"Dissimulation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for sobriety in his private station, and in the conduct of a supposed dissimulation, by which he aspired to sovereign power, than he continued to be, even on the throne of Indostan. Simple, abstinent, and severe in his diet, and other pleasures, he still led the life of a hermit, and occupied his time with ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... not pleasant to know that clandestine proceedings of this kind have been going on under my roof. I have no wish to say anything disrespectful of Miss Hood, but I am disposed to think that she has mistaken her vocation; such talents for dissimulation would ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... was equalled in ferocity by none among the princes of his time. Restlessly active, recognized as one of the most powerful political minds of the day, and free from the vices of the profligate, he concentrated all his powers, among which must be reckoned profound dissimulation and an irreconcilable spirit of vengeance, on the destruction of his opponents. He had been wounded in every point in which a ruler is open to offence; for the leaders of the barons, though related to him by marriage, ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... had less liberty and saw less of each other, and so the stills were pulled down, and the gardens given up. Raleigh was more closely watched, and entrapped. Then there was fencing and defencing, for nothing could stand against the King's persistent rancor, and Cecil's dissimulation. From time to time Sir Walter's titles, his offices, his Elizabethan monopolies and his appointments were all taken from him. All his emoluments were wanted for hungry favourites ; and finally the Sherburne estate which he had been permitted to entail on his son went by no higher law ...
— Thomas Hariot • Henry Stevens
... person was appointed to fill his station for the present. This person I had seen, and I liked him less by much than the one he succeeded: he had an Italian appearance, and he wore an air of Italian subtlety and dissimulation. I was surprised to find, on proposing the same service to him, and on the same terms, that he made no objection whatever, but closed instantly with my offers. In prudence, however, I had made this ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... who is called Madame de Cleves, far from pretending to be distressed, she is as joyous as ever, and wears new dresses every day, which argues either prudent dissimulation or stupid forgetfulness of what should so closely touch her heart. Be it as it may, it has thrown the poor ambassador of Cleves into a fever, who sends every day to ask if I have no ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... Living in an age when hypocrisy was looked upon with honor, and when falsehood was deemed a vice only when unsuccessful, he showed in all his dealings, whether with friends or foes, a steadfast integrity of purpose with an utter ignorance of the art of dissimulation. Not a stain can history fix upon his memory. Highly gifted as a statesman, courageous on the field of battle, ever courteous in diplomacy, and warm and sympathetic in the bosom of his family, his figure stands forth as ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... been partly made for those purposes; and that truth is a riddle for eyes and wit to discover, which it were a mere spoiling of sport for the tongue to betray. Still we have our limits beyond which we call dissimulation treachery. But it is said of the Greeks that their honesty begins at what is the hanging point with us, and that since the old Furies went to sleep, your Christian Greek is of so easy a conscience that he would make a stepping-stone of ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... must anyhow disappoint the director, as I had no choice but to return at once to Leipzig, where I had to put my affairs in order. This polite manner of tendering my absolute refusal to accept the appointment—a conclusion I had quickly arrived at in my own mind—forced me to practise some dissimulation, and made it necessary for me to appear as if I really had some other purpose in coming to Lauchstadt. This pretence in itself was quite unnecessary, seeing that I was quite determined never ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... hurt, more than either aspis or basiliscus, engendering and doing all things fraudulently, deceitfully, guilefully: which as Nimrods and such sturdy and stout hunters, being full of simulation and dissimulation before the Lord, deceive the children of light, and cumber them easily. Hunters go not forth in every man's sight, but do their affairs closely, and with use of guile and deceit wax every day more ...
— Sermons on the Card and Other Discourses • Hugh Latimer
... the Baron, the Queen had felt somewhat shocked at her own talent for dissimulation. "I little thought at Gablehurst that I should ever fib like this!" she reflected. "But I wasn't a Queen then! And I can't afford to be too particular, when it's a question of keeping ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... faithfully informed the young Quaker of the whole transaction, not sparing himself at all in the relation. Josiah was shocked and astonished at the depravity of heart, and the depth of dissimulation, that had been shown throughout this disgraceful affair; and, when George finished speaking, he grasped his ...
— The Little Quaker - or, the Triumph of Virtue. A Tale for the Instruction of Youth • Susan Moodie
... the errors of a young man, ambitious of glory, and deceived by the craft of Agesilaus. But finding Agis was suspicious, and not to be prevailed with to quit his sanctuary, he gave up that design; yet what could not then be effected by the dissimulation of an enemy, was soon after brought to pass by ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... affection which is equal to such a test certainly ought to be eternal. It is to be wondered at that women do not oftener employ it to judge of their lovers; a fool, an egoist, or a petty nature could never stand it. Philip the Second himself, the Alexander of dissimulation, would have told his secrets if condemned to a month's tete-a-tete in the country. Perhaps this is why kings seek to live in perpetual motion, and allow no one to see them more than fifteen minutes ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... and expressions by a severe etiquette, which precludes all violent and avowed display of passion, and which, but that the whole world are aware that this assumed complaisance is a matter of ceremony, might justly pass for profound dissimulation. It is no less certain, however, that the overstepping of these bounds of ceremonial, for the purpose of giving more direct vent to their angry passions, has the effect of compromising their dignity with the world in general; as was particularly noted when those distinguished rivals, Francis ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... on this account, chiefly, they ground their claims of right and possession. No public complaint having been made against their conduct, we have thought it more prudent to pass over, for the present, the enormities of this wicked race with dissimulation, than exasperate them by ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... practical Mr. Rushbrook that, even considered as a desirable business affair, the prospective completion of this contract provoked neither frank satisfaction nor conventional dissimulation on the part of the young lady, for he regarded her calm but slightly wearied expression fixedly. But he only said: "Then I shall say nothing of ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... for the asking. How it happened she did not yet know. Sometimes she thought it was because Mrs. Peniston had been too passive, and again she feared it was because she herself had not been passive enough. Had she shown an undue eagerness for victory? Had she lacked patience, pliancy and dissimulation? Whether she charged herself with these faults or absolved herself from them, made no difference in the sum-total of her failure. Younger and plainer girls had been married off by dozens, and she was ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... Dissimulation, to a certain degree, is as necessary in business as clothes are in the common intercourse of life; and a man would be as imprudent who should exhibit his inside naked, as he would be indecent if ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... direction of too rigid economy, but on a railway such as the Midland, and in a country such as Ireland, economy was and is an excellent thing, and if he erred, it was on the right side. Truth, candour, courage and enthusiasm marked his character in a high degree. Fearless in speech, the art of dissimulation he never learned. I shall not readily forget a speech he once made at the Railway Companies' Association in London. It was on an occasion of great importance, when all the principal companies of the United Kingdom were present. ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... somewhat less nervously; when, in fact, they were seen to be, at least in outward semblance, much as other men; some regard had to be paid to statements that could be checked by observation; and the Papist's disappointing ordinariness had to be attributed to dissimulation or to be otherwise interpreted into accord with the preposterous principles by which their lives were ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... affairs had never changed since the royal session of the 17th of March. The minister, persevering in his system of falsehood and dissimulation, still distorted the truth with the same impudence, and did not cease to predict the approaching destruction of Napoleon and his adherents. At length, after a thousand subterfuges, it became necessary to confess, that Napoleon was within ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... she was, in all the arts of cunning and dissimulation, the girl Nancy could not wholly conceal the effect which the knowledge of the step she had taken, wrought upon her mind. She remembered that both the crafty Jew and the brutal Sikes had confided to her schemes, which had been hidden from ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... the boundary that divides wise suspense in forming opinions, wise reserve in expressing them, and wise tardiness in trying to realise them, from unavowed disingenuousness and self-illusion, from voluntary dissimulation, and from indolence and pusillanimity. These are the three departments or provinces of compromise. Our subject is a question of boundaries.[1] And this question, being mainly one of time and circumstance, ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... Gray, descending the stairs with a two-year-old child in her arms, such a rosy, brown-eyed cherub of a child that an older and more hardened bachelor than Richard Kendrick need not have been suspected of dissimulation if he had stopped short in his course as Richard did, to admire ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... the vain attempt of inducing me to pardon him. With this view the marechale de Mirepoix, whose succour he had implored, observed to me that it was sometimes necessary to feign to overlook an insult; I replied, that dissimulation was an art I knew nothing of, nor did I wish ever to acquire it. "Really, my dear countess," cried she, "you should not live at court, you are absolutely unfit for it." "It may be so," replied I; "but I would rather quit Versailles altogether than be surrounded by false and perfidious ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... could have been so bad; his disgrace was richly deserved. Buckingham kept up appearances by saying a word for him from time to time in Parliament, which he knew would be useless, and which he certainly took no measures to make effective. It is sometimes said that Buckingham never knew what dissimulation was. He was capable, at least, of the perfidy and cowardice of utter selfishness. Bacon's conspicuous fall diverted men's thoughts from the far more scandalous wickedness of the great favourite. But though there was no plot, though the blow fell upon Bacon almost accidentally, ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... lax that any man could subscribe to them with undisturbed conscience, then they ceased to be any test at all. On the contrary, if they were hard and rigid, then they forced men to the most odious form of dissimulation. A declaration, if required by the Crown, was therefore substituted for the sacramental test, by which a person entering office pledged himself not to use its influence as a means for subverting the Established Church. On the motion of the Bishop of Llandaff, the words 'on the true faith ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... ever after"? A symposium entitled "Is Love Really Worth It?" by such distinguished characters as Helen of Troy, Mrs. Potiphar and Cleopatra, might be improving reading, if the ladies were capable of telling the truth after lives of dissimulation and deceit. ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... imagination, dashing draughtsmanship, colossal scale, something demonic and decisive in execution."[2245] Virtu meant the ability to win success. Machiavelli used it for force, cunning, courage, ability, and virility. "It was not incompatible with craft and dissimulation, or with the indulgence of sensual vices."[2246] Cellini used virtuoso to denote genius, artistic ability, and masculine force.[2247] "The Italian onore consisted partly of the credit attaching to public distinction and partly of a reputation ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... controversy, we shall have to take a wider view of the Emperor himself and of his policy towards the Christians generally. The life of Julian is one of the noblest wrecks in history. The years of painful self-repression and forced dissimulation which turned his bright youth to bitterness and filled his mind with angry prejudice, had only consolidated his self-reliant pride and firm determination to walk worthily before the gods. In four years his splendid energy and ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... Sidney was unequalled in this country. Vidocq may have been his superior in dissimulation, but in that alone. He certainly had not a tithe of Mr. Sidney's genius and strength of mind and moral power to discern the truth, though never so deeply hidden, and to expose it to the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... monarch, who professed to be a connoisseur in both. With these showy qualities, Alvaro de Luna united others of a more dangerous complexion. His insinuating address easily conciliated confidence, and enabled him to master the motives of others, while his own were masked by consummate dissimulation. He was as fearless in executing his ambitious schemes, as he was cautious in devising them. He was indefatigable in his application to business, so that John, whose aversion to it we have noticed, willingly reposed on him the ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... I was so taken up thinking of you and Maurice," says she, with a first (and most flagrant) attempt at dissimulation, "that I ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... also proved himself to be endowed with far more cleverness than Lecoq had supposed. What self-control! What powers of dissimulation he had displayed! He had not so much as frowned while undergoing the severest ordeals, and he had managed to deceive the most experienced eyes ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... according as our jealousy is or is not awake, or our aversion stimulated, are tokens of truth or of dissimulation and pretence. There is a story of a sane person being by mistake shut up in the wards of a Lunatic Asylum, and that, when he pleaded his cause to some strangers visiting the establishment, the only remark he elicited in answer was, "How naturally he talks! you would think he was in ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... surprise, Toussaint looked in the face of the envoy, observing that, for himself, he disclaimed all such passion and such dissimulation as his household ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... consequences, and we know that in ancient Greece dishonesty was openly and actually associated with happy consequences.... When the concentrated experience of previous generations was held, not indeed to justify, but to excuse by utilitarian considerations, craft, dissimulation, sensuality, selfishness." ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... Pepys' religion is the same in prosperous and adverse hours, a thing constantly in remembrance, and whose demands a gentleman can easily satisfy. But his conscience is of that sort which requires an audience, visible or invisible. He hates dissimulation in other people, but he himself is acting all the time. "But, good God! what an age is this, and what a world is this! that a man cannot live without playing ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... though they comprised crime and entailed horrors upon me from which woman naturally shrinks. I was hard as the nether millstone of which the Bible speaks, and went determinedly on in the path of dissimulation and crime which had been marked out for me, till we came to this inn. Then, owing, perhaps, to my long imprisonment in the dreadful box, I began to feel qualms of physical fear and such harrowing mental forebodings that more than once during ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... a view to elicit the good opinion of others, in the teeth of their daily life and practice, is nothing short of disgusting. "Oh, Geordie, jingling Geordie," said King James, in the novel, "it was grand to hear Baby Charles laying down the guilt of dissimulation, and Steenie lecturing ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... the court of the Bithynian Prusias—fitting end for villany and cruelty. Of his Italian victories I say nothing; they were the fruit not of honest legitimate warfare, but of treachery, craft, and dissimulation. He taunts me with self-indulgence: my illustrious friend has surely forgotten the pleasant time he spent in Capua among the ladies, while the precious moments fleeted by. Had I not scorned the Western world, and turned my attention to the East, ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... also a complete master of the art of dissimulation he did not deem it worth his while to exercise it among the young gentleman of his mess, and he had been but a short time on board His Majesty's ship Vixen, before he was very much feared, and very cordially ...
— Blackbeard - Or, The Pirate of Roanoke. • B. Barker
... You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing. But you should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded—with what caution—with what foresight—with what dissimulation I went to work! I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him. And every night, about midnight, I turned the latch of his door and opened it—oh so gently! And then, when I had made an ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... 25th of August, 1648; and to please the Court I told the Queen and Cardinal how the Parisians then stood affected, which they never knew before, through flattery and prejudice. I also complained to the Queen of the Cardinal's cunning and dissimulation, and made use of the same intimations which I had given to the Court to show the Parliament that I had done all in my power to clearly inform the Ministry of everything and to disperse the clouds always cast over their understandings by the interest of inferior ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... children, and that other sort of plaginism in catching our children away (may seem to heir some estate in those invisible dominions) which never return. For swearing and intemperance, they are not observed so subject to those irregularities, as to envy, spite, hypocrisy, lying, and dissimulation. ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... kind of enemies, who praise a man in order to render him obnoxious, the emperor Julian, who had himself suffered greatly by them, speaks feelingly in his 12th epistle to Basilius;—"For we live together not in that state of dissimulation, which, I imagine, you have hitherto experienced: in which those who praise you, hate you with a more confirmed aversion than your most ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... haunted. But, as a matter of fact, I never slept better. Possibly the lightness of the dinner (cooked by the small handmaid Lobelia) had something to do with it; possibly, too, the infectious somnolence of the two Admirals, who spoke but little during the meal, and nodded, without attempt at dissimulation, over the dessert. At any rate, shortly after nine o'clock—when Miss Wilhelmina brought out a heavy Church Service, and Uncle Melchior read the lesson and collect for the day and a few prayers, including the one "For those at Sea"—I ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... said nothing of dissimulation. I made no charge against you, and make none. Pray don't defend yourself to me. You swear that you are devoted to my beauty, and yet you are on the eve of matrimony with another. I feel this to be rather a compliment. It is to Mrs Bold that you must defend yourself. That you may find difficult; unless, ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... afraid my praise must stop, because I have seen among a great number of them a good deal of dissimulation, or, to speak more plainly, of bad faith,—with regard to which their modes of thinking are very different from those prevailing at home; and among their mercantile people especially, they often appear to imitate, or unconsciously to ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... Inspired: disdain not such access to me." To whom our Saviour, with unaltered brow:— "Thy coming hither, though I know thy scope, I bid not, or forbid. Do as thou find'st Permission from above; thou canst not more." He added not; and Satan, bowling low His gray dissimulation, disappeared, Into thin air diffused: for now began Night with her sullen wing to double-shade 500 The desert; fowls in their clay nests were couched; And now wild beasts came ...
— Paradise Regained • John Milton
... faith discloses to them a reflection of the glory of Mary in you, from those who behold in you simply a daughter of Eve. Their conversation, deportment and looks, everything in them, will serve you as an index to this discernment. It is very difficult for man to disguise his real sentiments—dissimulation costs nature too dearly—but there are two circumstances wherein his moral character betrays itself in a striking manner, namely, in the presence of God, and in the presence of woman. It is neither permitted nor possible ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi
... Glastonbury was in the flower-garden on one knee before a vase, over which he was training a creeper. He looked up as he heard the approach of Ferdinand. His presence and benignant smile in some degree stilled the fierce emotions of his pupil. Ferdinand felt that the system of dissimulation must now commence; besides, he was always careful to be most kind to Glastonbury. He would not allow that any attack of spleen, or even illness, could ever justify a careless look or expression ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... have been paralytic and bed-ridden The other cause may be found in the accidental but reasonable hostility of the Byzantine court to the first Crusaders, as also in the disadvantageous comparison with respect to manly virtues between the simplicity of these western children, and the refined dissimulation of the Byzantines.] as chiefly known by its effeminacy; and the greater is the ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... difficult to take one's eyes from him. Had he been endowed with physical strength he would have been a terror to his comrades, exercising by fear the ascendancy which Pierre owed to his joyous temper and unwearied gaiety, for this mean exterior concealed extraordinary powers of will and dissimulation. Guided by instinct, the other children hung about Pierre and willingly accepted his leadership; by instinct also they avoided Antoine, repelled by a feeling of chill, as if from the neighbourhood of a ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... When, therefore, with the quiet step peculiar to his race, he glided into her hut, just before the setting of the sun, he had chased the traces of passion from his brow, and met her with a calm and satisfied mien. So perfect was the dissimulation that even one less guileless than the woman would have been deceived. In the present case, the preoccupation of her mind in Holden's favor ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... them; will you give me a little sketch of his conversation?" "Most willingly," said I, and accordingly related the whole. When I had concluded, she shook her head, and replied, "Beware, my friend, of his arts. Your own heart is too sincere to suspect treachery and dissimulation in another; but suffer not your ear to be charmed by the siren voice of flattery, nor your eye to be caught by the phantom of gayety and pleasure. Remember your engagements to Mr. Boyer. Let sincerity and virtue be your guides, and they will lead you to happiness and peace." ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... in "Sophonisba," he would be a portentous ruffian if he had a little more life in him; he has to do the deeds and express the emotions of a most bloody and crafty miscreant; but it is only now and then that we catch the accent of a real man in his tones of cajolery or menace, dissimulation or triumph. Andrugio, the venerable and heroic victim of his craft and cruelty, is a figure not less living and actual than stately and impressive: the changes of mood from meditation to passion, from resignation to revolt, from tenderness to resolution, ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... buy the Rump's great saddle, With which it jockey'd the nation? And here is the bit and the bridle, And curb of dissimulation; And here's the trunk-hose of the Rump, And their fair dissembling cloak; And a Presbyterian jump, With an Independent smock. Says ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... well it appeared to be taken off the marquis's hand for the present, yet it appeared afterwards that this godly freedom was never forgot, until it was again repaid him with the highest resentment (such was the way to hearken to his counsel); for if debauchery and dissimulation had ever been accounted among the liberal sciences, then this prince was altogether a master ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... men friends that such half-concealed encouragements, such evasions and drawings back are a necessary part of the love-play—the woman's unconscious testing of the fussy male. There is one friend, a doctor, who tells me that the woman's dissimulation of her own inclination has come to be a secondary sexual characteristic, a manifestation of the operation of sexual selection, diluted, perhaps, and altered by civilisation, but an essential feature in every courtship, so that the woman ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... wonder the girl spoke so well—she spoke in such a good cause. "She is very graceful, has a fine command of language; her father says it's a natural gift." Ransom saw that he should not in the least discover Mrs. Farrinder's real opinion, and her dissimulation added to his impression that she was a woman with a policy. It was none of his business whether in her heart she thought Verena a parrot or a genius; it was perceptible to him that she saw she would be effective, would help the cause. He stood almost ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... imagined he had discovered in his brother; and not without some exultation in his own rhetoric, which, he supposed had gained no inconsiderable victory. ALMORAN, in the mean time, applauded himself for having thus far practised the arts of dissimulation with success; fortified himself in the resolutions he had before taken; and conceived new malevolence and ...
— Almoran and Hamet • John Hawkesworth
... adapting itself to its environment by imitating the objects around it, at least in the matter of colouring. We are told that it uses this faculty to baffle its foes, or else to approach its prey without alarming it. Finding itself the better for this dissimulation, a source of prosperity indeed, each race, sifted by the struggle for life, is considered to have preserved those best-endowed with mimetic powers and to have allowed the others to become extinct, thus ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... healthy, sturdy beggars, who, lost to every sense of shame, had embraced the profession from choice, not necessity; and who, not unfrequently, added insolence and threats to their importunity, and extorted that from fear, which they could not procure by their arts of dissimulation. ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... a hand across his brow. The gesture seemed to express perplexity; in truth it covered amusement and a kind of fearful joy in his newly-found talent for dissimulation. ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... happiness. I say apparently, for the greatest source of human misery is not in external circumstances, but in men themselves—in their depraved inclinations, their wayward passions and perverse wills. Here is room for all the petty competition, the envy, hatred, malice and dissimulation that torture the heart in what may be supposed the most sophisticated states of society; and though less marked and offensive, there may be much of ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... caution, and endeavoured to charm Charlie over to their views by showing him great attention, by trying to make things pleasant for him, by flattering him with notice, and seeming to welcome him cordially as one of themselves. Their dissimulation was profound; at first the new boy found everything quite delightful, and before a week was over had caught, as they meant him to catch, the spirit of party, and always was ready to stick up for the Noelites as the best house in the school. So far so good; but this was only the first ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... I make myself worse than I am in my health, and better than I am in my penitence, it is fit I should be punished for my double dissimulation: and you have the pleasure of being one of my punishers. My sincerity in both respects will, however, be best justified by the event. To that I refer.—May Heaven give you always as much comfort in reflecting upon the reprobation I have met with, as you seem to have pleasure in mortifying ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... enemies who affect to say otherwise? Such a Constitutional circular is despatched by Couriers, is communicated confidentially to the Assembly, and printed in all Newspapers; with the finest effect. (Moniteur, Seance du 23 Avril, 1791.) Simulation and dissimulation mingle extensively ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... did not allow King Charles IX to have much share in the government of France at that period. She had an Italian love of dissimulation, and followed the methods of the rulers of petty Italian states in her policy, which was to play off one rival faction against another. Henry of Guise led the Catholic party against the Huguenots, whose leaders ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... and such as our fathers wont to call men of their hands, of which sort he had many brave gentlemen that followed him; yet not taken for a popular or dangerous person." Though extremely choleric, he was honest, and not at all malicious. It was said of him that "his Latin and his dissimulation were both alike," equally bad, and that "his custom in swearing and obscenity in speech made him seem a ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... Russian Government to accept the Vienna note on the express ground—I give the exact words—that 'its general sense differed in nothing from the sense of the original propositions of Prince Menchikoff.' Why, Sir, can there be dissimulation more extraordinary—can there be guilt more conclusive than that this Government should act as it did, after it had recommended the Emperor of Russia to accept the Vienna note? For the noble Lord has told us, over and over again, that the Government ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... acting—masking with her admirable art some emotion secret from him. He knew this—felt it intuitively, though he did not understand; and the knowledge affected him poignantly. What place had dissimulation in their understanding? Why need she affect what she did ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... Charley with a demure grin, that was highly creditable to his powers of dissimulation. "Where ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... or dissembling whatever he wished —Cujuslibet, rei simulator ac dissimulator. "Dissimulation is the negative, when a man lets fall signs and arguments, that he is not that he is; simulation is the affirmative, when a man industriously and expressly feigns and pretends to be that he is ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust
... himselfe from my servyce of teaching Arthur grammer. Sept. 3rd, my lord and lady cam to Trebon. Sept. 12th, spes confirmata. Sept. 15th, the Lord Chamberlain cam to Trebona, and went away on the 17th. The rancor and dissimulation now evident to me, God deliver me! ...
— The Private Diary of Dr. John Dee - And the Catalog of His Library of Manuscripts • John Dee
... so superior to his dissimulation that the smile quite broke down and gave way to another of deprecatory and apologetic distress. He ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... about his reticence on the previous night would have been rather allayed than stimulated had I not noticed that a page had been torn out of the book just at this point. The frayed edge left had been pruned and picked into very small limits; but dissimulation was not Davies's strong point, and a child could have seen that a leaf was missing, and that the entries, starting from the evening of 9th September (where a page ended), had been written together at one sitting. I was on the point ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... established his sonne, began to deuise waies how to assure the state more stronglie to his said sonne. And hearing that his sonne in law Constantine was minded to come into Italie against him, he purposed to practise Constantines destruction, insomuch that it was iudged by this [Sidenote: Dissimulation.] which followed, that Herculeus Maximianus did but for a colour seeme to mislike that which his said son Maxentius had doone, to the end he might the sooner accomplish his intent for the dispatching of Constantine ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (4 of 8) - The Fovrth Booke Of The Historie Of England • Raphael Holinshed
... pleasant; his reflections just and modest; his repartees close—not scurrilous; he had a great deal of wit, and no malice. His mind was large and noble—above the little designs of most men; an enemy to dissimulation, and never feared to own his thoughts. He was a true Englishman, and lover of the liberties of his country, and declared it in the worst of times. He was an enemy to nothing but error, and none were his enemies that knew him, but those who ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... work, and his constant habit of facing truth in its most uncompromising forms, had made dissimulation almost impossible to him; and added to that, situated as he was, there was no necessity for it. Colston knew of his love, and the Princess had guessed it long ago. Did Natasha know his open secret? Of that he hardly dared to be sure, ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... indeed, and then his Goodness will appear to every body's Satisfaction; so that upon all accounts Sincerity is true Wisdom. Particularly as to the Affairs of this World, Integrity hath many Advantages over all the fine and artificial ways of Dissimulation and Deceit; it is much the plainer and easier, much the safer and more secure way of dealing in the World; it has less of Trouble and Difficulty, of Entanglement and Perplexity, of Danger and Hazard in it; it is the shortest ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... for man, called The Truth. Why was it called The Truth? How could such an idea arise? Many persons will be weak enough to fancy that, as [Greek: hopoetes] was sometimes an artifice of rhetoric for expressing the exclusive supremacy of Homer, and as by a pure affectation and movement of dissimulation a man was called by the title of The Orator, his own favourite Greek or Roman thus affecting for the moment to know of no other (for all such emphatic and exclusive uses of the imply a momentary annihilation ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... Chanones. Me. What you tell me of *Amphybyanes, [*Amphybyanes be thynges doutfull.] suche as ye mostre *Fyber is.[*Fyber is a beste of ye see & ye land.] Ogy. No thay be rather suche as the *Cocatrice. [*A Cocatrice wil kyll a man with a loke,] But withowt dissimulation, I shall put you owt of this dowte in thre wordes. To them that thay hate, thay be Chanones, and to them that thay loue thay be Monkes Menede. Yet yowe doo nat open thys redle. Ogy. || I shall paynte it before youre eyes, if the bysshope of Rome doo shot hys thonderbowlt amogst ...
— The Pilgrimage of Pure Devotion • Desiderius Erasmus
... perforce Leave him in wardship to his innocence. His young and open soul—dissimulation Is foreign to its habits! Ignorance Alone can keep alive the cheerful air, 115 The unembarrassed sense and light free spirit, That ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... their eyes conject upon princes, whose acts and doings not only be observed in the mouths of them that now do live, but also remain in such perpetual memory to our posterity [so that] the evil, if any there be, cannot but appear and come to light, there is no reason for toleration, no place for dissimulation; but [there is reason] more deeply, highly, and profoundly to penetrate and search for the truth, so that the same may vanquish and overcome, and all guilt, craft, and falsehood ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... you can never do!" said Glazzard, deliberately. "You enter upon a lifetime of dissimulation. Ten, twenty years hence you will have to act as careful a part as on the day when you and she first present yourselves ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... their more pious brethren to continue, during the term of a year, the care and service of the sick. In these acts of mercy the virtue of Saladin deserves our admiration and love: he was above the necessity of dissimulation, and his stern fanaticism would have prompted him to dissemble, rather than to affect, this profane compassion for the enemies of the Koran. After Jerusalem had been delivered from the presence of the strangers, the sultan made his triumphal entry, his banners waving in the wind, and to the harmony ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... on a level with the task we propose for him, he the height of man above it. 'Tis clear that vanity will trip him, but honesty is a strong upholder; and he is one that hath the spirit of enterprise and the mask of dissimulation: gratitude I observe in him; and it is as I thought when I came upon him on the sand-hill outside the city, that his star is clearly in a web with our star, he destined ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... big as his soul—could have acted like this—with that profound simplicity, with such resignation, with such horrible moderation—But I wanted to find out more. "And when would you want me to go?" I asked, with a dissimulation of which I would not have suspected myself capable a moment before. I was maturing in the fire of love, of danger; in the lurid light of life piercing through ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... in stead of a crowne, and he put the same on the head of our Captaine, and tooke from his wrists two bracelets of Esnoguy, and put them vpon the Captaines armes, colling him about the necke, and shewing vnto him great signes of ioy: which was all dissimulation, as afterward it wel appeared. The captaine tooke the said crowne of leather and put it againe vpon his head, and gaue him and his wiues certaine smal presents, signifying vnto him that he had brought certaine new things, which afterward he would bestow vpon him: ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... not conceal his thankfulness at escaping the cross-examination which he had anticipated with the dread natural to one wholly unpractised in dissimulation. ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... ability of the Indian women, a good specimen is given by McKenney, in an amusing story of one who went to Washington, and acted her part there in the "first circles," with a tact and sustained dissimulation worthy of Cagliostro. She seemed to have a thorough love of intrigue for its own sake, and much dramatic talent. Like the chiefs of her nation, when on an expedition among the foe, whether for revenge ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... his association might be kept secret: 'For though, I thank God, I have no other meaning than becometh an honest man in any of my actions, yet that which were another man's Pater noster, would be accounted in me a charm.' Ralegh's views and character obliged him to no bashful dissimulation of the practice. To him privateering seemed strictly legal, and unequivocally laudable. He boasted in 1586 that he had consumed the best part of his fortune in abating the tyrannous prosperity of Spain. He acted as much in defence and retaliation ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... main, desire to do judgment and justice to all men; but, as the whole system of morality had been by this time undermined by the teaching of the Romish Church, the idea of justice had become separated from that of truth, so that dissimulation in the interest of the state assumed the aspect of duty. We had, perhaps, better consider, with some carefulness, the mode in which our own government is carried on, and the occasional difference between parliamentary ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... much blame-worthy, unlesse it be on ground he layes in the second Chapter; whereupon hee builds most of this Fabrick, viz. That Subjects must either be dallyed or flatterd withall, or quite crusht. Whereby our Author advises his Prince to support his authority with two Cardinall Vertues, Dissimulation, and Cruelty. He considers not herein that the head is but a member of the body, though the principall; and the end of the parts is the good of the whole. And here he goes against himselfe in the twenty sixt Chapter of his Rep. 1. 1. where hee blames Philip of Macedon for such courses, terming ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... back at unscrupulous competitors or antagonists, and who innately was opposed to underhand work or fraud in any form. Vanderbilt is in every case portrayed as an eminently high-minded man who never stooped to dissimulation, deceit or treachery, and whose first millions, at any rate, were made in the legitimate ways of trade as they ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... more startling sign of the times is exhibited by the device-loving bishop. He relates that one Mattei, a man of noble courage, when waiting with dissimulation and patience an opportunity to murder a person by whom he had been insulted, applied to him (Jovius) for an appropriate device; and the bishop, 'wishing to shew that a noble mind has power to digest, with time, every grievous injury,' designed an ostrich devouring a nail, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various
... they came, he drew back and separated himself, fearing them that were of the circumcision. And the rest of the Jews [the Jewish Christians] dissembled likewise with him; insomuch that even Barnabas was carried away with their dissimulation. But when I saw that they walked not uprightly according to the truth of the gospel, I said unto Cephas before them all, If thou, being a Jew, livest as do the Gentiles, and not as do the Jews, how compellest thou the Gentiles to live as do ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... she had never uttered a word of counsel or rebuke. She had been coldly, distantly courteous, and as she had prophesied, met with at least the semblance of respect. It was more than the semblance, it was the reality. Mittie disdained dissimulation, and from the moment her step-mother asserted her own dignity, she felt it. Mrs Gleason would have lifted up her warning voice, but she knew it would be disregarded, and moreover, she had pledged herself to neutrality, unless admonition or counsel ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... who could not be depended on to preserve a secret? or a person who was as artful as Mr. Bygrave himself, and who was kept in reserve to forward the object of some new deception which was yet to come? In the first two cases, Mrs. Lecount could trust in her own powers of dissimulation, and in the results which they might achieve. In the last case (if no other end was gained), it might be of vital importance to her to discover an enemy hidden in the dark. In any event, she determined to run the risk. Of ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... Young. Buchanan and others had not quite succeeded in bringing him to scorn and hate his mother; Lady Mar, who was very kind to him, had exercised a gentler influence. The boy had read much, had hunted yet more eagerly, and had learned dissimulation and distrust, so natural to a child weak and ungainly in body and the conscious centre of the intrigues of violent men. A favourite of his was James Stewart, son of Lord Ochiltree, and brother-in-law of John Knox. Stewart was Captain of the Guard, a man of learning, who had been ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... say that you more than any other were cause of the state of war that now exists, and that your flattering of me is but dissimulation. ...
— Poet Lore, Volume XXIV, Number IV, 1912 • Various
... proceeded from his own family. Robert, his eldest son, surnamed Gambaron or Curthose, from his short legs, was a prince who inherited all the bravery of his family and nation; but without that policy and dissimulation, by which his father was so much distinguished, and which, no less than his military valour, had contributed to his great successes. Greedy of fame, impatient of contradiction, without reserve in his friendships, declared in his enmities, this prince could endure ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... so steep a height, That all the world she might command with sleight Of her gay wings; and then she bade her haste,— Since Hero had dissembled, and disgraced 310 Her rites so much,—and every breast infect With her deceits: she made her architect Of all dissimulation; and since then Never was any trust in maids or men. O, it spited Fair Venus' heart to see her most delighted, And one she choos'd, for temper of her mind To be the only ruler of her kind, So soon to let her virgin race be ended! Not simply for the fault a whit ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... was at first trusted with this negotiation was the Duchess of Orleans. She was at this time about five-and-twenty, "a singular mixture of discretion, or rather dissimulation, with rashness and petulance; of exceeding haughtiness, with a winning sweetness of manner and disposition which gained all hearts." She was not, however, exactly pretty or well made, but had the dazzlingly fair complexion of an Englishwoman, "un teint de rose et de jasmin," a profusion of light ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... the palace, adorned with the ensigns of royalty, and, preceded by his lictors, went to despatch some affairs that related to the public safety, still pretending that he took all his instructions from the king. This scene of dissimulation continued for some days, till he had made his party good among the nobles; when, the death of Tarquin being publicly ascertained, Ser'vius came to the crown, solely at the senate's appointment, and without attempting to gain the ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... hatred of brutality, that by universal agreement his manners were distinguished for exquisite suavity: the tiger's heart was masked by the most insinuating and snaky refinement. All his acquaintances afterwards described his dissimulation as so ready and so perfect, that if, in making his way through the streets, always so crowded on a Saturday night in neighborhoods so poor, he had accidentally jostled any person, he would (as they were all ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... been schooled in the art of acting, but not in the art of dissimulation; she had been of the world without having been worldly; and sometimes she was as frank and simple as a child. And worldliness makes a buffer in times like these. Cathewe thanked God for his own shell, toughened as it had been in ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... therefore the obligation to speak truth was not paramount or intrinsical: that my duty is modelled on a knowledge and foresight of the conduct of others; and that, since men in their actual state, are infirm and deceitful, a just estimate of consequences may sometimes make dissimulation my duty were truths that did not speedily occur. The discovery, when made, appeared to be a joint work. I saw nothing in Ludlow but proofs of candour, and ...
— Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist - (A Fragment) • Charles Brockden Brown
... caterpillar attacks their roots, so that they all grow black and wither away suddenly. I fall upon him and tell him that he is to blame. He protests that he cannot control underground caterpillars. He knows that I suspect, and I suspect that he knows, but a veil of dissimulation, however transparent, averts a crisis, so we fence for a time till he understands clearly that, when he propagates my plants, he must reserve a ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... to know, What affair could make strangers press upon a solitude which we, who are to inhabit this place, have devoted to Heaven and our own thoughts?"— "Madam," replies Rake, (with an air of great distance, mixed with a certain indifference, by which he could dissemble dissimulation) "your great intention has made more noise in the world than you design it should; and we travellers, who have seen many foreign institutions of this kind, have a curiosity to see, in its first rudiments, this seat of primitive ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... who make truth their highest aim, make children untruthful. I watched a child who was severely punished for denying something he had unconsciously done, and noted how under the influence of this senseless punishment he developed extreme dissimulation. ...
— The Education of the Child • Ellen Key
... complaint. He has therefore here in Berlin a host of spies charged with watching every word, movement, and step of your majesty. Oh, believe me, you are at all hours in danger of seizure and secret removal. I am familiar with the whole plot; by means of bribery, dissimulation, and cunning, I have wormed myself into the confidence of, and gained over to my side, some of these spies. They have informed me that every day, shortly before nightfall, a closed carriage drives up ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... "And I thought just now that all was too meagre and too poor! Miserable dupe that I am! Below, all is arranged for the eyes of comers and goers. Here, everything is intended exclusively for themselves. Now, I recognize Martial's astonishing talent for dissimulation. He loves this vile creature so much that he is anxious in regard to her reputation; he keeps his visits to her a secret, and this is the hidden paradise of their love. Here they laugh at me, the poor forsaken wife, whose ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... door open and executed his politest bow—and was clever enough to pretend that he saw nothing of his visitor's agitation. Yet deep within himself he felt more tremors than one, and it needed all his powers of dissimulation to act and speak as if this were the most usual ...
— The Talleyrand Maxim • J. S. Fletcher
... by Thomas puts an imputation upon General Sherman that he ought not to bear. Of the thousands that one may meet in a lifetime, General Sherman was among the freest from anything in the nature of hypocrisy or dissimulation. Of those who knew him intimately after the close of the war there are but few, probably, who did not hear him speak with hostility and bitterness of the Catholic Church. For myself I can say that I heard him speak in terms of contempt ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... blood, mingled gayly in these festivities, and vied with each other in the exchange of courtly greetings and polished flatteries. Catharine and Charles IX. lavished, with the utmost profusion, their commendations and attentions upon the young Prince of Navarre, and left no arts of dissimulation unessayed which might disarm the fears and win the ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... in the camp, he was christened by the soldiers Caligula, from the soldier's boots (caligae) which he wore. By shrewd dissimulation he preserved his life through the reign of Tiberius, and was left heir to the throne along with the emperor's grandson. But, deceiving the senate by his pretended moderation, he was appointed ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... himself such an expert in dissimulation. He shook his head knowingly, and enquired of Donovan if he would take the ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... many as possible to the royal crown. However in regard to this there was trouble enough, for once an office-holder stated in public that, at this rate, all the Indians would belong to the royal crown, and it became necessary to use dissimulation. ...
— The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol. 4 of 55 - 1576-1582 • Edited by E. H. Blair and J. A. Robertson
... fact even in matters of doctrine, how much more in all departments of practice! He that cannot withal keep his mind to himself cannot practise any considerable thing whatever. And we call it 'dissimulation,' all this? What would you think of calling the general of an army a dissembler because he did not tell every corporal and private soldier, who pleased to put the question, what his thoughts were about everything?—Cromwell, I should ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... however, in his frequent visits to the Fleet, persisted in saying that I was a poor-spirited creature, a mere tool in Brough's hands, and had not saved a shilling. Opinions, however, differed; and I believe it was considered by the turnkeys that I was a fellow of exquisite dissimulation, who had put on the appearance of poverty in order more effectually to ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a great deal about his speech at Derry, and said that so many of his friends were aware of the change in his opinions that he thought it more fair and manly to declare them at once in public than to use any dissimulation with his constituents and leave them to be guessed at, as if he dared not own them; that he had made a great sacrifice, for he had risked his seat, which was very secure before, and had quarrelled with Peel, with his family, and with all his old political ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... believe that green tea was colored by salts of copper, on copper plates, having doubtless learned that their were European merchants who would not be deterred from vending poisonous foods provided a good fat profit attended the transaction. In short, they practiced some of the dissimulation and tricks of trade to which many merchants ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.
... of all her efforts, and how much would she not have borne, ventured, and suffered for its attainment! How many intrigues were planned, how much cunning and dissimulation, flattery, and hypocrisy, had been employed for that purpose, and all, ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... and drew no comment. But the other! That one had been postmarked at the capital, and as he had sat at his counter at the post-office waiting for closing time he bad turned it over and over with many ejaculations and futile guesses. Past master of dissimulation that he was, he had made up his mind—if he should find Cynthia at home—to lay the letters indifferently on the table and walk into his bedroom. This campaign he now proceeded ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Rousseau condemns the stage upon the same principle. "It is, says he, the art of dissimulation—of assuming a foreign character, and of appearing differently from what a man really is—of flying into a passion without a cause, and of saying what he does not think, as naturally as if he really did—in a word of forgetting himself ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... tax-payers by the communes; from which it follows that on the budget of 1791 and throughout that year, the tax-payer has paid nothing.—At last, in 1792, everybody begins to receive this assessment. It would require a volume to set forth the partiality and dissimulation of these assessments. In the first place the office of assessor is one of danger; the municipal authorities, whose duty it is to assign the quotas, are not comfortable in their town quarters. Already, in ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... rage came into Eagle Claw's face, for Swanson had married his own sister, and such an insult was not to be brooked. But with all the powers of dissimulation which the Indian possesses, he forced a smile to his lips, and, blandly speaking, pointed to the thongs around ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... into those clear eyes. Your eyes would begin to quail before you had looked long into the fourth shepherd's deep eyes; but those eyes of his have no cause to quail under yours. This man has nothing to hide from you. He never had. He loves you, and his love to you is wholly without dissimulation. He absolutely and unreservedly means and intends by you and yours all that he has ever said to you and yours, and much more than he has ever been able to say. The owner of those deep blue eyes is as true to you when he is among your enemies as he is true to the truth itself when he is among ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... that I have not the nerves to enter their synagogues. Old prejudices cling about me. I cannot shake off the story of Hugh of Lincoln. Centuries of injury, contempt, and hate, on the one side,—of cloaked revenge, dissimulation, and hate, on the other, between our and their fathers, must, and ought, to affect the blood of the children. I cannot believe it can run clear and kindly yet; or that a few fine words, such as candour, liberality, the light of a nineteenth century, can close up the breaches of so deadly ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... were committed by themselves personally, or by others at their instigation. He resolved, therefore, to sound Pizarro, and to discover his sentiments on this subject, which he did with wonderful artifice and dissimulation. One day he pretended to be overcome with extreme grief, weeping and sobbing, and refusing to eat or drink, or to speak with any one. When Pizarro inquired the cause of this distress, he allowed himself to be long intreated ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... his lips. It seemed useless to carry the fight further. He stood with one foot over the brink and momentum at his back. Then when another moment would have ended his campaign of dissimulation his wife spoke again, and the man's brain reeled—but this time with an incredulous reversal of emotion. Some ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... to the heart as he remembered the horrible things that have been done by women since that day upon which Eve was created to be Adam's companion and help-meet in the garden of Eden. "What if this woman's hellish power of dissimulation should be stronger than the truth, and crush him? She had not spared George Talboys when he stood in her way and menaced her with a certain peril; would she spare him who threatened her with a far greater danger? Are women merciful, or loving, ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... part admirably, showing that a young girl, however simple and naive, has the instinct of dissimulation, which only ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... confession of all your misbehaviour, is the only attonement you can make, and that I can expect from you:—remember I have signed your pardon for all that is past, but shall not include in it any future acts of disobedience, among which, dissimulation, evasion or concealment, in what I demand to be laid open, I shall look upon as of the worst and ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... policy, imported from Florence with Catherine of Medicis, your wicked disciple, produced in France such a government, such dissimulation, such perfidy, such violent, ruthless counsels, as threw that whole kingdom into the utmost confusion, and ended my life, even in the palace of my sovereign, ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... dared to turn him out, he, who had half-imposed his native tongue upon us, constraining the household to a hideous jargon, the bastard growth of two languages, condescended to jerk us back rudely into our own speech once more, mastering it with a readiness that proved his former dissimulation, and using it henceforward as the sole vehicle of his wishes. On his past life he remained silent; but took occasion to confide in me that he proposed embracing a military career, as soon as he should tire of ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... God) with dreadfull feare, and enraged his minde with bloudy fury, 1. Sam. 16. 14. Entred into Iudas, prouoked him to betray his maister, dispaire and hang himselfe, Math. 27. 3. filled the heart of Ananias and Saphira with dissimulation,Act. 5. 3. possessed the bodies of many really, as is manifest in the History of the Gospell. Our Sauiour Christ assureth vs, that a daughter of Abraham was bound for 18 yeares by Sathan, with such a spirit of infirmitie, as bowed together, shee could in ...
— A Treatise of Witchcraft • Alexander Roberts
... poverty; no contracts, no succession, no dividences; no occupation, but idle; no respect of kindred, but common; no apparel, but natural; no manuring of lands; no use of wine, corn, or metal. The very words that import lying, falsehood, treason, dissimulation, covetousness, envy, detraction, and pardon were never heard ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... Quin is, certainly, one of the best bred men in the kingdom. He is not only a most agreeable companion but (as I am credibly informed) a very honest man; highly susceptible of friendship, warm, steady, and even generous in his attachments, disdaining flattery, and incapable of meanness and dissimulation. Were I to judge, however, from Quin's eye alone, I should take him to be proud, insolent, and cruel. There is something remarkably severe and forbidding in his aspect; and, I have been told, he was ever ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... kindness of the honest schoolmaster, the affectionate earnestness of his speech and manner, the truth which was stamped upon his every word and look, gave the child a confidence in him, which the utmost arts of treachery and dissimulation could never have awakened in her breast. She told him all—that they had no friend or relative—that she had fled with the old man, to save him from a madhouse and all the miseries he dreaded—that she was flying ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... happy to hear this, and to find hostilities were again likely to be deferred. Though we well knew the character of these men, and that they were capable of the most treacherous acts, and the deepest dissimulation, yet, their thus throwing themselves into our power, with the olive branch in their hands, was irresistible; and we received them with all the pomp we were capable of. We ordered a pig to be killed for the feast, and requested ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... (such as that justice is), though he had the cunning for a short disguise, he had not the hypocrisy to maintain systematic deceit. He could play a part for a while, from an exulting joy in his own address; but he could not wear a mask with the patience of cold-blooded dissimulation. Why enter into painful details, so easily divined by the intelligent reader? The faults of the son were precisely those to which Roland would be least indulgent. To the ordinary scrapes of high-spirited boyhood no ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... friars had fallen short of. They went about preaching from village to village, and the civil authority was alarmed by the political and religious theories expounded to the people by these wanderers, who journeyed "from county to county, and from town to town, in certain habits under dissimulation of great holiness, without license of our Holy Father the Pope, or of the ordinary of the diocese."[709] Wyclif justified these unlicensed preachings by the example of St. Paul, who, after his conversion, "preechide fast, and axide ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... country to gratify a mad ambition, and waded through a sea of blood to the mastership of the world. Augustus was a profound statesman, and a successful general; but he was stained with the arts of dissimulation and an intense ambition, and sacrificed public liberties and rights to cement his power. Even Diocletian, tyrant and persecutor as he was, was distinguished for masterly abilities, and was the greatest statesman whom the empire saw, with the exception of Augustus. Such a despot as Tiberius ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... no brilliancy of genius, no tact or talent in business, and no amount of success, will compensate for duplicity, shuffling, and trickery. There may be apparent advantage in the art and practice of dissimulation, and in violating those great principles which lie at the foundation of truth and duty; but it will at length be seen that a dollar was lost where a cent was gained; that present successes are outweighed, a thousand-fold, by the pains and ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... arrival at Tholouse, and now that she was removed from him, and in uncertainty, she perceived all the interest he held in her heart. Before she saw Valancourt she had never met a mind and taste so accordant with her own, and, though Madame Cheron told her much of the arts of dissimulation, and that the elegance and propriety of thought, which she so much admired in her lover, were assumed for the purpose of pleasing her, she could scarcely doubt their truth. This possibility, however, faint as ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... returning from my first inspection of the picture, refrained from imparting to Eleanor my opinion of its value. Eleanor is porous, and I knew that sooner or later the unnecessary truth would exude through the loose texture of her dissimulation. Not infrequently she thus creates the misery she alleviates; and I have sometimes suspected her of paining people in order that she might be sorry for them. I had, at all events, cut off retreat in Eleanor's direction; and the remaining alternative ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... and one (by his own confession to me) that can put on two several faces, and look his enemies in the face with as much love as his friends. But, good God! what an age is this, and what a world is this! that a man cannot live without playing the knave and dissimulation. ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... the edge of the sword. A Judgment of God upon them, no doubt, for their dissembling in that matter. All manner of lying and dissembling is dreadfull, but to make God and Religion a Disguise, therewith to blind thy Dissimulation from others eyes, is highly provoking to ...
— The Life and Death of Mr. Badman • John Bunyan
... when the dish comes in and one rapidly notes the disparity between the paucity of its contents and the vast and eager anticipation of the company. For it is useless to attempt to conceal greed when mushrooms arrive. A certain amount of dissimulation has mercifully been given by a wise Providence to all of us for the lubrication of the cogs of daily life; but it does not extend so far as this. And particularly so if the mushrooms have been fried in butter. Stewed they are not of course to be undervalued, especially if ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 30, 1914 • Various
... Thuringians, though they had some time since received permission to cross the river, were still wandering up and down the banks, being hindered by a twofold obstacle; first, that in consequence of the mischievous dissimulation of the said generals they were not supplied with the necessary provisions; and also because they were designedly detained that they might the more easily be plundered under the wicked semblance ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... fool you then. What do you read on the Senator's surface? Simplicity; a kind of rank and protuberant simplicity; whereas, in fact, that's one of the deepest minds in the world. A perfectly honest man—an absolutely honest and honorable man— and yet without doubt the profoundest master of dissimulation the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... every conscience leaves a sting, May be by man employ'd on one, whose trust He wins, or on another who withholds Strict confidence. Seems as the latter way Broke but the bond of love which Nature makes. Whence in the second circle have their nest Dissimulation, witchcraft, flatteries, Theft, falsehood, simony, all who seduce To lust, or set their honesty at pawn, With such vile scum as these. The other way Forgets both Nature's general love, and that Which thereto added afterwards gives birth To special faith. Whence in the ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... vice of age—a love for money, which was insatiable. I must acknowledge that the company and mode of living were more to my satisfaction than the vigils, hard fare, and constant prayer, with which the old man had threatened me, when I proposed to enter the community, and I soon became an adept in dissimulation and hypocrisy, and a great ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... go farther in your lofty pride, and, without hesitation, lay bare your whole heart? You are too prone to dissimulation. Do not unsay anything you once said. Be brief, be brief, lay aside all scruples; say that his passion has kindled yours, that his presence ...
— Don Garcia of Navarre • Moliere
... upon himself the ill-will of those who had been unfortunately the subjects of his mirth; but enemies so provoked, he thought it beneath him to regard or to pacify; for he was fiery, but not malicious, disdained dissimulation, and in his gay or serious hours, preserved a settled detestation of falsehood. So that he was an open and undisguised friend or enemy, entirely unacquainted with the artifices of flatterers, but so judicious in the choice of friends, and ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... English, except those on the eastern shore of the Chesapeak, who were not trusted with the plan, were successively gained over; and, notwithstanding the perpetual intercourse between them and the white people, the most impenetrable secrecy was observed. So deep and dark was their dissimulation, that they were accustomed to borrow boats from the English to cross the river, in order to concert and ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... between whom there is no love lost, make the discovery that they are rivals, one of them, I can't say which, is capable of killing the other, for one is strong in innocence and lawful love; the other, furious to see the fruit of so much dissimulation, so many sacrifices, even ...
— The Stepmother, A Drama in Five Acts • Honore De Balzac
... Dissimulation never mark'd my looks, Nor flatt'ring deceit e'er taught my tongue, The tale of falsehood, to disguise my thoughts: To Virtue, and her fair companion, Truth, I've ever bow'd, their holy precepts kept, And scann'd by them the actions ...
— The Prince of Parthia - A Tragedy • Thomas Godfrey
... memory, and sounded in his ear;—Emily had entered into the confederacy that disturbed his repose. For herself, she was wholly unconscious of offence, and upon every occasion quoted Mr. Falkland as the model of elegant manners and true wisdom. She was a total stranger to dissimulation; and she could not conceive that any one beheld the subject of her admiration with less partiality than herself. Her artless love became more fervent than ever. She flattered herself that nothing less than a reciprocal passion ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin |
