"Cant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... herself. She supposed it was wicked—but she did not care! She ought to be resigned to the mysterious dispensations of Providence—that was the prescribed phraseology of pious people. She had heard the cant times without number. What more would they have than her utter destitution of love and bliss? Was she not miserable enough to satisfy the sternest believer in purgatorial purification? to appease the wrath even of Him who had wrought her desolation? It must be the judgment of a retributive ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... Sneer. Most obligingly communicative indeed! and your confession, if published, might certainly serve the cause of true charity, by rescuing the most useful channels of appeal to benevolence from the cant of imposition. But, surely, Mr. Puff, there is no great mystery in your present profession? Puff. Mystery, sir! I will take upon me to say the matter was never scientifically treated nor reduced to rule before. Sneer. Reduced to rule! Puff. O Lud, sir, you ...
— Scarborough and the Critic • Sheridan
... 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 ...
— Baron d'Holbach • Max Pearson Cushing
... He, however, went so far as to apply the following language to the majority:—"As to the greater part of the sect, it is, we apprehend, of little consequence what they study or under whom. It would be more amusing, to be sure, and more reputable, if they would take up the old republican cant and declaim about Brutus and Timoleon, the duty of killing tyrants and the blessedness of dying for liberty. But, on the whole, they might have chosen worse. They may as well be Utilitarians as jockeys or dandies. And, though quibbling about self-interest ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... hearts, now, "Rouse up! art thou a man and darest not do this thing?" now, "Rise, kill and eat—it is thine, wilt thou not take it? Shall the flimsy scruples of this teacher, or the sanctified cant of that, bar thy way, and balk thee of thine own? Thou hast strength to brave them—to brave all things in earth, or heaven, or hell; put out thy strength ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... 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
... has rendered you superstitious, Cornelius. I have no faith in the religious cant of the present day, in priests ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... capitalised may exceed the value of the property insured, and the drain caused by armies and navies may be much greater than the havoc they prevent. The evils against which they are supposed to be directed are often evils only in a cant and conventional sense, since the events deprecated (like absorption by a neighbouring state) might be in themselves no misfortune to the people, but perhaps a singular blessing. And those dreaded possibilities, even if really evil, ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... highways and recognized paths to the Eternal, now all torn up and flung in heaps, submerged in unutterable boiling mud-oceans of Hypocrisy and Unbelievability, of brutal living Atheism and damnable dead putrescent Cant: surely a tragic pilgrimage for all mortals; Darkness, and the mere shadow of Death, enveloping all things from pole to pole; and in the raging gulf-currents, offering us will-o'-wisps for loadstars,—intimating that there are no stars, nor ever ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... afraid of the least appearance of cant, but they would do anything for "Ma"; and when, a few days later, in order to give an object-lesson to the natives, she proposed an English service, they agreed, and one of them read the lessons, and another led the singing. A short time before ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... heart and write!" said Herr Cant; and earth's cuckoos echoed the cry. Look into the Rhine where it is deepest, and the Thames where it is thickest, and paint the bottom. Lower a bucket into a well of self-deception, and what comes up must be immortal truth, mustn't it? ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... meetings. He was as yet William Rufus Holly, the cricketer, the laziest 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
... of really pure and generous character like Brasidas lending himself to be the mouthpiece of Spartan hypocrisy. To him the sounding phrases and lofty professions which he uttered may have meant something: but in their essence they were mere hollow cant, intended to divert attention from the true issue, and drag a peaceful and prosperous community into the private quarrels of Sparta. So degraded was now the tone of politics in Greece, even among her best ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... you what you are, sir," pursued the Squire. "You're a Benthamite. I disown you. Your mother would have died for shame; there was no modern cant about your mother; she thought—she said to me, sir—I'm glad she's in her grave, Dick Naseby. Misinformed! Misinformed, sir? Have you no loyalty, no spring, no natural affections? Are you clockwork, hey? Away! This is no place for you. Away!" (Waving ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... for doles," Replied the haughty surgeon; "To use your cant, I don't play roles Utility that verge on. First amputation—nothing less— That is my line of business: We surgeon nobs despise all jobs ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... fast as the wind. I almost fall out Mama hanged on to the lines. if she let go we may all be kill. At last she raned them into a fence. they stop and a man ran to help so we are well but mama hands and arms are still so sore she cant write you yet. My brother Calvin is very sweet. God had to give him to us because he squealed so much he sturbed the angels. We are not angels so he Dont sturb us. I thank you for my good little book. and I love you ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... more where it came from"—tapping his head with his finger, and taking occasion at the same time to cant his morion over his right ear, which gave him a very self-satisfied air—"I do not need to borrow ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... (tho' still, sure, with the same indecency and indiscretion) at that incomparable Man, for wearing out a long Life in poring through a Telescope. Indeed, the weaknesses of Such are to be mentioned with reverence. But who can bear, without indignation, the fashionable cant of every trifling Writer, whose insipidity passes, with himself, for politeness, for pretending to be shocked, forsooth, with the rude and savage air of vulgar Critics; meaning such as Muretus, Scaliger, Casaubon, Salmasius, Spanheim, Bentley. When, ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... a good deal of time in exposing the cant of these gentlemen about the sanctity of the Missouri compromise, and the dishonor attached to the violation of plighted faith. I have exposed these matters in order to show that the object of these men is to withdraw from public attention the real ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... Owing to the cant of the vessel, the masts hung far out over the water, and from my perch on the cross-trees I had nothing below me but the surface of the bay. Hands, who was not so far up, was, in consequence, near to the ship, and fell between me and the bulwarks. He rose once to the surface ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in conflict with the jewellers that Vaux best proved his mettle. It was his wont to clothe himself 'in the most elegant attire,' and on the pretence of purchase to rifle the shops of Piccadilly. For this offence—'pinching' the Cant Dictionary calls it—he did his longest stretch of time, and here his admirable qualities of cunning and coolness found their most generous scope. A love of fine clothes he shared with all the ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... puerile conceits; but they are not far-fetched, like those of Donne and Cowley; they generally lie on the surface, and often consist of nothing more than a mere play upon words; so that, if to be a punster is to be a metaphysician, Marino is a poetical Heraclitus. But Johnson had caught the cant of the age, in which it was usual to designate almost any thing absurd or extravagant ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... pow'rs release To rouse the dullard from his dream of peace. Awake! ye hypocrites, and deign to scan The actions of your "brotherhood of Man." Could your shrill pipings in the race impair The warlike impulse put by Nature there? Where now the gentle maxims of the school, The cant of preachers, and the Golden Rule? What feeble word or doctrine now can stay The tribe whose fathers own'd Valhalla's sway? Too long restrain'd, the bloody tempest breaks, And Midgard 'neath the tread of warriors shakes. On to thy death, Berserker ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... man, who sits him down before the baize and challenges all comers, his money against theirs, his fortune against theirs, is proscribed by your modern moral world! It is a conspiracy of the middle-class 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 ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... little lad "Betty"—was not the affection they lavished upon him that which manhood ever owes to the weak and helpless. Search London over and you will not find elemental goodness in a shape more worthy than it was to be found in the caves—nor can we forego a moment's reflection upon the cant which ever preaches the vice of the poor and so rarely stops to preach ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... to it every day, but St. Elspeth says just to rite when I feel like it which I don't s'pose will be offen as there is usuly something to do which I like better. I am riting today becaus it rains and I cant go out doors. ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... fine work on the English language by traducing all who now write that tongue. "None seek the audience, fit, though few, which contented the ambition of Milton, and all writers for the press now measure their glory by their gains," and so indefinitely onward,—which is simply cant. Does Sylvanus Cobb, Jr., who honestly earns his annual five thousand dollars from the "New York Ledger," take rank as head of American literature by virtue of his salary? Because the profits of true literature are rising,—trivial as they still are beside those of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... lad," said Wriggs. "Speak the truth whatever yer does. She's got a cant to port since we ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... law or Vote, The Witler's tavern and the Workman's throat!" Shouts the fanatic. Which, then, fad or pelf, Cares really, solely, for the Poor Man's self? Nay; the Monopolist fights for his money, The Monomaniac for his craze. How funny To hear one shout for freedom, t'other cheer The poisoner's cant ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 15, 1893 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... members to work slowly they use certain cant phrases which sound most plausible until their real meaning is analyzed. They continually use the expression, "Workmen should not be asked to do more than a fair day's work," which sounds right and just until we come ...
— Shop Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor
... "Abolition" kiss, write an article on slavery, like Dickens; marry him to a white gall to England, get him a saint's darter with a good fortin, and well soon see whether her father was a talkin' cant or no, about niggers. Cuss 'em, let any o' these Britishers give me slack, and I'll give 'em cranberry for their goose, I know. I'd jump right down their throat with spurs on, and gallop their ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... celestial cant, Confess'd his flame, and swore by Styx, Whate'er she would desire, to grant— But wise Ardelia knew ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... if we keep steadily before us the wise words which, with his own singular felicity of speech, he addressed two years ago to the Indian Civil Service:—"We have a clouded moment before us now. We shall get through it—but only with self-command and without any quackery or cant, whether it be the quackery of blind violence disguised as love of order, or the cant of unsound and misapplied sentiment, divorced from knowledge and untouched by ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... evidently contains much that is autobiographical, and helps us to understand Carlyle's childhood and youth; but it is so mixed up with fantasy and humour that it is difficult to separate fiction from fact. Its chief aim seems to be the overthrow of cant, the ridiculing of empty conventions, and the preaching of sincerity and independence. But not yet was Carlyle's generation prepared to listen to such sermons. Jeffrey was bewildered by the tone and offended at the style; ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... we, at last, accumulated sufficient to enable mother to start for Canada, and oh! how rejoiced I was when that dear, overworked mother approached the time, when her hard-earned and long-deferred holiday was about to begin. The uses of adversity is a worn theme, and in it there is much of weak cant, but when it is considered how much of sacrifice the poverty-stricken must bear in order to procure the slightest gratification, should it not impress the thinking mind with amazement, how much of fortitude and patience ...
— From the Darkness Cometh the Light, or Struggles for Freedom • Lucy A. Delaney
... miser was all panic. His hands groped towards his waist, then suddenly flew upward beneath his moleskin pillow, and there lay clutching something out of sight. Meantime, to himself he incoherently mumbled:—"Confidence? Cant, gammon! Confidence? hum, bubble!—Confidence? ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... to consummate his nuptials, suppose I should (as sure I should) kill myself, it were blasphemy to lay this fatal marriage to heaven's charge——curse on your nonsense, ye imposing gownmen, curse on your holy cant; you may as well call rapes and murders, treason and robbery, the acts of heaven; because heaven suffers them to be committed. Is it heaven's pleasure therefore, heaven's decree? A trick, a wise device of priests, no more——to ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... Geoffrey Owen must have wanted heart and fire. I watched him first to see if he could ride; he rode well. When he came he could not fence; in six months he was a good hand with the foils; physical fatigue seemed as unknown to him as mental inertia. There was no strain and no cant about him; he smoked hard, drank well after exertion, with pleasure always. He delighted to talk to my mother, chaffing her Styrian ideas with a graceful deference that made her smile. Victoria adored him ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... hanged them," replied Ravenswood. "I hope to see the day when justice shall be open to Whig and Tory, and when these nicknames shall only be used among coffee-house politicians, as 'slut' and 'jade' are among apple-women, as cant terms of idle ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... 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
... that they were alone? Their talk was precisely what it might have been in other people's presence. And Bevis, such a frank, good-hearted fellow, could not by any possibility fail in respect to her. The objections were all cant, and cant of the worst kind. She would not be a slave of such ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... things—the power to tell the good from the bad, the genuine from the counterfeit, and to prefer the good and the genuine to the bad and the counterfeit. This is the supreme end of the talk of Socrates, and it is the supreme end of the talk of Johnson. 'My dear friend,' said he, 'clear your mind of cant; . . . don't THINK foolishly.' The effect of long companionship with Boswell's Johnson is just this. As Sir Joshua said, 'it brushes away the rubbish'; it clears the mind of cant; it instills the habit of singling ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... and loyal herself in spite of the many deceptions and treacheries which she had witnessed in her life, she never looked for falsehood or for cant in others. Even now she only saw before her a woman who had been wrongfully persecuted, who had suffered and had forgiven those who had caused her to suffer. She bitterly accused herself for her original mistrust of this noble-hearted, unselfish woman, who was content to tramp around in ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... penniless and half-blind. It is calculated to Castelli's "gull-wing" curve. Raise a few feet of that all but invisible plate three-eighths of an inch and she will yaw five miles to port or starboard ere she is under control again. Give her full helm and she returns on her track like a whip-lash. Cant the whole forward—a touch on the wheel will suffice—and she sweeps at your good direction up or down. Open the complete circle and she presents to the air a mushroom-head that will bring her up all standing ...
— With The Night Mail - A Story of 2000 A.D. (Together with extracts from the - comtemporary magazine in which it appeared) • Rudyard Kipling
... Ilioneus calls him nimbosus, Anna, aquosus. He is tempestuous in the summer, when he rises heliacally; and rainy in the winter, when he rises achronically. Your lordship will pardon me for the frequent repetition of these cant words, which I could not avoid in this abbreviation of Segrais, who, I think, deserves no little ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... are united by the strongest 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 surely is in individual ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill
... this remark to me was, that she fancied there might be some error in the translation of the Greek expression. I replied that, in my opinion, there was; and that I had myself always been irritated by the entire irrelevance of the English word, and by something very like cant, on which the whole burden of the passage is thrown. How was it any natural preparation for a vast spiritual revolution, that men should first of all acknowledge any special duty of repentance? The repentance, if any movement of that nature could intelligibly be supposed called for, should more ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... a kind of a sideways cant to my nose, that Tobin give me when we was to school. I don't know's you ever noticed it," said Mr. Briley. "We was scufflin', as lads will. I never bore him no kind of a grudge. I pitied ye, when he ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... thinkers, and obscure writers and talkers who at present infest our literature, and whose parrot-like repetition of their own stereotyped phraseology, mingled with some barbarous infusion of half Anglicised German, threatens to form as odious a cant as ever polluted the stream of thought or disfigured the purity of language. Happily it is not likely to be more than a passing fashion; but still it is a very unpleasant fashion while it lasts. As in Johnson's day, every young writer imitated as well as he could the ponderous diction and everlasting ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... Chartres," and his "History of John Bull," still extract shouts, screams, and tears of mirth from thousands who scarce know the author's name—a politician without malice or self-seeking—and, best of all, a man without guile, and a Christian without cant. He, although a physician, was in effect the chaplain of the corps, and had enough to do in keeping them within due bounds; nay, is said on his deathbed to have called Pope to him, and given him serious advice in reference ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... span, they would take the air in Battery Park, where the one would invoke the Statue of Liberty for a thought, or the gilded domes of Broadway for a metaphor, while the other would be scouring the horizon for the Nothingness, which is called, in the recondite cant of ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... of his sisters, and matched them admirably. He was a kind-hearted, outspoken, generous young man, up to anything, from a midnight spree to a special religious service; hating everything like cant as decidedly "low," and going in for sincerity, truth, and free- thought. Moreover, he spent his money, or, more strictly speaking, his father's money as well as his own, on horses, dogs, and guns, and left sundry little bills to stand over ...
— Working in the Shade - Lowly Sowing brings Glorious Reaping • Theodore P Wilson
... deride it. In no spirit of cant and with no desire to preach, I set down these things, simply because they are as obvious as temples or scenery to any Oriental traveller who travels with open ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... Atkins in his unanimous mood—unanimously condemning cant and at the same time unanimously courteous. Now that I come to reflect I believe that, in his best moments, these are perhaps the only two points concerning which Tommy Atkins is unanimous. Whether he lives ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... the devil take such cant! Say, once and always, Luca was a wittol, I am his cut-throat, you ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... assembles his servants round 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 his ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... "To pill" was a cant expression used a good deal by "the set," meaning, apparently, to ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... a pool an' go in, Wayland. Dry farmin' may be good for crops; but this dry bath business o' y'r Desert,—'tis not for a North man. Better come along! If A can find it to my neck, y'll need a cant hook to get ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... excuse me i must go to a Dyeing man and i Mustnt Tell Who cause if my mother was Home I Wood and she wood say yes. She always helps dyeing folks and sick ones one the boys will go and he can ride Moses or prince Which he likes. I guess marty so i Cant right any more the paper is so ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... George Wythe. To both of these Jefferson confessed the deepest debt for their efforts to strengthen his mind and make his footing firm. Now, of all men in this country at that time, these two were least likely to support pro-slavery theories or tolerate pro-slavery cant. For while to Small's soundness there is abundance of general testimony, there is to Wythe's soundness testimony the most pointed. We have but to take the first volume of Jefferson's Works, published by order of Congress, and we find Jefferson's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... began that life of struggle against debt, ridicule and unkind condition that was to continue for forty-seven years; never out of debt, never free from attacks of enemies; a life of wordy warfare and inky broadsides against cant, affectation and untruth—with the weapons of his dialectics always kept well burnished by constant use; hated and loved; jeered and praised; feared ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... can see; no can see, no can walkee," chanted Heywood in careless formula. "I say," he complained suddenly, "you're not going to 'study the people,' and all that rot? We're already fed up with missionaries. Their cant, I mean; no ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... welcome in a sufficiently genial fashion, nevertheless with a certain reserve. He was not quite certain if Baltic's conversion was genuine, and if he found proof of hypocrisy, was prepared to fall foul of him forthwith. Sir Harry was not particularly religious, but he was honest, and hated cant ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... sacraments rightly administered, we signify unto you to be our intent, so far as God will assist us to withstand your idolatry. Take this for warning, and be not deceived."[**] With these outrageous symptoms commenced in Scotland that cant, hypocrisy, and fanaticism which long infested that kingdom, and which, though now mollified by the lenity of the civil power, is still ready to break ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... natural utterance in difficulty; it may be that in his heart he believed it. Who, indeed, shall say that he was wrong? But what made such an excuse so disagreeable in his case was that he had not—intellectually speaking—the right to avail himself of it. The difference between truth and cant often lies only in the lips that ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... ABRAHAM-MEN. A cant term for vagabonds, who formerly begged about under pretence of having been discharged destitute from ships and hospitals; whence an idle malingerer wanting to enter the doctor's list is said to "sham Abraham." From a ward in Bedlam which ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... which yield this milk, and which the babes suck, are the preachers in the christian Church. As the bridegroom says to the bride, in Cant. iii., "Thou hast two breasts like two young roes; they are as though they were hung with a bundle of myrrh;" as the bride says, Cant. i., "My beloved is like a bundle of myrrh that lies continually between my breasts." That is, we should ever preach Christ. The bridegroom must resort to ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther
... 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 ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... one habit,—I said to our company a day or two afterwards—worse than that of punning. It is the gradual substitution of cant or flash terms for words which truly characterize their objects. I have known several very genteel idiots whose whole vocabulary had deliquesced into some half dozen expressions. All things fell into one of two great categories, —FAST or SLOW. Man's chief end was to be a ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... cant. 1. alterum sine altero proferre non expedit; recordatio solius judicii in desperationem praecipitat, et misericordis; ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... he would leave one having such an exhortation as "Take heed that thou stumbleth not." Yet all this was done in an honest, and, as I believe, a secretly humorous spirit of a serious nature, for Gordon was as opposed to cant and idle protestations as any man. There is a strikingly characteristic story preserved somewhere of what he did when a hypocritical, canting humbug of a local religious secretary of some Society Fund or other paid a visit to a house ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... 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 history of cant and vulgar language; with glossaries of two secret languages, ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... neighborhood—the man—the woman among all the white race in all the North, who is willing to allow the despised African, the ordinary privileges of white men. Ah! you cannot do it. Shame! shame! Hold! cease,—for God's sake cease your hypocritical cant about Southern slavery. No! no! there is not a state in all this union where they enjoy the privileges of white men. There is not—there never has been—and there never will be! They are no where equal parties in an action at law. They are no where credible witnesses against white men. They ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... book, gained so many friends wherever the English tongue is spoken, parts with none of his power to interest and charm in this record of his collegiate life. Mr. Hughes has the true, wholesome English love of home, the English delight in rude physical sports, the English hatred of hypocrisy and cant, the English fidelity to facts, the English disbelief in all piety and morality which are not grounded in manliness. The present work is full of illustrations of these healthy qualities of his nature, and they are all intimately connected with an elevated, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... the Visions of Quevedo, and certain other writings of his, should be something more than a fair Spanish scholar, and a good master of the language into which he would render them, as they abound not only with idiomatic phrases, but terms of cant or Germania, which are as unintelligible as Greek or Arabic to the greater part of ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... person, girl or man, whom I knew I could get at, who would strip himself or herself bare to me in a spiritual sense, and would be revealed disinterestedly, would have no axe to grind and no contemptible small ends to gain, and no tradesman's commercial morality and no grafting conventionality, no moral cant based on self-interest—some being so near the 'limit' that he was intellectually and morally fearless and did not need to pose, from whom some truth could be derived, whose sincerity and power of straight-seeing was not warped and concealed by any bourgeois ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... uniting to the talent and earnestness of the father, the gentle, endearing qualities of his mother. He was handsome, frank, and graceful; the expression of his face so truthful and unaffected, that it created an interest in his favour at first sight. Religious without cant, and clever without pretence, it is no wonder that his father, who was his sole instructor, reposed in the fine lad the utmost confidence, treating him more like an equal than a son, over whom he held the authority of ...
— George Leatrim • Susanna Moodie
... bold saying for a divine: "But, to avoid all commonplace cant as much as I can on this head, I will forbear to say, because I do not think, that 'tis a breach of Christian charity to think or speak ill of our neighbour. We cannot avoid it: our opinion must follow the evidence," &c. And a little ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... somewhat nearer to those old people who were perhaps a little too dumpish in their repentance and their faith and their hope that morning, than it did to those who took to the table with a light heart. I know all your flippant cant about gospel liberty and against Highland introspection, as you call it—as well as all your habitual neglect of a close and deep self-examination, as Paul called it; but I tell you all to-night that it ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... manned; the hands were ordered aloft, and topsails, and topgallant-sails were let fall; but before we could cant the right way, the brig had passed us, and had already reached the passage, when, the head-sails filling, the anchor was tripped, and being run up to the bows, we steered for the broader ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... from the abominable blur of cant, humbug, and self-seeking which surrounds everything in this present world—that is to say, supposing that I am not already unconsciously tainted myself, a result of which I have a morbid dread. I am perhaps overrating myself. You must put me in mind of my better self, as you did ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... attack on cant. It was a story written by Dickens to protest against all he hated in the nature of oppression. Dickens hated the vulgar cant that only helps to bring self-advertisement: the ethic that the poor must listen to the rich, not because the rich are the best law-givers, but because ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... herself, she could interpret much that she saw in this new world. Cant phrases, bits of studio lore, artists' patter, their ways of looking at things, their manners of expression, their mannerisms, their little vanities, their ideas, ideals, aspirations, were fast becoming familiar to her. Also ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... trusted to keep your own counsel and your clients' secrets. And now for some confessions of mine. In the first place, it is my painful duty to tell you that I am a discharged convict—an 'old lag,' as the cant ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... Sidon, Babylon, and Damascus, and Jerusalem, as a consequence of the sins of their people; but if fire now consumes or earthquake shatters or the tornado crushes a great city, those are scoffed at as fanatics and sneered at for indulging in cant, or rebuked for Pharisaic uncharitableness, who venture to believe and say that there are divine retributions and God's judgment in the ruin wrought by His ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... of God, of Africa, and of the 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 ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... you should ne'r implore, Nor wish for Gold, unless to give the Poor; It makes your Art contemptible appear, Less follow'd too, and look'd into more near; For if all those that preach up Paradise, Will have their shares of every human Vice, They shall Cant long enough e're I believe, Or pin my Soul's Salvation on ...
— Essays on the Stage • Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet
... convert' | Ob'ject object' Ac'cent accent' | Con'vict convict' | Out'leap outleap' Affix affix' | Con'voy convoy' | Per'fect perfect' As'pect aspect' | De'crease decrease' | Per'fume perfume' At'tribute attribute'| Des'cant descant' | Per'mit permit' Aug'ment augment' | Des'ert desert' | Pre'fix prefix' Au'gust august' | De'tail detail' | Pre'mise premise' Bom'bard bombard' | Di'gest digest' | Pre'sage presage' Col'league colleague'| Dis'cord discord' | Pres'ent present' ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... 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 pontificem et D. Henricum ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 183, April 30, 1853 • Various
... doubt about her meaning. She expressed herself strongly on many subjects, and one of these was arithmetic. "I am now going to tell you the horrible and wretched plaege (plague) that my multiplication gives me you cant conceive it the most Devilish thing is 8 times 8 and 7 times 7 it is what nature itself cant endure." Yet "if you speak with the tongues of men and angels and make not mention of arithmetic it profiteth you nothing," ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... any sort can come of it? What is it to me if nations fall a-slaughtering each other? Let the fools go to it! Why should they not please themselves? Peace, after all, is the aspiration of the few; so it always; was, and ever will be. But have done with the nauseous cant about "dire calamity." The leaders and the multitude hold no such view; either they see in war a direct and tangible profit, or they are driven to it, with heads down, by the brute that is in them. Let them rend and be rent; let them paddle in blood and viscera till—if that would ever ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... you my length, breadth, height, and weight to a hair. If silly people take you for me, and put my braggin' on your shoulders, why jist say, 'You might be mistakened for a worse fellow than he is, that's all.' Yes, yes, let my talk remain 'down-east talk,'1 and my writin' remain clear of cant terms ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... 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 Self which ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... absolute grounds. All things are Christ's; all dominions, dignities, potences; it is especially meet that we say, to-day, all institutions. It is the grossest wrong practically to hold otherwise. It is loss, too, and nowhere more palpably than in the educational sphere. It is no cant saying to affirm, and that in a more than merely spiritual sense, that in Christ are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.' At his throne the lines of all science terminate; above all, the science that has man for its subject. Of all history, ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... my eyes, and I thank God that I have such a sister." Of course one can use a religious dialect without meaning much by it, but these Sedgwicks were cultivated people, who thought for themselves, and did not speak cant to ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... cant,' answered Jim, 'and I said nothing of sin or virtue. I don't ask you to trust God, but to trust man. Be at peace ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... how I hate thy cant! Not eastern bombast, nor the savage rant Of purpled madmen, were they numbered all From Roman Nero, down to Russian Paul, Could grate upon my ear so mean, so base, As the rank jargon of that factious race, Who, poor of heart, ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... hearts in our eyes, know very well, and have often said it before, that Eden is not so many days' journey away from our feet that we may not inhale its perfumes and press our brows against its sod whenever we wish. It is not cant, I hope, to say that Eden is not lost entirely. There stands no angel at its gates with naming sword; nor did it fade away with all its legendary beauties, drop its leaves into the melancholy streams, leaving no trace behind of its glades and winding alleys, its stretches ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... raised a new Objection to Clarissa, in that she talked so much of Religion, which he call'd Canting. Nay, Sir, said Bellario, 'I cannot see how she can be said to cant; for her religious Reflections are neither nonsensical or affected, but such as naturally arise from a pious Mind in her several Situations; and if you are a Christian, Sir, I am sure you cannot, on Consideration, dislike that Part of her Character.' Mr. ...
— Remarks on Clarissa (1749) • Sarah Fielding
... plans and interests, even though it might be God's providence, always angered him. And now he was irritated at the loss of one of his best clerks, just as he was becoming of great value; so he said, sharply: "I hope you are not leaning toward the silly cant of mysterious providence. Life is uncertain stumbling only to fools who can't see the chances that fortune throws in their way, or recognize the plain laws of health and success. This young Fleet has been putting two days' work ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... desiring peace. "Ambition, interest, the desire of making people talk about me carried the day, and I decided for war," he said. It was reserved for Harnack and Hauptmann, not to speak of the Kaiser, to cant about the responsibilities of "Kul-tur" (that harlot of the German dictionary, debased by all ignoble uses), about the hastening of the kingdom of heaven, and about the German sword being sanctified by God. But the old German Adam remained, ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine
... unload the heavier stuff, so they could cant the boat and spill the bilge water out of her. The tarpaulin was thrown over some willow bushes for a shelter, and under this they piled their grub boxes and dunnage rolls. The beds were all in watertight canvas bags, and so were their spare clothes, so matters might have been ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... to Mr. Booth with a smile, or rather grin, on her countenance, and asked him for a dram of gin; and when Booth assured her that he had not a penny of money, she replied—"D—n your eyes, I thought by your look you had been a clever fellow, and upon the snaffling lay [Footnote: A cant term for robbery on the highway] at least; but, d—n your body and eyes, I find you are some sneaking budge [Footnote: Another cant term for pilfering] rascal." She then launched forth a volley of dreadful oaths, interlarded with some ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... expected of the horrible eighteenth century—the true dark age of Europe; but surely even a composer of Handel's powers could scarcely do himself justice with such a choice blend of stupidity and cant ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... quickly. "It's not that kind, General," he said. "There's no cant in the boy. He's more popular for it— that's often so with the genuine thing, isn't it! I sometimes think"—the young Captain hesitated and smiled a trifle deprecatingly—"that Morgan is much of the same stuff as Gordon— Chinese Gordon; the martyr stuff, you know. But it seems a bit rash to ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... was a cant name given to a lady [Lady Powis], who was very fond of loo, and who had lost much ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... use of this boasted virtue, if it will not procure that happiness after which all are so eager in pursuit, but which none has ever yet attained? Was Christ, who is said to have been spotless, happy? No; he was a man of sorrows. Away, then, with this cant of virtue. It is a shadow, a deception; a thing, like religion, that has no existence, but takes our senses, our interests, and our passions, and works with them under its own mask. Yet why am I afraid of my daughter? and why do I, in my heart, reverence ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... her, put her on his back, took her two tiny hands in his large left hand, lay down flat on his stomach and crawled along on top of the wall as far as the cant. As he had guessed, there stood a building whose roof started from the top of the wooden barricade and descended to within a very short distance of the ground, with a gentle slope which grazed the linden-tree. A lucky circumstance, for the wall was much higher on this side than on ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... Ireland. The success of federal government in other countries, and especially in the United States, and the success of colonial independence throughout the British Empire, are adduced as presumptions that Home Rule would knit together Great Britain and Ireland, or, as the cant of the day goes, transform a paper union into a union of hearts. If New York be loyal to the United States, if New Zealand be loyal to the British Crown, why should not Ireland, when endowed with local independence resembling ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... 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 to know ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... with you.' It isn't agreeable to my self-esteem to own it, but I expected to hear her say that she would consent to any sacrifice for the sake of her dear daughter. No such clap-trap as that passed her lips. She owned the true motive with a superiority to cant which won my sincerest respect. 'I'll do anything,' she said, 'to baffle Herbert Linley and the spies he has set to watch us.' I can't tell you how glad I was that she had her reward on the same day. We were ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... encircled with a wreath of red roses. Maria thought that she should have worn a bonnet. Maria felt an odd sort of instinctive antagonism for her. She wondered why Wollaston looked at the teacher so instead of at herself. She gave her head a charming cant, and glanced again, but the boy still had his eyes fixed upon the elder woman, with that rapt expression which is seen only in the eyes of a boy upon an older woman, and which is primeval, involving the adoration and awe of womanhood itself. The boy had not reached the age when ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... concern themselves about your reason, they will simply look at the fact that you have failed." The truth in this remark is preeminently a truth for young people. The world, on one side of it, is very hard and cruel. It will apologize for failure in the abstract under tricks of speech, and cant about charity, but for individual failure ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... fast; Rodney clung to the horse, who tried to rear; Sylvie sat still on the seat sloped with the sharp cant ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... all the gossip, and through much that might have been called at other times commonplace cant of religion, there was spread a tender earnestness, and the whole air seemed to be enchanted with the fragrance of that fading rose. Each one spoke more gently, more lovingly to each, for ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... but in his day he numbers them at ten thousand; and most of them were rogues, who counterfeited sores and wounds, and were mere thieves and caterpillars on the commonwealth. He names twenty-three different sorts of vagabonds known by cant names, such as "ruffers," "uprightmen," "priggers," "fraters," "palliards," "Abrams," "dummerers "; and of women, "demanders for glimmer or fire," "mortes," "walking ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... cant of custom—Providence sends no evil without a remedy. Should I lie groaning under a yoke I can shake off, I were accessory to my ruin, and my patience ...
— The Beaux-Stratagem • George Farquhar
... book of poems mentioned above, Rasmie's Buedie. Rasmie is a Shetland crofter who is typical of the race: shrewd, kindly, thoughtful, and gifted with a touch of quaint sarcasm. He has perfectly clear views of life, this old peasant, and is quite free from cant, or superstition, or mystery. Some of his metaphors are droll: after long pondering on the scheme of creation, he comes to the conclusion that earth is the field, heaven the house, and hell the "midden." Pope, speaking of Paradise Lost, ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... lasted through the nights of the 27th and 28th, the West-India interest affecting great horror of slavery, and depicting the encouragement the measure would give to that evil in terms of great and even pious alarm. Never did a party resort more scandalously to cant and hypocrisy to serve a purpose than this, on the memorable occasion of "the sugar debate." The resolution was carried, and a bill embodying it rapidly passed the commons, but was resisted in the lords with ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... perhaps a volenteer in the Second U S Regiment who Richly deserved preferment for his bravery through the whole action he made the freeest use of the Baonet of any Man I noticed in the Carcases of the Savages. John Hamelton I cant say too much in praise of who was along with the army a packhorse master he picked up the dead mens guns and used them freely when he found them Loaded and when the Indians entered the Camp he took up an ax and at them with it. I am Intirely ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... said Dick bluntly; "I don't believe you when you say so. I call it cant. How do you know? You ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... cloven hoof and just escapes the adornment of ass's ears! Dear, dear, what a temper! But, jesting aside, you must not suppose I abhor the cant of humanitarianism from any thin-blooded selfishness or outworn apathy. Have I not made this clear to you? It is the negative side of humanitarianism (the word itself is an offence!), and not its portion of human love that vexes ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... to use a cant phrase, is an exquisite "bit of Blarney;" but independent of the vulgar association, it has a multitude of attractions for every reader. Its interest will, however, be materially enhanced by the following admirable ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 396, Saturday, October 31, 1829. • Various
... people whose time is money, they must be simplified, and treated much as a painter treats them, drawing them in squarely, seizing the more important features, and neglecting all that does not assert itself as too essential to be passed over—hence the slang and cant words of every profession, and indeed all language; for language at best is but a kind of "patter," the only way, it is true, in many cases, of expressing our ideas to one another, but still a very bad way, and not ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... 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, Charles Earl of Dumfermeling, ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... awakened by this bustle of preparation. I gazed with respect and wonder at the vagrant personages who accompanied these caravans. I loitered about the village inn, listening with curiosity and delight to the slang talk and cant jokes of the showmen and their followers; and I felt an eager desire to witness this fair, which my fancy decked ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... old college, but to the more splendid foundation of Trinity. About the date of his matriculation there is a doubt. In Wood's Athenae Oxonienses there is a note to the effect that Marvell was admitted "in matriculam Acad. Cant. Coll. Trin." on the 14th of December 1633, when the boy was but twelve years old. Dr. Lort, a famous master of Trinity in his day, writing in November 1765 to Captain Edward Thompson, of whom more later on, told ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... in operation which does not recognize and affirm the tenets of their respective creeds, they render the adoption of any such system impossible. They see this; they know it; they mean it. And nothing moves me to indignation quicker than their stereotyped cant of "Godless education," "teaching infidelity," "knowledge worthless or dangerous without Religion," &c. &c. Why, Sirs, it is very true that the People need Religious as well as purely Intellectual culture, but the former has been already provided ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... ridicule every thing that appears so in others." Now, Sir, this Sect, as I have been told, is very frequent in the great Town where you live; but as my Circumstance of Life obliges me to reside altogether in the Country, though not many Miles from London, I cant have met with a great Number of em, nor indeed is it a desirable Acquaintance, as I have lately found by Experience. You must know, Sir, that at the Beginning of this Summer a Family of these Apes came and settled for the Season not far from the Place where I live. ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... granting of these claims would tend to make woman less amiable and attractive, less regardful of her peculiar duties and obligations as wife and mother, a wanderer from her proper sphere, bringing confusion into domestic life, and strife into the public assembly, is the cant of Papal Rome as to the discordant and infidel tendencies of the right of private judgment in matters of faith; is the outcry of legitimacy as to the incapacity of the people to govern themselves; is the false allegations which selfish and timid conservatism is ever ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... Byron—I do not speak of that mixture of cant and stupidity which denies the poet his place in Westminster Abbey, but of literary reaction—has shown itself still more unreasoning. I have met with adorers of Shelley who denied the poetic genius of Byron; others ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... the declaration of war, long did he continue in the common cant of office, in declamation about the Scheld and Holland, and all the vulgar causes of common contests! and when at least the immense genius of his new supporter had beat him out of these 'words' (words signifying 'places' and ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... maintains a supremacy over all the others. On the occasion of her marriage, a civil magistrate usually officiates, and the rite of "sealing" is afterwards administered by Young. By the civil process, in the cant language of the Mormons, she is bound to her husband "for time," and by the ecclesiastical solemnization "for eternity." Every wife taken after the first is called a "spiritual," and is "sealed" ecclesiastically ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... examples are cited from Beaumont and Fletcher, and Swift. It is formed from flam, which Johnson calls "a cant word of no certain etymology." Flam, for a lie, a cheat, is however used by South, Barrow, and Warburton, and therefore at one time obtained an admission into dignified style. See Nares' ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 208, October 22, 1853 • Various
... impale 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 ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... of puzzling the question with religion is clear. You cannot quarrel for sixpences with the man who is helping you the way to heaven. The man who wants your sixpences, therefore, assumes a religious phraseology, which is cant, and cant is fraud, and fraud is dishonesty, and the dishonest should have a ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... he be like to die, he had better do it, and decrease the surplus population. Your very words, Scrooge. Decrease the surplus population. (SCROOGE hangs his head in shame.) Man, if man you be in heart, forbear that wicked cant. Will you decide what men shall live, and what men shall die? It may be that in the sight of Heaven you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions ...
— The White Christmas and other Merry Christmas Plays • Walter Ben Hare
... laid they violent hands upon him; next, Himself imprison'd, and his goods asseiz'd: This certify the Pope: away, take horse. [Exit Attendant. Lan. My lord, will you take arms against the king? Archb. of Cant. What need I? God himself is up in arms When violence is offer'd to the church. Y. Mor. Then will you join with us, that be his peers, To banish or behead that Gaveston? Archb. of Cant. What else, my ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe
... I am employed in looking over the several notices which I have received of their manner of dexterity, and the way at dice of making all rugg, as the cant is. The whole art of securing a die has lately been sent me by a person who was of the fraternity, but is disabled by the loss of a finger, by which means he cannot, as he used to do, secure a die. But I am very much at a loss how to call some of the fair sex, who are ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... chaplain refuse his ration. And of the salt of the good God's earth are the chaplains. There was Major the Reverend John Pringle, of Yukon fame, whose only son Jack was killed in action after he had walked two hundred miles to enlist. No cant, no smug psalm-singing, mourners'-bench stuff for him. He believed in his Christianity like a man; he was ready to fight for his belief like a man; he cared for us like a father, and stood beside us in the mornings as we drank our stimulant. Again, I repeat ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat
... people within twenty miles of your own coast. I fairly confess that the dread which I have of their physical power is with me a very strong motive for listening to their claims. To talk of not acting from fear, is mere parliamentary cant. From what motive but fear, I should be glad to know, have all the improvements in our constitution proceeded? I question if any justice has ever been done to large masses of mankind from any other ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... You are pariahs, pitiful people.... I am a different sort. My eyes are open, I see it all as clearly as a hawk or an eagle when it floats over the earth, and I understand it all. I am a living protest. I see irresponsible tyranny—I protest. I see cant and hypocrisy—I protest. I see swine triumphant—I protest. And I cannot be suppressed, no Spanish Inquisition can make me hold my tongue. No.... Cut out my tongue and I would protest in dumb show; shut me up in a cellar—I will ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Th' wife's a raight cant body, and as clean—ye mught eat your porridge off th' house floor. They're sorely comed down. I wish William could get a job as gardener or summat i' that way; he understands gardening weel. He once lived wi' a Scotchman ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... much given to this silly sort of cant, more gratifying to vulgar prejudice, than becoming a scholar, or a man of science. One knows not how to show its absurdity better than, by merely directing the reader to consider for a moment, the things ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... mind was admirably balanced by her home affections, which remained unsullied and unshaken to the end of her days. She had, in common with her three brothers and her charming sister, the advantage of a wise and loving mother—a woman pious without cant, and worldly-wise without being worldly. Mrs. Porter was born at Durham, and when very young bestowed her hand and heart on Major Porter. An old friend of the family assures us that two or three of their children were born in Ireland, and that certainly Jane was amongst the ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various
... fight. Nevertheless, to the astonishment and sorrow of his religious friends, he accepted Mr. Clay's challenge with the utmost possible promptitude, and bore himself throughout the affair like (to use the poor, lying, tory cant of the last generation) "a high-toned Virginia gentleman." Colonel Benton tells us that Mr. Randolph invented an ingenious excuse for the enormous inconsistency of his conduct on this occasion. A duel, ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... borders of the home State. When other States enact and rigidly enforce some such drastic measure, the West will begin to have some regard for their particular brand of virtue. Until then, the West may be pardoned for believing that cant and hypocrisy often join hands with the lawless element and make a grandstand ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... his head for a moment, then dropping it again on the ground; "take your cant to some other market, I don't believe in a God, or heaven or hell: and the sooner I die the better; for I'll be out of ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... hug him, give him the "Abolition" kiss, write an article on slavery, like Dickens; marry him to a white gall to England, get him a saint's darter with a good fortin, and well soon see whether her father was a talkin' cant or no, about niggers. Cuss 'em, let any o' these Britishers give me slack, and I'll give 'em cranberry for their goose, I know. I'd jump right down their throat with spurs on, ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... 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 ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres) |
