"Insincerity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... are, Mr. Bartram, but I am quite certain you are something more than you wish to tell. I mean a bigger factor in the Crane affair than you admit. I ask no questions, I agree to your terms, and I will do exactly as you direct, relying on your promise that if I do so, you will not tell of any—any insincerity you may notice." ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... refusal to accept the Whig shibboleths. In the Forest he was enthusiastic for the peace, and sneered at the Revolution. Pope afterwards declared that Addison had disavowed all party intentions at the time, and he accused him of insincerity for afterwards taking credit (in a poetical dedication of Cato) for the services rendered by his play to the cause of liberty. Pope's assertion is worthless in any case where he could exalt his own character for consistency ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... the self becomes purified. The soul is itself the sa@msara (the cycle of rebirths) when it is overpowered by the four ka@sayas (passions) and the senses. The four ka@sayas are krodha (anger), mana (vanity and pride), maya (insincerity and the tendency to dupe others), and lobha (greed). These ka@sayas cannot be removed except by a control of the senses; and self-control alone leads to the purity of the mind (mana@hs'uddhi). Without the control of the mind no one can proceed in the path of ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... very best of them. {59} None knew the infirmities of ordinary human nature better than Johnson. They neither angered him nor amused him; he neither storms, sneers, nor chuckles, as he records man's vanity, insincerity, jealousy, and pretence. It is with a placid pen he pricks the bubble fame, dishonours the overdrawn sentiment, burlesques the sham philosophy of life; but for generosity, friendliness, affection, he is always on the watch, whilst talent and ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... the perpendicular line up from between the eyebrows was quite in harmony with the rest of his appearance. He was weary, harassed, and divided against himself. Insincerity made him uncomfortable; it compelled continual exertion, and of a paltry and degrading kind; and it gave neither a sense of security, nor a prospect of future advantage. Five days from now he was to be married; the duties of a parish minister were to be undertaken, and he felt himself ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... was her frank admission. "He represents a life we know so little about here on the far frontier. To you, with your code of border manliness, he may appear all affectation, mere shallow insincerity; but to me, Captain de Croix represents his class, stands for the refinements of social order to which women can never be indifferent. Those were the happiest days of my life, Monsieur; and at Montreal he ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... for honours, which yet experience tells him is but vanity. The profligacy of his youth, grossly overdrawn by malice, [79] was yet no doubt a ground of remorse; and though the severity of his opening chapters is somewhat ostentatious, there is no intrinsic mark of insincerity about them. They are, it is true, quite superfluous. Iugurtha's trickery can be understood without a preliminary discourse on the immortality of the soul; and Catiline's character is not such as ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... a man who prospered under Cromwell and Charles II., and was a favourite of both, a presumption of excessive pliancy, of too much readiness to adapt himself to his environment, of time-serving, if you like, and insincerity. It cannot be proved that he was not a Vicar of Bray, the title which at once suggests itself. Tolerance, geniality, and charity are virtues which have their own defects, and some measure of austerity is ...
— The Life and Times of John Wilkins • Patrick A. Wright-Henderson
... demon-guide: "Thou hast described the sand as hot, but it is not so." "True; and it is on account of the heavy showers of snow that have fallen and cooled the ground, a proof that thou art under the protection of the Almighty." Isfendiyar smiled, and said: "Thou art all insincerity and deception, thus to play upon my feelings with false or imaginary terrors." Saying this he urged his soldiers to pass rapidly on, so as to leave the sand behind them, and they presently came to a great river. Isfendiyar was now angry ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... in one desperate spurt, he is naturally obliged to spend more than a corresponding amount of time in recuperating, even if no serious complication intervenes; and this gives rise to the accusation of laziness and insincerity from those who chance to see him in one of ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... opinions; and he tells you nothing but the truth. But even in those cases their suffering is an evidence of their sincerity; and it would be very hard to charge men who die for the doctrine they profess, with insincerity in the profession. Mistaken they may be; but every mistaken man is not a cheat. Now, if you will allow the suffering of the apostles to prove their sincerity, which you cannot well disallow; and consider that they died for the truth of a matter of fact which they had seen themselves, you will perceive ...
— The Trial of the Witnessses of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ • Thomas Sherlock
... a capacious old dowager, and mine to be handed in by Mr. Grimsby, a friend of his, but a man I very greatly disliked: there was a sinister cast in his countenance, and a mixture of lurking ferocity and fulsome insincerity in his demeanour, that I could not away with. What a tiresome custom that is, by-the-by—one among the many sources of factitious annoyance of this ultra-civilised life. If the gentlemen must lead the ladies into the dining-room, why cannot they ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... established piece of art. He practised diligently, and gained, as he himself states, his high rank by constantly drilling himself in the art of writing. This imitation of form to the point of perfection, rather than an expression of a great and moving idea, gives an air of insincerity to some of Stevenson's works. Yet, although seemingly artificial, he never chose words for the sake of mere sounds, but for their accuracy in truth and fitness. He was as an ephemeral shadow with an optimistic and real spirit. He infused an intimacy and spirituality into his writings that ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... scenery of Claude, or brooded over the lofty solitudes of Salvator Rosa and the brigand—I have experienced the frivolity of France, the dissipation of Florence, the profligacy of the Venetian, the degeneracy of the Roman, and vindictiveness of the Neapolitan, the insincerity of the impoverished noble, and the truth of honest poverty—I have wondered in the gaudy sanctuary of the Papist, teeming with devotees, or pondered amid the nobler simplicity of the Heathen's Temple in the deserts ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... object to in this little trait of Ned's, is,' said Mr Chester, '—and the mention of his name reminds me, by the way, that I am about to beg the favour of a minute's talk with you alone—the only thing I object to in it, is, that it DOES partake of insincerity. Now, however I may attempt to disguise the fact from myself in my affection for Ned, still I always revert to this—that if we are not sincere, we are nothing. Nothing upon earth. Let us be ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... care and pray! Praying alone is not enough, but oh for more real praying! We are playing at praying, and caring, and coming; playing at doing—if doing costs—playing at everything but play. We are earnest enough about that. God open our eyes and convict us of our insincerity! burn out the superficial in us, make us intensely in earnest! And may God quicken our sympathy, and touch our heart, and nerve our arm for what will prove a desperate fight against "leagued fiends" in bad men's shapes, who do the devil's work to-day, branding on little ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... and distant, keep their doors closed to the general public. No one has yet dared to permanently set up here their Lares and Penates. The subordination of family life to externals, and insincerity of social compacts, are destined to make California a mere abiding place for several generations. The fibres of ancestry must first knit the living into close communion with their parents born on these Western shores. Hardin's domineering nature, craving excitement and control over ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... rest was merely secondary. The mystery of his mighty influence, then, lay in his honesty; and it is this that gave warmth and tone to his feelings, an energy to his language, and an impression to his manner before which every imputation of insincerity must have immediately vanished." ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... distinctions without differences, its gnat strainings and camel swallowings, its pretence of grappling with a question while resolutely bent upon shirking it, its dust throwing and mystification, its concealment of its own ineffable insincerity under an air of ineffable candour? Is there not a "lo there!" from that other school with its bituminous atmosphere of exclusiveness and self-laudatory dilettanteism? Is there not enough actual ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... virtue of which his nature is no mere aggregate of parts or faculties, but a living whole. So deeply rooted in the Western mind is disbelief in the reality of the soul that it is difficult to use the word, when speaking to a Western audience, without exposing oneself to the charge of insincerity,—not to speak of the graver charge of "bad form." A savour either of cant or gush hangs about the word, and is not easily detached from it. That being so, it must be clearly understood that I mean by the soul the nature of Man considered in its unity and totality,—no ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... air of insincerity about the Japanese which Ned did not like. It seemed to the boy that he was leading the others on—or trying to lead them on—in a sinister way. The impression was in the lad's mind from the moment of his meeting Gostel that the two men, Itto and Gostel, were in the ...
— Boy Scouts in the Canal Zone - The Plot Against Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... bent of the Spanish mind is religious. Taking the nation as a whole, with all its marvellous variations in race and character, no portion of it has ever been reproached for insincerity in its religious beliefs. It has been often held up to reproach for bigotry and superstition; but the people have in past ages been penetrated by a sincere reverence for what they have believed to be religion, and perhaps no other nation has ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... have been the faults of Peter, history cannot accuse him of ingratitude, or insincerity, or weak affections,—nothing of which is seen in his treatment of the honest Dutchman, in whose yard he worked as a common laborer; of Lefort, whom he made admiral of his fleet; or of Mentchikof, whom he elevated to the second place in his empire. Peter was not a great warrior, but he created ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... my heart; he who charges me with insincerity will have to answer Heaven; he who charges me with ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... cloke of marriage, to conceal a mode of conduct, that would for ever have damned their fame, had they been innocent, seduced girls. These particularly stood aloof.—Had she remained with her husband, practising insincerity, and neglecting her child to manage an intrigue, she would still have been visited and respected. If, instead of openly living with her lover, she could have condescended to call into play a thousand arts, which, degrading her own mind, might have allowed the people who were ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... accept Mohammed as the prophet of God. It would be like putting Bonaparte above the Lord Buddha. A faith is a very solemn thing and not to be approached lightly. To accept a faith publicly, the tongue in the cheek, was the sin of insincerity and rank dishonesty, having committed which no man should hold up his head. And moreover Moslem women were queer things. For centuries they had been held to be a little more beautiful than a flower, a little less valuable, less personal than a fine horse. Being told that for centuries, ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... he and they saw the past in the light of the present, and did their best to make it fit a present so wonderful and miraculous. The whole trend of recent research on the subject of Columbus has been unfortunately in the direction of proving the complete insincerity of his own speech and writings about his early life, and the inaccuracy of Las Casas writings his contemporary biographer, and the first historian of the West Indies. Those of my readers, then, who are inclined to be impatient with the meagreness of the facts with ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... mother earth, so have the trials to which we Republicans of the Daily News have been subjected for the four years riveted us all the more securely to the faith. We have been forced in the line of professional duty to turn humorous paragraphs upon the alleged insincerity of our beloved political leader, but every paragraph so turned shall eventually come home d.v. (and we hope d.q.) to roost, like an Ossa, upon the Pelion of Infamy, which shall surely mark the grave of Mugwumpery. Every poem which we persecuted defenders of the faith have ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... coat of paint to a religious sign post is particularly attractive to the female members of the congregation. With the first class, it is ignorance; with the second, business, and with the third, a mild, but well defined form of insincerity. You will find, too, that, with few exceptions, flowery ministers are—little else. I do not mean a forcibly drawn picture; that is a wholly different thing; I mean gaudy, flowery word painting. I remember at Trinity church in Staunton once, a description by a minister named Tucker, of a sacrifice ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley
... insincerity he could not account for, he now felt inclined to defend his previous sentiment, although all the while conscious of a certain charm in his companion's graceful skepticism. He had in his truthfulness and independence hitherto always been quite free from that feeble admiration of cynicism which ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... character of a patron to learning and learned men; but Napoleon, in an age when knowledge of every kind was self-patronized—when no possible exertions of power could avail to crush it—and yet, under these circumstances, with utter insincerity. Charlemagne, on the other hand, at a time when the countenance of a powerful protector made the whole difference between revival and a long extinction—and what was still more to the purpose of ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... Alix grinned. She had before this accused Peter of violent partisanship with his own sex. He criticized women severely; the Strickland girls had often been angry and resentful at his comments upon the insincerity, extravagance, and ignorance of their own sex, but with Peter, all men were worthy of respect, until ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... rigorous, less imperious, and more indulgent would have thrown greater lustre over her character, let it be remembered that some good qualities appear to be incompatible with others; nor let the seductive and corrupting nature of power be left out in the account. Her insincerity was perhaps the greatest blot in her character and the fruitful source of all the vexatious incidents of her reign. Though unacquainted with philosophical toleration, the only method of disarming ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... that I cannot give you satisfactory and intelligible reasons for this step. You are a beautiful and luxurious creature: life is to you full and complete only when it is a carnival of love. My case is just the reverse. Before three soft speeches have escaped me I rebuke myself for folly and insincerity. Before a caress has had time to cool, a strenuous revulsion seizes me: I long to return to my old lonely ascetic hermit life; to my dry books; my Socialist propagandism; my voyage of discovery through the wilderness of thought. I married in an insane fit of belief that I had a ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... recognition of the principle of racial equality. We earnestly implore you not to depart from the High Commissioner's five years' compromise, which the Uitlanders accepted with great reluctance. The absolute necessity for a satisfactory settlement with an Imperial guarantee is emphasised by the insincerity and bad faith persistently shown during the Volksraad discussion of ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... Clerical quack, vending his wretched patent medicines of salvation in a style of offensive denunciation that would have ruined a host of Dulcamaras, trained in the insinuating methods of the ordinary trade. But on this the Clergyman thrives, and weak women fall prostrate before his roaring insincerity. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 17, 1892 • Various
... He expected to receive a note of bewitching, cajoling, feminine apology, but he did not receive it. They met again, always at Kenilworth Mansions, and in an interview full of pain at the start and full of insincerity at the finish Henry learnt that Geraldine's invitation had been for Sunday, and not Saturday, that various people of much importance in her eyes had been asked to meet him, and that the company was deeply disappointed and the hostess humiliated. Henry was certain that she ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... (1625-1649).—Charles I. in dignity of person far excelled his father. He had more skill and more courage; but he had the same theory of arbitrary government, and acted as if insincerity and the breaking of promises were excusable in defense of it. His strife with Parliament began at once. They would not grant supplies of money without a redress of grievances and the removal of Buckingham, the king's favorite. War had begun with Spain before the close of ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... His manners were rude though kind; he had wonderful personal popularity, and was the freest possible from cant, pretence, or any sort of demagogueism. He was as incapable of a mean thought as of uttering the slightest approach to an untruth, or practising a possible insincerity. He was a favorite with the young lawyers and students, who imitated his rude manner and strong language; was a dangerous advocate, and had much influence with courts. In all these early years he was known as Frank Wade; "Ben" and "old Ben" came to ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... or dangerous knowledge is more impetuous when a sudden emancipation of mind sweeps the old landmarks and restraints out of sight, and nothing has been foreseen which can serve as a guide. Then is the time when weak places in education show themselves, when the least insincerity in the presentment of truth brings its own punishment, and a faith not pillared and grounded in all honesty is in danger of failing. The best security is to have nothing to unlearn, to know that what one knows is a very small part of what can be known, but that as far as it goes it is true ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... A little unpremeditated insincerity must be indulged under the stress of social intercourse. The talk even of an honest man must often represent merely his wish to be inoffensive or agreeable rather than his genuine opinion or feeling on the matter ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... those whom I esteemed privately. On the other hand, the barbarian manner of retort did not find me endowed by nature to parry it successfully. Quite lacking in measured periods, it aims, by an extreme rapidity of thrust and an insincerity of sequence, to entangle the one who is assailed in a complication of arising doubts and emotions. "Who are you,—no one but yourself," exclaimed a hireling of hung-dog expression who claimed to ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... stillness of the study, calm and significant memories of the last few days rose one after another in his imagination, particularly of the battle of Borodino and of that vague sense of his own insignificance and insincerity compared with the truth, simplicity, and strength of the class of men he mentally classed as they. When Gerasim roused him from his reverie the idea occurred to him of taking part in the popular defense ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... below. Keep away from the edge. You are safer so. Although, of course, I am not talking about mere conventional dissimilarities; and though I know and believe and feel all that can be said about the insufficiency, and even insincerity, of such, yet there is a broad gulf between the man who believes in Jesus Christ and His Gospel and the man who does not, and the resulting conducts cannot be the same unless the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... insincerity of Lewis, we shall now quote parts of a second speech made by him in the evening of the same day on which he had spoken so eloquently in behalf of asserting the truth and not telling ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... he told himself that the suddenness of this new emotion must be evidence of its insincerity. He was perfectly well aware that his impulses were abrupt and of short duration. But he knew that this was not sudden. Without realising it, he had been from the first drawn to Hilma, and all through these last terrible days, since the time he had seen her at Los ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... defects underlie the brightness and fascination of the external part of French character—namely, selfishness and insincerity. Perfect in manner, in dress, in grace, in suavity, in sweetness it may be, the French are utterly and wholly unreliable. They resemble the phantom woman in the story told by Leigh Hunt, that was only a suit of clothes, with no face beneath the hood and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... than to anyone else. You are secure in my house, where I advise you to continue, if you think fit; and, provided you do not stray from hence, I dare assure you, you will have no just cause to complain of my insincerity." ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... withdrew, and Mrs. Aliston fulfilled her mission. Then I was more than ever convinced of the fellow's insincerity. I heard how he received the news of his sister's flight; and when Mrs. Aliston went, in a panic, to call her niece, I heard him, ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... then bespoke him: "After the proofs you have given of your falsehood and insincerity, we can no longer have any reliance upon you, nor faith in your fulfilling the conditions of our agreement; I will, therefore, once more make you a proposal that shall still leave you indebted to our clemency. You shall banish yourself from England for ever, ...
— The Old English Baron • Clara Reeve
... should have actually taken yourself in it by it. One acts so badly with only oneself for audience. You know perfectly well that you are not going to give in, you are not going to attempt to stifle that which is the centre of your life; you have not courage for such slow suicide. Don't add insincerity to the other faults that are laid to your account——" She mused over the little self-administered lecture. And probing down into her consciousness, she realized that she could not face the thought ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... she would always be. Rilla Blythe's nature in that year had changed and matured and deepened. She found herself seeing through Irene with a disconcerting clearness—discerning under all her superficial sweetness, her pettiness, her vindictiveness, her insincerity, her essential cheapness. Irene had lost for ever ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... who maketh right, what those most interested in know to be wrong, cherishes a bad motive. When a philosopher teaches doctrines that become doubtful in their ultraness, the weakness carries the insincerity,—the effort becomes stagnant. Never sell yourself to any class of evils for popularity's sake. If you attempt it you mistake the end, and sell yourself to the obscurity of a political trickster, flatttered by a ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... much before us now. But the service cannot be overrated, to all parties, of the protest which his life and all his words were against dangers which were threatening all parties, and not least the Liberal party—the danger of shallowness and superficial flippancy; the danger of showy sentiment and insincerity, of worldly indifference to high duties and calls. With the one great exception of Arnold—Keble's once sympathetic friend, though afterwards parted from him—the religious Liberals of our time have little reason ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... established, or unestablished, compelled men of science and philosophers to treat dominant creeds as consecrated ground, on which ordinary methods of research, reasoning or criticism could not be pursued. In saying this, I am far from accusing those illustrious men of insincerity. Some few of them, indeed, used a sort of cryptic satire to excuse to themselves an unwilling conformity. But, for the most part, the moral pressure of tradition and education compelled enlightened men to identify the doctrines of a personal God, Creation, Fall, Redemption and Immortality ...
— Pantheism, Its Story and Significance - Religions Ancient And Modern • J. Allanson Picton
... the time came for the first general election since Venezelos had taken office. Two years' experience of his administration had already won him such popularity and prestige, that the old party groups, purely personal followings infected with all the corruption, jingoism, and insincerity of the dark fifteen years, leagued themselves in a desperate effort to cast him out. Corruption on a grand scale was attempted, but Venezelos' success at the polls was sweeping. The writer happened to be spending that month in Krete. The ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... good many faults, Vincent," he said quietly; "but I don't think insincerity is one of them. If I say a thing to you, my lad, pleasant or unpleasant, you may take it for granted that I believe it to ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... truth telling is fixed, it has become incorporated with their nature. Their characters bear the indelible stamp of veracity. You and I know men whose slightest word is unimpeachable; nothing could shake our confidence in them. There are other men who cannot speak the truth: their habitual insincerity has made a twist in their characters, and this twist appears in ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... expected from his position or character to say, rather than what he would have said if his personality were not concerned. As far as honesty goes, signature perhaps offers as many inducements to one kind of insincerity, as anonymity offers to another kind. And on the public it might perhaps be contended that there is an effect of a rather similar sort. They are in some cases tempted away from serious discussion of the matter, into frivolous curiosity ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... that he should have omitted from this letter all mention of Mlle. Binet, and I am disposed to account it at least a partial insincerity that he should have assigned entirely to his self-imposed mission, and not at all to his lacerated feelings in the matter of Climene, the action which he had taken ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... said the Prophet, with the heavy earnestness of absolute insincerity, "Mr. Sagittarius is the most single lived man I ever met, the very most. But why did Sir Tiglath, that ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... that though he had called them the parliament, he had not thereby acknowledged them for such.[***] This subtlety, which has been frequently objected to Charles, is the most noted of those very few instances from which the enemies of this prince have endeavored to load him with the imputation of insincerity; and have inferred that the parliament could repose no confidence in his professions and declarations, not even in his laws and statutes. There is, however, it must be confessed, a difference universally avowed between simply giving to men the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... externally agreeable, of bending in all indifferent matters to the whims and wishes of superiors, and of saying what they think Signori like. This habit, while it smoothes the surface of existence, raises up a barrier of compliment and partial insincerity, against which the more downright natures of us Northern folk break in vain efforts. Our advances are met with an imperceptible but impermeable resistance by the very people who are bent on making the world pleasant to us. It is the very reverse of that dour opposition ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... of revolting at injustice, kiss the rod? Is it unfair to infer, that her virtue is built on narrow views and selfishness, who can caress a man, with true feminine softness, the very moment when he treats her tyrannically? Nature never dictated such insincerity; and though prudence of this sort be termed a virtue, morality becomes vague when any part is supposed to rest on falsehood. These are mere expedients, and expedients are only ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... deceiver of the people. You cannot deny that He says, 'Come unto me all ye that are weary and heavy laden.' If, then, you say He calls those that cannot come, those whom He knows to be unable to come, those whom He can make able to come but will not; how is it possible to describe greater insincerity? You represent Him as mocking His helpless creatures, by offering what He never intends to give. You describe Him as saying one thing and meaning another, as pretending the love which He had not. Him in whose mouth was no guile, you make full of deceit, void of common sincerity; ...
— The Doctrines of Predestination, Reprobation, and Election • Robert Wallace
... average British citizen is also hailed with importunate cries which are none the less piercing and annoying from the fact that they are translated into black and white. The ignoble frivolity of the swarming circulars, the obvious insincerity of the newspaper appeals, the house-to-house calls, tend steadily to vulgarize an ancient and a beautiful institution, and alienate the hearts of kindly people who do not happen to be abject simpletons. The outbreak of kindness is sometimes genuine on the part of ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... was leaving. I was going back now to the vast tumult of the roaring towns, to the lip of mockery, the eye of insincerity, the hand of hypocrisy, where none may trust a neighbor. And moreover, I was going back without one look, face to face, into the eyes and the heart of the woman I had loved, and who, by force of these extraordinary circumstances had, for a miraculous moment, been thus set down ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... do not add—mine; for that would be an insincerity unworthy of you! Of me you did not think, except as a marplot! You say you came for the great pleasure you enjoyed in Nora's society! Did it ever occur to you that she might learn to take too much pleasure in yours? Answer ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... island," the Ambassador said thoughtfully, "have brought the English great weal, as they may bring to her much woe. The too-nimble brain of the diplomat has its parallel of insincerity in the people whose interests he seems to guard. I believe in the honesty of the English politicians, I have placed that belief on record in the small volume of memoirs which I shall presently entrust to you. But we talk too seriously for a summer afternoon. Let us illustrate to the world our ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... disclaimer of any responsibility for the Austrian ultimatum, but we have already seen that when the German Foreign Office prepared its statement for the German nation, which was circulated in the Reichstag on August 4th, Germany confessed the insincerity of these assurances by admitting that before the ultimatum was issued the Austrian Government had advised the German Foreign Office of its intentions and asked its ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... lectures on the plurality of worlds, and in that country had written, in Italian, his most important works. It added not a little to the exasperation against him, that he was perpetually declaiming against the insincerity; the impostures, of his persecutors—that wherever he went he found skepticism varnished over and concealed by hypocrisy; and that it was not against the belief of men, but against their pretended belief, that he was fighting; that ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... patronage of four hundred places; while the Regent was to possess no power whatever over any office, reversion, or pension. This appeared to the Prince and his allies a monstrous proposition, calculated to introduce "weakness, disorder, and insincerity into every branch of political business;" to "separate the Court from the State;" to "disconnect the authority to command service from the power of animating it by reward;" and to impose on the Regent "all the invidious duties of the kingly station, ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... the other by its own. If the Japanese are puzzled by English gravity, the English are, to say the least, equally puzzled by Japanese levity. The Japanese speak of the 'angry faces' of the foreigners. The foreigners speak with strong contempt of the Japanese smile: they suspect it to signify insincerity; indeed, some declare it cannot possibly signify anything else. Only a few of the more observant have recognised it as an enigma worth studying. One of my Yokohama friends—a thoroughly lovable man, who had passed more than half his life in the open ports ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... differed from him in opinion, not only on important political questions, but even on comparatively insignificant matters of every-day occurrence. His coadjutors found that, independently of the sincerity or insincerity of his intentions, his judgment was not to be trusted. He could be misled by any ignis fatuus that displayed a bright light, and was led into many a Serbonian bog from which he was not extricated without serious difficulty. Some men have an unerring instinct which, even in the ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... apprehension that my present professions (which speak not half my feelings) should be considered only as a pretext to cover a request, as I have a request to make. No, my dear Ned, I know you are too generous to think so, and you know me too proud to stoop to unnecessary insincerity—I have a request, it is true, to make; but as I know to whom I am a petitioner, I make it without diffidence or confusion. It is in short, this, I am going to publish a book in London," etc. The residue of the letter specifies the nature of the request, which was merely to aid in circulating his ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... were talking the plainest common sense when they specifically emphasized as Capitalist the falsehoods and suppressions of their great contemporaries. From the Socialist point of view the leading fact about the insincerity of the great official papers is that this insincerity is Capitalist; just as from a Catholic point of view the leading fact about it was, and is, that ...
— The Free Press • Hilaire Belloc
... Border-State men into a terrible ferment. Again, they, and their Copperhead and other Democratic friends of the North, meanly professed belief that this was but a part of Mr. Lincoln's programme, and that his apparent backwardness was the cloak to hide his Anti-Slavery aggressiveness and insincerity. ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... It is a sin; not merely theologically, but socially, one of the very worst sins, the parent of seven other sins,—of falsehood, suspicion, hate, murder, and a whole bevy of devils. The prevalence of adultery in any country has always been a sign and a cause of social insincerity, division, and revolution; where a people has learnt to connive and laugh at it, and to treat it as a light thing, that people has been always careless, base, selfish, cowardly,—ripe for slavery. And we must say that either the courtiers and Londoners of ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... it all! Here was the strain of conviction pressing sorely, steadily in upon him through the tumult of his thoughts—was it nothing for her to be insincere? Did she even know what sincerity was? Would he marry an insincere woman? Insincerity was a growth not only ineradicable, but sure to spread over the nature as one grew older. He knew young people over whose minds it had begun to creep like the mere slip of a plant up a wall; old ones over whose minds it lay like a poisonous creeper hiding a rotting ruin. To be married ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... of them are likely to produce in their minds. What good fun this would be! . . . You don't seem to value this as you ought," said Byron with one of his sardonic smiles, seeing I looked, as I really felt, surprised at his avowed insincerity. "I feel the same pleasure in anticipating the rage and mortification of my soi-disant friends at the discovery of my real sentiments of them, that a miser may be supposed to feel while making a will that will disappoint ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... making all comment in daily newspapers illegal? In a way, of course, it would be hard on the commentators. Having lost the power of independent thought, having sunk into a state of chronic dulness, apathy and insincerity, they could hardly, be expected to succeed in any of the ordinary ways of life. They could not compete with their fellow-creatures; no door but would be bolted if they knocked on it. What would become of them? Probably they would have to perish in what they ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... intruded? you ask. Why could not a modern Utopia be discussed without this impersonation—impersonally? It has confused the book, you say, made the argument hard to follow, and thrown a quality of insincerity over the whole. Are we but mocking at Utopias, you demand, using all these noble and generalised hopes as the backcloth against which two bickering personalities jar and squabble? Do I mean we are never to view the ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... little that Mrs. Strickland should be concerned with gossip, for I did not know then how great a part is played in women's life by the opinion of others. It throws a shadow of insincerity over their most deeply ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... that was scarcely either to be blamed for or congratulated on its handling of foreign affairs. The young politician had not the strength of character or convictions that keeps a man naturally in the forefront of affairs and gives his counsels a sterling value, and on the other hand his insincerity was not deep enough to allow him to pose artificially and successfully as a leader of men and shaper of movements. For the moment, however, his place in public life was sufficiently marked out to give him a secure footing in that world where people are counted individually ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... to be so; and it would be so, provided we kept its character unstained by any deviation from moral feeling or duty in the sight of God. You must not continue to write to me, for I shall not, and I can not persist in a course of deliberate insincerity to those who love me with so much affection. I will, however, see you this day, two hours earlier than the time appointed in your note. I could not absent myself from the family then, without again risking an indirect breach of truth, and this I am resolved never ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... said, notwithstanding what I have advanced, that if Mr. Pitt had exerted himself as the minister of the country in behalf of the abolition, he could have carried it. This brings the matter to an issue; for unquestionably the charge of insincerity, as it related to this great question, arose from the mistaken notion, that, as his measures in parliament were supported by great majorities, he could do as he pleased there. But, they who hold this opinion, must be informed, that there were ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... Voltaire.[Footnote: Let not the reader misunderstand me; I do not mean that the clerical writer now before us (bishop or not bishop) is more hostile to religion than Voltaire, or is hostile at all. On the contrary, he is, perhaps, profoundly religious, and he writes with neither levity nor insincerity. But this conscientious spirit, and this piety, do but the more call into relief the audacity of his free-thinking—do but the more forcibly illustrate the prodigious changes wrought by time, and by the contagion from secular revolutions, in the ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... paradoxical. The direct straightforwardness and simple structure of the Martial language enhanced this peculiar effect of her speech; and much that seems infantine in translation was all but eloquent as she spoke it. Often, as on this occasion, I felt guilty of insincerity, of a verbal fencing unworthy of her unalloyed good faith and earnestness, as I endeavoured to parry thrusts that went to the very heart of all those instinctive doctrines which I could the less defend on the moment, because I had never ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... these social flavorings one is especially abused; one which, unremittingly employed, communicates to all dishes its frigid and piquant relish, I mean insincerity (badinage). Society does not tolerate passion, and in this it exercises its right. One does not enter company to be either vehement or somber; a strained air or one of concentration would appear inconsistent. The mistress of a ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... pleased to lay before the French people; but among the educated minority who had political theories of their own, the publication of this reform by Edict produced the worst possible impression. No stronger evidence, it was said, could have been given of the Emperor's insincerity than the dictatorial form in which he affected to bestow liberty upon France. Scarcely a voice was raised in favour of the new Constitution. The measure had in fact failed of its effect. Napoleon's object was to excite an enthusiasm that should lead the entire nation, ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... thanked Kali that he had acted as his proxy at this ceremony, for he felt that at the swallowing of "a piece" of M'Rua he undoubtedly would have given proof of insincerity and treachery. ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... desired her commissioners to inform the Duke of Parma that it greatly touched his honour—as both before their coming and afterwards, he had assured her that he had 'comision bastantissima' from his sovereign—to clear himself at once from the imputation of insincerity. "Let not the Duke think," she wrote with her own hand, "that we would so long time endure these many frivolous and unkindly dealings, but that we desire all the world to know our desire of a kingly peace, and that we will endure no ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... bewilder or terrify the plain country gentlemen, or the youths from Eton, Oxford, or Cambridge, who constitute a majority of that House. His success in exciting the passions of such senators in favour of discord and war, his lavish expenditure of the public money in corrupting others, and his insincerity in whatever he professed for the public benefit, rendered him through life the subject of my aversion: but, in this chamber, reduced to the level of ordinary men, and sinking under the common infirmities of humanity, his person, character, and premature decease ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... speaking of it as a governing body. In that character it has been towards Ireland always ignorant and nearly always unfair. I am treating it simply as an assembly of men, and I say of it, it is a body where sooner or later every man finds his proper level, where mediocrity and insincerity will never permanently succeed, and where ability and honesty of ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... polite. Besides, going always armed, and having a very punctilious idea of their own gentility and consequence, they usually behaved to each other and to the Lowlanders with a good deal of formal politeness, which sometimes even procured them the character of insincerity." ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... it would. And yet, even as I said it, I was conscious of a peculiar feeling of insincerity. I liked young Bayliss. He was all that Hephzy had said, and more. He would, doubtless, make a good husband for any girl. And his engagement to Frances Morley might make easier the explanation which was bound to come. I believed I could tell Herbert Bayliss the truth concerning the ridiculous "claim." ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... deepest sincerity. All sham and hypocrisy were foreign to their nature; they held insincerity in any one to be the meanest and most deadly sin. To this intense loyalty to the truth, Jesus bore emphatic testimony by an early martyrdom; while Gautama gave the same unwavering witness by a long and holy life. They both ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... patriotic record! To his ambition, selfishness, ignorance and innate insincerity he has sacrificed as much of the people's honor, of the people's interests, and of the people's blood as was feasible. History cannot be cheated. History will compare Mr. Seward's manifestoes and phrases ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... herself amply justified of her children, is still complaining that she is misunderstood among the nations; she is for ever crying out for someone to give her keener sympathy, fuller appreciation, and exhibit herself and her grievances to the world in a true light. The result is that kind of insincerity and special pleading which has been the curse of Irish or Anglo-Irish literature. I write of a literature which has its natural centre in Dublin, not in Connemara; which looks eastward, not westward. That literature begins with the Drapier Letters: it continues ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... din of an office, an air so cruelly unsympathetic, as frost to buds, to the blossoming of all those words of love that press for birth,' when, as a matter of fact, he has been unblushingly eating the lotus, in the laziest chair at home, in the quietest night of summer. Such insincerity is a common besetting sin of the young male; invariably, I almost think, if he has the artistic temperament. Yet I do not think it presents itself to his mind in its nudity, but comes clothed with that sophistry in which youth, the most thoroughgoing of philosophes, is so ingenious. Consideration ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... Shabbethai Zebi."[475] The Bishop was apparently deceived by this manoeuvre, and in 1759 the Zoharites declared themselves converted to Christianity, and were baptized, including Frank himself, who took the name of Joseph. "The insincerity of the Frankists soon became apparent, however, for they continued to inter-marry only among themselves and held Frank in reverence, calling him 'The Holy Master.'"[476] It soon became evident that, whilst openly embracing the Catholic faith, they had in reality retained ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... most sensitive nerve in Merthyr's system, if he loved her, and she had determined to try harshly whether he did. Nevertheless, though the expression succeeded, and was designedly cruel, she could not forgive the insincerity of his last speech; craving in truth for confidence as her smallest claim on him now. So, at all the consultations, she acquiesced in any scheme that was proposed; the advertizings and the use of detectives; the communication with Emilia's mother and father; and the callings at suburban ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... which had been prepared, and in which she was made to deliver many comfortable assurances, that at the time were received as a great boon with much thankfulness by all the Reformed, who had too soon reason to prove the insincerity of those courtly flatteries. For no steps were afterwards taken to give those indulgences by law that were promised; but the papists stirring themselves with great activity, and foreign matters and concerns coming in aid of their ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... party most to be suspected of insincerity in their professions of satisfaction; but the princess Mary set them an excellent example of graceful submission to what was inevitable, by soliciting the office of godmother. Her sister was happily too young ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... school can do much, but we must remember that home was God's first and holiest school. It is in the home that the child receives his first and most lasting lessons. Let us not misjudge the ability of the child to perceive the inconsistency, the insincerity, of father and mother. Even though the parent be a teacher in the Sunday school, her influence cannot be for the best if her everyday life is wasted in society and unworthy amusements. The father's praise of the ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold
... rest by reason of discreditable conduct. But, in reality, as we now know, there are all sorts of people, with all varieties of moral character, to be found among inverts, just as among normal people. Sadger (Archiv fuer Kriminal-Anthropologie, 1913, p. 199) complains of the "great insincerity of inverts in not acknowledging their inversion;" but, as Sadger himself admits, we cannot be surprised at this so long as inversion is counted a crime. The most normal persons, under similar conditions, would be similarly insincere. If the homosexual differ in any respect, under this aspect, from ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... information can be asked, granted, or refused without any loss of dignity on either side, which is more than can be said of a park. It is the same with the place of interviewing in journalism. In a trade where there are labyrinths of insincerity, interviewing is about the most simple and the most sincere thing there is. The canvasser, when he wants to know a man's opinions, goes and asks him. It may be a bore; but it is about as plain and straight a thing as he could do. So the interviewer, when ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... fought under the old man in Commons. At the Liberal Win-the-War meeting in 1917, he threw off all disguises and fervently proclaimed that he had chosen to take office under "the greatest Premier in the world." The statement smacked not so much of insincerity as of a sense of emancipation. Mr. Rowell was no longer labelled a Laurier Liberal. He was a free agent in a new great conflict of force. He was stirred as never he had been. Of all the Liberals who took oath under the new administration he was the strongest, and the ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... said Madeline—'the spring in England. How many years is it since you have seen it? There will be a breath of the cowslips about her, and in her eyes the soft wet of the English sky. Oh, you will be very glad to see her.' The girl was well aware of her insincerity, but only dimly of her cruelty. She was drawn on by something stronger than her sense of honesty and humanity, a determination to see, to know, that swept ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... simplicity as of the earlier world, the loss of absolute sincerity must have been a real loss. Goethe understands that Winckelmann had made this sacrifice. Yet at the bar of the highest criticism, perhaps, Winckelmann may be absolved. The insincerity of his religious profession was only one incident of a culture in which the moral instinct, like the religious or political, was merged in the artistic. But then the artistic interest was that by desperate faithfulness to which Winckelmann was ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... stronger? Why upset yourself, now you are getting on so nicely?" As she speaks she lets her clear, calm eyes rest fully upon the hopeless wreck of what once was strong before her. No faintest tinge of insincerity mars the perfect kindliness of her tone. "Why not let us three remain as ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... his life, how improbable it seemed, this happy issue out of crudity, turbulence, lack of purpose, weakness, insincerity, ignorance. First and foremost he had to thank good old Dr Harvey, of Greystone; then, his sister, sleeping in her grave under the old chimes she loved; then, surely himself, that seed of good within him which had survived all adverse influences—watched, surely, ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... the lark the next morning, and bade them good-night, the serenaders retired as if they had had a funeral sermon preached to them. Thenceforth Mr. Webster was a disappointed, heart-stricken man, and he retired to Marshfield profoundly disgusted with the insincerity of politicians. ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... children. In this respect Americans differ greatly from the English. The English adhere with meticulous care to the rule of avoiding everything personal. They are very much afraid of rudeness on the one hand, and of insincerity or flattery on the other. Even in the matter of such a harmless affair as a compliment to a foreigner on his knowledge of English, they will precede it with a request for pardon, and speak in a half-apologetic manner, as if complimenting were ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... That, at any rate, was the impression made upon Lee; and he continued to puzzle his brain as to what underlay it all—what motive, what object. At the same time he was sickened by the suave interest she pretended, by her shallow insincerity. "I've wondered if I could be of any help here to you," she went on. But a sharp movement on his part caused her to say, "Still, I know a man doesn't like a girl messing up his work. That's one reason I've been careful not to propose it before, or even to make the demands on your time ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... not do it, she will punish herself severely, for she will feel for many days to come that while her companions were willing to acknowledge their faults, she wished to conceal and cover hers. Conscience will reproach her bitterly for her insincerity, and, whenever she hears the sound of the door-bell, it will remind her not only of her fault, but of what is far worse, her willingness to appear innocent when she was ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott
... full extent two passions that had come to be a part of his nature—the love of fine skies, and of beautiful scenery. His feelings in regard to this country and to France he expressed on one occasion with a courtliness that was wholly free from the insincerity of the courtier's art. In November, 1830, shortly after his return to Paris from Germany, he was presented to the royal family. The Queen of Louis Philippe, who was the daughter of Ferdinand I., of the Two (p. 070) Sicilies, asked him of all ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... household. Her religious knowledge, notwithstanding the pious care of her Moravian instructors in Antigua, is still but very limited, and her views of christianity indistinct; but her profession, whatever it may have of imperfection, I am convinced, has nothing of insincerity. In short, we consider her on the whole as respectable and well-behaved a person in her station, as any domestic, white or black, (and we have had ample experience of both colours,) that we have ever had in ...
— The History of Mary Prince - A West Indian Slave • Mary Prince
... Albinia was resolved to avail herself. She left all the insincerity to her husband, and would by no means allow grandmamma to abdicate the warm corner. She suspected that he wanted an introduction to Mrs. Nugent, and was resolved to defeat this object, unless he should condescend to make the request, so she was well satisfied ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... discreet congratulations. He preferred the piece, however, as it had been originally written, and suggested to Ford the advisability of returning to the first text. Then Ford went upstairs to take his paint off, and Hubert walked about the stage with Brown. Brown's insincerity was sufficiently transparent; but men in Hubert's position catch at straws, and he soon began to believe that the attitude of the public towards his play was not so ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... with brag, bluster, pomposity, cheap wit, and insincerity, served him as a magnificent foil. Never again were wind and tide so ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... said Albert of Hers, addressing Father Omehr, "did not the Pope revoke his pardon at this evident insincerity?" ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... the way o' politeness!" He remembered that the politeness seemed too elaborate, too florid, altiloquent to the extent of insincerity. "To see her again is to love her the more," he insisted. "I have never been to Washington. Probably I'd be able to understand better the manners one is obliged to put on there, if I had been to Washington. I ought to have gone there on my vacation, ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... life, and there we stand, two spirits under the sky, two that believe in Truth and Freedom, parted by insincerity. The vile weed has crept up around us; we are parted by falsehood, even we. Goodnight. Perhaps I shall not write again. I shall send you a telegram before ...
— The Wings of Icarus - Being the Life of one Emilia Fletcher • Laurence Alma Tadema
... sneer, which speaks perpetually of the hollowness of so-called society, as if rich people could not make and did not make as honest friendships as the poor and middle class; but, at the same time, few would deny how much of what would be such a good thing is disfigured by display and insincerity, that miserable attempting to be thought richer than we are, that pitiable struggle to get into a smarter set than happens to be ours, the unreal compliments, the insincere expressions, the sometimes hideous treachery. If ...
— The After-glow of a Great Reign - Four Addresses Delivered in St. Paul's Cathedral • A. F. Winnington Ingram
... increased in number, his sense of guilt toward his consort was stamped deeper on his consciousness. He endeavored to make amends by paying her marked respect and treating her at times with distinguished tenderness and consideration. But Versailles was the high seat of elaborate and elegant insincerity, and no one was deceived by the formal courtesies paid by the Sun King to his unhappy wife. The deference that he displayed toward her in public appeared to the eyes of the world to be simply a cloak for essential neglect. ...
— The Story of Versailles • Francis Loring Payne
... insincerity, unsuitable as they seem to the dignity of public transactions, offend us with a less degrading idea of meanness, than when they are found in the intercourse of private life. In the latter, they discover a want of courage; in the other, only a defect of power: and, as it ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... him again. He pointed out to Joe that, since he had taken the witness-stand, he had thus professed his willingness to lay bare all his knowledge of the tragedy, and that his reservation was an indication of insincerity. The one way in which he could have withheld information not of a self-incriminating nature, was for him to have kept off the stand. He showed Joe that one could not come forward under such circumstances and tell one ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... that remained of the army; and the kingdom would be left without a single soldier. William, however, could not be brought to believe that the case was so hopeless. He listened too easily to some secret adviser, Sunderland was probably the man, who accused Montague and Somers of cowardice and insincerity. They had, it was whispered in the royal ear, a majority, whenever they really wanted one. They were bent upon placing their friend Littleton in the Speaker's chair; and they had carried their point triumphantly. They would carry as triumphantly a vote for a respectable military establishment if ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... insincere in heart, and that insincerity is radiated by their presence. They have a wondrous interest in your welfare,—when they need you. They put on a "property" smile so suddenly, when it serves their purpose, that it seems the smile must be connected with some electric button concealed in their clothes. Their ...
— The Majesty of Calmness • William George Jordan
... of Fashion is a trivial world where all must appear trivial; it is a place where all must act a part, and where those are most regarded who are most affected; it is a world of shams and insincerity, and very jealously guarded." ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... always are when one struggles toward the forward margin of any Slough of Despond. He had even gone to church at long intervals, having there the good hap to fall under the influence of a man whose faults were neither of ignorance nor of insincerity. ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... the wise ones, he said. They lived for art and love, and what else was there in life? A few sonatas, a few operas, a few pictures, a few books, and a love story; we had always to come back to that in the end. He spoke with conviction, his only insincerity being the alteration of a plural into a singular. But no, he did not think he had lied; he had spoken what seemed to him the truth at the present moment. Had he used the singular instead of the plural a fortnight ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... us what he sees and believes as he sees and believes it, the defective earnestness of his presentation will cause an imperfect sympathy in us. He must believe what he says, or we shall not believe it. Insincerity is always weakness; sincerity even in error is strength. This is not so obvious a principle as the first; at any rate it is one more profoundly ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... Catherine. "I now perceive the insincerity of your professions. This much I have said to try you. And now to my real motive for sending for you. I have in my possession certain letters, that will ruin ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... understanding, sent a sharp letter to Gallatin, pressing Davis' appointment on the ground of good faith, with a threat that he would no longer be trifled with; but Gallatin was helpless as well as ignorant, and the President silent. Davis' journey to Monticello developed nothing but Jefferson's insincerity, and on his return to New York the press ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... perpetually writing leaders against his own convictions is a pure figment of the popular imagination. No doubt an editor will sometimes ask a leader-writer not to put a particular view so strongly as he, the leader-writer, is known to feel it, but such reticence cannot surely be regarded as insincerity on the ethics of anonymity in journalism. The public are apt to suppose that anonymity is the cloak of all sorts of misdoings, and I have often heard people declare that in their opinion every leader-writer should be forced to sign his name. As I once heard it picturesquely expressed, ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... very great man from the pen of a very ladylike writer—this is the best description we can give of M. Caro's Life of George Sand. The late Professor of the Sorbonne could chatter charmingly about culture, and had all the fascinating insincerity of an accomplished phrase-maker; being an extremely superior person he had a great contempt for Democracy and its doings, but he was always popular with the Duchesses of the Faubourg, as there was nothing in history or in literature that he could not explain away for their edification; ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... that were incapable of insincerity, that, in the present instance, attempted to veil nothing, the priest read all that of which, six years ago on that never to be forgotten November night in New ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... human body as God made it and had meant that it should be seen? Of nakedness and simplicity, and all things genuine, the civilised man had been taught to be ashamed. No, no, to-day, in the sunshine, he felt sure that he would not return to the insincerity, artificiality, and the blinkered-eyes of the town, were he given his choice. He wanted to breathe cleanness, and to see God's hand at work, and to be a man; in London, or any other city, individuality and all these things would be denied. He could be very happy now, he believed; ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... statesmen. So, as they are, the State papers are a curious agglomeration of good patriotism and confusion. So the Minister to England is to avoid slavery; the Minister to France has the contrary. All this is not smartness or diplomacy, but rather confusion, insincerity, and double-dealing. One must conclude that Lincoln and Seward have themselves no firm opinion. The instructions to Mexico would sound nobly-worded but for the confusion and the veil ordered to be thrown upon the cause of secession. ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... in the schools of Annapolis and West Point—now rivaled by other schools in "setting up." The Admiral is of solidity and dignity, of good stature and proportions; has nothing of affectation in manners or insincerity in speech; is a hearty, stirring, serious man, whose intensity is softened by steady purposes and calm forces, and moderated by the play of a sense of humor, that is not drollery or levity, but has a pleasing greeting for a clever ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... me ... that I should write such things, and have written others so different? I have thought that in myself very often. Insincerity and injustice may seem the two ends, while I occupy the straight betwixt two—and I should not like you to doubt how this may be! Sometimes I have begun to show you the truth, and torn the paper; I could not. Yet now again I am borne on to tell you, ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... military officers. When the Commodore was seated he addressed himself to the Viceroy by his interpreter, and began with reciting the various methods he had formerly taken to get an audience, adding that he imputed the delays he had met with to the insincerity of those he had employed, and that he had therefore no other means left than to send, as he had done, his own officer with a letter to the gate. On the mention of this the Viceroy stopped the interpreter, and bid him assure ...
— Anson's Voyage Round the World - The Text Reduced • Richard Walter
... knew it was an insincerity—one of the many he and Del were now trying to make themselves believe against the almost hopeless handicap of the unbelief they had acquired as part of their "Eastern culture." He went on: "There's one redeeming feature of ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... young and laughing, so ready to stop an army to argue with a child, could not be beyond reach of persuasion. With the simple frankness so innocent of guile as to make charming that which upon other lips would have been the broadest insincerity, he put that moment's ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... lest they should be put out of the synagogue: for they loved the praise of men more than the praise of God." Note also the instance of the scribe who proffered to become a professed disciple, but, probably because of some degree of insincerity or unfitness, was rather discouraged than approved by ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... taint of the blood which you discover inclines you toward guile, insincerity, and untruthfulness fortify yourself by the reflection that insincerity is a losing game. Put it on the low ground of self-interest, and ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... you are, so as to put on his best manners only if the force majeure of your social standing compels him. No one wishes the Englishman to express more than he really feels or to increase the already overwhelming mass of conventional insincerity; but it might undoubtedly be well for him to consider whether it is not his positive duty to drop a little more of the oil of human kindness on the wheels of the social machinery, and to understand that it is perfectly possible for ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead |
