"Sham" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the Arbours. Cherbetts, Ros Solis, rich and small Wines, with Tea, Chocolate, &c. compleated the old Lady's Treat; the Pleasure of which was much heighten'd by the Voices of two of her Ladyship's Sham-Nieces, who sung very charmingly. The Dear, sweet Creature, thought she had happily got into the Company of Angels: But (alas!) they were Angels that had fallen more than once. She heard talk of Nunneries, and having never been out ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... in Velvet Chair, here lolls at Ease To promise future Health for present Fees Then as from Tripod solemn Sham reveals And what the Stars know nothing of ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... little violence to the principles of the ancient constitution—all these topics, we say, would, if we were so inclined, supply us, as they have supplied Mr. Macaulay, with abundant opportunities of grave tautology and commonplace; but we decline to raise sham debates on points where there is no contest. We can have little historic difference, properly so called, with one who has no historical difference on the main facts with anybody else: instead, then, of pretending ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... and selfish class loves to see mischief being made, even if it is made at its own expense? Its own life being all a matter of pose and gesture, it is unable to realize the power and the danger of a real movement and of words that have no sham meaning. It is all fun and sentiment. It is sufficient, for instance, to point out the attitude of the old French aristocracy towards the philosophers whose words were preparing the Great Revolution. Even in England, where you have some common-sense, a demagogue has only to shout loud enough and ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... ride home from the Thing, and by that time thy husband will have come back, and will be glad to see thee; thou must he blithe and buxom to him, and he will think a good change has come over thee, and thou must show no signs of coldness or ill-temper, but when spring comes thou must sham sickness, and take to thy bed. Hrut will not lose time in guessing what thy sickness can be, nor will he scold thee at all, but he will rather beg every one to take all the care they can of thee. After that he will set off west to the Firths, and Sigmund with him, for he ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... be disgraced in any way?" The general-secretary was, however, only thinking how the pretty Madame Colleville, whose intentions were exactly those of Madame Rabourdin, had summarily abandoned him when it suited her to do so. Rabourdin caught the sham statesman's eyes fixed on his wife, and he recorded the look in his memory. He was too keen an observer not to understand des Lupeaulx to the bottom, and he deeply despised him; but, as with most busy men, his feelings ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... young—these are, and must forever remain, poetical. Out of reverence can be woven the most beautiful pictures which the poet's brain can conceive; but Young America can no more excite poetic sentiment, or inspire poetic imaginations, than the sham Havana it smokes, or the mongrel horse it drives. There is no poetry in an irreverent character, or in an irreverent community. Irreverence in any form will ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... addressing his relative, Colonel Cole (at one time administrator of New Brunswick), on the 20th March, 1865, only thirteen days before his ever-to-be-lamented death, wrote about Canada: "We are two peoples to all intents and purposes, and it is a perilous delusion to both parties to attempt to keep up a sham connection and dependence, which will snap asunder if it should ever be put to the strain of stem reality. It is all very well for our cockney newspapers to talk of defending Canada at all hazards. It would be ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... republicans, to desert and put them in possession of Fort Penthievre. This dark deed was done on the dark and stormy night of the 20th of July, when a detachment of republican grenadiers having approached near to the spot, some of these sham royalists who were on guard betrayed the fort, and assisted in slaughtering their own comrades. All was lost; the storm prevented the British fleet from approaching the coast; hundreds perished in the waves, and thousands by the sword of their own countrymen. Early on the morning of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... she interrupted, "you would know me better, and care less, perhaps. I am a sham; a cheat," a trifle of bitterness in the tone. "You will learn all that some day, and laugh at yourself. Oh, I know you will; so not another word, sir. I am ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... I'd—by Jove, I will, too! See here, you fellow: I'll fight you for it—pistols, or any thing. Come, now. I'll drop all considerations of rank. I'll treat you as if you were a real count, and not a sham one. Come, now. What do you say? Shall we have it out? Pistols—in the woods there. You've got all your infernal crew around you, you know. Well? What? ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... had never been able to snub any one in his life; it gave him a great respect for Alice that it seemed not to cost her an effort or a regret, and it charmed him to think that her severity was part of the unconscious sham which imposed her upon the world for a person of inflexible design and invariable constancy to it. He was not long in seeing that she shared this illusion, if it was an illusion, and that perhaps the only person besides himself who ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Among his sham titles are Dux Roani and 'de Roano,' clearly referring, as Mr. Steuart notices, to de la Cloche's travelling name of Henri de Rohan. The Neapolitan pretender, therefore, knew the secret of that incognito, and so of de la Cloche's mission to England in 1668. ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... with his grotesque rags, his staff, his knotted hair, and with the more disgusting contrivances to excite pity, still practised among a class of our mendicants, who, in their cant language, are still said "to sham Abraham." This impostor was, therefore, as suited his purpose and the place, capable of working on the sympathy, by uttering a silly maunding, or demanding of charity, or terrifying the easy fears of women, children, and domestics, as he wandered up and down the country: they refused nothing ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... That puppy, that shame to his birth and caste, who holds all hereditary lordships and privilege to be usurpation, all nobility a tinsel sham, all aristocratic institutions a fraud, all inequalities in rank a legalized crime and an infamy, and no bread honest bread that a man doesn't earn by his own work—work, pah!"—and the old patrician brushed imaginary labor-dirt from his white hands. "You have ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and Congress of the way that this grim humorist had, with an apposite anecdote or a rugged illustration, brushed away the most delicate sentiment or the subtlest poetry, even as he had exposed the sham of Puritanic morality or of Epicurean ethics. Brant had even solicited an audience, but had retired awkwardly, and with his confidence unspoken, before the dark, humorous eyes, that seemed almost too tolerant of his grievance. He had been to levees, and his ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... moment was his last; and no coaxing could bring him to himself, until he was removed, cage and all; then immediately he would jump up, frisk about, sit on his haunches, and laugh out of his eye as merrily as if he had said, 'I know a thing or two—don't I, though?' These manoeuvres were a clear sham; he could fall into one in a twinkling, at any time. How many times he has led the children of the family, and the big children too, through beds of beans, beets, and cucumbers, and through the tomato vines and rose-bushes; and when we were in full chase, ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth
... likely to have paid best in that particular case. Religion he thinks one of the smartest business dodges extant, a firstrate investment, and by all odds the most respectable disguise that a lying or swindling business man can wear. Honor he thinks is a sham. Honesty he considers a plausible word to flourish in the eyes of the greener portion of our race, as you would hold out a cabbage leaf to coax a donkey. What people want, he thinks, or says he thinks, is something ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... surrounded by his trusted servants, cried, "Woe is me! who am left as a traveller amongst strangers, and who have no longer relatives to lend me support in the day of adversity!" Thus do the most shameless take pleasure in exhibiting sham sorrow after crimes they ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... magnificent Milton has it. His tobacco must be bird's-eye, as he takes a bird's-eye view of things; and his pipe is presumably a meer-sham, whence his "sable clouds turn forth their silver lining on the night." Smoking, without doubt, is a bad practice, especially when the clay is choked or the weed is worthless; but fuming against smokers we ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... Suez saw the reconstruction of the Manchester Territorial units completed. The sense of vitality, without which no army can take the offensive, was fully restored. We had spirited sham fights with another battalion of the Manchesters for the possession of "Tower 16," a solitary landmark on the caravan track to Cairo, after the manner of the pre-War era. The Sentry blossomed as the first ...
— With Manchesters in the East • Gerald B. Hurst
... profess fineness or luxury, but should show itself for what it is: for my part I decidedly prefer the cheaper papers that are used for the journals, so far as appearance is concerned, to the thick, smooth, sham-fine papers on which respectable books are printed, and the worst of these are those which imitate the ...
— The Art and Craft of Printing • William Morris
... his task, Raskolnikoff inserted his finger in a small crevice in the floor under his couch, and brought out the PLEDGE with which he had been careful to provide himself. This pledge was, however, only a sham—a thin smooth piece of wood about the size and thickness of a silver cigarette case, which he had found in a yard adjoining a carpenter's shop, and a thin piece of iron of about the same size, which ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... "But that was only sham courage. I was morally a coward, and could not possibly face the evil spirit of detraction. Therefore, the morning found me feverish in body and faint in spirit. I kept out of sight of my boarders, except Mr. Seabrook, who looked ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... treaty and alliance with France for mutual supports and for a Dutch war; and when various pretended obstacles and difficulties were surmounted, a sham treaty was concluded with their consent and approbation, containing every article of the former real treaty, except that of the king's change of religion. However, there was virtually involved, even ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... do her, and she will cheerfully take all she is allowed to get quietly, as a sop for her quietness regarding Egypt, and she will cheerfully fight you for the rest—small blame to her. She knows Africa is a superb training ground for her officers. Sham fights and autumn manoeuvres have a certain value in the formation of a fighting army, but the whole of these parlour-games, put together in a ten-year lump, are not to be compared to one month's work at real war, to ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... faith, may fall into sin at any moment. His unbelief is the result of sin. He can neither help himself—nor other people—and you need never be surprised to find that his supposed goodness is a mere sham and delusion. I don't say it is always so, ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... individuals can thrive, expand and develop their best faculties unless their lives are based upon freedom and justice. Not freedom to exploit a weaker person or people, not justice before the law which is a mockery and a sham, but freedom for each to live his own life in his own way, and justice to all in the shape of equal opportunity to the earth and all ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 3, May 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... books. It was a very thick door, with a projecting frame, and it had been the fancy of some ancestor to cross it with shallow shelves, filled with book-backs only. The harmless trick may be excused by the fact that the titles on the sham backs were either humorously original, or those of books lost beyond hope of recovery. I had a great liking for ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... me doing often enough! So I just told him he was being lain for and brought him out here. I knew this cave was safe, for I lived here two months before me and the rest of us dribbled into La Chance. And I knew the Halfway wasn't—for the two men who turned Billy Jones out of it, with a sham letter from the boss, were the two who drowned old Thompson! I've played honest in my way, Mr. Stretton, if you never ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... man doesn't steal a loaf of bread; he has no temptation to do so: the uneducated thief doesn't get up sham companies, because he has no temptation to do so. Temptation and Opportunity have much to answer for in the destinies of men. Honesty is the best policy, but it is not always the most expedient ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... going regularly there to ride the moral high horse, that Committee will slump into utter scoundrelism. It will turn out a long, inconsistent, botched, unreadable report that will back up all sorts of humbugging bargains and sham settlements. It will contain some half-baked scheme to pacify the miners at the expense of the general welfare. It won't even succeed in doing that. But in the general confusion old Cassidy will get away with a series of hauls that may run into millions. Which ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... for an emperor being discussed, sundry bottles of "Sham" were uncorked, and their effervescing contents decanted into the well-fed bodies of the four aldermen. Toasts and songs, wit and humor, filled up the time, until the democrats began to think it was ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... Emmy Lou cried with her head buried in Aunt Cordelia's new bolster sham; for how could she confess to Hattie and to Rosalie that it was a parlour ...
— Emmy Lou - Her Book and Heart • George Madden Martin
... Whores' Petition to the most splendid, illustrious, serene and eminent Lady of Pleasure the Countess of Castlemayne, &c., signed by us, Madam Cresswell and Damaris Page, this present 25th day of March, 1668." This sham petition occasioned a pretended answer, entitled, "The Gracious Answer of the Most Illustrious Lady of Pleasure, the Countess of Castlem.... to the Poor Whores' Petition." It is signed, "Given at our Closset, in King Street, Westminster, die Veneris, April 24, 1668. ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... benefit—modern government—whereby a vast and teeming society is wondrously represented by some five hundred intellects. It neutralizes opposing forces and gives free play to Civilization, that Titan queen who has succeeded the ancient terrible figure of the King, that sham Providence, reared by man between himself and heaven. In the face of such achievements, atheism seems like a barren skeleton. What ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... Mohun Dobee pressed his legs under the water, and kept them so; and about 10 p.m. his soul quitted the body. When he died, his knees were under water, but the rest of his body above." Evidence of Radha Sircar and Sham Chum Baboo, before the Mofussil Court of Hoogly, September 1838, in the enquiry on the impostor Kistololl, who personated ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... afterglow of his wings for the living radiance. They had begun to realise the desolate truth. They read it in each other's eyes. She had been too loyal to speak. She would have married him, hoping as a woman hopes, against hope. Paragot, whose soul revolted from pretence, preferring real mire to sham down, fled ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... case mythology and symbolism had lost their pristine charms, an absolutely novel entertainment should be given to the King on this occasion. So on the fields between the Couvent des Emmurees and the left bank of the Seine a great sham fight was arranged between a number of Norman sailors and fifty "Brazilian savages" of the newly discovered tribe of Tupinambas, "naivement depinct au naturel," which may be understood as "clad only in their own skins and a few stripes of paint." They must have felt the climate of Rouen in October ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... arouses strong suspicion that Morton was the Protector's emissary referred to by Col. Cromwell; and assuredly a Mr. Morton is mentioned to Thurloe, by one of his continental agents, as a friend, and fellow sham-Royalist, who might assist him in enticing some of the King's retinue into projects, such as the 'murther of ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... life, my boy! You're up against realities all the time. Not a sham within the horizon. You eat till you burst, work till you sleep, and sleep till you're kicked awake. You should just see Liosha. Maturin says he has only met one other woman sailor like her, and that was the daughter of a trader sailing ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... childhood. It would be a pleasant pastime to sit on Patty's veranda and talk, become, and act like one of the young people. He was growing old; his youth must be renewed soon, or he would lose it utterly. This young man had been surfeited with noise and light, with the sham and glitter of hotels, clubs and restaurants. He was not to the manner born; thus he could easily see how palpably false life is in a great city. To those who have lived in the abnormal glamour of city life, absolute quiet is ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... and by now her eyes were blinded by the tears clinging to her lashes. "You—you humiliated yourself to serve me; you—you were obliged to pawn something in security for this food. I—I saw you—your excuse for leaving me outside was just a sham. You had no money. I watched through the window, and—and I almost ran away, only my promise ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... influenza symptoms—all you ask of them is that they should bring out their smiling mask as readily as you struggle to assume your own. Only, as I said before, in love and friendship and the courts of law is the mask an insult, a tragic disillusion and a sham. In every other circumstance it is usually a blessing. Without it society, as a social entertainment, would become impossible. For society is but a collection of men and women wearing masks, each ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... pleasure, greed of gold,— Laxed morals even in these,— We suffered them, as unaware Of their soul-cankerings. We had slipped back along the sloping way, No longer holding First Things First, But throning gods emasculate,— Idols of our own fashioning, Heads of sham gold and feet of crumbling clay. If we would build anew, and build to stay, We must find God again, And ...
— 'All's Well!' • John Oxenham
... have light in abundance, while the former would be involved in thick darkness. Availing himself of the privilege conferred by his peculiar office, and, perhaps, unwilling in his own person to test the rival powers of a sham prophecy and a real American bullet, he prudently took a position on an adjacent eminence; and, when the action began, he entered upon the performance of certain mystic rites, at the same time singing a war song. Soon after the engagement commenced, he ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... as he could tear the ground, An' took, in line, a so'jer's pleaece, Vor Nanny's cloke an' frighten'd feaece; While vo'k did laugh an' shout To zee her cloke stream out, As she did wheel about, A-cryen, "Oh! la! dear!" in fright, The while her ho'se did play sham fight. ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... (Kaum) of Shu'ayb upon whom be peace!): it was founded by Madyan, son of Ibrahim, the Friend (of Allah), the grandfather of Shu'ayb. It exports the merchandise of Tabuk between El-Medinah and El-Sham (Damascus). In it is the well whence Musa (upon whom be peace!) watered the flocks of Shu'ayb, and it is said that the well is of great depth; and that over it is a building visited by (pious) men. This settlement Madyan is subject to the district of Tabariyyah ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... Wolf and the Lamb! Said the Wolf, "I dislike, and distrust him. His innocence is but a sham. I mean having the bleed of him, bust him!" (Such language sounds vulgar and coarse, And to put it in poesy's painful; But KIPLING will tell you that force Of taste must be sometimes disdainful.) ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Dec. 20, 1890 • Various
... celebrate a year of tournaments, but at the suggestion of the Treasurer of Portugal, John Affonso de Alemquer, he decided on this African crusade instead. For the same strength and money might as well be spent in conquests from the Moslem as in sham-fights between Christians. So after reconnoitring the place, and lulling the suspicions of Aragon and Granada by a pretence of declaring war against the Count of Holland, King John gained the formal consent of ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... that the Universe is wholly evil! And even this poor result is only plain To Genius—which, of course, is quite a rarity. I should have thought this would have given it pain, And moved it to both modesty and charity; But what surprises me (—ZOILUS, to mock sure, Will whip me with sham-epigrams would-be witty,—) Is that Agnostics seem so awfully pure, And ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 17, 1891 • Various
... was appointed for the trial of the unknown device, and the boys separated with their curiosity on tiptoe as to the nature of the other improved method of swimming. They had no idea that it was a humbug, for "Ben" never practised sham. He was so much of a genius that, no doubt, he had something that would ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... you declare in my presence, then speak so also in the church, in public lectures, in sermons, and in private conversations, and strengthen your brethren, and lead the erring back to the right path, and contradict the contumacious spirits; otherwise your confession is sham pure and simple, and worth nothing. Whoever really regards his doctrine, faith and confession as true, right, and certain cannot remain in the same stall with such as teach, or adhere to, false doctrine; ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... be, take my word for it," returned the whip-jack, or sham sailor. "Look at his rigging—see how he flashes his sticks[33]—those are the tools to rake a three-decker. He's as clever a craft as I've seen this many a ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... David Livingstone, and then turning up their noses at a teacher, not because he is bad, or ignorant, or ill-bred, nor yet even because he is a negro, but, forsooth, because he teaches a negro school! There is a very large intimation of 'sham' in this distinction without a difference. It is utterly absurd. May it not also be sinful?" We commend this problem to the good Christian people among whom our missionaries dwell, for solution. They will be sure to come out where Dr. Haygood leads them. And when ...
— The American Missionary—Volume 39, No. 02, February, 1885 • Various
... am about the most unfit man in the world for a college tutor. The undergraduates regard me as a shilly-shallying pedant. On my part,' he added drily, 'I am not slow to retaliate. Every term I live I find the young man a less interesting animal. I regard the whole university system as a wretched sham. Knowledge! It has no more to do ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... were permitted to be witnesses of these maneuvers, and where we saw the torpedo boats that were lying in ambush behind Rohellan Isle glide between the rocks, all of which appeared familiar to them, and start out seaward at the first signal. It was here, too, that we were witnesses of the sham attack against a pleasure yacht, shown in one of our engravings. A torpedo boat, driven at full speed, stopped at one meter from the said yacht with a precision that denoted an ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... bits of leather caps and bullets and bones scattered about in the fields, and you are pestered with children innumerable with relics of all sorts. We had heard magnificent accounts on our road here of all that was to be done on the field, balls, fetes, sham fights, processions, and I do not know what, but they have all dwindled to a dinner given here to the Belgian soldiers and a Mass to be said for the souls of the dead to-morrow. However, we saw what we wished as we wished, and the impression is perhaps ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... his page, "a handsome fair boy," and, with the help of his attendants, dressed him in women's clothes. He then ordered his coach to be brought round, and when it came, his attendants, ostentatiously, but with a show of great hurry and fear of discovery, ran out of the house with the sham-lady and "thrust her suddenly into" the ...
— The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck - A Scandal of the XVIIth Century • Thomas Longueville
... the 70's and 80's. It is a favourite jest to pretend to confuse her with the Great Western Railway Station, which never fails to bring a flush to a Balliol cheek. But whatever the merciless hand of the architect has done to turn her into a jumble of sham Gothic spikes and corners, no one can doubt her wholesome democracy of intellect, her passion for sound scholarship, and the unsurpassable gift of her undergraduates for the delicately obscene. This may be the wake of a tradition ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... attraction had, for me, consisted not so much in her surpassing loveliness of person, though doubtless that had had its effect upon me, as in that angelic purity and fascinating simplicity and truthfulness of character which I now discovered to be a mere worthless sham. It was evident enough that Merlani had been her lover—most probably her accepted lover—when I appeared upon the scene; and that, dazzled by my appearance of superior wealth, she had in the most ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... illness and depression of mind.' Could you have kept quite well had you been a Campbell with John Gordon for a husband? Think of having to nurse your humbug of a husband through a shammed illness. Think of having to take a hand in sending in a sham doctor's certificate because your husband was too much of a time-server to go to Edinburgh to give his vote for a persecuted church. Think of having to wear the title and decoration your husband had purchased for you at the cost of his truth and honour and manhood. Lady Kenmure needed Samuel ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... met you here a year ago, David, I should not have known you," she said severely. "A woman resents being made a fool of, nor can she easily forgive one who exposes the sham in which she has a part. The fault was mine and Mrs. Bannister's, and back of ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... religious, or other—have ever to be swept away; and eventually are so swept away in all cases. Signs are not wanting that some change is at hand. A host of satirists, led on by Thackeray, have been for years engaged in bringing our sham-festivities, and our fashionable follies, into contempt; and in their candid moods, most men laugh at the frivolities with which they and the world in general are deluded. Ridicule has always been a revolutionary ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... coin. It is either a confession that one is so ashamed of one's face that one dare not let it be seen in public, or it is an attempt to deceive the world into accepting you as something other than you are. It has the same effect on the observer that those sham oak beams and uprights that are so popular on the front of suburban houses have. They are not real beams or uprights. They do not support anything, or fill any useful function. They are only a thin veneer of oak stuck on to pretend that they are ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... force like that and you may expect abnormalities in the wake of it. We had "Sham Shoes". Hughes had nothing to do with those. He stated in Winnipeg that Wellington had once said that a contractor who made bad boots for an army should be shot. We had shell contracts—and the "friend" Joseph Wesley Allison; the Kyte charges, which brought the Minister home ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... seems to me so empty, so unreal, so puerile. I am bored to death with it. Do you think this is real?" He waved his arms impatiently about him. "It is all a sham and a fraud. I am nothing—nobody. I am a puppet on a hired stage, playing to amuse—not myself!—the Lord knows I am bored enough by it!—but a lot of people who don't care any more about me than I do about them. I can't ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... His sham ports fell as if by magic, his guns grinned through the gaps like black teeth; his huge foresail rose and filled, and out he came ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... was fonder of Charles Baxter than of anyone else, save his sister. He hated sham and cant: if a man had a single reality in him the old Doctor found it; and Charles Baxter in many ways exceeds any man I ever knew in the downright quality of genuineness. The Doctor was never tired of telling—and with humour—how he once went to Baxter to have a ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... Hugo imagined when he wrote it that he was inspired by Shakespeare; if he was inspired by anyone it was by Voltaire. His drama is the old drama of the eighteenth century, repainted in picturesque colours; it resembles those grotesque country-houses that our forefathers were so fond of, where the sham-Gothic turrets and castellations ill conceal the stucco and the pilasters of a former age. Of true character and true passion it has no trace. The action, the incidents, the persons—all alike are dominated by considerations of rhetoric, ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... day. I followed them thither, heard their speeches, noted their modes of enjoyment, watched them unnoticed and unknown, save in one instance, until they finally dispersed. Next day I went to Scarva, forty miles away, to see the great sham fight which annually takes place there between representatives of King James and King William of Orange. There were sixty-four special trains, at cheap fares, running to Scarva, besides the ordinary service, and let it be remembered that Scarva is on the main line from Dublin to Belfast. ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... should constitute the furnishings of a house, or to illustrate its style or fashion by drawings, and content ourself with the single remark, that it should, in all cases, be strong, plain, and durable—no sham, nor ostentation about it—and such as is made for use: mere trinkets stuck about the room, on center tables, in corners, or on the mantel-piece, are the foolishest things imaginable. They are costly; they require a world of care, to keep them ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... no fool, I can tell you. He knows country society in perfection, and he would not be long in understanding Fifth Avenue noodledom just as well. He detects sham people and sham ways as quickly as you could, and delights in ridiculing them. He says there's a ghost of a man up there which interests him exceedingly, but that it is such an extremely well-behaved, good-mannered ghost that it is tolerated without remark, and ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... going to see the roses come back into your cheeks and the wrinkles leave your pretty face. Uncle John is Papa's senior by ten years but he looks much younger—why? Because Papa is bent and worn getting money for me—for us to make a show on. Everything is sham, Mamma, and let us give it up—let us keep only friends who care for us ourselves and we shall be happier. I shall take you up to camp next summer. You can help us so much; you are so clever and can teach the girls. And as for a grand marriage for me, ...
— Ethel Hollister's Second Summer as a Campfire Girl • Irene Elliott Benson
... one knows so well where the shoe pinches as he who wears it." At this he asked me about lynch law in the United States, and expressed his horror of it. I showed him that it was the inevitable result of a wretched laxity and sham humanity in the administration of our criminal law, which had led great bodies of people, more especially in the Southern and extreme Western parts of the country, to revert to natural justice and take the law into their own hands; and I cited Goldwin Smith's profound ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... fashionable may call the candid speaker a boar, and shun him. He may be an outcast from their society: but, after all, his honesty and candour will wear better and longer than their sham and shoddy. His "Nay, nay," and "Yea, yea," will outlast and outshine their double-tongued prevarication and flattery. Better a boar—if you know him to be such—than a wolf in sheep's clothing. A rough friend is more valuable than a ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... he thought moodily, "how long they will go on intoning their dreary Latin doggerel? Priestcraft and Sham! There's no escape from it anywhere, not even in the wilds of Caucasus! I wonder if the man I seek is really here, or whether after all I have been misled? There are so many contradictory stories told about him that one doesn't ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... proper I should explain," put in the broker, "that we has two varieties of them 'ere harticles. One is the true harticle, as is got up by our great wits and philosophers, they says, on the most approved models; but the other is nothing but a sham harticle that is really manufactured in Leaplow, and is sent out here to get hour stamp. That's all—I never deceives a customer—both sell well, I hear, on ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Mir Jafar were drawn up; one on red paper, known as lal kagaz, containing a clause embodying Omichand's demand; the other on white, containing no such clause. Admiral Watson, with bluff honesty, refused to have anything to do with the sham treaty; it was dishonorable, he said, and to ask his signature was an affront. But his signature was necessary to satisfy Omichand. At Clive's request, it was forged by Mr. Lushington, a young writer of the Company's. The red treaty was shown to Omichand; ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... was critical, all those fresh and noble tentatives that admit of unsavoury interpretations, and when the urgent Yahoo in him carried him below the pretentious dignity of his accustomed organ he would squirt out his bitterness in a little sham facetious bookstall volume with a bright cover and quaint woodcuts, in which just as many prominent people as possible were mentioned by name and a sauce of general absurdity could be employed to cover and, if ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... to him and say, 'My good friend, you're making a fool of yourself. Your crown isn't of real gold, and you must throw it away. I haven't a golden crown to give you instead, but you're wicked to take pleasure in that sham thing.' They're just as comfortable, after their fashion, in a hovel as you in your fine house; they enjoy the snack of fat pork they have on Sunday just as much as you enjoy your boiled chickens and blanc-manges. They're happy, and ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... are excellent: but," continued he, "I cannot think that olives will keep seven years, and be so good, therefore send for some olive-merchants, and let me hear what is their opinion." Two boys, as olive-merchants, then presented themselves. "Are you olive-merchants?" said the sham cauzee. "Tell me how long olives will keep ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... Discourse, this Impudent and filthy Trull, quite sham'd him out of any thoughts of Vertue; and therefore that he might the better ...
— The London-Bawd: With Her Character and Life - Discovering the Various and Subtle Intrigues of Lewd Women • Anonymous
... so here we were in a deep lane from which there was no escape, and, as we afterwards ascertained, between the two halves of one of the most famous regiments in the British army, one ambuscaded by the other! We were taken completely by surprise, as we had never seen or heard of a sham fight before, and it appeared a terrible thing to us, as the fiery eyes and fierce countenances of the soldiers were fearful to see, and we became greatly alarmed, expecting every minute to be taken prisoners. I consoled my brother by telling ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... payment, and provoked B to commence an action. The law he knew very well was on the side of B: but that was of little consequence. Plaintiff B brought his action in Trinity Term. Defendant A pleaded a sham plea: asserted plaintiff had been paid for his meadow, by a firkin of butter: [All a lie, you know.] long vacation was thus got over, and next term defendant files a bill in Chancery, to stay proceedings at law. Plaintiff B files his answer, and gets the injunction dissolved: ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... and everything else—the whole of it. Haven't you guessed it yet? It was all a sham; don't you see? When I came back from college and found out exactly how things were going, I realized at once that something must be done. You were miserable and neglected, and Mother was under the influence of ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... pupil, the king contemptuously sent him into his kitchen, and condemned him to the servile office of turnspit. Afterwards, as young Simnel showed some intelligence and loyalty, he was made one of the king's falconers. And so ended the story of this sham Plantagenet. ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... with passion, his hands clenched and his arms upraised, his whole soul ablaze with hatred and defiance. Ten thousand curses upon them and their law! Their justice—it was a lie, it was a lie, a hideous, brutal lie, a thing too black and hateful for any world but a world of nightmares. It was a sham and a loathsome mockery. There was no justice, there was no right, anywhere in it—it was only force, it was tyranny, the will and the power, reckless and unrestrained! They had ground him beneath their heel, ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... persistently mobbed by a party of a dozen. Both agreed that if any real pluck lay at the back of the attentions so freely bestowed, the view entertained of the proceedings might be somewhat modified. But both were well aware that there was nothing of the kind; that the bold front was a sham, that inquisitiveness was the origin of it all, and that funk in reality filled every one of those dozen hearts, however much their owners hustled forward or lifted up ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry
... neglect of adolescence in both sexes, more especially in girls, will be marvelled at, and many of the evils from which we suffer will cease to exist because the fatal and costly economy of the practical man is dismissed as a delusion and a sham, and it is perceived that whether for the saving of life or for the saving of money, adolescence ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... second, she expressed her low opinion of Norman, and her high opinion of ancient French, blood. Occasionally she descended to inferior topics, and displayed her conspicuous abilities as a mimic and satirist. She spoke of Lord Byron, and ridiculed his petty affectations and sham Orientalism. For Lamartine she had still less mercy. His morbid self consciousness and exaggerated refinement of manner, had excited her contempt. Indeed, she seems to have cherished an abundant scorn of everything approaching ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... This contention, which has not escaped the malice of Porphyry, supposes some error and passion in one or both of the apostles. By Chrysostom, Jerome, and Erasmus, it is represented as a sham quarrel a pious fraud, for the benefit of the Gentiles and the correction of the Jews, (Middleton's Works, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... must do this and act so, when you wish to separate the dogs from the flocks." At first Reynard was a little awkward, but he rapidly improved, and with a little practice he reached at last the perfection of wolfish strategy. Just as he had learned all that there was to know a flock approached. The sham wolf ran after it spreading terror all around, even as Patroclus wearing[19] the armour of Achilles spread alarm throughout camp and city, when mothers, wives, and old men hastened to the temples for protection. "In this case, the bleating army made sure there ...
— The Original Fables of La Fontaine - Rendered into English Prose by Fredk. Colin Tilney • Jean de la Fontaine
... watching Fred Badger, and listening to what he had to say from time to time. Apparently Fred was as indignant as any of them, and so far as Jack could tell there was not a particle of sham about his fervent denunciation of the evil deed contemplated by those strangers anxious to beat the Chester people, who wagered with them, ...
— Jack Winters' Baseball Team - Or, The Rivals of the Diamond • Mark Overton
... the man, with a shrewd glance at Tom's tall and well-knit frame. "He may be worsted in a sham fight, but, methinks, in sober earnest he would be an ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... has never written to me," she said chokingly. "I've never had a letter from him since he went away, and that was on New Year's Eve. It's all been a mistake—a sham ... he never cared for ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... Goldsmith and Irving, and differs, in degree at least, from the comic almanac exaggeration and coarseness which preceded it, puts its foot on every bud of sentiment, holds few things sacred, and refuses to regard anything in life seriously. But it has no mercy for any sham. ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... and at home for vital Christianity. These spurious forms, fortunately or unfortunately, soon betray themselves. How little there is in them becomes gradually apparent. And rather than indulge in a sham the budding sceptic, as the first step, parts with the form and in nine cases out of ten concerns himself no further to find a substitute. Quite deliberately, quite honestly, sometimes with real regret and even at personal sacrifice he takes up his position, and to his parent's sorrow ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... is a Turkish saying known to all Turks educated or ignorant, dweller in city or in obscure village, which reads, Evelli Sham, Akhuri Sham. Now Sham is the Turk's name for Damascus, Evelli means first, and Akhuri means last: and the meaning of the saying in English would be something like this, "Damascus is everything to the Turk, and when it falls all is lost." Probably the prophet ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... has this to say: "The administration of the penitentiary is a sham and pretense. 'Reform' is a show, for the benefit of government inspectors and visitors, with, underneath, a callous and brutal disregard for the welfare of the convicts moral and physical. No tortures? I was trussed up, face to wall, with arms outstretched, for ten hours. ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... officers mix at proper times with them, admired heartily the beautiful handiwork of the common men. The only man he could not abide was the one who, whether officer or private, was a fraud or a sham. ...
— The French Prisoners of Norman Cross - A Tale • Arthur Brown
... thing I'm sure," I remarked, entering the room where only a few short hours before Mrs. Blair had related her strange tale. "Whatever the cause of it, the devil dancers don't sham." ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... bedstead is a blunt, honest piece of furniture; it may be slightly disguised with a sham drawer; and sometimes a mad attempt is even made to pass it off for a book-case; ornament it as you will, however, the turn-up bedstead seems to defy disguise, and to insist on having it distinctly ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... of the Gentile critic, the Jewish journal is obliged to admit the justice of his contention that "it is lamentable to think of the undue proportion of young Jews" who "have joined the Revolutionary or sham 'Modern Art' ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... and third lieutenant, the master, and several of the youngsters, all like myself, suffering from the influenza. The sailors have christened it the Dardanelles fever; and the men who are well, swear the others sham illness, in order to escape the working through the Hellespont. Should the captain get impatient and resolve to beat up, there will be no end to the tacking, and the orders, "Her helm's a lee, and mainsail haul," will be ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... well up the Bay, And we looked that our stems should meet, (He had us fair for a prey,) Shifting his helm midway, Sheered off and ran for the fleet; There, without skulking or sham, He fought them, gun for gun, And ever he sought to ram, But could finish never ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... protect our citizens from proper treatment in foreign lands. We continue steadily to insist on the application of the Monroe Doctrine to the Western Hemisphere. Unless our attitude in these and all similar matters is to be a mere boastful sham we can not afford to abandon our naval programme. Our voice is now potent for peace, and is so potent because we are not afraid of war. But our protestations upon behalf of peace would neither receive nor deserve the slightest attention if ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... once, Radmore's quick eye detected a concealed door in the wall, on which there were encrusted the sham book titles often to be found on the doors of an old country home library. Quickly he went across and, opening it, found it gave straight ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... everything was in the third-rate French style—inferior mahogany and cheap gilding, bare floors with gaudy little rugs lying about here and there, tables with flaming tapestry covers, chairs cushioned with red velvet of the commonest kind, sham tortoiseshell clock and candelabra on the dining-room chimney-piece, alabaster clock and candelabra in the drawing-room. There was nothing home-like or comfortable in the house to atone for the smallness of the rooms, ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... polis foorce is out, an' hammerin' th' heads iv th' delighted throng. Riprisintatives iv th' free an' inlightened press, th' pollutyem iv our liberties, as Hogan says, bright, intilligent young journalists, iver ready to probe fraud an' sham, disgeezed as waithers, is dashin' madly about, makin' notes on their cuffs. Business is suspinded. They'se no money in Wall Sthreet. It's all at th' sacred scene. Hour be hour, as th' prisints ar-re delivered, th' bank ...
— Mr. Dooley: In the Hearts of His Countrymen • Finley Peter Dunne
... however, not on the steps of the old castle of which Prince LLEWELLYN was once lord that you are thus received. By the side of the old ruin has grown up another Hawarden Castle, a roomy mansion, statelily stuccoed, with sham turrets run up, buttresses, embrasures, portholes, and portcullises, putting to shame the rugged, looped and windowless ruin that still stands on the projecting ridge. This dates only from the beginning of the century, and, looking upon it, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 8, 1890 • Various
... sends in his resignation," said the young Viscount de Segur. At Paris curiosity was the prevalent feeling; but the jokes were bitter. "The comptroller-general has raised a new troop of comedians; the first performance will take place on Monday the 20th instant," said a sham play-bill: "they will give us the principal piece False Confidences, followed by Forced Consent and an allegorical ballot, composed by M. de Calonne, entitled The Tub of ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... properties. And yet I cannot say that the play lost one whit of its charm for me, or that the working of the machinery and its inevitable clumsiness disturbed my enjoyment in the least. There was so much truth and beauty in the playing, that I did not care for the sham of the ropes and gilding, and presently ceased to take any note of them. The illusion which I had thought an essential in the dramatic spectacle, turned out to be a ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... the Treasury and Auditor of the Navy as segregated jobs for Negroes. Such positions have furnished a nucleus for the large, worthless, office-seeking class of Negroes in Washington, who have established the going of the people of the city toward pretence and sham. ...
— A Century of Negro Migration • Carter G. Woodson
... certain sure he would let me go after the sham ceremony was performed, I would marry him," was the conclusion she had arrived at by morning. "No matter what happens, nothing can be half so ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... his back in horror of the ill-concealed evidence of the most cruel misery there is—that of people in decent society? I have kept shop, and I know. There is no eye so quick as that of the Paris tradesman to detect real wealth from its sham.—You have no money," he said, in a lower voice. "It is written everywhere, even on your ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... perilous foe to the trickery of the ignorant or half-prepared advocate, but the veteran practitioners around him are quick to detect every sign of mental weakness, disingenuous artifice, or disposition to substitute sham for reality. Forensic life is, to a large extent, life in the broad glare of day, under the scrutiny of keen-eyed observers and merciless critics. In every cause there are two attorneys engaged, of whom one is a sentinel upon the other; and a blunder, a slip, an exaggeration, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... translation, and has so far complied with the taste of the age, that his whole book is overrun with texts of Scripture, and the notion of pre-existence, supposed to be stolen from two verses of the prophets." The sincere believer is usually the first to detect and be disgusted with the sham one; and Addison was always a sincere believer, but he had also that happy nature in which disgust is carried quickly and easily off through the safety-valve of ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... fruit-trees and water everywhere. "Peaches too!" he sang out, and sprang off to run, but checked himself in five steps. "I don't seem able to stop your foolish talking," he said, "but you shall not chase around like that. You'll stay with me. I tell you that's a sham. Look at it." Obedient, he looked hard at it, and the cactus and rocks thrust through the watery image of the lake like two photographs on the same plate. He shouted with strangling triumph, and continued shouting until brier-roses ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... by telephone from my squadron that one of our pilots had been detailed to take the recently arrived bus to the Somme, I awaited his arrival and passed the time to good purpose in watching the aerobatics and sham fights of the pool pupils. Every now and then another plane from England would arrive high over the aerodrome, spiral down and land into the wind. The ferry-pilot who had brought me left for Rafborough ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... upon me after the length of my age, and the vicissitudes of days and circumstances, I am the son of Sheddad, who held dominion over mankind and each tract of the whole earth. All the stubborn troops became abject unto me, and Esh-Sham from Misr unto Adnan. In glory I reigned, abasing their kings, the people of the earth fearing my dominion; And I beheld the tribes and armies in my power, and saw the countries and their inhabitants dread me. When I mounted, I beheld my army comprising a million bridles upon neighing ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... limited to the consideration of certain specified subjects, not including taxation, and its acts can be overruled by the First Volksraad, while its assent is not required to the acts of that body. It has therefore turned out little better than a sham, having, in fact, been created only as a tub to throw to the Uitlander whale. The effect of the legislation of 1890 and subsequent years down to 1894 (legislation too intricate and confused to be set forth in detail here) has been to debar any immigrant from acquiring the right to vote for the ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... indeed come to this? Have the Zeitgeist and the Weltschmerz or their yet later equivalents, compared with which "le spleen" of the French Byronic age was gay, done so much for us? Is there to be no laughter left in literature free from the preoccupation of a sham real- life? So it would seem. Even what the great master has not shown us in his work, that your critic convinced of pathos is resolved to see in it. By the penetration of his intrusive sympathy he will come at it. It is of little use now to explain Snug the joiner to ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... room. Among the many groups in talk there were faces turned toward us, regarding us with a discreet good-humoured amusement. The King forgot his duties and talked with his lady-love. Every moment buttressed the reputation of our love match. Let it be so; it was best. Yet the sham was curiously ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... forced to form all his conceptions of the world outside of his own experience. It is a tribute to his clean traditions and sturdy self-reliance that he sat unabashed, pleased with the color, the gayety, the richness, but able still to distinguish the fine things from the sham, the honest things from those which only appeared honest—to feel a thrill of pride in his father's hard, rough-hewn life and ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... is more probable that the females are excited, either before or after the conflict, by certain males, and thus unconsciously prefer them. In the case of Tetrao umbellus, a good observer (23. 'Land and Water,' July 25, 1868, p. 14.) goes so far as to believe that the battles of the male "are all a sham, performed to show themselves to the greatest advantage before the admiring females who assemble around; for I have never been able to find a maimed hero, and seldom more than a broken feather." I shall have to recur to this subject, but I may here add ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... are comedy and tragedy blended in this life! I had not been home a full half-hour, after witnessing those playful sham-duels, when circumstances made it necessary for me to get ready immediately to assist personally at a real one—a duel with no effeminate limitation in the matter of results, but a battle to the death. An account of it, in the next chapter, will show the reader that duels between boys, for ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Gordon long to find out that the khedive's newly discovered zeal in putting down the slave-trade was 'a sham to catch the attention of the English people,' but the weapon had been thrust into his hands, and he meant to use it for the help of the oppressed tribes. Difficulties he knew there would be, and he was ready to fight ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... corner of Isle Rathan, Stair and Patsy could see that the sham defences had been carried with a rush, and that something lay very still behind the hastily-dug trench. Patsy's keen eyes noted that it was still wearing ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... and plunged into South America to sink or swim as I could, without a cent in my pocket or a word of Spanish in my tongue, or anything but white hands and expensive habits to get my bread with. And the natural result was that I got a dip into the real hell to cure me of imagining sham ones. A pretty thorough dip, too—it was just five years before the Duprez expedition came along ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... have found the world a fountain Of deceit and Life a sham. I have taken to the mountain And ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... whether the faint and the heart attack had been a gigantic sham, but remembering the deadly pallor she could hardly credit the supposition. As she looked the expression disappeared as by magic, and Mrs. Vandemeyer lay inert and motionless as before. For a moment the girl fancied ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... invaders of his rights withstood," was surprised in his own house by major Weymies, who tore him away from his shrieking wife and children, marched him up to Cheraw court-house, and after exposing him to the insults of a sham trial, had him condemned and hung! The only charge ever exhibited against him was, that he had shot across Black river at ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... years which lay between her youth and my fast approaching middle-age—grey, weary years, whose follies seemed now to rise up and stalk by my side, the ghosts of misspent days, ghosts of the sickly reasonings of a sham philosophy which lead into the broad way because its thoroughfares are easy and pleasant, and pressed by the feet of the great majority. I kept my eyes fixed upon the ground and I felt that strange thrill of despair pulling at my heartstrings, dragging ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of wood. It is built some three or four feet from the real wall of the room, thus forming a closet. As the whole room is papered and but dimly lighted, a visitor cannot detect the fact that it is a sham. A panel, which slides noiselessly and rapidly, is arranged in the false wall, and the chair with the visitor's clothing upon it is placed just in front of it. While the visitor's attention is engaged in another quarter, the ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... nation. They were compelled to fly because, as Dr. Anderson, a Protestant minister, says, "artful Cecil had employed one St. Lawrence to entrap the Earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnell, the Lord of Devlin, and other Irish chiefs, into a sham plot which had no ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... we'd go up to town; he wouldn't know whether you were wearing them or not. But there! if it comes to that, we could easily get them copied in paste; they imitate them so closely you can't tell the real from the sham. Fact. Why, half the women in London are wearing shams, and ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... want to know!" cried the Honourable Adam. "Will Flint put up a bond of one hundred thousand dollars that I'll be nominated and elected next year? This is the clearest case of going back on an old friend I ever saw. If this is the way you fellows get scared because a sham reformer gets up and hollers against the road, then I want to serve notice on you that I'm not made of that kind of stuff. When I go into a fight, I go in to stay, and you can't pull me out by the coat-tails ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... that he may universalise himself in his own way, and not in obedience to the ruling of custom and authority, in order that he may escape from himself through the real outlet of sincere self-expression, and not through the sham outlet of ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... him, and showed him his sin in so doing, and how inconsistent it was with his own concessions in the present treaty; and an evidence that he had no intention to perform what he had agreed to, but dissembled with GOD and man; and he, on the other hand, put them off with sham excuses and professions; and so, from their too much credulity to his fraudulent professions and promises all along, they brought him over to Scotland, and before his landing in this kingdom, he takes the covenant at ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... Parliament really is stronger than the Crown to-day. The power of the mass of the people to control Parliament has been given as far as mere legislation could give it. We all know that it is a sham. And if you ask what it is that makes the difference of reality between the two cases, it is this: that men killed and were killed for the one thing and ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... 1711 perhaps within a week or two of the third guilty Spectator (June 7) and went into a second edition, "Corrected," by August 18. An advertisement in the Post Man of that day referred to yet a third "sham" edition, "full of errors."[3] The writer alludes to the author of the Spectators covertly ("we have had an enterprising Genius of late") and quotes all three of the ballad essays repeatedly. The choice of Tom Thumb as the corpus vile ...
— Parodies of Ballad Criticism (1711-1787) • William Wagstaffe
... large irregular square planted with meager, dusty elm trees. The place was so well known in Vauchamp that it was customary to say, "Are you coming to Melanie's?" At the farther end of the first room, which was a spacious one, there was another called "the divan," a narrow apartment having sham leather benches placed against the walls, while at each corner there stood a marble-topped table. The widow, deserting her seat in the front room, where she left her little servant Phrosine, spent her evenings in the inner apartment, ministering to a few customers, the usual frequenters ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... not based on reality; sham, in a large sense, is never successful. In the life of the individual, as in the more comprehensive life of the State, pretension is nothing ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... could get, the first day, but after he blundered into a place where there were a lot of fellows from his own regiment, he took off the badges, and he wasn't very numerous around the boys the rest of the week. But he was lightning on the sham battle," says the boy. ...
— Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa - 1883 • George W. Peck
... burn de guart-haus, Some trink des Königs wein; Some fill deir hats mit rasbry sham, Und prandy beeches fein. Hans Breitmann in de gitchen Vas shdare like avery ding, To see vot lots of victual-de-dees Id dakes to feed ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... to announce the neighborhood of a hostile tribe. Instantly there was a wild scramble for mounts and weapons. The enemy rushed in, and for ten minutes there was a sham battle which filled the place with noise and confusion. This battle was copied as exactly as it could be copied from one of the scrimmages in which I had taken part in my first days as a scout. Then we gave them a buffalo hunt, in which I had a hand, and ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)
... old formula surviving in a sham triple sale, whereby a descendant is liberated from the authority of an ascendant, or after a triple transfer and a triple manumission the son is freed from his father and stands in his ...
— The Twelve Tables • Anonymous
... thousand-fold marchings, manoeuvrings, assaults, surprisals, sudden facings-about (retreat changed to advance); nor could the powerfulest human memory, not exclusively devoted to study the Art Military under Friedrich, remember them when understood. For soldiers, desirous not to be sham-soldiers, they are a recommendable exercise; for them I do advise Tempelhof and the excellent German Narratives and Records. But in regard to others—A sample has been given: multiply that by the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... of the stage. Perhaps you are she; but remember, mere beauty and rich costumes do not make an actress, nor are the efforts of a clever little girl to play great characters real art. It is all dazzle and sham, and a disgrace and disappointment now. Why will the public be satisfied with opera bouffe, or the trash called society plays when a world of truth and beauty, poetry and pathos lies waiting ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... of his client, in this desperate strait maintained that there might exist several copies of the books found in his possession, and that it was out of the question to condemn, on his own sham avowal, a man who appeared to be half cracked. The counsel for the prosecution said that that plea could not be urged in the case of the book printed by Lambert Palmart, as but one copy of that was ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... the mightiness of His mercy, Joe. 'Twas the God us worships, you mind, not Him of the Luke Gosp'lers nor any other 'tall. Theer's awnly wan real, livin' God; an' you left Him for a sham." ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... and byways, and compel people to come in. Was he doing this? Or were not they rather compelling him to keep out—outside their doors at any rate? He began to have an uneasy feeling as though ere long, unless he kept a sharp look out, he should drift into being a sham. ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... side, you whom the gods have made Preservers of my throne. Woe is my heart That the poor soldier that so richly fought, Whose rags sham'd gilded arms, whose naked breast Stepp'd before targes of proof, cannot be found. He shall be happy that can find him, if Our ...
— Cymbeline • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]
... possess especial knowledge of its type. Hence, every criminalist is required to found his knowledge upon that of the largest possible number of experts and not to judge or discuss any matter which requires especial information without having first consulted an expert with regard to it. Only the sham knows everything; the trained man understands how little the mind of any individual may grasp, and how many must coperate in order to explain the ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... group flying. There, the restraints of the schools were removed, for we were supposed to be accomplished pilots. We flew when and in what manner we liked. Sometimes we went out in large formations, for a long flight; sometimes, in groups of two or three, we made sham attacks on villages, or trains, or motor convoys on the roads. It was forbidden to fly over Paris, and for this reason we took all the more delight in doing it. J. B. and I saw it in all its moods: in the haze of early morning, at midday ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... the 'Tyrant,' from his affectionate persecution of young Huettenbrenner, who in return lavished upon him the affection of a slave for his idol. They were all boisterous, merry, life-loving spirits, venting their feelings in howls, repartees, sham-fights, and mock-concerts—there is even a story of their 'performing' the 'Erl King,' with Schubert himself accompanying them on a tooth-comb! The change from this unconventional life to the aristocratic ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... of it is that he will listen to the country people's tales. They are all bound together, all tarred with one brush—all stuffed with a heap of lies, to send us wrong; and as for the fishing-boats, and what they see, I have been here long enough already to be sure that their fishing is a sham nine times in ten, and their real business is to help those rogues. Our plan is to listen, and ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... me the program, though; how they was goin' to have a sham torpedo battle, windin' up with a grand ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... you wish it, and then you may write precisely what you think, no more, no less. You are going right away from this howling cockpit, and never need set foot in it again. You are going to a beautiful climate, a free life in the open, with no vestige of sham or pretence about it, and long, secure leisure to reflect, to think, to muse, to read, to do precisely what you desire to do, and nothing else. You are free—free! Do you hear, you tired hack? Too tired to prick your ears, eh? Ah, well, wait till you've been a week ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... "Caught by the husband's skill, whose art the chains "In novel form had fram'd. The Lemnian god "Instant wide threw the ivory doors, and gave "Admittance free to every curious eye: "In shameful guise together bound they laid. "But some light gods, not blaming much the sight, "Would wish thus sham'd to lie: loud laugh'd the whole, "And long in heaven the ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... Lincoln, Timothy Pickering, and Beverly Randolph were ordered by the president to go to the Maumee to conclude a general treaty which Indians had declared their willingness to enter into. But the commissioners were detained at Niagara by sham conferences with Gov. John Graves Simcoe, of Canada, until the middle of July, when the Indians sent them word that unless they would in advance "agree that the Ohio shall remain the boundary between us," the proposed "meeting would be altogether unnecessary." The commissioners ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... to which Mrs. Arnot had returned every Sabbath morning with increasing pleasure, became as repulsive as it had been sacred and attractive. To her sincere and earnest spirit anything in the nature of a sham was peculiarly offensive; and what, she often asked herself, could be more un-Christlike than this service which had ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... [2] is best, That would take off the test, And made a sham speech to attempt it; But being true blue, When he found 'twould not do, Swore, damn him, if ever he ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... distance from the house; and I soon became as expert as any of them. The ends of our lances were not only headless, but covered with a soft pad, so that we could charge at each other without much risk of serious injury; and one day, in a sham fight, I unhorsed all my opponents in succession. As I rode up to where the ladies—who had come out to witness our sports—were standing, they greeted me with loud applause, and Donna Isabella especially showed her satisfaction by the bright smile she gave me and the ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston
... an old framed print of a large house, as much of a sham castle as the nature of things would permit; and beneath were the words 'Cheveleigh, the seat of ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... are more beautiful and memorable and delectable in themselves than fertile in results. They catch up the sum of their own possibilities, and utter it in such a fashion that there is no more to say in that fashion. The dreary imitation Iliads, the impossible sham Divina Commedias, the Sheridan-Knowles Shakespearian plays, rise up and terrify or bore us. Whereas these second-rate experimenters, these adventurers in quest of what they themselves hardly know, strike out paths, throw seed, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... breach of faith. Republican liberty rests on an implied but essential compact that the result of a fair election shall be conclusive. If those who lose an election are thereupon to rush to arms for a reversal of the decision of the ballot-box, then elections are a stupid sham, whereon no earnest person will waste his breath or his suffrage. Why should any one devote his time and effort to secure a political result which those overborne by it will set at defiance the next hour? It is not merely ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... his outline had the very form of bidding. He expressed himself admirably in our language, of which he knew the intimate graduations. I heard him saying, "These great maneuvers, after all, they're a sham. It's music-hall war, directed by scene-shifters. Hunting's better, because there's blood. We get too much unaccustomed to blood, in our prosaic, humanitarian, and bleating age. Ah, as long as the nations love hunting, I shall ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... to the impulse to a dangerous action. The highest reported degree, in which even criminal actions are performed by honest men, exists in my opinion only in the imagination of amateurs; it is certainly not difficult to produce sham crimes for performance sake, with paper daggers and toy pistols, but that is no proof at all that the hypnotized person would commit a crime under conditions under which he has the conviction that he faces a real criminal situation. ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... Slumberous Europe, rotting amid its blind pedantries, its lazy hypocrisies, conscious and unconscious: this man is capable of shaking it a little out of its stupid refuges of lies and ignominious wrappages, and of intimating to it afar off that there is still a Veracity in Things, and a Mendacity in Sham Things,' and so forth, in the well-known strain.[17] It is impossible to overrate the truly supreme importance of the violent break-up of Europe which followed the death of the Emperor Charles VI., and in many respects 1740 is as important a date in the history of Western societies as 1789. Most ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... was Monday, the 5th of February, there were more dancings and sham fights, so many more, indeed, that we began to weary of this savage show. Late in the afternoon, however, Dingaan sent for the commandant and his men to come to see him, saying that he wished to talk with him about ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... or your city-shop or chambers, as the case may be. Here, in due course, you will begin to meditate upon your next excursion to THE BATH, provided always that you have not dipped your estate at "E.O.", or been ruined by milliners' bills;—that your son has not gone northwards with a sham Scotch heiress, or your daughter been married at Charicombe, by private license, to a pinchbeck Irish peer. For all these things—however painful the admission—were, according to the most credible chroniclers, the by-no-means ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson |
