"Pretend" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... NEWMAN, Professor of Latin in the University of London, probably without much hope of satisfying himself, and certain to dissatisfy every one who could read, or pretend to read, the original, did nevertheless complete and publish a translation of the "Iliad." And now, unmindful of Bentley's dictum, that no man was ever written down but by himself, he has published an answer ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... Dhritarashtra. I also deem it proper for the sons of Pandu. A peaceful disposition of an exceedingly rare character hath been displayed by Pandu's son in this matter. When Dhritarashtra and his sons, however, are so covetous, I do not see why hostility should not run high. Thou canst not pretend, O Sanjaya, to be more versed than I am or Yudhishthira is, in the niceties of right and wrong. Then why dost thou speak words of reproach with reference to the conduct of Yudhishthira who is enterprising, mindful of his own duty, and thoughtful, from the very beginning, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... we are commanded to try the spirits. The spirit that does not cause us to live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world, is not the Spirit of Christ. I am more and more convinced that Satan has much to do in these wild movements.... Many among us, who pretend to be wholly sanctified, are following the traditions of men, and apparently are as ignorant of truth as others who make no such pretensions."(646) "The spirit of error will lead us from the truth; and the Spirit of God will lead us into truth. But, say you, a man may be in an error, and ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... towards us, with his hands in his pockets, thereby giving what I am forced to admit is an imitation of myself perfect in its burlesque. Ben Flint roars with laughter. I clutch the imp and throw him across knee and pretend to spank him. We struggle lustily till Madame ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... have explained it. You certainly did not excuse it or make it a whit less outrageous. You cannot pretend that you really imagine that an engaged girl is behaving with perfect correctness when she allows a man she has only just met to take her to supper at the Savoy, even if she did know him slightly years and years ago. It is very idyllic ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... man should pretend that the material environment of mankind determines the destiny of mankind. Those who say such things have abandoned the domain of intelligence. But it is true that the soul eagerly seeks for and receives the impressions of the world about it, and will be moved to a different ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... edifices once renowned for beauty and magnificence. It is our wish, as it has been our aim, to rescue these ruins from degradation and decay. Gathered from many an uninviting heap of chaotic matter, they are now presented in a different form, and under a more popular aspect. We cannot pretend to say that we have invariably assigned to them their true origin, or that their real character and position have been ascertained. Still, we would hope, that, as relics of the past rescued from the oblivion to which they were inevitably ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... would pretend for a moment on the strength of the Piyadasi inscriptions that Alexander of Macedonia, or either of the other sovereigns mentioned, was claimed as an actual "vassal" of Chandragupta. They did not even pay tribute, ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... weather, to whip himself now and then, as monks do, but above all to fast." Not with sweet wine, mutton and pottage, as many of those tender-bellies do, howsoever they put on Lenten faces, and whatsoever they pretend, but from all manner of meat. Fasting is an all-sufficient remedy of itself; for, as Jason Pratensis holds, the bodies of such persons that feed liberally, and live at ease, [5611]"are full of bad spirits and devils, devilish thoughts; ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... people will wish me well." Then, opening a jar of nard, he had us all anointed. "I hope I'll enjoy this as well when I'm dead," he remarked, "as I do while I'm alive." He then ordered wine to be poured into the punch-bowl. "Pretend," said he, "that you're invited to my funeral feast." The thing had grown positively nauseating, when Trimalchio, beastly drunk by now, bethought himself of a new and singular diversion and ordered some horn-blowers brought into the dining-room. Then, propped up by many cushions, ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... pretend to deny that I am interested in the girl. Alone, unprotected, as I have seen so many young girls left in boarding-houses, the centre of all the men's eyes that surround the table, watched with jealous sharpness by every woman, most of all by that poor relation of our landlady, who ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... plane-table observations, I was within an ace of being detected from an unexpected quarter. Four men armed with matchlocks showed themselves. Much quicker than it takes me to record it, the rule or sight vane was run up my long and open sleeve, and I began to pretend to be looking about for stray roots; the intruders were thrown off the scent, and after a while assisted the Saiad in looking for odd roots for the ...
— Memoir of William Watts McNair • J. E. Howard
... t' very things you thought t' last on earth to happen come about just as easy as falling off a log. When I went over next morning to pretend to say good-bye, Marie whispered in my ear, 'He really wants to go. He only wants asking'—and before night we had it all arranged. We was to fix up t' hold for him and Marie, and they'd come along and make a new home ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... concealed them from their persecutors. The first province which was seized with the fanatical spirit of rebellion was, as had been expected, Walloon Flanders. A French Calvinist, by name Lannoi, set himself up in Tournay as a worker of miracles, where he hired a few women to simulate diseases, and to pretend to be cured by him. He preached in the woods near the town, drew the people in great numbers after him, and scattered in their minds the seeds of rebellion. Similar teachers appeared in Lille and Valenciennes, but in the latter place the municipal ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... delivered. So he began to talk like a philosopher to them in the distress he was then in, when he said thus to them: "O my friends, why are we so earnest to kill ourselves? and why do we set our soul and body, which are such dear companions, at such variance? Can any one pretend that I am not the man I was formerly? Nay, the Romans are sensible how that matter stands well enough. It is a brave thin to die in war; but so that it be according to the law of war, by the hand of conquerors. If, therefore, I avoid death from the sword of the Romans, I am truly ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... lad's character the injustice of backing it at even money. I'll lay you five to one Frank turns up trumps in this business! You ought to be ashamed of yourself for talking of him as you do. What sort of hocus-pocus you bring it about by, I don't pretend to know; but you always end in making me take his part, as if I was his father instead of you. Ah yes! give you time, and you'll defend yourself. I won't give you time; I won't have any of your special pleading. Black's white according ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... faithfully and properly administered. But we are determined that no thief, burglar, incendiary, assassin, ballot-box stuffer or other disturber of the peace, shall escape punishment, either by quibbles of the law, the carelessness of the police or a laxity of those who pretend to administer justice." ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... appears, that the life I lead is chearful, and not gloomy, as some persons pretend, who know no better; to whom, in order that it may appear what value I set on every other kind of life, I must declare, that I would not exchange my manner of living or my grey hairs with any of those young men, even of the best constitution, who give way to their appetites; knowing, ...
— Discourses on a Sober and Temperate Life • Lewis Cornaro
... which I am conducting here. I am bound to add, however, that my own opinion points the other way. Some unbearable anxiety in connexion with the missing Diamond, has, I believe, driven the poor creature to her own destruction. I don't pretend to know what that unbearable anxiety may have been. But I think (with your ladyship's permission) I can lay my hand on a person who is capable of deciding whether I am ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... the tale to be a lie, but, at the moment she resolved to pretend to believe the story and fool the man, when she could lure him on to justice ...
— The Dock Rats of New York • "Old Sleuth"
... sniff, tiff and whiff. And what can you do with those? Students, I hope, will see what they can do. My own tentative solution is printed, by arrangement with the Editor, on another page (458). I do not pretend that it is perfect; in fact it seems to me to strike rather a vulgar note. At the same time it is copyright, and must not be set to music ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 9, 1920 • Various
... the duke, "you pretend to have been thinking all night of my interests, and the result of so much meditation is to propose to me ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas
... well, de men dey go free, and when de Governor at Quebec he hear de truth, he say it is all right. Also de English soldier die in peace and happy, becos' he tink his sins are forgive. But den—dere is Mathurin and his sin to pretend he is a priest! The Cure he come back, and dere is ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... that a gentleman keeps to clean his 'osses, and be blown up, when things go wrong. They are generally wery conceited consequential beggars, and as they never knows nothing, why the best way is to take them so young, that they can't pretend to any knowledge. I always get mine from the charity schools, and you'll find it wery good economy, to apply to those that give the boys leather breeches, as it will save you the trouble of finding him a pair. The first thing to do, is to teach him to get up early, and to hiss at everything ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... strength enough between them to get home. They made a forced landing in the silver loneliness of Kensington Gardens. It was a fortunate place, for there is much magic there. Wherever there are children who pretend, there grows a little magic in the air, and therefore the wind of Kensington Gardens thrills with enchantment, and the Round Pond, full of much pretence of great Armadas, crossed and re-crossed with the abiding wakes of ships ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... "Do you pretend that Bryant is not a poet in the grain, and that the wondrous boy, Willis, was not also 'to the manner born?' Read 'Thanatopsis,' or are you acquainted with it already? I hardly think you can be. Read ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... it had never been stated at all. It is not too much to say that "Life and Habit," when it first came out, was considered so startling a paradox that people would not believe in my desire to be taken seriously, or at any rate were able to pretend that they thought I was not ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... don't pretend to know much about the matter," said Mary, modestly. "There are more important things in life than books; but I do think she's splendid. I can't help feeling I'm wasting my time when I read most novels, but I never feel that ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... thou, Cousin Duke? Is there a man in the county who knows more of horse-flesh than myself? Who broke in the filly, that no one else dare mount, though your coachman did pretend that he had tamed her before I took her in hand; but anybody could see that he liedhe was a great liar, that Johnwhats that, a buck? Richard abandoned the horses, and ran to the spot where Marmaduke had ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... bringing about the signature of the Treaty of Nimeguen, and more than once it fell to her lot to obtain a success of the same kind, to which neither her arrogant Grace of Cleveland nor the piquant Nelly could ever pretend. In political affairs the Querouaille held her own triumphantly over all her rivals, and obtained a dominion that ended only with the life of Charles. Too sensible to exact a strict fidelity from the King, the Duchess of Portsmouth was content to sigh in silence so long ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... unhappy. Not a bit of it. He is a very happy little fellow. There is a great deal of wisdom in that pretty little head of his. There is more real sense in it than in some very big heads. When some of his neighbors make fun of him for being so very, very timid he doesn't try to pretend that he isn't afraid. He doesn't get angry. He ...
— The Burgess Animal Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... he said awkwardly when Helen appeared, "I—er—wanted to do something for you, and it gave me a good deal of happiness to pretend that you were my own daughter, if you don't object. I happen to have a sister in Paris, and I telegraphed her a week ago. I think I have heard you say you were size thirty-six. Well, my dear, this package has just come. She sent it in care of ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske
... 12 M., I saw a common leatherwing bat flying over the War Department. What this portends I do not pretend to say, perhaps nothing. It may have been dislodged by the workmen building chimneys to the offices ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... his legs; but it was really mainly owing to the fur boots and the jolting. On the street the old boy took out a letter and read it. Then he went up to Jasch, who had run to the cart, and who had to pretend that he did not understand a word of German, and began to make all manner of alarming gesticulations. He held his hand two feet above the pavement, and when the servant shook his head, the governor stooped down to the ground. This was meant to signify, 'My manikin!' ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... her fingers reproachfully from the insistent reminder of virtuous intention, and resolutely she turned her back on it and tried to pretend herself to sleep. But every broken section of her treaty had a voice, and above them all clamored the call of Number 9 that it was not ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... indistinctness common to the dwellers in the counties bordering upon England, and to the "would-be genteel" of too many other parts of Wales, who, perfectly unconscious of the beauty of their own language, and ignorant of its literature, affect English manners and customs, and often pretend that English is more familiar to them than Welsh, a fatuous course of conduct which brings upon them only the sarcasm of the lower classes, and the ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... fire was put out. Well, there's but one thing to be done, and that's to put a bold face on it. I can't sleep any more to-night; besides, the bed's wet, and it's beginning to get daylight. I'll go to work and get myself ready for breakfast, and I'll pretend to something—I don't know just what—to get myself out of this scrape, if ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... the use of sneering?' began the dull voice again. 'I am horribly tired, Sheila. And try how you will, you can't convince me that you believe for a moment that I am not myself, that you are as hard as you pretend. An acquaintance, even a friend might be deceived; but husband and wife—oh no! It isn't only a man's face that's himself—or even his hands.' He looked at them, straightened them slowly out, and buried them in his pockets. ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... disaffection among his nobility; or, lastly, by the vigorous measures pursued against the encroaching Jesuits in Paraguay, and their correspondents in Portugal, had incurred the resentment of that society, we shall not pretend to determine: perhaps all these motives concurred in giving birth to a conspiracy against his life, which was actually executed at this juncture with the most desperate resolution. On the third day of September, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... to his little sister. That smote me, for she was slowly getting well of a sickness, and it would have been a proud moment for him, to see her joy and surprise and have her caresses. But I was ashamed to say I was ashamed, and only said something rude and mean, to pretend I did not care, and he made no reply in words, but there was a wounded look in his face as he turned away toward his home which rose before me many times in after years, in the night, and reproached me and made me ashamed again. It had grown dim in my mind, by and by, then it ...
— The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... the weather-factory 'long in the afternoon and pretend to be terrible interested in the ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... seize the throne. Cyrus, the great founder of the Persian empire, first the subject and afterward the dethroner of the Median Astyages, corresponds to their general description, as far, at least, as we can pretend to know his history. For in truth even the conquests of Cyrus, after he became ruler of Media, are very imperfectly known, while the facts which preceded his rise up to that sovereignty cannot be said to be known at all: we ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... time under his care is the unpardonable sin. No one may know of it, but you never forget the thump—eh? A blow on the very heart. You remember it, you dream of it, you wake up at night and think of it—years after—and go hot and cold all over. I don't pretend to say that steamboat floated all the time. More than once she had to wade for a bit, with twenty cannibals splashing around and pushing. We had enlisted some of these chaps on the way for a crew. Fine fellows—cannibals—in ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... Rameures. "Yes, that is quite true. The excessive centralization of which I complain has had its hour of utility, nay, even of necessity, I will admit; but, Monsieur, in what human institution do you pretend to implant the absolute, the eternal? Feudalism, also, my dear sir, was a benefit and a progress in its day, but that which was a benefit yesterday may it not become an evil to-morrow—a danger? That which is progress to-day, may it not one hundred years hence have become ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... not a man—to go and tell everything, all at once," sobbed Mrs. Gaunt. "Besides, I wanted to shield his good name, whose dear life they pretend I have taken." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... through regular lessons in foot-ball, bandy, playing at tic, hares and hounds, and such like excellent and really useful and health-giving lessons. Begin his lessons! Begin brain work, and make an idiot of him! Oh! for shame, ye mothers! You who pretend to love your children so much, and to tax, otherwise to injure, irreparably to injure their brains, and thus their intellects and their health, and to shorten their very days. And all for what? To make prodigies of them! Forsooth! to make fools ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... "I will never pretend sorrow," said I; and, to say the truth, during his absence Miss Grant and I had been embellishing the place in fancy with plantations, parterres, and a terrace—much as I have since ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... distinct from the question whether the archipelago of the Canaries and the adjacent islands are the vestiges of a chain of mountains, rent and sunk in the sea during one of the great convulsions of our globe. I do not pretend to form any opinion in favour of the existence of the Atlantis; but I endeavour to prove, that the Canaries have no more been created by volcanoes, than the whole body of the smaller Antilles has been formed by madrepores.) is by no means contradictory ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... what I observe of your mind, you are rushing on destruction in marrying the great-niece of an old corpse of a courtier and dilettante like Samuel Rogers." It is only opinion for opinion. Nobody can pretend that either Mary Godwin or Samuel Rogers was mad; and the general view a man may hold about the healthiness of inheriting their blood or type is simply the same sort of general view by which men do marry for love or liking. There is no reason to suppose ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... with one of my guard," he urged, "and he could then pretend to be the Caesar escaping through the crypta to ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... nearly swore, Peter," she said, "but I remembered in time. If one can't get what one wants, one has to go without singing. But I'll have a cigarette, not to say two, before we've finished. And I'm in no hurry; I want to sit on here and pretend it's not Saturday night. And I want to go very slowly to bed, and I don't ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... a subject which seems to me more and more important; and one which is just now somewhat forgotten. I therefore desire to say a few words on it. I do not pretend to teach: but only to suggest; to point out certain problems of natural Theology, the further solution of which ought, I think, to be ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... They are Indians in hides of bears and wolves, who run on their hands and feet, uttering terrible cries, and are followed by women, who, to make the scene more fearful, pretend to hold them back, and restrain them from violence. The Spirit-dance is held to be a sacred frenzy, and before it begins the biters are charged to hunt the woods for any who have not joined the army of dancers, ...
— The Log School-House on the Columbia • Hezekiah Butterworth
... hold the skylight in place until it can be fastened. And while he is doing that I wish those who are sitting under it would move quietly out into the aisles. Don't crowd or rush. You children can pretend it is like the fire ...
— Bunny Brown and his Sister Sue Giving a Show • Laura Lee Hope
... on Emergencies. By John F. South, one of the Surgeons to St. Thomas's Hospital. The first American, from the second London edition. A highly valuable book for the family, which does not pretend, however, to supersede the advice and experience of a physician, but merely to have in preparation, and to recommend such remedies as may be necessary until such advice can be obtained. There are many illustrations ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... that he could understand a younger person feeling differently, and that he did not wish to set himself up as a censor. But he could not pretend that he was glad to have been called out of nonentity into being, and that he could imagine nothing better than ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... had been no possibility of escape. It was obvious to us that Tako was the leader of these invaders; and, whatever they were planning, our best chance to frustrate it was to appear docile. Safety for us—the possibility of later escaping—all of that seemed to lie in a course of docility. We would pretend friendliness; willingness to help. ...
— The White Invaders • Raymond King Cummings
... at his old work again," Mr. Santiago told his customer. "He and Moss Abrams were in my parlour. Moss sent out my boy for a stamp. It must have been a bill for fifty pound. I heard the Baronet tell Moss to date it two months back. He will pretend that it is an old bill, and that he forgot it when he came to a settlement with his wife the other day. I dare say they will give him some more money now he is clear." A man who has the habit of putting his unlucky name to "promises to pay" at six ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... over the stock exposed on the shelf and stands outside, and he looked stonily at the great man; it was evident that he was as far from suspecting his greatness as his relationship. It pleased Thorpe for a little to take up one book after another, and pretend to read from it, and force the boy to watch him hard. He had almost the temptation to covertly slip a volume into his pocket, and see what the lad would do. It was remarkable, he reflected with satisfaction—this new capacity within him to ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... child, there are various explanations. On the Earth, they pretend to say it was meant to signify that the English women are the finest in the universe—the most sensible, the most charming, the most virtuous. No wonder, if this is so, we find their sign up there! What said MAGNUS APOLLO to young IULUS,—"Proceed, youngster, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 11, June 11, 1870 • Various
... it myself. I shouldn't complain of not being asked to people's houses, and the working-men don't; you can't do that; but I should feel it an incalculable loss. We may laugh at the emptiness of society, or pretend to be sick of it, but there is no doubt that society is the flower of civilization, and to be shut out from it is to be denied the best privilege of a civilized man. There are society women—we have all met them—whose graciousness and ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... insured. Impure drugs may do as much harm as patent medicines containing harmful drugs. In New York a vigorous campaign was recently inaugurated by the department of health to drive out impure drugs. Drugs are dangerous enough at their best. When they are not what they pretend to be, whether patented or not, they may take life. One extreme case where a patient's heart was weakened when it ought to have been strengthened, led to the discovery that practically all of one particular drug offered for sale in New York City was unfit to use and ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... him of unfairness; and Leibnitz has given his decision that both Wallis and Lallouère, in the treatises which they published,—which did not, however, appear till after Pascal’s,—had succeeded in solving the problems. Upon such a point we cannot pretend to judge; but it may be safely said that the design of the Duc de Roannez was hardly realised in the issue. It was sufficiently proved, indeed, that Pascal, in the midst of all his austerities and devotional exercises, was the same Pascal who had held ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... "Oh, I know—I know! But on condition that they don't hear anything unpleasant. Aunt Welland put it in those very words when I tried.... Does no one want to know the truth here, Mr. Archer? The real loneliness is living among all these kind people who only ask one to pretend!" She lifted her hands to her face, and he saw her thin shoulders shaken ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... cried the young laird. "Do ye pretend to bear the name o' Scott, and yet tremble like an ash leaf at ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... here cry shame, And say our authors are to blame, 380 That (spite of all philosophers, Who hold no females stout, but bears; And heretofore did so abhor That women should pretend to war, 'They wou'd not suffer the stoutest dame 385 To swear by HERCULES'S name) Make feeble ladies, in their works, To fight like termagants and Turks; To lay their native arms aside, Their modesty, and ride astride; 390 To ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... before another steps in. But I see more and more that happiness is not dependent on health or any other outside prosperity. We are at peace with each other and at peace with God; His dealings with us do not perplex or puzzle us, though we do not pretend to understand them. On the other hand, Martha with absolutely perfect health, with a husband entirely devoted to her, and with every wish gratified, yet seems always careworn and dissatisfied. Her servants worry her very life out; she misses the ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... to your counsel, I will again carefully study the Bible, and especially the life of Jesus of Nazareth, which you believe the clearest revelation which God has allowed of Himself to earth. Finding any contradictions or obscurities, I will remember, as you say, that Scripture was not, and does not pretend to be, written visibly and actually by the finger of God, but by His inspiration conveyed through many human minds, and of course always bearing to a certain extent the impress of the mind through which it passes. Therefore, while the ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... pretend to say whether Master Prout was more scandalized by the sentiment of dissatisfaction at the colony, or by there proaches lavished on the other goody, who, indeed, to do her justice, was not slow in the use ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... her with his air of easy assurance. He saw the bewitching smile come over that fair, flowery face; he saw Carryl, with unabashed familiarity, take her fan out of her hand, look at it as if it were a mere common, earthly fan, toss it about, and pretend to fan ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... studies the literary situation in the concluding pages of his history; they are almost the most brilliant pages, and they embody a conception of it so luminous that it would be idle to pretend to offer the reader anything better than a resume of his work. The revolution had passed away under the horror of its excesses; more temperate ideas prevailed; the need of a religious and moral restoration was felt. "Foscolo died in 1827, and Pellico, Manzoni, Grossi, ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... you off in pursuit of them, while the king himself keeps out of the way." But this was all a lie, for Hyrodes had divided his army in two parts, with one he in person wasted Armenia, revenging himself upon Artavasdes, and sent Surena against the Romans, not out of contempt, as some pretend, for there is no likelihood that he should despise Crassus, one of the chiefest men of Rome, to go and fight with Artavasdes, and invade Armenia; but much more probably he really apprehended the danger, and therefore waited to see the event, intending that Surena should first run the ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... the looking-glass, with her head bent well forward, her hands behind her back, lacing herself into determination). Get up, Mr. Regniati. (No sign of life in the bed.) Don't pretend to have gone to sleep again. (Not a movement.) I know you haven't. I shan't wait for you when I'm once dressed. It's twenty-five minutes. (Sharply.) Do you hear, ...
— Happy-Thought Hall • F. C. Burnand
... believe me now.—Loved her!" he continued, after another short pause—"oh, what a feeble word is love to express the concentration of mighty feelings that flowed like burning lava through my veins! Who shall pretend to give a name to the emotion that ran thrillingly—madly through my excited frame, when first I gazed on her, who, in every attribute of womanly beauty, realised all my fondest fancy ever painted?—Listen to me, Clara," he pursued, in a fiercer tone, and with a ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... be resigned, left alone, and in sorrowful circumstance; but feeling immovably assured that my God and Father was too wise and loving to err in anything that He does or permits, I looked up to the Lord for help, and struggled on in His work. I do not pretend to see through the mystery of such visitations,—wherein God calls away the young, the promising, and those sorely needed for His service here; but this I do know and feel, that, in the light of such dispensations, it becomes us all to love and serve our ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... is as if one should say to a man whose leg has had to be amputated that it does not help him at all to think about it. And we all lack something; only some of us feel the lack and others do not. Or they pretend not to feel the lack, and ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... the reader's indulgence if he or she find in the ensuing pages any serious lapses from true literary style. I write merely as I feel, and do not pretend to be either an expert hieroglyphist or a rhetorician of commanding quality. Perhaps I should do more wisely if I were to accept the advice of my great-grandson Ham, who, overhearing my remark to a caller last ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... if foreign policy had that continuity which the political pundits pretend, we should now be fighting on the side of the Turk against the Balkan States? That we have entered into solemn treaty obligations, as part of our national policy, to guarantee for ever the "integrity and independence of the Turkish dominions in Europe," that we fought a great and popular war ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... good style: one is the gift of nature, and cannot be taught; the other may be acquired by frequent exercise, perpetual labour and an emulation of the ancients. To make men sensible and sagacious, who were not born so, is more than I pretend to; to create and new-model things in this manner would be a glorious thing indeed; but one might as easily make gold out of lead, silver out of tin, a Titornus out of a Conon, or a Milo out of a ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian
... your wantonness your ignorance] You mistake by wanton affectation, and pretend ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... pretend ignorance,' said she with her usual scream, when you must know that it was on your account that the Shah sent Zeenab out of this world—that her death led to the doctor having his beard plucked —that having his beard plucked brought on his disgrace—and ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... who is seldom released from prison until he has signed a discharge of the whole debt. And these vices are mixed with a puerile superstition which disgraces their understanding. They listen with confidence to the productions of haru-spices, who pretend to read in the entrails of victims the signs of future greatness and prosperity; and this superstition is observed among those very skeptics who impiously deny or doubt the existence of a celestial power." [Footnote: Found in the sixth chapter of the fourteenth, and the ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... you. It seems I am shut up here by your orders. What does this mean? What right have you to make a prisoner of me? What do I owe you? Your mother left me a hundred pounds: have you ever offered to make any addition to my fortune? But, if you had, I do not want it. I do not pretend to be better than the children of other poor parents; I can maintain myself as they do. I prefer liberty to wealth. I see you are surprised at the resolution I exert. But ought I not to turn again, when I am trampled upon? I should have left you before now, if Mrs. Jakeman ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... people too, as well," he said lightly. "But never mind that. What I want to ask is: Why shouldn't I do, sir? I don't say but you could take a steamer about the world as well as any of us sailors. I don't pretend to tell you that it is a very great trick . . ." He emitted a short, hollow guffaw, familiarly . . . "I didn't make the law—but there it is; and I am an active young fellow! I quite hold with your ideas; I know your ways by this time, Mr. Massy. I wouldn't try to give myself airs like ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... and was given to us to put us to sleep. If we pretend to be overcome it may throw them off their guard, and that will give us another chance to gain possession of the vessel. What do you say if we lie down and pretend to be asleep when they ...
— The Rover Boys in Southern Waters - or The Deserted Steam Yacht • Arthur M. Winfield
... both was founded in nature; the Italians contented themselves with considering the pieces of Gozzi as the wild offspring of an extravagant imagination, and with banishing them from the stage. The comedy with masks is held in contempt by all who pretend to any degree of refinement, as if they were too wise for it, and is abandoned to the vulgar, in the Sunday representations at the theatres and in the puppet-shows. Although this contempt must have had an injurious influence on the masks, preventing, as ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... "I cannot pretend to understand either your motives or your fears. I do not understand them. My own self-respect prevents me from supposing it to be possible that you have attributed an evil ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... brother's marriage had further complicated an already difficult position; but both brothers had honestly tried to protect Gladys, as long as she lived, from Julia's merciless tongue, and to do their duty, as they understood it, by Arthur. They did not even pretend to like the lad, and their generosity towards him showed itself chiefly in providing him with lavish supplies of pocket money and allowing him to go ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... care to put such ideas into a girl's head? Never having noticed a child with a doll, we have somehow failed to realize that Nature, her Ancient Mother and ours, is not above putting into her head, when she can scarcely toddle, the ideas at which we pretend to blush. Prudery on this topic, and with such consequences, is not much less than blasphemy against life and the most splendid purposes towards which the individual, "but a wave of the wild ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... a comedy by Ben Jonson (1609). Morose, a miserly old fellow, who hates to hear any voice but his own, has a young nephew, Sir Dauphine, who wants to wring from him a third of his property; and the way he gains his point is this: He induces a lad to pretend to be a "silent woman." Morose is so delighted with the phenomenon that he consents to marry the prodigy; but the moment the ceremony is over, the boy-wife assumes the character of a virago, whose tongue is a ceaseless clack. Morose is in despair, and signs away a third of his ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... all was when mother used to play with us. Then she put her back to the rock, and we both attacked her at once from opposite sides, each trying to get hold of a hind-leg just above the foot. If she put her head down to pretend to bite either of us, the other jumped for her ear. Sometimes we would each get hold of an ear, and hang on as hard as we could, while she pretended we were hurting her dreadfully, growling and shaking her head, and making as ...
— Bear Brownie - The Life of a Bear • H. P. Robinson
... different colonies were divided in their opinions, and Mr. Abercrombie postponed the execution of any important scheme till the arrival of lord Loudon, who was daily expected. The reasons that delayed the reinforcement, and detained his lordship so long, we do not pretend to explain; though we may be allowed to observe, that many fair opportunities have been lost, by the neglect and procrastination of an English ministry. Certain it is, the unaccountable delay of this armament rendered it useless for a whole year, afforded time and leisure to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... get a divorce!" he cried ironically. "You still pretend to be the injured one. You and Whitmore have it all framed up—eh! But I tell you you've miscalculated this time! No man can wreck my home with impunity! No man can enter my house to steal my wife—and get away with it. I've been blind a long time, but my eyes are ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... main path led around the foot of the bluff into the little glen from below. I had followed a branch of it in coming to the top of the bluff. I ran quickly down to the lower entrance of the glen, but there I stopped a moment to assume an air as of one leisurely strolling. I did not pretend to see the group until I was well into the glen where I could also be seen. Then I struck an attitude of intense surprise for mademoiselle's benefit (who by this time had caught sight of me), and when I had sufficiently recovered from the surprise ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... consumed in your own habitation, in your neighborhood, in your own city? Let all this poison, which is thus exported to spread woes and death somewhere, be concentrated and consumed where you might see it, and is there any man who will pretend that the paltry sum which he receives is a compensation for what he knows would be the effect of the consumption? You keep your own atmosphere pure, it may be, but you export the pestilence, and curses, and ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... incomplete explanation. It is one, moreover, which Mr. Wallace does not accept.[30] It is very incomplete, because it has no bearing on some of the most striking cases, and of course Mr. Darwin does not pretend that it has. We should have to go back far indeed to reach the common ancestor of the mimicking {36} walking-leaf insect and the real leaf it mimics, or the original progenitor of both the bamboo ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... gathered from letters, dialogues, and imaginative works; he contended for the dogma of "immediate cognition as the special organ of the supersensuous," and failed to see, as SCHWEGLER notes, that said cognition "has already described a series of subjective intermediating movements, and can pretend to immediacy only in entire oblivion of its own nature and ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... of it, and part of it is you're old-fashioned." Stella paused at the door and looked back. "What made you rush me, anyway, Percy?" she asked indulgently. "What did you go and pretend to be a spender and get ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... use to pretend that in little over a year I can have become accustomed to the eventlessness of life in Altruria. I go on for a good many days together and do not miss the exciting incidents you have in America, and ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... they're not," the girl returned hotly. "They shouldn't come to church with me; they only pretend. Besides, they don't follow the other girls about nearly as carefully. The worst of it is that I have to stay here ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... Glossary, of putting a / between the numbers of the page and line, so that 5 / 115 stands for page 5, line 115. Where no line is named, then p. for page is prefixed. The French references are to Cotgrave, except where otherwise specified. The Index, though long, does not pretend to completeness. The explanations of words given in the notes to the text ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... shall tame down all this bullying haughtiness. You never thought my day would come when I was forced to put up with the insults and jeers of a miserable cub of a boy. But every man has his day. Your party has gone down at last, and mine is in power. Ah, you may pretend not to hear me, and that you treat everything I say with contempt! Judas, am I, because I saved bloodshed by a diplomatic stroke? Well, we shall see. You'll come ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... have a better right to hate him, to revenge herself upon him. She was surprised sometimes at the atrocious conjectures that came into her thoughts, and she had to go on smiling, to hear repeated to her at all hours that she was happy, to pretend to be happy, to let it ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... as conspicuously indicated, by an exterior sign over the door, as our shops in England are by the three golden balls; but, whether they indicate the same doctrine of chance as to the return of property, we will not pretend to say. Three years are allowed to redeem, with a grace of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 326, August 9, 1828 • Various
... pretend to no more than just furnishing a general idea of the requisites towards the execution: the particulars, it is impossible, to give in verbal description, or even by choregraphy or dances ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... pretend you are getting to be a blase man. I know that you are only about ten years older than I am—not more than nine, I think—and you dance very well, and no doubt ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty
... hit upon was to pretend to turn bagman; and so Mercy would believe he was travelling all over England, when all the time he was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... delusions do so easily take place in the hearts of the ignorant, is, because those that pretend to be their teachers, do behave themselves so basely among them. And indeed I may say of these, as our Lord said of the Pharisees in another case, the blood of the ignorant shall be laid to their charge. They that pretend they are sent of the Lord, and come, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... that's hid from me," answered Mrs. Peckaby. "The gentleman that was sent back to me by Brother Jarrum, hadn't had particulars revealed to him. There's difficulties in the way of a animal on four legs which can't swim, doing it all, that I don't pretend to explain away. I'm content, when the hour comes, sir, to start, and trust. Peckaby, he's awful sinful, sir. Only last evening, when I was saying the quadruple might have mirac'lous parts give to it, like Balum's had in the Bible, ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... said I. "I'm by with it. O, let me get into the bield of a house—I'll can die there easier." I had no need to pretend; whether I chose or not, I spoke in a weeping voice that would have melted a ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the Son, and whatever English Roman Catholics may be made to believe by their priests or impose upon us, it is certain that the devotion to the Madonnas in Itally is something more than a bare representation of the Virgin Mary when they desire her intercession. Miracles they pretend not only to be wrought by the Madonnas themselves, but there is far greater respect paid to a Madonna in one place than another, whereas if this statue were only a bare representation of the Virgin to keep them in mind of her, the respect would be equal. I ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... to the making of a poet except the one which alone can make a poet, in the proper sense of the word, great. Neither pathos nor humor nor fancy nor invention will suffice for that: no poet is great as a poet whom no one could ever pretend to recognize as sublime. Sublimity is the test of imagination as distinguished from invention or from fancy: and the first English poet whose powers can be ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... principle. "Positively the principle may be expressed; in matters of the intellect follow your reason so far as it will take you without regard to any other consideration. And negatively; in matters of the intellect, do not pretend that conclusions are certain which are not demonstrated or demonstrable." So far as this goes we have here perfectly sound advice. But why call it Agnosticism? It is no more than the perfectly sound advice that we must be honest in our investigations, and ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... he no doubt would, to keep firing until the whole 12 shots were fired, and then if the animal was not killed, to use his own judgment as to what to do, whether to run for the house, or lay down and pretend to be dead. ...
— Peck's Bad Boy With the Cowboys • Hon. Geo. W. Peck
... thin. Thin. She couldn't take herself in quite in that way. It was the way she had tried with Gibson Herbert. When he did anything she loathed she used to pretend he hadn't done it. But with John, if she didn't give him up, her eyes must always be open. Perhaps they would get beyond yesterday. Perhaps she would see other things, go on with him to something new, forgetting. Her unique, beautiful happiness was ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair
... another. The very senselessness of the scenes of the Norns and of Valtrauta in relation to the three foregoing dramas, gives them a highly effective air of mystery; and no one ventures to challenge their consequentiality, because we are all more apt to pretend to understand great works of art than to confess that the meaning (if any) has escaped us. Valtrauta, however, betrays her irrelevance by explaining that the gods can be saved by the restoration of the ring to the Rhine ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... of Titian could pretend that he is always thus imaginative, that coming in contact with a commanding human individuality he always thus unfolds the outer wrappings to reveal the soul within. Indeed, especially in the middle time just past, he not infrequently contents himself ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... hide his loyalty to the teachings of Plato.[1] As Ariston said of him,[2] "Plato before, Pyrrho behind, Diodorus in the middle." Sextus also characterises the method of Arcesilaus as dialectic,[3] and we know from Cicero that it was his pride to pretend to return ...
— Sextus Empiricus and Greek Scepticism • Mary Mills Patrick
... a ruse to see Olive and then make another appeal for pity. Well, in that case there would be a very delicious pleasure in giving an absolute refusal—a pleasure one could taste in anticipation and linger over in execution. One could play with the girl a little—pretend to be influenced, hesitate, ask for time to consider, raise hopes, fan them, and then administer the ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... be welcomed by the good, O Book! thou make thy steady aim, No empty chatterer will dare To question or dispute thy claim. But if perchance thou hast a mind To win of idiots approbation, Lost labour will be thy reward, Though they'll pretend appreciation. ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... "The Guardian has turned Tory," is the hue and cry, and many appear to be under greater concern about it, than they ever were about the salvation of their souls. Many again, have got wonderfully wise, and pretend to reveal (as a friend, but in reality as an enemy) the secrets of your policy. Under these unpleasant circumstances, the Ranters have availed themselves of the opportunity of planting themselves at nearly all our posts, and sowing tares ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... "You pretend, Monsieur, that you know the motive for the crime, and that that motive—in the face of all the evidence that ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... to pretend that she was asleep, but if she had been her cigarette would not have been held in her fingers but would have ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... some are sealed to others; and some stir the soul at some given point of a man's life and yet convey no message at other times. The reader, the booklover, must meet his own needs without paying too much attention to what his neighbors say those needs should be. He must not hypocritically pretend to like what he does not like. Yet at the same time he must avoid that most unpleasant of all the indications of puffed-up vanity which consists in treating mere individual, and perhaps unfortunate, idiosyncrasy as a matter ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... the whole technique of the man game has changed. My method, alas, had become as out of style as a pompadour Gibson hat. Where once girls pretended to know less and to have experienced less than they actually had, now they pretend to more. Therein lie all the law and the social profits. Therefore Rule One of these dauntless rebels reads: It is not an insult but a compliment for an admirer to explain that his ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... the public stage, these poor nervous little modern people with their dried instincts and their withered thoughts, clever and helpless, rotting in inaction.... No. It has been all wrong. I've been a fool, but I couldn't pretend.... I think I knew it in my head, but it needed you to bring it home to me.... I'm not fit to live in the same world as you. I ought not to ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... certain self-development of the Absolute. We are indebted to Mr. Morell for a specimen,[142] alike amusing and instructive, of Schelling's speculations on this subject. We shall not attempt to interpret its meaning, for, in sooth, we do not pretend to understand it: but one thing is clear, the laws of Matter, of Dynamics, of Organic structure and life, the laws of Knowledge, of Action, and of Art, are all exhibited as mere deductions or corollaries from the "idea of the Absolute;" and in the name of Natural Science, not ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... honorable for a lawyer to try to clear a man that he knows deserves conviction? That is not the entire question by much. Is it honorable to pretend to believe what you do not believe? Is it honorable to lie? I submit that these questions are not answered affirmatively by showing the disadvantage to the public and to civilization of a lawyer refusing to serve a known offender. The popular interest, like any other good cause, can ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... said doggedly, "they get us. My gang will gripe about being edged out of the trip. They won't like it. But they'd like backing out still less. We'll play it the way it's dealt—but we won't pretend to like it." ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... of the living and of the dead. "Who, then, was Lorenzo?" exclaim the readers I have mentioned. If we cannot be sure that he was his son, which would have been finely terrible, was he not his nephew, his cousin? These are questions which I do not pretend to answer. For the sake of human nature, I could wish Lorenzo to have been only the creation of the poet's fancy: like the Quintus of Anti Lucretius, "quo nomine," says Polignac, "quemvis Atheum intellige." That ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... 'Madoc' and 'Kehama,' it will be universally imputed to personal ill-will. On the other hand, he cannot commend this poem without the most flagrant inconsistency. This would be confessing that he has wronged me in the former instances; for no man will pretend to say that 'Madoc' does not bear marks of the same hand as 'Roderick;' it has the same character of language, thought, and feeling; it is of the same ore and mint; and if the one poem be bad, the other ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Home Government tries to abolish our slavery system, we will abolish the Home Government, and go to the United States for protection." That was treason, of course; but there was so much of it that the governor, the Duke of Manchester, had to close his ears and pretend not to hear. The planters had another grievance—the pirates in the Gulf of Mexico. There was one in particular, a certain El Demonio or Diableto, who practically sealed the Florida passage; it was hardly ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer |
