"Pretence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... armament, until the emperor had all that he wished of Baldwin. Thither also came back again Earl Sweyne, who had gone from this land to Denmark, and there ruined his cause with the Danes. He came hither with a pretence, saying that he would again submit to the king, and be his man; and he requested Earl Beorn to be of assistance to him, and give him land to feed him on. But Harold, his brother, and Earl Beorn resisted, and would give him nothing of that which the king had given them. The king also ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown
... neophyte before Buddha, though I did not go so far as to analyze the reason,—that in Mr. Jason I was brought face to face with the concrete embodiment of the philosophy I had adopted, the logical consequence of enlightened self-interest. If he had ever heard of it, he would have made no pretence of being anything else. Greatness, declares some modern philosopher, has no connection with virtue; it is the continued, strong and logical expression of some instinct; in Mr. Jason's case, the predatory instinct. And like a true artist, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... With a side glance I had marked well where he stood; and backing towards him, under pretence of getting a fairer "break," I came close up to the savage. Then suddenly wheeling, with the spring of a cat and the dexterity of a thief, I caught the tomahawk and jerked it from ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... better human qualities. If the life is not of a deeply religious cast, it is at least not inferior to that which is exemplified elsewhere, and there is the advantage of an entire absence of assumption and pretence. The moral atmosphere, so far, is pure; and there is found a strong desire to walk ever on the mountain tops of life; though taste, rather than piety, is the aspect ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... Without any pretence of concealment he drew it with the keys from his pocket and fingered it idly, looking out of the window as though his thoughts were far away. "Red" looked at the articles, recognized their harmless character, and with an ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... only vexation and trouble. Besides, he had told everybody that he did not think it worth his while to waste his time on such things and perhaps catch his death to boot. The Lord knew that was mere pretence. Eighty crowns for a beautiful, dark brown fox skin was a tidy sum! But a man had to think up something to say for himself, the way they all harped on fox-hunting: Bjarni of Fell caught a white vixen night before last, or Einar of Brekka caught a brown dog-fox ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... of his sister's constancy, on pretence of building a tomb, caused this subterraneous habitation to be made, in hopes to find one day or other an opportunity to possess himself of that object which was the cause of his flame, and to bring her hither. He laid hold on the time of my absence to enter by force into the place ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... upon which he was destined to play his part of the plot, and especially to observe the persons and the habits of the two Medici princes. Furthermore, he was directed to seek a personal interview with Lorenzo, on the pretence of submitting suggestions, propounded by Count Girolamo, with respect to the acquisition of some ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... this time Charles procured the election of his brother Ferdinand as king of the Romans, on the plea that, in his absence, the empire required a powerful chief to make head against the Turks. This might be only a pretence for family aggrandizement; but the emperor became seriously apprehensive lest the Lutherans, if provoked, should abandon the cause of Christendom, and policy therefore conceded what zeal would have refused. By a treaty concluded with the Protestants at Nuremberg, and ratified at ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... box by removing two-thirds of its contents, when we were enabled, with some trouble, to raise it from the hole. The articles taken out were deposited among the brambles, and the dog left to guard them, with strict orders from Jupiter neither, upon any pretence, to stir from the spot, nor to open his mouth until our return. We then hurriedly made for home with the chest; reaching the hut in safety, but after excessive toil, at one o'clock in the morning. Worn out as we were, it was not in human nature to do more just now. We rested until two, and ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... understand. Their pretence made you despise and pity them. It was a horrid thing, as though a skeleton came to life and jiggled its bones and mouthed at you, "You see, I used to do that too." That was why you told lies to them—even ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... nerves delivered him. The custom of punctilious courtesy, so deeply ingrained as to mean in his case the impossibility of wounding another, decreed that some pretence must be kept up before Ruth. But with one shock she divined the next morning the significant change in him, and bowed her head to it. What could she do? She loved him, but she had overrated the capacity of his spirit. There had never been any courage, only ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... asked the reason why, he said, that Mercy was a pretty lass, but troubled with ill conditions.[148] When he had left her, Prudence said, Did I not tell thee, that Mr. Brisk would soon forsake thee? yea, he will raise up an ill report of thee; for, notwithstanding his pretence to religion, and his seeming love to Mercy, yet Mercy and he are of tempers so different, that I believe ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... then turned restlessly toward the door, as though expecting someone. The look was troubled, and the pipe he held was not alight, though he made a pretence of smoking. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Fredrik, and took the opportunity to charge Gustavus with every sort of crime. The expedition of Christiern appears to have miscarried, but it so startled Fredrik that he hastened to rid himself of his doubtful ally, Norby. On pretence of wanting an escort for his daughter, about to sail for Prussia, he asked the pirate to come to Copenhagen. Norby, willing though he was to sacrifice his life for Fredrik, thought he scented bait. He could not go, he said, ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... accompanies me to-night to Lady Walton's, which you know is at the extremity of the town—on some pretence or other I'll tell her I have ordered the servant at the back gate which adjoins the paddock,—there I'll leave her—and if you have a chaise waiting near the spot, you may conduct her where you please.—You know my ...
— The Dramatist; or Stop Him Who Can! - A Comedy, in Five Acts • Frederick Reynolds
... than do a single hour's honest work. Blackguard is written in their faces. The poacher needs some courage, at least; he knows a penalty awaits detection. These fellows have no idea of sport, no courage, and no skill, for their tricks are simplicity itself, nor have they the pretence of utility, for they do not catch birds for the good of the farmers or the market gardeners, but merely that they may booze without ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... his desk. He will fail in his lesson on Saturday, and the colonel must punish him. This will make him mad. The exercise book will be torn up, and pieces of it, especially the cover with his name on it, will be found near the burnt building. Masters, who is on good terms with Grant, on a certain pretence, known to him and me, will induce him to wait at the shed until after dark, where he will be seen by Mr. Gault, when he goes his rounds. A broken bunch of matches will be found in Grant's closet, where no fellow is allowed to keep matches. Other suspicious circumstances will appear at the ...
— In School and Out - or, The Conquest of Richard Grant. • Oliver Optic
... proof against imposition, and he gave away as freely as he earned. Moreover, he was regarded by a certain set of his friends as a Croesus, or, rather, as a never-failing coiner of money, and two of these so-called friends were not ashamed to live openly upon his easy-going, careless ways, under the pretence of sharing the expenses of a joint lodging. The partnership, if such it could be called where one was called upon to find the money, extended even to articles of clothing—boots, hats, coats, cravats, etc., being regarded as common property—whilst ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... was anxious to call upon you, Serjeant Snubbin,' said Perker, 'to state to you, before you entered upon the case, that he denies there being any ground or pretence whatever for the action against him; and that unless he came into court with clean hands, and without the most conscientious conviction that he was right in resisting the plaintiff's demand, he would not be there at all. I believe I state your views correctly; do I not, my dear Sir?' said ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald
... counsel, under the colour of religion, I am not so devoid of the gifts of God or of the aid of friends, as to be unable to make choice of persons worthy of my confidence, and capable of acting, not under a vain pretence, but with the true spirit of religion. * * * I clearly perceive that you have been misinformed, both respecting the answer of my estates and the disposition of my subjects. The two estates have professed their obedience to religion. * * * I know who my neighbours are; the one hates ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... So I did walk forth, and whether I made too many turns or no in the darke cold frosty night between the two walls up to the Parke gate I know not, but she was gone to bed when I come again to the house, upon pretence of leaving some papers there, which I did on purpose by her consent. So I away home, and was there sat up for to be spoken with my young Mrs. Daniel, to pray me to speake for her husband to be a Lieutenant. I had the opportunity here of kissing her again and again, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... gave commands; Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands As if alive. Will't please you rise? We'll meet The company below, then. I repeat, The Count your master's known munificence Is ample warrant that no just pretence Of mine for dowry will be disallowed; Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed At starting, is my object. Nay, we'll go Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though, Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity, Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... wrinkling her forehead into lines of acute distress. "Oh, Goody! It's as bad as lessons every bit. Look here, I'm not clever, and I don't make any pretence at poetry or the rest of it. You'll just have to ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... her unseasonable visit to me at Bologna, she refused to return to Florence without me, till I assured her, that as my affairs would soon call me thither, I would visit her at her own palace, as often as those affairs would permit. Her pretence for coming to Bologna was, to induce me to place Emily with her, till I had settled every thing for my carrying the child to England; but I was obliged to be peremptory in my denial, though she had wrought so with Emily, as to induce her to be an earnest petitioner ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... the pretence of going to Arthur's court; but she went back to the chamber where she had left Owain; and she tarried there with him as long as it might have taken her to have travelled to the Court of King Arthur. And at the end of that time, she apparelled herself, and went to visit the Countess. And the ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 1 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... her husband are still at Goettingen, and still celebrating their marriage. At one house, under pretence of the heat, the bride was led into the garden, and beheld there an illuminated motto: "Happy the man who has a virtuous wife: his life will be doubly long." Another friend arrayed her son as Hymen, and taught him to strew flowers in Caroline's ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... he was attacked in broad daylight by two men who came under pretence of buying pulque; but having time to get hold of a sword, he overpowered one, which frightened the other, upon which they both began to laugh, and assured him it was mere experiment to see what he would do—a perfect jest, which he pretended to believe, but advised them not to ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... set her in a corner of the throne chamber, and all that day Leonard and Francisco mounted guard over her alternately. She made no resistance and said nothing; indeed it seemed as if a certain lassitude had followed her outbreak of rage, for she leaned her head back and slept, or made pretence to sleep. ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... their mother, always as if she had never witnessed such behaviour before. "Yu daring rascal! Put down! I'll gie thee such a one in a minute. Go an' sit down to once." Then they climb into chairs, wave their grubby hands over the plates, in a pretence of grabbing something more, and spite of the whacks which sometimes fall, they gobble their food to the accompaniment of incessant tricks and roars of shrill laughter. Never were such disorderly, hilarious meals! If Tony is here they simply laugh at his threats of weird punishment, ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... "I'm glad I came before you begun. I want"—here she unfolded her scrap of paper and made pretence to read—"I want to see the Reverend ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... unreasonable. He satirises too the heads of the rustic aristocracy; the brutal squire who bullies his nephew the clergyman for preaching against his vices, and corrupts the whole neighbourhood; or the speculative banker who cheats old maids under pretence of looking after their investments. If the squire does not generally appear in Crabbe in the familiar dramatic character of a rural Lovelace, it is chiefly because Crabbe has no great belief in the general purity of the inferior ranks of rural ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... what I have been saying that Christian people ought to do—separating himself from the world? In a sense, yes, but the voice came, 'What dost thou here, Elijah?' 'Go back to your work; to Ahab, to Jezebel. Go back to death if need be. Do not shirk your duty on the pretence of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... and weary, with dark shadows under her eyes, and a head that throbbed tormentingly. She breakfasted with Isabel in the latter's room, and was again deeply grateful to her friend for forbearing to comment upon her subdued manner. She could not make any pretence at cheerfulness that day, being in fact still so near to tears that she could scarcely keep ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... pleading the word of God is a false pretence, and that we are nefarious corrupters of it. But that this is not only a malicious calumny, but egregious impudence, by reading our confession, you will, in your wisdom, be able to judge. Yet something further is necessary to be said, to excite your attention, or at least to prepare your mind for ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... modes of behaviour; with the natural history of the states of consciousness which accompany some of their actions; and with the relation of behaviour to experience. We will endeavour to follow Darwin in his modesty and candour in making no pretence to give ultimate explanations. But we must note one of the implications of this self-denying ordinance of science. Development and evolution imply continuity. For Darwin and his followers the continuity is organic through physical heredity. ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... the great drawing-room, it was really comic. Lady Theodosia did not make any pretence of talking to the people. Her whole attention was with the "children," who had just been let loose from her boudoir, where her maid had been keeping them company while we dined. They were as jealous as possible of Fanny, ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... as a singular circumstance, that after such pains had been taken, and so great a stretch of power practised, to put a Court so suddenly in operation to try persons accused of witchcraft, on the pretence, too, recorded in the Journal of the Council, of the "thronged" condition of the jails, at that "hot season," and after trying one person only, it should have adjourned for four weeks. Perhaps, by a collation of passages and dates, we may reach a probable explanation. In his letter to "the ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... ministers of Him who died invoking blessings on His enemies, kindle the fires of fratricidal strife, which they call a sacred war, and lead on and inflame their dupes by the pretence that the gates of Paradise are to be ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... of an old respect; his humanity, his instinct for essentials, his cool detection of pretence and cant, however finely disguised, and his English with its frank love for the embodying noun and the active verb, make reading very like the clear, hard, bright, vigorous weather of the downs when the wind is up-Channel. ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... had better go, especially as our trunks have been sent on in advance, and it really is not safe to have one's luggage long out of one's sight in a strange country." This last argument proved conclusive, and we yielded, as we usually do, to Miss Cassandra's arguments, although we generally make a pretence of discussing the pros ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... for them, and local authorities must prepare them. Let them address themselves to this matter and no longer shirk their duty with regard to the housing of the poor. Let them stop for ever the miserable pretence of housing the poor that they at present pursue. For be it known that they house "respectable" people only, those that have limited families and ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... extend from Trinidad to Porto Rico were called, from their inhabitants, the Caribby islands. The Caribs, however, made no pretence to have occupied them for any great length of time. They distinctly remembered that a generation or two back they had reached them from the mainland, and had found them occupied by a peaceful race, whom they styled Ineri or Igneri. The males of this race they slew or drove into the interior, ...
— The Arawack Language of Guiana in its Linguistic and Ethnological Relations • Daniel G. Brinton
... Archway, and still finding no one waiting, he alighted with a pretence of examining some part of the car, and looked back over the paths ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... are to be conveyed. Language is not language unless it not only expresses fairly definite and coherent ideas, but unless it also conveys these ideas to some other living intelligent being, either man or brute, that can understand them. We may speak to a dog or horse, but not to a stone. If we make pretence of doing so we are in reality only talking to ourselves. The person or animal spoken to is half the battle—a half, moreover, which is essential to there being any battle at all. It takes two people to say a thing—a sayee as well as a sayer. ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... only was the persecution of the Protestants recommenced, but the excesses of the ill-paid and licentious German mercenaries, who were quartered on the country in defiance of the constitution after the twenty years' truce, under the pretence of guarding against any fresh attack from the Turks, were carried to such a height that disaffection became universal even among those who had hitherto constantly adhered to the Austrian interest, so that (in the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... be ordered, but he beholds the future in the present, and his thoughts are the germs of the flower and the fruit of latest time. Not that I assert poets to be prophets in the gross sense of the word, or that they can foretell the form as surely as they foreknow the spirit of events: such is the pretence of superstition, which would make poetry an attribute of prophecy, rather than prophecy an attribute of poetry. A poet participates in the eternal, the infinite, and the one; as far as relates to his conceptions, time and place ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... man who has spent half his fortune in charity, and built alms-houses, leave a thoughtless son, or a runaway daughter, or a plain-spoken nephew, to struggle with poverty all his life, refusing to forgive him, and comforting himself with a text or a pretence. No, no; hate is the only possession that goes out of the world with a man: and this old witch, Danby, hates the whole race of Hastings with a goodly strength that will not decay as her body does. Besides Sir Philip is well-nigh as puritanical as his father—a ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... you say, frightful nonsense. And what sort of a laugh, moreover, is it that you offer that unfortunate Dorothy for her feeble participation? Nothing of a healthy, wholesome, vigorous, vital, individual, personal kind; but some pitiful pretence of wit or humor, having for its vague or indefinite object ideal or general, abstract, impersonal, or, so to speak, invisible intangible subjects, wanting all the vivacious pungent stimulus that belongs to real individual absurdity, and the ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... men walking about on shore among the negroes. On the return of the boat from the ship with goods, bread, wine, and cheese were distributed among the natives. At this time two of the negroe pledges, on pretence of sickness, were allowed to go on shore, promising to send two others in their stead. On perceiving this, Captain Haiward began to dread some perfidy, and retreated towards the boat, followed by two or three negroes, who stopped him from going on ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... not their apologist, but their eulogist. Noyades of Carrier, fusilades of Collot d'Herbois, are cited as examples very suitable for imitation in adequate emergencies. Prussia's seizure, on behalf of Germany, of Schleswig and Holstein, on pretence of their being not Danish, but German, and her subsequent retention of them for herself on the plea of their having always been not German, but Danish, are applauded as acts perfectly consistent with ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... still all words are faint! But moving Love himself appears to teach Their action, though denied to rule her speech; And thou who seest her speak and dost not hear, Mourn not her distant accents 'scape thine ear; Viewing those lips, thou still may'st make pretence To judge of what she says, and swear 'tis sense: Cloth'd with such grace, with such expression fraught, They move in meaning, and they pause in thought! But dost thou farther watch, with charm'd surprise, The mild irresolution of her eyes, Curious to mark how frequent they repose, In brief eclipse ...
— The School For Scandal • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... to be washed not only with water but with the Holy Spirit of all your fellows. To be baptized into Christ ought to mean to be regenerated in the Holy Spirit of all humanity; and no doubt in cases it does mean this, but too often unfortunately it has only amounted to a pretence of religious sanction given to the meanest and bitterest quarrels of ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... against responsible government, declares that as God is the only ruler of princes, princes cannot be accountable to the people; and perdition is the lot of all rebels, agitators of sedition, demagogues, who work under the pretence of reforming the State. All the troubles of the country are due to parliaments constantly demanding more power and thereby endangering the supremacy of the mother country. The Banner is astonished by the unblushing avowal of these doctrines, which had not been so openly proclaimed since the ...
— George Brown • John Lewis
... atoms of human bodies. But as it did so, from the interior of the mass one man fell to the ground, dead. No one needed to ask who it was. The royal fleurs-de-lis and lions on the surcoat, with an escocheon of pretence bearing the arms of Leon and Castilla—the princely coronet surrounding the helmet—were enough to tell the tale. Other men might come alive out of the fight of Agincourt, but Edward Duke of York would only leave ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... could do was to keep fit, for I had a notion I might soon want all my bodily strength. I had to keep up my pretence of lameness in the daytime, so I used to take my exercise at night. I would sleep in the afternoon, when Peter had his siesta, and then about ten in the evening, after putting him to bed, I would slip out-of-doors and go for a four or five hours' tramp. Wonderful were those midnight wanderings. ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... Wolfenschiess entered Conrad's house and ordered his wife to prepare him a bath, at the same time renewing with ardor his former proposals. With the cunning of her sex, the wife feigned to be willing to accede to his wishes, and on the pretence of retiring to another room to undress sped to her husband, who quickly returned and slew Wolfenschiess while he was still in the bath. After this exploit an entrance was effected into the bailies' castle of Rotzberg by one of the conspirators, who was ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... the Peishwa had left Scindia's camp before Nana's arrival there; and had summoned a dozen of the latter's adherents, under the pretence that he desired to see them on a matter of business. Wholly unsuspicious of treachery, they rode out at once; and each, on his arrival, was seized and thrown ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty
... How, how, knave, swear he killed thee, and by the law? What pretence, what colour ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson
... among a people less austere; In scenes, which, having never known me free, Would not reproach me with the loss I felt. Do I forebode impossible events, And tremble at vain dreams? Heaven grant I may! But the age of virtuous politics is past, And we are deep in that of cold pretence. Patriots are grown too shrewd to be sincere, And we too wise to trust them. He that takes Deep in his soft credulity the stamp Design'd by loud declaimers on the part Of liberty, themselves the slaves of lust, Incurs derision for his easy faith, And lack of knowledge, and with cause ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... to every scandal, the devout lady shut her eyes to the derelictions of her guests who had been carefully selected by the duke; indeed, it is surprising how much these excellent women will tolerate under pretence of bringing the lost sheep back to the fold ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... to say that it was in bad professional form. After he had left the friendly clerk, however, he walked over to the drug store and made some inquiries in a general way. The place was a shameful pretence of a prescription pharmacy. Cigars, toilet articles, and an immense soda-water fountain took up three-fourths of the floor space. A few dusty bottles were ranged on some varnished oak shelves; there was also a little closet at one side, where the blotchy-faced young clerk retired to compound ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... consideration the many inconveniences arising to the public from several projects set on foot for raising of joint-stock for various purposes, and that a great many of his majesty's subjects have been drawn in to part with their money on pretence of assurances that their petitions for patents and charters to enable them to carry on the same would be granted: to prevent such impositions, their excellencies this day ordered the said several petitions, together with such reports from the Board of Trade, and from his majesty's ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... royal blood of Persia, and a prototype of Catharine of Russia in her amours, has already cast her eyes on Theagenes, whose personal attractions seem on all occasions to have been as irresistible by the ladies as those of the fair partner of his wanderings by the other sex.[63] Under pretence of removing them from the temple during the period of mourning for Calasiris, they are lodged in the palace of the satrapess, where the constancy of the hero is exposed to a variety of perilous temptations, but comes forth, of course, unscathed from the ordeal. The love of ladies thus rejected ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... presenting a pistol, is sufficient to frighten a common Chinese into convulsions; and their warriors shew but few symptoms of bravery. The Chinese may certainly be considered among the most timid people on the face of the earth; they seem to possess neither personal courage, nor the least pretence of mind in dangers or difficulties; consequences that are derived probably from the influence of the moral over the physical character. Yet there is perhaps no country where acts of suicide occur ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... by philosophical adventurers, by Illuminati and Freemasons, most of whom had imbibed the French revolutionary maxims, sent him, in a kind of honourable exile, as an Ambassador to Italy. Shortly afterwards, under pretence of having discovered a conspiracy, in which the Baron was implicated, he was outlawed. He then took refuge in Russia, where he was made a general, and as such distinguished him self under Suwarow during the campaign ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... there October 1689, aged sixty-three. In 1667 Sir Robert Brooks presented him to the rectory of Wanstead, which he also held till his death.] This declaration of the King's do give the Presbyterians some satisfaction, and a pretence to read the Common Prayer, which they would not do before because of their former preaching against it. After dinner to Westminster, where I went to my Lord's, and, having spoken with him, I went ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... but unknown since the foundation of the world, with splendors beyond all our dreams, what must be the glory of His face itself! I have done with vain shadows. It is better to depart and to be with Him, where shall be neither desire nor anger, self-deception nor pretence, but the eternal fulness of reality and truth. One thing I have to do before I die, for God has laid it on me. Let that be done to-night, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... in spite of herself the pretty hazel eyes are brimming full, and, under pretence of some household duty, she dashes away. For a moment Phil stands confounded. Then, through his set teeth, he growls, "I was a fool ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... would improve your voice, Terrence," observed Mr Mitford, meekly, "I'm sure I wish ye had pounds of it, for it's that harsh— though, of course, I make no pretence ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... the Parisian senatus-consultum, ratifying this imperial rescript, instantly fulminated a bull of excommunication against Napoleon. Shortly after some unauthentic news from Germany inspired new hopes into the adherents of the Pontiff; and, disturbances breaking out, Miollis, on pretence that a life sacred in the eyes of all Christians might be endangered, arrested Pius in his palace at midnight, and forthwith despatched him under ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... into it, I thought that the pretence of welcoming Captain Hope would allay any suspicion of my intention; and so, with her good mother's permission, I brought her down, leaving ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... the man was Hunky Ben, and the strangest thing about him— that which puzzled these wild men most—was that he neither drank nor smoked nor gambled! He made no pretence of abstaining on principle. One of the younger men, who was blowing a stiff cloud, ventured to ask him whether he really thought ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... for a responsible official at once, and I was sent. As I came along I saw Corder lounging about, and of course I took no notice—it would not do for us people from the Yard to recognise each other too readily in the street. But Corder came up, and made pretence to ask me for a match to light his pipe; and under cover of that he told me that he had seen Mayes not an hour before, coming out of the Admiralty. At this, of course, I pricked up my ears. I didn't ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... lantern must also have been altered into their present shape about this time, and the first story of a tower, which, if it had been completed, would have been one of the finest in England, built upon them: this is now remaining, and forms all the pretence that this Cathedral can show to a ...
— The New Guide to Peterborough Cathedral • George S. Phillips
... could keep up the pretence for twelve years without being found out. The idea is ...
— The Stepmother, A Drama in Five Acts • Honore De Balzac
... 'Nay, there was no pretence. I became a Mussulman. That, however, betwixt ourselves, as it might not stand me in very good stead with some Reverend Aminadab Fount-of-Grace in the rebel camp, who ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... lived. And this knowledge withdrew the last prop from his sense of propriety. He ceased to face the trouble that care for his person implied, just as he gave up raising the lid of the piano and making a needless pretence of work. Openly now, he took up his abode in the BRUDERSTRASSE, where he spent the long, idle days stretched on the sofa, rolling cigarettes—in far greater numbers than he could smoke, and vacantly, yet with a ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... resolute front presented by these three boys, the rough element showed that it considered it had won a great victory, and was now entitled to run the town. Members of the gang selected what goods they needed at any of the stores, making no pretence of payment. They swaggered boldly about the streets at all times, infested the better places such as the Bella Union, elbowed aside insolently any inoffensive citizen who might be in their way, and generally conducted themselves as though ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... man consider that if the world knew all that of him which he knows of himself; if they saw what vanity and what passions govern his inside, and what secret tempers sully and corrupt his best actions; and he would have no more pretence to be honoured and admired for his goodness and wisdom than a rotten and distempered body is to be loved and admired for its beauty and comeliness. And, perhaps, there are very few people in the world who would not rather choose to die than ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... I tried to cheat myself into the belief that there was no change, and the dear heart bleeding for me assisted in that poor pretence. She sought to glide to me with swimming eyes as before, but it showed only that this caressing movement was still within her compass, but never again for me. With the hands she had pressed to her breast she touched mine, but no longer could they convey ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... and maids of all shades from ebony to cream-colour, and of all varieties of picturesqueness. All day the immense piazzas were crowded with promenaders, sitters, talkers, fancy-workers, servants attired in rainbow hues and apparently enjoying their idleness or their pretence at work to the utmost. Every morning parties played ten-pins, rode, strolled, gossipped; every afternoon the daring few who did not doze away the heated hours in the shaded rooms, flirted in couples under trees on the lawn, or in the ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... us; but our position even then was not pleasant. We had to pass the fort and several encampments before we could arrive at the beach, which was at least four miles distant. However, we put a good face on the matter, and forcibly detaining one of the mandarins upon the pretence that he must show us the way back, with the threat, that upon the slightest molestation on the part of his countrymen, we would blow his brains out, we commenced our march back to the beach, our two musicians playing with great energy, "Go to the devil and shake yourselves," which tune, struck up ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... crafty man, who put on the appearance only of those good qualities, while the governing principles of his soul were ambition and lust. For we see him, as soon as he found himself strong enough to act upon the offensive, plundering caravans, and, under a pretence of fighting for the true religion, attacking, murdering, enslaving, and making tributaries of his neighbors, in order to aggrandize and enrich himself and his greedy followers, and without scruple making ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... allow the parents, even if they were desirous of doing so, taking larger premises with an extra bedroom. Very few parents brace themselves to this endeavour, for it means not only effort but expense. So the young folks swarm either to lodgings, or to marriage, and the pretence of home life. ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... she would look up at him as he passed along the skyline, and rejoice once more that he had returned to make their lives complete, to fill Ann's heart with happiness, and his father's with content; for the girl, generally so clear-sighted, so free from guile or pretence, was deceiving herself utterly, and imagined that the increased joy and glory of life which had permeated her whole being since Gethin's return, arose only from the deep interest she took in every member of the Garthowen family, and was due solely to the happiness which the return of the ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... on being applied to by the Prime-Minister for advice, suggested a repeal of the Revenue Act in favor of other Provinces, but the execution of it with rigor in Massachusetts, saying,—"There is no pretence for violence anywhere but at Boston; that is the ringleading Province; and if any country is to be chastised, the punishment ought to be levelled there." As to the policy of arrests, in Lord Barrington's judgment, five or six examples would be sufficient for all ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... there enters something to keep the filth from overwhelming self-respect. The advocates of slavery have not, as it appears, lost all pretence of honor and honesty. Thieves are sustained by a sense of the injustice of society. They do but right an old wrong, taking bravely what was accumulated by cautious cunning. They cultivate many virtues, and, like the best of us, make much of these, identify themselves with these. If a man ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... were severely simple. What Lowell called "the grand simplicities of the Bible," with which he was so familiar, were reflected in his discourse. With no attempt at ornament or rhetoric, without parade or pretence, he spoke straight to the point. If any came expecting the turgid eloquence or the ribaldry of the frontier, they must have been startled at the earnest and sincere purity of his utterances. It was marvellous to see how this untutored man, by mere self-discipline and ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... folk said that the Prince, furiously jealous of power, had offered the "Constitution" merely as a pretence to Europe that he was up-to-date, and had so arranged as to retain autocracy; that he purposely suppressed knowledge, kept out literature, and encouraged only the narrowest education in order to retain power and keep folk ignorant; that ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... to the prince, The poor may take their share; No mortal has a just pretence To perish ...
— Hymns and Spiritual Songs • Isaac Watts
... pretence of Alexis was to me insupportable, I hastened to take leave of the family. In my own apartment I examined my sword, tried its point, and went to bed, having ordered Saveliitch to wake me in ...
— Marie • Alexander Pushkin
... hard hit. He made a pretence of devoting himself to his studies to keep away from Gaynor's raillery. But one day he ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... present position, He may be calling you to something more. If he has given you the power and opportunity of raising yourself, he meant you to use them. It is a false humility and a false view of religion that encourages sloth under the pretence of being contented with one's humble lot. There is God's work—real every day work to be done in worldly as well as in what seems to be more directly spiritual work. One's whole interest is not to be centred on earthly things, neither are we to be so heavenly minded as to neglect earthly ...
— Boys - their Work and Influence • Anonymous
... exploiters of "Ulster" is motived on this point by two considerations, the one an illusion, the other a reality. The illusion, or rather the pretence, consists in representing the Unionists as the sole holders of wealth in Ireland. It would be a sufficient refutation of this view to quote those other passages in which the same orators assert with equal eloquence that the Tory policy of land purchase and resolute ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... Brownrig came again to the inn and asked for him. John had gone to his room, but he came down when the message was brought to him. The man had been drinking, but he could still "take care of himself," or he thought so. He made some pretence of having something more to say about business, but he forgot it in a little, and went off to other matters, speaking with angry vehemence about men and things of which John knew nothing. It was a painful sight to see, and when two or three men came ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... sea, where the air is bracing, and it is not necessary to trick the senses with a pretence at coolness, nothing is more satisfactory or gay than scarlet geraniums; but if they are used, care must be taken that they harmonise with the colour of the awnings and ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... States," said the officer, "will require more particulars, and so, for that matter, will the police of Bologna. This is useless for any such purpose, and your pretence only adds urgency to my desire of you. I don't wish to be severe with you. I ask you in a friendly and reasonable way to ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... pretence," rejoined my companion; "an effect of that small wisdom we have just been decrying. Cosmopolitism, as we are accustomed to define it, can be no virtue of the present age, nor yet of the next, nor perhaps for centuries to come. Even when it shall have attained to its best, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... he knew that she had not yet gone to rest. For a moment he lingered and looked at it in the absurd way lovers will look, and was presently rewarded by seeing what he watched for—a shadow flit between him and the light. The sight was a strong temptation to him to dismount and enter, and, under pretence of warning her against the Earl of Rochester and his "pretty page," see her once again. But reflection, stepping rebukingly up to him, whispered indignantly, that his ladylove was probably by this time in her night robe, and not at home to ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... skip. The conclusion is . . .) 'They were different. Perhaps, in the far future, when generations of men had struggled and failed as he must now struggle and fail, woman would be, indeed, what she now made a pretence of being—the friend and companion—not the enemy and ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... old woman, "I am entirely at your command." "I ask nothing of you," said the Prince, "but to let me give Violet a kiss." "If that's all," answered the old woman, "go and hide yourself in the room downstairs in the garden, and I will find some pretence or another for sending ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... not go into an exposure of these useless and false distinctions, which are adopted to help carry out erroneous principles. The only pretence for a subjunctive mood is founded on the fact that be and were were formerly used in a character different from what they are at present. Be was used in the indicative mood, present tense, when doubt or supposition was implied; ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... has been allowed to shut himself in, like a dog, too long. He owes something to this community. I'll go down to his kennel, under pretence of wanting a loan—and I do need some ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... magnitude has become the chief exponent of folly and misery, co-ordinate in the fraternal enormities of the Factory and Poorhouse,—the Barracks and Hospital. And the final law in this matter is, that if you require edifices only for the grace and health of mankind, and build them without pretence and without chicanery, they will be sublime on a modest scale, and lovely ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... rather sadly. "But I make no pretence of being what I am not. Your religion interests me, although, as you know, I have never been taught the belief you have. My gods are in the air, in the trees, in the sky. I believe what I have been ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... Kitty. She swallowed down a sob in her throat and made a pretence of laughing while her hands played with her hair-brush, and her eyes, which endeavoured to blaze defiance, only succeeded in looking large and full ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... did you bring me down into that room," I asked, "under a false pretence? Why did you use that murderous cane of mine for your crime? Why did you insist upon it that I should be seen dining with the girl—God knows who she is!—who is ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... about, or obtain a just cause of complaint against us, if we abandoned him. It would be just as dangerous and unfair towards the Emperor to mislead him in this respect as it would be for the Queen to conceal from Lord John that under no pretence will she depart from her position of neutrality in the Italian quarrel, and inflict upon her country and Europe the calamity of war on ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... establishing himself in a more tenable position, by an incident which must again be accounted among the romantic adventures of his life. For the sudden journey of the fascinating Margaret of Valois to the springs of Spa, on pretence of indisposition, was generally attributed to a design against the heart of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... house—and casually, without hesitation, mounted the steps—and quite as casually, making a pretence of ringing the electric bell, opened the unlocked outer door, stepped into the vestibule, and, without a sound now, closed the door ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... very year in which 2,000 ministers were ejected from the Church of England, a most favourable charter—far more so than the Colonial Office in the present day would grant. Charles, however, repented having granted it, and in 1687 sent over Sir Edmund Andross, under some pretence or other, to demand it back. It was night, and the Legislative Assembly were convened on the subject, when suddenly the lights were extinguished, and the charter was missing. For a long time it ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... I went upon the creek guard and John Bates was Lanch corporeal also in the afternoon their was 3 Boston men came out under pretence of fishing but they made their escape ...
— The Military Journals of Two Private Soldiers, 1758-1775 - With Numerous Illustrative Notes • Abraham Tomlinson
... Col talked of the lands belonging to his family, he always said, 'my lands[885].' For this he had a plausible pretence; for he told me, there has been a custom in this family, that the laird resigns the estate to the eldest son when he comes of age, reserving to himself only a certain life-rent. He said, it was a voluntary custom; but I think I found an instance in the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... of the Council, which would soon begin, served as a pretence for leaving them. Eva was to blame for what he had just suffered; but he knew everything concerning the rumours about the inexperienced girl and Heinz Schorlin, and there fore was aware that her fault was trivial. To censure her seemed as difficult as to discuss calmly with ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Kalendars, or Faquirs. The Torlaques are Mahometan Monks, who under the pretence of holiness, are guilty of the most flagrant excesses. Bajazet the 2d, banished them from the Turkish empire in 1494. The Kalendars wander about in heathen countries, as the Gypsies do among Christians. The Faquirs are religious fanatics; and rove about in heathen and mahometan ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland
... a child fresh from the nursery should have had the instinct to foresee, but the young man on the edge of life never dreamed. What motives or emotions drove his masters on their various paths he made no pretence of guessing; even at that age he preferred to admit his dislike for guessing motives; he knew only his own infantile ignorance, before which he stood amazed, and his innocent good-faith, always matter of simple-minded surprise. Critics ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... taken through many of the houses and although no actual prohibition to talk was given it was virtually impossible to speak with the prisoners, as I was always hurriedly rushed along from one place to another. In order to make a pretence of conversation, one of the two captains who escorted me would sometimes say to a prisoner, "What nationality are you?" "Scotch, sir." "What regiment?" "Argyle-Highlanders, sir." "Ah, so!" and we would then hurry along again. We were in the camp an hour and a half, and during that time ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... that of breaking it to her, the sooner you let the world into the secret the better. The disclosure may be mortifying; but then it is a single misery, and soon over: whereas you otherwise suffer it, in anticipation, every hour in the day. It is not poverty, so much as pretence, that harasses a ruined man—the struggle between a proud mind and an empty purse-the keeping up a hollow show that must soon come to an end. Have the courage to appear poor, and you disarm poverty of its sharpest ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... rascality which recalls rather the man of Brumaire and of Waterloo than the man of December and of Sedan. He has something too of Napoleon's ruffianly good-humor—the frankness of a thieves' kitchen or an imperial court, when the last thin fig-leaf of pretence has been plucked off and crumpled up and flung away. We can imagine him pinching his favorites by the ear and dictating memorials of mendacity with the self-possession of a self-made monarch. As it is, we see ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... tortured glance towards his playmates, and then dropped his eyes to the snow at his feet. Presently he turned to the trunk of one of the great maple-trees that lined the curb. He made a pretence of closely examining the rough and virile bark. To his mind, this familiar street of Whilomville seemed in grow dark in the thick shadow of shame. The trees and the houses ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... of what he used to regard as culture in the old Eastern life, the jargon of the colleges, the smattering of things talked about, the tricks and turns of trained motions and emotions; but there was a difference. There was no pretence. There was none of the fire-proof self-complacency—Self-sufficiency, she had, but not self-righteousness. Then, most striking contra-distinction of all to the old-land culture, there was unconsciousness of self—face to sunlight, radiant of the joy of life, not anaemic and putrid ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... some years after his return, the reputation of his parts was so great, that he was made choice of to be sent into Spain, to recover of the Spanish monarch a rich English ship, seized by the Viceroy of Sardinia for his master's use, upon some pretence of prohibited goods ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... and burned, and not only all the inhabitants of both sexes, young and old, put to the sword, but moreover a great number of neighbouring gentry, whom he had drawn thither to that end. Jaropelk, his revenge being thus satisfied and his anger appeased, which was not, indeed, without pretence (for Boleslaus had highly offended him, and after the same manner), and sated with the fruit of this treachery, coming to consider the fulness of it, with a sound judgment and clear from passion, looked upon what had ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... article will bear a large profit. If not, I take a moderate advance, turn the penny quick, and at it again. I will compound something that will take out your false hair, for I don't think it will be easy to shave it off. It all came of pretence. What in the world was the reason you couldn't walk quietly into the cantecoi, where people were enjoying themselves, and either join them, or if you had scruples, keep them to yourself and sit by. Nobody would have molested you. Nothing but cant led you to join temperance societies. A ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... their children. That is, says Hazlitt, Malthus would leave children to starvation, though he professes to disapprove infanticide. He would 'extinguish every spark of humanity ... towards the children of others' on pretence of preserving the 'ties of parental affection.' Malthus tries to argue that the 'iniquity of government' is not the cause of poverty. That belief, he says, has generated discontent and revolution. That is, says Hazlitt, the way to prevent revolutions and produce ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... spirits, fouler than the sinners yielded into their charge, extract a horrible joy from the tortures they are inflicting. Such was the teaching to be found in the simple carvings hung out at the doors of churches. By these men learned the horrible lesson of the pleasures of pain. On pretence of punishing, the devils wreaked upon their victims the most outrageous whims. Truly an immoral and most shameful idea was this, of a sham justice that befriended the worse side, deepening its wickedness by the present of a plaything, and corrupting ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... Camillus, being called to his sixth tribuneship, desired to be excused, as being aged, and perhaps not unfearful of the malice of fortune, and those reverses which seem to ensue upon great prosperity. But the most apparent pretence was the weakness of his body, for he happened at that time to be sick; the people, however, would admit of no excuses, but, crying that they wanted not his strength for horse or for foot service, but only his counsel and conduct, constrained him to undertake the command, and with one of his fellow-tribunes ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... pretence to get me away, I know," said she, "and you may as well confess it at once. You are ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... eyes on her before. But she had long ago made it her business to see him; had, in fact, put on bonnet and shawl one day and visited Helleston on pretence of shopping, and had, across the width of Coinagehall Street, been struck with terrified admiration of his stern face and great stature, recognising at a glance that here was a stronger man and better worth respecting ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... next week was the day appointed when she should be received into the broiderers' guild, and the day before came the master aforesaid to see Birdalone. Sooth to say, he had not failed to come to see her every day, on one pretence or another, since the first day they had met, but ever he did to her with all honour and simply. But on this day he brought with him the woman skilful of her hands, to show her unto Birdalone, who received ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... of love. Instead of calling it the fair, it would have been better to call it the unaesthetic sex. Women have neither the appreciation nor the knowledge of music, any more than they have of poetry or of the plastic arts; with them it is merely an apelike imitation, pure pretence, affectation cultivated from their ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... of the noble mansion, that Charlie had determined to destroy Doy and Doy, that he, Mr. Prohack, was caught in a trap, that there was the devil to pay, and that the finest lies that ingenuity could invent would have to be uttered. He abandoned all pretence of honesty and uprightness. Mimi showed no surprise whatever, nor was she apparently in the least shocked. She seemed to regard the affair as a quite ordinary part of the day's routine. Her insensitive ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... and despised a wit on its own defence. And he drew (if I may so express myself) a human and humorous portrait of himself with all his defects and qualities, as he thus enjoyed in talk the robust sports of the intelligence; giving and taking manfully, always without pretence, always without paradox, always with exuberant pleasure; speaking wisely of what he knew, foolishly of what he knew not; a teacher, a learner, but still combative; picking holes in what was said even to the length of captiousness, yet aware of all that was ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... those which arise out of the nature of virtue and vice, I might add, as our Saviour has set us a perfect example of goodness in our own nature. Now love and charity is plainly the thing in which He hath placed His religion; in which, therefore, as we have any pretence to the name of Christians, we must place ours. He hath at once enjoined it upon us by way of command with peculiar force, and by His example, as having undertaken the work of our salvation out of pure love and goodwill to mankind. The endeavour ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... in their wake. Lying stark on the pavement were the bodies of some eight men, dead and uneaten; and though the cave-tigers stopped their prowlings now and again to nuzzle these, and beat them about with playful paw-blows, they made no pretence at commencing a meal. It was clear that this cruel sport had grown common to them, and they knew there were other victims yet to be added to ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... each person that makes use of any book or books in the said library, is required to sett 'em up again decently, without entangling the chains; by which is signified to all concerned that no person whatsoever, upon any pretence, is permitted to carry any book out of the library to their chambers, or any otherwise to be used as a private book, it being against the statutes of our college in ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 216, December 17, 1853 • Various
... this stramash, I took opportunity to come fleeing down the stair, with the gun in my hand; in the first place, to show them I was not frightened to handle fire-arms; and, in the second, making pretence that I thought it was Mounseer with his green foraging-cap making an attempt at housebreaking. Benjie was in a terrible pickle; and, though his nose was blooding with the drive he had come against Tommy's teeth, he took hold of my arm like grim death, ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... me does not seem in any degree true. Did I perceive those impulses, decussations, and directions of the rays of light in like manner as hath been set forth, then indeed it would not be altogether void of probability. And there might be some pretence for the comparison of the blind man and his cross sticks. But the case is far otherwise. I know very well that I perceive no such thing. And of consequence I cannot thereby make an estimate of the situation of objects. I appeal to anyone's experience, whether he be conscious to himself that ...
— An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision • George Berkeley
... reign is too fresh in the memory of all the world to need a comment; how, under pretence of joining with the Church in redressing some grievances, they pushed things to that extremity, in conjunction with some mistaken gentlemen, as to depose the late King, as if the grievance of the nation could not have been redressed but by the absolute ruin ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... before night dropped her starry veil, she had travelled to a mansion whose door was set wide, and, within, a cold hearth was piled with boughs of oak and beech. The opal upon Maya's finger grew dim, but she moved toward the unlit wood, and at her approach the false pretence betrayed itself; the ice glared before her, and chilled her to the soul, as its shroud of bark fell off. She fled over the threshold, and the house-spirit laughed with bitter mirth; but the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... several words are emphatic, make it clear which is the most emphatic.* Thus, in "The state was made, under the pretence of serving it, in reality the prize of their contention to each of these opposite parties," it is unpleasantly doubtful whether the writer means (1) state or (2) parties to ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott
... he would be lonely. He cares for so few people and with all his wisdom has so little understanding of many things in life. He is so intolerant of weakness and meanness, of sham and show and pretence and make-believe that—that that's why you like him, and you know it, Claudia Keith! You shouldn't have asked him. You didn't know—but you knew before he went away. And he is coming back." Slowly she got ...
— The Man in Lonely Land • Kate Langley Bosher
... Something may turn up all at once, that will give you that advantage over me. But come! let us to business—make out the deed of appropriation of the boat of that bad pay, Vicente Perez, who under pretence that he has six brats to feed, can't reimburse me the twenty ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... every person concerned should be graveyard dust. We had celebrated two anniversaries of the Fourth of July. The new free and independent States had organized local governments. The King's appointees still made a pretence of maintaining the royal provincial governments, but mostly abode under the protection of the King's troops in New York. There also many of those Americans in the North took refuge who distinctly ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... widened out a bit, Lady Claudia. My moustache is really a moustache, and not a pretence at one; otherwise I don't feel that I have changed. The alteration in yourself ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... little. Stay, it will not be long. It is the story of a cousin of mine, or rather a cousin of my wife. Another of your confraternity. He was curate or deacon, or canon, in fact I don't know what rank in your regiment. At any rate, a bitter hypocrite; you will see. Under pretence of relationship, he used to pay us frequent visits. You can think if that suited me, who already adored the cassock! Besides, on principle, I detested cousins. It is the sore of households, gentlemen; you must avoid it like the plague. Monsieur ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... as a proposal in England or a pretence in America, simply means that the man who has drunk less shall have no drink, and the man who has drunk more shall have all the drink. It means that the old gentleman shall be carried home in the cab drunker than ever; ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... which God's free grace had annulled and open heaven to the ranks of reconciled souls. There is not the least shadow of proof that the sacrifices in the Mosaic ritual were Divinely ordained as types pre figuring the great sacrifice of Christ. There is no such pretence in the record, no such tradition among the people, not the slightest foundation whatever of any sort to warrant that arbitrary presumption. All such applications of them are rhetorical; and their historical force ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... got to the point," she interrupted. "Looking back on my conduct from the moment I first set foot on your beach, I can see no false pretence that I have made about myself or my intentions. I was my natural self to you from the first. I told you my plans; and yet you sit there and calmly tell me that you don't know whether I really intend to become a planter, or whether it is all obstinacy and pretence. Now let me assure ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... Outsing the speech of many an older rhyme, And though my ear deliver them from death One day or two, it is so little time. Nor does your beauty in its excellence Excel a thousand in the daily sun, Yet must I put a period to pretence, And with my logic's catalogue have done, For act and word and beauty are but keys To unlock the heart, and you, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... appointed in 1830, finding his presence at Ava agreeable neither to the king nor to himself, removed in 1837 to Rangoon, and shortly afterwards retired from the country. Ultimately it became necessary to forego even the pretence of maintaining relations of friendship, and the British functionary at that time, Captain Macleod, was withdrawn in 1840 altogether from a country where his continuance would have been but a mockery. The state of sullen dislike which followed was after ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... basely murdered by Twala the king, and his wife and child driven out to starve. Then he pointed out that the people suffered and groaned under Twala's cruel rule, instancing the proceedings of the previous night, when, under pretence of their being evil-doers, many of the noblest in the land had been dragged forth and wickedly done to death. Next he went on to say that the white lords from the Stars, looking down upon their country, ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... in his anger is shown by the fact that, as he had foreseen, he reaped all the odium of Mann's conversion. The Bishop of Cordoba in Council branded him as "a dangerous, pestilent person, who under the pretence of selling the Scriptures went about making converts, and moreover employed subordinates for the purpose of deluding weak and silly people into separation from the ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... father's manse, seemed poor and meagre. But no thought of the hardness of their fare seemed to trouble the mind of the weaver and his wife. Theirs was the kind of hospitality which disdains apology or pretence. They gave of their best. There was no more that they could do. Also, it was evident that the tickling of the palate with food, or the filling of the belly with delicate things was not a matter of much importance to these people. Living ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... songs will be entirely missed if the reader does not bear in mind the mimetic skill of the amateur Japanese dancer and his power as a contortionist. Clever dancers often use their powers in a humorous pretence of clumsiness. Of the freer sort of songs I ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... occasion, which courtesy I greatly appreciated. Permission being granted, I invoked a blessing. The meal was served in courses, and we were waited upon by the Japanese page. I ate very sparingly, in fact, made only a pretence of eating, for God's message lay so heavily on my heart that I had to deliver it. They listened with rapt attention, and all but one shed tears. How stolid she appeared to be! yet she was possibly the one ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... the same opinion. Then had come Logotheti's mad attempt to carry her off out of the theatre, after the dress rehearsal before her debut, and Madame Bonanni and Lushington between them had spirited her away just in time. After that it had been impossible for him to keep up the pretence of avoiding her, and a sort of intimacy had continued, which neither of them quite admitted to be love, while neither would have called it ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... boon, and I will grant it readily. But indeed I was only testing thee, for thou art so young that I doubted thy strength and manliness. It was only a pretence of beating ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt |
