"Pretend" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... partisan of the Blues, and gave them permission to commit the greatest atrocities and deeds of violence against the opposite faction, while Justinian pretended to be grieved and annoyed in his secret soul, as though he could not oppose his wife's orders; and often they would pretend to act in opposition. The one would declare that the Blues must be punished because they were evil-doers, while the other pretended to be enraged, and angrily declared that she was overruled by her husband against her will. Yet, as I have said, the Blue faction seemed ...
— The Secret History of the Court of Justinian • Procopius
... on the Smyrna station till we pretty well knew it under every changing phase of season. Through the rigour of winter we had been brought now to the very flagrance of the dog-star, to the time when human nature can pretend no opposition to the mood of the lordly sun. Even late in the autumn, these clear skies afford so little interruption to the tide of sunbeams, that one is not quite exempt from risk of coup de soleil. Indeed this is perhaps ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... me. I will not pretend to a higher state of grace than your brother, and you know up to that time you had taken no pains to render yourself attractive to me. See how soon ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... we pretend, with a three-decker brain, That could harness a team with a logical chain; When he spoke for our manhood in syllabled fire, We called him "The Justice," but ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... at least an opportunity of selection. There are bibs with arms, and bibs without arms. And there is a certain amount of satisfaction in being able to see our own hands, carefully holding the newspaper or periodical wherewith we pretend that we are still intelligent human beings. And here again are distinctions. The patrons of my own favored barber's shop have arms to their bibs and pretend to be deeply interested in the Illustrated London ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren
... your berth anyhow and pretend to be. You are to be too ill to receive any friends who may chance to be on board. Your stewardess will bring your meals to your stateroom. When the boat arrives, you must wait till every one else is off, and when you land you must again be heavily veiled and be too sick to speak to any ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... divine revelation, he manifestly usurps what belongs to God. It is for this reason that certain men are called divines: wherefore Isidore says (Etym. viii, 9): "They are called divines, as though they were full of God. For they pretend to be filled with the Godhead, and by a deceitful fraud they forecast ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... not pretend, John, to understand all that is written there, but I cannot see that there is evil in it. There are assuredly many noble thoughts, and much worldly wisdom. Did I think that your life would be passed here, I ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty
... loved me, as you pretend, Lucy," Mr. Nowell wrote on one occasion, "you would speedily exchange this degrading slavery for liberty and happiness with me, and would be content to leave the future utterly in my hands, without question or fear. A really generous woman would ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... "I can't pretend to say. Do any of us really know, I wonder, what we would do under any given circumstances? I wish you would tell me exactly what your friend complained of in ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... said simply that he could understand a younger person feeling differently, and that he did not wish to set himself up as a censor. But he could not pretend that he was glad to have been called out of nonentity into being, and that he could imagine nothing ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... endeavoured to shew, that in general the morbid effects of this pollution was in the imagination; and that those were only liable to those effects in general, who had been terrified by the villainous books, which pretend to prevent or to cure it, but which were purposely written to vend some quack medicine. Most of those unhappy patients, whom I have seen, had evidently great impression of fear and self-condemnation on their ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... me to speak the truth. Besides, I love you too much to pretend about your work. It's strong, it's patient sometimes,—not always,— and sometimes there's power in it, but there's no special reason why it should be done at all. At least, ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... and when he does, you mustn't pretend to know. I believe Mr Palliser will certainly be Chancellor of the Exchequer before next month, and, if so, he'll never come in for ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... "Why pretend we're not? I hate people who claim to be great aristocrats when they can't even keep up ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... nicknacks (POMPONS), for her jewels. And this fine arrangement did not save her from an accident like that of Philip II., when, after spending all the night in writing, he got his despatches drowned by the oversetting of an ink-bottle. The Lady did not pretend to imitate the moderation of that Prince; at any rate, he was only writing on affairs of state; and the thing they blotted, on this occasion, was Algebra, much more ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... a country which had long felt bitter jealousy of Rome, and was anxious for some way of bringing about its destruction. So the people chose three men who could be trusted, and, loading them with money, sent them to Rome, bidding them to pretend that they were diviners of dreams. No sooner had the messengers reached the city than they stole out at night and buried a pot of gold far down in the earth, and let down another into the bed of the Tiber, just where a ...
— The Violet Fairy Book • Various
... see the Uncreate in the Create—the Infinite in the Finite—the absolute good in that which is like the good. Does Tregarva pretend to more? He sees God in His own thoughts and consciousnesses, and in the events of the world around him, imaged in the mirror of his own mind. Is your mirror, then, so much narrower ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... that till that night she had been what the world calls "a straight woman." She did not ape a rigid morality for once betrayed by passion, or pretend to any religious scruples, or show any fears of an eventual punishment held in reserve for all sinners by an implacable Power; she did not, when Dion was brutal to her, ever reproach him with having made of her a wicked or even a light woman. But she made him feel by innumerable hints ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... practical treatise on Scotch Loch-Fishing desires chiefly that it may be of use to all who read it. He does not pretend to have written anything new, but to have attempted to put what he has to say in as readable a form as possible. Everything in the way of the history and habits of fish has been studiously avoided, and technicalities have been ...
— Scotch Loch-Fishing • AKA Black Palmer, William Senior
... is only so before he speaks; but let his clack be set a-going, and he shall tongue it as impetuously and as loudly, as the arrantest hero in the play. By this means, the characters are only distinct in name; but, in reality, all the men and women in the play are the same person. No man should pretend to write, who cannot temper his fancy with his judgment: nothing is more dangerous to a raw horseman, than a hot-mouthed ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... you to understand that I wish to help you, to do all in my power to restore to you that which you seem to have lost! I can sympathise with your desire to quit life altogether now that the best part of it, sight, seems gone. I do not pretend to judge the actions of my fellows; and if you determine to carry out your purpose I shall not be able to prevent you for ever. I shall not try to. But you certainly shall not do so till you know what I know! ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... without the chauffeur and Tracey took occasion to race any automobile that would accept an obvious challenge. It was his particular delight to drive alongside a car of one of the cheaper makes and to pretend that he was doing his utmost to pass and in that way to lure the small-car owner into competition. Sometimes he succeeded and after he had made his victim believe that the big car was about to be vanquished ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst
... persecutors. The first province which was seized with the fanatical spirit of rebellion was, as had been expected, Walloon Flanders. A French Calvinist, by name Lannoi, set himself up in Tournay as a worker of miracles, where he hired a few women to simulate diseases, and to pretend to be cured by him. He preached in the woods near the town, drew the people in great numbers after him, and scattered in their minds the seeds of rebellion. Similar teachers appeared in Lille and Valenciennes, but ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... time for their duration? On which there are three opinions. We are agreed, too, that the term ought not to be chosen most likely in its operation to spread corruption, and to augment the already overgrown influence of the Crown. On these principles I mean to debate the question. It is easy to pretend a zeal for liberty. Those, who think themselves not likely to be encumbered with the performance of their promises, either from their known inability, or total indifference about the performance, never ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... future and that of his friend! Not in those points where he could never hope equality—wealth and station—the conventional distinctions to which, after all, a man of ordinary sense must sooner or later reconcile himself—but in that one respect wherein all, high and low, pretend to the same rights—rights which a man of moderate warmth of feeling can never willingly renounce—viz., a partner in a lot however obscure; a kind face by a hearth, no matter how mean it be! And his happier friend, like all men full of life, was full of himself—full ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... loyalty to the teachings of Plato.[1] As Ariston said of him,[2] "Plato before, Pyrrho behind, Diodorus in the middle." Sextus also characterises the method of Arcesilaus as dialectic,[3] and we know from Cicero that it was his pride to pretend to return to ...
— Sextus Empiricus and Greek Scepticism • Mary Mills Patrick
... Pierre had cut himself adrift, did not even pretend to sorrow, and she listened to him with her eyes fixed steadily on his own. As a matter of fact, she had shown neither hope nor excitement from the moment he came back to her and started to tell his message. But if she showed neither hope nor excitement for herself, ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... together in the dark and fall upon him. Together we could beat him down and nearly kill him. Then I would tell him that next time Felipe Jalisco would finish the job unless he paid to me that money. The gringoes are cowards. They laugh and pretend they are not afraid; but when real danger comes they ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... the geography of Palestine and other tiresome details. For me, reading as I did, the whole of the New Testament was radiant with interest, a frankly human interest. There were many passages that I did not pretend to understand, sometimes because the English was obscure or archaic, and sometimes because my mind was not equal to it or my knowledge too small. Whatever may be the opinion of other people, mine is that the reading of the New Testament ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... advocated while in prison, for the reason that I feared the outside world would believe it a disguise to obtain my freedom. Freedom is the birthright heritage of every man, and it was very dear to me, but if the price of it was to pretend to be religious, the price was too high, and I would rather have remained in prison. Some men in prison fly to it as a refuge in sincerity—some otherwise. But to the sincere it is a great consolation, for it teaches men that hope is a divinity, ...
— The Story of Cole Younger, by Himself • Cole Younger
... conditions of life have changed, the cosmopolitan public, so far from being confined to a handful of scholars and merchants, extends down to and is largely made up of that terrible modern production, "the man in the street." It is quite ridiculous to pretend that because an Erasmus or a Casaubon could carry on literary controversies, with amazing fluency and hard-hitting, in Ciceronian Latin, therefore "the bald-headed man at the back of the omnibus" can give up the time necessary ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... floor, walk leisurely to that point, hesitating a moment, and then make another plunge. All this time she would eye her master sharply, and if he moved, she would fall down on the floor at once, and pretend to be asleep. ...
— Stories of Animal Sagacity • W.H.G. Kingston
... provided were soon devoured by so vast a following. His army, however, were paid their wages weekly, and were well satisfied. But whatever the King or his flatterers might pretend, the real object of all the mighty preparations made was still in the distance, and fresh supplies were needed for the projected campaign of 1395. To raise the requisite funds, he determined to send to England his uncle, the Duke of ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... to form her mind. Kitty had a mind of her own, which did not want forming. Perhaps Percival Heron, was right when he said that Vivian was a prig. He certainly liked to lecture Kitty; and she used to look up at him with great, grave eyes when he was lecturing, and pretend to understand what he was saying. She very often did not understand a word; but Rupert never suspected that. He thought that Kitty was a very ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... do things a thousand times more useful, Sally. I don't pretend to compare with you in the useful arts, and I am only a bungler in ornamental ones. Sally, I feel like a useless little creature. If I could go round as you can, and do business, and make bargains, and push ahead in the world, I should feel that I was good for something; ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... cried the high, snarling voice. "It will bring YOU into the dock, Holmes, not me. He asked me to come here to cure him. I was sorry for him and I came. Now he will pretend, no doubt, that I have said anything which he may invent which will corroborate his insane suspicions. You can lie as you like, Holmes. My word is ...
— The Adventure of the Dying Detective • Arthur Conan Doyle
... is determined, and the writings signed. She proves an immense fortune; they pretend a hundred and thirty thousand pounds-what ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... no doubt about it, but we must pretend to be awfully surprised when the captain brings it out. But ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... impediments to the interior of every mansion in Klosterheim, was doubtless likely enough to visit the castle; nay, it would be no ways improbable that he should penetrate to this very room. What bars had yet been found sufficient to repel him? And who could pretend to calculate the hour of his visit? This night even might be the time which he would select. Thinking thus, the Landgrave was suddenly aware of a dusky figure entering the room by a door at the lower end. The room had the length and general proportions of a gallery, and the ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... "Then his Excellency will unquestionably deny your assertion," said the judges. "Alas, then am I a dead man," replied Volmar, and the unfortunate deacon never spoke truer words. Captain de Maulde also confessed his crime. He did not pretend, however, to have had any personal communication with Leicester, but said that the affair had been confided to him by Colonel Cosmo, on the express authority of the Earl, and that he had believed himself to be acting in obedience to his ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... in some analogous way. No, my dear; you are dead and gone and done with, and I shall be dead and gone and done with too soon to leave me leisure to fool myself with hopes of immortality. Poor Hetty! Well, good-by, my darling. Let us pretend for a moment that you can hear that; I know it will ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... must not be understood of the gate simply, but because of that cumber that some men carry with them that pretend to be going to heaven. Six cubits! What is sixteen cubits to him who would enter in here with all the world on his back? The young man in the gospel who made such a noise for heaven, might have gone in easy enough, for in six cubits breadth there is room; but, poor ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... that best yourself—there's no use your playing off—I don't pretend to know anything about it, but I can put my finger on the very year and the very month you turned against Champney Googe who never had anything but a pleasant word for you ever since you was so high—" he indicated a few feet on his whipstock—"and ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... cheat wou'd pass, much more this, which shall carry so seeming a Truth in't, he being clapt under hatches in the Dark, we'll wind round a League or two at Sea, turn in, and land at this Garden, Sir, of yours, which we'll pretend to be a Seraglio, belonging to the Grand Seignior; whither, in this hot part o'th' year, he goes to regale himself with ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... the evenings. Blanche, if she happened to be there, would sit on a low chair beside the sofa, busy with some delicate bit of fancy work, and later in the evening Berke would take her home. Sometimes Pocahontas would bring her work and listen, or pretend to listen, with the rest, but oftener she would go into the parlor and play dreamily to herself for hours. She had taken up her music industriously and practiced ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... Ebenezer, from which they are sometimes known as "Ebenezers." This tract comprised five thousand acres of land, including what is now a part of the city of Buffalo. In 1855 they moved to their present locality in Iowa. They pretend to be under direct inspiration, receiving from God the model and general orders for the direction of their community. The present head, both spiritual and temporal, is a woman, a sort of sibyl who ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... second sight to your other accomplishments! How in the world could a girl of your age have the experience and intuition to feel that? Old Sommerville passes for a great admirer of yours. You won't, I hope, go so uncannily far in your omniscience as to pretend to know why he ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... and immediately that is the one thing they want to do. As for Tim—Well, I fancy he's disgruntled because Ted Carter dropped him. He doesn't want to sit around and watch baseball today. He probably figured that the best way was to go off and pretend he didn't care. If he could add spice to the going off, it would make it seem all the more as though he was really ...
— Don Strong, Patrol Leader • William Heyliger
... miles may really be forty, and that, even then, they are calculated on the level, so that one is credited with only the base of the triangle while he is laboriously climbing up its hypotenuse. I am personally acquainted with the hypotenuses of a good many mountains, and there is no use trying to pretend that they are bases. ...
— Tenting To-night - A Chronicle of Sport and Adventure in Glacier Park and the - Cascade Mountains • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... of it stands for the almost incredible ignorance which has rendered China so impotent nationally speaking. The other part of it stands for the new spirit which has been aroused even among the common people in remote districts. Those who fear, or who pretend to fear, a new Boxer movement, or a definite general anti-foreign movement, are, I think, mistaken. The new consciousness goes much deeper. Foreign policies that fail to take it into account and that think that relations with China can be conducted upon the old basis will find this new ...
— China, Japan and the U.S.A. - Present-Day Conditions in the Far East and Their Bearing - on the Washington Conference • John Dewey
... so wise as they pretend to be," he said. "There's grub, an' grub. An' what kind of grub is it that a man ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... interfered with or alarmed. These forest savages are dead shots with their arrows, and they'll look on us as intruders. If they're as spiteful as most of their kind we shall have trouble. Get your revolver ready, but we must pretend we haven't noticed them. You've got to replace those plugs; do it as quickly as you can. Don't look round; ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... tells us that we are lacking in understanding of the high seriousness of the war; that we use sporting expressions about it. "The Times," referring to this criticism, points out that, though we do not pretend, like the Germans, to make a religion of war, our sporting instinct at least enables us to recognise that to draw the sword on women and children ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 14, 1914 • Various
... give the girl a letter and the notes done up in a separate parcel, and tell her exactly what she is to do. When she sees the Marquis, let her pretend to be alarmed at the great responsibility that she is incurring in carrying this large sum, and insist upon a receipt ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... off for a day in the country. Crossing the Luxembourg gardens Rodolphe met a great poet who had always received him with charming kindness. Out of respect for the conventionalities Rodolphe was about to pretend not to see him but the poet did not give him time, and passing by him greeted him with a friendly gesture and his companion with ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... you pretend to be aristocratic in the Bush? Too good. Ha, ha—they're calling to me; ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... be very pleasant to describe the tea-table; but the truth is, it did not pretend to offer a plethoric banquet to the guests. The Widow had not visited at the mansion-houses for nothing, and she had learned there that an overloaded tea-table may do well enough for farm-hands when they come in at evening ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... was rather a terrible moment once when she came in unexpectedly and caught me losing half-a-crown underneath the hearth-rug; but I pretended to be finding it, and saved the situation. It will be just the same with you. You will go down into the basement and pretend to mistake the flour for the salt, and the cook will love you for ever. It's all ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 14, 1920 • Various
... Afterwards the Germans advanced, but they were seen by the men and repulsed by machine gun fire. A party of Germans was observed carrying a stretcher and a white flag. It was a favourite device of the enemy to pretend that they were carrying a stretcher when they were actually carrying a machine gun, and in consequence this ...
— The Story of the "9th King's" in France • Enos Herbert Glynne Roberts
... remarkable work. Laws, he wrote, are not a product of the wisdom of our ancestors: they are the product of their passions, their timidity, their jealousies and their ambition. The remedy they offer is worse than the evils they pretend to cure. If and only if all laws and courts were abolished, and the decisions in the arising contests were left to reasonable men chosen for that purpose, real justice would gradually be evolved. As to the state, Godwin frankly claimed its abolition. A society, he wrote, can ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Provisional Government. Augereau, who, like all uneducated men, went to extremes in everything, had published under his name a proclamation extravagantly violent and even insulting to the Emperor. Whether Napoleon was aware of this proclamation I cannot pretend to say, but he affected ignorance of the matter if he was informed of it, for on the 24th, having met Augereau at a little distance from Valence, he stopped his carriage and immediately alighted. Augereau did the same, and they cordially embraced in the presence of ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... dullness in less than no time. The most wonderful, delightful chance is offered to us. I met her yesterday, and she decided to do it. She is a brick of bricks. She will make the most tremendous difference in our lives. You know, although you pretend not to feel it, but you all must know how we foundationers are sat upon and objected to in the school. We bear it as meekly as we can for the sake of our so-called advantages; but if we can be snubbed, we are, and if we can be neglected, we are—although ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... to me like that!" she exclaimed passionately. "My kind heart! Why, sometimes I hate her; and I would be glad if she was out of the world! Don't look like that at me! And don't pretend to be surprised, or say you don't understand me. I think every one understands me, and has for a long time. I think everybody on the street says, after I pass, 'Poor Antonia!' I must talk to somebody! And I'd rather talk to you because, even though you are a man and can't possibly know how ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... shoulders moved as well as his legs. The habit was shown as he lunged forward to grip Jenny's hand. When he spoke he shouted, and he addressed Pa as a boy might have done who was not quite completely at his ease, but who thought it necessary to pretend that he was so. ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... Other accounts pretend that the immediate cause of rupture was a claim instituted by Huascar for the territory of Tumebamba, held by his brother as part of his patrimonial inheritance. It matters little what was the ostensible ground of collision between persons placed ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... a dogma with her, that he is the very "first man in Virginia," an expression which in this region has grown into an emphatic provincialism. Frank, in return, is a devout admirer of her accomplishments, and although he does not pretend to have an ear for music, he is in raptures at her skill on the harpsichord, when she plays at night for the children to dance; and he sometimes sets her to singing "The Twins of Latona," and "Old ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... glen after a flood, which either the labours of those tiny artists, or the eddies of the brook among the stones, have formed into a fantastic resemblance of cups, saucers, basins, and the like, in which children who gather them pretend to discern fairy utensils. ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... child is to efface himself in every possible way. The strength of the teacher is to assert himself in every possible way. The golden rule of education is that the child is to do nothing for himself which his teacher can possibly do, or even pretend to do, for him. Were he to try to do things by or for himself, he would probably start by doing them badly. This is not to be tolerated. Imperfection and incorrectness are moral defects; and the child must as far as possible be guarded from them as from the contamination ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... scheme Will ever get beyond a dream, And tend to British happiness and glory May be no, and may be yes, Is more than I pretend to guess— However here's my story. In one of those small, quiet streets, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... and talked to the servants freely, softly, and easily, yet with a superiority, which suddenly was imposed in the case of the huntsman at the kennels—for the Whipshire hounds were here. Gaston had never ridden to hounds. It was not, however, his cue to pretend knowledge. He was strong enough to admit ignorance. He stood leaning against the door of the kennels, arms folded, eyes half-closed, with the sense of a painter, before the turning bunch of brown and white, getting the charm of distance and soft tones. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of difference. Age and stature were the same, so were the hair and complexion, save that the former was less ruddy, the latter paler than in the case of the buxom Emilie. And there were grace and refinement about this person, far beyond any to which the Dutchman's lady-love could pretend. The expression of the interesting features was rather pensive than gay, and there was something classical in the arch of the eyebrow and outline of the face. The lady was plainly but richly attired ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... for my Philippa to any other actress, and shall do so still, even if you will not, or cannot, throw more vigor into the lines that need it. I do not pretend to be as good a writer of plays as you are an actress [how naughty of him!], but I do pretend to be a great judge of acting in general. [He wasn't, although in particular details he was a brilliant ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... This does not pretend to be an actual transcription of the conversation between Mr. Chambers and his visitor. I asked Mr. Chambers recently if he recalled this interview. He said at this date he did not distinctly ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... bearings upon slavery, are so well understood, that no man of general reading, especially an editor, or member of Congress, who professes anti-slavery sentiments, at the same time advocating free trade, will ever convince men of intelligence, pretend what he may, that he is not either woefully perverted in his judgment, or emphatically, a "dough-face" in disguise! England, we were about to say, is in alliance with the cotton planter, to whose prosperity free trade is indispensable. Abolitionism is in alliance with England. All three of these ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... course of education in play; let him go through regular lessons in foot-ball, bandy, playing at tic, hares and hounds, and such like excellent and really useful and health-giving lessons. Begin his lessons! Begin brain work, and make an idiot of him! Oh! for shame, ye mothers! You who pretend to love your children so much, and to tax, otherwise to injure, irreparably to injure their brains, and thus their intellects and their health, and to shorten their very days. And all for what? To make prodigies of them! Forsooth! to make fools of ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... altogether different. The cold which led to such alarming results had been caught in one of his secret expeditions to see Lottie. She had been forced to keep him waiting, and a chilly September rain had drenched him to the skin. He had gone away in his wet clothes, had tried to pretend that there was nothing amiss with him, and had gone out the next day in order to be able to attribute his cold to a ride in the north-east wind. Since that time Lottie had had three letters—the first a gallant little attempt at ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... most the things that happen to the people he cares about. To you and Eliot. They're the sort of things he can't face. He'd pretend they couldn't happen. But the war's so big that he can't say it isn't happening; he's got to stand up to it. And the things you stand up to don't hurt you. I feel certain he'll come ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... derived, and who had, at least, his petit corps gelatineux to begin with—to commence weaving organic tissue from—but our author's organic globule is not so substantive a conception; and as he does not pretend to be able to produce even this by physical means, he has not made a single step ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous
... tried to pretend that his houses were fit for people to live in, and went to law to prevent the ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 15, February 18, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... me not;" that is, did not visit in the name and for the sake of the Judge, those whom God has made it a duty no less than a privilege to visit. And can I set myself, with impunity, against that which my Saviour has encouraged, and yet pretend to be one of his followers? What would be more presumptuous? I am not an enemy to visiting, if done with a view to glorify God in the benefit of mankind. Let young women visit, indeed, but lot it be done in a way which will be approved by the Saviour and ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... out; he was so little," returned Dimple. "Let's set them all free, Florence. We'll pretend that they escaped in the night, or ...
— A Sweet Little Maid • Amy E. Blanchard
... other rushed on, "that's the truth, as God hears me! And it's the first time I've ever spoken it in my life! I have to hide it—because men would laugh at me—they pretend they're not afraid! But I lie awake all night, and it's like a fiend that sits by my bedside! I lie and listen to my own heart—I feel it beating, and I think how weak it is, and what thin walls it has, and what a wretched, helpless ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... business streets, round the park, and the residential suburb rising along the Assiniboine, as they plunged through seas of black mud to look at the little old-fashioned Cathedral of St. John, with its graveyard recalling the earliest days of the settlement, Lady Merton gradually ceased even to pretend to ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to secure quarters which had been recommended to me in a comfortable boarding-house in one of the old-fashioned Inns in Holborn—Thavies' Inn—in which, I was informed, whether accurately or not I do not pretend to know, the Knight Templars of old had once resided. There were no Knight Templars there when I arrived, but in their stead I found some highly-proper and non-belligerent clerics with their wives and families, and other visitors from the country, who seemed very satisfied ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... this view of the matter. "Yes! yes! I can't pretend to represent her Ladyship's language, or yours either; I am obliged to take my words as they come to me. Don't disturb yourself: it's all right—I understand. You have made me the happiest man living. I shall ride over to-morrow to your aunt's house, and hear what you have to say to ...
— My Lady's Money • Wilkie Collins
... fate,' replied Miss Mancel, 'I do not pretend even to suppose, my business is to take care of my own. The laws against robbery are not rendered either less just or less binding by the numbers that daily steal or who demand your purse on the highway. Laws are not ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... are nane the lads o' France, "Nor e'er pretend to be; "We are three lads o' fair Scotland, "Auld ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... said Nellie. "But all employers have it or pretend to have it. I fancy it comes through men, afraid of being victimised if they display independence, shifting the responsibility of their sticking up for rules upon the union and letting the boss think they don't approve of the rules but are afraid to break them, when they're really afraid to let ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... meaning of the word "fear," but the bursting shells produced a disagreeable impression on him. "Does it always go on like that?" he asked, when he heard the vicious hammer of the enemy's Maxim. "Yes," somebody gloomily answered, "it always goes on like that, till at length we pretend to like it, and that we should feel dull if it ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... you feel so about it,—indeed I am," said Mr. Shelby; "and I respect your feelings, too, though I don't pretend to share them to their full extent; but I tell you now, solemnly, it's of no use—I can't help myself. I didn't mean to tell you this Emily; but, in plain words, there is no choice between selling these two and selling everything. Either they must go, or ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... habit and set of mind which gives these arguments their force. For want of a better name, we call it the spirit of the age. It is the result of very subtle and complicated forces, which I do not pretend to analyse. It spreads through society, and forms the congenial soil in which these seeds of evil, as we believe them to be, take root. Does anybody suppose that the growth of popular unbelief is owing to the logical force of certain arguments? It is in the air; a wave of it is passing ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... well executed; never surely was any thing so sadly, yet so finely done. I defy the nicest eye, however near, to distinguish it (suppose the head laid upon a pillow in a bed) from nature; nor must Mrs. Wright, or any of the workers in wax I have ever yet seen, pretend to a tythe of the perfection in that art, with the man who made this head.—Sad as the subject is, I could not withstand the temptation of asking permission to take a copy of it; and fortunately, I found the man who made it was then at Paris,—nor has he executed his work for me less perfect than ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, Volume II (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... said, is a subject which seems to me more and more important; and one which is just now somewhat forgotten. I therefore desire to say a few words on it. I do not pretend to teach: but only to suggest; to point out certain problems of natural Theology, the further solution of which ought, I think, to be ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... perversity, and simulacrum, no Speaker, but a Babbler! Even in Arabia, as I compute, Mahomet will have exhausted himself and become obsolete, while this Shakespeare, this Dante may still be young;—while this Shakespeare may still pretend to be a Priest of Mankind, of Arabia as of other places, for unlimited periods to come! Compared with any speaker or singer one knows, even with Aeschylus or Homer, why should he not, for veracity and universality, last like them? He ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... suffering, remorse, I turned upon her where she sat: "It is you who killed him! Why do you come here to blame me? And now you pretend to be sorry. You felt no pity when pity would have done some good. ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen
... with a hushed and solemn fear, the mysteries, between which and this state of existence is interposed the barrier of the great trial and change that fall on all the things that live; and although I have not the audacity to pretend that I know anything of them; I can no more reconcile the mere banging of doors, ringing of bells, creaking of boards, and such-like insignificances, with the majestic beauty and pervading analogy of all the Divine rules that I am permitted ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens
... incognita. This singular and unparalleled proposition was not easily acceded to: but the opposition with which it was received only tended to make the young Princess more determined to be gratified in her caprice. Her Imperial Highness did not pretend that any end was to be obtained by this unusual procedure, and indeed she had no definite purpose in requesting it to be permitted. It was originally the mere whim of the moment, and had it not been ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... Those who pretend to be best acquainted with the order of nature and the mysterious designs of Providence assure us with confidence that all this is as it should be; that woman is not meant to grow and flourish singly, but to hang on man, and to depend on him, like the vine upon the elm. If ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... concisely as ever possible. This is why simplicity has always been looked upon as a token, not only of truth, but also of genius. Style receives its beauty from the thought expressed, while with those writers who only pretend to think it is their thoughts that are said to be fine because of their style. Style is merely the silhouette of thought; and to write in a vague or bad style means ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... of me to tell you, but I've simply got to get in the first word. You must pretend you haven't heard it, but if there's any persuading to be done I want my share, and want it first. Your cousins are going to invite you to sail with them next week for a summer in England after a fortnight in Paris—Paris in June! You don't know what that means; you ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... to do? How could I hold back? I was certainly growing stronger every hour, and in spite of my breakdown on the previous night, I felt that it would be absurd to pretend that I was ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... shan't," cried Chris shortly. "Get out! You're going to pretend that you'll lie down and die, and you're going to ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... pretend to speak grammar or book-English, Jack," retorted the young sailor, "no more than yourself; but all who have ever sailed in the Fire-fly, as both you and I have done, know her quality, and that anything can be made of her: I tell you, every ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... elegant acquaintance with the renaissance and old French, and be capable of distinguishing himself in stately Latin verse, though that sounded more than doubtful when he had been plucked at his university—the inhabitants of Redcross did not, as a rule, pretend to be judges in such matters. What they did know, because it had oozed out some time before, was that Cyril Carey, though a banker's son, was lamentably weak in arithmetic, and his handwriting would have been held ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... conception of his audience encouraged and guided his pen. While translations in general could not pretend to the strength and universality of appeal which belonged to the Bible, nevertheless taken in the mass and judged only by the comment associated with them, they suggest a varied public and a surprising contact with the essential interests of mankind. ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... may argue and moralists pretend, a lie like that of Sir Henry Lee for saving his prince from the hands of Cromwell (vide Woodstock), or like that of the goldsmith's son, even when he was dying, for saving the prince Chevalier from the hands of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... answers Figuier's question by the argument that "in our finite understanding, we cannot pretend to understand God's plans, purposes and designs, nor to criticize his form of justice." It holds that we must look beyond that mortal life for the evidence of God's love, and not attempt to judge it according to what we see here on earth ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... the workshop pretend to steal loving glances all day long when she's not looking. When she ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... but I shall sing and act both. Now then pretend that I am Marguerite, in Faust, you know, and see if you don't think I can do both, as well as one." So they all looked and listened, while she sang and sang, 'till the very birds hushed their music in envious ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... whom a lawsuit is on agreeable relaxation, a gentle excitement. One of this class, when remonstrated with, retorted, that while one friend kept dogs, and another horses, he, as he had a right to do, kept a lawyer; and no one had a right to dispute his taste. We cannot pretend, in these few pages, to lay down even the principles of law, not to speak of its contrary exposition in different courts; but there are a few acts of legal import which all men—and women too—must perform; and to these acts we ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... Queen cannot either quite agree in Lord Palmerston's observation, that the French Government state the danger of internal revolution, if not supported, merely to extract further concessions for Mehemet Ali. The Queen does not pretend to say that this danger is not exaggerated, but depend upon it, a certain degree of danger does exist, and that the situation of the King of the French and the present French Government is not an easy one. The majority, too, cannot be depended upon, as ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... his hands clasped behind his back, thoughtfully looking at the trees, and trying to suppress his wild imaginations. But he could not suppress them. The dead man seemed to say, "Don't be a humbug, don't pretend. You know we are alike. Why, when you looked in the glass the other day, you saw the resemblance. You saw my puffy eye-orbits and my pendulous lip in your ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... clubs are of short duration, but some of them have been in existence for years. Sometimes they are literary, sometimes purely social—but more often dramatic. In the dramatic club the children, starved for the brighter things of life—can pretend to their hearts' content, and their keen imagination can make it all vividly realistic for them. They choose their own plays, draw the parts, make their costumes and carry out their own conception of the different roles. Astonishingly well they do it too. Is it any ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... galloped out of town. All this I saw; and the old woman in the potato-locker told me the general had been in the house a short time before we landed. Her account agreed with the appearance of the officer I saw; though I will not pretend to be certain ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... me to pretend that I know how I got on that rock, for I don't know. A man loses the conscious relation with life in such a poignant crisis. He does heroic things, and overcomes tremendous odds, fighting to save what the Almighty has lent him for a little while. But I got on that rock. ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... words or trade, are not frequent with boys; boot on jack-knives must be paid on the nail; and it is considered much more honorable to out with a personal grievance at once, even if the explanation is made with the fists, than to pretend fair, and then take a sneaking revenge on some concealed opportunity. The country-boy at the district school is introduced into a wider world than he knew at home, in many ways. Some big boy brings to school a copy ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... it is hard to keep it at its poor best. The empiric easily degenerates into the quack. He does not know where his knowledge begins or leaves off, and so when he gets beyond routine conditions he begins to pretend—to make claims for which there is no justification, and to trust to luck and to ability to impose upon others—to "bluff." Moreover, he assumes that because he has learned one thing, he knows others—as the history of Athens showed that the common craftsmen thought they could manage household ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... on the prompt execution of the proposed measure. 'Silence, monsieur,' said the Queen to him; 'silence; you are the only person who ought to be silent here; when the mischief is done, those who did it should not pretend to wish to ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... Anna had ceased even to pretend to look friendly upon me, and I did not feel much alarm as to her power for or against my happiness or ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill |
