"Pretender" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... apart from the instances of such vicissitudes among the ancients, the King of Syracuse keeping school at Corinth, or Alexander, son of Perseus, becoming a Roman scrivener, he actually saw Charles Edward, the Stuart pretender, wandering from court to court in search of succour and receiving only rebuffs; and he may well have known that after the troubles of 1738 a considerable number of the oligarchs of his native Geneva had gone into exile, rather than endure the humiliation ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... their dependencies. Sobriety, diligence, capacity, loyalty, and subjection to command, were essentials required in all whom he advanced. Where any of these were found wanting, no interest or authority were capable of moving him in favour of the highest pretender; the Royal command only excepted, of which he was also very watchful, to prevent any undue procurements. Discharging his duty to his Prince and Country with a religious application and perfect integrity, he feared ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... fellow; he has the audacity to say that he has never heard of Calros the pretender, who calls ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... it did when the air was thick with rumours of another rising, troubled him greatly; and there was the fact that the boy had, unknown to him, been learning fencing; and lastly this interference, which had enabled a notorious emissary of the Pretender to ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... Edward VI. did not live at St James's Palace regularly, but Queen Mary patronized it, preferring it to Whitehall. It was granted to Prince Henry during the reign of James I., and Charles I. spent the last three days before his execution here. The Prince known as the "Pretender" was born in one of the palace apartments, and many historians have commented on the fact that this chamber was conveniently near a small back-staircase, up which a new-born infant could have been smuggled. ...
— The Strand District - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... says of the false humourists, "But since there is an impostor abroad, who takes upon him the name of this young gentleman, and would willingly pass for him in the world: to the end that well-meaning persons may not be imposed upon by cheats, I would desire my readers, when they meet with this pretender, to look into his parentage and examine him strictly, whether or no he be remotely allied to truth, and lineally descended from good sense; if not, they may conclude him a counterfeit. They may likewise distinguish him by a loud and excessive laughter, in which he seldom ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... the preceding Sunday, to Titmouse's saddened eye there seemed a sort of gloom everywhere. Up and down the Park he and Huckaback walked, towards the close of the afternoon; but Titmouse had not so elastic a strut as before. He felt empty and sinking. Everybody seemed to know what a sad pretender he was: and the friends quitted the magic circle much earlier than had been usual with Titmouse. What with the fatigue of a long day's saunter, the vexation of having had but a hasty, inferior, and unrefreshing meal, which did not deserve the name of dinner, ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... a great fleet coming out to meet them. This was the squadron of Sir George Byng, which had for some days been on the coast, having been despatched as soon as the news reached London of the gathering of ships and troops at Dunkirk, and of the arrival of the Pretender there. The French admiral at once signalled to all the ships to put about, and he lay off until the English fleet were near enough to discern its composition, which was far superior in force to his own. Seeing the impossibility of landing the ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... cross. Few men of his age aroused more bitter or more unjust and unchristian hostility. He was in advance of his time; perhaps, if he were living now, he would still be so; for the spirituality of his nature cannot yet be understood. There were not wanting those who decried him as a pretender, a hypocrite, and a cheat. Those who knew him best depose to the honesty of his heart, the depth of his convictions, the fervor of his faith; and many yet live who will indorse this eloquent tribute of his biographer:—"To him, mean thoughts and unbelieving hearts were the only ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... men are bound to shut their eyes to the truth. But we all took the insults that were offered to the flag in President Buchanan's time as coolly as if that were the proper course of things, while the attack on Sumter had the same effect on us that the acknowledgment of the Pretender as King of Great Britain and Ireland by Louis XIV. had on the English. War was then promptly accepted, and has ever since been waged, with that various fortune which is known to all contests, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... possible that virtue so exalted should be erected upon injustice? that the proudest and the most ambitious of mankind should be the great master and accomplished pattern of humility? that a doctrine so pure as the Gospel should be the work of an uncommissioned pretender? that so perfect a system of morals should be established ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... penetrated into the vices and horrors of the monarchy. She has shown them clear as daylight, and forever crushed that system; and he, whoever he may be, that should ever dare to reclaim those rights would be regarded not as a pretender, ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... is, a grand pretender, a self-deceiver At the age of forty, men that love love rootedly Hosts of men are of the simple order of the comic Men in love are children with their mistresses Providence and her parents were not forgiven She ran through delusion and delusion, ...
— Quotations from the Works of George Meredith • David Widger
... perjurer, false witness, menteur a triple etage[Fr], Scapin[obs3]; bunko steerer* [U.S.], carpetbagger* [U.S.], capper* [U.S.], faker, fraud, four flusher*, horse coper[obs3], ringer*, spieler[obs3], straw bidder [U.S.]. imposter, pretender, soi-disant[Fr], humbug; adventurer; Cagliostro, Fernam Mendez Pinto; ass in lion's skin &c (bungler) 701; actor &c (stage player) 599. quack, charlatan, mountebank, saltimbanco[obs3], saltimbanque[obs3], empiric, quacksalver, medicaster[obs3], Rosicrucian, gypsy; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... you know that he is a pretender to the throne of Babbiano? You will remember that he is cousin to ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... war. The powers of Europe awed by our victories, and lying in ruins upon every side of us. Burdened indeed we are with debt, but abounding with resources. We have a trade, not perhaps equal to our wishes, but more than ever we possessed. In effect, no pretender to the crown; nor nutriment for such desperate and destructive factions as ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... any rate, within three or four months of her death, he committed suicide. But before he did so, he formally executed a rather elaborate will, by which he left all his estates in England, 'now unjustly withheld from me contrary to the law and natural right by the rebel pretender Cromwell, together with the treasure hidden thereon or elsewhere by my late murdered father, Sir James de la Molle,' to John Geoffrey Dofferleigh, his cousin, and the brother of his late wife, and his heirs for ever, on ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... Actions they should be neither too reserved nor too extravagant; so in Principles should they be neither too high nor too low: The Virginians being neither Favourers of Popery nor the Pretender on the one Side, nor of Presbytery nor Anarchy on the other; but are firm Adherents to the present Constitution in State, the Hanover Succession and the Episcopal Church of England as by Law established; ...
— The Present State of Virginia • Hugh Jones
... in such unmistakable language as Jesus Christ does. To say such things of oneself as come from His lips is a sign of a weak, foolish nature. It is fatal to all influence, to all beauty of character. It is not only that He claims official attributes as a fanatical or dishonest pretender to inspiration may do. He does that, but He does more—He declares Himself possessed of virtues which, if a man said he had them, it would be the best proof that he did not possess them and did not know himself. 'I ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... which the scenes are laid in the time of Richard Coeur de Lion, the reader recognises little realism of language. But as Scott's historical novels deal with periods extending from that of the crusades down to the Pretender's attempt in 1745, an intimate knowledge of the innumerable social changes and peculiarities ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... romantick, and impossible to succeed." He saw himself, in short, as an emancipated Butler or even Cervantes; and like his famous predecessors he too would laugh quite out of countenance the fool and the hypocrite, the pretender and the enthusiast, the knave and the persecuter, all those who would create a god in their ...
— A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing (1729) • Anthony Collins
... George I. The scheme was, with four distinct bodies of Jacobites, to seize the Tower and the Bank, to arrest the king and the prince, and capture or kill Lord Cadogan, one of the Ministers. At the trial it was proved that Layer had been over to Rome, and had seen the Pretender, who, by proxy, had stood godfather to his child. Troops were to be sent from France; barricades were to be thrown up all over London. The Jacobites had calculated that the Government had only 14,000 men to meet them—3,000 of these would be ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... to the Countess of Albany, widow of Prince Charles Edward Stuart the Pretender. She was then supposed to be married to Alfieri the poet, and had a kind of state reception every evening. I did not like her, and never went again. Her manner was proud and insolent. "So you don't speak ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... up arms in the cause. According to Mr. Home, his example was decisive of the movement of his neighbours: "So when he who was so wise and prudent declared his purpose of joining Charles, most of the gentlemen in that part of the country who favoured the Pretender's cause, put themselves under his command, thinking they could not follow a better or safer guide than Lord Pitsligo." His Lordship's own account of the motives which urged him on is peculiar:—"I was grown a little old, and the fear of ridicule stuck to me pretty much. I have mentioned the weightier ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... Notitiae Academiae Oxoniensis, and asking who the author of that book was? He [Edw. Forest] answered, the report was that one Mr. Anth. Wood, of Merton College was the author, but was not. Whereupon Mr. Aubrey, a pretender to Antiquities, having been contemporary to A. Wood's elder brother in Trin. Coll. and well acquainted with him, he thought, that he might be as well acquainted with A. W. himself, Whereupon repairing to his lodgings, and telling him who ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey
... on the side of its enemies in the next war in which it might be engaged. [515] But the democratic and impassioned character of the agitation in the minor States in favour of the Schleswig-Holsteiners and their Augustenburg pretender had enabled Bismarck to represent this movement to the Austrian Government as a revolutionary one, and by a dexterous appeal to the memories of 1848 to awe the Emperor's advisers into direct concert with the Court of Berlin, as the representative of monarchical order, ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... magistrate as a titter ran through the court. "All this fooling will do you no good, I can tell you. We believe that you are a traitor to the king and an emissary of the Pretender. If you make a clean breast of it, and tell me the names of those with whom you have been having dealings, there may be a hope of mercy for you; but if not, we shall get at the truth other ways, and then your meanness of condition will not save you ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... I say;—pretending to do it. Even that's a good deal for Lord Dumbello; isn't it?" And then Lord Lufton, not being a pretender himself, put his arm round her waist, and away they went up and down the room, and across and about, with an energy which showed that what Griselda lacked in her tongue she made up with her feet. Lord Dumbello, in the meantime, stood by, observant, thinking to himself that Lord Lufton was ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... dream, with the history of all creation: we awaken him, and ask him to grapple, instead, with the history of but a few individual species,—with that of the mussel or the whelk, the clam or the oyster; and we find from his helpless ignorance and incapacity what a mere pretender he is. ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... field of investigation. Even men of science, so called, have this feeling. I know that the scientific advisers of the Admiralty, who, years ago, received 100 pounds a year each for his trouble, were sneered at by a wealthy pretender as "fellows to whom a hundred a year is an object." Dr. Thomas Young was one of them. To a bookish man—I mean a man who can manage to collect books—there is no tax. To myself, for example, 40 pounds worth of books deducted from my shelves, and the life-use ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... the bag. This Highlander of the Devil had some mechanism in his purse that discharged a small steel pistol when unwarily opened. My hand is but slightly wounded, yet I cannot hold my sword, nor hath my search brought me any news of Alan Breck. He has vanished like an emissary of the Devil or the Pretender, as I doubt not he is. But I will have his blood, if he is not one of their Scotch ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... he executed accordingly, exclaiming as he departed—"Oh, city and court! you by whom the expectations of the bold pretender are fulfilled, while the hopes of the modest labourer are destroyed; you who abundantly sustain the shameless Buffoon, while the worthy sage is left to die of hunger; I bid you farewell." That said, he proceeded to Flanders, where he finished ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... a harsh croaking voice, "was Dr. Johnson in the years 1745-6? He did not write anything that we know of, nor is there any account of him in Boswell during those two years. Was he in Scotland with the Pretender? He seems to have passed through the scenes in the Highlands in company with Boswell many years after 'with lack-lustre eye,' yet as if they were familiar to him, or associated in his mind with interests that he durst not explain. If so, it would be an additional ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... and her contempt for myself, were equally undisguised. And in the ring which she soon cleared out for public exhibition, she made us both fully sensible of the very equitable stations which she assigned to us in her regard. She was neither very brilliant, nor altogether a pretender, but might be described as a showy woman, of slight but popular accomplishments. Any woman, however has the advantage of possessing the ear of any company; and a woman of forty, with such tact and experience as she will naturally have gathered ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... the gentlemen who took part in this divan were Catholics, and all of them stanch Jacobites, whose hopes were at present at the highest pitch, as an invasion, in favour of the Pretender, was daily expected from France, which Scotland, between the defenceless state of its garrisons and fortified places, and the general disaffection of the inhabitants, was rather prepared to welcome than to resist. Ratcliffe, who neither sought to assist at their consultations on this ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... was, to say the least, come to years of discretion, and the Squire had long since placed her property entirely at her own disposal, Mr. Hazeldean was forced to acquiesce in the Parson's corollary remark, "That this was a delicacy which could not be expected from every English pretender to the lady's hand." Seeing that he had so far cleared ground, the Parson went on to intimate, though with great tact, that, since Miss Jemima would probably marry sooner or later, (and, indeed, that the Squire could not ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... They are generally classified as Christians. But they protest, you know. Protesto, protestare, verb, active, first conjugation. 'Mi pare che la donna protesta troppo,' as the poet sings. They're Christians, but they protest against the Pope and the Pretender." ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... Capper, unobtrusively prompted by Sim Squires, went certain of the Harper kin who knew not where else to turn—ignoring Parish Thornton as a young pretender for whom they had little more liking than ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... Charles, and suffered exile in his name. 'Twas love for King James that sent my father hither, though he swore allegiance to Anne and the First George. I can say with pride that he was no indifferent servant to either, refusing honours from the Pretender in '15, when he chanced to be at home. An oath is an oath, sir, and we have yet to be false to ours. And the King, say I, should, next to God, be loved and loyally served by his subjects. And so I have served this George, and his grandfather ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... said I, "the prince of all conspirators and machinators; he made sure of placing the Pretender on the throne of these realms. 'I can bring into the field so many men,' said he; 'my son-in- law, Cluny, so many, and likewise my cousin, and my good friend;' then speaking of those on whom the government reckoned ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... which Fouquet was sacrificing to the blood of Louis XIII.; it was to a selfish ambition he was sacrificing a noble ambition; it was to the right of keeping he sacrificed the right of having. The whole extent of his fault was revealed to him by the simple sight of the pretender. All which passed in the mind of Fouquet was lost upon the persons present. He had five minutes to concentrate his meditations upon this point of the case of conscience; five minutes, that is to say, five ages, during which ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... a short time, a pretender, a Magian, who called himself Smerdis, and professed to be the brother of Cambyses, usurped the throne. Cambyses is said to have put an end to his own life. After a reign of seven months, during which ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... Nearer home, there was the marriage of Mary of Scotland with Henry Darnley (1565), and all the tragedy which followed, Kirk of Field (1567), Lochleven, Langside, Carlisle, the imprisonment of the pretender to the English Crown (1568). In England, the authority of Elizabeth had established itself, and the internal organization of the Reformed Church was going on, in an uncertain and tentative way, but steadily. There was a struggle between Genevan exiles, who were ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... much respect. We, who know that the French Emperor is the first man of the age, as well in intellect as in position, have no right to sneer at the men of 1840 because they looked upon him as a feeble pretender. He had made two attempts to place himself at the head of the French nation, and in each instance his failure had been so signal, and in some respects so ridiculous, that it was impossible to regard him as the representative ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... obvious that no mere pretender could exhibit these proofs; and that, where they were taken as the sole measure of a man's worth, dexterity with a rifle must be of more value than the accomplishments of a talker—Indian-fighting a more respectable occupation than speech-making. Small politicians were, ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... present. When the dictates of humanity are in question, I know no difference between Turks and Greeks. It is enough that those who want assistance are men, in order to claim the pity and protection of the meanest pretender to humane feelings. I have found here twenty-four Turks, including women and children, who have long pined in distress, far from the means of support and the consolations of their home. The Government has consigned ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... tree was distinguished among fig trees; the others offered no invitation, gave no promise; "the time of figs was not yet"; they, in due season would bring forth fruit and leaves; but this precocious and leafy pretender waved its umbrageous limbs as in boastful assertion of superiority. For those who responded to its ostentatious invitation, for the hungering Christ who came seeking fruit, it had naught but leaves. Even for the purposes of the lesson involved, we cannot conceive of the ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... side." [1716: Fassmann, p. 171.] So Peter's troops have gone home again; Denmark too glad to get them away. Perhaps they would have stayed in Denmark altogether; much liking the green pastures and convenient situation,—had not Admiral Norris with his cannon been there! Perhaps? And the Pretender is coming again, they say? And who knows what is coming?—How Gortz, in about a year hence was laid hold of, and let go, and then ultimately tried and beheaded (once his lion Master was disposed of); [19th March, 1719: see Kohler (Munzbelustiggungen, vi. ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... under the mask of charity; I therefore proceeded at once to menaces, telling him that you bad so many advantages over his wife, that you scorned to consider her your rival: but that, nevertheless, you did not choose that any upstart pretender should dare ask to share his majesty's heart. To all this he made no reply; and as the sight of him only increased my indignation, I at length desired him to quit me. I trust you will pardon me for having spoken in as queenlike a manner as you could have ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... goodly following and these quickly surrounded him and Bu-lot, but there were many knives against them and now Ja-don pressed forward through those who confronted the pretender. ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... tell ye, Ivan, though ye be my son, never mair shall I call ye so, if ye join the rabble that young scamp has got together, and never mair shall ye darken the doors of Dunmorton if ye gae wi' him. Noo choose between that young pretender and your ...
— Marie Gourdon - A Romance of the Lower St. Lawrence • Maud Ogilvy
... that whereon they are built, what Science again will you compare with this? Let the pretender to Geological skill,—(I say not the true Geologist, for he never offends!)—let the conceited sciolist, I say, go dream a little longer over those implements of chipped flint which have called him into such ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... regular established number in Florence. There are I and my brother over there at the great house on the other side of the Arno: we are the Florentine Stenterelli by right divine, as is well known. Who is this pretender who comes to interfere with us?" etc. Now, this was a little too much, even for Florence. And a day or two afterward the old original Stenterello was ordered to go to prison. Nobody was ever arrested, as we should call it, or taken to prison. A man who for any cause was to suffer ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... regular practitioners were clever, and had only doubted Mr. Sheldon because he was not a regular practitioner. But how if she were to withdraw her husband from the hands of a clever man to deliver him into the care of an ignorant pretender, simply because she was over-anxious ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... letters mentions his feelings on the defeat of the luckless Charles Edward, whose hopes of the British crown were extinguished by the battle of Culloden, (April 16, 1746.) "The Pretender, who gave us so much disturbance for some time past, is at length, with all his adherents, utterly defeated, and himself (as some say) taken prisoner. 'Tis strange to see how the minds of the people are in a few days changed. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... cocked hat, the white waistcoat, and the long grey coat. He brought his stick down smartly on the ground, drew himself up, squared his shoulders, and said: "Courage, Eustache Lagroin. It is not forty Prussians, but one rogue! Crush him! Down with the pretender!" ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... members of either class, but it is plain, from his four large quarto volumes, called Analecta, that he did not lack the will. In his Analecta Mr. Wodrow noted down all the news that reached him, scandals about 'The Pretender,' Court Gossip, Heresies of Ministers, Remarkable Providences, Woful Apparitions, and 'Strange Steps of Providence'. Ghosts, second sight, dreams, omens, premonitions, visions, did greatly delight him, but it is fair to note that he ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... a few paragraphs in the newspaper, sir," Hal answered. "Enough to know that some pretender in the country across the border is trying to upset the present ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Lieutenants - or, Serving Old Glory as Line Officers • H. Irving Hancock
... Discontent of the Nation Captain Kidd Meeting of Parliament Attacks on Burnet Renewed Attack on Somers Question of the Irish Forfeitures: Dispute between the Houses Somers again attacked Prorogation of Parliament Death of James the Second The Pretender recognised as King Return of the King General Election Death ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... A.P. man said gloomily. "That's the hell of it. None of this is happening. Just the way Taft the Pretender never happened in '03. Just the way the Pentagon ...
— The Adventurer • Cyril M. Kornbluth
... continued his journey, landing at New York in 1725. At the first meeting of the Church Council he won the hearts of all, even of those who had been instrumental in foisting von Dieren upon the congregation, who now stood convicted as an ignorant pretender, and therefore was dismissed. Dieren continued his agitation in other Lutheran congregations until Berkenmeyer in 1728 published a tract fully exposing the character of the impudent impostor. From the beginning Berkenmeyer's ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente
... no mere ordinary pretender, working on the superstitions of shallow-pated people. He lived up to his belief—took no money, avoided notoriety when he could; and the proof of his sincerity lies in the fact that he ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... cottons to the pretender, an' they get chummy. They're together all the time. You can gamble Jim told all he knew an' then some. A little liquor loosens his tongue. Several of the boys rode over from Ord, an' one of them went to Poggin an' says Jim ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... right of the supreme authority alone to handle public matters, or choose officials to do so, it follows that that subject is a pretender to the dominion, who, without the supreme council's knowledge, enters upon any public matter, although he believe that his design will be to the best ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... Tom Meggot, who is a Favourite with her, and allowed to visit me in her Company because he sings prettily, has roused me to rebel, and conveyed his Intelligence to me in the following Manner. My Wife is a great Pretender to Musick, and very ignorant of it; but far gone in the Italian Taste. Tom goes to Armstrong, the famous fine Writer of Musick, and desires him to put this Sentence of Tully [1] in the Scale of an Italian Air, and write it out for my Spouse from him. An ille mihi liber cui mulier ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... Antonio to me, in French, "those two fellows are Carlist priests, and are awaiting the arrival of the Pretender. Les imbeciles!" ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... beest more, thou art an understander, and then I trust thee. If thou art one that takest up, and but a pretender, beware of what hands thou receivest thy commodity; for thou wert never more fair in the way to be cozened, than in this age, in poetry, especially in plays: wherein, now the concupiscence of dances and of antics so reigneth, as to run away from nature, and be afraid ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... far did the pretender go hobbling. He changed his gait and hurried to the eastern side of Valhalla. There a great oak tree flourished and out of a branch of it a little bush of Mistletoe grew. Loki broke off a spray and with it in his hand he went ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum
... of the late Sir David Murray, Baronet, and Sister of the present Sir David Murray, who is now in the Service of the King of France, in the East Indies: This young Gentleman was unfortunate enough to take Part with the young Pretender in the late Rebellion, being Nephew to Mr. Murray, of Broughton, the Pretender's then Secretary: and after the Battle of Culloden was taken Prisoner, and tried at Carlisle, where he received Sentence of Death as a Rebel: but for his Youth, not being then above eighteen Years ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... feeling that way about him, completely under his influence, that I married him. And in a week," here she arose, the cloak falling from her shoulders as she flung out her arms in a gesture of despair, "I knew just what I had done. The man was a cheap pretender; he'd never had an honest thought in his life; he had familiarized himself with all my little weaknesses and aspirations before he met me; all his learning was a sham; his good ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... another, has failed,—marvellously failed,—and he himself is now exhibited not only in our fatherland, but even at the Antipodes, in fact wherever the English language is spoken or read, as a shallow pretender, one quite incompetent to treat of matters of such undying interest as those he presumed to ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... period which had introduced this new pretender to the heart of Delia, had been distinguished by the arrival of a Sir William Twyford, who paid his addresses to Miss Fletcher. Sir William was exactly the reverse of Mr. Prettyman. With a genteel person, and an open and agreable phisiognomy, ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin
... the urgent necessity of political reform, they are irrelevantly charged by the adherents of the spoils system with being "hypocrites and pharisees." Precisely so, when I plead the urgent necessity of philosophical reform, I am irrelevantly charged by Dr. Royce, in effect, with being a false pretender, a plagiarist, and an impostor. The charge is just as true in one case as in the other. But, be the charge true or untrue, the attention of keen and candid minds is not to be diverted by this perfectly transparent device from the main point ...
— A Public Appeal for Redress to the Corporation and Overseers of Harvard University - Professor Royce's Libel • Francis Ellingwood Abbot
... meanness is impossible to a demagogue,—a pretender to things of which he has even no just conception,—a man who lives to envy and traduce; in a word, a quasi gentleman. Let us hear ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... hoofs rang on the frozen road, thrust his hands for warmth into his coat. In another dress, with his dark hair blown backward in the wind, he might have been a cavalier fresh from the service of his lady or his king, or riding carelessly to his death for the sake of the drunken young Pretender. ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... during the close of the seventeenth and the first half of the eighteenth century. If the dates be marked by corresponding political history, its rise may be placed as early as the reign of Charles I; its maturity in the period from the revolution of 1688 to the invasion of the Pretender in 1745; its decay in the close of the reign of George II, and the early part of that of ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... denotes the spot which his division occupied previous to the contest. The tomb of Sir J. Graham bears an inscription. Here also is the monument of Sir R. Munro, who was killed in 1746, when General Hawley was defeated by the Pretender. The scene of this second battle was the Moor of Falkirk, about a mile ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 367 - 25 Apr 1829 • Various
... the first blow. The title of the Peshwa was not undisputed. A portion of the Mahratta nation was favorable to a pretender. The Governor-General determined to espouse this pretender's interest, to move an army across the peninsula of India, and to form a close alliance with the chief of the house of Bonsla, who ruled Berar, and who, in power and dignity, was inferior to ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Sergius Nesimir was not the man to deal with a candid adventurer of this type. It occurred to him that he ought to summon help and clap the soi-disant King and his henchman into prison. But on what charge? Could any royal pretender put forth more reasonable plea? And Kosnovia is near enough to the East to render sacred the claims ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... were the only sights we saw in Frascati. We did, indeed, penetrate the chill interior of the local cathedral, but as we did not know at the time that we were sharing it with the memory of the young Stuart pretender Charles Edward, who died in Frascati, and whose brother, Cardinal York, placed a mural tablet to him in the church, we were conscious of no special claim upon our interest. We ought, of course, to have visited the Villa Aldobrandini and the Villa Ruffinella ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... days were drawing to their end; and appropriately he died in a welter of innocent blood. When the Duke of Hamilton was appointed Ambassador to the French Court, the Whigs were so alarmed by his known partiality for the Pretender that the more unscrupulous of them decided that, at any cost, he must be got rid of. What simpler plan could there be than by provoking him to a duel; what fitter tool than the fire-eating, bloodthirsty Mohun, the most skilled ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... matchlock for the Castle-people and Sir John Hope, or merely looked over from the kale-beds at the victorious fighters for Prince Charley, I cannot learn; it is certain only that before Culloden, and the final discomfiture of the Pretender, he avowed himself a good King's-man, and in many an after-year, over his pipe and his ale, told the story of the battle which surged wrathfully around his father's kale-garden by ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... pretender's having been introduced in a warming pan into the queen's bed, though as destitute of all probability as of all foundation, has been much more prejudicial to the cause of Jacobitism than all that Mr. Locke and others have written, to show the unreasonableness and ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... opinion, and had threatened to imprison the Prince if he came within his reach; in Holstein the Austrian Government had permitted, if it had not encouraged, the inhabitants to agitate in favour of the Pretender, and had allowed a mass-meeting to be held at Altona on the 23rd of January, where cheers were raised for Augustenburg, and the summoning of the Estates of Schleswig-Holstein was demanded. This was enough to enable Bismarck to denounce the conduct of Austria as an alliance with ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... its authors; for Jews would never have called the followers of Jesus of Nazareth, 'Christians,' or those of Christ, the very point of their opposition to Him being, that He was not the Christ, but a false pretender to the name. [Footnote: Compare Tacitus (Annal, xv. 24): Quos vulgus ... Christianos appellabat. It is curious too that, although a Greek word and coined in a Greek city, the termination is Latin. Christianos ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... youth in showy knickerbockers, whose eyebrows and nose and the glued points of whose little moustache were extraordinarily uplifted and sustained. I remember taking him at first for a foreigner and for something of a pretender: I scarcely know why, unless because of the motive I felt in the stare he fixed on me when I asked Miss Saunt to come away. He struck me a little as a young man practising the social art of "impertinence"; but it didn't matter, for Flora ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... most sultry day, to his very nose. How singular is the slavery of fashion! Notwithstanding their mortification, the unexpected costume of von Aslingen appeared only to increase the young lords' admiration of his character and accomplishments; and instead of feeling that he was an insolent pretender, whose fame originated in his insulting their tastes, and existed only by their sufferance, all cantered away with the determination of wearing on the next day, even if it were to cost them each a calenture, furs enough ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... letter which was forwarded from Henry to the mayor and citizens of London, (it is the last we shall have occasion to transcribe,) and which is chiefly remarkable for his language when speaking of the Dauphin. He (p. 300) will not acknowledge him to have any right to the title, and calls him a pretender. Another point of considerable interest is the unqualified manner in which he speaks of the cordial co-operation and sincere attachment of ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... presence that he was endowed with this supernatural privilege, the officer took an opportunity of applying to his arm the point of a sword and drew the blood, to the no little diversion of the spectators, and mortification of the pretender to superior gifts, who vowed revenge, and would have taken it had not means been used to keep him at a distance. But a single detection of charlatanerie is not effectual to destroy a prevalent superstition. These impostors are usually found among ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... founders of the Commonwealth. Nothing marked more vividly the strength of the reaction against the Protector's system than the union in a common enmity of Vane and Haselrig with the partizans of the Stuart pretender. ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... of the Saint as a "depraved quack," and says that the time he spent with him was worse than wasted. If Saint-Simon was the rogue and pretender that Comte avers, it is no certificate of Comte's insight that it took him four years ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... what must be true, that he had great executive skill, a clear method, and a just attention to all the details of the task in hand. Plainly he was no boaster or pretender, but a man for up-hill work, a soldier to bide the brunt; a man whom disasters, which dishearten other men, only stimulated to new courage ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... say the same thing; and, as soon as a pretender offers himself, they are delighted. Mine is a fellow of twenty-six, quite good looking, amiable, witty, and who has had the ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... was a cousin of the two brothers Keith; the one of whom, then Lord Marischal, had proclaimed the Old Pretender king at Edinburgh; and both of whom had attained very high rank abroad, the younger Keith having served with great distinction in the Spanish and Russian armies, and had then taken service under Frederick the Great, from ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... first of them all, "Waverley." Here is a border tale which narrates the adventures of a scion of that house among the loyal Highlanders temporarily a rebel to the reigning English sovereign and a recruit in the interests of the young pretender: his fortunes, in love and war, and his eventual reinstatement in the King's service and happiness with the woman of his choice. While it might be too sweeping to say that there was in this first romance (which has never ranked with his best) the whole secret of the ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... account of religion. 6. For-swear', to swear falsely. 9. De-spite'ful-ly, maliciously, cruelly. 10. Pub'li-cans, tax collectors (they were often oppressive and were hated by the Jews). 11. Mete, to measure. Mote, a small particle. 12. Hyp'o-crite, a false pretender. 17. Scribes, men among the Jews who read and explained the law to ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... of the babbies—only that her mother was on oath to Father M'Dermot, who ought to be hanged, drawn, and quartered instead of those poor fellows whom the government called rebels, but who were no more rebels than Father M'Grath himself, who'll uphold the Pretender, as they call our true Catholic king, as long as there's life in his body or a drop of whiskey left in ould Ireland to drink his ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... GREAT pretender to gentility Came to a herald for his pedigree: The herald, knowing what he was, begun To rumble o'er his heraldry; which done, Told him he was a gentleman of note, And that he had a very glorious coat. "Prithee, what is 't?" quoth he, "and take your fees." "Sir," says the herald, "'tis two rampant ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... could see the green-grey roofs of Kensington Palace. At his left he could see a public-house which bore the name and stood upon the site of the hostelry where the Pretender's friends gathered on the morning when they expected to see Queen Anne succeeded by the heir to the House of Stuart. Looking from the one place to the other, he reflected upon the events of that morning when those gentlemen waited in vain for the expected tidings, ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... Here was stirring news, indeed, for the citizens of Boston, and for all British subjects, wherever they might be. The suspense in which loyal New England was plunged, as to whether "great George our King and the Protestant succession" were to succumb before the Pretender and his Jesuitical followers, was happily terminated by intelligence of the decisive battle of Culloden, the tidings of which victory, gained on the 16th of April, 1746, appear in the number for July. Public ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... I knew that if he were lord in name he was not so in fortune, and I was astonished to see him driving such a handsome carriage, and still more so at his blue ribbon. In a few words he told me that he was going to dine with the Pretender, but that he would sup at home. He invited me to come to ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... A Carlyle (Auto. p. 114) tells how in 1745 he found 'Professor Maclaurin busy on the walls on the south side of Edinburgh, endeavoring to make them more defensible [against the Pretender]. He had even erected some small cannon.' See ante, iii, 15, for a ridiculous story told of him ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... senate, his wife Tullia also following him. He there spoke many words to remind them of his father's worth and uttered many jests at the expense of Tullius. When the latter on hearing of it hastily made his appearance and said a word or two, the pretender seized him, and thrusting him out cast him down the steps in front of the senate-house. So the king, bewildered by the audacity of Tarquin and surprised that no one came to his assistance, did not say or do anything ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio
... horse, and Mr. George Bowes, the county member, made His Royal Highness a present of his nag to enable him to proceed on his journey. The roads west of Newcastle were so bad, that in the previous year the royal forces under General Wade, which left Newcastle for Carlisle to intercept the Pretender and his army, halted the first night at Ovingham, and the second at Hexham, being able to travel only twenty miles ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... King The London Clergy disobey the Royal Order Hesitation of the Government It is determined to prosecute the Bishops for a Libel They are examined by the Privy Council They are committed to the Tower Birth of the Pretender He is generally believed to be supposititious The Bishops brought before the King's Bench and bailed Agitation of the public Mind Uneasiness of Sunderland He professes himself a Roman Catholic Trial of the Bishops The Verdict; Joy of the People Peculiar State of Public ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Complete Contents of the Five Volumes • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... about her, should, in imitation of her ancestress, have gone out with her pitcher on her head to draw water from the well, while in all her own courtyards pipe-led streams gushed forth, would have acted the part of the pretender; that had she insisted on resuscitating her loom and had sat up all night to spin, she could never have produced those fabrics which alone her household demanded, and would have been but a puerile actor; that it ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... with which he had nullified the last 'Senatus-consulte'. He scarcely seemed to hear me, so completely was his mind absorbed in the subject on which he was meditating. At length, suddenly recovering from his abstraction, he said, "Bourrienne, do you think that the pretender to the crown of France would renounce his claims if I were to offer him a good indemnity, or even a province in Italy?" Surprised at this abrupt question on a subject which I was far from thinking of, I replied that I did not think the pretender would relinquish his claims; that it ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... that whatsoever of a pretender Paracelsus may have been in certain respects, he was unquestionably a man of extraordinary powers: and, as a pioneer in a science of the first magnitude of importance, deserving of high honour. If ever the famous German attain a high place in the history of the modern ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp |
