly how to attain it. I tell you what, Phipps, Female Emancipation is going to do away with a lot of cant and idealism. Knock the silly male on the head. There'll be an end of your chastity-worship, once women are fairly started on the game. They ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... twelve-grain dose, without any sugar coat, but it sweat more cant and false pride out of my system than I could get back into it for the next twenty years. I learned right there how to be humble, which is a heap more important than knowing how to be proud. There are mighty few men that need any ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... at heart of craft and cant, Sick of the crazed enthusiast's rant, Profession's smooth hypocrisies, And creeds of iron, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... lands, near a little country village that lay just at the foot of the mountains. It was made up of the simple peasantry, where life was free from cant, suspicions, criticism and morbid curiosity. Here they could live and follow the bent of their minds, undisturbed and unobserved if they so wished. They kept their identity unknown yet the villagers knew from the ...
— Within the Temple of Isis • Belle M. Wagner
... did they not own thirty thousand feet apiece in the "richest mines on earth"! Who cared if their credit was not good with the grocer, so long as they revelled in mountains of fictitious wealth and raved in the frenzied cant of the hour over their immediate prospect of fabulous riches! But at last the practical necessities of living put a sudden damper on their enthusiasm. Clemens was forced at last to abandon mining, and go to work as a common labourer in a quartz mill, at ten dollars a week ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... think you these wretched outcasts have less sensibility than yourselves? think you, in cold and hunger, they lose those feelings which even in voluptuous prosperity from time to time disturb you? you say they are all cheats? 'tis but the niggard cant of avarice, to lure away remorse from obduracy. Think you the naked wanderer begs from choice? give him your ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... if there were foundation for such rumors. Liberty was the creed or the cant of the day. France was being rocked by revolution, and England by Clarkson. In America, slavery was habitually recognized as a misfortune and an error, only to be palliated by the nearness of its expected end. How freely anti-slavery pamphlets had ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... Sir, I cannot help asking gentlemen to compare the petitions for this bill with the petitions against it. Never was there such a contrast. The petitions against the bill are filled with cant, rant, scolding, scraps of bad sermons. The petitions in favour of the bill set forth in the simplest manner great practical grievances. Take, for instance, the case of Cirencester. The meeting house there was built in 1730. It is certain ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... was buried with much pomp at Thetford Abbey under a tomb designed by himself and master Clarke, master of the works at King's College, Cambridge, & Wassel a freemason of BuryS. Edmund's.' Cooper's Ath. Cant., ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... expression meant "fix a candle in a candlestick," but I am indebted to Mr. George L. Apperson for the true explanation. He writes:—"In Dyche's Dictionary (I quote from ed. 1748) is the verb sconce, one of the definitions being—'a cant term for running up a score at an alehouse or tavern'—with which cf. Goldsmith's Essays (1765), viii, 'He ran into debt with everybody that would trust him, and none could build a sconce better than he.' This explanation seems to me ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... to be a man, and his friends and Anna believed in him, an he'd be hanged if he went back and confessed anything at all, admitted anything. It was all well enough to look facts in the face, but it was better still to keep on fighting until the gong rang. And when he was fighting against the cant purity and goodness of Mr. Mix, and the cold astigmatism of Aunt Mirabelle, he'd be hanged if he quit in the first round. No, even if Henry himself knew that he was beaten, nobody else was going to know it, and ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... anger half and pity mov'd, The ghostly Colourist reprov'd. And what didst Thou aspire to gain, Who dar'd'st the will of Jove arraign, That bounded thus within a span The little life of little man; With shallow art deriving thence Excuses for thy indolence? 'Tis cant and hypocritic stuff! The life of man is long enough: For did he but the half improve He would not quarrel thus ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... scene is strictly historical. The army knew in what manner the emperor had rewarded Marshal Lefebvre, and it became a cant-phrase for soldiers who wished to borrow money of their comrades: "Have ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... insure success. It is a pleasure to me to hear that you are so comfortably settled and that your health is so much improved. I trust God will continue His kindness towards you. Let me say also that I admire the good-sense and absence of flattery and cant which your letter displayed. Farewell. I shall always be glad to hear from you as a friend.—Believe ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter |
