"Cant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... darkness such as the world seldom has borne, the enduring morning evolved of the true world and the true man. It is not clear to us. Hands wet with a brother's blood for the Right, a slavery of intolerance, the hackneyed cant of men or the bloodthirstiness of women, utter no prophecy to us of the great To-Morrow of content and right that holds the world. Yet the To-Morrow is there; if God lives, it is there. The voice of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... of American cities, the richest and raciest is a book called St. Louis: The Future Great City of the World, by L.U. Reavis. The very title-page gives an inkling of the nature of the contents by its motto, savoring somewhat of cant: "Henceforth St. Louis must be viewed in the light of the future—her mightiness in the empire of the world—her sway in the rule of states and nations." This book, strangely enough, was "published by order of the St Louis County Court," in 1870, on the petition ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 5, May, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... fling dust or snuff in the eyes of the person intended to be robbed; also to invent some plausible tale, to delude shop-keepers and others, thereby to put them off their guard. CANT. ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... mother, always did go to hear the parsons. Parsons, as a rule, were hypocrites. He had met one or two of them in town under circumstances that showed they had really no more "nonsense about them" than other people, but in the pulpit they were bound to cant. Look at Mr. Whymper, for instance—the best specimen of them, by-the-by, he had ever known—who could doubt that his mind was wholly set upon the main chance? To what slights and insolences did he submit himself for the sake of feathering his own nest; and how he had counted upon that fat living, ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... town called Geneva, where, only ten years ago, a man said, pointing to a porte-cochere in the upper town, the first ever built there: "By that door luxury has invaded Geneva." Calvin gave birth, by the sternness of his doctrines and his executions, to that form of hypocritical sentiment called "cant."[*] According to those who practice it, good morals consist in renouncing the arts and the charms of life, in eating richly but without luxury, in silently amassing money without enjoying it otherwise than as Calvin enjoyed power—by thought. Calvin imposed on all the citizens of ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... the real secret of Nietzsche's influence, is the fine quality of his moral personality. However much we may be repelled by the thinker, we are attracted by the magnetism of the man, by his noble courage, by his splendid integrity, by his love of truth, his hatred of cant. Even though he has himself misunderstood Christianity, he has done a great deal to bring us back to the fundamental ideals of the Christian religion. He has done a great deal to undermine that superficial and "rose-water" view of Christianity current in official and academic ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... do no great 'arm. Poor old BUGGINS, he flushes and coughs; Gets hangry, he do, at my talk. I sez, keep on your hair, my good bloke, Hindignation ain't good for your chest; cut this Sosherlist cant, or ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 22nd, 1890 • Various
... write an explanation full, 625 Translating hieroglyphics into Greek, How the God Apis really was a bull, And nothing more; and bid the herald stick The same against the temple doors, and pull The old cant down; they licensed all to speak 630 Whate'er they thought of hawks, and cats, and geese, By pastoral letters to ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... harm in trying! A pound's a pound, there's no denying; But think what thousands and thousands of pounds We pay for nothing but hearing sounds: Sounds of Equity, Justice, and Law, Parliamentary jabber and jaw, Pious cant, and moral saw, Hocus-pocus, and Nong-tong-paw, And empty sounds not worth a straw; Why, it costs a guinea, as I'm a sinner, To hear the sounds at a public dinner! One pound one thrown into the puddle, To listen to Fiddle, Faddle, and Fuddle! Not to forget ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... average man, of whom he is thus the bard, is a rather sophisticated average man, without very deep thoughts or feelings, without a very fertile or fresh imagination or fancy, with even a touch—a little touch—of cant and "gush" and other defects incident to average and sophisticated humanity. But this humanity is at any time and every time no small portion of humanity at large, and it is to Moore's credit that he sings its feelings ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... the singer, "but ef I hadn't a knowed it was old man Newcome as took Serlizer away, I'd be cant-hooked and pike-poled ef I wouldn't ha' sung jest them words, that's ef I had a paiun in my chaist and wanted to lay down." When they reached the third lake, through a channel similar to the last, the Captain said sternly: "I'm in command of this vessel, and expect orders to be ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... with cant, ere we were born, For feasts of death, and hatred's harvest wain Piled high, for princes from proud mothers torn, And soft despairs hushed in the waves ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... A Cant.—She must go in, if she came forth. The blessed Pocahontas, as the historian calls her, And great King's daughter of Virginia, Hath ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Johnson began that life of struggle against debt, ridicule and unkind condition that was to continue for forty-seven years; never out of debt, never free from attacks of enemies; a life of wordy warfare and inky broadsides against cant, affectation and untruth—with the weapons of his dialectics always kept well burnished by constant use; hated and loved; jeered and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... the culminating story That marks the zenith of his swift career, All the great qualities that won him glory, As writer and reformer too, appear: Righteous resentment of abuses hoary, Of pomp and cant, self-centred, insincere; And burning sympathy that glows unchecked For those who sit in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 5, 1917 • Various
... nature, without being biassed by what has been done by other painters; it is as absurd as if they would recommend a youth to learn astronomy by lying in the fields, and looking on the stars, without reference to the works of Kepler, Tycho Brahe, or of Newton." There is indeed a world of cant in the present day, that a man must do all to his own unprejudiced reason, contemning all that has been done before him. We have just now been looking at a pamphlet on Materialism (a pamphlet of most ambitious verbiage,) in which, with reference to all former education, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... constant supply. Dear reader, you are very difficult to please. My descriptions you call slow, my imaginings frivolous, science dry. Jokes are feeble and personalities tedious morality is stale, religion is cant. What, how can I write? You have had a taste of all and if you are not content the fault is—well, let me be on the ...
— Three Months of My Life • J. F. Foster
... about which there was at one time infinite wrangling, as to what both the meaning and the expression should best be, so that they then had living significance in the mouths of those who used them, though they have become such mere shibboleths and cant formulae to ourselves that we think no more of their meaning than we do of Julius Caesar in the month of July. They continue to be reproduced through the force of habit, and through indisposition to get out of any familiar groove of action until it becomes too unpleasant for us to remain ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... religion make you dishonest," he stabbed. "No man seduces a woman of your character without as much goodwill as deserves to be called encouragement, and by God is encouragement," he went on furiously. "Let's cut away some of the cant before we begin arguing ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... puts his arms behind his back and bubbles out, 'Hold not out your hand to me lest I spit on it. 'Tis like your snivelling cant to write sweet psalms for smuggling rogues and try to frighten ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... certain lifting of the nose's tip; A certain curling of the nether lip, In scorn of all that is, beneath the sky; In brief it is an aspect deleterious, A face decidedly not serious, A face profane, that would not do at all To make a face at Exeter Hall,— That Hall where bigots rant, and cant, and pray, And laud each other face to face, Till ev'ry farthing-candle ray Conceives itself a ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... character; his greatness and disinterestedness. "His very failings were those of a sincere, a generous, and a noble mind," says a biographer who knew him well. His contempt for base actions; his love of equity; his passion for truth, which was carried almost to a hatred of cant and hypocrisy, were the immediate causes of his want of fairness in his opinion of himself and of his self-accusation of things most contrary ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... "Ihtida,"divine direction to Huda or salvation. The old bawd was still dressed as a devotee, and keeps up the cant of her caste. No sensible man in the East ever allows a religious old woman ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... cant words renders jests imperfectly intelligible. Greek humour was clearer in this respect than that of the present day, especially since our vocabulary has been so much enriched from America. Puns also restrict the pleasantries dependent on them to one country, ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... the meaning compare Cant. lix. 3: The voice of the turtle "is a sign that winter is past, proclaiming nevertheless that the time of pruning has come.... The voice, more like one who groans than one who sings, admonishes us of our pilgrimage." After ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor
... a great debt. He was cruel, but in comparison with the cruelty of Lebon, of Barere, of Billaud-Varennes, his cruelty was tender mercy, He was a hypocrite, but his hypocrisy shows like candour beside the perfidy and the cant of Petion and of Robespierre, while in the great 'art and mystery' of government he was a master where these modern apes of despotism were ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... was hardly less plain that she had found it to her advantage—everybody in England finds it to their advantage in some way to cover the outer side of her character carefully with a smooth varnish of Cant. This was, however, no business of mine; and I should have made these reflections outside instead of inside the house, if my interests had not been involved in putting the sincerity of Mother Oldershaw's reformation ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... degrading as certain pranks of Buckhurst's, which I would not dare mention in your hearing. We imitate them, and out-herod Herod, but we are never like them. We send to Paris for our clothes, and borrow their newest words—for they are ever inventing some cant phrase to startle dulness—and we make our language a foreign farrago. Why, here is even plain John Evelyn, that most pious of pedants, pleading for the enlistment of a troop of Gallic substantives and adjectives to ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... singularly happy combination and balance of qualities. Every one thought of him as a man having a genius for popular eloquence. But he had also as truly unique gifts and graces for personal friendship. Without a particle of cant, he possessed profound religious faith and devotion. He walked with God and had no gifts which were not consciously devoted to his service. At the same time he was intensely human. He never affected to be ethereal. He was a son of man, a child ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 42, No. 12, December, 1888 • Various
... he had held no meetings. He was as yet William Rufus Holly, the cricketer, the laziest dreamer of a college decade. His religion was simple and practical; he had never had any morbid ideas; he had lived a healthy, natural, and honorable life, until he went for a mikonaree, and, if he had no cant, he had not a clear idea of how many-sided, how responsible, his life must be—until that one ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... proprieties. Hegel will be to the next generation what Sir William Hamilton was to the last. Nothing will have been disproved, but everything will have been abandoned. An honest man has spoken, and the cant of the genteel tradition has become harder for young ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... a twelve-grain dose, without any sugar coat, but it sweat more cant and false pride out of my system than I could get back into it for the next twenty years. I learned right there how to be humble, which is a heap more important than knowing how to be proud. There are mighty few men that ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... along splendid," she wrote some weeks after this. "I like my teacher; her name is Holt. She is just as nice as she can be. She is cousin to the one who came with me; I live with her uncle, and I can go to soshibles whenever I want to; but the other girls cant. I am feeling pretty good, but I ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... knew the music: a Lied by Schubert—the favorite composer of the day; a master "whose best work was still unknown," as she said in the cant she had learned from the critics, alluding to the fact that only the least subtle of the melancholy composer's works had thus far ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... clever writer, Mr. Frederic Harrison, developed, in the systematic and stringent manner of his school, the thesis which Mr. Bright had propounded in only general terms. "Perhaps the very silliest cant of the day," said Mr. Frederic Harrison, "is the cant about culture. Culture is a desirable quality in a critic of new books, and sits well on a possessor of belles lettres; but as applied to politics, it means simply a turn for small fault-finding, love of selfish ease, and indecision ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... eased; the mysterious sympathy of numbers cheers him, the sense of Divine forgiveness has given him power, and he is ready to face life again with new heart. Ferrier caught the note of formality again and again, but he could see that the phrases had not putrefied into cant. ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... bound by no laws; with all its cadence and complexity his art was unsuited to a canon as would be the art of music. He seems almost to have disregarded the ordinary physical limitations under which he worked. He had no "cant of material," and whether in stone, bronze, wood, or clay, he went straight ahead in the most ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... features to a frowning sternness? Young lord! I tell thee, that there are such beings,— Yea, and it gives fierce merriment to the damn'd, 100 To see these most proud men, that loathe mankind, At every stir and buz of coward conscience, Trick, cant, and lie, most whining hypocrites! Away! away! Now let me hear ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... them are examples of elaborate criticism, in the most masterly style. In his review of the 'Memoirs of the Court of Augustus,' he has the resolution to think and speak from his own mind, regardless of the cant transmitted from age to age, in praise of the ancient ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... they stumble and fall. But I love you too well, Philip, to wish you to remain in this state of mental darkness. Read the Bible with the eyes of faith; think and pray, and the true light will dawn upon your soul, as it has on mine. Let not the ravings of fanaticism, nor the vulgarity of low cant, frighten you from the enjoyment of the highest and noblest privilege granted to man—the capacity of holding converse with his God. And, now, farewell, my dear friend. I shall see you again in the morning; think over twice what I have said to ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... sailors released their holds and the aeroplane lurched forward just clear of the bulwarks. Margaret Bunce clutched the rail nervously. One or two of the men had been somewhat slow in letting go, causing the aeroplane to cant over in a manner that was alarming to the onlookers. But long practice with the aeroplane in all kinds of gusty weather had developed in Smith an instinct for the right means of meeting an emergency ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... so deftly parodied in a railroad route to the heavenly goal. Full of keen satire, it does not, as it might at first seem, tend to diminish Bunyan's dignity, but inspires one with a novel sense of it, as one is made to gradually pierce the shams of certain modern cant. But a more profound consequence was the direction of Hawthorne's expanding thought toward sin and its various and occult manifestations. Imagine the impression upon a mind so fine, so exquisitely responsive, and so well prepared for grave revery as Hawthorne's, which ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... of course, that the "faddists" should be among Mr. Punch's most impatient critics, because "fad" and "cant" have always been Punch's pet ground-game that he loves to run to earth. It is perhaps from the Temperance party that he has had most sport, for he has always taken delight in the pictures they dislike the most—the incomparable ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... there. Pulling near with the little strength left in them, they could see that the frigate was weighing for sea. She had one anchor lifted and the other chain shortened in: her top-sails and topgallant sails were cast off, ready to cant her at the right moment for hauling in. An officer stood ready by the crew manning the capstan, and right aft two more officers were pacing back and forth with their hands ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... those old people who were perhaps a little too dumpish in their repentance and their faith and their hope that morning, than it did to those who took to the table with a light heart. I know all your flippant cant about gospel liberty and against Highland introspection, as you call it—as well as all your habitual neglect of a close and deep self-examination, as Paul called it; but I tell you all to-night that it would be the salvation of your soul ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... truly God, does nothing want, So all these speeches are the poets' cant. ("Hercules ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... owner of the cross mine, I write you because I am afraid I aint got your pardners name right and because Ive got something on my mind that I cant keep any more. Im the girl that got burned at the High Light. Your pardner saved my life and you were awful kind to me. Everybody's been very kind to me too. I spose you know 111 not be able to work ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... their money. Whosoever does these things, God's curse is on him, and his sin will surely find him out. No excuse of being in hot blood will avail him. No excuse of having fought well beforehand will avail him. Such cant will no more excuse him with God than it will with truly noble-minded men. He may have been brave enough before, but he is doing a coward's deed then; he is doing the devil's work, and the devil, and not ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley
... was very impertinent of him to try and interfere with her purely personal business, no doubt, but he seemed to do so in a genuinely kindly rather than in a fussy interfering spirit. At any rate he didn't begin by talking to her that horrid cant about the attempt to commit suicide being so extremely wicked! If he had done that, Selah would have felt it was not only an unwarrantable intrusion upon her liberty of action, but a grotesque insult to her natural intelligence ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... UNIVERSITY is first of all religious. With no cant, with the avoidance of undue emotion, with a constant appeal to Christian manhood and womanhood, men and women loyal to Jesus, seeking less their rights than to faithfully perform their duties, are being reared. For ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 54, No. 01, January, 1900 • Various
... of small anomalies, such as the acceptance, without cant, of certain forms of the shop, euphemized as the store, but containing the same old vertebral counter. Not all forms. Dry-goods were held in respect and chemists in comparative esteem; house furnishings and hardware made an appreciable claim, and quite a leading family was occupied with seed grains. ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... much as the British "full private;" indeed they have little cause, for the commissariat arrangements, even in remote departments, are admirable, and the Union grudges no comfort, or even luxury, to her armies. But they become "demoralized" (the word is a cant one now) surprisingly fast, and recover from such, depression very, very slowly. When the moment for action arrives, such men get fresh heart in the first excitement, but they lack stability, and if any sudden check ensues, involving ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... Thomas Harman, Esquiere, for the utilite and proffyt of his naturall Cuntrey" and he dedicated it to Elizabeth, Countess of Shrewsbury. It contained twenty-four character sketches, gave the names of the chief tramps then living in England, and a vocabulary of their cant words. This is Harman's ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... youd better not try to take back the boddy of Mister Peter. We berried it verry deep and it better remain here. Anny way, you cant mannage it till late summer. Say ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... science, thought, and study have been at work, and everything has been done, thus far, which can be done to make the earth more gladsome, and the hearts of the children of men more thankful to the Giver and Bestower of all our blessings. Away, then, with this cant, prejudice, and sneering about 'book farming.' As well cry out against book geography, or book philosophy, or book history, or book law. Chemistry, botany, entomology, and pomology unite the results of their researches in their various directions, and, while seeking apparently different ends, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... players remained at Arden, the two friends met by tacit agreement in the lane of Burleigh Grange, and, gradually, Lawrence Bury became less the actor and more the man, in the presence of a genuine woman, without affectation or artifice, stage-rant or art-cant,—one from whose face the glare of the foot-lights had not stricken the natural bloom, whose heart had never burned with the feverish excitement of the stage, its insatiable ambition, its animosities and exceeding fierce jealousies. For Zelma, she grew more humble and simple and less exacting, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... of Home Rule for Ireland. The success of federal government in other countries, and especially in the United States, and the success of colonial independence throughout the British Empire, are adduced as presumptions that Home Rule would knit together Great Britain and Ireland, or, as the cant of the day goes, transform a paper union into a union of hearts. If New York be loyal to the United States, if New Zealand be loyal to the British Crown, why should not Ireland, when endowed with local independence resembling the independence of an American State ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... Blackbird, n. "A cant name for a captive negro, or Polynesian, on board a slave or pirate ship." ('O.E.D.') But no instance is given of its ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... the interviews—a collection of curiosities in utopianism, cant, ignorant fanaticism, provincialism, hypocrisy. These appeared strictly as news; for the cardinal principle of Howard's theory of a newspaper was that it had no right to intrude its own views into its news-columns. On the editorial page he riddled the interviews. By adroit ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... the scowling old sundowners come, And cunningly ask if the master's at home, 'Be off,' she replies, 'with your blarney and cant, Or I'll call my son ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... the cause of freedom, for to Cromwell's government, and to the fanaticism which preceded it, we owe the reaction of Charles the Second's reign, when licentiousness in manners, and servility in politics succeeded in making virtue and freedom synonymous with hypocrisy and cant. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... ideal the schoolmaster will reply that something of everything means nothing thorough. I know the objection and what it commonly stands for. It is the cloak and pretext for that accursed pedantry and cant which turns every sort of teaching to a blight. Thoroughness is the excuse for giving boys grammar and accidence in the name of Greek: diagrams, formulae and numerical examples in the name of science. Stripped of disguise ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... half angry and half amused, "that I shall spend my money so very much better;—I quite mean to have my fling. Only I do so hate all this cant." ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... of themselves. "Precaution" was not merely a tale of English social life, it purported to be written by an Englishman; and it was so thoroughly conformed to its imaginary model that it not only reechoed the cant of English expression, but likewise the expression of English cant. To talk about dissenters and the establishment was natural and proper enough in a work written ostensibly by the citizen of a country in which there was a state church. But Cooper went much farther than (p. 021) this in ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... mother Madam, would you were So that my Lord your sonne were not my brother, Indeede my mother, or were you both our mothers, I care no more for, then I doe for heauen, So I were not his sister, cant no other, But I your daughter, he must be ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... wilderness He'll send us manna." On similar occasions in the past Hubbard had made like remarks to this, and he continued to make them on similar occasions in the future. Invariably they were made with a simplicity that robbed them of all cant; they came from the ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... paper they are written upon.' 'Faith as to Sumter fully kept—wait and see.' That which was seen was a fleet of eleven vessels, with two hundred and eighty-five guns and twenty-four hundred men—'carrying provisions to a starving garrison!' Have done with cant, and welcome open war! The Enquirer.—'Virginia will still succeed in mediating. Virginia from her curule chair, tranquil and fast in the Union, will persuade, will reconcile these differences!' Amen to that!" said Miss Lucy, and took up another bundle. ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... portable. They are as current as copper coin, and about as valuable. They serve equally the first capacities and the lowest, and they are, at least, as useful to the worst men as the best. Of this stamp is the cant of Not men, but measures; a sort of charm, by which many people got loose from every honourable engagement. When I see a man acting this desultory and disconnected part, with as much detriment to his own fortune ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... recklessness amuse or shame Selfish nonentities around? That mind which yearns for space is bound? And that too often we receive Professions eagerly for deeds, That crass stupidity misleads, That we by cant ourselves deceive, That mediocrity alone ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... monster survives? Is it nothing that they have fallen, and yet such a wrong that the fetters of the bondman should fall? Is the claim of property in man so sacred, and the blood of our brothers so cheap? Have done with this heartless cant,—this prating about the constitutional rights of traitors! When the Moslem chief was marching to the chastisement of a revolted tribe, the insurgents, seeing disaster inevitable in a fair field, resorted to the device ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... favorite hymn-poem, had a peculiar genius for putting golden thoughts into common words, and making them sing. Probably no other sample of his work shows better than this his art of combining literary cleverness with the most reverent piety. Cant was a quality Faber never could ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... the Hapsburg's new philosophy, and how tragically it was grounded, Driscoll only smiled in a very peculiar way. Knighthood? The word was supercilious cant, and irritated him. During that very moment, while listening to Chivalry's devotee, the young trooper thought of a little ivory cross in his pocket, a cross which was stained with a girl's blood. ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... fruit—mostly choke-pears and apples from ungrafted limbs—as was enterprising enough to grow and ripen without tending or harvesting. The trunks of the neglected trees were studded with knobs like enormous wens, and the branches had a jaunty earthward cant that made climbing the easiest sort of work, and swinging an irresistible temptation. In the higher boughs were cosey crotches where one could sit, and read, and even sleep, without danger of falling. I and my court of small darkies had spent one whole July Saturday in and under the ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... confidence in his closing years was Spencer Perceval, an able young barrister, who entered Parliament in 1796 as member for Northampton, and showed considerable skill in finance and debating powers of no mean order. "He spoke (says Sinclair) without the disagreeable cant of the Bar, was never tedious, was peculiarly distinct in matters of business, and explained his financial measures with clearness and ability. His style was singularly acute, bold, sarcastic, and personal." The same authority avers that Pitt, on being asked—"If ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... with the Poem of the souls Immortalitie; I have taken off the last stanza's thereof, and added some few new ones to them for a more easie and naturall leading to the present Canto. Psychathan. lib. 3. Cant. 4. ...
— Democritus Platonissans • Henry More
... A Dictionary of Modern Slang, Cant, and Vulgar Words. Used at the present day in the streets of London; the universities of Oxford and Cambridge; the houses of Parliament; the dens of St. Giles; and the palaces of St. James. Preceded by a history of cant and vulgar language; with glossaries ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... cant, the lawyer's sophistry, Lord's quibble, critic's jest, all end in thee, All rest in peace at ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... stimulated by observing the industry and application of those whom my situation in life gives me for companions. The pernicious and childish opinion that extraordinary genius cannot brook the slavery of plodding over the rubbish of antiquity (a cant so common among the heedless votaries of indolence), dulls the edge of all industry, and is one of the most powerful ingredients in the Circean potion which transforms many of the most promising young men into the beastly forms ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... as a cant expression. The woman here alluded to was a procuress well known in her day, and described in the "Tatler" (No. 84) as "the celebrated Madam Bennet." We further learn, from the "Spectator" (No. 266), that she was the Lady B. to whom Wycherley addressed his ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... that is the term for it, must be judged by its fruits. I am informed that of those who kneel here experience shows that but a small percentage relapse. The most of them become what in the Salvation Army cant—if one chooses so to ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... Robert Knox, William Jameson, Robert Murray, Henry Guthrie, James Hamilton, in Dumfreis, Bernard Sanderson, John Levingstoun, James Bonar, Evan Camron, David Dickson, Robort Bailzie, James Cuninghame, George Youngh, Andrew Affleck, David Lindsay, Andrew Cant, William Douglas, Murdo Mackenzie, Coline Mackenzie, John Monroe, Walter Stuart Ministers; Archbald Marquesse of Argyle, William Earle Marshall, John Earle of Sutherland, Alexander Earle of Eglingtoun, John Earle of Cassils, ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... mood of the poet. Take the words of a lyric for what they say, and they say nothing most of the time. And that is true of philosophers. You must penetrate the ponderous vocabulary, the professional cant to the insight beneath or you scoff at the mountain ranges of words and phrases. It is this that Bergson means when he tells us that a philosopher's intuition always outlasts his system. Unless you get at that you remain forever ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... practical purposes these dreamers fall under the condemnation they lavish so freely upon the conventional religious people who relieve themselves of all anxiety for the welfare of the poor by saying that in the next world all will be put right. This religious cant, which rids itself of all the importunity of suffering humanity by drawing unnegotiable bills payable on the other side of the grave, is not more impracticable than the Socialistic clap-trap which postpones ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... and justice." The exhortation of these monarchs to their people to fortify themselves in the principles of the Saviour, no less than the confession that they themselves ruled only by a delegation of power from Christ, was regarded by the Protestant Americans as religious cant. The power behind the throne was more likely force of arms. The provision that other nations professing these principles should be "received with as much readiness as affection in this holy alliance" was regarded as a bid and possible conspiracy for the extension of legitimacy not alone ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... of his house in Lebanon, to look 'from the lions' dens, from the mountains of the leopards,' to the things that are invisible; even as Paul said when he was in affliction, 'We look not at the things which are seen' (Cant 4:8; 2 Cor 4:18). He draws them out thence, I say, as sheep appointed for the slaughter; yea, he goeth before them, and ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... been a revolt of labor it too often finds arrayed against it the press, the law, and the police. All the great powers are in entente. The press, without inquiry, begins a detestable cant about labor agitators misleading ignorant men. Every wild phrase uttered by an exasperated worker is quoted against the cause of labor, and its grievances are suppressed. We are told nothing about how the worker lives: what homes, what food, his wage will provide. The journalist holds ...
— National Being - Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity • (A.E.)George William Russell
... granting of these claims would tend to make woman less amiable and attractive, less regardful of her peculiar duties and obligations as wife and mother, a wanderer from her proper sphere, bringing confusion into domestic life, and strife into the public assembly, is the cant of Papal Rome as to the discordant and infidel tendencies of the right of private judgment in matters of faith; is the outcry of legitimacy as to the incapacity of the people to govern themselves; is the false allegations which selfish and timid conservatism is ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... said in favor of toasted cheese for supper. It is the cant to say that Welsh rabbit is heavy eating. I like it best in the genuine Welsh way, however—that is, the toasted bread buttered on both sides profusely, then a layer of cold roast beef with mustard and horseradish, and then, on the top of all, the superstratum, of Cheshire ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... have had great deference. "His opinion," he writes, "is, that nothing could be more remote from awkwardness or constraint than your manner; that your style, ideas, and expression, were peculiarly your own; natural and unaffected, and so different from the cant of the House, or from the jargon of the bar, that he could not imagine any thing more agreeable; that you did not dwell upon a point till you had tired it out, as is the way of most speakers, but kept on with fresh ideas crowding upon you, and rising ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... as the car on a wild cant to the left went astern, screwing herself round the angle of a track that overhung the pond. "If she only had two propellers, I believe she'd talk poetry. She can ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... the same spirit when I add that to build a cathedral, and to spend our tears and pity upon a Saviour who was crucified nearly two thousand years ago, while women and men and little children are being crucified in our midst, without pity and without help, is cant, and sentimentality, and ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... was fascinated. What Trelawny cared for in literature was Imagination, the more sublime the better, while in life he had a taste for Truth and Freedom. He was always something of an oddity. He loathed superstition, cant and snobbery and said so in a way that gave much pain to the nicest people. He was of that disconcerting sort which, excelling in all that ordinary people admire, admires, for its part, what they hate—the abnormal and distinguished. He was a man of action who mistrusted common sense, a good fellow ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... she cried, running to him, "take me away from him: I cant bear——" I turned towards him, and shewed him my dog-tooth in a false smile. He felled me at one stroke, as he might have felled ...
— The Miraculous Revenge - Little Blue Book #215 • Bernard Shaw
... 1853, and 1861. It was, however, subjected to some criticism and ridicule, and gave rise to the expression "bowdlerise," always used in an opprobrious sense. On the other hand, Mr. Swinburne has said, "More nauseous and foolish cant was never chattered than that which would deride the memory or depreciate the merits of B. No man ever did better service to Shakespeare than the man who made it possible to put him into the hands of intelligent and imaginative ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... true lover of nature, without pretense or cant of any kind. She has an eye for flowers,—indeed her little garden is the delight of the neighborhood,—and she finds harebells on Thanksgiving Day and ferns in midwinter. She knows the minerals in the stone-walls, and likes ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... these Jefferson confessed the deepest debt for their efforts to strengthen his mind and make his footing firm. Now, of all men in this country at that time, these two were least likely to support pro-slavery theories or tolerate pro-slavery cant. For while to Small's soundness there is abundance of general testimony, there is to Wythe's soundness testimony the most pointed. We have but to take the first volume of Jefferson's Works, published by order of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... lucrative employment, lonely and despondent, she is led to take her first step on the downward path. Soon daily contact with vice removes abhorrence to it. Familiarity makes it habitual, and another life is ruined. The heartless moral code of the cynical young pleasure-seeking male is summed up in the cant phrase anent women: "Find, ... and forget!" It is these girls, who are victimized by their lack of self-restraint or moral principle, their ignorance or weakness, who make possible the application ...
— Sex - Avoided subjects Discussed in Plain English • Henry Stanton
... the yoke which she claimed England wished to fasten on her world relationships. She aimed to dominate the world with German efficiency. She aimed to demonstrate German superiority and expose what she called Anglo-Saxon hypocrisy and cant. Already possessing the world's supply of potash, she struck directly at the coal and iron region of Belgium and Northern France. And she took them on the initial advance. With potash, coal and iron, this was a Teutonic coup ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... Fear God and dread the Sunday-school France has neither winter, nor summer, nor morals Graham Bell Hain't we all the fools in town on our side? Happily, the little child was to evade that harsher penalty Hatred of humbug, and a scorn for cant Header Hickory-nuts I could a staid if I'd a wanted to, but I didn't want to. If loyalty to party is a form of patriotism, I am no patriot Lecky Livy, if it comforts you to lean on the Christian faith do so! Modest" Club My advice is not to raise the flag Operas Optimist ...
— Widger's Quotations from Albert Bigelow Paine on Mark Twain • David Widger
... confidence against all her sins, against death and hell, saying, "If I have sinned, my Christ, in whom I believe, has not sinned; all mine is His, and all His is mine," as it is written, "My beloved is mine, and I am His" (Cant. ii. 16). This is what Paul says: "Thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ," victory over sin and death, as he says, "The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law" (1 Cor. ...
— Concerning Christian Liberty - With Letter Of Martin Luther To Pope Leo X. • Martin Luther
... wherever said divorcee sets foot within the borders of the home State. When other States enact and rigidly enforce some such drastic measure, the West will begin to have some regard for their particular brand of virtue. Until then, the West may be pardoned for believing that cant and hypocrisy often join hands with the lawless element and make a ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... hot," he said, "as if I was cheering at a boat-race, or wrangling over a betting-book—eh? Ah, we were so easily heated when I was a young man! Let's change the subject. I know nothing to the prejudice of your friend, Mr. Delamayn. It's the cant of the day," cried Sir Patrick, relapsing again, "to take these physically-wholesome men for granted as being morally-wholesome men into the bargain. Time will show whether the cant of the day is right.—So you are actually coming back to Lady Lundie's after a mere flying visit to ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... Well, she cant see the doctor. Look here: whats the use of telling you that the doctor cant take any new patients, when the moment a knock comes to the door, in you bounce to ask whether ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • George Bernard Shaw
... politics and such things in the abstract—always in the abstract—calmly in the abstract. He was an old-fashioned Conservative of the Sir Leicester Deadlock style. When he was moved by an extra shower of aggressive democratic cant—which was seldom—he defended Capital, but only as if it needed no defence, and as if its opponents were merely thoughtless, ignorant children whom he condescended to set right because of their inexperience ...
— On the Track • Henry Lawson |
