"Quack" Quotes from Famous Books
... to the Corn Law Rhymer—we thought we saw evidence of a warm and generous sympathy with the poor and the wronged, a desire to ameliorate human suffering, which would have done credit to the "philanthropisms of Exeter Hall" and the "Abolition of Pain Society." Latterly, however, like Moliere's quack, he has "changed all that;" his heart has got upon the wrong side; or rather, he seems to us very much in the condition of the coal-burner in the German tale, who had swapped his heart of ... — The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... And the White Duck brought the little creatures up, and they paddled after her in the pond, and caught gold-fish, and hopped upon the bank and waddled about, ruffling their feathers and saying 'Quack, quack' as they strutted about on the green banks of the pond. But their mother used to warn them not to stray too far, telling them that a wicked witch lived in the castle beyond the garden, adding, 'She has ruined me, and she will ... — The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... want of practical sense. Their dear little foundlings all die of measles, diphtheria, or scarlet-fever. They give their pet paupers a regular allowance, which supplies them bountifully with tobacco and grog. They quack pauperism, and increase the malady instead of curing it, because impulses of weakness miscalled feelings are consulted, instead of the hard, dry details of eleemosynary science; for science it is,—a branch of ... — The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... rhetorical pose, any hint of the grand manner. Above all, let him not wear the smirk of the conjuror when he prepares with flourishes to whip the handkerchief away from his guinea-pig. Here is one who condescends to reader and subject alike. He would do harm all round: moreover he would be a quack, for he is just as much of a quack who makes little of much as he who makes much of little. No! Let his attitude be that of the contadino in some vast church in Italy, who walking into the cool dark gazes round-eyed ... — Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... quack. He has no respect for the old authoritative prescriptions, if they fail in practice, whether they come in Galen's name, or another's; but he is just as severe upon 'the empiricutics,' on the other ... — The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... everywhere around that sign of great undertakings on the part of vegetable nature which is apt to fill reflective human beings who are not undertaking much themselves with a sudden uneasiness at the contrast. He heard in the distance a curious sound, something like the quack of a duck, which, though it was common enough here about this time, was not common ... — The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... Somers had two sisters, sensible, benevolent women. They were not of that race of fine ladies who are miserable the moment they come to THE COUNTRY; nor yet were they of that bustling sort, who quack and direct all their poor neighbours, for the mere love of managing, or the want of something to do. They were judiciously generous; and whilst they wished to diffuse happiness, they were not peremptory in requiring ... — The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... been found and engaged, the next procedure was to appoint the assessor judges, of whom the consular instructions insisted on there being four. This weighty matter seemed to require the cooperation of the vice consul, Mr. Beaver, a highly respected quack doctor, whose principal nostrum was faith cure plus hot water. After arguing away your existence, which he always could do with extraordinary fluency, he would plunge you into a boiling bath till ... — Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... referred to. In March following he produced at the Haymarket, under the pseudonym of Scriblerus Secundus, The Author's Farce, with a "Puppet Show" called The Pleasures of the Town. In the Puppet Show, Henley, the Clare-Market Orator, and Samuel Johnson, the quack author of the popular Hurlothrumbo, were smartly satirised, as also was the fashionable craze for Opera and Pantomime. But the most enduring part of this odd medley is the farce which occupies the two first acts, and under thin disguises no doubt depicts much which was within the writer's experience. ... — Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... 'Proteus Hill:' Sir John Hill, a celebrated character of that day, of incredible industry and versatility, a botanist, apothecary, translator, actor, dramatic author, natural historian, multitudinous compiler, libeller, and, intus et in cute, a quack and coxcomb. See Boswell's account of the interview between the King and Dr Johnson, for a ... — Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... in the portrait in the possession of the Cawthorne family. I have not seen it, I am bound to admit. We had offended Dr. Cawthorne, by once in an urgent case calling in another doctor, who, he would have it, was a quack, that ought to have killed us, and we ceased to visit; but a gentleman who was an established patient of Dr. Cawthorne's and had frequent opportunities of judging the portrait, in the course of a chronic malady, describes Charles Dump on his legs as a small man looking diminished ... — The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... eccentricities. Still, my young friend certainly went beyond all bounds. Master Ambroise Pare, who was the first to attempt the ligature of arteries, and who, having commenced his profession at a time when surgery was only performed by quack barbers, nevertheless succeeded in lifting the science to the high place it now occupies, was assailed in his old age by all the young sawbones' apprentices. Being grossly abused during a discussion ... — The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... all that's good," said Don Quixote in high wrath, turning upon him angrily, as his way was; "and it is a very great slander, or rather villainy. Queen Madasima was a very illustrious lady, and it is not to be supposed that so exalted a princess would have made free with a quack; and whoever maintains the contrary lies like a great scoundrel, and I will give him to know it, on foot or on horseback, armed or unarmed, by night or by day, or as ... — Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... the impulse and go abroad. My intention was to avoid cities, and, wandering from village to village, lay my soul bare to the healing influences of nature. As to any healing in the power of Time, I despised the old bald-pate as a quack who performed his seeming cures at the expense of the whole body. The better cures attributed to him are not his at all, but produced by the operative causes whose servant he is. A thousand holy balms require ... — Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... with its suggestions from the past. He forgives sins. He speaks throughout the Gospels as one apart, as one distinct from us, closely as he is identified with us—and all this from a son of fact, who is not insane, who is not a quack, whose eyes are wide open for the real; whose instinct for the ultimate truth is so keen; who lives face to face with God. What does it mean? This, for one thing, that most of us have not given attention enough to this matter. I have confined myself in these chapters ... — The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... in pathology, any other skill she may discover being either a consequence of this knowledge, or the effects of observation and experience. The powers of a somnambule extend equally to the morale as well as to the physique. In this respect a phrenologist is a pure quack in comparison with a lady in a trance. The latter has no dependence on bumps and organs, but she looks right through you, at a glance, and pronounces ex cathedra, whether you are a rogue, or an honest man; a well-disposed, or an evil-disposed child of Adam. In this particular, ... — Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... of doctor," Russ replied. "I think he's a quack, myself. I wouldn't have him for a sick cat. But he calls himself a doctor and surgeon. ... — The Moving Picture Girls Snowbound - Or, The Proof on the Film • Laura Lee Hope
... night the sun went pale to bed, The moon in halos hid her head; The boding shepherd heaves a sigh, For, see, a rainbow spans the sky: The walls are damp, the ditches smell, Closed is the pink-eyed pimpernel. Hark how the chairs and tables crack! Old Betty's joints are on the rack; Loud quack the ducks, the peacocks cry, The distant hills are seeming nigh. How restless are the snorting swine; The busy flies disturb the kine; Low o'er the grass the swallow wings, The cricket too, how sharp he sings; Puss on the hearth, with velvet paws, Sits wiping o'er her whiskered ... — The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... in the stillness of morn,— When to call 'em to breakfast Josh toots on the horn, The ducks gives a quack, and the caow gives a moo, And the childen chimes in with their ... — Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... In the town of Raynham, within forty miles of Boston, there is now a settlement of colored people who have been there for three or four generations, the founder of which, Toby Gilmore, was an old Revolutionary veteran who had served his country faithfully. Stoughton Corner contributed Quack Matrick to the ranks of the Revolutionary soldiers; Lancaster sent Job Lewis, East Bridgewater Prince Richards. So did many other towns and States in this Commonwealth. Rhode Island raised a regiment which did signal service at Red ... — Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... has come when the rising generation must be thoroughly instructed in this matter. That quack specific "ignorance" has been experimented with quite too long already. The true method of insuring all persons, young or old, against the abuses of any part, organ, function, or faculty of the wondrous machinery of life, is to teach them ... — Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... humours. Here a party of young men were jumping, or wrestling, or shooting at a mark with cross-bows. There, girls and boys were dancing to the sound of a pipe, or still smaller children were playing at marbles, or amusing themselves with the toys they had just purchased. Not far from these, a quack from one scaffold was descanting on the virtues of his medicines, whilst a preacher from another was holding forth to the graver part of the crowd, the joys and terrors of another life; and yet farther on, a motley groupe were listening to a blind ... — A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... is a remarkable peculiarity in the mind of man, that it can frequently be set at ease by some self-constructed theory which would not bear its own examination for a minute—as if a quack were to treat himself with his own bread-pills and feel better—Mark, having convinced himself that the reviewer was a crass fool whose praise and blame were to be read conversely, found the wound to his self-love begin to heal from ... — The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... tedious failures. When I was on earth, professors of all sorts prowled round me feeling for an unhealthy spot in me on which they could fasten. The doctors of medicine bade me consider what I must do to save my body, and offered me quack cures for imaginary diseases. I replied that I was not a hypochondriac; so they called me Ignoramus and went their way. The doctors of divinity bade me consider what I must do to save my soul; but I ... — Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... old Busby, the quack-doctor up there," he answered, nodding towards a shrubbed and wooded ... — The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... sea. Mazzini, as you perhaps know, is with us this summer; comes across once in the week or so, and tells me, or at least my Wife, all his news. The Roman revolution has made a man of him,—quite brightened up ever since;—and the best friend he ever saw, I believe, was that same Quack-President of France, who relieved him while it ... — The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... why they were thus isolating my brother from all of us. I heard steps go upstairs, not only of the Dominican quack doctor, but of the Abbe Montagu, who had been previously sent to convert us. The good old Bonchamp, who had a conscience, was away at St. Germain with Gaspard de Nidemerle, and I—I had no one to appeal to when I knew they were harassing the very life ... — Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... furnished with an easy recipe for a resignation—a sort of panacea to correct all the sores of the body politic and produce a "speedy composure of the public mind" "Tereatis Risum Amici;" and call no one a political quack playing off his whimsical nostrums upon the people, whose mental repose lies so near his heart. If the meeting are told that they shall be responsible if they act on a declaration thus limited, keep it out of view as much as possible, or say ... — A Review and Exposition, of the Falsehoods and Misrepresentations, of a Pamphlet Addressed to the Republicans of the County of Saratoga, Signed, "A Citizen" • An Elector
... bought his children German-made jumping-jacks, was a traitor to the Constitution and a secret agent of the Wilhelmstrasse. And thus there were American pathologists and bacteriologists who denounced Prof. Dr. Paul Ehrlich as little better than a quack hired by the Krupps to poison Americans, and who displayed their pious horror of the late Prof. Dr. Robert Koch by omitting all acknowledgment of obligation to him from their monographs. And finally there was the posse of "two thousand American Historians" assembled by Mr. Creel to instruct ... — The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... queer old bird, with his whole wisdom of man packed up small for ready use, like a quack doctor," he said, as soon as ... — Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... congratulation, and then sat downcast, with my head drooped, deaf to the babble of our new acquaintance. He was clearly a confirmed hypochondriac, and I was dreamily conscious that he was pouring forth interminable trains of symptoms, and imploring information as to the composition and action of innumerable quack nostrums, some of which he bore about in a leather case in his pocket. I trust that he may not remember any of the answers which I gave him that night. Holmes declares that he overheard me caution him against the great danger of taking more than ... — The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... that deep soil great Rome was sown; Our England her foundations laid:— Hence, while the nations, change-dismay'd, To tyrant or to quack repair, A healthier heart we own, And the plant Man grows ... — The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... of rice left by the careless quadruped. Acting upon this theory, she hastily essayed to seize the morsel. The impact of her bill upon his nose woke Bob in terrible indignation. A short scuffle and a plaintive quack, and that duck's career was ended. But that was not all. So serious did the bulldog consider this insult to his dignity that, in spite of repeated castigations, he never rested until he had killed the whole of the ... — A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold
... Though he bore a name already distinguished in the annals of the English landed gentry, he had to make his own fortune under conditions of some difficulty. He was born in North America, and began life, it is said, as a quack doctor. There is also a legend of his having made a first marriage with a person of obscure birth in America. Yet such was the charm of his address, the beauty of his person, the dignity of his bearing, and the vigour of his will, that he succeeded in winning the hands ... — Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... parson's part: Quotes from the Bible many a sentence, That moves his patients to repentance; And, when his medicines do no good, Supports their minds with heavenly food: At which, however well intended. He hears the clergy are offended; And grown so bold behind his back, To call him hypocrite and quack. ... — English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... insufferable, the heat is intolerable, the door-keepers let the people keep shuffling in, the ducks in the corner are going quack, quack, quack, here's a little girl being tried for her life, and the judge can't hear a word that's said. Bring me my black cap, and I'll condemn her to ... — Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... countries we find opium consumed in different ways. In England it is either used in a solid state, made into pills, or a tincture in the shape of laudanum. Insidiously it is given to children under a variety of quack forms, such as "Godfrey's cordial," &c. In India the pure opium is either dissolved in water and so used, or rolled into pills. It is there a common practice to give it to children when very young, by mothers, who require to work and cannot ... — The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... pounding drugs. For this operation he assumes a pair of large, round spectacles, that in the dimly lighted apartment and its nocturnal associations are highly suggestive of owls and owlish wisdom. The old quack works away at his mortar, regardless of the approach of daybreak, now and then pausing to adjust the wick in his little saucer of grease, or to indulge in the luxury of ... — Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... thet each half-baked scheme's abetters Are in the hebbit o' producin' letters Writ by all sorts o' never-heared-on fellers, 'Bout ez oridge'nal ez the wind in bellers; I 've noticed, tu, it 's the quack med'cines gits (An' needs) the grettest heaps o' stiffykits; Now, sence I lef' off creepin' on all fours, I ha' n't ast no man to endorse my course; It 's full ez cheap to be your own endorser, An' ef I 've made a cup, I 'll fin' the saucer; But I 've some letters ... — The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... was a notorious trader in scandal, and he still pursues that avocation. Many of his discourses are "delivered to men only," an advertisement which is sure to attract a large audience; and one of them, which he has published, is just on a level with the quack publications that are thrust into young men's hands in the street. Henry Varley had already issued one private circular about Mr. Bradlaugh, full of the most brazen falsehoods and the grossest defamation; and containing, as it did, garbled extracts from ... — Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... case unprofessionally and had used it merely for an advertisement. They charged unprofessional conduct against me; they tried me in their high court and found me guilty. They dug the ground from under my feet and branded me as a quack. They broke me, they tried to have my license to practice revoked. But they failed in that. That was three years ago. I hung on, but I starved. So when I speak in what may seem a bitter way of the narrow traditions of my profession, you know my ... — Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... covered with vegetation of some sort, and she has layer upon layer of seeds in the soil for this purpose, and the wonder is that each kind lies dormant until it is wanted. If I uncover the earth in any of my fields, ragweed and pigweed spring up; if these are destroyed, harvest grass, or quack grass, or purslane, appears. The spade or the plow that turns these under is sure to turn up some other variety, as chickweed, sheep-sorrel, or goose-foot. The soil is a storehouse ... — The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... New York and London in his queer stilted way. He had been a fireman on board ship, a teacher of jiujitsu, a juggler, a quack dentist, Heaven knows what else. Driven by the conscientious inquisitiveness of his race, he had endured hardships, contempt and rough treatment with the smiling patience inculcated in the Japanese people by their education. "We must chew ... — Kimono • John Paris
... pity. I'm a quack! for whip me, if I know whether Miss Blair is a fever or an ague. How ... — Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... similarity of voice in families is still more marked. We need only recall the harsh and noisy parrots, so similar in their peculiar utterance. Or, take as an example the web-footed family: Do not all the geese and the innumerable host of ducks quack? Does not every member of the crow family caw, whether it be the jackdaw, the jay, or the magpie, the rook in some green rookery of the Old World, or the crow of our woods, with its long, melancholy caw that seems to make the silence and solitude deeper? Compare ... — Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... held in a great public square in the midst of the city. The courthouse was on one side, and over the door there was a sign which read "The Hall of Justice." Everybody seemed to be at the fair: peasants, nobles, soldiers, and citizens; rope-dancers, quack doctors, waxworks, showmen of all sorts, and bells rang and flags flew, and altogether it was just the thing for a gipsy's ... — Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... waxed with his years, it must not be supposed that Hake suffered from what in the “new criticism” is sweetly and appropriately called “modernity”—in other words, that vulgar greed for notoriety that in these days, when literature to be listened to must be puffed like quack medicine and patent soap, has made the atmosphere of the literary arena somewhat stifling in the nostrils of those who turn from “modernity” to poetic art. Nor was Hake’s feeling akin to ... — Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... the evening his friend Mr. Sowerby congratulated him, and the bishop joked with him and said that he knew that he would not give up good company so soon; and Miss Dunstable said she would make him her chaplain as soon as Parliament would allow quack doctors to have such articles—an allusion which Mark did not understand, till he learned that Miss Dunstable was herself the proprietress of the celebrated Oil of Lebanon, invented by her late respected father, and patented by him with such wonderful results in the way of accumulated ... — Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... there was the mamma duck. She was Mrs. Wibblewobble, a nice, white duck, being a cousin to Mrs. Quack-Quack, who once rescued Billie and Johnnie Bushytail, and Jennie Chipmunk from the desert island where they had ... — Lulu, Alice and Jimmie Wibblewobble • Howard R. Garis
... screaming away. In the swamp a bittern booms; and strange wailing cries come from the depths of the bush. On the farm dogs bark energetically, cattle bellow, horses neigh, sheep bleat, pigs grunt, ducks quack, and turkeys gobble. Frightful is the din that goes echoing among the woods. And then the outraged bridegroom gets out his gun, and commences rapid file-firing in ... — Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... A CELEBRATED quack, while holding forth on a stage of Chelmsford, in order to promote the sale of his medicine, told the people that he came there for their good, and not for want. And then addressing his Merry Andrew, "Andrew," said he, "do we come here ... — The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... that nearly all crimes, vices, cruelties, and other evil acts are due to ignorance or to mental disease. I do not hate the man who calls me an infidel, a liar, a blasphemer, or a quack. I know that he is ignorant, or foolish, or ill-bred, or vicious, and I ... — God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... phrenological cook, and his remains buried with a cerement of apple sauce in the paunches of apoplectic aldermen, eating against each other at a civic feast! Such are a few hints for "Some Passages in the Life of a Green Goose," written by himself—in foolscap octavo—published by Quack and Co., Ludgate Lane, and sold by all booksellers in town ... — Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... monk— (What vineyards have those priests!) And Gobbo to quack-salver sunk, To leech vile murrained beasts; And lazy Andre, blown off shore, Was picked up by the Turk, And in some harem, you be sure, Is forced ... — Poems • Victor Hugo
... story begins," said Bashwood the younger, "in the market-place at Thorpe Ambrose. One day, something like a quarter of a century ago, a traveling quack doctor, who dealt in perfumery as well as medicines, came to the town with his cart, and exhibited, as a living example of the excellence of his washes and hair-oils and so on, a pretty little girl, with a beautiful ... — Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... looks, and so graceful a figure; his lameness, indeed, was entirely the result of an accident,—a sad accident, due to teething. To please the King, his governess took him once to Auvez, and twice to the Pyrenees, but neither the waters nor the Auvez quack doctors could effect a cure. At any rate, I was fortunate enough to bring up this handsome prince, who, if he treat me with ceremony, yet loves me ... — Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... some directions for various cosmetics. How many of these are original, however, is difficult to say. Trotula's name had become a word to conjure with, and many a quack in the after time tried to make capital for his remedies in this line by attributing them to Trotula. As a consequence, many of these remedies gradually found their way into the manuscript copies of her book, and subsequent ... — Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... "Quack! Quack!" called the Duck who had been sitting on her nest so long. "My first egg is cracked, and I can see the broad yellow bill of my eldest child. Ah! Now I can see his downy white head." The Drake heard her ... — Among the Farmyard People • Clara Dillingham Pierson
... only going to save the reputation of AEsculapius by giving him a prescription got from a quack ... — The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... towards the charitable institutions of the French metropolis. There are very many notabilities of the French Imperial Court, who were then fermiers des jeux, or gambling house contractors; and only a year or two since Doctor Louis Veron, ex-dealer in quack medicines, ex-manager of the Grand Opera, and ex-proprietor of the "Constitutionnel" newspaper, offered an enormous royalty to Government for the privilege of establishing a gambling house in Paris. But the Emperor Napoleon—all ex-member ... — The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... and railed sardonically at all the world, mingling flattery of the crowd with abuse of the great, and of all the restrictions of society. These were the street preachers of cynicism, who found their trade by no means an unprofitable one. Often, after a few years of squalid abstinence and quack philosophy, they had picked up enough to enable them to shave their beards, don the robes of good society, and end their days in the vicious self-indulgence which was the original inspirer of ... — A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... got up, and he led her to the side of a pond, where she found a duck with its head caught in a railing. She made haste to set the poor creature free, and the drake flapped his wings and gave a joyous quack of thanks. ... — Friends in Feathers and Fur, and Other Neighbors - For Young Folks • James Johonnot
... place it against the roof of the mouth, tin side up, and with the edge of the rubber towards the front. When once wet, it will adhere to the roof of the mouth, and by skilful blowing, it can be made to send forth a most surprising variety of sounds. The quack of the duck and the song of the thrush may be made to follow each other in a single breath, and the squeal of a pig or the neigh of a horse are equally within its scope. In short, there is scarcely any animal, whether bird or quadruped, the cry of which may not be easily imitated by a ... — Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... imitate the owl and make a fair "hoot," otherwise keeping still, he may attract many birds that will feel bound to settle the question of his identity. A young friend of mine, by a good imitation of a blue jay's quack, finds many little woods' folks peering at him from the trees which he might not otherwise see. The "smack" which is produced by violently kissing the back of the closed fingers will call many birds from their hiding places, especially during the nesting ... — Bird Day; How to prepare for it • Charles Almanzo Babcock
... rather personifying element in faith extends even to the lowest forms of it, for it is this that produces faith in pseudo-revelation, in inspiration, in miracle. There is a story of a Parisian doctor, who, when he found that a quack-healer was drawing away his clientele, removed to a quarter of the city as distant as possible from his former abode, where he was totally unknown, and here he gave himself out as a quack-healer and conducted himself as such. When he was denounced ... — Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... The advertising quack who wearies With tales of countless cures, His teeth, I've enacted, Shall all be extracted By terrified amateurs: The music-hall singer attends a series Of masses and fugues and "ops" By Bach, interwoven With Spohr and Beethoven, At classical Monday Pops: The billiard sharp ... — Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... does not know what is normal and what abnormal in his physiological development, and is often the victim of groundless fears that use up his strength or send him in despair to seek assistance from the most easily available sources of information, those baleful writings and despicable quack practitioners everywhere soliciting and alarming youth, and whose career forms one of the saddest commentaries on ... — The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young • Margaret Warner Morley
... He felt rather as if he were being treated like a quack doctor, to whom people (if foolish enough) appeal only as the last ... — The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... certain extent in physicking, and the yearly invoice sent to London always ordered such drugs as were needed,—ipecacuanha, jalap, Venice treacle, rhubarb, diacordium, etc., as well as medicines for horses and dogs. In 1755 Washington received great benefit from one quack medicine, "Dr. James's Powders;" he once bought a quantity of another, "Godfrey's Cordial;" and at a later time Mrs. Washington tried a third, "Annatipic Pills." More unenlightened still was a treatment prescribed for Patsy Custis, when "Joshua Evans who came here ... — The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... the question whether morality is utilitarian or intuitionist, whether we do good to benefit ourselves or whether certain acts and states are intrinsically good. The Buddha is a physician who prescribes a cure for a disease—the disease of suffering—and that cure is not a quack medicine which pretends to heal rapidly but a regime and treatment. If we ask whether the reason for following the regime is that it is good for us or that it is scientifically correct; or why we want ... — Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... servants in those houses always loved to do) to any story of ghastly horror which these impostors chose to tell them, they were thankful to buy at almost any price some antidote against the fell disease; and even Lady Vavasour had made many purchases for herself and her daughter of quack medicines ... — In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... at the window. At this height it was unlikely that any stray bullet would come near him. But he could not see any one. He could hear the wild-fowl crying in the Park ... distinctly, in the pause of the firing, he could hear a duck's quack-quack.... ... — Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... for I asked the children to use imitate sounds, so we will play their boards and chalks for a at this. They could draw a cat definite drawing, and they should and say "miauw," and a duck and have had the time to use them say "quack." They could also freely and discover their use. I imitate the wind. got very little ... — The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... (1745-1794); a noted quack doctor. Returning from America, he claimed to have learned marvellous electrical cures from Franklin, and advertised impossible discoveries; he declared he could impart the secret of living beyond the natural span of life. He became fashionable, received testimonials ... — George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... during which he attended to business, refused assistance, and forbade any one not called by him to enter his room. Only the quick coming of death prevented him from ending his life with a crime; for in a fit of anger at the curandero, a sort of quack doctor who attended him, he sprang from his bed, snatched up his sword, and rushed furiously upon the trembling wretch. Before he could reach his intended victim he fell down in a fit of apoplexy. No one dared ... — Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... market-town. But in Wensdale itself there was only a handful of thatched cottages scattered about here and there round the vicarage. Life was so regular and quiet there that you might almost tell the time without looking at the clock. When you heard cling, clang, from the blacksmith's forge, and quack, quack, from the army of ducks waddling down to the river, it was five o'clock. Ding, dong from the church-tower, and the tall figure of Mr Vallance climbing the hill to read prayers—eight o'clock. So on throughout the day until evening came, and you knew that soon after the ... — A Pair of Clogs • Amy Walton
... was as poor as herself, Mrs. Desmoulins, whose family he had known many years before in Staffordshire. Room was found for the daughter of Mrs. Desmoulins, and for another destitute damsel, who was generally addressed as Mrs. Carmichael, but whom her generous host called Polly. An old quack doctor called Levet, who bled and dosed coalheavers and hackney coachmen, and received for fees crusts of bread, bits of bacon, glasses of gin, and sometimes a ... — Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... ten minutes, and the sea is his green-table. You call the profession of the law an honourable one, where a man will lie for any bidder;—lie down poverty for the sake of a fee from wealth; lie down right because wrong is in his brief. You call a doctor an honourable man,—a swindling quack who does not believe in the nostrums which he prescribes, and takes your guinea for whispering in your ear that it is a fine morning. And yet, forsooth, a gallant man, who sits him down before the baize and challenges ... — Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... favourable spot,—a place where four roads meet is that, if possible, generally chosen,—he hangs the unfortunate duck by the leg to the branch of a neighbouring tree, which, as if divining the part that he is intended to play in the piece, flaps his wings, and begins to cry and quack most vehemently. ... — Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... their brains And writhing of their bowels and so forth, In that bewildering entanglement 460 Of horrible eventualities Past calculation to the end of time! Can I mistake for some clear word of God (Which were my ample warrant for it all) His puff of hazy instinct, idle talk, "The State, that's I," quack-nonsense about crowns, And (when one beats the man to his last hold) A vague idea of setting things to rights, Policing people efficaciously, More to their profit, most of all to his own; 470 The whole to end that dismallest of ends By an Austrian ... — Men and Women • Robert Browning
... excessive heat; the pitch was bubbling up from the seams of the deck; a strong, hot, burning smell pervaded the vessel; the chickens in the hencoops hung their heads and forgot to cackle; the ducks refused to quack, and sat with their bills open, gasping for breath; the pig lay down, as if about to yield up the ghost; and even Ungka, who generally revelled in a fine hot sun, and selected the warmest place on board, now looked out for a shady spot, and sat ... — Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... in Italy; we all belong to factions. I have been brought up in an atmosphere of conspiracy, and it is so natural to me that I could scarce live without it. I am rich: men who trade upon the credulity of fools have plenty of clients. My business of a quack doctor brings me in an income that many a poor nobleman would envy. I travel when I like; I visit alternately all the great towns of France, though Paris ... — At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... proximity by the dropping of a false nut, or the fragments of the shucks rattling upon the leaves. Or, again, after contemplating you a while unobserved, and making up his mind that you are not dangerous, he strikes an attitude on a branch, and commences to quack and bark, with an accompanying movement of his tail. Late in the afternoon, when the same stillness reigns, the same scenes are repeated. There is a black variety, quite rare, but mating freely with the gray, from which it seems to be ... — Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs
... functions of human life was the Liver; and it is only with bated breath that any doctor dares question the legitimacy of that monarch's claim. The loyal subjects of King Liver are ever ready to call out "quack," "charlatan," etc., to those who dare repudiate the sovereignty of ... — Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... With a toorooloo whack; Hack away, merry men, hack away. Who would not die brave, His ear smote by a stave? Thwack away, merry men, thwack away! 'Tis glory that calls, To each hero that falls, Hack away, merry men, hack away! Quack! ... — Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... who go to fairs for the purposes of pleasure. Hither came half the tumblers, rope-walkers, contortionists, balancers, bear-leaders, puppet-players, wrestlers, strong men, fat women, bearded ladies, living skeletons, horrible deformities, lion-tamers, quack doctors, mountebanks, and jugglers who patrolled Europe in those days, and earned a precarious living and enjoyed the sweets of a vagabond freedom in the plying of their ... — The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... I had noticed a venerable man in a fine blue surtout and a wide-brimmed hat, who sat upon the shaft of a cart and puffed slowly at a great pipe. And as he puffed, he listened intently to the quack-salver's address, and from time to time his eyes would twinkle and his lips curve in an ironic smile. The cart, upon the shaft of which he sat, stood close to a very small, dirty, and disreputable-looking tent, towards which the old gentleman's back was ... — The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... not wholly at heart a knave, I fancy, among whose dupes is himself. Did you not see our quack friend apply to himself his own quackery? A fanatic quack; essentially a ... — The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... the constipatory and stupefying tendencies which, by a private process known to the assigns of the inventor, have been so masked or removed that it possesses in many cases an availableness which the practitioner can not despise, though compelled by the secrecy of its formula to rank it among quack medicines. The amount of it which my friend had taken during his month's eclipse represents an ounce of dry gum opium—in rough measurement a piece as large as a French billiard ball. I thus particularize because he had never previously been addicted to the drug; ... — The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... the practical man of the present age, especially when he happens to dwell on the other side of the Atlantic. There he uses the wonders of Nature as advertising boards for puffing quack medicines or patent stoves, and the picturesque and the grandiose are only appreciated by him in proportion to ... — The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... partial experiences are accumulated to found a hypothesis, and all contradictory phenomena are either ignored, or the meaning of words is changed according to the requirements of the reasoning. Nor is it only the philosophical quack who employs these conjuring tricks to deceive the public; without being conscious of it, the most upright and the least prejudiced thinker uses analogous means to satisfy his thirst for knowledge directly that he issues from the only sphere ... — The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... sailors That stood between the decks, Were four-and-twenty white mice With rings about their necks. The captain was a duck, a duck, With a jacket on his back, And when this fairy ship set sail, The captain he said, "Quack!" ... — The Baby's Bouquet - A Fresh Bunch of Rhymes and Tunes • Walter Crane
... long time, when the moon had climbed high above the trees, and everything was very quiet, that a long, slim fox stole softly beneath the fence and came creeping—creeping across the barn yard. Mamma Goose was so frightened that she almost said "Quack! quack!" out loud, but still she kept her eyes on the big white cock, and ... — The Wise Mamma Goose • Charlotte B. Herr
... dozen pages and then asked myself, 'What would you say if a man came along professing to have made this discovery? You'd demand his evidence, and you'd be right. Of course you'd be right. And if he didn't produce it, you'd call him a quack. Right again.' . . . From this personal point of view, to be sure, I might take this sorry way out—print my conclusions, and anticipate the demand for evidence by throwing myself overboard. . . . In the dim and distant future some fellow might ... — Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... disposal of the crown, the poor boy-king lay there almost neglected, or watched only by those who waited the moment of his death with impatience. As the disease took deeper and fatal hold of him, all forsook him save an incompetent quack nurse; and how far she may have helped on the ... — Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... for the journalists, I refuse to be photographed, and I am not likely to accept the invitations. It takes my two secretaries half their time to wade through my correspondence and to decide which of it is to be pitched into the waste-paper basket. I am not a dealer in quack remedies, or an actor. ... — A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... recurrence of the request for the restraint of quack doctors is somewhat surprising. The need of competent surgeons and midwives was much felt in the country, and recourse was had to the Estates General to provide them. In calling for legislation to prohibit quackery and to forbid lotteries, the people asked to be protected against themselves, ... — The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... who accused drink of killing people, and answered him by slapping himself on the stomach, the skin of which was so stretched by the fat that it resembled the skin of a drum. He would play him a tune on it, the glutton's vespers, with rolls and beats loud enough to have made a quack's fortune. Lorilleux, annoyed at not having any fat himself, said that it was soft and unhealthy. Coupeau ignored him and went on drinking more and more, saying it was ... — L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... corner wall of a street, surrounded by particoloured advertisements of quack medicines, wonderful cures, new invented essences, judgments of cassation, rewards for robbers, and bills of the opera, I beheld Bonaparte's address to the people of France, to elect him first consul for life. I took it for granted that the spanish proverb of "tell ... — The Stranger in France • John Carr
... intruders; but no one heeded his look. At a signal from the Dominican a servant had brought in a pair of candelabra, and in their commonplace light the cabalistic hangings, the magician's appliances and his fantastically-dressed attendants looked as tawdry as the paraphernalia of a village quack. Heiligenstern alone survived the test. Erect, at bay as it were, his black robe falling in hieratic folds, the white wand raised in his hands, he might have personified the Prince of Darkness drawn up undaunted against the hosts of the Lord. Some one had snatched ... — The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... be his own Fruiterer; and that gardening was a craft which, like others, required great study, long practice, and early experience. Unable to supply themselves, the majority became the victims of quack traders. They sickened of spongy apricots, and foxy pears, and withered plums, and blighted apples, and tasteless berries. They at length suspected that a nation might fare better if its race of fruiterers ... — The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... that the odds are that a quack will kill you quicker than a qualified doctor. All the same we ... — Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 9, 1919 • Various
... a sudden frost had nipped all my thoughts, I grew suddenly conscious that the first ceremony I assisted at with Aniela was a funeral. As a person in long sickness, having lost faith in medicine, turns to quack doctors and wise women, so the sick soul, doubting everything, ... — Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... the river's back And floated it down the tide, And the wild ducks came with a loud "Quack, quack," To play in the ... — Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... Shakespeares in the workhouse, while dull modern productions are applauded on the silly English stage, and poetasters are crowned by the Academies; but believe me that in Archaeology, in the deciphering of manuscripts, the quack is detected immediately. The science has been carried to such a state of perfection that, if our knowledge is still unhappily imperfect, our materials inadequate, the public recognition of our services ... — Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... hunters had always lined the river. This had been the case ever since the oldest Duck could remember. The Missouri River, too, was free from shooting throughout the greater part of its length, which was sufficient cause for many a grateful quack. ... — The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... drake was swimming With his curly tail, Jack Sprat came to soot him, But happened to fail. He let off his gun, But missing the mark, The drake flew away Crying "Quack, quack, quack." ... — Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... believe idle songs, never risked their soul's life on allegories; men in all times, especially in early earnest times, have had an instinct for detecting quacks, for detesting quacks. Let us try if, leaving out both the quack theory and the allegory one, and listening with affectionate attention to that far-off confused rumour of the Pagan ages, we cannot ascertain so much as this at least, That there was a kind of fact at the heart of them; that they too were not mendacious ... — Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... Richard? No? They advertise a great many cures for indigestion, I assure you, my dear boy. I wonder whether one can rely upon the authenticity of those signatures? I see no reason why there should be no cure for such a disease?—Eh? And it's just one of the things a quack, as they call them, would hit upon sooner than one who is in the beaten track. Do you know, Richard, my dear boy, I've often thought that if we could by any means appropriate to our use some of the extraordinary digestive ... — The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... leads to the market-place, in which I found a throng of men and women, it being market-day; wares of various kinds, tin, earthen, and cloth, set out on the pavements; droves of pigs; ducks and fowls; baskets of eggs; and a man selling quack medicines, recommending his nostrums as well as he could. The aspect of the crowd was very English,—portly and ruddy women; yeomen with small-clothes and broad-brimmed hats, all very quiet and heavy and good-humored. ... — Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... have Kaffee Klatsch with the Princess. I told you so. The lady is in love with you, and the Emperor is going to offer you her hand in marriage after he has bestowed on you an Iron Cross in return for one of your quack medicines." ... — L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... of the blame rests with the public itself, which insists on being poisoned. Somebody buys all the quack medicines that build palaces for the mushroom, say rather, the toadstool millionaires. Who is it? These people have a constituency of millions. The popular belief is all but universal that sick persons should feed on ... — Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... always act our creed. A man's conduct, just because he is man, is generated by his view of himself and his world. He who cheats his neighbour believes in tortuosity, and, as Carlyle says, has the Supreme Quack for his God. No one ever acted without some dim, though perhaps foolish enough, half-belief that the world was at his back; whether he plots good or evil he always has God as an accomplice. And ... — Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... a motley crew! A royal prince; Spanish nobles; Italian counts; French marquises; Dutch chevaliers; and, I may proudly add, English gentlemen. We had also a quack doctor from Paris; a gaming-house-keeper from Milan; a clergyman, poor as an Apostle, from Iceland; a grim-looking student from the University of Goettingen; a Danish baron, music-mad; a singing count from ... — Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... field once more. I visited several patients on the list, and treated their several complaints in one invariable routine. Hitherto things had gone well, and no one, thank Heaven, had risen up in rebellion against my prescriptions. But let a physician's cures be as extraordinary as they will, some quack or other is always ready ... — International Short Stories: French • Various
... taken no notice of them. By each nest is a little mound, on which the mother stands perched, from time to time projecting her head outward and upward, at the same time giving forth a queer chattering noise, half quack, half bray, with the air of a stump orator haranguing an open-air audience. Meanwhile, the youngster stands patiently waiting below, evidently with a fore-knowledge of what is to come. Then, after a few seconds of the quacking and braying, the mother bird suddenly ... — The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... believed in Burr's talent for conspiracy. He is too sanguine and visionary. He desires power, office, and emolument—rewards for his henchmen before they desert him; but I believe he'd go—or get—no farther, and the country is strong enough to stand a quack or two; while, if we ... — The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... I next presented myself to the queen (Marie-Antoinette), their majesties asked what I thought of Mesmer's discovery. I informed them of what had taken place, earnestly expressing my indignation at the conduct of the barefaced quack. It was immediately determined to have nothing ... — Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... secrets, which have all been formulated, concentrated, dictated, and plenipotentiarated into this idealized Elixir. If I were a mountebank or a charlatan I would claim that it cures a hundred diseases. Charlatan is a French word for a quack. I speak French, gentlemen; I speak nine languages, and can tell you the Hebrew for an old umbrella. The Gypsy's Elixir cures colds, gout, all nervous affections, with such cutaneous disorders as are diseases of the skin, debility, sterility, hostility, and all the illities ... — The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... men as varied as their countenances, the affections of the body, numerous and diversified, never preserving identically the same characters in two cases, or requiring the same exact treatment in diseases, apparently of the same nature, we discover that something more than the artifice of the quack is necessary in ... — The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... reason (distance and lack of roads) the boys and girls do not attend schools, and what little they know they learn from some ignorant teachers (maestrillos). People, ordinarily of bad life, escaped from other towns, some of whom are also quack doctors and bone-setters who at the same time that they are teaching the Cartilla and a little bit of the Catechism imbue the children with a thousand and one superstitions and all kinds of vices. The priest who at times goes, out of necessity, to attend to some one who is seriously ... — The Legacy of Ignorantism • T.H. Pardo de Tavera
... the rest of the family, clucking and scratching in their own retired and restricted barn-yard, there came the day when they discovered that their little flock contained at least one bird of a different feather—a bird that could paddle about the social pond with the liveliest, and could quack, if need ... — With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... and "A-quack!" said the daughter, "We've never seen objects like this in the water! Suppose we submit it to old Mrs. Ewe? She's wise about wool, and has ... — St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 • Various
... you, Iddings, and the like of you is you brood over your troubles, instead of brooding over ways to improve yourself. You spend time and money on quack doctors. But I tell you, don't fight your work or your boss. Fight nature, fight sleep, fight fatigue, fight the sky, fight despair, and if you want money hunt up a place ... — The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... watched him sitting down in the poultry-yard, fancying, I presume, that he was in his school. There would he decline, construe, and conjugate aloud, his only witnesses being the poultry, who would now and then raise a gobble, gobble, gobble, while the ducks with their quack, quack, quack, were still more impertinent in their replies. A sketch of him, in this position, has been taken by Sarah, and now hangs over the mantel-piece of my study, between two of Mr Turnbull's drawings, one of an iceberg, on the 17th ... — Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... first things that Mrs. Byron did on her removal to Newstead was to intrust her son to the care of a quack in Nottingham, in order to cure him of his lameness. As the doctor was not successful, the boy was removed to London with the double purpose of effecting a cure under an eminent surgeon, and of educating him according to his rank; for his education thus far had been sadly ... — Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... breaking teams on the neighboring claims plowed noiselessly, as figures in a dream. The whistle of gophers, the faint, wailing, fluttering cry of the falling plover, the whir of the swift-winged prairie pigeon, or the quack of a lonely duck, came through the shimmering air. The lark's infrequent whistle, piercingly sweet, broke from the longer grass m the swales nearby. No other climate, sky, plain, could produce the same unnamable weird charm. No tree to wave, no grass ... — Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... of the two sermons[120] to the bookseller Colburn for L250—well sold, I think—and is to go forth immediately. The man is a puffing quack; but though I would rather the thing had not gone there, and far rather that it had gone nowhere, yet, hang it! if it makes the poor lad easy, what needs I fret about it? After all, there would be little ... — The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... and Luke Milbourne. When, not long afterwards, Dennis attacked with his criticism Addison's Cato, to which Pope had contributed the Prologue, Pope made this the occasion of a bitter satire on Dennis, called The Narrative of Dr. Robert Norris (a well-known quack who professed the cure of lunatics) upon the Frenzy J. D. Addison then, through Steele, wrote to Popes publisher of this manner of treating Mr. Dennis, that he could not be privy to it, and was sorry to hear of it. In 1715, when Pope ... — The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... in all night. Waking up early in the morning, we cry Quack! Quack! until we wake ... — Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [January, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... it. Would our lady critic select a cheap sign painter to represent the beauty and glory of art, or the exhibitors of laughing gas to illustrate the science of Sir Humphrey Davy, or the performances of an illiterate quack to illustrate the dignity of the medical profession? Is our critic so profoundly ignorant of the progress of psychic science as to think such representations ... — Buchanan's Journal of Man, March 1887 - Volume 1, Number 2 • Various
... other valiant and great warriors—left no posterity behind them; or has the presumption of General von Mack imposed upon the judgment of the Counsellors of his Prince? This latter must have been the case; how otherwise could the welfare of their Sovereign have been entrusted to a military quack, whose want of energy and bad disposition had, in 1799, delivered up the capital of another Sovereign to his enemies. How many reputations are gained by an impudent assurance, and lost when the man of talents is called upon to act and the fool ... — The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... records which tell how the famous carver in wood, Grinling Gibbons, and the notorious quack, Richard Rock, once had lodgings in the Belle Sauvage Yard, and more picturesque are the memories of those days when the inn was the starting-place of those coaches which lend a touch of romance to old English life. Horace Walpole says Gibbons ... — Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... but by means of many out-of-the-way inquiries he discovered the name of the doctor who attended the Dodsons in case of illness. He found out, too, that this doctor was not a fully qualified medical practitioner. Lancashire is a very Mecca for quack doctors. Long years ago, before legislation became stringent in this direction, many unqualified men earned large incomes among the factory hands. Herbalists of all sorts and men who pretended to cure diseases which baffled all the doctors were in great ... — The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... put another nut in her pail, and then she'd put another nut in her pail. And then she'd put a marble in her pail, and then she'd put another marble in her pail, and then she'd put another marble in her pail. And then she'd put her quack-quack in her pail, and then she'd put her fish in her pail, and then she'd put her frog in her pail. Then she would shake her pail with all of the nuts and the marbles and the quack-quack and the frog and the fish, and they would all go ... — Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
... not many people be far more worthy of the appointment than myself?' said the writer. 'Where?' said the friendly Radical. 'If you don't get it it will be made a job of, given to the son of some steward, or, perhaps, to some quack who has done dirty work. I tell you what, I shall ask it for you, in spite of you; I shall, indeed!' and his eyes flashed with friendly and patriotic fervour through the large pair of spectacles ... — The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow |