"Humbug" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... side the water, 'tis prudent to pull O'er the eyes of the public their national wool, By accusing of slavish respect to John Bull All American authors who have more or less 400 Of that anti-American humbug—success, While in private we're always embracing the knees Of some twopenny editor over the seas, And licking his critical shoes, for you know 'tis The whole aim of our lives to get one English notice; My American puffs I would willingly burn all (They're ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... peaks of Hinchinbrook Island, in which all manner of sea fish revelled. When doubt was expressed as to the possibility of sea-water and sea-fish getting up so far "on top" and it was suggested—"What you think, that old man humbug you?" "Yes," was the ready response; "me think that old fella no tell true. Him humbug." Some blacks possess something wiser ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... as Zaire at the fourth appearance. I very much wished you had been there; you would have seen that the public does not hate your friend. I appeared in a box, and the whole pit clapped their hands at me. I blushed, I hid myself; but I should be a humbug if I did not confess to you that I was sensibly affected. It is pleasant not to be dishonored in one's ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... before our time. This he had arranged, that the general might see Miss Temple, as if by accident; and also allow me, who, my father supposed, was not aware of Miss Temple being in town, to meet with her. What a deal of humbug there is in this world! Nothing but plot and counterplot! I shook hands with Cophagus, who, I perceived, had, notwithstanding his wife's veto, put on his blue cotton net pantaloons and Hessian boots, and he appeared to be so tight in both, that he could hardly move. ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... Pope—quoad Pope, the poet—against all the world, in the unjustifiable attempts begun by Warton and carried on at this day by the new school of critics and scribblers, who think themselves poets because they do not write like Pope. I have no patience with such cursed humbug and bad taste; your whole generation are not worth a Canto of the Rape of the Lock, or the Essay on Man, or the Dunciad, or 'any thing that is his.'—But it is three in the matin, and I must go ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... what a horrid grimace he made, and how he lifted up both his hands, as if to wave off an imaginary cup of tea! I always thought that the tea sent over to this country from China was a miserable humbug; so poor Min-Yung's horror at being asked to drink a cup of it, quite upset me, and I laughed immoderately. Min-Yung laughed, too; and understood by the way I shook my fore-finger at him, just as well as if I had said, "You know ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... "Of course such a marriage would suit my child, and would suit me," he wished to say;—"not only, or not chiefly, because your son is a nobleman, and will be an earl and a man of great property. That goes a long way with us. We are too true to deny it. We hate humbug, and want you to know simply the truth about us. The title and the money go far,—but not half so far as the opinion which we entertain of the young man's own good gifts. I would not give my girl to the greatest and richest ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... "Humbug! What did he mean by addressing you secretly? Only to compromise your name, and so to secure your fortune, and perhaps to break ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... industries and forbidding children under twelve from working in cotton, woolen, silk, or flax mills. Children over fourteen, however, could, by special arrangement with parents or guardians, be compelled to work more than ten hours a day. "This act is very much of a humbug," commented Greeley, "but it will serve a good end. Those whom it was intended to put asleep will come back again before long, and, like Oliver Twist, ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... having fallen in with some of the members of that political junto, the Saints, who are worldly enough to link, as often as they can, into their association, the powerful by wealth or talent, his whole time is occupied in assisting to promote their humbug; and he has absolutely taken it into his head, that the attention he receives from them for his subscriptions is on account of his eloquence as a preacher, and that hitherto he has been altogether in an error with ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... Cleena will call us to our 'frugal repast,' like the poor children in stories, and I want to hear all about this 'ruined castle' I've come to live in, I mean 'dwell,' for story-book girls—'maidens'—never do anything so commonplace as just 'live.' Hally, boy, there's a lot of humbug in this world." ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... a humbug?" she said. "You know perfect well why you is using that. You want to hide us, that's why. What a silly ...
— A Little Mother to the Others • L. T. Meade
... from God's own hand and revelation. But I don't have any faith in modern spiritual seansys. They seem to me,—and I would say it in a polite, courtous way, for I wouldn't hurt your feelin's for the world,—all mixed up with modern greed and humbug." ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... ye! You want to take me to the court-house. You can't humbug me," said Noddy, fully confirmed in his suspicions by the ...
— Work and Win - or, Noddy Newman on a Cruise • Oliver Optic
... excessively that any change would be a relief to him." ... "Froude is staying up, and I see a great deal of him." ... "Froude is most enthusiastic in his plans, and says, 'What fun it is living in such times as these! how could one now go back to the times of old Tory humbug?'" From henceforth his position among his friends was that of the most impatient and aggressive of reformers, the one who most urged on his fellows to outspoken language and a bold line of action. They were not men to hang back and be afraid, but they were cautious and considerate ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... will fall, sure enough, but it will be simply because when our dear young knight, L.E., has killed her Dragon, she will have wiped out the whole brood! They can't live without their sweet and attractive little sister. And so, like many a bigger humbug, we shall take great credit, that belongs to somebody else, and assume to have done big things, at enormous expense of blood and money. Trust us, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 26, September 24, 1870 • Various
... the coming examination, form themselves into a joint-stock cramming company; take L.30 or L.40 shares in a private tutor; pitch their camp in some Dan or Beersheba which has a reputation for dulness; and, like other joint-stock companies, humbug the public, and sometimes themselves, into the belief that they are "doing business." For these classical bubbles, the long vacation is the usual season, and Wales one of the favourite localities; and certainly, putting "Reading" out of the question, three fine summer months might be worse spent, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... But you've never defined what the dream will be like when it comes. Your masters have. Let me read some choice bits to you from these big-brained, clear-eyed men who created your movement. I like these men because they scorn humbug. Defiance, disobedience, contempt for thing that ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... pretense of "Madam" or other social formula, but a plain and large "My dear," with the name appended as a concession to the humbug of life, even in regard to the woman he loved—"I am going to Hereford, but shall return here for luncheon. Mrs. Devar's illness is not likely to be lasting, and the view from the Yat is, if possible, better in the afternoon than in the morning. In addition to my obvious need of a ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... down in the books now as a Protestant, or Church of England man; but I do not believe all that churchmen believe. I think there's a good deal of humbug about what is called Christianity altogether. I have tried several creeds, and there's none of them squares exactly with ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... often at enmity with their masters, and fight them by means of the strike. "State o' trade! That's just a piece of masters' humbug. It's rate o' wages I was talking of. Th' masters keep th' state o' trade in their own hands, and just walk it forward like a black bug-a-boo, to frighten naughty children with into being good. I'll tell yo' it's their part—their cue, as some folks call it—to beat us down, to swell their fortunes; ...
— Queen Victoria • E. Gordon Browne
... hand, I do not contemplate this bi-cameral conference with the diplomatists trying to best and humbug the Labour people as well as each other and the Labour people getting more and more irritated, suspicious, and extremist, with anything but dread. The Allied countries must go into the conference solid, and they can only hope to do that by heeding and incorporating Labour ideas before they ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells
... whose orthodox toes Are seldom withdrawn from the stirrup; Dr Humdrum, whose eloquence flows, Like droppings of sweet poppy syrup; Dr Rosygill puffing and fanning, And wiping away perspiration; Dr Humbug who proved Mr Canning The beast in ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... admissible to be on the friendly terms on which I consider myself with you, and yet to be on such unfriendly ones that we should live close to each other and never meet!!!!![1] You write "tout a vous." Oh! you humbug! said I. No! no! it is really too bad. I should like to thank you 9000 times for all your efforts on my behalf, and to reproach you 20,000 that you came and went as you did. So all is a delusion! friendship, kingdom, empire; all is only a ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826, Volume 1 of 2 • Lady Wallace
... an open admission," he cried. "What more do you want? The fellow is a self-confessed humbug. We have only to return home and report him as the ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a joint resolution of Congress, the use of "that first-class humbug and fraud, the whiskey meter," has been abolished. Now there are dozens of members of Congress who are not only "first-class humbugs and frauds," but whiskey meters, to whom whiskey is both meat and drink, and yet who ever heard of ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 • Various
... my advice, and it's about the only thing most men of my age enjoy giving. Well, really, Cecil, and frankly, I think it's a dismal little story. It would be humbug if I pretended I was sorry about Mrs Raymond's—a—attitude, and I quite see its absolute genuineness But, if you'll excuse my saying so, what price ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... I have put out my gibber, and if you have read thus far, you will have taken it in. I wonder if you will ever come this length. I shall try a trap for you, and insult you here, on this last page. "O Baxter what a damned humbug you are!" There,—shall this insult bloom and die unseen, or will you come toward me, when next we meet, with a face deformed with anger and demand speedy and bloody satisfaction. Nous verrons, which ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... you, Chang, my boy, is it?' said Joe. 'What! are you glad to have me, old chappie? No humbug about yer, are ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... quietly is just the same sort of nonsense as any other complaint against anything alive for being "vicious" when we want to take or kill it. "This animal," said a Frenchman who made wise fun of all such humbug, "is very wicked. When you ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... could not do it. This government would be very weak, indeed, if a majority, with a disciplined army and navy and a well-filled treasury, could not preserve itself when attacked by an unarmed, undisciplined, unorganized minority. All this talk about the dissolution of the Union is humbug, nothing but folly. We do not want to dissolve ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... time, the united forces of the Camusot and Popinot families gained an easy victory in the world, for nobody undertook to defend the unfortunate Pons, that parasite, that curmudgeon, that skinflint, that smooth-faced humbug, on whom everybody heaped scorn; he was a viper cherished in the bosom of the family, he had not his match for spite, he was a dangerous mountebank whom nobody ought ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... rang the bell and out came Simon—the man who'd got me convicted, and my own brother too, mind you!—looking as smug as the hard-hearted old humbug he was. He got the shock of his life when he saw who it was, but I began gently and I put a proposition to him. I'll bet none of you will ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... to be fastened to a chain. He was held a slave by the man who, he says, treated him so finely. He was made to dance through fear of being touched up with a red-hot iron. In short, he is what men call a 'humbug.'" ...
— The Nursery, January 1877, Volume XXI, No. 1 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... our squadron, and its subsequent spell of idleness in Tunisian waters, had degenerated into a farce in which the ridiculous part fell to our share. So that when I took over the command of the squadron, with the prospect of seeing it undergo the same course of humbug again, I could not resist making some representations on the subject to M. Guizot, a resolute and large-minded man, as solicitous for his country's honour as for his own. That very year, as it happened, the Bey of Tunis had had to complain of intrigues ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... humbug," exclaimed David. "The silver things that old Jordan buried, the spoons, knives and dishes, were all dug up again and are in use now every day. General Gordon never had eighty thousand dollars ...
— The Boy Trapper • Harry Castlemon
... heap. But I needed none, and indeed, throughout the whole time was under one but twice. Tents are all very well, when you are quietly encamped for any length, of time; but when, as with us, you are on the more continually, I consider them a humbug and nuisance. You must carry half a one all day, and at night join it with your comrade's half. The common shelter tent, which is the only one that can be so carried, is a poor protection against heavy rain, for the water can beat in at the sides and form pools beneath you; ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... much sense not to take a good offer,' said Mervyn, 'otherwise, it is all humbug his pretending to care for you. As to Robert's folly, have not I given up all that any rational being could stick at? I tell you, it is the giving up those houses that makes me in want of capital, so you are bound to ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... all humbug! Nothing you can say will make me hold my tongue," added Broom, with a ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... you think of them all?" said Mr. Wood, looking down at me. "A pretty fine-looking lot of horses, aren't they? Not a thoroughbred there, but worth as much to me as if each had pedigree as long as this plank walk. There's a lot of humbug about this pedigree business in horses. Mine have their manes and tails anyway, and the proper use of their eyes, which is more ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... knows nothing of your constitution, while I can soon set you on your feet again. I am sick of the Institute and of Moron-val, and never wish to see either more." Thereupon the doctor launched forth in a philippic against the school which supported him. Moronval was a thorough humbug, he never paid anybody, and every one was giving him up; the affair of Madou had done him great injury; and finally Dr. Hirsch went so far as to compliment Jack on ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... microscope, upon my parlor rug, With a very heavy quarto and a very lively bug; The true bug had been organized with only two antennae, But the humbug in the copperplate would have them ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... sympathy of a wily and experienced hand at business. I wonder if the average youth is equally adaptive! Probably not, for I suppose it means I was a good deal of a humbug. All I knew of business, so far, was what Sussex Street had shown me; and if I had been perfectly candid, I should have admitted that, so far from striking me as interesting, it seemed to me absurdly, incredibly dull and uninteresting; ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... and influential citizens of a colony came there originally in the humblest possible way; and how many of the dregs of colonial society—the occupiers of the lowest rung on the colonial ladder—reached their new home with all the pomp and circumstance of quarter-deck sublimity, and all the humbug and pretension of real or fancied aristocracy. Is the result we see—for these contrasts are to be found plentifully in all the colonies at the Antipodes—what it ought to be, or not? ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... terms and we got none. We did not object to go under the War Office. We did not make speeches calculated to humbug or deceive while ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... door? Well, you ken best what's been Between that door and you. It's crazy and old, But, it looks innocent, wooden-faced humbug: yet I don't trust doors myself; they've got a knack Of shutting me in. But you'll be snug enough In the other room: I'd advise you to lie down, And rest; you're looking trashed: and, come to think, I've a deal to say to ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... aloud with the confidence of ignorance, "Back to Nature!" Nature! ah, my friend, what mischief that cry has done me. Where was there an apostle apter to receive this doctrine, so convenient for me as it was—beautiful Nature, and all that humbug? It is nothing but that. Well, the world was watching; and it saw "The Piano," the "White Girl," the Thames subjects, the marines ... canvases produced by a fellow who was puffed up with the conceit of being able to prove to his ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various
... When force attacks humbug, when a private soldier takes the square cap off a first president, and throws it ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... braggart, not only in music, but in art generally, and such esprit as his art criticisms exhibit would be even more common than it unfortunately now is, if he were oftener equalled in conceit and arrogance. The pillorying of a humbug is so laudable an object that the reader will excuse the digression, which, moreover, may show what miserable instruments a poor biographer has sometimes to make use of. Another informant, unknown to fame, but apparently more trustworthy, ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... there was only one Santa Claus, and even he was a humbug," cried Effie, astonished at ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... carriage among the expectant crowd. The clock struck the hour of noon, but the little Delaware skiff was nowhere to be seen; and, as the sun declined from the zenith, the people gradually dispersed, muttering, "Another humbug!" ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... he drew breath, would not give up the decision of the most important questions of government, and therefore this abdication, after all, was merely an excellent means of divesting himself of burdensome obligations, embellished with a certain amount of humbug. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... true emotion and particular facts, as opposed to general terms, and implicitly recognize it in the repulsion they feel toward any one who professes strong feeling about abstractions—in the interjectional "Humbug!" which immediately rises to their lips. Wherever abstractions appear to excite strong emotion, this occurs in men of active intellect and imagination, in whom the abstract term rapidly and vividly calls up the particulars it ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... address to Mugs by a Humbug. That's what it ought to be called. I was looking forward to having a good crack with you the night, but sure a newspaper man need never hope to have ten minutes to himself. I've given Miss Squibb orders to ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... at savage life was that of the harmless humbug who called himself the hermit. In a great tree, close by the highroad, he had built himself a little cabin after the manner of the Swiss Family Robinson; thither he mounted at night, by the romantic aid of a rope ladder; and if ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the Corporal, after he had communicated from his own pipe the friendly flame to his comrade's; "tell you what—talk nonsense; the commander-in-chief's no Martinet—if we're all right in action, he'll wink at a slip word or two. Come, no humbug—hold jaw. D'ye think God would sooner have snivelling fellow like you in his regiment, than a man like me, clean limbed, straight as a dart, six feet one ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... consultations became more frequent, however, he began to perceive, what other men were not slow to tell him, that Mr Silver thought him a bore. And the moment this flashed upon him, with his unfortunate antipathy to any thing like humbug, he began another war of independence. He selected crabbed passages; got them up carefully by the help of translations, scholiasts, and clever friends; and then took them up hot to Mr Silver. And when he detected him slurring a difficulty ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... himself a magician from beyond the land where the sun rose, and rejoiced in the name of Doctor Capricornus, A.V.G.T., and M.U.H.S., which the great learning of Herr Schwein interpreted by A Very Great Traveller, or Thief, and Member of the Universal Herbage or Humbug Society. Now, the feats displayed by this new candidate for public favour were of the stupidest order (remember, this is not the statement of a disinterested party), consisting merely in pointing out any pebble on the ground that any one of the crowd should have ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes
... And after making due allowance for those indescribable differences of taste which separate us from our fathers in every region of art—and even admitting, what is by no means sure, that sixty years ago rascality, snobbery, and humbug were more rampant in society than nowadays—we are still disposed to regret that a writer whose best work is superlatively good should have dwelt so persistently in his earlier stories upon the dreary and ignoble side of English life. From ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... now what it was that had happened to her. She could no longer humbug herself into insisting that it hadn't happened. The thing had been secret and treacherous with her, and she had been secret and treacherous with it. She had refused to acknowledge it, not because she had been ashamed of it but ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... "Interest of humbug!" snapped Prof. Darmstetter, his own sarcastic self again. "You consent because you vant to be beautiful. You care not'ing for science. I can trust you vit' my secret. You need svear no oat's not to reveal it. You vant to be t'e only perfect voman in t'e vorld, and so you ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... hokkerben, to humbug them. I suppose he had oils rubbed on his heels. But when he had drawn the rats away and asked for his money, they would not give it to him. So then, what ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... a humbug, but I don't believe Peterkin did; he was so completely taken up with the thought of Margaret's escape, and so down-to-the-ground sure that he was doing a most necessary piece of business if she was to be saved from the witch's 'enchantering,' ...
— Peterkin • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... sitting among the fat ones. Reichstag was nothing but a club of heavy-weights. All were eager to have the ministers tickle them under the arms; that meant some service to be rendered, and this again brought marks of honor and perhaps a decoration. Everything was humbug. Workingmen should help themselves and throw out all that reactionary mob, army, clergy and aristocracy; otherwise there could be no change ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... Admiral Bell replied that he might go and be d——d, if he liked, and that he considered him a swab and a humbug, and appealed to Jack Pringle whether he, Jack, ever saw such a sanctified ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... inurbane, uncivil, rude, disrespectful, pert, saucy, impertinent, impudent, insolent. Importance, consequence, moment. Impostor, pretender, charlatan, masquerader, mountebank, deceiver, humbug, cheat, quack, shyster, empiric. Imprison, incarcerate, immure. Improper, indecent, indecorous, unseemly, unbecoming, indelicate. Impure, tainted, contaminated, polluted, defiled, vitiated. Inborn, innate, inbred, congenital. Incite, instigate, stimulate, impel, arouse, goad, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... "It is humbug. I am not in a humour now to stand picking my words. I have been infernally badly used—badly used ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... sainted associations, from these pious opposers of our national characteristics, and the noblest institution of our country, the foundation stone of our honour and glory, the established church of England. There is (in my opinion) more mischief to be apprehended to the state from the humbug of piety than from all the violence of froth, political demagogues, or the open-mouthed howl of the most hungry radicals. Let it be understood I speak not against toleration in its most extended sense, but war only with hypocrisy and fanaticism, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... subject. I am a mortal enemy to every description of humbug; and I believe there is as much in the medical world as in any other. Madeira wine had for a century been in high and deserved reputation, when on a sudden some fashionable physician discovers that it contained more ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... in their daily life were like squirrels in a cage, and because they moved, they thought they were progressing. In them scepticism had killed belief; religion, family, country, were, as they phrased it, all humbug. They had only one aim, one passion—to enjoy themselves. Their watchword was "pleasure." All those who did not perish of consumption ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... "it may have been all the same with the dog, and I believe there's humbug in it; for if the dog had made his appearance, as master pretends he did, all of a sudden, he'd a ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... he was a kind of a humbug," said Calvin Green, who, with his wife, had come up close behind. "See how he kept dragging in his morals, jes like overhauling a trawl and taking off a haddock, ...
— Five Hundred Dollars - First published in the "Century Magazine" • Heman White Chaplin
... abroad is also now fairly developing. The discovery was at first looked upon as a humbug, but this view is giving way before the facts presented in the local papers. The leading journals of the country have sent special correspondents to write up the subject. The New York Tribune and Herald, Harper's Weekly, the Springfield Republican ...
— The American Goliah • Anon.
... unfavourable, and he explains that this bad showing is the result of a deliberate plot. The boys who obtain high marks, Page declares, secure them usually by cheating or through the partisanship of the professors; a high grade therefore really means that the recipient is either a humbug or a bootlicker. Page had therefore attempted to keep his reputation unsullied by aiming at a low academic record! The report on that three months' work, which still survives, discloses that Page's conspiracy against himself did not succeed, for his marks are all high. ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... Sir Thomas. "Harry, you are my brother, and I am only a guest here, but you are a humbug, sir." ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... goodness lands, Seemed like he had a dozen hands. Well, afterwhile they stopped the fuss, An' some one kindly parted us. All beat an' cuffed an' clawed an' scratched, An' needin' both our faces patched, Each started hum a different way; An' what o' Liza, do you say, Why, Liza—little humbug—dern her, Why, she 'd ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... the birthright of every American, and who, nevertheless, has ground us down to a state where we would not reduce our negroes, who tortures and sneers at us, and rules us with an iron hand! Ah! Liberty! what a humbug! I would rather belong to England or France, than to the North! Bondage, woman that I am, I can never stand! Even now, the Northern papers, distributed among us, taunt us with our subjection and tell us "how coolly ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... opened the dining-room for her to pass out, she touched his shoulder affectionately and laughed. "Hammer and tongs to Sophie Zobraska! Oh, Paul, aren't you a bit of a humbug?" ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... be up awful early, and pick the last cherries off that tree. I wanted to get ahead of him, so I sneaked down before light to humbug him, for I was going a-fishing, and we have to be off ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Vol. 5 - Jimmy's Cruise in the Pinafore, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... humbug. I've got the typhus; you can see it in my arm. You told me you'd sent for the doctor. You did that to comfort yourself... comfort me, too; send a messenger to Madame Odintsov; she's a lady with an estate... ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... affairs of others, and totally repudiates self. From early manhood he had roughed life in the very roughest and wildest scenes of the wilderness, and was now returning to those scenes after a short visit to his native land. The doctor was a nondescript; a compound of gravity, fun, seriousness, and humbug—the latter predominating. He had been everywhere (at least, so he said), had seen everything, knew everybody, and played the fiddle. It cannot be said, I fear, that he played it well; but, amid the various vicissitudes of his chequered life, the doctor had frequently found himself ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... No humbug, you know," he added, raising his eyes, and for a moment looking William searchingly in ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... to those Of Hydra presence and Stymphalian beak, Whose quarry is unseasoned youth, who seek By subtle snares the Infant's steps to trip, And catch the Minor in their harpy grip. To his Twelve Labours, against monsters grim, Who might have lived in safety but for him, To snare, to slay, to humbug, and to cozen, Herschelles, just to make a baker's dozen, Adds a Thirteenth! A wily, wicked wight, Dwelling in noxious nooks as dark as night, Beyond the radius of the housemaid's broom, And thence ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, April 2, 1892 • Various
... illustrating Gay's fable of the foolish young cock, who ne'er had been in that condition, but for his mother's prohibition: moreover, how is it, that so captivating a form of intoxication is so little rife among our drunken journeymen? queries, however, as to this; and whether or not the humbug of teetotalism (a modern speculation, got up by and for the benefit of grocers and sugar-planters on the one side, schismatics and conspiring demagogues on the other,) has already substituted opium-eating, drinking, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... abbes which they have borne in their time—the human mind becomes affected in no ordinary degree. Some human minds heave a sigh for the glories of bygone days; while others, considering rather the lies and humbug, the vice and servility, which went framed and glazed and enshrined, creaking along in those old Juggernaut cars, with fools worshipping under the wheels, console themselves for the decay of institutions that may have been ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... boarding-school Miss in her teens. She appears to us a kind of strong-minded old maid, but with her strong-mindedness greatly modified by the presumption as well as the sentimentality of romantic humbug. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... can guess from the trifling sort of things he has done, to have a capital notion of the principles of grouping. Now these things are valuable in themselves, but they are doubly, trebly valuable as possessed by a person of real comic humour; and a total despiser of that Venerable Humbug which almost all the artists of our day seem, in one shape or other, to revere as the prime god of their idolatry. Nobody, that has the least of an eye for art, can doubt that Cruikshank, if he chose, might design as many annunciations, ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... man blankly, "what a ridiculous old humbug it is! And how he used to frighten me in the old days with his confounded cavalry bluster! I rather think I will look him up: and I'll dine with him three times a week if he likes. Meanwhile, it's time for me to go and meet old Rainham, ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... hark ye, Senor Viscount. You will then learn what a mighty fine thing a debate in the English Parliament is! No Continental humbug there. Not but that the Court has a trouble to keep 'em in their places sometimes; and I would it had been one in the Lords instead. However, Sheridan says he has been learning his speech these two days, ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... notion of any sort of "economy." I don't know that he had ever taken up political science seriously, or that he had any preference for one kind or form of government over another. I repeat,—his radicalism was that of a humorist. He despised big-wigs, and pomp of all sorts, and, above all, humbug and formalism. But his radicalism was important as a sign that our institutions are ceasing to be picturesque; of which, if you consider his nature, you will see that his radicalism was a sign. And he did service to his cause. Not an abuse, whether from the corruption of something old, or the injustice ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... of the days when my mind misgives me whether the pictorial art be not a humbug, and when the minute accuracy of a fly in a Dutch picture of fruit and flowers seems to me something more reliable than the master-touches of Raphael. The gallery was considerably thronged, and many of the visitors appeared to be from the country, ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... view to tricking the people into entrusting them with power. The only possible way by which politicians as a class can be improved is the political and psychological education of the people, so that they may learn to detect a humbug. In England men have reached the point of suspecting a good speaker, but if a man speaks badly they think he must be honest. Unfortunately, virtue is not so widely diffused as this ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... sorrowful. To come back to your godmamma, who will teach you how to walk and be happy—happy and get all you want. Also, since she is now poor, you would do well to send her a little money to this address in Italy, since that old humbug of a Pasteur, whom she cannot harm because of the influences round him, still prevents her from returning to Switzerland, where she has friends. Now that big plum, it is very nice and you desire it much. Come to your godmamma and she will show you how to get it off ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... VERY angry, and, taking Harry with me, went at once to the address the old rascal gave me, a dirty court out of Hanover Street No such person had ever lived there, and my white-haired saint was a humbug. Harry laughed at me, and Mamma forbade me to bring any more thieves to the house, ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... gasped the yellow hen, in amazement; "if the copper man can do half of these things he is a very wonderful machine. But I suppose it is all humbug, like ...
— Ozma of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... hint that, on arriving at Tripoli, there would be exhibited a good deal of fantazia, ("humbug[10]") by the health-office department. Accordingly, after we had been an hour in port, the health officer came alongside, and affected great surprise at our not having passports, and asked me, with great pomposity, what was my "reverito nome?" The Turks always adopt and caricature the worst parts ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... which we have both taken. With respect to the Finance plan, I feel convinced that it must end where it ought to have begun, in an appropriation of part of the Sinking Fund, and that this will be done with more or less disguise and humbug, but that no regard for consistency will be sufficient to prevent a measure ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... these things sometimes, doctor, and though a great deal of it seems to be humbug, it is as you say—I know some are sincere, and I know there is a right way. I have been more than half tempted many times during the last few weeks to discover for myself the secret of power, but I am deterred by certain considerations, which ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... cities, and were far more astonishing animals than they. I thought that would silence them; but they just turned round, and informed me that my diatoms were plants, not animals,—so my story was all humbug. Then I was mad; and couldn't get over the fact that these little rascals had done what we, the kings of the sea, couldn't do. I wasn't content with being the biggest creature there: I wanted to be the most ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... humbug! You can't take me in. It's Lasse, of course, and Pelle!" And she held out her hand. She was short, like her husband, was always smiling, and had bowed arms and legs just as he had. Hard work and their cheerful temperament gave them both ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... almost inexplicable that honest men should neglect one of the greatest and, as God knows, one of the most threatening problems of this age and country, and waste words and precious moments over that most arrant humbug—Civil Service Reform. The People are more important than the Government: for to-day the Government ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5 • Various
... foods may perhaps be more liable to go sour, but I am far from considering sour milk an unwholesome food; whole nations have no other food and are none the worse, and all the array of absorbents seems to me mere humbug. There are constitutions which do not thrive on milk, others can take it without absorbents. People are afraid of the milk separating or curdling; that is absurd, for we know that milk always curdles in the stomach. ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... a little fool! Do as I tell you. It isn't a lie—only a piece of conventional humbug which everybody understands. There, please!" His tone of entreaty was more disagreeable to her than his roughness. All the pride and rigidity of her Puritan temperament was up in arms against the indefinable something which it had long ago ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... not knowingly publish any humbug, and I have placed a Brush in the hands of Mayor Cooper and Postmaster James of New York, as a guarantee of my ...
— Scientific American, Volume XLIII., No. 25, December 18, 1880 • Various
... is no quality of the mind so essential to the even-balance as humour. The schoolmaster without this humanising virtue never yet won your love and admiration, and to miss your affection and loyalty is to lose one of life's chiefest delights. You are as quick to detect the humbug who hides his mediocrity behind an affectation of dignity as was dear old Yorick, of whom you will read when you have got to know the sweetness of Catullus. This Yorick it was who declared that the Frenchman's epigram describing gravity as "a mysterious carriage of the body to cover ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... "You old humbug!" exclaimed Tom. "You know perfectly well that we've all decided what we are going to do. It is merely the question of putting it in words. In some way or other we intend to regard the case of Rex v. Wilhelm as one in which we personally ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... Caesars. I would indeed make that the essential thing in my reckoning of the war. It is a drama without a hero; without countless incidental heroes no doubt, but no star part. Even the Germans, with a national predisposition for hero-cults and living still in an atmosphere of Victorian humbug, can produce nothing better ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... prejudiced and so used to humbug that for the most part they do not in the least know their own motives for what they do. I will go to ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... of the man Ferguson used to work for. Besides he's got a way of getting round people. He's a humbug ...
— Tom, The Bootblack - or, The Road to Success • Horatio Alger
... should have thought no more of it, had we not observed the following notice editorial in the N, Y. Farmer and Mechanic. We copy the article entire, that our readers may judge for themselves whether the style and statements savor most of reality or humbug. ...
— Scientific American magazine, Vol. 2 Issue 1 • Various
... fellow," said he as they walked down Fifth Avenue in the gathering dusk of the early winter evening, "ever since I've begun to suspect that damned old humbug of a father of hers, I've been congratulating myself that there isn't the remotest chance of his ever becoming my father-in-law. And, by George, you'll never know how near I was to leaping blindly into the brambles. What a close call ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... don't care anything about fortune-tellers—I never saw one that wasn't a humbug—but you may depend upon it that I cannot be deceived, and I will not be trifled with. You can go home now and tell your brother to come over here ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... on the following day, spent in idling in the forest and about the hamlet, conversing with the cottagers, we were told that our old man was a bit of a humbug; that he was a great talker, with a hundred schemes for the improvement of his fortunes, and, incidently, for the benefit of his neighbours and the world at large; but nothing came of it all and he was now fast sinking into the lowest depths of poverty. ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... writes in his usual frank and above-board manner: "If the Indians are to audit accounts against the Indians (agreeably to the Senate's alteration of the treaty), there will be a pretty humbug made of it; then he that has most whisky ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... giving way to this libidinous humbug last night when he leaned back and said to me, 'This is all very well, Doctor; and I'm glad to have had the experience. But do you know what I want at ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... unflinchingly to live up to them in season and out of season is about as sensible as to expect him perpetually to live up to the photographs and anecdotes), we may take them as his ideal. He dislikes humbug: he tries to be polite. Could one sketch a sounder scaffolding on which to build all the odd divergencies—crankinesses and heroisms, stupidities and engagingnesses—which may go to make the edifice of an average decent soul's ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... shameful episode in the English annals. Thinking this, you will not consider my opinion good for anything, and therefore I need not inflict it upon you. Humbugs, however, will explode in the present state of the atmosphere, and the Austrian humbug, for instance, is at last, God be praised for it, exploding. John Bull, I suppose, will work himself into a fine fever about that; but he will think none the worse of the old ladies in Downing Street who are made fools of: and will be none the better disposed ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... I'll suddenly discover that He does exist. In that case, Mr. Savva, I thank you, but I'd rather not. Why should I? I live a nice, quiet existence. Of course, it's all a humbug, an imposition. But what business is it of mine? The people want to believe—let them. It wasn't ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... not going to lose you like this. I'm not going to let you slip a second time. I was awake about it all last night. I don't care where you are, what your people are, nor very much whether you've kept quite clear of this medium humbug. I don't. You will in future. Anyhow. I've had a day and night to think it over. I had to come and try to find you. It's you. I've never forgotten you. Never. I'm not going to be ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... thing that there's fower places staunin' in Millar's Level," said Jamie Lauder, "an' I'm telt there's five or six staunin' in the Black Horse Dook. It's a' a bit of humbug, an' I think we should try an' put ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... enough in its way. Neither can it be said to interfere with the happiness of foreigners either in or out of China that Chinese medical, astrological, geomantic, and such works, pretend to a knowledge of mysteries we know to be all humbug. On the other hand, they ought to keep their lying to themselves and for their own special amusement. They have no right to circulate written and verbal reports that foreigners dig out babies' eyes and use them in their pharmacopoeia. ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... would also caution my readers against those who will sell you "extra large layers, for immediate bearing," and whose "plants are better than those whom anybody else may grow," as their advertisements will term it. It is time that this humbug should cease; time that the public in general should know, that they cannot, in nature and reason, expect any fruit from a plant transplanted the same season; and that those who pretend it can be done, without vital injury to the plant, ...
— The Cultivation of The Native Grape, and Manufacture of American Wines • George Husmann
... sulphate of ammonia. Two or three pounds on a square rod will do good, but if you put half of it on a square yard, it will burn up the crop, and the other half will be applied in such a small quantity that you will see but little effect, and will conclude that it is a humbug. Judging from over thirty years' experience, I am safe in saying that not one man in ten can be trusted to sow these manures. They should be sown with as much care as ...
— Talks on Manures • Joseph Harris
... the dollars that'll do the trick. Miss Tuppence put me wise to that right away. There's no humbug about her. We ought to ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... Servant, and the people did not prove congenial to her—especially Mademoiselle Therese. Though she seemed to be a clever teacher, Barbara could never be sure that she was speaking the truth, and in writing home she described her as "rather a humbug." ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... conference would most need would be "common sense," and because, in his opinion, Count Munster had "lots of it," some of the count's utterances astonished me. He now came out, as he did the day before in his talk with me, utterly against arbitration, declaring it a "humbug," and that we had no right to consider it, since it was not mentioned in the first proposals ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... the semi-darkness. For an instant she was paralyzed with terror, and it was only the audience's delight at finding Frances arrayed as Scrooge's irrepressible nephew that covered the gap between "Merry Christmas, Uncle," and "Bah! Humbug!" ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... professor. They took the head of one beetle, the body of another of a totally different species, the wings of a third, the legs of a fourth. These members they carefully pasted together. Then they asked the professor what kind of bug the creature was. He answered promptly, "A humbug." Just such a monstrosity is trouble—especially future trouble. Some things about it are real, but the whole combined menace is only an illusion, not a thing which actually exists at all. Face the trouble itself; give ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... fine girls, and they will have a million apiece. I want 'em to be sensible and marry Chicago men, but, they both go in for coronets and all that humbug." The laughing Major extricated himself from the social tentacles of the honest old boy, mentally deciding to play off Miss Genie against Mad-ame ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... ashamed of sentiment. It simply gives temper to the blade, and mellowness to the intellect. Sensibility, on the other hand, is full of shivers and shakes and falsetto notes and squeaks. It is, in fact, all humbug, just as sentiment ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... from beside the day's accumulations of papers upon his heaped-up desk. He laid upon himself the burden of labor, examining and cross-examining men for hours upon a single point of essential fact—quick to detect fraud and intolerant of humbug,— but infinitely patient with those who were merely dull, evading no drudgery, and, above all, never evading the dear pains of building-up and ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... turning it into a wild, wonderful, remote, fairy-land region, where all sorts of poetical things may take place without the slightest difficulty. Of course Shakespeare would not have done thus, but that he saw quite through the grand critical humbug which makes the proper effect of a work of art depend upon our belief in the actual occurrence of the thing represented. But your "critic grave and cool," I suppose, is one who, like Wordsworth's "model ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... patriot, this rigid moralist, this unbending censor, the Right Honourable Joseph Chamberlain, flaunts his Radical and levelling doctrines before the astonished democrats of Newcastle. 'Vanity of Vanities,' saith the preacher, 'all is vanity.' 'Humbug of Humbugs,' says the Radical, 'all ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... Kirkbank,' he said, confidentially. 'The dear soul never pretends to be any better than the rest of us. She gambles, and we all know she gambles; she pegs, and we all know she pegs; and she makes rather a boast of being up to her eyes in debt. No humbug about dear old Georgie.' ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... You humbug! And you pretended to help me look for it." She gazed at him almost with respect. "I never knew you were so deep and snaky. I'm discovering all sorts ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... accomplished manner and gave full value in the general scheme to a character which the author made a person when he might have been content with a peg. Mr. DION BOUCICAULT'S physician was as bland a humbug as ever coined guineas in Mayfair. Mr. MARTIN LEWIS, as a profoundly silly ass, played a difficult hand without fault. Miss NINA SEVENING, as a consoler of handsome men in trouble, and Miss FLORENCE LLOYD, as Caroline's maid, competently rounded ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 16, 1916 • Various
... London before we can build a bridge. But rather a million times submit to expense and inconvenience than hand the country over to a set of thieves who'd sell us to-morrow. We're not such fools as ye take us for. Don't we know these heroes? And when we see them and Gladstone and Morley and Humbug Harcourt with his seventeen chins, all rowling together in Abraham's bosom (as ye may say)—Harcourt licking Harrington's boots, when only yesterday Tim was spittin' in his eye—we say to ourselves 'Wait yet awhile, my Boys, wait yet awhile.' But when ye've finished yer slavering ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... Mr. Barnum's secrets of success is his unique methods of advertising, and we can readily understand how he can bear to be denounced as a "Humbug," because this popular designation though undeserved in the popular acceptation of it, "brought grist to his mill." He has constantly kept himself before the public—nay, we may say that he has been kept before the public constantly, ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... from memory than any drunkard. He woke to his romance as a child wakes to the renewed wonder of the world. It was so real to him that, however hardly you judged him, you couldn't think of him as a humbug or a hypocrite.... No. He was not that. He was not that. His mind truly lived in a glorious state for which none of his disgraceful deeds were ever done. It created a sort of innocence for him. She could forgive him (even after yesterday), she could almost believe ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair
... de end. Er sauft. De Englishman, he sits down fresh and intends to get fuddled; but he is a hypocrite. He does not say de truth to hisself nor to nobody, he says, I will get fresh, when he means de odder ding. Big humbug. ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... is, that what has put Byron out of favour with the public of late has been not his faults but his excellences. His artistic good taste, his classical polish, his sound shrewd sense, his hatred of cant, his insight into humbug above all, his shallow, pitiable habit of being always intelligible—these are the sins which condemn him in the eyes of a mesmerising, table-turning, spirit-rapping, spiritualising, Romanising generation, who read ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... now produced some famous wine, that had been eleven years in bottle. We were unusually merry, and fell into toasts and speeches. I felt as if I had been his intimate friend for years, for he had not one atom of Levantine "humbug" in his composition. Poor fellow, little did he think, that in a few short weeks from this period his blood would flow as freely as the wine which he ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... not urgent, and consented to the delay. The curious thing was that he assumed it to himself. It is a tact—not incredible to those who know that nobody, not the most accomplished master in flattery, can humbug us so completely as we can and do humbug ourselves—that Mr. Furze, ten minutes after the letters were posted, was perfectly convinced that he had foreseen the necessity of each one—that he had personally and thoroughly controlled the whole day's operations, and that ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... a nephew of the man Ferguson used to work for. Besides he's got a way of getting round people. He's a humbug and a hypocrite." ...
— Tom, The Bootblack - or, The Road to Success • Horatio Alger
... said Atherley, "was the American one. I really admired old Stamps, and old Stamps admired me; for she knew I thoroughly understood what an unmitigated humbug she was. She had a fine sense of humour, too. How her eyes used to twinkle when I asked posers at ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... may be a hard taskmaster, but I strive to be a good one. When I am through with you, you will know architecture from the ground up. You will know its virtuous reality and you will know the fake and the fraud and the humbug. I will spare nothing—for your sake. I will stir up the cesspool to its utmost depths of stench, and also the pious, hypocritical virtues of our so-called architecture—the nice, good, mealy-mouthed, suave, dexterous, diplomatic ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... said in her severe way, "She is a virtuous woman, a youth like you should not utter ignorant jokes about women, especially about the humbler classes, to whom good reputation is everything." I began to see plainer than ever, that I could humbug mother ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... It was awful humbug that the commandant reeled off to his silent audience—hypocrisy garbed in paternal phrases, and interlarded with buncombe about Germany's mission to ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... three flag-staffs before the church; that he passes me a slatternly woman and a frowzy girl or two through the Piazza occasionally; and that he calls down the flocks of pigeons hovering near. I fancy the latter half ashamed to show themselves, as being aware that they are a great humbug, and unrightfully ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells |
