"Cant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it did not behove him to be very strait-laced with his own party. He took everything in good part, was not over-talkative, over- pushing, or presumptuous; he felt no strong bias of his own; had at his fingers' ends the cant phraseology of ministerial subordinates, and knew how to make himself useful. He knew also— a knowledge much more difficult to acquire—how to live among men so as ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... of the ship was about to be carried away. Her larboard quarter next came in contact with the ice, but the severity of the shock saved her; for after the damage which has been described was received, she again bounded off with a cant to starboard. The jib was instantly run up, and it and the other headsails catching the wind, away she glided from the berg. Those who had their eyes turned aft, however, could not refrain from uttering a cry of horror, for at that instant the berg, ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... what has put Byron out of favour with the public of late has been not his faults but his excellences. His artistic good taste, his classical polish, his sound shrewd sense, his hatred of cant, his insight into humbug above all, his shallow, pitiable habit of being always intelligible—these are the sins which condemn him in the eyes of a mesmerising, table-turning, spirit-rapping, spiritualising, Romanising generation, who read Shelley in secret, and delight ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... Tennyson and Thackeray, it is said, got well taken notice of in this way by their comrades. But there was no plan at the bottom of it—nothing to constitute them a name. The Apostles were always inveighing against cant—always affecting much earnestness, and a hearty dislike of formalism, which rendered them far from popular with the high and dry in literature, politics, or religion. They were eyed with terror by the conservatives as something ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440 - Volume 17, New Series, June 5, 1852 • Various
... mean that it is destructive to the ten thousand things in life that they do not enjoy or understand or tolerate, things that fill them, therefore, with envy and perplexity—such things as pleasure, beauty, delicacy, leisure. In the cant of modern talk you will find them call everything that is not crude and forcible in life "degenerate." But back to the very earliest writings, in the most bloodthirsty outpourings of the Hebrew prophets, for example, you ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... Some persons cant about the wickedness of the times: believe them not; this is the most saintly of ages, the most pure of generations, considering ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 360 - Vol. XIII. No. 360, Saturday, March 14, 1829 • Various
... deride it. In no spirit of cant and with no desire to preach, I set down these things, simply because they are as obvious as temples or scenery to any Oriental traveller who travels with open eyes ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... be rather a prominent figure on my canvas, I may as well here give the reader a slight preparatory sketch of that gentleman. He was about fifty-two years old; a great tyrant in his little way; a compound of ignorance, selfishness, cant, and conceit. He knew nothing on earth except the price of his goods, and how to make the most of his business. He was of middle size, with a tendency to corpulence; and almost invariably wore a black coat and waistcoat, a white neck handkerchief very primly tied, ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... persons of the first rank and distinction to give their birthday suits to the most favoured actors. I think Mr. Thurmond was honoured by General Ingolsby with his. But his finances being at the last tide of ebb, the rich suit was put in buckle (a cant word for forty in the hundred interest). One night, notice was given that the General would be present with the Government at the play, and all the performers on the stage were preparing to dress out in the suits presented. The spouse of Johnny (as he was commonly called) ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... the highest respect by the medical profession because physicians generally felt, in the words of Dr. Ransohoff, that "his life had a spiritual significance; there was no cant, only humility." Sometimes he walked to the operating room beside a fearful patient, and one man later said, "Something came through him to me. The fear was gone." He often went with parishioners to a doctor's office, and sent hundreds of others giving them an ...
— Frank H. Nelson of Cincinnati • Warren C. Herrick
... that Idleness shou'd be as severely punish'd as petty Larceny; and to beg with an Ability to Work, shou'd be regarded and treated as a Kind of training up Youth for Stealing, (when they have learn'd the proper Cant and Tricks of their Apprenticeship) and consequently to relieve a Vagabond, shou'd be as faulty and as corrigible as receiving stolen Goods. The proper Place for the Relief of sturdy Beggars, is a good County Work-house, where the Labours ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... his readiness to receive those who will open unto him. He is saying, "Open to me ... for my head is filled with dew, and my locks with the drops of the night," Cant. 5:2. "Blessed are those servants, whom the Lord, when he cometh, shall find watching: verily I say unto you, That he shall gird himself, and make them to sit down to meat, and will come forth and serve them," ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... had failed to send him various things ordered, such as half a dozen scythes and stones, curry combs and brushes, weeding and grubbing hoes, and axes, and that now he must buy them in America at exorbitant prices. Not long afterward he wrote again: "I have received my goods from the Recovery, and cant help again complaining of the little care taken in the purchase: Besides leaving out half and the most material half too! of the Articles I sent for, I find the Sein is without Leads, corks and Ropes which renders it useless—the crate of stone ware don't contain a third of the Pieces ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... it is simple and full of the tang and flavor of Irish speech, though there is little of the conventional dialect usually connected with Irish stories. The theme is marked by an absence of cant and conventionalism and by a love and wisdom for mankind that are ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... in the same breath with war may seem like sheer cant and hypocrisy. But in the possibility that those who best understand the use and nature of armed power may excel all others in stimulating that higher morality which may some day restrain war lies a main chance for the future. The Armed Services of the United States do not simply ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... expression of sarcasm. His motions were always so graceful, that he might almost have been suspected of having studied them; for he might, on any occasion, have served as a model for an artist, so remarkably striking were his ordinary attitudes. Andrew Gemmells had little of the cant of his calling; his wants were food and shelter, or a trifle of money, which he always claimed, and seemed to receive, as his due. He sang a good song, told a good story, and could crack a severe jest with all the acumen of Shakspeare's jesters, though without using, like them, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 397, Saturday, November 7, 1829. • Various
... my 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 ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... her own face was transfigured. Mrs. Zelotes, also, seemed to radiate with a sort of harsh and prickly delight. She descanted upon the hard-earned savings which Andrew had risked, but she held her old head very high with reluctant joy, and her bonnet had a rakish cant. ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... of the 27th and 28th, the West-India interest affecting great horror of slavery, and depicting the encouragement the measure would give to that evil in terms of great and even pious alarm. Never did a party resort more scandalously to cant and hypocrisy to serve a purpose than this, on the memorable occasion of "the sugar debate." The resolution was carried, and a bill embodying it rapidly passed the commons, but was resisted in the lords ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... in The Spanish Friar. In Wit Without Money, though it is as usual amusing, the stage preference for a "roaring boy," a senseless crack-brained spendthrift, appears perhaps a little too strongly. The Beggar's Bush is interesting because of its early indications of cant language, connecting it with Brome's Jovial Crew, and with Dekker's thieves' Latin pamphlets. But the faults and the merits of Fletcher have scarcely found better expression anywhere than in The Humorous Lieutenant. Celia is his masterpiece in the delineation of the type ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... temptingly, whispering to the mischievous wild beast which lurks in the bottom of all our hearts, now, "Rouse up! art thou a man and darest not do this thing?" now, "Rise, kill and eat—it is thine, wilt thou not take it? Shall the flimsy scruples of this teacher, or the sanctified cant of that, bar thy way, and balk thee of thine own? Thou hast strength to brave them—to brave all things in earth, or heaven, or hell; put out thy strength ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... observe that the author of the paper called The Englishman, hath run into the same cant, gravely advising the whole body of the clergy not to bring in Popery, because that will put them under a necessity of parting with their wives, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... characterize it. I have ever been of opinion that an abolition of this unnatural jargon would open the path to reformation. And my observations on these people have constantly instructed me that indulgence in this infatuating cant is more deeply associated with depravity and continuance in vice than is generally supposed. I recollect hardly one instance of a return to honest pursuits, and habits of industry, where this miserable perversion ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... they were found mischievous and dangerous. Their morality was easy,—but difficult to understand; compounded of three-fourths sentiment—nine-tenths selfishness, twelve-ninths instinct, self-devotion, metaphysics, and cant. 'Twas hard to come at a common denominator. John Bull, with his four rules of vulgar arithmetic, could never make it out; altogether he never could abide these foreign bores. Thought 'em confounded dull too—Civilly ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... and God identically right? Still must our ears without redress submit To hear you play the solemn hypocrite Walking in spirit some high moral level, Raising at once his eye-balls and the devil? Great King of Cant! if Nature had but made Your mouth without a tongue I ne'er had prayed To have an earless head. Since she did not, Bear me, ye whirlwinds, to some favored spot— Some mountain pinnacle that sleeps in air ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... "It's not that kind, General," he said. "There's no cant in the boy. He's more popular for it— that's often so with the genuine thing, isn't it! I sometimes think"—the young Captain hesitated and smiled a trifle deprecatingly—"that Morgan is much of the same stuff as ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... CANT. Cant is a kind of affectation; affectation is an effort to sail under false colors; an effort to sail under false colors is a kind of falsehood; and falsehood is a term of Latin origin which we often use instead of the ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... 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
... enormity of the cant about Penny Dreadfuls can best be perceived by travelling to and fro for a week between London and Paris and observing the books read by those who travel with first-class tickets. I think a fond belief in Ivanhoe-within-the-reach-of-all ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Lee? Will you not join the rest of the world and say that I overreached myself; and walked into this trap with my eyes open, and for my own objects? Do you think I shall ever be thought better of; for getting caught here? I don't parade high moral views like our friend French. I won't cant about virtue. But I do claim that in my public life I have tried to do right. Will you do me the justice ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... Grapes Catawba, Concord John W. Bullock, Brocton. Bronze medal Grapes Concord F. D. Burger, Pulteney Grapes Catawba, Iona, Isabella Mrs. Hiram Burgess, Newark. Bronze medal Apples White Graft, Smokehouse F. W. Campbell, Esopus. Silver medal Apples Greening Thomas Cant, Clarksville. Silver medal Apples Spitzenberg, Fall Pippin, McIntosh Pears Lawrence, Sheldon, Anjou, Howell O. J. Chamberlain, Brocton. Bronze medal Grapes Concord, Niagara Austin L. Champion, Schenectady. Bronze medal Apples Spitzenberg, Baldwin, Northern Spy, Red Winter Pippin ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... refuse his ration. And of the salt of the good God's earth are the chaplains. There was Major the Reverend John Pringle, of Yukon fame, whose only son Jack was killed in action after he had walked two hundred miles to enlist. No cant, no smug psalm-singing, mourners'-bench stuff for him. He believed in his Christianity like a man; he was ready to fight for his belief like a man; he cared for us like a father, and stood beside us in the mornings as we drank our stimulant. Again, I repeat if a man is found drunk while on ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat
... Chesterton, an attack on cant. It was a story written by Dickens to protest against all he hated in the nature of oppression. Dickens hated the vulgar cant that only helps to bring self-advertisement: the ethic that the poor must listen to the rich, not because the rich are the best ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... 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 in dance halls no more because Im quite ugly now with them ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... pursued the Alderman, 'there's a great deal of nonsense talked about Want—"hard up," you know; that's the phrase, isn't it? ha! ha! ha!—and I intend to Put it Down. There's a certain amount of cant in vogue about Starvation, and I mean to Put it Down. That's all! Lord bless you,' said the Alderman, turning to his friends again, 'you may Put Down anything among this sort of people, if you only know the way to ...
— The Chimes • Charles Dickens
... ennobling scenery into the images of lofty thoughts; which shall give visible form and life to the abstract ideas of our written constitutions; which shall confer upon virtue all the strength of principle and all the energy of passion; which shall disentangle freedom from cant and senseless hyperbole, and render it a thing of such loveliness and grandeur as to justify all self-sacrifice; which shall make us love man by the new consecrations it sheds on his life and destiny; which shall force through the thin partitions ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... an excellent specimen of an English gentleman of the nineteenth century. Free from all affectation and pedantry, still his whole nature seemed to revolt from anything slangish or low. No oaths, nor anything which would be considered one, nor any cant expressions, ever escaped his lips. Yet he was full of life and spirits, the soul of every society in which he moved. He had numerous friends, and so mild and quiet was his disposition that he seldom or never made enemies; or rather, I may say, if he ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... of his sisters, and matched them admirably. He was a kind-hearted, outspoken, generous young man, up to anything, from a midnight spree to a special religious service; hating everything like cant as decidedly "low," and going in for sincerity, truth, and free- thought. Moreover, he spent his money, or, more strictly speaking, his father's money as well as his own, on horses, dogs, and guns, and left sundry little bills to stand over till the ...
— Working in the Shade - Lowly Sowing brings Glorious Reaping • Theodore P Wilson
... that beats us; but children's children at the farthest, will have outgrown such pitiful meanness, and will dare to do all that others have dared and done for the sake of freedom and independence. Then all this cowardly cant about the unhealthy climate, the voracious beasts, and venomous reptiles of Africa, will be at a discount, instead of passing current as now for wisdom ...
— Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party • Martin Robinson Delany
... a style that would be impossible in New York. At my club I meet all kinds of men. Many of them are prominent citizens and many of them have large fortunes. I mix with them all. I don't mean to say I run constantly with the prom. cits. and the millionaires. I don't. I cant afford that. But they occasionally entertain me. And I as often entertain them. So many restaurants here are both inexpensive and good that I can return their hospitality self-respectingly and without undue expense. In New York I would not only never meet that ...
— The Native Son • Inez Haynes Irwin
... before the faculty, no answer was ever made to it; but we noticed that, at every social gathering on Founder's Day afterward, as long as Mr. Cornell lived, he had arrangements made for dancing. I never knew a man more open to right reason, and never one less influenced by cant or dogmatism. ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... that we have no use for the distorted and mystical figure that they present as Christ, a conservative member of the Property Defence League, a thing neither man nor woman, but a third sex—not understood of us except as a rightful object of suspicion; we have no use for this rant, cant and fustian of his holiness and immaculate qualities. That presentation has always been repellent to us and always will be, no matter how much he may be proclaimed as the friend of the workingman.... Christ, the democrat, the agitator, ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... town of Belfort I take a chair and I sit down in the street. We talk in a cant phrase of the Man in the Street, but the Frenchman is the man in the street. Things quite central for him are connected with these lamp-posts and pavements; everything from his meals to his martyrdoms. When first an Englishman looks at a French town or village his first ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... forsooth, a gallant man, who sits him down before the baize and challenges all comers, his money against theirs, his fortune against theirs, is proscribed by your modern moral world! It is a conspiracy of the middle-class against gentlemen. It is only the shopkeeper cant which is to go down nowadays. I say that play was an institution of chivalry. It has been wrecked along with other privileges of men of birth. When Seingalt engaged a man for six-and-thirty hours without leaving the table, do you think he showed no ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... seen real indyans many a time & he says to a nother fello say Bill here is a man who says them sent real indyans & the other fello says gosh I dont believe it & they laffed only the laff was on them Ethen because they wasnt real indyans & that is only tipical of how you cant tell these Boston swelt heds nothing & I guess if they had ever seen a real indyan they would of known better than to laff. Well I and Prudence follered the crowd down to Grifins worf & them indyans which was only wite men drest up clumb ...
— A Parody Outline of History • Donald Ogden Stewart
... as well as women. Her mind was admirably balanced by her home affections, which remained unsullied and unshaken to the end of her days. She had, in common with her three brothers and her charming sister, the advantage of a wise and loving mother—a woman pious without cant, and worldly-wise without being worldly. Mrs. Porter was born at Durham, and when very young bestowed her hand and heart on Major Porter. An old friend of the family assures us that two or three of their children were born in Ireland, and that certainly Jane was amongst the number. Although ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various
... a cant name given to a lady [Lady Powis], who was very fond of loo, and who had lost much money ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... you are quite well. i am quite well. Rubens is here and he is quite well. We dont no how he got here but i am verry glad. Ant Maria said well he cant be sent back now so he sleeps on my bed and i like London it is a kweer place the houses are very big and i like my cussens pretty well they are all gals their nozes are very big i ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... a true story. It happened in Markdale to an uncle of my mothers. He wanted to marry Miss Jemima Parr. Felicity says Jemima is not a romantic name for a heroin of a story but I cant help it in this case because it is a true story and her name realy was Jemima. My mothers uncle was named Thomas Taylor. He was poor at that time and so the father of Miss Jemima Parr did not want him for a soninlaw and told him he was not to come near the house or he would set the ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... and no mistake, as the Grand Old Man will find—to his cost. All classes are united against the common enemy" (Mr. Gladstone). "But tell me something—How is it that the English people are deceived by that arch-professor of cant? ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... known by its fruits" it is entirely sincere; the language, deportment, habits, and consistency of this well-meaning tar, being those of a cheerful and confiding Christian, without the smallest disposition to cant or exaggeration. In this particular, he is a living proof of the efficacy of faith, and of the power of the Holy Spirit to enlighten the darkest understanding, and to ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... be sure what the words mean. There is no use talking about a word till we have got at its meaning. We may use it as a cant phrase, as a party cry on platforms; we may even hate and persecute our fellow-men for the sake of it: but till we have clearly settled in our own minds what a word means, it will do for fighting with, but not for working with. Socrates of old used to tell the ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... no pale morality that got between Richard and the wine cup. In another day at college he had emptied many. But early in his twenties, Richard discovered that he carried his drink uneasily; it gave a Gothic cant to his spirit, which, under its warm spell, turned warlike. Once, having sat late at dinner—this was in that seminary town in France where he attended school—he bestrode a certain iron lion, the same strange to him and guarding the portals of a public building. Being thus happily ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... Wagner had been pointed out to him by admiring students, and he was aware that the captain's reputation was as great in the college for his manliness as it was for his success in athletics. Unpretentious, straightforward, without a sign of "cant" or "gush" about him, the influence of the young leader had been a mighty force for good in the life of Winthrop College. And now as Will glanced into the face of the tall, powerful young fellow and realized that it was indeed himself whom his visitor was addressing, ...
— Winning His "W" - A Story of Freshman Year at College • Everett Titsworth Tomlinson
... plunge me back in pagan night, And take my chance with Socrates for bliss, Than be the Christian of a faith like this, Which builds on heavenly cant its earthly sway, And in a convert mourns to lose a prey. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... hopes, Hiram, you had quit talking cant,' said Dr. Frank, in a tone of disgust. 'Take my advice, and stop it, that is, if ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... abruptly, but piecemeal, those outward symbols—his sombre clothes. First 'twas his hat he exchanged for a feather-trimmed beaver of more sightly hue; then those stiff white bands that reeked of sanctity and cant for a collar of fine point; next it was his coat that took on a worldly edge of silver lace. And so, little by little, step by step, was the metamorphosis effected, until by the end of the week he came forth a very butterfly of fashion—a gallant, dazzling ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... Togither-r-r—heave! Once more, heave! Walk her up, boys! Walk her up! Come on, Angus! Where's yer porridge gone to? Move over, two av ye! Don't take advantage av a little man loike that!" Angus was just six feet four. "Now thin, yer pikes! Shove her along! Up she is! Steady! Cant her over! How's that, framer? More to the east, is it? Climb up on her, ye cats, an' dig in yer claws! Now thin, east wid her! Togither-r-r—heave! Aw now, where are ye goin'? Don't be too rambunctious! Ye'll be afther knockin' a hole in to-morrow mornin'. Back ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... create special modifications of the laws to suit himself, making that excellent or endurable which in other hands would be intolerable. If the purpose of Literature be the sincere expression of the individual's own ideas and feelings it is obvious that the cant about the "best models" tends to pervert and obstruct that expression. Unless a man thinks and feels precisely after the manner of Cicero and Titian it is manifestly wrong for him to express himself in their way. He may study in them the principles of effect, and try to surprise some of their secrets, ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... To 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.
... just as I had satisfied a natural want for which I had risen. To rush to her, to embrace her tenderly, to fasten the door, and compel her, not much against her will, to come towards the bed, to beg her to lie on her belly on the bedside, to cant her petticoats up, to kneel and gamahuche her cunt from behind until she begged me to rise and fuck her, was but the work of a minute or two. And then my stiff-standing pego, aided by the mouthful of thick saliva occasioned ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... know," said Honor in assumed despair, "I've lost my programme and am thrown quite on the mercy and veracity of my gentlemen friends. I regret to say—if you say this is yours—I cant refuse it, for I've neither programme nor ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... we leg, And it wes cant as any cleg, It wes wynd in ane wynden schet, Baythe the handis and the feit: Suppose this gaist wes litill Yit it stal Godis quhitell; It stal fra peteous Abrahame, Ane quhorle and ane quhim quhame; It stal ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... be glad, at last, to come to the conclusion that we would fain draw from all these descriptions—why does this immorality exist? Because the people MUST be amused, and have not been taught HOW; because the upper classes, frightened by stupid cant, or absorbed in material wants, have not as yet learned the refinement which only the cultivation of art can give; and when their intellects are uneducated, and their tastes are coarse, the tastes and amusements of classes still more ignorant must be coarse and vicious ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... do. If Christianity were right, war was wrong. Either Christianity was a foolish thing, an impossible dream, and all our profession of it so much empty cant, or war was something which every Christian should turn from with ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... out and fish awhile," Judith announced over her last trap. "I've got all my tackle aboard and maybe I can find something Mrs. Ben will want. You sit still as a mouse, Blossom, for I cant't be watching you and ...
— Judith Lynn - A Story of the Sea • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... task was yet to be performed—the loading of the grand piano. We found it necessary to remove the raft to a place where the bank was more shelving, so that the shore side of the structure would rest on the ground, because the weight of the piano on one side would cant it over so that we ...
— Field and Forest - The Fortunes of a Farmer • Oliver Optic
... 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, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... same time, retain the charities and virtues of uncelestial but not devilish manhood? In defiance of monition and in spite of resolution, the primrose path is trodden by all sorts and conditions of men, sinners no doubt, but not necessarily abstractions of sin, and to assert the contrary makes for cant and not for righteousness. The form and substance of the poem were due to the compulsion of Genius and the determination of Art, but the argument is a vindication of the natural man. It is Byron's "criticism of life." Don Juan was taboo from the first. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... before?" I asked myself. "Will my novel prove as abortive as my paintings, my poetry, my journalism?" We all want notoriety, our desire for notoriety is ugly, but it is less hideous when it is proclaimed from a brazen tongue than when it lisps the cant of humanitarianism. Self, and after self a friend; the rest may go to the devil; and be sure that when any man is more stupidly vain and outrageously egotistic than his fellows, he will hide his hideousness in humanitarianism. Victor Hugo was the innermost stench of ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... The name of this jargon varies with the country in which it is spoken. In Spain it is called 'Germania'; in France, 'Argot'; in Germany, 'Rothwelsch,' or Red Italian; in Italy, 'Gergo'; whilst in England it is known by many names; for example, 'cant, slang, thieves' Latin,' etc. The most remarkable circumstance connected with the history of this jargon is, that in all the countries in which it is spoken, it has invariably, by the authors who have treated of it, and who are numerous, ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... entirely in the initial consonants, as between 'phial' and 'vial'; 'pother' and 'bother'; 'bursar' and 'purser'; 'thrice' and 'trice'{110}; 'shatter' and 'scatter'; 'chattel' and 'cattle'; 'chant' and 'cant'; 'zealous' and 'jealous'; 'channel' and 'kennel'; 'wise' and 'guise'; 'quay' and 'key'; 'thrill', 'trill' and 'drill';—or in the consonants in the middle of the word, as between 'cancer' and 'canker'; 'nipple' and 'nibble'; 'tittle' and 'title'; ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... mean, Lois? The garden work is for our eating, and the sewing is for your own back, or grandma's. I understand religion, but I don't understand cant." ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... most glaring passages; as where they read the indictment against Robert Earl of Essex, etc. The Tories declare against further prosecution-if Tories there are, for now one hears of nothing but the Broad Bottom: it is the reigning cant word, and means, the taking all parties and people, indifferently into the ministry. The Whigs are the dupes of this; And those in the Opposition affirm that Tories no longer exist. Notwithstanding this, they will not come into the ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... sort of cant," said Sir Richmond in a fierce parenthesis, "that the supplies of oil are inexhaustible—that you can muddle about with oil anyhow.... Optimism of knaves and imbeciles.... They don't want to be pulled up ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... the soonerest. Sum men was beests & wood never git into the Gole at all. He sed the Erth was materiel but man was immaterial, and hens man was different from the Erth. The Erth, continnered the speaker, resolves round on its own axeltree onct in 24 hours, but as man haint gut no axeltree he cant resolve. He sed the ethereal essunce of the koordinate branchis of super-human natur becum mettymorfussed as man progrest in harmonial coexistunce & eventooally anty humanized theirselves & turned into reglar sperretuellers. (This was versifferusly applauded by the cumpany, and ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... a bit sorry for my father. He seemed to me to be the victim of his own foolish sentimentality. The current cant required my attendance at his funeral, but it was really ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... genial fashion, nevertheless with a certain reserve. He was not quite certain if Baltic's conversion was genuine, and if he found proof of hypocrisy, was prepared to fall foul of him forthwith. Sir Harry was not particularly religious, but he was honest, and hated cant with all his soul. ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... cant argue with a person when his livelihood depends on his not letting you convert him. And would you mind not calling me Bunny. My name is ...
— Misalliance • George Bernard Shaw
... in the shade, at which experts who had passed the whole of their summers in the furnace of the Diamond City inveighed against the slowness of the instrument and its lapse from the path of rectitude. The cant of the day ordained the twenty-fifth of December the "hottest day of the year." Well, the newcomers felt that if it were to be redder than the twenty-fourth they might jump into the Kimberley mine, without danger of landing on their feet, and ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... 'The true cant of the day,' said Herries, in a tone of scorn. 'The privilege of free action belongs to no mortal—we are tied down by the fetters of duty—our mortal path is limited by the regulations of honour—our most indifferent actions are but meshes of the web ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... drawing you sent me was very pretty. So you don't like Raphael! Well, I am his inveterate admirer: and say, with as little affectation as I can, that his worst scrap fills my head more than all Rubens and Paul Veronese together—"the mind, the mind, Master Shallow!" You think this cant, I dare say: but I say it truly, indeed. Raphael's are the only pictures that cannot be described: no one can get words to describe their perfection. Next to him, I retreat to the Gothic imagination, and love the mysteries of old ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... self-sacrificing, better fitted to contend with violence, or guard against the follies which undermine a state? What are the true conservative forces of our world? On what did Luther and Cranmer build the hopes of regeneration? The cant of dilettanti would be laughed at by the old apostles and martyrs. Art amuses, and may refine when it is itself pure. It does not brace up the soul to conflict. It does not teach how to resist temptation. It presents temptations rather. It gilds the fascinations of earth. It does not point to duties, ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... observed Squire Harwood, pointing southward with his hand. "I cannot forget my father's account of the times when Red-nosed Noll ruled the roost, and that arch-traitor Hutchinson held the castle, and insulted all the Cavaliers in the town and neighbourhood by his preaching, and his cant, and his strict rules and regulations; and now, forsooth, every man and woman in the place thinks fit to stand up for the usurper William, and not an expression of sympathy do I hear for the cruel fate of our lawful ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... Tommy Atkins in his unanimous mood—unanimously condemning cant and at the same time unanimously courteous. Now that I come to reflect I believe that, in his best moments, these are perhaps the only two points concerning which Tommy Atkins is unanimous. Whether he lives up to them or not (and to expect him ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... tippling-house. One is strongly led to believe that this is the origin of our cant word boozing-ken, imported from the East by the gipsies some ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... of ours — what fools! what fools! How they laugh at wisdom, her cant and rules! How they waste their powers, and, when wasted, grieve For what they ...
— Poems: Patriotic, Religious, Miscellaneous • Abram J. Ryan, (Father Ryan)
... of himself and of chance comers-in. "The Elf—da," says he, "was too exquisitely pretty; I could make no fun out of that."' Piozzi's Anec. p. 37. I doubt whether Johnson used the word fun, which he describes in his Dictionary as 'a low cant [slang] word.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... cant of the day to underrate the House of Commons, and the work which it performs; don't you suffer yourself to join in the chorus of the simpletons. Your time cannot be better employed than in endeavouring to ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... importance of thought he lays a stress unusual in modern life. It is the cant of the day, in judging the value of a man, that "it does not matter what he believes but only what he does." That is not true. It matters infinitely what a man believes; for as a man's belief so he is; as a man's thought, so inevitably is his action. There was ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant
... as elapsing be no greater than the time it took in playing. He was always pre-eminently an Englishman of his own day with a scholar's rather than a poet's temper, hating extravagance, hating bombast and cant, and only limited because in ruling out these things he ruled out much else that was essential to the spirit of the time. As a craftsman he was uncompromising; he never bowed to the tastes of the public and never veiled his scorn of those—Shakespeare among them—whom he conceived ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... who, while she was plighting her troth to this same Eugene, were not ashamed to prostitute her to Strozzi! Cease your disgusting cant, and learn that I acknowledge and respect the tie that binds your daughter to her real spouse: and woe to you, if you dare trouble the current of her peaceful life! Farewell. Say to his majesty that I shall be forever grateful for ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... yet I wish I could join heartily in that chorus of praise which the kind-hearted old bully has enjoyed. It is difficult to follow his own advice and to "clear one's mind of cant" upon the subject, for when you have been accustomed to look at him through the sympathetic glasses of Macaulay or of Boswell, it is hard to take them off, to rub one's eyes, and to have a good honest stare on one's own account at the man's actual words, deeds, ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... things to say about Shakespeare which he dared not utter, because the British public would not stand them. But the British public has stood some very severe things about the Bible, which is even yet reckoned of higher sanctity than Shakespeare. And certainly there is as much cant about Shakespeare to be cleared away as about the Bible. However this is scarcely the place to do it. It is clear enough, however, from his usage of Painter, that Shakespeare was no more original in plot than any of his fellows, and it is only the unwise and rash who could ask for originality ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... of feeling, says the pseudo-connoisseur, where we should only, or at least first, bring knowledge? This is the common cant of those who become critics for the sake of distinction. Let the Artist avoid them, if he would not disfranchise himself in the suppression of that uncompromising test within him, which is the only sure guide ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... in the catechism also form a part of the college course. The religious atmosphere which surrounds the college is as genial and cheerful as the natural atmosphere which bathes the hills and valleys around in October days. It has no element of sectarianism or bigotry. Free alike from cant, from looseness and indifference, the religious tone of the college ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various
... at his mother's looking-glass, Would force his 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 more music. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... kopecks and you: 'Let me kiss your hand, sir.' You are pariahs, pitiful people.... I am a different sort. My eyes are open, I see it all as clearly as a hawk or an eagle when it floats over the earth, and I understand it all. I am a living protest. I see irresponsible tyranny—I protest. I see cant and hypocrisy—I protest. I see swine triumphant—I protest. And I cannot be suppressed, no Spanish Inquisition can make me hold my tongue. No.... Cut out my tongue and I would protest in dumb show; shut me up ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... upon the ways of his fellow working-men he learned properly how to swing an axe; he grew accustomed to dragging all day on the end of a seven-foot crosscut saw, to lift and strain with a cant hook. The hardening process, begun at Lone Moose, continued unceasingly. If mere physical hardihood had been his end, he could easily have passed for a finished product. He could hold his own with those ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... cant the swill-tub to an angle of forty-five degrees at a distance of one and a half inches above his right eyebrow. (In the case of Rifle Regiments the soldier will balance the swill-tub on his nose.) He will then invite the officer, by a smart ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... grasp of the policemen as though it had been a feather: with one great stride he reached the countess and caught her roughly by the wrist. "Look at her, will you?" he cried: "you and the likes of you, with your smooth cant, have killed her! You crush us and starve us till we turn, and then you shoot us down like dogs. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... at present infest our literature, and whose parrot-like repetition of their own stereotyped phraseology, mingled with some barbarous infusion of half Anglicised German, threatens to form as odious a cant as ever polluted the stream of thought or disfigured the purity of language. Happily it is not likely to be more than a passing fashion; but still it is a very unpleasant fashion while it lasts. As in Johnson's day, every young writer imitated as well as he could the ponderous ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... have got to go away on bizness. I had ought to hav said good-by but I cant wate till you gets back so I thort I wold write. I love you. I hates everyboddy else when I think of you. I dont love no other woman but you. Nor never did. If ever I go away and dont come back dont forget what I say because I will be ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... that of drawing, for we find that 'He was buried with much pomp at Thetford Abbey under a tomb designed by himself and master Clarke, master of the works at King's College, Cambridge, & Wassel a freemason of BuryS. Edmund's.' Cooper's Ath. Cant., i. p. ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... on playing on the half-cracked strings of their flabby and sentimental hearts! At the beginning of my story I told you that we all considered Andrei Kolosov an extraordinary man. And if a clear, simple outlook upon life, if the absence of every kind of cant in a young man, can be called an extraordinary thing, Kolosov deserved the name. At a certain age, to be natural is to be extraordinary.... It is time to finish, though. I thank you for your attention.... Oh, I forgot to tell ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... sufficiently absurd to us, but it was not always so. Solomon (Cant. vi. 10) does not disdain the image "fair as the moon, clear as the sun," and those who have seen a moon in the sky of Arabia will thoroughly appreciate it. We find it amongst the Hindus, the Persians, the Afghans, the Turks and all ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... unwarranted and unfounded." And this discriminating judge continued to show that the imputation was so—concluding with the assertion that the sheriff "had done his duty in the case." Then without pausing, he proceeded to the usual lecture, full of hypocritical cant with which British judges usually preface their awards, however infamous. He alluded to the personal condition of Mr. Mitchel, and expressed his regrets that a person of such merits should be in such ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... passage, of short notes, which is founded essentially on a much simpler passage of longer notes. A cant term for the old-fashioned variation (e.g., the variations of the 'Harmonious Blacksmith') was 'Note-splitting,' which at once explains itself, and the older word 'Division.' A very clear example of Divisions may be found in 'Rejoice ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... 'Defender of the Faith' as our cautious English neighbors persist in doing?" asked the girlish Marquise with a smile. "Your country, Madame McVeigh, has no such cant in its constitution. You have reason to be proud of the great men, the wise, far-seeing men, ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... 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 ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... patience, just Heaven! Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world——though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst, the cant of criticism ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... live and die as free citizens under the protecting wing of the mother country. Recalling all this sickening sentimentalism, Mr. Paine uttered a loud and ringing BOSH! Let us clear our minds of cant, he said in effect, and ask ourselves what is the nature of government in general and of the famous British Constitution in particular. Like the Abbe Sieyes, Mr. Paine had completely mastered the science of government, which was in fact extremely ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... 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 ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... now considered the mark of a gentleman. The ideal hero of Wycherley or Etherege was the witty young profligate, who had seen life, and learned to disbelieve in virtue. His highest qualities were a contempt for cant, physical courage, a sort of spendthrift generosity, and a good-natured readiness to back up a friend in a quarrel, or an amour. Virtue was bourgeois—reserved for London trades-people. A man must ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... northern slope and plain. The dimensions of the work are fifty-five metres each way. The curtains, except the western, where stood the Bab el-Bahr ("Sea gate"), were supported by one central as well as by angular bastions; the northern face had a cant of 32 degrees east (mag.); and the northwestern tower was distant from the sea seventy-two me'tres, whereas the south-western numbered only sixty. The spade showed a substratum of thick old wall, untrimmed granite, and other hard materials. Further down ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... To fix me thus meant nothing? But I can't tell (there's my weakness) What her look said!—no vile cant, sure, About "need to strew the bleakness Of some lone shore with its pearl-seed, That the sea feels"—no "strange yearning That such souls have, most to lavish Where there's chance of ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... Professing to be Johnson's friend, that biographer has raised more objections to his character, than all the enemies to that excellent man. Sir John had a root of bitterness that "put rancours in the vessel of his peace." Fielding, he says, was the inventor of a cant phrase, "Goodness of heart, which means little more than the virtue of a horse or a dog." He should have known, that kind affections are the essence of virtue: they are the will of God implanted in our nature, to aid and strengthen moral obligation; they incite ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... world as it is; or if you like so to call it, a belief qualified with scorn in all things extant. The tastes and habits of such a man prevent him from being a boisterous demagogue, and his love of truth and dislike of cant keep him from advancing crude propositions, such as many loud reformers are constantly ready with; much more of uttering downright falsehoods in arguing questions or abusing opponents, which he would die or starve rather than use. It was not in our friend's ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... kinds of antics and chatter a weird medley of half sense, half nonsense, in which one can dimly discern satirical allusions to various forms of the literary, political, and religious cant of Goethe's generation. ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... it; howsumever, I wish I had not done it: I don't keer: they cant skeer me. however, I disregard them. They cannot ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... unfortunately, to be on the lee side of the canal, and for a couple of minutes after cutting adrift we were in imminent danger of taking the ground after all our trouble. Between us, however, we succeeded in so far flattening in the main-sheet as to cant her bows to windward, and though the schooner's keel actually stirred up the mud for a distance of quite fifty yards, we at last had the gratification of seeing her draw off the bank. The moment that she was fairly under ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... here gives a minute and accurate description, took place on the 22d of July 1544, when Lord Gray's partizans were repulsed with a loss of upwards of sixty men.—(Adamson's Muses Threnodie, by Cant, pp. 70, 71, 112.) Lord Gray, in October that year, received from the Cardinal a grant of part of the lands of Rescobie in Forfarshire, for his "ready and faithful help and assistance in these dangerous times of ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... like reading in a dictionary. 'Tis an inventory to remind us how many classes and species of facts exist, and, in observing into what strange and multiplex by-ways learning has strayed, to infer our opulence. Neither is a dictionary a bad book to read. There is no cant in it, no excess of explanation, and it is full of suggestion,— the raw material of possible poems and histories. Nothing is wanting but a little shuffling, sorting, ligature, and cartilage. Out of a hundred examples, Cornelius Agrippa "On the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... . . the devil take such cant! Say, once and always, Luca was a wittol, I am his cut-throat, you are ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... weeks in their tents,—no bad thing, either, for anybody. I was more than once tempted to tell him the strange fact that, though he had been among the black people and thought he had learned their language, what they had imposed upon him for that was not Romany, but cant, or English thieves' slang. For what is given, in good faith, as the gypsy tongue in "Paul Clifford" and the "Disowned," is only the same old mumping kennick which was palmed off on Bampfylde Moore Carew; or which he palmed on his readers, as ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... [63] "Cant as we may, and as we shall to the end of all things, it is very much harder for the poor to be virtuous than it is for the rich; and the good that is in them, shines the brighter for it. In many a noble mansion lives a man, the best of husbands and of fathers, whose private worth in both capacities ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... going back home, dont be fritened about me because I know the way. Ive got to go. something is calling me. dont be cross. I love you, but I cant stay. Im leaving my foolscap book for you, you can keep it always but I must go back ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... black-hearted scoundrel. I can see Monsieur exactly the same as ever in the King. The bad brother who voted so wrongly in his department of the Constituent Assembly was sure to compound with the Liberals and allow them to argue and talk. This philosophical cant will be just as dangerous now for the younger brother as it used to be for the elder; this fat man with the little mind is amusing himself by creating difficulties, and how his successor is to get out of them I do not know; he holds his younger brother in abhorrence; ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... cant of it too!" cried Montroymont. "But I'll tell ye for all that. It's to try and see if we can keep the rigging on this house, Francie. If she had her way, we would be beggar-folk, and hold our hands out by the wayside. When ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sexual, stage of the young man of twenty-one. It was the period when "young Germany's" device was the emancipation of sensuality. Wagner himself says that his "conception was mainly directed against Puritan cant, and led to the bold glorification of unrestrained sensuality. I was determined to understand the grave Shakespearean subject only in this sense." And in his "Autobiographical Sketch" he says: "I learned to love matter." In addition to this Wagner gives us the following ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... only an accident which gave me a clue to the real program. Mapes sent me back into the vacant space just forward of the paddle-wheel, seeking a lost cant-hook, and, as I turned about to return the missing tool in my hand, I paused a moment to glance curiously out through a slit in the boat's planking, attracted by the sound of a loud voice uttering ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... a man who had conceived a violent eccentric prejudice against negroes; and he was not content with chiming in with the usual cant of the prejudice that they ought not to be allowed in our churches and in our rail-road-cars, but vociferated, that, if he had his way, they should not be allowed in Africa! The advantage of grit in this respect is in its annihilating ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... already been made of Mark Twain's natural leaning toward ministers of the gospel, and the explanation of it is easier to realize than to convey. He was hopelessly unorthodox—rankly rebellious as to creeds. Anything resembling cant or the curtailment of mental liberty roused only his resentment and irony. Yet something in his heart always warmed toward any laborer in the vineyard, and if we could put the explanation into a ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine |
