"Palm off" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... described it as a copy made in 1760 under the author's own eyes, and this may have been the case, though, if so, it must, from some of the references, have been revised after 1773. The two young men who had tried to palm off their retranslation from Goethe as Diderot's own text, at once had the effrontery to accuse Briere and Diderot's daughter of repeating their own fraud. A vivacious dispute followed between the indignant ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... took, with a slight surprise on the 'Prince's part, some small recollecting. "The treacherous cracked thing you wanted to palm off on me, and the little swindling Jew who understood Italian and who backed you up! But I feel this an occasion," he immediately added, "and I hope you don't mean," he smiled, "that AS an occasion it's ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... to see. Here are skis and toboggans, butter scoops and log chairs from the underworld, rose-coloured mittens, clothes' rollers, foxes' skins. And here are horse-dealers and drovers mingling with drunken folk from up the valley. Jews there are, too, anxious to palm off a gaudy watch or so, for all there is no money in the town. And the watches come from that country up in the Alps, where Bocklin—did not come from; where nothing and nobody ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... me for a moment," Chris went on. "He was bound to have the picture, and, being baffled one way, he tried another. Look here, Lord Littimer. Let me assume for a moment that Dr. Bell came down here to steal your picture, get rid of the frame, and palm off your own engraving for another. Now, in the name of common sense, let me ask you a single question. Could Dr. Bell have possibly known that the frame of the Rembrandt was securely fastened to the wall and that I had attached it quite recently? ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... take the whole of your physic, boy; you've got to stop writing for the present, you've lost your sense of the theatre, you're forgetting all the tricks you ever learned. D'you know, when I read that thing, I thought for a moment that you were trying to palm off some old thing that you'd written ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... ordered to sea during their "stand-off," informing everyone what a rotten service the navy is, crossing-sweeping is a sinecure compared with it. Then a few pass on to the cabin near the men's quarters. Here the "Drafting Officer" is trying to palm off a deck hand on the C.O. of a trawler, who is vainly explaining that he must have a signalman. A telephone rings and news comes from the "Sick Bay" that an engineer has been badly burned and will be unable to go to sea with his ship. The distracted ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... laughing a little. "Don't you palm off any luncheon on us! That sounds like a dab of salad and a dab of sauce and two peas in a platter and a prayer for dinner to hurry up and come around! Cook us some grub, old girl—lots of it. Coffee and bacon and ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... his yellow beard and rarther admired Mr Salteena for his truthful utterance—Oh I see he said well why did you palm off on my menials ...
— The Young Visiters or, Mr. Salteena's Plan • Daisy Ashford
... thing about the play was the fact that so clever and experienced a writer should have made it. Perhaps the compliments I have paid to my friend Mr. VACHELL in these columns have given me the right to beg him not to take advantage of his many recent successes and palm off on the public just any kind of banality, For these are days when pens (with or without a big P) must be pretty good if they are to compete with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, May 10, 1916 • Various
... thorough-going believer in state rights. Slavery was to be abolished, as he thought, by the action of the separate States. Here he was in accord with Northern abolitionists. If such literature as Helper's volume should find its way into the South, it would be no longer possible to palm off upon the unthinking public the patent falsehood that abolitionists of the North were attempting to impose by force a change in Southern institutions. All that Southern abolitionists ever asked was the privilege of remaining at home in their ...
— The Anti-Slavery Crusade - Volume 28 In The Chronicles Of America Series • Jesse Macy
... liars of the Semi-Weekly Earthquake are evidently endeavoring to palm off upon a noble and chivalrous people another of their vile and brutal falsehoods with regard to that most glorious conception of the nineteenth century, the Ballyhack railroad. The idea that Buzzardville was to be left off at one side originated ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... business of an art is to degrade it. Literature should be the spontaneous output of the mind that has known and felt. To work the mine of spirit as a business and sift its product for hire, is to overwork the vein and palm off slag for sterling metal. Shakespeare was a theater-manager, Milton a secretary, Bobby Burns a farmer, Lamb a bookkeeper, Wordsworth a government employee, Emerson a lecturer, Hawthorne a custom-house inspector, and Whitman a clerk. William Morris was a workingman ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... careful relatives had provided me with a "cardigan" jacket, three handkerchiefs, and a half-dozen pairs of socks for Christmas, that the season seemed to me like a hollow mockery and the attempt to palm off necessities as Christmas gifts filled my childish heart with disapproval. I am older now and can face a Christmas remembrance of a cookbook, a silver cake-basket, or an ice-cream freezer (some of which I have actually received) with philosophical ...
— A Little Book for Christmas • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... Nevertheless, Nick jumped up from the chair in which he had been lounging, and frowned. "Great guns! If there ain't that bandy-legged, crop-eared, broken-nosed auto Sealman came to offer Mrs. Gaylor last winter, and wanted to palm off on me!" he grumbled to himself. "How in creation did that maverick get hold of Mrs. May? Bet there've been ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... that you should tell me to my face that somebody else is your real husband, but you must shunt your spurious offspring into my house. Isn't that what it all comes to . . . all this damnable fuss of your father's . . . that you are going to palm off on me and my name and family your own and this man's . . ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... to get up under cover of the darkness of night and palm off a ten-cent necktie on a boy who had been expecting a ten-dollar watch, and then say that an angel sent it to him, is low, ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... said B., much relieved. "You would be trying to palm off one or other of them on some simple-minded peasant for ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... it as they entered the tunnel from the cellar of Morris's. It was conjectured that the quarrel had progressed and that the debtor had endeavored, by the light of his pocket lantern in the tunnel, to palm off a counterfeit bill in settlement of the debt. This may have led to a blow, or more likely only to an argument during which a bomb was dropped and exploded, followed quickly by the other explosion. Dead hand, counterfeit ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... blood had not been polluted by extensive miscegenation with the negro. Anthony, who was feller than More of More Hall, rode with ungirthed saddle over the most dangerous achadas (ledges); a single buffet of this furious knight smashed a wild boar, and he could lift his horse one palm off the ground by holding to a tree branch. The estate has been wilfully wasted by certain of his descendants. Comacha, famous for picnics, is a hamlet rich in seclusion and fine air; it might be utilised by those who, like the novel-heroes of Thackeray and Bulwer, deliberately sit ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... closing the case with a sudden snap, which endangered my fingers, but softening the brusquerie of the proceeding by one of his enthralling smiles; then he added, using one of the odd idioms which gave his speech a peculiar piquancy, "I don't palm off upon my friends what I have of second best." He re-opened the case and held it out to me. To have refused would have been to confess that I did not appreciate his "gems" as he called them. I smoked another, in which I still failed ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... vain. No trace of her could I find. I heard, indeed, of many children among these strolling companies, and carefully investigated each case that came to my knowledge; but it always ended in disappointment. Several women, indeed, tried to palm off their little girls upon me as my child, and I had to be on my guard against fraud; but I never failed to sift the matter thoroughly, even though I knew that deceit was intended, lest I should unawares reject the dear little one I was so anxiously seeking. At last I was almost forced ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... gathering endeavour year after year to make the world believe that theirs is the only meeting at which honour has the least chance of bursting into flower. I have my own opinions on this point. Really, these tenth transmitters of foolish faces become more and more brazen in their attempts to palm off their miserable two-penny-halfpenny, tin-pot, one-horse Regatta as the combination of all the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 9, 1890. • Various
... that room fixed up," she said, "and don't try to palm off any bogus doctrines on me so early in the morning. Housewives have no ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... tamely be mocked with the very platitudes that had brought him all his misery—he cut the master short in a violent passion. "This is too much!" he cried—"you shall not palm off that miserable rubbish on me. I see through it. It's a plot to keep me here, and you're in it. It's false imprisonment, and I'll write to the Times. I'll ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... knowing how to do, the understanding how to suit means to ends, which makes a Yankee so useful and versatile, and consequently a valuable acquisition to society—has received its full share of Southern abuse and ridicule. 'They palm off upon us their inventions, half of which are worthless,' say they. 'They cheat us with their wares, their manufactures, their patents, and nostrums. They grow rich on our necessities, and take the world's trade from ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... take advantage of another's ignorance; to palm off a poor article for a good one; to get more than we give, is very great in all forms of business. Cheating is very common, and one is tempted to do a little cheating himself in order to keep even with the rest. ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... from removing the treasure. Search was made all over the country, but no perfectly white dog could be found. "Then Joe said a white sheep would do as well; but when this was sacrificed and failed, he said "The Almighty was displeased with him for attempting to palm off on Him a white sheep for a white dog. This informant describes Joe at that time as "an imaginative enthusiast, constitutionally opposed to work, and a general ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... mean? Was the druggist, Muller, the man higher up? She recalled suddenly her own experience of the afternoon. Had Muller tried to palm off something on her? The more she thought of it the more sure she was that the powders she had taken ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... is just 'cream toast,' and nothing else, disguised under a high-sounding name to deceive innocent people, and make them believe they are eating something very high-toned. Just a little more tea, papa. But I am up to their tricks and I'll not palm off any old-fashioned dishes on you, under a Frenchified name," and she chatted on, helping him and preparing what was before him, till she had beguiled him into making quite ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... not attempt, with that happy, half-humorous audacity which all his dealings with his own works suggests, to palm off his deficiencies upon us as manifestations of ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... useless, dear fellow, quite useless. Mal vedere should that falsely named villa be called; but neither for good nor for evil will she evermore gaze forth from any casement. She and the son whom she thought to palm off as a girl lie at this moment in a windowless dungeon in the vaults of the castle of St. Angelo. I had thought for a moment to give you guest-room beside her, but you have warned me of her designs, and my father argues that we must not anger ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... was!" laughed Carlis, ponderously. "But who made it possible for Mallowe to palm off those miles of vacant lots—as improved city property, of course—on Lawton, without his knowledge, and even have them recorded in his name, but me? What am I boss for, if I don't own a little man ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... on hand. He tried hard to palm off one of his pet orations on the court, but Major Elbert shut ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Lieutenants - or, Serving Old Glory as Line Officers • H. Irving Hancock
... manufactured, they are a growth. God's inspired and infallible Book must furnish the text. The connection between every good sermon and its text is just as vital as the connection between a peach-tree and its root. Sometimes an indolent minister tries to palm off an old sermon for a pretended new one by changing the text, but this shallow device ought to expose itself as if he should decapitate a dog and undertake to clap on the head of some other animal. Intelligent audiences see through ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... another. He was unable to understand how his memory, which never before had played him false, had done him this ill turn, and he appealed to the House generally, and declared that there was not even amongst his bitter political foes one who would think him capable of trying to palm off on the House a speech which could be so palpably and so readily exposed. In these few sentences, Mr. Dillon brought before the House his strange, picturesque, and chequered career. His oratory was such that the explanation was considered ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... and, indeed, I am in some dubitation whether it ever existed at all, and is not rather the waggish invention of certain audacious Scottishers, who have taken advantage of the insular ignorance and credulity of the British public to palm off upon it several highly fictitious kinds of ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... Muckslush Heath. He calls himself "an Irish gintleman bred and born." He was "brought up to the church," i.e. to be a church beadle, but lost his place for snoring at sermon-time. He is a sot, with a very kind heart, and is honest in great matters, although in business he will palm off an old cock for ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... full with the little Princess. I dared not go down the stairs. I dared not for a moment take my palm off her mouth. For as like as not she would call out for the Duke Casimir to come and deliver her from my cruelty. So I stuck to my post, even though I knew that ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... So, with fear and trembling, I sent that essay to its editor. Lowell told a Harvard student who was an old schoolmate of mine that when he read the paper he thought some young fellow was trying to palm off an early essay of Emerson's upon him as his own, and that he looked through the "Dial" and other publications in the expectation of finding it. Not succeeding in doing so, he concluded the young man had written it himself. It was published in November, 1860, ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... while another class termed it "the American Sabbath"—none of them having Bible authority for the names given. This inadvertence might be excused if these gentlemen were not poising as moulders of public thought and teachers of Bible truth, while they are endeavoring to palm off Sunday upon the National Columbian Commission as a "holy day," for which they cannot ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... you Law; and in return ye laid a plot amongst you to get rid of me;—how, ye white-livered scoundrels? Oho! not by those fists, and knives, and bludgeons. All your pigeon breasts clubbed together had not manhood for that. But to palm off upon me some dastardly deed of your own; by snares and scraps of false evidence—false oaths, too, no doubt—to smuggle me off to the hangman. That was your precious contrivance. Once again I am here; but this once only. What for?—why, to laugh at, and spit ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and that his face and neck were marked by one or more deep scars, the result, as the claimant himself alleged, of scrofulous abscesses in early youth. He expresses the opinion that he is attempting to palm off these old scars as evidence of wounds received, and that if he had been wounded as he claimed he (the surgeon) would have known it and ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... ask you to try and sell it for me, so I won't be stuck," the ranchman said after his decision was made. "I'm not going to palm off a death-dealing place on somebody the way Barter, so it appears, loaded me up with it. But I don't yet admit anything is wrong. However, if you boys find there is, just close up shop ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Death Valley - or Diamond X and the Poison Mystery • Willard F. Baker
... said Matt heartily. "I was afraid you might want to palm off a lot of trash for first-class goods and I didn't want to be a party ...
— Young Auctioneers - The Polishing of a Rolling Stone • Edward Stratemeyer
... after our doings, but 'as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.' The good or the evil of anything that I do is determined wholly by the motive with which I do it. And we are a great deal too apt to palm off deceptions on ourselves to make sure that our motives are right, unless we give them a very careful and minute scrutiny. One side of this watchfulness, then, is a habitual inspection of our motives and reasons for action. 'What am I doing this for?' is a question that would stop dead an enormous ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... my brother!" cried the priest, who resented the idea that Marzio might wish to palm off an ill-made object in order to save time. "He is a good artist, he loves the work, he always does his best! When he says he can do nothing better than what he has already finished, ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... never give that horse away until a man comes along who is able to guard for three nights in succession the Old Woman's mare and foal. Any one who attempts this and fails she kills. But even if a man were to succeed he would never get the right horse for the old witch would palm off another on him. Urrh! Urrh! Urrh! Oh, ...
— The Laughing Prince - Jugoslav Folk and Fairy Tales • Parker Fillmore
... reading that second chapter that God tried to palm off on Adam a beast as his helpmeet. Everybody talks about the Bible and nobody reads it; that is the reason it is so generally believed. I am probably the only man in the United States who has read the Bible through this year. I have wasted that time, but I had ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... attempts were often made to counterfeit it, an unallowed shell being fraudulently used in the manufacture of the white, while the black was imitated from a kind of stone. Yet the habitual caution and keenness of the Indian made it difficult to palm off ...
— Wampum - A Paper Presented to the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society - of Philadelphia • Ashbel Woodward
... always ring it? Or did you get into these dilemmas that made it necessary, merely by the demureness of your looks and ways? Or had nothing else passed? Or have you two characters, one that you palm off upon me, and another, your natural one, that you resume when you get out of the room, like an actress who throws aside her artificial part behind the scenes? Did you not, when I was courting you on the staircase the first night Mr. C—— came, beg me to desist, ...
— Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion • William Hazlitt
... a spice of malice in what followed. At all events, it seemed to me that that was a kind of game at which two could play, and if, under the circumstances, he chose to palm off for knowledge gained by the fingers, what he was really getting by means of his eyes and ears, there would be no great crime in punishing him a little for his impertinence. So, in calling the following boys, I selected some who were notorious in school for certain marked traits, but whose ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... you talking about? What nonsense have you let them palm off on you? Do you not see that if it were true I should be the first person to know it? In short, Werner, ...
— Minna von Barnhelm • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
... with regard to Constantine refers to the fact that it is now almost impossible to decide which are his own and which are the writings of others. It has been said that he even tried to palm off some of the writings of others as his own. This seems extremely unlikely, however, knowing all that we do about his life; and the suspicion is founded entirely on manuscripts as we have them at ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... away, even in soils below the last glacial drift, where no microscope can possibly reach them. As the accounts of seeds taken from the mummy-cases of Egypt may answer the purposes of those seeking to palm off some new cereal as a nine-days wonder on the ignorant, so these speculations about the indestructibility of seeds, when hidden away by nature, may answer a like purpose in imposing upon the over-credulous; but they will hardly be accepted ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... you doing there?' cried he; 'why did you palm off those bones on me? And why, when you had got the reindeer, ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... prefer to reserve for a viva voce talk. They relate to (A) my personal position and something connected with it socially; (B) the position of musical matters among artists and in the Press, which not only influence but intimidate the public, disconcert it, and palm off upon it ears, with which it cannot hear. This temporary very bad state of things I think I have, alas! at all times quite rightly acknowledged, and, if I do not greatly mistake, it must surely soon perceptibly modify in our favor. Our opponents "triumph ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... upon the whole the best way to get a servant is by going to one of the numerous registry offices. Some of these exist merely to palm off bad servants upon you; but there are always offices of good reputation, which will not recommend a girl they know ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... she do but, happenin' on 'Biades— that's my younger brother, an' scarce turned four—outside o' Mrs Pengelly's, with a bit of gold money in his hand that Mr Nanjivell gave to him in a moment o' weakness,—what must she do (an' callin' herself a lady, no doubt, all the while) but palm off two bright coppers on him for a swap? . . . That's a fact," 'Beida wound up, dabbing the towel gently, but with an appearance of force, against Nicky-Nan's temple, "for I got it out o' the child's own mouth, an' work enough it ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... saw the Indian trappers gathering before his door with piles of peltries, I would go across and help him to value the furs. At first the Indian rogues were inclined to take advantage of his abstraction and palm off one miserable beaver skin, where they should have given five for a new hatchet; and I began to understand why they crowded to his lodge, though he did nothing to attract them, while they avoided mine. Then I took a hand in Hudson's Bay trade and equalized values. ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... told, your name—if your magical tube can disclose the distant scenes you speak of, it will interest me much, and you may expect with full confidence an adequate reward. But if your tube be in truth but a mystification for the vulgar, under cover of which you palm off the monstrous and incredible fictions of your imagination, why, you had better confess to me the truth at once, and depart, because, should I discover later that it is so, I will cause your tube to be broken and your head to be removed ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin |
