"Impostor" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... miles an hour. During the early day he strove frequently to mend it; but as the sun became hot in the heavens, his efforts after speed were gradually reduced, and long before evening he had begun to think that Jerusalem was a myth, his dragoman an impostor, and his Arab steed the sorriest ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... anything to your own advantage?" suggested Mr. Carless, with a keen glance which passed from one partner to the other. "You, as reputable practitioners of our profession, don't want to be mixed up with an impostor?" ...
— The Middle of Things • J. S. Fletcher
... this renown less? Of thirty-three years, He lives thirty without appearing. For three years He passes as an impostor; the priests and the chief people reject Him; His friends and His nearest relatives despise Him. Finally, He dies, betrayed by one of His own disciples, denied by another, ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... to do with the prisoner's ignominious flight for months from his home and from persons he abandoned to suspicion and shame? This man is an impostor." ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... eagerly believed by the many, the questioning few also finding it well to still their doubts in presence of death or torture. Piety and politics quickly worked hand in hand to found the impostor's authority. A mosque began to rise over the tomb of the Mahdi in his chosen capital, Omdurman; and his successor gained the support and the offerings of the thousands of pilgrims who came to visit that wonder-working shrine. Such was the basis of ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... willingly recognise that no one has brought the matter into so clear a light as you have done. You are always perspicuous, and nothing but good can come of such conscientious work as yours. Still, you must remember that you proved Darwin to be an arch-impostor; and there was no fault in your logic. It is not the logic that fails in this book." No. It ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... for the Prussian army being either to advance, form a junction with the gallant Hessians and render the Rhine the seat of war, or to fall back upon the reserve and hazard a decisive battle on the plains of Leipzig. That intriguing impostor, Lucchesini, the oracle of the camp, however, purposely declared that he knew Napoleon, that Napoleon would most certainly not attempt to make an attack. A few days afterward Napoleon, nevertheless, ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... the part of Salustius, that he had revised the copy? Does it not look as if his certificate of revision was meant to establish this as a fact not to be contravened,—that the Manuscript is as old as the fourth century? The trick is clearly the artifice of an impostor, who wants an attestation, when no attestation is required to substantiate a thing except when the thing to be substantiated is, as in this instance, a falsification. The Benedictine monks say in their "Nouveau Traite de Diplomatique" (III. 279), "they never saw ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... that it is a mistake—that it is the great injustice to me she speaks, and that night I dressed in my best clothes to penetrate this mystery—to meet this man who disgracefully used the name of my son—to expose this impostor who would bring shame to the name of Helois, the wood merchant, whose two sons have been fighting for France these three ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... English, and an Indian interpreter who is with him is so scantily supplied with words that the information we have obtained is very unsatisfactory. But we have learned that the young man is trying to find his mother. Some of our neighbors regard him as an impostor. But he does not ask for money, and there is something in his frank physiognomy calculated to inspire confidence. We therefore believe his statement, and publish it, hoping it may be seen by some ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... impostor Jim started away over the moor at the slapping pace I have already referred to, he was observed by two of the village boys, who were lying in a hollow by the road-side amusing themselves. These urchins immediately ran ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... not in the sense to deserve pity. An upstart impostor such as that to soil a lady with ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... you impostor!—you—didn't you come here to pay your addresses to this lady? and wasn't I to bring you into parliament, for your quiet ...
— The Dramatist; or Stop Him Who Can! - A Comedy, in Five Acts • Frederick Reynolds
... be less modest about their powers of appreciating visual art. Everyone is inclined to believe that out of pictures, at any rate, he can get all that there is to be got; everyone is ready to cry "humbug" and "impostor" at those who say that more can be had. The good faith of people who feel pure aesthetic emotions is called in question by those who have never felt anything of the sort. It is the prevalence of the representative ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... ages of the world, who sought to unite with the honours of the sage the mysterious reputation of the magician. Epimenides, numbered by some among the seven wise men, was revered throughout Greece as one whom a heavenlier genius animated and inspired. Devoted to poetry, this crafty impostor carried its prerogatives of fiction into actual life; and when he declared—in one of his verses, quoted by St. Paul in his Epistle to Titus—that "the Cretans were great liars," we have no reason to exempt the venerable accuser from his own unpatriotic reproach. ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... little, you would permit no one else to do so. And, by the way, talking of the respectable old peer, he is anything but a friend of yours, and urged me strongly to send you to the devil, as a cheat and impostor." ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... There was a brief silence. "Mr. Law, every now and then you say something that makes me think you're a—rank impostor." ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... fun-maker, rib-tickler, and laugh-provoker. This marvellous volume of merriment proves melancholy an impostor, and grim care a joke. With joyous gales of mirth it dissipates gloom and ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... intellectual pretensions is, that nine-tenths of those you come in contact with do not know whether you are an impostor or not. I dread that certain anonymous criticisms should get into the hands of servants where I go, or that my hatter or shoemaker should happen to read them, who cannot possibly tell whether they are well or ill founded. The ignorance of the world leaves one at the mercy of its malice. ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... belief that the male line of Cyrus had become extinct with the death of Cambyses. The usurpation of Gaumata and the accession of Darius had not quenched their faith in the existence of Smerdis: if the Magian were an impostor, it did not necessarily follow that Smerdis had been assassinated, and when a certain Vahyazdata rose up in the town of Tarava in the district of Yautiya, and announced himself as the younger son of Cyrus, they ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... that his soul was accursed, and that the only salvation for him in this life and the next was, first, that he return the stolen dollar by hand to its rightful owner, next that he become a real believer in the only true church instead of an impostor. ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... impostor!" continued Frank to himself; "to pretend to suspect me, when he was himself hatching his ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... greatest Impostor in Nature. Wou'd you think it, Sir? he pretends to be no less than an Ambassador from the Emperor of ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... the symbol of the faith in which thy father died. A Hebrew impostor, one Jesus, was nailed by the Roman conquerors of Jerusalem to a cross-piece of wood. He affected to be the son of David and the Saviour of men. My son, in the name of his punishment the children of Israel have been burned at the stake, dispersed abroad among ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... showing, acquainted with half the peerage,) "I will aid you in this affair. Your cursed vanity, sir, and want of principle, has set you, in the first place, intriguing with other men's wives; and if you had been shot for your pains, a bullet would have only served you right, sir. You must go about as an impostor, sir, in society; and you pay richly for your swindling, sir, by being swindled yourself: but, as I think your punishment has been already pretty severe, I shall do my best, out of regard for my friend, Lord Cinqbars, to prevent the matter ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... cut off by the Lord Bishop of London."[31] No doubt the bishop may have been somewhat arbitrary. It was his privilege under the procedure of the high commission court, and he was dealing with one whom he deemed a very evident impostor. In fine, a verdict was rendered against the two clergymen. They were deposed from the ministry and put in close prison.[32] So great was the stir they had caused that in 1599 Samuel Harsnett, chaplain ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... secretary entered the library directly after I left. Some thirty minutes later I passed down the corridor towards the library, and was startled to hear Mr. Mainwaring, in loud and excited tones, denouncing some one as a liar and an impostor. The reply was low, in a voice trembling with rage, but I caught the words, 'You are a liar and a thief! If you had your deserts, you would be in a felon's cell to-night, or transported to the wilds of Australia!' There was much more ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... decides in favor of intelligence, that no law outside of divine Mind can punish or reward Mortal 441:27 Man. Your personal jurors in the Court of Error are myths. Your attorney, False Belief, is an impostor, per- suading Mortal Minds to return a verdict contrary to law 441:30 and gospel. The plaintiff, Personal Sense, is recorded in our Book of books as a liar. Our great Teacher of mental jurisprudence speaks of him also as "a murderer from the 441:33 beginning." We have ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... maddened by the water which he had brought to our mouths, the governor would arrive, let himself drop into an easy chair, his head in his hands, and before one could speak to him: "Kill me," he would say, "kill me. I am a wretched impostor. The combinazione has failed. It has failed, Pechero! the combinazione." And he would cry, sob, throw himself on his knees, pluck out his hair by handfuls, roll on the carpet. He would call us by our Christian ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... your pardon, Count," said he, "but the young man of whom I spoke represented himself to be the Viscount Giovanni Massetti. Is it possible that he was an impostor?" ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... to a fool, who speaks not the words of the Great Spirit, but those of the devil and of the British agents. My children, your conduct has much alarmed the white settlers near you. They desire that you will send away those people, and if they desire to have the impostor with them, they may carry him. Let him go to the lakes; he can ...
— Tecumseh - A Chronicle of the Last Great Leader of His People; Vol. - 17 of Chronicles of Canada • Ethel T. Raymond
... "The notorious impostor and biped animal already alluded to, actuated by an overweening desire of notoriety, and in order to catch the applause of some one, grovelling in the morasses of insignificance and vice, like himself, leaves his native obscurity, and indulges ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... hopes rose high. Surely the impostor had been found out at last, and the envelope would contain an urgent invitation to him to come back and resume his rights—an invitation which he might show to the Doctor as his ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... and the contents of that letter," cried Will, his eyes gleaming with anticipation. "We'll soon find out whether Mr. Adolph Hensler was a regular, honest-to-goodness spy, or just an impostor. How about it, Allen?" he went on, as the latter stumbled over a stone, and Will hooked an arm through his. "Feeling pretty much ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Army Service - Doing Their Bit for the Soldier Boys • Laura Lee Hope
... the poems, nor the publisher of them, in my life, nor had any communication, directly or indirectly, with the fellow. Pray say as much for me, if need be. I have written to Murray, to make him contradict the impostor." ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... back in amazement. This woman, whom he had taken for a newspaper reporter, was an interloper, an impostor, the very last woman in the world whom he would have permitted to be admitted to his house. He considered that she, as much as anybody else, had contributed to his son's ruin. Yet what could he do? She was there, and he was ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... really, you know, in Charades one gets carried away at times. I assure you, I hadn't the remotest (&c., &c.—until Miss BUCKRAM is partly mollified.) Now then—last syllable. Look here, I'll be a regular impostor, don't you know, and all of you come on and say what a liar I am. We ought to make that ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., January 3, 1891. • Various
... same key as the inquiry. Disappointment is not uncommon. I have taken part in seances of every kind, with cautious investigators devoid of all spiritualistic bias, with unsophisticated believers in a supernatural source of all psychic phenomena, with scoffers convinced that every medium is an impostor, and that nothing but a little common sense is needed for the exposure. The results have been largely dependent on the mentality of the investigators. Failure to understand this is responsible for much of the ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... over it such an interest; and beautiful as it is, "the pride of Bristowe and the Westerne Land," how many visit it for its beauty alone? This is rather hard for the clericals: they are unwilling to forget that Chatterton was an impostor and a suicide; and to have their church surrounded by a halo from such a source! bah! They have done what they could by removing his monument from consecrated ground and depriving ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... and offered to set out with the princess that very day. At first the king would not believe that there could be any use in his offer, because so many great physicians had failed to give any relief. The courtiers laughed Fairyfoot to scorn, the pages wanted to turn him out for an impudent impostor, and the prime-minister said he ought to be put ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... the venerable man. She was away the whole day, and for the first time since her visit she kept us waiting more than half an hour for dinner. The moment we all sat down to table, she informed us, to Morgan's great delight, that the bard was a rank impostor. ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... soon as the discovery was made the man became unnerved and agitated, and on re-examining the parts the testicles were found in the scrotum. When he found that there was no chance for escape he acknowledged that he was an impostor and gave an exhibition in which, with incredible facility, he pulled both testes up from the bottom of the scrotum to the external abdominal ring. At the word of command he could pull up one testicle, then another, and let them drop simultaneously; ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... world indeed was curious to see the encounter between Rachel Curtis and her impostor, and every one who had contributed so much as a dozen stamps to the F. U. E. E. felt as if under a personal wrong and grievance, while many hoped to detect other elements of excitement, so that ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... have written. You know that in this volume the key to your inmost soul was contained. If I had been a profound and malignant impostor, what plenteous materials were thus furnished me of stratagems ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... entering with outstretched hand! and there was a lady—his wife doubtless! But how young the major was! he had imagined him a man in middle age at least!—Bless his soul! was he never to get rid of this impostor fellow! it was not the major! it was the rascal calling himself Sir Gilbert Galbraith!—the half-witted wretch his fool of a daughter insisted on marrying! Here he was, ubiquitous as Satan! And—bless his soul again! there was the minx, ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... by a usurper who had no great talent to recommend him, nor much political strength behind his brilliant personal courage, their first instinct was to refuse submission to his authority, and to drive him out as an impostor. It was not until they had been chilled and disappointed by the scornful coldness of the Empress Queen's imperious bearing that they saw how much pleasanter it would be to rule Stephen than to serve Maud. Yet Gloucester was powerful, and with his feudal retainers and devoted followers and ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... He it was that spoke of Wagner as a musical impostor, and of the grinning woman in every canvas of Leonardo da Vinci. I enjoy his 'Angel in the House' so much, because it shows me the sort of a woman I am not and the sort of a woman we modern women are trying to outlive.... Yes, 'the bright disorder of the stars is ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... Van Bibber, very gently. "Or else an impostor. And, you know, if you should happen to be the latter I should have to hand you ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis
... actually seized the throne; but the assurances of the suspected person, and a suggestion which he made, convinced him of the contrary, and gave him a clue to the real solution of the mystery. Prexaspes, the nobleman inculpated, knew that the so-called Smerdis must be an impostor, and suggested his identity with a certain Magus, whose brother had been intrusted by Cambyses with the general direction of his household and the care of the palace. He was probably led to make the suggestion by his knowledge of the resemblance borne by this person ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... commissary. At the end of the performance, he had not returned. Mme. Delattre, greatly alarmed, drove to the office of the commissary of police. There she found the real M. Thezard and discovered, to her great terror, that the individual who had carried off her husband was an impostor. ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... light of that royal and lovely woman's eyes, there was surely about him a glow—and a glow not altogether, it seemed to me, of "Smith's nickel and Jones's dime." I could have laughed. I could have kicked him. The impostor! Even yet I had failed ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... to do this thing not only calmly, but confidently, unhesitatingly, as a man going about something from a sense of duty. This 'job' seemed a very 'simple' thing to him; in making an end of the impostor, he was quits with 'everyone' at once—he punished himself for his stupidity, and made expiation to his real darling, and showed the whole world (Tchertop-hanov worried himself a great deal about the 'whole world') that he was ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... traitor donor inventor odor conqueror senior tenor tremor bachelor junior oppressor possessor liquor surveyor vapor governor languor professor spectator competitor candor harbor meteor orator rumor splendor elector executor factor generator impostor innovator investor legislator narrator navigator numerator operator originator perpetrator personator predecessor protector prosecutor projector reflector regulator sailor senator separator solicitor supervisor survivor tormentor testator transgressor ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... author of the lectures received this ill opinion of Pausanias from Julius Caesar Scaliger, who treats him as an impostor; but he is amply vindicated by Vossius. He lived in the second century, and died very old at Rome. In his account of the numerous representations of the [Greek: Charites], he seems to throw some light upon a passage in Xenophon's Memorabilia, which, as far as we know, has escaped ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... of polite company could make a woman happy, surely my kind hostess Mrs. Ponto was on that day a happy woman. Every person present (except the unlucky impostor who pretended to a connexion with the Snobbington Family, and General Sago, who had brought home I don't know how many lacs of rupees from India,) was related to the Peerage or the Baronetage. Mrs. P. had her heart's desire. If she had been an Earl's daughter herself could she ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... A report prevailed that King Olaf, the Queen's son, was not dead; it was propagated by the nobility, and very likely set on foot by them, in order to punish Margaret for her liberality to the clergy. An impostor claimed the crown of Denmark and Norway, and gained credit every day by making discoveries which could only be known to Olaf and his mother. Margaret, however, proved him to be a son of Olaf's nurse. Olaf had a large wart between ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... of Mahomet, and in his Autobiography Goethe has indicated the leading ideas it was to embody. Contrary to the prevailing opinion, which had received brilliant expression in Voltaire's play on the same subject, Mahomet was to be represented not as an impostor but as a prophet sincerely convinced of the truth of his message, and inflamed with a disinterested desire to give his countrymen a purer religion—a view of Mahomet, it may be said in passing, which Goethe's disciple, Carlyle, was among the first to ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... observe one thing about him. Had I observed that his nose was rectilinear, incurved, and with a lifted base, and that his auricular temporal angle was between 96 and 97 degrees, I should have known at once that he was an impostor. Vide Ottolenghui on 'Ears and Noses ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs
... Tilh, an Impostor, who deceived a Man's Wife and Relations, and puzzled, for a long Time, the Parliament of France. Memoirs of the famous Madam de Brinvilliers, who poisoned her Father, and two Brothers, and attempted the Life of her Sister, &c. The Misfortunes ...
— The Annual Catalogue (1737) - Or, A New and Compleat List of All The New Books, New - Editions of Books, Pamphlets, &c. • J. Worrall
... have felt inclined to say more than once of late!" she answered. "I'm beginning to suspect that the man who calls himself Sir Gilbert Carstairs is not Sir Gilbert Carstairs at all! He's an impostor!" ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... agent for the restitutions and expiations imposed upon Jacques Fervand, because he wished doubly to punish him for having, by his detestable hypocrisy, obtained the esteem and affection of the good priest. Was it not, in effect, a great punishment for this hideous impostor—this hardened criminal, to be constrained to practice, at length, the Christian virtues which he had so often feigned to possess, and this time really to deserve the just eulogiums of a respectable priest who ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... snugly ensconced at the Hotel des Anglais. We had capital quarters on the first floor—salon, study, and bedrooms—and found on the spot a most agreeable cosmopolitan society. All Nice, just then, was ringing with talk about a curious impostor, known to his followers as the Great Mexican Seer, and supposed to be gifted with second sight, as well as with endless other supernatural powers. Now, it is a peculiarity of my able brother-in-law's that, when he meets with a quack, he burns to expose him; he is so keen a ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... yielded allegiance thereto, you will find, when few generations have passed, that men have clean forgotten what and who it was that made that cause triumphant, and ignorantly will set up for honour the name of a traitor or an impostor, or attribute to a great man as a merit deeds and thoughts which he spent a long life ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... child from receiving the bounty of his father, which was accordingly the consequence, if the person whose life Johnson wrote, was her son; or shall we not rather believe that the person who then assumed the name of Richard Savage was an impostor, being in reality the son of the shoemaker, under whose wife's care[501] Lady Macclesfield's child was placed; that after the death of the real Richard Savage, he attempted to personate him; and that the fraud being known to Lady ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... himself up with a look of pain and sorrow. "I understand, madame. Some impostor, speculating upon your sorrow, has told you that he has ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... or, as is often the case with the more spirited, falls dead beneath his rider. If he had the power to reason, would he not rear and pitch his rider, rather than suffer him to run him to death? Or would he condescend to carry at all the vain impostor, who, with but equal intellect, was trying to impose on his equal rights and equally independent spirit? But, happily for us, he has no consciousness of imposition, no thought of disobedience except by impulse caused by the ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... unhappy poet was consigned like a bale of goods to my grandfather's correspondent at Amsterdam, who had instructions to place him at some collegium of repute in that city. Here were passed some years not without profit, though his tutor was a great impostor, very neglectful of his pupils, and both unable and disinclined to guide them in severe studies. This preceptor was a man of letters, though a wretched writer, with a good library, and a spirit inflamed with all the philosophy of the eighteenth ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... the wall of dogged silence she had built around herself. 'Oh, sir,' she cried, weeping like the child she is, 'what can I do? Can I dare to take little children by the hand, stained as I am? Can I go as an impostor where, if people knew, they would snatch their loved ones from me? Oh, it would be too wretched!' I tried to remonstrate with her, told her that the lily in the dust is no less a lily than is her spotless sister held high above contamination. She ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... our Savior about the preservation of His Church from error be false, then Jesus Christ is not God, since God cannot lie. He is not even a prophet, since He predicted falsehood. Nay, He is an impostor, and all Christianity is a miserable failure and a huge deception, since it ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... "is George, and I wish it were some other, for it is the first name of that arch-impostor Higgs. I hate it as I hate ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... the particular devotion to St. Genevieve, which is practised at St. John-le-rond, the ancient public baptistery of the church of Paris, seems to have taken rise. She assured the people of the protection of heaven, and their deliverance; and though she was long treated by many as an impostor, the event verified the prediction, that barbarian suddenly changing the course of his march, probably by directing it towards Orleans. Our author attributes to St. Genevieve the first design of the magnificent church which Clovis began ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... into history. But I once traced the Avon to its source under Naseby battlefield, and found it issuing from the fragments of a stucco swan. No god mounts guard over the head-water of the Thames; and the only Englishman who boldly claims a divine descent is (I understand) an impostor who runs an Agapemone. In short we are a mixed race, and our literature is derivative. Let us confine our pride to those virtues, not few, which are honestly ours. A Roman noble, even to-day, has some excuse for reckoning a ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... driving the impostor Thestorides from the island, Homer enjoyed considerable success as a teacher. In the town of Chios he established a school, where he taught the precepts of poetry. "To this day," says Chandler, "the most curious remain is that which has been named, without reason, the School of Homer. It is on the ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... am no liar. You will answer, to the best of your ability, such questions as they shall put. You will also write on such theme as they shall select. In their eyes, it appears, I hold the position of an unprincipled impostor. I write essays; and, with deliberate forgery, sign to them my pupils' names, and boast of them as their work. You will disprove ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... his own esteem, and to work out his ideal of the high destiny reserved for him; or why does he, when tied under a cart to which a larger quadruped is harnessed, invariably try to persuade himself and others that he is pulling the load up the hill, and that the horse or donkey is an impostor? ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... are of the wrong stuff, boy. Do you know that you are a weak young idiot to come and offer me, a perfect stranger, all that money—a man you have never seen before, and may never see again? How do you know I am not an impostor?" ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... questions you desire and we will answer them frankly. I came to China at the request of the Washington government, and am to receive instructions here. The operator tells me that there is a cablegram here for me, but refuses to deliver it on the ground that I may be an impostor." ...
— Boy Scouts on Motorcycles - With the Flying Squadron • G. Harvey Ralphson
... did, without kenning. He was gieing his horse a drink when I met him, and he let me tell him his fortune. He said he would gaol me for an impostor if I didna tell him true, so I gaed about it cautiously, and after a minute or twa I telled him he was coming to Thrums the nicht to ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... sex, such as any distressed maiden might have been glad to light upon. But again Victoria was aware that the case was not as simple as it sounded. However, she was no less angry than he. Mother and son were on the brink of making common cause against a grasping impostor; who was not to be allowed to go off—either with money that did not belong to him, or with angelic sympathies that still less belonged to him. Meanwhile on this point, whatever may have been in their minds, they said on this occasion not a word. Victoria ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Pharisee had zeal without knowledge. He blazed away upon the presumption that Jesus was an impostor. Why, the Jesus idea was preposterous, Saul mused. God's Kingdom was to be set up with a great capital at Jerusalem and a great and powerful king on the throne to whom all the world around would come and ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... you?" she whispered tensely. "You are not my brother. You are not the real Kenneth Gwynne! Who are you?" She waited for the answer that did not come. Then as she drew farther away from him: "You are an impostor. You have deceived us. You have come here representing yourself to be—to be my brother,—and you are not—you are not! I know it—oh, I ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... his new faith, we should be careful, in judging of the work of missionaries among savage tribes, not to apply to their converts tests and standards of too great severity. If the scoffing Lucian's account of the impostor Peregrinus may be believed, we find a church probably planted by the apostles manifesting less intelligence even than modern missionary churches. Peregrinus, a notoriously wicked man, was elected to the chief place among them, while Romish priests, backed by the power of France, could ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... how to accomplish the slaughter of the white man, and what he should do now after the attempt to kill him had failed. Either Moonspirit would flee, which would be most happy proof to Bakahenzie that he was an impostor and no magician, or he would seek revenge immediately. No other action was conceivable to Bakahenzie. Therefore in such a case the obvious act was to strike the quicker. He contemplated his colleague without looking ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... tell you, Madam," says Steele, "that I had discovered you to be an impostor. Those five children you claimed as yours did not belong to you at all. The janitor of the building ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... to remain a political Grandison[31153]; until the very end, he keeps his mask, not only in public but also to himself and in his inmost conscience. The mask, indeed, has adhered to his skin; he can no longer distinguish one from the other; never did an impostor more carefully conceal intentions and acts under sophisms, and persuade himself that the mask was his face, and that in telling a ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... affair. This transformation scene, which will seem to you as wild and purple as a Persian fairy-tale, has been (except for my technical assault) strictly legal and constitutional from its first beginnings. This man with the odd scar and the ordinary ears is not an impostor. Though (in one sense) he wears another man's wig and claims another man's ear, he has not stolen another man's coronet. He really is the one and only Duke of Exmoor. What happened was this. The old Duke really had a slight malformation of the ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... of representing Methodists either as idiots or hypocrites, 'A very different feeling is due to many, perhaps to most, of this enthusiastic sect; nor is it rashly to be inferred, that he who makes religion the general object of his life, is for that sole reason to be held either a fool or an impostor.' (Scott's 'Miscellaneous ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... being inferior to his ancestors, although it is the very thing at which the great should blush, if, indeed, the great in general descended from the worthy. I did expect to see the day, and although I shall not see it, it must come at last, when he shall be treated as a madman or an impostor who dares to claim nobility or precedency and cannot shew his family name in the history of his country. Even he who can shew it, and who cannot write his own under it in the same or as goodly characters, must submit to the imputation of degeneracy, from ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... living, and I have been told that thou canst make thyself invisible when thou pleasest. Perhaps thou art the prophet Malachy, whose words thou dost so frequently quote. Some say that an angel was his father, and that he likewise is still alive. An impostor as thou art could not have a finer opportunity of taking persons in than by passing thyself off as this prophet. Tell me, without farther preamble, to what order of kings thou dost belong? Thou art greater than Solomon,—at least thou ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... lady intimately connected with the chiefs of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, and appears to have been employed by them in various patriotic services. In 1851 she visited Birmingham and was a welcome guest until "someone blundered" and charged her with being an impostor. On the evening of August 29, she and her copatriot, Constant Derra de Moroda, were arrested at the house of Mr. Tyndall and locked up on suspicion of fraud. Her sudden death in the police-court next morning put a stop to the ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... sizes. Here our savages left the sacks containing their provisions and their less necessary articles, in order to be lighter for going overland and avoiding several falls which it was necessary to pass. There was a great dispute between our savages and our impostor, who affirmed that there was no danger by way of the falls, and that we ought to go that way. Our savages said to him, You are tired of living, and to me, that I ought not to believe him, and that he did not tell the truth. Accordingly, having several times ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain V3 • Samuel de Champlain
... looking up and around in the impotence of expression, saw the portraits of the dead Whaleys in unbroken lineal respectability, bending their eyes upon him—the one, the only impostor of the name! ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... one another," he said lightly. "But, I say, what an impostor the fellow is! Everyone knows about Dr. Wade, but no one connects him in the smallest degree with Hereford Wingarde. It shouldn't be allowed to go on. You ought to tell ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... willingly have kept it from you, but you must know; if only for the safety of your soul entangled in so deadly a snare... there is yet time, if you follow my advice. Listen: the man with whom you are living, who dares to call himself Martin Guerre, is a cheat, an impostor——" ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARTIN GUERRE • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... the case of some others present. Let us shake hands and think rather of what we have gone through together when I was King and you were my most loyal supporter, than of the poor climax to my brief reign that reveals me as an impostor." ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... being applauded, was pelted with a hailstorm of ridicule. He was an "impostor," a "ventriloquist," a "crank who says he can talk through a wire." The London Times alluded pompously to the telephone as the latest American humbug, and gave many profound reasons why speech could not be sent over a wire, because of the intermittent nature of the electric current. Almost ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... "Open your eyes, or you will be beaten anew." Then he said to the prefect, "Send some one with me to fetch the money, for these fellows will not open their eyes, lest they be put to shame before the folk." So the prefect sent to fetch the money and gave the impostor three thousand dirhems to his pretended share. The rest he took for himself and banished the three blind men from the city. But, O Commander of the Faithful, I went out and overtaking my brother, questioned him of his case; whereupon he told me ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... The foaming at the mouth is produced by a piece of soap between the gums and the cheek. The true epileptic, especially if he suspects that a fit is imminent, takes his walks abroad in some secluded spot, whilst the impostor selects a crowded locality for his exertions. The epileptic often injures himself in falling, his imitator never; one bites his tongue, but the other carefully refrains from doing so. The skin of an epileptic during an attack is cold and pallid, but that of the exhibitor is covered with sweat ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... invent for the disappearance of King Louis's envoy. We cannot, as the footman says in the play, recollect the exact nature of the lie which the bell wethers told the flock, but no task is so easy as that of imposing upon a multitude whose eager prejudices have more than half done the business ere the impostor ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... we are playing with edged tools,' said I. 'An offer of marriage is a delicate subject to handle. You have refused, and you have justified your refusal by several statements: first, that I was an impostor; second, that our countries were at war; and third— No, I will speak,' said I; 'you can answer when I have done,—and third, that I had dishonourably killed—or was said to have done so—the man Goguelat. ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of her with truth that she was crushed by pure grief. There was fear of all things, fear of solitude, fear of sudden change, fear of terrible revelations, fear of some necessary movement she knew not whither, fear that she might be discovered to be a poor wretched impostor who never could have been justified in standing in the same presence with emperors and princes, with duchesses and cabinet ministers. This and the fact that the dead body of the man who had so lately ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... that which the accursed promised to do with me of good and of the love which he professed for me. Know, then, O my mother, that this man is an accursed Maugrabin enchanter, a liar, a deceiver, an impostor and a hypocrite; methinketh the devils that be under the earth are not his match, may God put him to shame in every book! [271] Hear, O my mother, what this accursed did; nay, all I shall tell thee is truth and soothfastness. Do but see the villain's duplicity; ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne
... an evil impostor who has—An omen! A true omen, my children! The evil ones hath been branded for the knife! Seize them! ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... enlightenment of the spirit—with absolute assurance—now know I that he who first goes yonder with the inscription about his neck is what the inscription proclaims him—KING OF THE JEWS. A common man, an impostor, a felon, was never thus waited upon. For look! Here are the nations—Jerusalem, Israel. Here is the ephod, here the blue robe with its fringe, and purple pomegranates, and golden bells, not seen in the street since the day Jaddua went out to meet the Macedonian—proofs ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... often cut him to the quick, when, on entering an office in his daily search for employment, he was met by hostile or suspicious glances, or when, as it occasionally happened, the door was slammed in his face, as if he were a vagabond or an impostor. Then the wolf was often roused within him, and he felt a momentary wild desire to become what the people here evidently believed him to be. Many a night he sauntered irresolutely about the gambling places in obscure streets, and the glare of light, the rude ...
— A Good-For-Nothing - 1876 • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... this censor with a look of disdain, replied, in a solemn, lofty tone: "He that from affectation imitates the extravagancies recorded of Don Quixote, is an impostor equally wicked and contemptible. He that counterfeits madness, unless he dissembles, like the elder Brutus, for some virtuous purpose, not only debases his own soul, but acts as a traitor to Heaven, by denying the divinity that is within him. I am neither an affected imitator of Don Quixote, ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... lastly for his Religion, you cannot expect much from him. Of the Religion of his Countrey he makes but a small Profession; as perceiving that there is a greater God, than those that they thro long custom, have and do Worship. And therefore when an Impostor, a Bastard Moor by Nation born in that Land; came and publickly set up a new nameless God, as he styled him; and that he was sent to destroy the Temples of their Gods, the King opposed it not for a good while, as waiting to see which of these Gods would prevail, until ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... forth consisted in a great measure of excuses for not having profited more substantially by the help already given her. The eye and the ear of experience would readily enough have perceived in Mrs. Wilson a very coarse type of impostor, and even Lilian, though showing a face of distress at what she heard, seemed to hesitate in her replies and to entertain troublesome doubts. But the objection she ventured to make to a flagrant inconsistency in the tale called forth such loud indignation, such a noisy ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing |
